Yankees beat the Phillies in the World Series.
Thank goodness that it was handily without questionable umpire calls or other questionable calls. Thank goodness we were not in Philadelphia during this time since fans in philadelphia are insufferable... not matter if they won or lost.
Thank goodness for small things...
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Post season baseball and other thoughts
Phillies up 2-1 over the Dodgers and Joe Torre
NYY playing Angels in Anaheim. Should have seen Saturday night game that A-Rod tied it in the ninth with a solo HR and then Jeery Hairston Jr ran home second to a throwing error. What a game!!!!
BTW, who calls someone else a fag, gayboy anymore??? Nothing but a homophobic, uneducated, dumbass, 60yo lazy piece of s--t.
Max got his blood drawn today for anemia and OT today. Using a toothbrush on his face and firm pressure for massage to try to help overcome his textural sensitivity issues. UGHHHH!
NYY playing Angels in Anaheim. Should have seen Saturday night game that A-Rod tied it in the ninth with a solo HR and then Jeery Hairston Jr ran home second to a throwing error. What a game!!!!
BTW, who calls someone else a fag, gayboy anymore??? Nothing but a homophobic, uneducated, dumbass, 60yo lazy piece of s--t.
Max got his blood drawn today for anemia and OT today. Using a toothbrush on his face and firm pressure for massage to try to help overcome his textural sensitivity issues. UGHHHH!
New York Yankees Post Season Watch
ALDS
RED SOX LOSE to Angels in sweep!!!
Dodgers to play Phillies
| Fri, 10/9 | Twins | W 4-3 | 2-0 | Robertson (1-0) | Mijares (0-1) |
| Sun, 10/11 | at Twins | W 4-1 | 3-0 | Pettitte (1-0) | Pavano (0-1) |
RED SOX LOSE to Angels in sweep!!!
Dodgers to play Phillies
Friday, October 9, 2009
New York Yankees Post season Watch
NEXT GAME 10/9, 6:07 ET versus Minnesota Twins
TV: TBS
RADIO: WCBS 880, ESPN Radio, 92.7 WQBU
RADIO: WCBS 880, ESPN Radio, 92.7 WQBU
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Faith healing vs Medicine
No matter what the parents believe... a 2 year old will not be able to decide whether he can or can not follow his parents' beliefs. It is a parents duty to provide for basic life sustaining needs. Having diarrhea, fevers, productive cough, and at the end, inability to eat should have alarmed the parents enough to seek medical attention. No matter what their religious beliefs and ideas about medicine for healing, they should have known that inability to eat and diarrhea are not life-sustaining so that as parents they should have known to seek help than prayer. Prayer is not going to make your 2yo eat or stop having diarrhea.
The boy died in PAIN... This is terrible...
Faith-healing parents charged in death of infant son
On the last day of Kent Schaible's life, his parents and pastor intensely prayed over his 32-pound body, which, unbeknown to them, was ravaged by bacterial pneumonia.
When the 2-year-old boy finally died at 9:30 p.m. Jan. 24 inside the family's Northeast Philadelphia home, the pastor called a funeral director to take the boy's remains to the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's Office.
At no time that day, nor in the week-and-a-half prior, did Herbert and Catherine Schaible seek medical treatment for their son despite his sore throat, congestion, liquid bowel movements, sleeplessness and trouble swallowing, Assistant District Attorney Joanne Pescatore said in court yesterday.
"All it would have taken is a simple visit to a doctor for antibiotics or Tylenol, maybe, to keep this child alive," she said during the couple's preliminary hearing.
After the two attorneys representing the Schaibles argued for their innocence, Municipal Judge Patrick Dugan held them for trial on charges of involuntary manslaughter, conspiracy to commit involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of a child.
"When you look at this case, it's obvious that what you have are loving parents who also appear to be misguided," Dugan told the couple. "Your child needed medical care. As parents, that's what your duty is, and that's why you are here in court today."
The Schaibles' case is similar to a growing number around the country in which parents are slapped with criminal charges for turning to religion rather than medical care for sick children who later die.
Herbert Schaible, 41, and Catherine Schaible, 40, of Rhawn Street near Bustleton Avenue, are free on bail and will be arraigned on Oct. 28.
They are members of the First Century Gospel Church, in the Northeast, which believes that the sick can be healed through prayer rather than by medicine, according to statements that the couple gave homicide detectives two days after their son's death.
" 'We prayed to God for victory . . . We were praying that he would be raised up, " Detective Stephen Buckley said yesterday, reading from Herbert Schaible's statement.
Herbert Schaible is a teacher at First Century Gospel Church, said his attorney, Bobby Hoof.
"They believe in faith-healing; that's fine for them," Pescatore said after the hearing. "But this was a two-year-old child."
On Jan. 13 or 14, Kent started showing symptoms of illness that at times improved but generally grew worse until his death on Jan. 24, his parents said in their statements.
" 'He was moody and demanding; you couldn't please him,' " Det. Buckley said, quoting from Catherine Schaible's statement.
Edwin Lieberman, the assistant medical examiner who did Kent's autopsy, said that he had determined the manner of death to be a homicide because the boy could have been saved with basic medical care.
Bacterial pneumonia "is very treatable," he said, but without care he "seriously" doubted if Kent improved at all, as his parents had told detectives.
Francis Carmen, Catherine Schaible's attorney, said that the couple's decision to forgo medical attention was not due to their religion, but because they thought Kent had a cold.
"The commonwealth wants to use [the Schaible's] religious beliefs as a self-fulfilling prophecy that, somehow, because they are different and because they exercise religious beliefs that are not necessarily in line with the majority of us," he said, "that is the cause of them failing to recognize that this child was as ill as he was."
Hoof, on behalf of Herbert Schaible, said that his client did everything in his power to care for his son in the days before he died - feeding him and giving him liquids.
"He cared for his child and thought his child was getting better," Hoof told reporters.
When asked why he did not call a doctor, he said: "He never said that he would not take the child to a doctor in his statement. He never said that."
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Beware of the Chinese... It is the Chinese behind the push to get rid of the dollar
The demise of the dollar
In a graphic illustration of the new world order, Arab states have launched secret moves with China, Russia and France to stop using the US currency for oil trading
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/the-demise-of-the-dollar-1798175.html
While they are smiling and shaking your hand... getting you to celebrate 60years of Communism, they are stabbing you in the back. Beware of the Smiling red dragon!
Sunday, October 4, 2009
Shame on the United States
Honor China, Not Its Communism
On Tuesday September 29, 2009, 6:44 pm EDT
Public Relations: The Empire State Building this week will illuminate red and yellow, celebrating China's 60 years of communist rule. There are many things to appreciate about China, but communism isn't one of them.
Public Relations: The Empire State Building this week will illuminate red and yellow, celebrating China's 60 years of communist rule. There are many things to appreciate about China, but communism isn't one of them.
What was the Empire State Building thinking in lighting up in celebration of China's long communist rule?
Amid all the charming reasons the classical 102-story skyscraper colors the Gotham sky at night
-- the 70th anniversary of "The Wizard of Oz," El Museo del Barrio's reopening, Columbus Day and Gabrielle's Angel Foundation, according to its Web site -- China stands as a negative outlier.
Cynics call it recognition that the Chinese, who buy U.S. debt, now own us. But this looks more like a thoughtless confusion of China with its communist government, in perhaps the same impulse that prompts some to set up kitschy eateries bearing photos of Mao.
Cynics call it recognition that the Chinese, who buy U.S. debt, now own us. But this looks more like a thoughtless confusion of China with its communist government, in perhaps the same impulse that prompts some to set up kitschy eateries bearing photos of Mao.
Recognizing China's regime with bright lights does New York's most visible landmark no honor at all.
China's 6,000-year-old history and civilization are loaded with things to celebrate -- from its invention of paper money and fireworks, to its great cuisines, its Taoist philosophy, the daring historic voyages of Sanbao (a possible model for Sinbad), millions of Overseas Chinese, and perhaps the awed arrival of Marco Polo into the Middle Kingdom, which ignited the Age of Exploration.
Much of the story of civilization is rooted in the West's longing to connect with China -- and this is not a finished story. In 1989, China saw brave young people stand up to tanks in the name of liberty at Tiananmen Square, an event surely worthy of the Empire State Building's honor as a beacon of freedom.
So it's discordant and jarring to see the tyranny that's plagued China for 60 years now the object of the skyscraper's approbation.
"Would the Empire State Building honor the government of Sudan or the birth of Nazi Germany?" asked Thor Halvorssen, whose Human Rights Foundation has an office in this building. "It's sad that a symbol of free enterprise honors the butchers of Beijing."
Communism is the root of the honor and nothing has harmed China so much. The nightmare began with Mao Zedong in 1949. He imported the alien ideology that is still around, diluted only because the authorities made such an economic hash of the country. By Mao's 1976 death, his successors had no choice but to open up.
Communism is the root of the honor and nothing has harmed China so much. The nightmare began with Mao Zedong in 1949. He imported the alien ideology that is still around, diluted only because the authorities made such an economic hash of the country. By Mao's 1976 death, his successors had no choice but to open up.
Before that, the communist regime was responsible for wars, purges and famine on a scale untold in human civilization. According to University of Hawaii historian R.J. Rummel, the communist regime is responsible for the deaths of nearly 77 million people.
"... this equation of power is not limited to democide (murder by government). ... Power also breeds violence and war and all their associated killing. War, revolution and democide are as natural to power as the lust for power is to our species," Rummel wrote.
The writings of Nien Cheng and Harry Wu, in the telling of their personal stories, describe just how cruel the Chinese regime has been to millions of innocents.
"... this equation of power is not limited to democide (murder by government). ... Power also breeds violence and war and all their associated killing. War, revolution and democide are as natural to power as the lust for power is to our species," Rummel wrote.
The writings of Nien Cheng and Harry Wu, in the telling of their personal stories, describe just how cruel the Chinese regime has been to millions of innocents.
"So much for the statistics," Rummel adds. "These numbers alone do not measure the pain and suffering involved. For each person murdered, there remain grieving relatives and possibly broken homes and children. How many more died as a consequence is itself unknown and unestimated here. Then many of those killed did not die easy; often it was by inches, under torture, through starvation, overwork and exposure, or from painful wounds. These statistics only reflect in small measure the monstrous human misery."
The suffering in China isn't confined to the past. Xinjiang's Rebiya Kadeer and Tibet's Dalai Lama continue to speak out about the depredations of the communism that has never stopped persecuting its ethnic minorities who challenge its rule. And with an unrepentant regime, which still enslaves 8 million in its prison camps called Laogai, this will be the reality of China until it faces the errors of the past.
The Empire State Building's managers who mainstreamed this lighting display ought to have known this.
They run a great American symbol of freedom and enterprise, dear to the hearts of Americans because it still stands after 9/11.
To use the building as a lighted billboard to congratulate a regime whose cruelty is a matter of record ought to be protested.
China's long history is well worth honoring from the Empire State Building. But it's China's enterprising and freedom-loving people who deserve the honor, not its oppressive communist regime.
Friday, October 2, 2009
New Ad
Flying to Chicago on Airforce 1 for date nights ... $ 254,000 - ish
Flying across the Atlantic on Ariforce 1 roundtrip x 2 ... $??,???,??? - ish
Losing the Olympic bid in the face of the world ... to Rio De Janeiro despite unemployment, health care debacle, Afghanistan
Life of the dead Chicago honor student on the southside of Chicago ... priceless
Don't Cry for Me Chicago
The symbol of the Olympic Games is composed of five interlocking rings, colored blue, yellow, black, green, and red on a white field. This was originally designed in 1912 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games. Upon its initial introduction, de Coubertin stated the following in the August, 1912 edition of Revue Olympique:
- The emblem chosen to illustrate and represent the world Congress of 1914...: five intertwined rings in different colors - blue, yellow, black, green, red - are placed on the white field of the paper. These five rings represent the five parts of the world which now are won over to Olympism and willing to accept healthy competition.
These five parts are generally taken to mean the Americas, Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania.
Friday, September 25, 2009
Got back pain?
Try traveling with a crick in your neck that hurts so much that you need to swivel your whole body to see what is going on to the left... and handling 2 children under the age of 4 with a ton of luggage, a dumb poster tube, and a stroller that no one wants to sit in...
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Ready to Unionize???
Read the Union Health-Care Label
Get ready for Detroit-style labor relations in our hospitals.
By MARK MIX
In the heated debates on health-care reform, not enough attention is being paid to the huge financial windfalls ObamaCare will dole out to unions—or to the provisions in the various bills in Congress that will help bring about the forced unionization of the health-care industry.
Tucked away in thousands of pages of complex new rules, regulations and mandates are special privileges and giveaways that could have devastating consequences for the health-care sector and the American economy at large.
The Senate version opens the door to implement forced unionization schemes pursued by former Govs. Rod Blagojevich of Illinois in 2005 and Gray Davis of California in 1999. Both men repaid tremendous political debts to Andy Stern and his Service Employees International Union (SEIU) by reclassifying state-reimbursed in-home health-care (and child-care) contractors as state employees—and forcing them to pay union dues.
Following this playbook, the Senate bill creates a "personal care attendants workforce advisory panel" that will likely impose union affiliation to qualify for a newly created "community living assistance services and support (class)" reimbursement plan.
The current House version of ObamaCare (H.R. 3200) goes much further. Section 225(A) grants Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius tremendous discretionary authority to regulate health-care workers "under the public health insurance option." Monopoly bargaining and compulsory union dues may quickly become a required standard resulting in potentially hundreds of thousands of doctors and nurses across the country being forced into unions.
Ms. Sebelius will be taking her marching orders from the numerous union officials who are guaranteed seats on the various federal panels (such as the personal care panel mentioned above) charged with recommending health-care policies. Big Labor will play a central role in directing federal health-care policy affecting hundreds of thousands of doctors, surgeons and nurses.
Consider Kaiser Permanente, the giant, managed-care organization that has since 1997 proudly touted its labor-management "partnership" in scores of workplaces. Union officials play an essentially co-equal role in running many Kaiser facilities. AFL-CIO President John Sweeney called the Kaiser plan "a framework for what every health care delivery system should do" at a July 24 health-care forum outside of Washington, D.C.
The House bill has a $10 billion provision to bail out insolvent union health-care plans. It also creates a lucrative professional-development grant program for health-care workers that effectively blackballs nonunion medical facilities from participation. The training funds in this program must be administered jointly with a labor organization—a scenario not unlike the U.S. Department of Labor's grants for construction apprenticeship programs, which have turned into a cash cow for construction industry union officials on the order of hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
There's more. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has suggested that the federal government could pay for health-care reform by taxing American workers' existing health-care benefits—but he would exempt union-negotiated health-care plans. Under Mr. Baucus's scheme, the government could impose costs of up to $20,000 per employee on nonunion businesses already struggling to afford health care plans.
Mr. Baucus's proposal would give union officials another tool to pressure employers into turning over their employees to Big Labor. Rather than provide the lavish benefits required by Obamacare, employers could allow a union to come in and negotiate less costly benefits than would otherwise be required. Such plans could be continuously exempted.
Americans are unlikely to support granting unions more power than they already have in the health-care field. History shows union bosses could abuse their power to shut down medical facilities with sick-outs and strikes; force doctors, nurses and in-home care providers to abandon their patients; dictate terms and conditions of employment; and impose a failed, Detroit-style management model on the entire health-care field.
ObamaCare is a Trojan Horse for more forced unionization.
why you are the way you are...
Birth Order: Fun to Debate, but How Important?
By PERRI KLASS, M.D.
The older girl was smart, neat and perfectly behaved in school; in her spare time, she won dance trophies. At every checkup, her mother would tell me what a good girl she was.
She is the oldest, her mother would say, so she gets lots of attention, and she works very hard. When her younger sister turned out to be an equally good student, the proud mother explained that naturally she wanted to be just like her older sister.
Then a long-looked-for baby boy was born. When he was a toddler, I began to worry that his speech seemed a little slow in coming. His mother was perfectly calm about it. He is the only boy, she said, so he gets lots of attention, and he doesn’t have to work very hard.
Everyone takes it personally when it comes to birth order. After all, everyone is an oldest or a middle or a youngest or an only child, and even as adults we revert almost inevitably to a joke or resentment or rivalry that we’ve never quite outgrown.
Children and parents alike are profoundly affected by the constellations of siblings; it is said that no two children grow up in the same family, because each sibling’s experience is so different.
But that doesn’t mean the effects of birth order are as clear or straightforward as we sometimes make them sound. Indeed, birth order can be used to explain every trait and its precise opposite. I’m competitive, driven — typical oldest child! My brother, two years younger, is even more competitive, more driven — typical second child, always trying to catch up!
I surveyed some experienced pediatricians about when parents are likely to bring up birth order. Many cited the issue of speech, especially when a second child doesn’t talk as well or as early as the first.
And parents are likely to talk about mistakes they think they made the first time around. This time, we’re going to solve the sleep thing good and early. This time, we’re going to get it right with potty training. This time, we’re going to sign the child up for soccer.
“Too many parents are haunted by experiences both good and bad that they identify with their birth order,” said Dr. Peter A. Gorski, a professor of pediatrics, public health and psychiatry at the University of South Florida. And that might lead them to classify their own children according to birth order, he went on, which in turn can lead to a sense of identification or even rejection and to “self-fulfilling prophecies.”
Frank J. Sulloway, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of “Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics and Creative Lives” (Pantheon, 1996), points out that second-born children tend to be exposed to less language than eldest children. “The best environment to grow up in is basically two parents who are chattering away at you with fancy words,” Dr. Sulloway said.
He cited a huge and well-publicized Norwegian study, published in 2007, which found that eldest siblings’ I.Q.’s averaged about three points higher than their younger brothers’. (The study made use of Norwegian military records, so all the subjects were male.)
Those differences in verbal stimulation, like the differences in I.Q., are “relatively modest,” Dr. Sulloway continued, and unlikely to result in clinical speech delays. But in a child who is already vulnerable, a child who may be temperamentally less likely to evoke adults’ attention, or a child growing up in a less stimulating home — well, then, being the second child might be the added risk that makes the difference, he said.
“Birth order doesn’t cause anything,” Dr. Sulloway said. “It’s simply a proxy for the actual mechanisms that go on in family dynamics that shape character and personality.”
We can all cite examples and counterexamples, from our own families, our friends, history and literature. There are plenty of families where the younger child is brighter or more academic, and plenty of literary and historical examples (Jane and Elizabeth Bennet, Meg and Jo March, Dmitri and Ivan Karamazov — and you can think about those authors and their older siblings as well, and draw any comparisons you like). And then there are plenty of examples of brilliant eldest siblings, but given my own eldest status, I will refrain from citing any. (I told you this always gets personal.)
I.Q., though it does grab headlines, may shape family life less than personality and temperament. “It’s a part of a bigger picture that really involves family dynamics,” Dr. Sulloway said. “Child and family dynamics is like a chessboard; birth order is like a knight.”
Then there are all the other influences, from family size to socioeconomic status. “Typically firstborns tend to boss their younger siblings around, but what if you’re a very shy person?” Dr. Sulloway said. “Napoleon was a second-born and his older brother was a very shy guy, and he usurped the older-sibling niche because his older sibling didn’t occupy that niche.
“And why didn’t he occupy that niche? Temperament.”
Now, of course birth order played into my patients’ patterns, but so did gender and birth spacing and, above all, temperament. That little boy was more even-tempered, more placid than either of his sisters, easily soothed, and I think he would have shown that temperament no matter what.
But temperament also helped define his relationship to the four larger people in his immediate circle. “I wouldn’t discount the impact of birth order,” Dr. Gorski told me. “It sets up the structure of one’s place in relation to others from the beginning, as we learn how to react to people of different ages and different relationships.”
Pediatricians are always being warned not to let a speech delay slip past because of parents’ beliefs that boys talk later or that youngest children talk later. I did eventually insist on a hearing test and speech therapy for this little boy. As it turned out, his hearing was fine, and his sisters drilled him over and over with “use your words” exercises until his speech improved. That is one of the advantages of having hardworking older sisters.
By PERRI KLASS, M.D.
The older girl was smart, neat and perfectly behaved in school; in her spare time, she won dance trophies. At every checkup, her mother would tell me what a good girl she was.
She is the oldest, her mother would say, so she gets lots of attention, and she works very hard. When her younger sister turned out to be an equally good student, the proud mother explained that naturally she wanted to be just like her older sister.
Then a long-looked-for baby boy was born. When he was a toddler, I began to worry that his speech seemed a little slow in coming. His mother was perfectly calm about it. He is the only boy, she said, so he gets lots of attention, and he doesn’t have to work very hard.
Everyone takes it personally when it comes to birth order. After all, everyone is an oldest or a middle or a youngest or an only child, and even as adults we revert almost inevitably to a joke or resentment or rivalry that we’ve never quite outgrown.
Children and parents alike are profoundly affected by the constellations of siblings; it is said that no two children grow up in the same family, because each sibling’s experience is so different.
But that doesn’t mean the effects of birth order are as clear or straightforward as we sometimes make them sound. Indeed, birth order can be used to explain every trait and its precise opposite. I’m competitive, driven — typical oldest child! My brother, two years younger, is even more competitive, more driven — typical second child, always trying to catch up!
I surveyed some experienced pediatricians about when parents are likely to bring up birth order. Many cited the issue of speech, especially when a second child doesn’t talk as well or as early as the first.
And parents are likely to talk about mistakes they think they made the first time around. This time, we’re going to solve the sleep thing good and early. This time, we’re going to get it right with potty training. This time, we’re going to sign the child up for soccer.
“Too many parents are haunted by experiences both good and bad that they identify with their birth order,” said Dr. Peter A. Gorski, a professor of pediatrics, public health and psychiatry at the University of South Florida. And that might lead them to classify their own children according to birth order, he went on, which in turn can lead to a sense of identification or even rejection and to “self-fulfilling prophecies.”
Frank J. Sulloway, a visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of “Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics and Creative Lives” (Pantheon, 1996), points out that second-born children tend to be exposed to less language than eldest children. “The best environment to grow up in is basically two parents who are chattering away at you with fancy words,” Dr. Sulloway said.
He cited a huge and well-publicized Norwegian study, published in 2007, which found that eldest siblings’ I.Q.’s averaged about three points higher than their younger brothers’. (The study made use of Norwegian military records, so all the subjects were male.)
Those differences in verbal stimulation, like the differences in I.Q., are “relatively modest,” Dr. Sulloway continued, and unlikely to result in clinical speech delays. But in a child who is already vulnerable, a child who may be temperamentally less likely to evoke adults’ attention, or a child growing up in a less stimulating home — well, then, being the second child might be the added risk that makes the difference, he said.
“Birth order doesn’t cause anything,” Dr. Sulloway said. “It’s simply a proxy for the actual mechanisms that go on in family dynamics that shape character and personality.”
We can all cite examples and counterexamples, from our own families, our friends, history and literature. There are plenty of families where the younger child is brighter or more academic, and plenty of literary and historical examples (Jane and Elizabeth Bennet, Meg and Jo March, Dmitri and Ivan Karamazov — and you can think about those authors and their older siblings as well, and draw any comparisons you like). And then there are plenty of examples of brilliant eldest siblings, but given my own eldest status, I will refrain from citing any. (I told you this always gets personal.)
I.Q., though it does grab headlines, may shape family life less than personality and temperament. “It’s a part of a bigger picture that really involves family dynamics,” Dr. Sulloway said. “Child and family dynamics is like a chessboard; birth order is like a knight.”
Then there are all the other influences, from family size to socioeconomic status. “Typically firstborns tend to boss their younger siblings around, but what if you’re a very shy person?” Dr. Sulloway said. “Napoleon was a second-born and his older brother was a very shy guy, and he usurped the older-sibling niche because his older sibling didn’t occupy that niche.
“And why didn’t he occupy that niche? Temperament.”
Now, of course birth order played into my patients’ patterns, but so did gender and birth spacing and, above all, temperament. That little boy was more even-tempered, more placid than either of his sisters, easily soothed, and I think he would have shown that temperament no matter what.
But temperament also helped define his relationship to the four larger people in his immediate circle. “I wouldn’t discount the impact of birth order,” Dr. Gorski told me. “It sets up the structure of one’s place in relation to others from the beginning, as we learn how to react to people of different ages and different relationships.”
Pediatricians are always being warned not to let a speech delay slip past because of parents’ beliefs that boys talk later or that youngest children talk later. I did eventually insist on a hearing test and speech therapy for this little boy. As it turned out, his hearing was fine, and his sisters drilled him over and over with “use your words” exercises until his speech improved. That is one of the advantages of having hardworking older sisters.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
So what???
This is fitting for my mood...
A LITTLE THREE YEAR OLD BOY IS SITTING ON THE
TOILET. HIS MOTHER THINKS HE HAS BEEN IN THERE
TOO LONG, SO SHE GOES IN TO SEE WHAT'S UP.
THE LITTLE BOY IS SITTING ON THE TOILET READING A
BOOK. BUT ABOUT EVERY 10 SECONDS OR SO HE PUTS
THE BOOK DOWN, GRIPS ONTO TO THE TOILET SEAT
WITH HIS LEFT HAND AND HITS HIMSELF ON TOP OF
THE HEAD WITH HIS RIGHT HAND.
HIS MOTHER SAYS: "BILLY, ARE YOU ALL RIGHT?
YOU'VE BEEN IN HERE FOR A WHILE. "
BILLY SAYS: "I'M FINE, MOMMY.. I JUST HAVEN'T
GONE 'DOODY' YET."
MOTHER SAYS: "OK, YOU CAN STAY HERE A FEW
MORE MINUTES. BUT, BILLY, WHY ARE YOU
HITTING YOURSELF ON THE HEAD?"
BILLY SAYS: "WORKS FOR KETCHUP."
Sunday, August 23, 2009
Healthcare reform by an MD
An Anesthesiologist's Take on Health-Care Reform Expect a two-tier medical system and needless ER deaths if Congress and the White House have their way.
By RONALD DWORKIN
Every medical student learns an old adage: You can skimp on some medicine, but you can't skimp on obstetrics or anesthesiology. An elderly surgeon explained it to me this way, "In surgery, people die in days and weeks—a doctor has time to fix a mistake. But in obstetrics and anesthesiology, they die in minutes and seconds."
Twenty years ago, I became an anesthesiologist. Since then, whenever death has loomed in the operating room only to be sidestepped at the last moment, I think back on that wise surgeon. Indeed, the old adage explains why an anesthesiologist's life resembles a soldier's life. A soldier plays cards around the campfire, then goes out on routine patrol and ends up dead. The anesthesiologist jokes around with the surgeons and nurses, then, because of some unforeseen complication, his or her patient dies on the table. Although I have not personally faced such a disaster, I know anesthesiologists who have.
Incredibly, Congress's proposed health-care reform plan risks skimping on anesthesia. According to one of the health-care bills in Congress, H.R. 3200, the public option would reduce reimbursement for anesthesia by over 50%. More broadly, the bill reflects the incorrect assumptions progressive politicians have made about the mindset of today's doctors and how the health-care system operates.
The first error involves the new taxes on high wage earners. Progressives think marginal tax rates are a disincentive to work only when they reach, say, 70%. By raising taxes to only 60%, they expect a linear increase in tax revenues. But a new culture reigns in the world of upper-middle class professionals that invalidates this rule.
If the tax increase targeted 19th century aristocrats, the increase might be linear, since Old World aristocrats worked for honor—not money. Aristocrats viewed the whole notion of working for profit with contempt.
If the Protestant work ethic described by sociologist Max Weber dominated the earth, the tax bounty would also be huge. That's because the stereotypical Calvinist businessman worked not just for profit, but because he believed it was his duty to work.
People who view their job as a calling are also eager beavers. They work independent of the tax rate because their job is a vital part of their identity.But today's generation of upper-middle class professionals is different. They enter their respective fields to satisfy a career interest and to be of some use to society. When the novelty of their career wears off, they continue to work but do so primarily to make a good living and retire while still healthy.
Lawyers go through the change first. That's why the biggest law firms ladder their salaries in a particular way. They kick up a young lawyer's salary just when that lawyer starts to make the time-money calculation and ponder a lateral move to another industry. Each time the lawyer wises up, the firm pays him more—until he's too old to retool.
Such time-money calculations occur later in a doctor's career. But they do occur. Most doctors no longer think of their job as a calling. Few of them are Calvinists, and none of them are Old World aristocrats. Many doctors work part-time; others want flexible shifts. This would have been considered heresy even 20 years ago.
My point is that today's upper-middle class professionals are very sensitive to marginal tax rates. To preserve "lifestyle" and "quality time," they will work less. Thus to get money for health-care reform, progressives will have to tax further down the economic ladder, which means taxing the rest of the middle class.
A second thing progressives fail to grasp is the genius of the American health-care system: It unites rich and poor in a common private insurance system.Here's how it works. When a rich person rolls into the operating room, the nurse asks him: "Would you like a warm blanket? How about a pillow?" The anesthesiologist numbs his skin before putting in the I.V. Every effort is made to make him happy. People in the operating room pay attention to a rich patient's wishes because they know a rich person can make their lives miserable. He can complain to the hospital president, or call the mayor. But the side effect is that their high quality care becomes habitual, and all patients receive it. When a poor person complains in most environments, no one listens. But in health care, through a common private insurance system, poor people go to the same hospitals and doctors as rich people and thus enjoy the benefit of rich people's power.
The public option severs this link. Dissatisfied with government-run health care, the rich will exit the system. The poor and middle-class will be left to flounder alone inside the public system. Government-run health care will become like the public schools.
The progressives' third mistake is to skimp on anesthesiology. In no medical specialty is the spread between the Medicare rates and private insurance rates greater. Progressives expect to pay anesthesiologists Medicare rates, which are 65% less than private insurance rates, without any change in the system.
But there will be changes. Some anesthesiologists will leave the field. They are already faced with lawsuits at every turn. Something else has happened in America that threatens to tip the balance for anesthesiologists. Americans have grown very fat. This complicates anesthesia tremendously. Putting in IVs, spinals and epidurals is harder. Inserting breathing tubes is much more dangerous.
Quality of care will inevitably decline. That decline will come first in obstetrics. At the hospital where I work, two anesthesiologists work in obstetrics almost around the clock, so that a woman in labor need not wait more than five minutes for her epidural. Other hospitals are less fortunate, and have on staff at most one anesthesiologist in obstetrics. The economic crunch will eventually force these hospitals to cover obstetrics "when anesthesiology is available," meaning in between regular operating room cases. During an obstetrical emergency, these short-staffed anesthesia departments will scramble to send someone to perform the C-section.
Don't forget, a baby has only nine minutes of oxygen when the umbilical cord prolapses, so time is of the essence. At the very least, pregnant women will be waiting a lot longer for epidurals. But more pain on the labor floor is only the beginning. If hospitals delay the administration of anesthesia because Congress skimped, needless deaths will certainly result.
Dr. Dworkin is an anesthesiologist and the author of "Artificial Happiness" (Basic Books, 2006).
Friday, August 14, 2009
OK... Another pick me-up for being on Call and in Doylestown...
Also -
Monastery Life
A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand.
He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.
The head monk, says, 'We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son.'
He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot.
So, the young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He finds him banging his head against the wall and wailing,
'We missed the R!
We missed the R!
We missed the R!'
His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.
The young monk asks the old abbot, 'What's wrong, father?'
With A choking voice, the old abbot replies,'The word was . . .\
CELEBRATE!!!'
A young monk arrives at the monastery. He is assigned to helping the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand.
He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up! In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.
The head monk, says, 'We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son.'He goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscripts are held as archives in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot.So, the young monk gets worried and goes down to look for him. He finds him banging his head against the wall and wailing,
'We missed the R!
We missed the R!
We missed the R!'
His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.
The young monk asks the old abbot, 'What's wrong, father?'
With A choking voice, the old abbot replies,'The word was . . .\
CELEBRATE!!!'
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