Divemedic

Nostalgia

Last night, I was watching some of the streaming offerings on PlutoTV. It got me to thinking about the America that existed when I was a kid. The shows like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, the Wonderful World of Disney, Six Million Dollar Man, Happy Days, Barney Miller, Mork and Mindy, The Love Boat, Three’s Company, and Laverne and Shirley. During the day, we grew up on old shows like the Dick van Dyke show, Andy Griffith, and The Beverly Hillbillys.

Watching music videos on television.

All of it seems like it was so corny, and so wholesome. I know that life had its difficulties. We had the Carter years, the Cold War, and my young adult years were filled with my time in the military, but being young, the world seemed so much better in those days than it is now. Things made more sense then. Perhaps its due to the state of the world today, or perhaps its due to the youthful optimism that we all have when we are in our teens.

Still, there are times when I live in the nostalgia of the years between 1976 and 1996, and long to return to those days. So I think I will sit here for a couple of hours, watch some nostalgia TV, and remember a time when I was young, and the world seemed to make sense. Then I have to go to work.

By Divemedic, ago

Volcanoes, Water Vapor, & Climate Change

Last August, NASA reported that the Tonga volcano eruption blasted an amount of water vapor into the stratosphere that has not been seen before. In fact, the volcano ejected approximately 146 million tons of water vapor into the stratosphere- that is the equivalent of 13% of the water vapor that was already there, a 5-fold increase of stratospheric aerosol load. Since water vapor is 4 times more effective at being a greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide, it’s responsible for about half of Earth’s greenhouse effect.

The January eruption of the underwater volcano saw the catapulting of millions of tons of water vapor dozens of miles into the upper reaches of the atmosphere, where it is usually not as prevalent. This greatly increased the greenhouse effects of water vapor and raised global temperatures. (pdf warning)

That’s why everything was fairly normal until mid-March 2023, and then a dramatic 1°C warming spike in a matter of 2-weeks raised global temperatures to the record levels we are at today. We are going to be stuck with higher than normal temperatures for the next few months. So don’t let those with a political agenda tell you that this is man’s fault. This is nature at work. Science, it’s a thing.

By Divemedic, ago

Pretentious Ass

I was out with my wife and some of her coworkers for some cocktails. The only other male there was an English teacher, and as you can guess from his useless degree, he is a flaming liberal. We got into a conversation about how movies that are based on books are largely trash. One of the ones we talked about was Starship Troopers. His point was that the story was about the evils of Capitalism and the dangers of letting a capitalistic system have control of the military. Proving that he doesn’t know who Robert Heinlein is, nor has he actually read any of his work, to include Starship Troopers.

Then he went on to tell me how his favorite author was Steinbeck, with Hemingway and Melville being tied for a close second. Then he went on a 20 minute spiel about how The Great Gatsby was actually just a retelling of Moby Dick, framed in a way to illustrate the crass waste that is Capitalism. Of course he is a fan of those three authors- all three of them are Socialists.

Why is it that Socialists always picture a socialist system in which they are permitted to sit around and talk about poetry and Stalin, and not the real version of socialism where they toil in the fields or labor in a death camp?

By Divemedic, ago

Masters Degree

As I rapidly approach my seventh decade, I realize that I can’t work as a bedside healthcare worker forever. I can’t wrestle with meth heads forever. It’s time to start thinking about what comes next. My new employer will pay for my classes and books, so I have decided to get my Masters degree. There are two real choices: Nursing Management, or Nursing Education.

I have already gone down the road of education- I was a high school science teacher, I have also had jobs teaching Paramedic, ACLS, PALS, and other classes. I also don’t have a very high opinion of nurse educators, so I don’t want to do that.

That leaves Nursing Management. If you’re gonna be in the band, it’s better to wave the stick than to carry the big drum. That requires a couple of undergrad prerequisite courses that my previous degrees didn’t cover. Classes begin this week.

By Divemedic, ago

Now They Tell Us

I took Ivermectin and HCQ when I got COVID. It sure didn’t hurt. It may have helped, I don’t know. It’s hard to tell when there is an illness with a 99% survival rate.

By Divemedic, ago