Uncategorized

The gun question

As you know if you have been reading this blog, I am in school to earn my Masters Degree and become a Physician Assistant. We were recently in a class on how to conduct an exam, and were talking about the questions that we are required to ask a patient. One of the questions that they said we are required to ask is whether or not they own a gun, and whether or not that gun is kept in a secure location. Then we should use this as an opportunity to talk to them about the dangers of having a firearm in the home. I spoke up and said that I did not feel like that was a valid medical question, and the answer that I got was that this was about safety.

I then pointed out that we shouldn’t stop there. After all, if this is about safety, why not ask them if they are gay, and of so, lecture them on the dangers of homosexual activity? Of course, the reaction I got was how inappropriate that was. I pointed out that more people die each year from AIDS than are murdered by firearms.

I then asked if I would be penalized in any way for refusing to participate in a politically charged topic like this. They relented, and I will not be penalized in any way for refusing to ask that question.

By Divemedic, ago

“It just works”

“It just works” is the slogan of Apple’s products. The Apple fanboys will go on and on about how the idevices are virus and crash free. Now, I can tell you that I own a windows desktop, an iPad, and an iPhone. Until I bought my iPad last February and my iPhone in December, I had never before owned an Apple product, nor had I used one (with the exception of a former significant other’s machine). I had almost exclusively been a windows person. In fact, I had owned a windows machine (or three) since the days of Windows 3.0, when I bought an Intel 286 machine. We go way back.

So after a year of testing, how true is the claim? Not very. I use my iPad for note taking, and it occasionally needs a reboot. Some software compatibility issues require some tweaking, and there ARE viruses out there that affect Apple equipment. However, I have not had a virus on any machine that I have owned (including my Windows and Apple devices) in over ten years, mostly through some common sense web practices, despite not having any virus protection software running. (Spyware is a different story: but I eventually got a handle on that as well.)

With all of that said, the iPhone 4S is not my first smart phone, but it has been the best one I have had, and I have often wondered during the 2 months that I have had it how I ever got along without it. The iPad is great for taking notes during lectures (I use it to write directly on the Professor’s Powerpoint slides. There is an app that allows you to highlight, write notes, and mark up the slides on your iPad, using only your finger, but that is a post for another day.

So yes, Apple products are good, but bot the evolutionary leap forward that so many claim it is. They and Windows devices, IMO, are on par with each other.

By Divemedic, ago

Defenseive gun use

One of the lies that is told by anti gun forces in this country is how guns are not used for lawful defense that often, and that your risk of being killed by that gun is higher than your chances of using that firearm in self defense. The flaw with this statement is that firearms are used in self defense millions of times each year without a shot being fired, uses which of course don’t make it into any sort of statistics.

Here is one such case.
A man is in custody after Greene County deputies believe he and a companion broke in and ransacked a home…  A brother of the homeowner, who lives nearby, interrupted the burglary in progress and held the man at gunpoint until deputies arrived. 

By Divemedic, ago

Free College

At first glance, Ohio’s Antioch College offer of free tuition for a four year degree sounds like quite a deal. After all, a four year degree from this 160 year old college is worth over $100,000. The problem is that it is a complete waste of four years of your time.
The reason that it is a waste of valuable years of your life is that the school teaches liberal arts. Liberal arts majors have unemployment rates that are higher than the national average. According to the CEO of the Harlem Education Activities Fund, graduates in more practical fields find that their skills are outdated within 5 to 10 years. Of course, that means that you have probably been working in your field for those five or ten years, and are current in your knowledge through your work experience.
 Not so with a liberal arts degree. It is outdated from the start. Of course, many will tell you that a degree is better than none, but higher education is supposed to be about creating self-sufficiency through job training so a person won’t end up jobless, homeless, dependent upon relatives, or victimized for being in poverty. There is an industry to support here, though. The colleges of this country are peddling snake oil.
The public library’s and bookstore’s purpose is to increase one’s knowledge, ethics, and intellect. If four years or more of a university education is spent on only increasing intellect and morality with no job training, the time that you have spent there has been wasted.
A liberal arts degree is a degree that you earn that has no purpose, other than to allow you to list a college diploma on your resume. This is operating on the assumption that any college degree is beneficial, no matter what the degree was for.
I have a liberal arts degree that I earned by accident while pursuing other academic endeavors. I don’t even list it on my resume, nor is that degree hanging on my wall beside the other two. If any four year degree looks good to an employer, why not get a degree that has the added benefit of giving you a job skill in a field where you will actually get a job?
A four year degree at a state college in Florida (where I went to college) only cost me about about $11,000. For that kind of money, you are better off living at home and going to your local college to earn a degree in a field that is actually hiring.

By Divemedic, ago

Greedy harpies.

So I was at school today, and I overheard a conversation between two female grad students, and they were bragging to each other that they were having their school paid for by their ex-husbands, as a part of a “maintenance order.” One then bragged to the other, “I told him to take the TV and the shotgun, because he had cheated on me. I told him if he didn’t take the gun, I was going to kill him. I got to keep the house, the dog, and the money, and he still has to work two jobs to pay for my school.” All of the other women in the area were in agreement.

I brought this up to my friends, and not one of the women  saw the double standard. If a man ever threatened a woman like that, he would have a domestic violence order on him, and probably be in jail the next day for domestic violence. He certainly wouldn’t be a winner in the lottery.

I’m sorry ladies, but cheating in a marriage does not entitle anyone, man or woman, to free money for the rest of their lives. To claim so reduces women to the class of prostitutes with a payment plan. If women ever expect to be equal in the eyes of the law, they have to be willing to be treated equally in ALL areas of the law.

That is why I cannot believe that there is a popular country music song where the woman talks about all of the violent things she did to her man and his truck because he cheated on her. If this were a song where a man talk about destroying a woman’s property, the outrage would be immediate.

By Divemedic, ago

Geek humor

My grad school class is filled with people who have a wide range of degrees: Pre-med, Chemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology, and Psychology degrees are common. So I got a laugh when one of the students, complaining that a professor was rather long winded and boring, said: “I could feel my telomeres getting shorter.” Geek humor.

By Divemedic, ago

Interesting conversation

I had a conversation in a bar last night that I found to be interesting. I was sitting in a local beer joint having some wings and IPA with another grad student when the subject of guns came up. He told me that although he is from Illinois, he routinely carries a handgun for protection. That is interesting, I say, because Illinois remains the only state in the USA that does not allow this, and you need a permit to even own a gun, and permits to carry guns are non-existent. He told me that the only way he would get caught is if he had to use that gun to defend his life, and in that case, he would worry about the ramifications then.

Now understand that this particular grad school is not for slackers or troublemakers. The school won’t even look at your application if your undergrad GPA is less than 3.3 and your criminal history is a blank slate. Not only that, without giving any of this guy’s details away, he is a very upstanding guy, and his resume would certainly not place him in the category of ‘troublemaker.”

Gun control has failed as a philosophy. Some folks just haven’t accepted that, yet.

By Divemedic, ago

Mother of the year

When you are a parent, you get used to saying no to questions like: “Dad, can I juggle chainsaws?” or “Mom, can I go skydiving?” or even “Dad, I know I’m only 14, but we are in love and want to get married.” So what do you say to your ten year old when he wants a tattoo?
Not this mom. Maybe mother of the year is a bit premature, since we have about 49 more weeks of people doing stupid things left in the year, but she is probably going to be a finalist.

By Divemedic, ago

Update

Two weeks into Physician Assistant school, and things are going well. We had a quiz today that was an essay form and had only one question: List everything that you know about neutrophils.

I think that I did well, and I recalled a lot more than I thought that I would. I am really happy that I decided to hang up being a medic. It is a chapter of my life that I don’t regret, but as with all things, the time for that came to an end.

For now, I am studying on weeknights until 8 or 9, and several hours on Sunday. Friday nights and Saturdays are mine, at least for now. A year of this, a year of clinical internship, and my Master’s will be complete.

By Divemedic, ago

Nice Try

There are many people who abuse 911 for various reasons. Some because they are whiney people with minor complaints that want to be seen now instead of in the morning, some because they want a free meal or to get high, some because they are simply stupid, and many because they are mentally ill.

There is a woman who falls into the latter category and is known throughout several states for faking seizures in order to get attention. This woman is well known by nearly every medic in the state of Florida who has more than a couple of years on the job. Chances are, if you are a paramedic in the state of Florida, you have or will run on this woman.

I have met paramedics all over Florida, Georgia, and even as far north as Maryland who have run on this woman. She has been seen on shows like Paramedics and Trauma: life in the ER. More than a few medics have given this woman Valium without realizing who she was. She is very good at faking.

So came the day that we ran on her at 2:30 in the A.M one early morning. Tired of running stupid calls, those of us who were there chipped in and paid her bus fare to Orlando, which was 20 miles away, put her on the bus, and patted ourselves on the back for ridding ourselves of the problem. (Come to think of it, this may explain why she has traveled so extensively.)

Two weeks later, I ran on her again. During the call, she handed me an envelope and told me that the Orlando firefighters had asked her to give it to me the next time she saw me. I opened the envelope, and in it was a note. It read simply:

Nice Try.

That, my readers, is a true story.

By Divemedic, ago