I don't think Dobson would make much of a dog trainer. I've trained lots of dogs, and in my experience beating them doesn't help anything. So never mind the ethics -- beating just doesn't work well. I don't think it does with children, either.
Putting on my pediatrician's hat, I think Dobson is just wrong. I can't say he's evil, but the natural extension of his viewpoint on child discipline can clearly lead to evil.
As a Quaker, I'm part of a tradition for which mysticism has a central position. As hersiarch @374 says, Protestantism in general has not been friendly toward mysticism. In many ways Quakerism grew as a reaction to the aggressively anti-mystical viewpoints of 17th century English Protestants.
From the cited Flushing Remonstrance: " . . . but shall be glad to see anything of God in any of them." As a Quaker myself, that's actually a nearly direct quote from George Fox, the founder of Quakerism. Which makes it an interestingly subversive statement.
As a practicing pediatric ICU doc I'm up to my neck in all of this. I have to say our current system absolutely stinks. I'm salaried myself, but the very worstest aspect of our current, mostly fee-for-service system is the more you do, the more you get paid. And, since most estimates peg about a third of what we do as useless at best, there is every incentive to do more useless stuff. It's insane.
All the cool rocks out my way are infested with boulderers. Any picture of such an impressive chunk of stone as yours on a sunny, weekend day would show it crawling with helmeted ant-humans snaking ropes all over it.
Xopher at #132
Yes. "Crackles" (once called "rales") indicate fluid in the air sacs (alveoli). They sound like what you hear when you crunch up plastic wrap and then release it. Crackles are characteristic of pneumonia, heart failure, and several other things.
Ahem. I'm an intensive care physician with a sideline in infectious diseases. I have to say most everything on this thread is reasonable (and reasoned) and pretty much correct -- in refreshing contrast to much of the weirdness I've read elsewhere.
I've also just seen my first case of H1N1 fluA. It was quite mild. It's only because the state lab is requesting we send all fluA isolates to them for subtyping that we knew what it was. (There is a quick and easy test for influenza that most hospitals do routinely -- subtyping is only done by reference labs.)
As others have said, the main reason for all the concern is that nobody has any immunity to this new strain and, although it appears quite ordinary now for influenza A, nobody knows if it will morph into a more severe illness.
Leva at #122:
I agree with you on this, although the result of this kind of "reasoning" quickly leads to denying raped women emergency contraceptives, so I think opposition to that plays a role, too.
I also think, to the unknowing, the term "rape kit" conjures up images of some kind of gift basket or something. The notion of saving money in this way is totally absurd anyway, since the cost of a rape investigation is the personnel time (SANE nurse, police investigators) and not the supplies used.
Echoing others, I deal with child abuse on all too frequent occasions, and good SANE nurses make an outstanding contribution to heathcare, one largely unappreciated because most don't know about them.
I assume, per protocol, that this was all Dawno's fault?
Seth Gordon@#17:
Interesting. Standard practice among epidemiologists, when they know only the year, is to assign July 1, the mid-point. (If they know the month they use the 15th of it, for the same reason.)
I used to do a lot medical air transports. Most person's blood oxygen saturation drops a bit when they fly since cabin pressure is usually maintained at about 5-7,000 feet (we can get it lower, but usually that means we need to fly lower also). If you live at sea level and go skiing in Colorado, you may know how you feel at that altitude if you're not used to it. The oxygen needs of the fetus are already being met at the margin, and dropping a mother's blood oxygen level even a bit for several hours can cause problems. One very good Colorado obstetrician I know tells his patients not to go higher than 8,000 feet unless it's only a very brief zip over a pass.
Michael at #163.
Speaking medically, a woman who's had as many children as she's had typically delivers very fast -- like an hour or two -- after her water breaks. I just can't believe the story.
There's another narrative that has me fear for the VP debate -- the perennial love we have for the feisty, scrappy underdog. Palin will be seen by many as winning against the old Washington pol if she merely gets through without becoming obviously unglued. A think a big chunk of the pundocracy will bite on that and it will become the standard meme. It will be "lady moose hunter goes to Washington."
Patrick way back up at #55.
I knew Wellstone. You're absolutely right.
Charles Rosenberg's The Cholera Years is a bit old (first published in 1962, revised in 1987), but still excellent. It describes what happened when cholera hit New York City.
Out here in the Rockies I've personally taken care of quite a few folks struck by lightning. Usually it's hikers (invariably tourists from Texas or some such place) above tree line on a summer day in the afternoon. The literal "bolt from the blue" from an apparently cloudless sky (the cloud may be on the other side of the peak) is often the first sign of trouble. There have been a few interesting ones, including a kid who got hit in the head (his ball cap looked like one of Wile E. Coyote's) and had the bolt leave via his foot, where it melted his synthetic sock to his sneaker. He did fine. I've not had a fatality, yet, actually. But lightning can do some serious harm.
In my experience, earlier cohorts of plastic surgeons themselves had misgivings and rationalizations. I know some and have interacted a fair amount with plastic surgery trainees over the years. More than a few trotted out a variety of the notion that they're really doing this to help all those maimed and disfigured people, especially the children. The newer batch is much more brazen about why they went into plastics, but it appears a few are still uneasy in their career choice, in spite of all the money.
Just remember to get through Espanola as quickly as possible and don't stop there. Ever.
Serge at 44: Taos is close the way my wife drives. We're up and down that road all the time.
Spherical time at 45: Yeah, Bobcat Bite is good. So's Guadalupe Cafe (I live just up the street from it), but just now it's still full of legislators at lunch time. They'll be gone soon.
But Orlando's smothered burritos are the best. Really, and I'm a foodie.
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|---|---|
| 2009 | 11 |
| 2008 | 12 |
| 2007 | 2 |
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