This is just plain inappropriate. I don’t care if it’s a “docu-game” — killing the president is not an acceptable form of entertainment.
Category Archives: Media/TV
Plane Crash
CNN.Com: Plane Crash in Missouri kills 8.
Cheryl (one of the people on my sidebar) is the wife of a student at the medical school in Kirksville and she’s been blogging on the crash. Her husband is pretty much locked down in ICU and the media are posing as family members to try and get in. It never fails to amaze me how low some people will go to get “an exclusive story”.
(BTW, she claims the CNN article isn’t totally accurate. Big surprise.)
Awareness
I was watching Venom E.R. (a show documenting the goings on of the Venom E.R. at Loma Linda University Medical Center) and it was definitely an interesting episode. A guy was bitten by a rattlesnake on his lunch break and fought for his life for three days before ending up in a coma and having to be taken off life support by his family. It was an interesting episode for me on a pastoral, ethical, and practical level.
Pastoral
When this guy’s health started taking a nose dive and they showed the ICU/Dr. Sean Bush calling about lab results that showed kidney failure/life support machines, I was transported back to June of last year when I saw the life-ending process from start to finish. (Read from June 15th to the 30th.) It was interesting to see Dr. Bush talking about the situation after the patient died because you could see just how much shock he was in. He’s treated hundreds of bites and all of them had walked out of the E.R. The guy’s wife (who is a nurse) talked at the end about how it was good that her husband and she had talked about the life support issue as well as talking to their kids about death. It made the decision an easier one and it respected her husband’s wishes.
In the circumstances I dealt with last June, the patient had suffered a heart attack before going into open heart surgery and ended up suffering multiple strokes as well as another heart attack after surgery. His brain was damaged to the point that he wouldn’t have been able to see, walk, or talk in addition to his heart being damaged. It begged the question of what kind of life he would have had and they did eventually have to take him off of life support. Pastorally, we had to help them to understand that this was OK, that it wasn’t murder, and that it was God’s will. We had prayed for him to live, and then we had to pray for him to die. Reconciling that was an interesting process.
Ethical
One of the things Dr. Bush touched on was the fact that they had given this guy state-of-the-art treatment. He had received 48 vials of anti-venom (the normal person only needs about 12) and they had done everything they could for him. It reminded me of some of the issues I struggle with in terms of technology and life support. We may have the technology, but should we use it? We *can* do some things to prolong life, but should we?
Swelling With Pride For My Alma Mater
They made fun of my alma mater’s mascot on Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! this weekend. I am so proud to be a fighting banana slug!!!!!
And for the record, a banana slug could so beat up a geoduck!
One of Those “DUH!!!” Things
CNN.Com: Study: Soda linked to diabetes in women
When I saw this, I was thinking “I could so have told them this!” I lived on Pepsi in college and gained probably 50 lbs over those three years. I gave up soda for Lent two years in a row in seminary and on Jon’s internship and felt so much better. (I also lost enough weight for my wedding dress to be loose on me.)
I think people really don’t calculate the amount of sugar they consume in beverage form. Three cans of Coke a day is about 450 calories — the amount in a modest meal and all of it is sugar. Another problem: the sugar we put in our coffee and tea. Two spoons of sugar goes a long way. (And yes, I know that this is the pot calling the kettle black because when I get a latté, I get a few shots of vanilla in it.)
Should I Be Sad About This?
San Jose Mercury News: Bomb plot figure dies in prison
This guy tried to blow up my brother’s community college three years ago. I hate to say that I’m really having a hard time feeling bad about him hanging himself…
The Pledge of Allegiance
Court dismisses Pledge case: Atheist father cannot sue over use of ‘Under God’
Are we surprised? NO! The rationale of most of the judges (5 of them) had nothing to do with whether or not it violated the First Amendment — it had to do with the fact that the father has no legal right to speak for his daughter because he does not have custody of her. The others (3 of them) dealt with the First Amendment issue.