Allegory, parable, rhetoric – Page 18

New Definitions

7/2017

New additions to Dorlands Medical Dictionary

Constipation
noun | con·sti·pa·tion |kän-stə-ˈpā-shən|
First known use; 15th century

1 :Passage of unusually hard dry lumps of stool with bowel movements.
2 :Having an unusually high load of stool contained in the colon (commonly referred to as being full of shit).
3 :Coming to the emergency department for abdominal pain and spending about $10,000 to be told that you need a $2 laxative.

Placebo
noun |pla·ce·bo |plə-ˈsē-(ˌ)bō|
Origin and Etymology; Latin, I shall please

1 :A pharmacologically inert preparation prescribed more for the mental relief of the patient than for its actual effect on a disorder
2 :An inert or innocuous substance used especially in controlled experiments testing the efficacy of another substance (as a drug)
3 :Something tending to soothe
4 :A fictitious diagnosis that justifies this visit to the emergency department at 2:27 am on a Sunday night/Monday morning for something that has been present for 6 months and for which there is no physical or chemical abnormality resulting in a normal physical exam and laboratory testing.

1 :A disease marked by brief paroxysmal attacks of chest pain precipitated by deficient oxygenation of the heart muscles
2 :A respectful method of not having to go to jail when you get stopped for speeding home after a few too many at your local watering hole
3 :The best way to get a field trip to someplace that has a bunch of young, cute women that will attend to you for several hours when you are in prison for life for murder

Laceration
noun |lac·er·a·tion |la-sə-ˈrā-shən|
First known use 1597

1 :A deep cut or tear of the flesh
2 :What happens when your 240 lb 6-year-old bumps his knee on the coffee table reaching for the remote to change the TV to the cartoon channel after you told him to come inside because it was too hot to play outside

From your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary.

The Devil You Don’t Know

7/2017

Disclaimer: This is NOT a political comment but an example of poor financial planning and a lesson learned in life.

OK now. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, I owned a 1972 Cheby Nova (spelling intentionally incorrect) with a V-8 engine. My wife would run along beside it with a gas can to make sure we didn’t run out of gas between home and the store 2 blocks away. Well maybe not really, but you get the idea.

A young (to the US) upstart Japanese car company (Subaru), Jimmy (then President), and a lot of the national media strongly urged everyone to ditch their gas guzzlers for a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle. Kinda sounds familiar, doesn’t it? “You will save money,” they said.

Young and stupid was I, I traded in the perfectly functional but less than efficient Nova.

The new Subaru did indeed get better fuel mileage. When it ran. Unfortunately, it was one of the first vehicles (at least for Subaru) to have computer control of the engine. It didn’t work too well. In addition, the little 4 cylinder engine didn’t have enough oomph to make the hills of Kansas without downshifting, if there was more than one adult in the vehicle. The car was in the shop almost every week for months. Subaru finally threw in the towel and said, “We don’t know what is wrong and you are on your own. Sue us if you want.” This was before the current impotent Lemon Laws,

I ended up trading the Subaru, on which I still owed a significant amount of the original financed note, for a new Jeep Wagoneer. Loved that Wagoneer, but wish, even now, that I had the Nova and all the money wasted in finance charges, maintenance, lost equity and rental expenses for substitute vehicles. If I had, instead of following this woe-some path, invested in say Walmart, lookout Donald. I’d of been firing people on TV instead of him.

Me thinks what I am saying is consider carefully, the devil you know versus the devil you don’t know.

Your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave, who didn’t fall for it the second time around.

Weary.

Sex Drugs and Cosby, (Not Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young)

7/2017

Seems Bill Cosby is all the rage, these days.

He has been an American icon and role model for most of his adult life. He was viewed as a successful black man that had values. His comedy was clean, his extremely successful TV programs upheld traditional American family values and are still a presence on cable rerun channels today. He was a public figure admired for his character and for demanding personal responsibility for black youths.

Until now. Now he is the worst of the worst.

Basically, Cosby has been accused of date rape. No different than any of the college frat guys and others all across this country, for example. Just more notorious and in the public eye.

He is accused of giving another person a drug that may or may not affect their judgment and/or consciousness either with or without their knowledge with the intent (and the intent may have been before or after the fact) to have sexual contact.

Like men and women have been doing since substances that alter cognition have been known.

How do I know this?

Look at aboriginal cultures, there are countless documented rituals that involve mind-altering substances and sexual acts. Even today in less developed cultures, there are many of the same or similar rituals. Our own American culture, as recent as the 1950s, aggrandized the concept of getting laid using the “Spanish Fly” or dinner and a couple of stiff drinks. In the 1970s, rampant drug use fueled the “sexual revolution”, free sex and sex communes. Alcohol, barbiturates (pentothal or Thiopental and others), benzodiazepines (Xanax, Librium, Ativan and others), marijuana, roofies, ecstasy (a colloquial term for MDMA, an empathogenic drug) have all been eulogized as the date rape drug of choice during one era or another.

So, why do I bring this up?

Because, Cosby is being tried for something that happened 13 years ago. I just want to warn all those folks (basically every adult and some not quite an adult) that has ever indulged in the use of any or all of those substances (or more) and had sex (or thought they did). You just might end up on CNN sometime in the future if the trend continues.

Your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

Weary.

Liar, Liar Your the Greatest

7/2017

Somebody or other does statistics on who is trustworthy and what rank of trustworthiness a particular person has. At issue is the 2015 Brian Williams scandal. It seems that before he was canned, he was ranked as the 18th most trustworthy person in the US, by this group that does these things. After he got fired for lying to his audience (however small ABC’s audience is), his trustworthiness dropped him to a level of 870th most trustworthy person in the US.

At the time of this writing, the current #1 most trustworthy person in the US is Tom Hanks.

Let’s think about this for a minute. As of 2013, the population of the US was 316,130,000. According to this group’s trustworthiness statistics, Brian Williams ranks 870th of 361, 130,000. So, who are the 316, 129,130 who are less trustworthy than a lying, self sensationalizing talking head? You do realize that today’s news reporters are called talking heads because all that they are allowed to do is read a script from a teleprompter that has been approved by the editorial staff of the organization they work for, don’t you? Not to defend old Brian, but I wonder if his numbers reflect his or the editorial staff’s performance?

OK then, let’s look at the numbers another way. After Brian Williams was fired and slumped to the 870th place, he was still in the 99.9999975th percentile. What is a percentile? It means that Brian Williams is considered more trustworthy than 99.9999975 percent of the US population.

Let’s just consider the concept of this group that ranks Tom Hanks as the most trustworthy person in the US. Tom Hanks is an actor.

That means that he lies for a living.

Tom Hanks is an actor and very little is known about his private life.

That means he hides the truth.

Best I can get is a 78th percentile in my patient satisfaction scores. Maybe I should learn something from Brian Williams and Tom Hanks.

Your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave pondering life’s little mysteries.

Weary.

Multitasking or Idiot

7/2017

Multitasking has become the buzzword for exceptionally talented humans. (1) Especially women. No, I’m not trying to pick a fight, just stating the facts, mam.

But, consider this. We have one human and one task. If the human can concentrate adequately, the task gets 100% of the attention. In another scenario, the human has 3 tasks. Let’s do the math. (Ever notice that many of my reflections involve math. That’s because life is math.) So now, we have 3 tasks, each getting 33.3 percent of the human’s attention or some different proportion but none gets 100% if the others get any. Sound about right?

The later, multitasking, is called ADD or attention deficit disorder. Believe me, I know because I’ve had it all my life. Everybody that knows me knows that I have more unfinished projects than, well you fill in the rest. See, I couldn’t even finish the last sentence.

So by today’s standards, if you can’t multitask, then you are an idiot savant, right?

Yes, actually. Here we are using the term savant to mean a person who is highly knowledgeable about one (or a select few) subject(s). Think of Dustin Hoffman’s character in Rain Man, when the box of toothpicks is dropped or spilled and Hoffman counts them while Cruise berates him for being clumsy and not paying attention. So the idiot savant is able to perform a single task to a level no other person could in the face of chaos. How? By giving 100% of his/her attention to the task at hand.

Pay attention! What are you? An idiot or a multitasker?

Thoughts from your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_multitasking

Weary.