I am always happy to misinterpret what I read, and when it backs up common sense and anecdotal experience, then the sky’s the limit.
One of the silliest medical experiences of my life involved early offspring #3’s journey through two NICU’s. He was extremely early [by 1995’s standards, apparently 23 weeks is now viable … soon the womb will be an inconvenience of the poor …] and received considerable medical care. We were lucky, and he was perfect and continues that way to this day, but he received two very different kinds of care.
In the first NICU, when he was admittedly much more fragile, the approach was scientific, the doctors and nurses were in charge, the parents were a problem, and keeping the babies germ free was a key focus and used to justify all practices. And it didn’t help that, although firmly in the province of Ontario, the hospital that housed that NICU was staffed entirely by francophones, which is what always happens when we try to provide bilangue service. Worse, the staff were secretive and wouldn’t let you listen to the report given when they changed shift and were discussing what had happened to your child in the night – which was always in French – a quick impenetrable Quebec French – and if you wanted to touch your baby in the incubator, they would let you, until the baby’s oxygen needs would go up, setting off alarms, and off one was sent.
But luckily there was another hospital closer to us that he was able to be moved to when he was about 3 weeks old and off a respirator. Again, I must acknowledge that they did not deal with what we call tertiary care infants, those born in extreme need, but that does not fully account for the difference in attitude. The first thing I really noticed was that the nurses would adjust the oxygen flow so that our baby’s blood oxygen levels stayed high while he was being handled, preventing both him getting distressed and the alarms going off. And then one of the very nice nurses sheepishly spoke to me one day about this concept they were trying to introduce, ‘discovered’ in Australia, called Kangaroo Care, because some genius had found that premature babies did better when given skin to skin contact and not just kept in incubators, and would we mind if she snuggled our peanut when we weren’t there. So she rocked him a lot instead of him just lying there – and he flourished. Just imagine.
Mikey, enjoying his first real hug, at three weeks old, 31 weeks gestation.
Okay, that was a long anecdote. But then we have offspring #2’s leg healing I have just written about, and my current very positive experience with the athletic therapist I have been seeing. But this is all old news.
What I read the other day, and failed to understand properly, was an article about the hormone oxytocin [look out, here comes another birth story, ed.], with which I am intimately familiar. But I will spare you the details of Offspring #1’s reluctant entrance to this world, only to comment that oxytocin is clearly a very powerful hormone. And it would appear that is has been linked, or a lack of it has been linked I should say, to anti-social behaviour. It is used through-out the body in a multitude of systems that quite defy our understanding, but I couldn’t help but think of our very shy neighbour who’s social anxieties have become worse and worse – it is obvious that the outward behaviours are reenforcing but it is so sad to think that by withdrawing from physical contact, perforce, one would chemically contribute to anti-social behaviours that create depression and ultimately madness.
So I come back to the obvious – the kiss that came with the bandaid did help heal your wounds, and a hug a day just might keep the doctor away.
Oh, and here is the article:
can’t believe that last article left out the cock brothers. those dog GIF’s are hilarious. this one is called the Godfather…
can’t believe the article describing fake libertarians left out the cock Bro’s.
yes Xty, hopium. irony back at you once again!
hilarious dog GIFs EO. this one is called the Godfather…
Here’s an article that I thought would provide me some confirmation bias, on a thesis that I have. And then I read the article and found that the author had no idea.
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/02/05/why-america-stopped-driving.aspx
My theory is that The Car is dying because the young people just don’t need/want it the same as we did. In our day The Car represented so many things. Independence, freedom, yes, but in modern parlance it represented social networking. The Car was our route to interaction with our friends, free from parental supervision. This was huge. The norms were entirely different back then. We were dying to get The Car (as in Our Drivers License). We’d take drivers ed as soon as possible, and schedule our drivers test on the first possible day. We’d secretly hate our friends who were a little older than us, but not too much since we needed them to drive us around until we could do it too. There wasn’t much else. One night we were stuck at home reading a book or playing “Sorry” with our parents (gack), the next we had The Car. Ahhhhh….
Today’s kids are interconnected in a hundred different ways. All their video games are interactive. Facebook. Tumblr. Steam. My moment of truth came when my eldest was a young teen, and to my mind was wasting away another glorious summer day in front of the computer. I was getting on his ass about it, saying “Go outside! Ride your bike! Play with your friends!” He looked up at me and away from his screen just long enough to say “Dad, I AM playing with my friends.” At that moment I knew two things. One, he was right. And two, The Car was dead as a social phenomenon.
Today, both kids loathe the car. They hate to drive. They’ll find any excuse not to drive. Car ownership is a necessary evil, at best. Like paying your internet and cell phone bill, but without any obvious upside. The youngest plans on living in NYC someday, where The Car is not only optional, but actually a pain in the ass.
Kids these days will someday look back with nostalgia on Zelda and Mario like we look back on Mustangs and GTO’s.
The Car is dead.
before anyone says anything, well STFU. any idiot can tell what happened here.
edit: this should come before your post EO.
i just found this on you tube. it has to go on now, and then i want to talk about GTO’s.
The Fam is settling in now to watch “Joe vs The Volcano”.
I feel a brain cloud coming on.
Good morning
Quick reactive comments:
I read the article about unaware libertarians with interest, because it is a type of person I am aware of and interested in – and while it had great material, the author’s own bias was too strong and unfortunately it took away from the article and made it a tad sneering – it is a bad idea to try to include your interpretation of your enemies’ arguments when your dander is up. This drives me crazy – both sides of an argument are so busy taking down the other side that they forget to proofread their own ideas. And as I was getting irritated by the poorly written article interfering with its own excellent content, I came to the most unfortunately idiotic conclusion:
“Government is how we create a better world, Mr. Bezos. It won’t just be delivered to our doorstep by a drone.”
I think he misses his own point – it is the confluence of these assholes taking all they can from the government system – as much subsidy as they can suck up through what ever means – the economic ‘rent seeking’ – making money by restricting your competitors access to government largess, while lobbying for your own – and helping to build them drones that create the fascism they say they fear.
“Government is how we create a better world, Mr. Bezos. It will just be delivered to your doorstep by a drone.”
I know I am being cranky – but when he got to suggesting that some how we had a system of government where a true democracy of competing ideas had created a Nirvana of educated citizenry governed to their liking, I was getting jumpy.
That wasn’t very articulate. It is just more complicated than the author allowed, and he is bang on with his thesis – conflicted assholes milk system they deride.
And yes as to cars:
Neither of my boys has their licence yet. They don’t want to drive – it is expensive and smelly and difficult and you might destroy dad’s car and kill someone, including yourself, is sort of their attitude. I got mine as soon as I possibly could, just like EO says. Freedom 16!
been watching too much tv even though there is nothing on, nbc’s coverage of the olympics is terrible(imo) anyway
suggested that i listen to videos instead. hope all are well…i’m always around.