That's B I L L I O N

U.S. cash shipped to Iraq:
$12 billion (weight: 363 tons)

U.S. cash unaccounted for:
$8.8 billion (weight: 266 tons)

The Great Iraq Swindle

SkeptiDay

Once again, it's Skeptical Wednesday!

OK, there's no such thing. I just have a spattering of interesting skeptical links to unload.


Now this is interesting: the St. Petersburg Times has a new site called PolitiFact which uses a cool Truth-O-Meter to evaluate political candidates and their verbal diarrhea.
Just like FactCheck and Spin of the Day, it's illuminating.

Or check out Healthy Skepticism Adwatch which keeps up on Big Pharma shenanigans.


Cosmic Connie has written a great article about The Secret. Also check out her excellent blog, Whirled Musings, which has even more Secret secrets.

Her blog also pointed me to this Uncyclopedia entry on HowTo: Start a Religion:

Your religion will appeal to impressionable audiences if it is cast as a battle between us and Them. It also helps to throw in a conspiracy theory to give the impression that you are being persecuted by Them. If They are a group of people at whom you can easily point your finger, then this will impress your followers even more and bring them in line with your holy crusade against Them. Here's a handy list of possible enemies you might want to consider for your religion:

• Arabs
• Jews
• Gays
• Non-believers
• Homeless people
• Ugly people
• Cows
• Everyone but yourself
• Yourself

Bad Astronomy Blog has a wonderful post on how teaching Creationism kills kids' wonder.


Relatedly, you may enjoy this Esquire article on Idiot America:

This is how Idiot America engages the great issues of the day. It decides, en masse, with a thousand keystrokes and clicks of the remote control, that because there are two sides to every question, they both must be right, or at least not wrong. And the poor biologist's words carry no more weight than the thunderations of some turkey-neck preacher out of the Church of Christ's Own Parking Facility in DeLand, Florida. Less weight, in fact, because our scientist is an "expert" and, therefore, an "elitist." Nobody buys his books. Nobody puts him on cable. He's brilliant, surely, but his Gut's the same as ours. He just ignores it, poor fool.

I didn't know "executive privilege" was made up by George Washington. Did you?


Museum of Hoaxes has a new writer, Elliot Feldman who writes about tons of cool stuff, like Frank Zappa Vs. Tipper Gore. Take his Indiana Jones quiz!


Hooray! Penn & Teller are going to do another season of Bullshit!
Next month they take on Handicapped Parking (repeat?). I could rant on that all day!

Other cool sites:

MondoSkepto
The Inoculated Mind

Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://yoism.org/

Infirmus A Deux

Every now and then I get a double patient, which is usually a mother and daughter with the daughter usually being the actual patient and the mother camped out at her bedside.

This means you walk into a room and listen to two sets of complaints.

Daughter: "It's my scleroderma. It hurts all over, even inside. And-"

Mom: "Oh yes, it's terrible! She needs IV Dilaudid. It's the only thing that works. I have neuropathy, which is pretty much the same. I have to take Vicoden and Neurontin though. Three times a day!"

Me: "How long have you had scleroderma?"

Daughter: "Ever since-"

Mom: "Ever since she was 18! It was diagnosed at the Mayo Clinic. We were in there for... what was it honey? Two weeks? She had to have a specialist look at her stomach. I had the same thing when I was her age and I had to have my gallbladder out. It wasn't anything to do with the lining. Although I do have frequent diarrhea still."

Me: "Where does it hurt right now?"

Mom: "In her stomach; in the top part; in her legs and arms; AND she has a headache!"

Daughter gives lethargic nods.

Me: "OK, but I have to hear it from her so I can get a better sense of what's going on."

Mom: "Oh, I understand! It's just that we both know each other's illness inside and out. Once I couldn't speak or swallow and she had to call the paramedics and tell them what medicine had caused it! Remember that honey? I was in the hospital for a week that time."



As you can tell from this crude graph*, it only takes a finite number of times for the mother to speak in order to give you a one-way ticket on the Hades Express.










*Reverse the axis labels please (I knew I shouldn't have tried to copy Indexed!)



Now here it is, your url of the day:
Robotarium

Moonshine Madness

Bill Nye booed in Waco, Texas for saying the moon doesn't shine on its own?

But nothing got people as riled as when he brought up Genesis 1:16, which reads: "God made two great lights -- the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars."

The lesser light, he pointed out, is not a light at all, but only a reflector.

At this point, several people in the audience stormed out in fury. One woman yelled "We believe in God!" and left with three children, thus assuring that people across America would read about the incident and conclude that Waco is as nutty as they'd always suspected.

This had better show up on Snopes as being false, otherwise all hope is lost!

Fun With Brain Washing

Sometime pro-lifers can be very clever.

Take the Umbert The Unborn cartoon. It's a cute little cartoon of a cute embryo or a cute something with a cute human head that seems to never grow or leave its cute mother's womb as it eternally muses cutely about its cute life.

Yeah, the artist is obviously trying to portray an embryo with baby-seal awwww!! so people will feel bad about wanting to abort it.

But just how old is Umbert? Is he an embryo or a fetus?



If he's an embryo, then that's like having some H.R. Giger thing talking to you.

And that's not so much cute.










Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.spinaltapfan.com/

Zombie Nutrition

It was revised once.

Whittling Reality

Thomas Martel, 28, of Bonnie Brae is a big guy. So he has a hard time using the features on ever-shrinking user interfaces on devices like his new iPhone. At least, he did, until he had his thumbs surgically altered in a revolutionary new surgical technique known as "whittling."

Ha ha! The North Denver News puts one on and gets many bites.

A parody is fully successful when people can't discern it from reality.


Also, reality can be so much more fun:

A 27-year-old lady presented with persistent cough, sputum and fever for the preceding six months. Inspite of trials with antibiotics and anti-tuberculosis treatment for the preceeding four months, her symptoms did not improve. A subsequent chest radiograph showed non-homogeneous collapse-consolidation of right upper lobe. Videobronchoscopy revealed an inverted bag like structure in right upper lobe bronchus and rigid bronchoscopic removal with biopsy forceps confirmed the presence of a condom. Detailed retrospective history also confirmed accidental inhalation of the condom during fellatio.

Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://bentobjects.blogspot.com/

Nurse Staff Shuffle

It's a problem in a lot of hospitals and it's the bastard child of our nursing shortage. I'm talking about the floor staff shuffle.

Here's the deal: let's say you have a decent floor manager who tries to stay aggressive in hiring and keeps your floor adequately staffed. You come onto your shift with a proper staffing ratio for your floor. However, there are two, three, or more other floors who have delinquent staffing ratios (for whatever reason, but usually bad floor managers) and thus the house supervisor (who see only numbers) does one of two things: they pull some of your nurses to help staff other floors or they send all hits (admissions) to your floor since you have the 'best' staffing. Sometimes they do a little of both.

So now your floor staffing is either drained to match the shit staffing on other floors, or it is overwhelmed by hits making its staffing as ineffective as the other floors.

How do you solve this?

I know the first answer is to tie the house super up on the roof and let crows peck at his or her eyes, but then you'd probably wind up taking care of them as a patient eventually.

Another solution is to initiate dedicated staffing. This means that your floor will staff itself at all times and will refuse to participate with the rest of the floors. It also means that if you have a bunch of call-ins then your core staff must be willing to step-up and cover things, and unfortunately it's very hard to find enough dedicated people to do that.

A pipe-dream solution is to fire all floor managers and house supervisors and have the nursing staff work things out for themselves. I'd love to insert a gender-specific joke here, but I don't want to die.

Any other solutions out there?











Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.thunderwoodcollege.com/

We Live Underair

Most everyone at some point in life dreams of what it would be like to live under the sea down in that wondrous atmosphere of water.

I just finished a thoroughly enjoyable book called An Ocean Of Air by science writer Gabrielle Walker which opens the reader's eyes to the wonder of our own atmosphere.

"What a marvel it is!" (Torricelli) wrote when he contemplated the invisible air pressing his mercury up into the tube. He spoke with awe of how our blanket of air, perhaps fifty miles high, constantly presses down on the planet beneath. And he encapsulated it all in the one glorious image. "Noi viviamo sommersi nel fondo d'un pelago d'aria," he said. "We live submerged at the bottom of an ocean of air."

If I once learned about how much pressure our atmosphere constantly exerts upon us, I have most certainly forgotten about it. It's amazing to think about though.

Something I bet you didn't know:
It's not the sucking that pulls a liquid up through a straw and into your mouth; it's the removal of air on your side of the straw which allows the pressure of the atmosphere to push the fluid in the cup up the straw!

The same thing happens when a baby drinks from its mother's breast. The baby's enthusiastic sucking just removes the air from around its mother's nipple; the force of the air above her then squeezes the mother's breast and sends milk spurting into the baby's mouth.

The book is peppered with atmosphere-related science discovery stories: merucury experiments, properties of air, molecular content, oxygen/carbon dioxide balance, trade and jet stream winds, the ozone layer, radio waves, the Van Allen Belt... Some you may be familiar with, others not. One I didn't know about was her account of the Star Dust tragedy (also a recent Damn Interesting post).

Yes, the book talks about global warming, and in perhaps the best way too. You appreciate the dynamic and delicate aspects of our atmosphere when it is explored completely and presented in all its glory. You don't even have to subscribe to the Gaia theory to realize how precious our atmosphere is (although it helps).

There's an old Sufi adage to be present at every breath. This book delivers another level to that presence. Yes, we do live in an ocean.











Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.charlierose.com/home (Awesomely re-done! Video clips archived!)

Back To Skool

It's back to school soon for quite a few people (my kids started last week!).

Here's some great back to school tips from,











Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://blog.creativethink.com/

Nurse This!

Here is Wikipedia's definition of Nursing Practice:

Nursing practice is the actual provision of nursing care. In providing care, nurses are implementing the nursing care plan which is based on the client's initial assessment. This is based around a specific nursing theory which will be selected as appropriate for the care setting. In providing nursing care the nurse uses both nursing theory and best practice derived from nursing research.

I'm sorry but I don't get or subscribe to any of that.

To me there's no "theory" or anything specific to "nursing". It's all real and it's all medicine, baby!
I'm not some Nightingale cult member practicing 'theory' over in the corner separate from the medical team.
I don't sit around shuffling idiotic nursing diagnosis cards trying to translate a medical problem into Fisher-Price speak.

Nurses aren't allowed to officially diagnose and prescribe treatment - that's the doctors' job and they get paid for it. However, nurses are on their team and they do most of the skilled labor.
If some nurse 'researcher' knows more about how to treat a medical problem than a doctor then I'm proud of 'em, but it seems a waste of time since they don't have an M.D.

I don't know of any people with a high degree in architecture and design who would rather pound rivets all day.










Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.shag.com/

David Rees Rocks!

The wonderfully effervescent 3quarksdaily points out the most hilarious essay of the summer.

It's by David Rees, of Get Your War On fame, and it takes on a recent Cormac Michael Ignatieff article in the NYT Magazine.

It doesn't just take it on, it rips it to shreds.

"Improvisation may not stave off failure. The game usually ends in tears. . . ."

You know what would have pushed this essay into the realm of literary greatness? If Ignatieff had ended this paragraph with: "The game usually ends in tears-- the tears. . . of a clown." I don't know why, but that would have made me really happy. I guess because I love that song? Do you think there's a chance Ignatieff actually did". . . the tears of a clown," but then deleted it, saying, "They wouldn't understand. . . they're not ready yet"? Let's call the Geek Squad and pay them to steal his hard drive! Then we can "hack it."

Pass this thing on to everyone you can. It is sidesplitting writing.

"A prudent leader will save democracies from the worst, but prudent leaders will not inspire a democracy to give its best. . . ."

This reminds me of something I had stitched on the back of my denim jacket once: "An eagle with a broken wing may fly high enough to avoid the quicksand, but it cannot soar above possibility's treetops at the dawn of a new day." Boy, did everyone in town hate that denim jacket!

Monkey Butt Nurses

If I gave this stuff to a few nurses I know, I wonder what they would make of it?

Would they:

1) take it as a hint that they sit on their ass too much?

2) take it as a hint that their ass is huge and the friction is dangerously close to igniting a nearby oxygen tank?

3) be thankful that they can now put a stop to their river of ass-crack sweat?

4) back me into a corner with their inflamed monkey buttocks and crush me?











Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://www.thetoymaker.com/

Funk Science Challenge

JunkScience, a website that is to science as the Healthy Forest Initiative is to saving forests, is pulling a cute little stunt called the Ultimate Global Warming Challenge, offering $100,000 dollars to anyone who can prove that "humans are causing harmful global warming." The pitiful prize makes the contest not too sure of itself (especially when it also demands $15 to enter).

And look at the two loaded hypotheses that must be refuted:

UGWC Hypothesis 1 Manmade emissions of greenhouse gases do not discernibly, significantly and predictably cause increases in global surface and tropospheric temperatures along with associated stratospheric cooling.

UGWC Hypothesis 2 The benefits equal or exceed the costs of any increases in global temperature caused by manmade greenhouse gas emissions between the present time and the year 2100, when all global social, economic and environmental effects are considered.

Linkfilter has already noted how similar the challenge is to the Simon-Ehrlich wager.

The Ultimate Global Warming Challenge is a sucker's bet. I'll offer $100,000 to anyone who can prove the theory of gravity (entry fee: $99,999).

I'm a sucker though and I'll enter. Uh, I just need to use a bio-dome and a few months diet of beans.

Futurama News

NOVEMBER!







.

Strangely Huge

Congratulations to the strangely-huge muscles that broke Hank Aaron's home run record!



Way to go, strangely-huge muscles!!!













Now here it is, your url of the day:
http://hwww.exactitudes.nl/

Pathology Por Favor

•External lateral view of a spleen. •Notice the normal slate-gray color of the spleen. •Towards the right of this specimen, extending from the very top diagonally across to the bottom of the specimen, is a large tear in the capsule of the spleen, exposing the pulp. •Splenic lacerations are common in automobile accidents and are particularly common if the spleen has undergone enlargement due to some reason.

(Description By:T.V.Rajan, M.D. )

From Pathweb, a cool place to explore pathologies.



If you really want to turn your fascination knob up to 11, then make regular visits to Neurophilosophy, a medical blog that keeps on top of stuff like:



Anatomy Acts


"Exploring the human body inside and out.
Rare and extraordinary objects from
Scottish Collections."

Jumper Stats

A Marin County coroner's study was released this week giving stats on Golden Gate Bridge suicide jumpers:

The study, released on Monday by Marin County Coroner Ken Holmes, whose office handles most deaths from the bridge, showed that over 85 percent of the people who jump are Bay Area residents. The average jumper was 41.7 years old; men outnumber women nearly 3 to 1; and whites account for 83 percent of the dead, Holmes found in his review of data from January 1996 to July 26 of this year.

The study reverses a long-held policy among government officials to refrain from publicizing the number of bridge suicides. Authorities have held that copycat behavior could be prevented if the media would not report on suicides at the bridge. In 1995, the California Highway Patrol stopped counting as the 997th official suicide was tallied. A race to be the 500th jumper occurred in October 1973.

Holmes said he decided the time had come to distribute the information because of debate over building a suicide barrier at the bridge and because the number of suicides is holding steady or in some years increasing slightly.

-SF Chronicle, "An Inside Look At Who Jumps"

They seriously believed that not publishing jumper data would keep people from jumping.

Now here it is, your url of the day:

http://greatcaricatures.com/index.html

Best Doctor Ever!

At ratemds.com you can look up doctors and see how 'good' they are (on a scale of 1 to 5).

Look how helpful this is! I clicked on a random Colorado doctor (Dr. Andrews, allergy specialist, Boulder) and found two reviews:

She kept asking me if my allergies were sneezing and runny nose, when I kept telling her I couldn't breath and got horrible rashes and breakouts. She didn't listen to me and didn't throughly test me. She never followed through when my testing was done to go over the results or options for treatment. I ended up going to a different doctor to get something done.

and

Dr. Andrews is very knowledgeable and helpful. She's very thorough in her testing, and really takes the time to discuss things with you. I've had asthma and allergies all my life, and her suggestions for treatment have really made a difference in my quality of life.

There! How much clearer a picture of that doc do you need?

Just like reviews on Amazon: "OMG!! OMG!! Best! Book! Ever!!!!!" and "I threw this piece of trash on the fire after reading the first chapter!" At any rate, woe to the doctor who pisses off an internet troll.


If I were a doc, I'd go on and rate myself daily, like this:

OMG!! Not only is this doctor good, but good looking too!! I kept looking for an airport nearby, because I kept hearing my heart taking off!! Seriously though, I soooo wanted to ask "Are you in Karate? 'Cause that ass is kickin'!!!" You know? No, really I should've asked, "Are you Jamaican? 'Cause Jamaican me crazy!" Know what I'm sayin'? Listen, if you've got a disease then this doctor is the cure! Go see this doctor now!!!

Now here it is, you url of the day:
Peanuts by Charles Bukowski