Archive for August, 2005
Google Talk ROCKS!!!
Thursday, August 25th, 2005I promise you that I am NOT being paid to say this, but YOU MUST DOWNLOAD Google Talk right now. No, don’t wait. RIGHT NOW! You can talk to your list of people and hear them OR you can type. It is like being on the phone. The clarity ROCKS! Who needs a phone. As I write this, I’m yacking to Mr. Dr. M while he’s at the office.
That, my friends, is called multi-tasking. No ear-plug. No echo-y speaker phone. Only problem: when my fan turns on my laptop, my hubby’s ears blow out.
And it’s free, free, free.
P.S. For you techies out there you can write code for it and it will be customizable because it is OPEN. Awesome!
Plastic Surgery
Thursday, August 25th, 2005Watching celebrities carve up their bodies and faces leads me to believe that plastic surgery just isn’t the way to go. We get old and look old, plain and simple. Getting surgery just makes you look like an old person with surgery.
She possessed natural beauty that needed little or no make-up. Plastic surgery, by definition, is unnatural and requires make-up to hide.
It probably sounds judgemental as a woman in her late 30s to say this, right? I reserve the right to change my mind, but the plastic surgeries I see don’t help except in very rare occasions.
Gifted & Talented or Special Needs
Wednesday, August 24th, 2005Thomas Sowell talks about how smart kids get shortchanged and a pioneer who was their champion here.
I’ve noticed in my short time as a parent and my getting longer time on this earth as an adult who was public-school educated, that the Public Education system is barely adequate for students who fall into the mean. But the kids who are outside “normal” receive what truly can be called a “soft form of bigotry.”
My “special needs” son is expected to be slow, stupid and incompetent–a perspective that I challenge the teachers on almost daily (the kids have been in school four days now and I have talked to, in person or on the phone, an educator every one of those days). The sincerity and desire of these people I don’t question. But I believe they get lost in the trees and fail to see the jungle. His incremental progress on handwriting, for example, obscures his gifts in reading and math. Those talents shouldn’t be let go while his handwriting catches up–that could take two years and by then he could be typing!
Marcus Buckingham, formerly of the Gallup Organization, hammers away on this same problem in the corporate world. Don’t just try to shore up your weaknesses. They are likely to be weaknesses forever. Build on your strengths. And I’ll add one thing: hire for your weaknesses and forget it. We have done that at our office. Our assistants are total opposites to us and help us in our blind spots. I could work on my lack of detail orientation, but why do that when I have someone who is gifted at it?
On the other hand, children like my daughter, for whom every intellectual pursuit is easy, faces considerable “soft bigotry” as well. She must wait..and wait…and wait for those who must work harder to get the same information. We have tried to mediate this problem by placing her in school at the youngest possible age. She will be 17 when she graduates high school or younger. We may change her academic venue when she gets a little older. We’ll see. Even the GT programs in the public school lag behind the elite prep schools but they don’t come cheap at $10-12,000/year…for elementary school. In the meantime, she enthusiastically learns quickly and blows through her work. Let’s hope she keeps her enthusiasm.
Anytime you put 15-30 unique kids in a classroom a communistic process occurs. Everyone ends up being a different variety of poor, but they are all poor. Schools are huge beaurocracies created to feed the beast not the children.
School privatization would change this. Send your kid to a school that suits his or her needs. Bring competition to the table. The bad teachers and schools would die out. Certain schools would have waiting lists. Get rid of tenure. Where in the world but in education are you guaranteed a job regardless of ability (besides the court system, that is, and look at that mess!)?
Every child is unique. While some flexibility must occur because of the nature of group dynamics, a child shouldn’t suffer because his gifts or lack thereof fall outside the mean.
No Pain Until 29 Weeks Gestation
Wednesday, August 24th, 2005I’d like to note that they also say that children can’t see at 24 weeks but my son popped open his still fused eyes the moment after he was born and looked straight at us. We might have been fuzzy but he saw us. He stopped crying when held (just like a full term newborn). He acted comforted. And he fought like hell to get his intubation tube out–on DAY 1 of birth–which was 24 weeks remember–so hard that they had to heavily sedate him.
But he felt no pain. He was totally comfortable.
Here’s the BBC’s interpretation here.
This pain argument is, of course, a red herring. There are adults who have disorders which negates pain. I guess that makes it okay to kill them, right?
Hollywood Personal Lives
Wednesday, August 24th, 2005Why do we care about some actress’s life we have one of our own? Are actors getting “de-humanized” because they live what people perceive as rarified, elite lives completely out of touch with ordinary citizens?
The Paparazzi is especially merciless in England. I think perhaps it is because the divide between the “common man” and the “upper crust” is so vast that the common man ceases to view the crusties as people at all. Maybe that is what is happening in the U.S. as the wealthy get wealthier and pull away from Average Joe.
Just a theory. Read more here.
Granny Blog
Wednesday, August 24th, 2005I don’t know Mona, but she “GrannyTiger” commented here, so I rooted around and dug her up. Find more opinions from her here.
Google Creates IM Software
Wednesday, August 24th, 2005Yahoo! (And I don’t mean that Yahoo.) Everything Google touches is elegant and easy to use. Can’t wait for this incarnation. Read more here.
I Can TrackBack Look AT ME! Wheeee!
Wednesday, August 24th, 2005Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.
Fetuses and Pain
Tuesday, August 23rd, 2005Okay, I wasn’t going to post any more today but I read an article that has me enraged as a mother and a doctor. Read the mindless pap here.
According to researchers at University of CA, San Fran and published in JAMA (Journal of American Medical Association) proports that fetuses as late as 20 weeks feel no pain. The researchers “reviewing the literature” are not fetal pain experts at all.
But let me give you some personal experience: My sons were born at 24 weeks gestation and they MOST DEFINITELY felt pain. In fact, my sense was that their experience of pain was more acute than what an adult felt but they just happened to possess a greater ability to endure it. Their nerves are still myelinating–they are literally “raw”.
Even more telling, a 22 week gestation little girl was also in the hospital at the same time as the boys. She too, from all observation experienced pain.
What do you call drawing back? What do you call crying when being stuck with a needle? What do you call screams when being poked for the fifth time during a arterial draw? Only ten years ago, premature babies were given surgery without anesthesia because doctors ignored the flailing evidence in front of them until it was “proven” objectively that (OOPS!) they do feel pain.
Nevermind that some “aborted” fetuses with arms sucked off have been born crying and then LIVED! (You can’t kill the baby once it leaves the mother. How’s that for ironic?)
What is wrong with people? Will the morally-challenged persevere in the desire to rid women of the consequences of their behavior at all costs?
I know women pay the biggest price with an unwanted pregnancy. I know that many women who get pregnant don’t want the child and become horrible mothers. I know one more fatherless kid ends up on the public dole.
But abortion–especially those beyond the 12th week–are unbelievably vile. That “fetus”, that child, with volition sucks its thumb. Why would he need to comfort himself if he felt no discomfort? With volition, the child feels around with his hands the uterus he calls home–any woman who is pregnant knows this. Why touch if he can’t feel?
I’m sorry ladies, but that child does feel pain. It has a heart that beats. It has a brain with brainwaves. To further this “no pain” garbage and veil it in pseudo-science to salve the consciences of men and women who want to escape or avoid the trappings of an inconvenient child well, a societal price is paid.
I’ve tripped over more than one woman in my practice whose sorrow, grief and shame over an abortion causes her more distress than caring for that baby ever would have. Pressured by boyfriends, encouraged by angry parents, sexually-abused by fathers, yet the woman has to live with the consequences–not with the birth but with the death of a child she wanted in her heart.
And so does the baby that feels that pain.
