Filed under: Amazon, Google, Government, movies, Nuclear weapons, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, tech, Terrorism, Violence, Wired
Yesterday was an anniversary. Here are some stunning pictures related to it. There have been movies made about it. And movies about what it meant. Or what it could lead to. And, of course, there are a whole bunch of books on related subjects. I’ve talked about the threat it presents. Lore about it has widely influenced popular culture. And it is still topical.
Did you mix a drink to celebrate?
Jim Downey
Filed under: Comics, Darths & Droids, Preparedness, Star Wars, Survival, Violence
. . . Darths & Droids previously, and particularly want to point to today’s strip. Why? Because of the commentary:
You can tell inexperienced roleplayers from experienced ones quite easily. Put them in a room that might contain traps or lurking monsters.
The inexperienced players will check behind the furniture, under the rugs, around the walls, etc, etc. The experienced players will check the ceiling. All the worst things are concealed on the ceiling. Really experienced players will have a 10-foot pole handy, specifically to poke and prod the ceiling, just to make sure it doesn’t have any lurking monsters, collapsing sections, more lurking monsters, cunningly concealed deathtraps, even more lurking monsters, rusty spikes that might drop on you if you so much as breathe, and, of course, yet more lurking monsters.
And you can tell veteran adventurers in most fantasy worlds by the way they keep glancing up every few seconds.
Or veteran veterans, for that matter. Or anyone who pays attention to the surroundings. It’s called ‘situational awareness.’
Jim Downey
Filed under: Connections, General Musings, Health, Predictions, SCA, Society, Survival, Violence, Writing stuff
The past is not dead. In fact, it’s not even past.
William Faulkner.
I’ve read my share of Faulkner, as appropriate for someone getting through a high school English class in the 1970s. And then I read a lot more in graduate school. Always loved his use of language, but I never really ‘got’ that quote, though it nicely sums up one of the major themes of his writing. Partly, this was just being young. Partly it was because of a conscious effort on my part to forget some of the worst aspects of my own personal history.
Oh, sure, I understood how the past shapes the future. In fact, that was a big part of my interest in both economics (one of my college degrees) and the SCA – knowing history allows you to understand how things develop in the ways they have, and can provide analogs which can be useful to understanding new situations when they arise. (That is discussed explicitly in Communion of Dreams, in relation to the the industrial archaeologist brought onto the research team.) But for me, the past has always been the past: dead, immutable.
Until now.
* * * * * * *
As mentioned previously, we’re in the process of dividing up Martha Sr’s estate. This includes the household items. When someone has lived in one house, and raised a family there, for over 50 years, lots and lots of stuff accumulates. In an effort to be completely fair and above board, we’ve had assessors in to evaluate the furniture and household items, so that each family member involved can be sure that they get their share. This coming weekend my wife and her siblings are going to go through and divvy everything up. Then over the coming weeks stuff will get moved out and we’ll deal with whatever no one wanted. Eventually, only those things which are ours will remain, and my wife and I can proceed to actually getting settled here.
Because when we sold our house and moved in here to care for Martha Sr, we wanted to disrupt her home environment as little as possible. We wedged ourselves into rooms which she didn’t use much, put a lot of stuff into storage. It was a pain, but one we were willing to put up with while we cared for her.
Now, of course, I am looking forward to actually getting settled. As I told a friend recently:
It was frustrating to be shoe-horned in here the last six years, but I was willing to put up with it for Martha Sr’s sake. As I have been recovering from the care-giving, I have been wanting more and more to feel less and less cramped up here – I can only put up with this level of chaos and annoyance for so long.
But of course it is a little different for my wife, who now sees her childhood home being split up, her memories associated with this or that piece of furniture bereft of a physical connection.
* * * * * * *
I never met my father in law. He died before my wife and I got together. But he was something of a local character, and over the years here I have had many people tell me anecdotes about him. Seems most people either loved him or hated him. He evidently carried on a number of long-term feuds.
One such was with a local builder, who is now the executor of a family trust which owns the property next to us (part of a large tract in our neighborhood which has caused some grief for people here). For various legal reasons (limitations on the trust), this property has always been undeveloped. But now those reasons are being resolved. And it turns out that what we thought for some 50 years is part of our property is actually part of the trust. This includes a substantial strip of our lawn and even a chunk of my garden, about half of the fenced in area I created for my dog, and a substantial number of huge trees. My wife’s family has maintained and used the strip of property for that entire time.
So for the better part of the last year we’ve been involved in some legal wrangling to settle this issue. Because, you know, the matter couldn’t be settled simply, due to the aforementioned feud. And yesterday things came to a bit of a head, as the son of the executor came onto our property to ‘do some maintenance’.
I had words with him.
OK, let’s recap: I, who never met my father-in-law, had a potentially dangerous confrontation with the son of a man who had a feud with my FIL.
Given my current attempts to recover from prolonged and excess stress, this could have gotten stupid very quickly. And I spent a lot of time afterwards carefully considering the situation. And somewhere in there last night I realized that I finally understood just exactly what Faulkner meant. Now I know why border disputes and blood feuds are carried on for generations, pulling people in who otherwise would react in more sane and rational ways. Because, without desire or intent on my part, I am in the middle of exactly one such episode of history intruding on the present.
This is insane.
* * * * * * *
My wife and I discussed the matter at some length last night, once I had stepped back from the adrenaline stew that had me jumped up. Our attorney will seek a restraining order on the other parties to prevent them from doing anything to the disputed strip of property until the matter is resolved in court – to just keep things ‘status quo’. I have asked for specific instructions from our attorney about what I should do in the event that we have a recurrence – ignore it, call the cops, confront them, what?
But beyond that, I have decided that I am going to try and disentangle myself from this historical mess. I just want a resolution to the matter, and of the feud, so I can get on with my life. But I cannot make that resolution – this is a problem for others to sort out; their problem, not mine. Because I finally ‘got’ what Faulkner meant, and understand that unless I disentangle myself I am likely to contribute to a perpetuation of this feud, damaging my own sanity and soul in the process.
Jim Downey
I worked over six hours yesterday. Yeah, I took a few breaks, but still. Something of a milestone.
* * * * * * *
Humans are remarkably adaptive creatures. We can adjust to a wide range of environmental conditions, accommodate significant changes in diet, accept shifts in social structure. Just look around the world and you’ll see what I mean, from variations in culture in response to climate to how people cope with extreme conditions such as war and famine.
There can be a toll to such adaptations, of course, depending on what they are, how long they last, and the particular individual or society.
In caring for Martha Sr I slowly changed my routine and focus to better meet her needs, so most of the changes I went through in that time were barely discernible from day to day. Over the four plus years of intense care giving, however, both my wife and I underwent a very substantial shift in what could be considered our normal life.
I’ve mentioned some of those changes previously – the weight gain, the loss of concentration, the lack of sleep. But I haven’t discussed the operative mechanism behind all those changes: stress. Specifically, the physiological changes in hormonal balance which come with prolonged stress – the so called stress hormones of cortisol and norepinephrine. Most people know these as the ‘fight or flight’ reflex effects: boost in blood pressure and heart rate, heightened sensory awareness, a slight time dilation. It is our body’s way of preparing us to survive a threatening situation. It is a very powerful experience, and can even be a bit addictive – anyone who characterizes themselves as an ‘adrenaline junkie’, who gets a kick out of doing dangerous things or watching scary movies, is talking about just that.
The problem is, those stress hormones come with a price – they exact a toll on the body. For most people, occasional jolts of this stuff isn’t really dangerous, but for someone with a heart condition or an aneurysm waiting blow, such an event can kill. That’s why you see those warning signs on roller coasters.
And consider what happens to someone who slowly ramps up their stress hormone levels over a prolonged period. That’s me. My formerly excellent blood pressure and heart rate is now scary bad, and has been for a while. I’m lucky that I started this in good condition – but think back to this episode last year, and you’ll see what kind of effect the excessive stress hormone levels had. In the final year of care giving, my system became saturated with stress hormones – my ‘fight or flight’ reflex changed from being related to a sudden threat to being an ongoing condition. I adapted.
So now I am in detox. That’s what the last few months have been all about. Slowly adapting back to something resembling normal, at a very basic physiological level. More sleep. More exercise. Better diet. As I’ve discussed recently, I have started to see some real changes. But as a good friend who is also a doctor reminded me recently, it will likely take a year or longer to make this transition, for my endocrine system to settle down. Recently I have taken some additional steps to help this process, in terms of changes to diet and food supplements. But it is a long and winding road I need to walk now.
* * * * * * *
I got up about 3:30 this morning for a potty run. Stepping from our bedroom into the bathroom, I froze: there was a light coming up from the downstairs that shouldn’t have been there. I quietly backed into the bedroom, put on pants and glasses, grabbed my cell phone, a pistol and a powerful flashlight.
I’m no ‘macho guy’ or wanna-be hero. The smart thing to do if you have an intruder in your house is to batten down the hatches where you are, call 911, and let the police deal with it.
But what if you just left a light on by accident?
I was about 90% sure that was what happened. So, carefully, I went to investigate. Checked the house completely. Everything was safe and secure. The cats were confused by what I was doing up so early.
I went back upstairs, hit the head, put away the various items I’d picked up, and crawled back into bed.
And have been awake since.
After an hour or so, I just got up. Because I knew I wasn’t getting back to sleep anytime soon. That’s the problem – the stress hormone receptors in my brain are so adapted to a regular high dose of adrenal squeezin’s that they hungrily lap the stuff up when it comes their way.
* * * * * * *
I worked over six hours yesterday. Yeah, I took a few breaks, but still. Something of a milestone.
Six hours may not sound like a lot. After all, most people are expected to work eight or more hours at a time, with a couple of paltry breaks.
But for me, regaining the ability to focus in, to concentrate and work for that length of time is a real improvement. It shows that I am making progress in detoxifying my system, of readjusting the endocrine balance.
Today is going to be a bit of a bitch, though, thanks to the early-morning jolt of adrenaline. But I know how to handle it, and hopefully it won’t cause too much back sliding. We’ll see.
The road is long and winding, and I must take it where it leads.
Jim Downey
Filed under: ISS, NASA, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Space, Survival, tech
Happily, Shuttle Discovery made it home safe and sound on Saturday, as scheduled, in spite of misgivings I expressed in my last post and in comments. But losing pieces of the shuttle (or any space vehicle) is always a concern, as discussed extensively by James Oberg in this item for MSNBC:
Why NASA watches out for true UFOs
Astronauts don’t keep mum about potentially life-threatening objectsHOUSTON – Friday’s brief orbital anxiety about threats from an unidentified object seen out the window of space shuttle Discovery underscore why NASA has always been interested in what can justifiably be called UFOs.
* * *
The reason is life-and-death. Since Mercury days, NASA engineers have realized that visual sightings of anomalies can sometimes provide clues to the functioning — or malfunctioning — of the spaceships that contain their precious astronauts. White dots outside the window could be spray from a propellant leak, or ice particles, flaking insulation, worked-loose fasteners (as in this latest case) or inadvertently released tools or components.
Whatever the objects might be, they pose a threat of coming back in contact with the spacecraft, potentially causing damage to delicate instruments, thermal tiles, windows or solar cells, or fouling rotating or hinged mechanisms. So Mission Control needs to find out about them right away in order to determine that they are not hazardous.
Oberg knows his shit, so take a few moments and read the whole thing.
As I’ve mentioned previously, we know that space travel is dangerous, and there is very little doubt that we will see more deaths. But there’s no reason not to learn from our mistakes, and to make things safer as we can.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Babylon 5, Emergency, General Musings, Health, J. Michael Straczynski, JMS, movies, Predictions, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Travel
This is disturbing:
‘Back from dead’ case stuns doctors
THE case of a man whose heart stopped beating for 1-1/2 hours only to revive just as doctors were preparing to remove his organs for transplants is fuelling ethical debates in France about when a person is dead.
The 45-year-old man suffered a massive heart attack and rescuers used cardiac massage to try and revive him without success before transferring him to a nearby hospital.
Due to a series of complex circumstances, revival efforts continued for longer than usual for a patient whose heart was not responding to treatment, until doctors started preparations to remove organs.
It was at that point that the astonished surgeons noticed the man was beginning to breathe unaided again, his pupils were active, he was giving signs that he could feel pain – and finally, his heart started beating again.
Several weeks later, the man can walk and talk.
As John Sheridan might say: “Death? Been there, done that.”
Deciding on when someone is irrevocably dead is actually a very difficult thing to do, and through the ages there have been many instances where people thought to be dead have either spontaneously revived, or been re-animated through the use of medical technology. The Victorians had something of a phobia about premature burial, but the concept of a lych gate has existed for centuries (my first encounter with such can be found here, towards the bottom).
When you add in a legitimate need for organs appropriate for transplantation, which need to be ‘harvested’ quickly, then you’re pushing two conflicting timelines. This is evidently part of the problem which has led to the ethical debate mentioned above. Add in new research into ‘suspended animation‘, and things are going to get even more confused.
Welcome to the future.
Jim Downey
*recognize the quote?
Filed under: Daily Kos, Emergency, Flu, Flu Wiki, Government, Health, Pandemic, Plague, Preparedness, Religion, Society, Survival
One of the ‘front page’ writers at Daily Kos is very much concerned about public health issues, and preparations for a pandemic or other public health emergency. He’s also one of the people responsible for the Flu Wiki. He had a good post up today at dKos about how this issue is playing out in the current presidential election. In the discussion of that post, there was one comment in which the author said this:
Our Emergency Rooms are in Chaos Now …
…without a pandemic.
We are in no way prepared for anything out of the normal. Republican misrule has mazimized corporate profits in medicine while minimizing social welfare benefits. Unprofitable activities like emergency preparedness have gone wanting.
If we have a pandemic, pray hard.
I am not a person of faith. I don’t write about that much here, though if you follow any of my links over to UTI, you’ll certainly see what I have to say about religion there. So the thought of praying for help in a pandemic would never occur to me – I would much rather do something practical to prepare for such an emergency, like getting our hospitals ready.
And I don’t think that the author of that comment is saying that we should only rely on prayer – just expressing some exasperation with the current situation, the current mindset about what role hospitals play in our society. Daily Kos is, after all, a blog devoted to electing progressive democrats and pushing liberal values like a good universal health system.
Anyway, first consider how prepared you are for a possible pandemic, earthquake, whatever. Personally. You have to take responsibility for yourself and your family. As I have written before, there are a lot of good resources with excellent information on what steps you can take to insure your own survival in an emergency. And then investigate what steps you can take to help your local government, your community, to better prepare. It is a very complex problem, and they will likely welcome your help. This will be a step I will likely be looking into in the future, now that our care-giving responsibilities are done and I am recovering.
If prayer is important to you, then by all means, pray. But that shouldn’t stop you from doing what you can to also prepare in more tangible ways.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Emergency, Flu, Flu Wiki, General Musings, Government, Health, NPR, Pandemic, Plague, Predictions, Preparedness, Science, Science Fiction, Society, Survival, Writing stuff
Well, we all will, unless there’s some sort of miracle breakthrough in medicine or technology. But that’s not what I’m talking about. Rather, I’m talking about something anyone who has thought about it much has probably already assumed is true: that in the event of a large-scale pandemic, procedures will be put into effect by medical authorities to determine who will be treated and who will be allowed to die.
This is called triage. And to the best of my knowledge, for the first time such procedures are being publicly put forth as being applicable for all hospitals in the US, in recognition that it is better to have consistent and uniform criteria already in place before a disaster hits. The May issue of CHEST, the peer-reviewed journal of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), today carried a supplement titled Definitive Care for the Critically Ill During a Disaster. From the press release on the ACCP website:
(NORTHBROOK, IL, May 5, 2008)—In an unprecedented initiative, US and Canadian experts have developed a comprehensive framework to optimize and manage critical care resources during times of pandemic outbreaks or other mass critical care disasters. The new proposal suggests legally protecting clinicians who follow accepted protocols for the allocation of scarce resources when providing care during mass critical care events. The framework represents a major step forward to uniformly deliver sufficient critical care during catastrophes and maximize the number of victims who have access to potential life-saving interventions.
“Most countries, including the United States, have insufficient critical care resources to provide timely, usual care for a surge of critically ill and injured victims,” said Asha Devereaux, MD, FCCP, Task Force for Mass Critical Care. “If a mass casualty critical care event occurred tomorrow, many people with clinical conditions that are survivable under usual health-care system circumstances may have to forgo life-sustaining interventions due to deficiencies in supply, staffing, or space.” As a result, the Task Force for Mass Critical Care developed an emergency mass critical care (EMCC) framework for hospitals and public health authorities aimed to maximize effective critical care surge capacity.
So, is this just good public health planning? Well, yes. But it is also very sobering to read the following:
The proposed guidelines are designed to be a blueprint for hospitals “so that everybody will be thinking in the same way” when pandemic flu or another widespread health care disaster hits, said Dr. Asha Devereaux. She is a critical care specialist in San Diego and lead writer of the task force report.
“When”. Emphasis mine. Not “if”. The news report goes further:
Bentley said it’s not the first time this type of approach has been recommended for a catastrophic pandemic, but that “this is the most detailed one I have seen from a professional group.”
While the notion of rationing health care is unpleasant, the report could help the public understand that it will be necessary, Bentley said.
Devereaux said compiling the list “was emotionally difficult for everyone.”
That’s partly because members believe it’s just a matter of time before such a health care disaster hits, she said.
“You never know,” Devereaux said. “SARS took a lot of folks by surprise. We didn’t even know it existed.”
Again, emphasis mine.
I’ve written many times about the possibility of widespread flu or some other kind of pandemic. Partly this is just because such a catastrophe sets the stage for Communion of Dreams. But more importantly – and this is even part of the reason *why* I wrote Communion of Dreams – is that I don’t think that people give this matter nearly enough thought.
It is good to see that the public health authorities are taking this step. And I was heartened to hear about it on NPR as I started to compose this post. Maybe it will prompt people to stop and think for a moment about what they themselves should be doing to prepare for some kind of pandemic or other disruption. Because I bet that almost no one you know is actually ready to ride out such an event – and by the time you hear of a pandemic starting, it will be too late to get everything you will need to increase the chances of you and your loved ones surviving. This is not fear-mongering; this is taking some reasonable precautions – the same sorts of precautions that have lead to the development of this new triage plan. If you want to know more, check out the Flu Wiki (where they also link to this resource).
Yeah, we’re all gonna die. And I can easily imagine disaster scenarios where I would not want to live. But I sure as hell don’t want to die needlessly from something I can avoid, or ride out with a little advance prep.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 