it’s been a pretty sparse week for updates. First, I just grew overly tired and frustratedwith Carlos Fuentes’ Terra Nostra. It’s over 800 pages long, starts slow and keeps going slow. While reading it (I got a little over 200 pages in) I knew there were things that could have been researched to provide more richness to the story, and it would have probably helped to have known a bit of Latin, but engaging in a novel as research project was simply something I didn’t have in me. If given a different temperment, I might have kept going. But, right now, I just don’t have it in me.
And this week I haven’t felt capable of much of anything. After “camping” with my g/f’s family for all of one night, I got sick. A drainage/sinus/throat thing that has made me feel like crap all week. It’s drained me of energy, it’s made me feel miserable, I’ve been running a fever, etc. And because I may or may not be overmedicating myself at night with night time cold medicine, I have had an increasingly difficult time getting out of bed in the morning. I don’t tend to read directions but to just fill to the top line whatever little plastic shotglass is next to the medicine bottle. I should check to see if the top line on the glass corresponds to the correct dosage listed on the bottle.
Oh, and I screwed up my back over the weekend and it’s still not feeling right, either. As you can see, it’s been a lovely week.
“Young voters helped put Barack Obama in the White House, but they’re not proving to be much help when it comes to the biggest push of his presidency,” Politico reports. Voters aged 18 to 29 say “they’re likely to support health care reform by wider margins than those in any other age range,” but polling numbers and other evidence indicate “health care reform just isn’t a particularly high priority for the younger crowd.”
“[I]n a new Gallup Poll out this week, only 34 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 34 said they want their member of Congress to vote for health care reform. Another 34 percent want their representative to oppose health care reform, and a whopping 31 percent say they aren’t sure — roughly 10 percentage points higher than other age groups. Obama’s plan could have immediate appeal for young adults, if its proponents could get them to pay attention. Among other things, the plan would create special young-adult private and public insurance plans and would allow them to remain on their parents’ policies until they’re 26″ (Lovely, 9/10).
Yesterday was my birthday and Lacey gave me a lot of “love” with lots of kisses.Later in the night she became “jumpy” because 1)she’s still taking her medicine which she really does not like even to put the syringe in her mouth is something else altogether.2)she was given a bath right after her medicine 3)she had to be brushed 4)she had to get her ears cleaned.I think it got to be too much for her so it scared her to even come near us for a while.Instead she was hiding from us probably afraid….Think next time we need to space things out a little more so she does not get scared.Having a scared puppy is not good at all.
The name was so awesome it had to be in all caps. The idea is pretty sweet too, scientists are using single-celled organisms to build nano-tech. There is a line in there about “building liquid logic gates for a synthetic brain,” that worries me a little (see my post “I’m pretty sure I know where this is going”), but other than that I see mainly positive applications for this kind of thing. Especially if they can be reprogrammed to build an immune system. Suddenly we’d have a cure for all disease because of its flexibility. I think it’d be a little like the bacta tanks from Star Wars. Might just be an injection if the technology advances far enough.
To think I’m going to miss all of this. The Future can’t get here quickly enough.
Modern paranoia, and the resulting conspiracy theories, regarding the capacity of a government’s willingness and capacity to use its citizens for political and experimental fodder are not without basis. They spring from a slow trickle of stories that have been revealed by the mainstream press over the last 50 years.
Some of these stories gained a lot of attention in the mass media. Some did not.
These pages cover well-documented, verifiable, non-consensual experiments carried out on US citizens by parties which include the United States Government.
Atomic Testing on this page you will find:
DOE Resources on Human Radiation Experiments
Government Documents
Searchable Databases
Specific Experiments
Other Sources
Altered States on this page you will find:
Books and Excerpts on LSD, the CIA and Psychosocial Manipulations
Web Sites and Links
Experiments on Pregnant Women, Infants and Children on this page you will find:
A number of experiments carried out under the Atomic Energy Commission on Pregnant Women and on children. Other experiments are included on this page.
This information is not presented in order to suggest that every conspiracy theory has verifiable merit. It is meant to suggest, instead, that the concerns finding expression in modern paranoia have some basis in historical fact.
A Rasmussen Reports poll of September 3 indicates that 56% of voters nationwide want Congressmen at Health Care Town Hall meetings to be seen and not heard.
Fifty-six percent (56%) of voters nationwide say that it’s more important for Congressmen to hear the view of their constituents rather than explain the proposed health care legislation. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 37% hold the opposite view while 7% are not sure.
The desire for Congress to listen may stem from the fact that voters believe they understand the legislation better than Congress.
This is a post about my flexible, but current theory of tolerance or acceptance. Each independent of the other. I think in work, and everyday life, there are moments when you need to have tolerance, and there are moments when you need to be accepting, but never both together. It is an all-or-nothing deal.
For example, when you are listening to a boring story being told by a friend, acquaintance, or family member etc., and you don’t want to listen to it, but they need you, you must have tolerance to stay in the moment for your friend, acquaintance or family member etc., because they need you to just be there.
Acceptance and tolerance both establish themselves positively and negatively in varying situations, based on if the situation is negative or positive. It’s kind of like in math, when you are measuring integers: the same signs cancel themselves out to be a positive, and opposing signs result in a negative equation or a positive equation, depending on the situation. I think it is integers, but you know what I mean. If the situation is positive, but the path leads to a negative that you have to either tolerate, or accept, then it is a negative tolerance, or negative acceptance. If the path is congruent, or matches the situation positively, then the result will be positive acceptance, or positive tolerance. Tolerance seems to be the more- negative state, compared to acceptance, but it can be true for either. You may think that if the path is congruent to the situation, then there is still a risk for a negative outcome, but it only depends on the situation being negative, not the decision of the path… hmmm.. this is getting complex. Here are three examples (there are an infinite number):
Scenario 1:
Situation: Negative (example: irritable co-worker at your job)
Path: Tolerance or acceptance?
Decision: Tolerance= negative tolerance
Outcome: Your day is shifted by the negative mood of your coworker, but you tolerate this mood and don’t “react,” to the coworker.
Tolerance, by Christophe Vorlet
Scenario 2:
Situation: Positive (example: Feeling excited to return to school)
Path: Tolerance or acceptance?
Decision: Acceptance= positive acceptance
Outcome: Positive mood and emotions due to feeling excited to return to school.
Outcome: You buy another icecream, and hope that you will not drop it. Feeling a bit disappointed about the lost money from dropping it, but accept the situation.
Acceptance, by Elizabeth Silk
It is important to be aware of your choices and options for being tolerant, or accepting of situations. We are faced with having to make decisions about how we feel in situations everyday, at every moment, but if you are able to discern between a positive situation or negative situation, you can learn how to cope with the effects by either tolerating the outcome, or accepting the outcome, regardless of the positive or negative aspects of the situation. Living this way helps you be more conscious of how negative or, how overly positive you may be (if overly positive is possible), and you can learn how to begin to change from feeling negative to more positive, almost overnight. If you find that you are “tolerating” most negative situations, it is not that “negative” to begin with, because you are able to identify the possibility to stick in the situation and tolerate it, to find hope in a negative situation. It is not either, or, because tolerance and acceptance are different things, and hopefully my arguments have made sense, and are understandable, logical.
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I am writing about this, because as a Physician, I think it will be so important for me to understand tolerance, and understand acceptance when working with patients, their families/ caregivers and colleagues. Not everyone thinks the same, so it is important to be flexible and accept, or tolerate moods and actions in every situation. Medicine requires an incredible amount of patience, problem solving and preparation (3 P’s), so being alert to the details of each situation will allow me to stay grounded, and focused on the task at-hand. I am excited for this challenge!
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