Category Archives: health

But If Obama Had Made Jobs We Could Employ People To Install Sidewalks

Posted on by
3

Athenae points us to today’s searing death ray of political brilliance: Michelle Obama’s ‘Get Moving’ Program Linked to Pedestrian Deaths. Ignore my jaw on this keyboard and keep reading.

The Governors Highway Safety Association says pedestrian deaths increased in the first half of 2010 and the First Lady’s program to get Americans to be more active could be partly responsible.

Governors Highway Safety Administration spokesman Jonathan Adkins told 630 WMAL that Michelle Obama is “trying to get us to walk to work and exercise a little bit more. While that’s good, it also increases our exposure to risk.”

… Other factors include distracted drivers, distracted pedestrians and what Adkins calls “aggressive pedestrians.”

*slowly raises hand* Hello, if I may. Is there maybe, oh, possibly, just saying, a chance that more people lack transportation now because of the shitty economy and have to WALK TO WORK WHAT A CONCEPT combined with the fact that many built-up (read: suburban) areas increasingly don’t have a comprehensive system of sidewalks? It’s a thought.

The rapidly-constructed retirement subdivision where my parents live is a great example. Each time I visit them is a chance for my nature-loving father, the veritable John Fraking Muir of Ohio suburbia, to stand and deliver: “The developers have chopped down every single tree in these gorgeous old-growth woods [never got that - why not simply cut down what you don't need and leave the rest?], would place these houses on top of one another if they could [yards, after all, are for pussies] and are off to destroy another round of woods, ambient water table and natural topography in the next township.” Sidewalks then cost money, which neither the developer nor the township wants to pay for. Besides, you’ve now got a lovely 1.5-car garage (into which fits comfortably a standard SUV and a garden rake) and can drive to the conveniently-near mall, grocery store, church and rec center. Why ever, dear American, would you want to walk on your own blessed soil?

I don’t blame my dad for running off to Chennai for six months out of the year. Indian cities create no pretenses like Walnut Woodlands, The Lakes at Whistling Streams or The Park of Hunter Pasture. They go straight for Gandhi Tacky Dump, St. Mary’s Putrid Badlands and Sivasankara Malaria Depression. Take it or leave it, the next buyer awaits.

Come to think of it, every new American neighborhood I’ve visited, be it in this small town, Akron, Columbus, Cleveland, Fort Collins, Orlando, Houston and suburban New Orleans, lacks sidewalks. And that’s where the two extremes of modern living – the cheap-ass apartment complex with little to no parking and the McMansion with five garages – tend to commonly occur. I’ll let you do the math. The only reason I recall the sidewalks, or lack thereof, in each one of these neighborhoods is the “aggressive pedestrian” mentioned above and his or her microscopic approximation-of-dog walked on a mile-long leash just purchased out of the SkyMall catalog that I’ve had to swerve, brakes screeching and all, to avoid hitting. It’s not that poor genetic disaster Fluffy’s fault.

Where The Sidewalk Ends (courtesy corde5 on Flickr)

Then there’s that hilarious case of where the sidewalk ends. It just stops. This is old town. Take a step forward and you’re in new town. You can now walk on yuppie grass and get shot at have nasty letters written to you by the neighborhood association. “We are a group of good Christian and God-fearing people here at The Creek of Sheffield Forest. We understand that you are a homeowner, but walking on the lawns, however close to the curb, is not allowed. We insist that you refrain from this questionable activity at once and walk only on the pavement, taking care to avoid our freshly-washed, wide-turning, all-terrain vehicles, of course. Our children are not to be influenced by such deviant behavior. This will be our first and only warning.”

But what really, truly perplexes me is this new phenomenon of people running on the streets towards your vehicle WHEN THERE IS A PERFECTLY GOOD CLEAN, UNBROKEN AND PLOWED SIDEWALK JUST THREE YARDS OVER FERCHRISSAKES LET ME PUSH YOU ONTO IT. I mean, what? Are you stupid? You’re obviously educated enough to achieve the earning power to afford that running ensemble of  UnderArmour, Ray Bans, iPod and brand-new NBs. Why risk losing all of that, your brand new 7-minute mile and those internal organs to the front headlight of a vehicle doing the legal speed limit which has no other place to go but into you? You run at 8AM on my way to work and at 5PM on my way back from work. Speaking of which, what the hell are you doing running on the streets during rush hour anyway? Do you not have jobs to go to? Oh, and get this, get this, just this morning, one of you was even running in the middle of the street towards us WITH AN ORANGE SAFETY VEST ON because a winter weather advisory has been issued for the entire Ohio valley and visibility has been severely reduced. *BLINK*BLINK*

Your dumb ass had better have voted for Obama because his wife is now taking the blame for it. Meanwhile, poor Pedro in Houston or suburban Canton and his wife have to legitimately walk on the street just to get to and from the bus stop, while avoiding people on their cellphones who have no regard for pedestrian crossings. “Health enthusiasts” risking their lives to run in the middle of the street with sidewalks present. Less-fortunate Americans who are forced to, in the absence of sidewalks and comprehensive public transportation, put themselves in harm’s way to deliver food to their family’s plates.

Good grief, what next? Simply breathing increases our exposure to risk, so could you kindly quit it? How much more barbarically partisan and deeper into the pockets of insurance companies can this country get?

Measured Consumption

Posted on by
Reply
SamSara Dublin

SamSara in Dublin

The Google feedreader has been trimmed down to sources that have a very high chance of containing posts and articles I want to read, a far cry from the online firehose that gave me many little tidbits of news but nothing I could synthesize into storable knowledge. For instance, TechMeme and Gizmodo went right out. Twenty auto-posts at a time with no order of importance and mostly headlines of the geek I get anyway from colleagues, friends and D. See ya.

I also leave Twitter alone for hours and days at a time. As in shut it off, you’re done. You have to when you want to tell some on the timeline that they don’t have to retweet everything they read, especially CNN’s breaking news, but don’t have the heart to do that and/or unfriend them. So, you walk away.

Telling myself I don’t have to eat something because it’s there or was offered. Ta-Nehisi Coates has a good post on this. “The common reaction is ‘What did you do?’ And the only honest response is ‘Shove less shit down my throat.’” Let’s see how long I can do this. General relaxation, as in generally zoning out on the couch, helps quite a bit here.

Exercise. I’m not going to talk about the exercise until I see some marked results beyond simple maintenance. Like a bicep and a six-two-pack.

You know what the nicest thing was about being in Chicago a couple of weeks ago, besides seeing my friends and the Art Institute again? It was walking around the city for almost a couple of days with no real agenda. There was no “Oh my god, we have to be here at precisely 8:23 to catch the bus to X after which we need to hop in a cab to Restaurant Y to meet so-and-so and have pictures taken with her new baby and cut out of there so we make our reservations at Theatre Z.” Instead, I went to a farmer’s market, ate fresh donuts, played with ferrets, walked alone and with friends in the Loop, had a very casual dinner at the home of one of those friends, rode the L to nowhere, woke up late, wandered the Art Institute with no particular artist or exhibition in mind and quietly hopped on the plane back home. If you let people be, if you let yourself simply be, the world is a much softer and nicer place. I have to learn that, most of the time, nothing needs doing Right Now.

This is what I want for our upcoming trip to Dublin. Wander around, meet and talk to people, take in a museum or two. Very easy to do considering my fellow travelers – D and Killer. A day hike in the Wicklow Mountains south of the city is absolutely called for (hello, exposed Paleozoic igneous and metamorphic rocks from the Caledonian orogeny!), but there’s nothing that says we can’t saunter or stop at a pub on the way and back. Like I’m not going to with these two.

All You Can Leave Behind

Posted on by
1

Not dead. Really, I’m not. With travel, work and everything edible and intellectual absorbed during said travel and work, I’ve a lot of catching up to do.

I’m also going through what Terry Gross and Andy Ihnatko explore here and here, respectively, i.e. digital information Twitter blog overload cortisol bzzzt. Instead of killing all of my social media accounts in a fit of pique and then retiring to the basement for two weeks, I figured simple things like paring back and going to bed early are actually more … dare I say it … constructive.

But I was in one of my favorite cities – Chicago – a couple of weekends ago and saw Neil deGrasse Tyson in Cleveland last week. Everyone needs the Art Institute and science talks made of cool from time to time.

Back after the brain’s extended spa break. Expect some photos of paintings in the meanwhile. Yes, how very recursive. Deal.

Gas Land

Posted on by
8

Oil and gas. I can’t seem to get away from the stuff. My mother once joked that it is in my blood. I was born in a land made obscenely rich by massive oil finds, started out wanting to be a doctor or architect but ended up seduced by rocks and working in the oil industry for a decade and now own property and live right on top of one of the most prolific American gas shales.

Last night, when I turned on HBO’s GASLAND, a documentary about the hydraulic fracturing of shales for oil and gas removal and its human and environmental impacts, imagine my surprise when it started with the Devonian Marcellus shale that sits about half a mile below this Ohio town and runs all the way east into Pennsylvania and southern New York and south into West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, Tennessee and northern Alabama.

***

First, a short primer on hydraulic fracturing: Conventional drilling is tapping into porous rock, sandstone for instance, and pumping out oil and gas. Hydraulic fracturing involves breaking non-porous rock, in this case shales, with a high-pressure mixture of water, sand and proprietary chemical mixes, which releases oil or gas into the well. The controversy here comes from two things: 1) Hydraulically fracturing rock impacts adjacent aquifer horizons by exposing them to oil, gas and chemicals through the fractures and 2) the Energy Policy Act of 2005 included the exemption of hydraulic fracturing from the Safe Drinking Water Act (recommended by a special task force on energy policy convened by Vice President Dick Cheney, FYI). It seems that fracking of the Marcellus shale east of here has had documented negative effects on the health of humans, water sources and wildlife.

GASLAND takes director Jason Fox and his production crew from his home in Pennsylvania to various places in America where fracking is on the rise to tap these unconventional sources of energy, i.e. not regular crude oil or coal but oil and gas shales, as the quality of life of the people of these regions decreases. I am as wary of non-scientists “doing science” as it gets and am not partial to the Michael-Moore-And-Me “folksy” style of exposé, but Fox is on to something here.

***

It is the beginning of the third month of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. GASLAND‘s parallels with this disaster alone are startling.

- Area residents and fauna take ill as hydraulic fracturing intensifies and companies blame it on anything but the chemicals required for said fracturing. Even when no one got sick and water coming out of pipes wasn’t flammable until then.

- The well blowouts and pipe leaks. They are everywhere.

- Halliburton is everywhere.

- State regulatory agencies are mismanaged and underfunded bodies that seem to operate on behalf of energy companies and not the people they represent. “There is no one here to help you. Find a lawyer.”

- Legal and public relations arms of the energy companies expertly stonewall the media.

- Legislative hearings are dog-and-pony shows in which energy company executives state that they follow the law and that they have published the chemical composition of their raw materials but are unwilling to hand those documents over to lawmakers.

- One legislator uses the hearing to stump for his next campaign and apologizes to the energy companies for this hassle while thanking them for the jobs they have created in the region.

- Louisiana is always terminally screwed. Never mind its own production, refining and pipeline activity, which pollutes the coastline and has created Cancer Alley between Baton Rouge and Plaquemines Parish, the state receives one-third of the nation’s oil and gas drilling waste via the Mississippi and other streams in its drainage basin.

- Interior Secretary Ken Salazar is as useless now as he was then. As Colorado senator, he voted for the 2005 Energy Policy Act with the hydraulic fracturing provision intact (then Senator Obama of Illinois, Senators Landrieu and Vitter of Louisiana, Senator Kohl of Wisconsin and both senators of Ohio and Pennsylvania respectively also voting Yea, surprise surprise).

***

The pros of offshore drilling, hydraulic fracturing and other conventional energy-extraction methods: Jobs, revenue and independence from foreign energy sources.

The cons: Water and land pollution; human and animal illness, chromosomal abnormalities and death; long-term environmental destruction.

Jobs and revenue are great, but we have to get past looking at energy in these terms. As D says, “When horses were replaced by automobiles, the guys clearing horseshit from roads and stables complained about lost jobs.” Times change and our resources are limited. A barrel unused is a barrel in reserve.

If we don’t take this opportunity to check our energy consumption and use oil, gas and coal but only to evolve into our next, more sustainable set of energy sources, we are going to be left with neither and will have polluted our soil and drinking water in the process. Given our growing rate of consumption, we will also have to return to importing fuel after having depleted ours.

Fast, easy and cheap. We get to pick two.

Fell Off The Bookmobile

Posted on by
Reply

For the last month, I haven’t touched a book other than to look up formulae, quotes or recipes. Well, that’s not completely true, I haven’t touched a really good book in the last month, which may explain my current aversion to them. A neighbor loaned me Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol and I figured why the hell not. On guessing the identity of the bad guy as well as the never-literal final thrust of the story halfway through the book, the compulsive in me had to plow through to the final page (also to figure out if I was right). That couldn’t end well.

Symbol wasn’t a total loss. It re-introduced me to Ben Franklin’s Magic Squares and a couple of other cool puzzles. Also makes me want to take a month to visit the Smithsonian again and other buildings in the nation’s capital.

Before that was Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Smart and well-paced for a detective thriller with heaping spoonfuls of social advocacy, but it didn’t propel me into its sequel, The Girl Who Played With Fire. Chalk it up to the fact that we are in the throes of the horrifying BP oil spill and Season 1 of Treme and I’m not quite in the mood to read about a woman flashing back to psychological and physical abuse in the Swedish child welfare system, even if she does grow up to kick ass and take goth tattoos.

The Wall Street Journal’s Books’ section agrees with me: “If ever we’ve needed a healthy dose of escapism, this summer is it. We’re stressed about losing our jobs, paying our mortgages, selling our homes.” But even their selections are too shallow or too depressing.

These have been my reading attempts over the last five weeks:

- 15 pages into Kevin Baker’s Dreamland (really hard to keep the cast of 5000 characters introduced in the first 10 pages straight, especially when you’re falling asleep on an airplane)
- 2 pages into Cory Doctorow’s Little Brother (I’ve had enough of the government passing bad regulations and not good ones for a while, thanks)
- 20 pages into Denis Leary’s Why We Suck (do I need Leary to tell me?)
- 16 pages into Stieg Larsson’s The Girl Who Played With Fire (see earlier analysis)

These four books impede the purchase of Miguel Syjuco’s Ilustrado, Michael Chabon’s Gentlemen of the Road, Citrus County by John Brandon, Carlos Ruiz Zafon’s The Angel’s Game and other recommended books. Who am I kidding? Existing books have never kept me from buying new ones. But, I don’t want to buy them and have them sit there.

Exercise, sleep and making the food, metronome, jewelry and clothing (other than the three t-shirts I altered the other day) I’ve long envisioned also wait in the wings. What’s stopping me? Sleep, or lack thereof, and the crap tv I watch in order to fall asleep but end up watching until late. Ideas?

Liveblogging From RT4: Healthcare Panel

Posted on by
Reply
This entry is part 5 of 8 in the series Rising Tide Conference 4

Liveblogging as usual, so keep checking back here for updates.  Also follow the #risingtide and #rt4 hashtags on Twitter.

Healthcare panel includes public health Ph.D. candidate and local blogger Holly Scheib, Cecile Tebo, crisis unit coordinator for the NOPD and one of New Orleans magazine’s Top Ten Female Achievers; Dr Elmore Rigamer, medical director of Catholic Charities, moderated by our very own Liprap.

Rising Tide 4: Healthcare Panel

It’s not an exaggeration to show that the nation’s healthcare woes are magnified in New Orleans, especially after Katrina and The Flood.  If there was a time for accessible and affordable community clinics in this city, it is NOW!

Katrina Pain Index 2009:  “0. Number of hospitals in New Orleans providing in-patient mental health care as of September 2009 despite post-Katrina increases in suicides and mental health problems.”

Closure of NOAH = crime against New Orleans.  Cecile Tebo lets us know that these patients will end up in hospitals not in the area.  The mentally-ill also end up in the closed structure of jails to contain problem, where they do not get required treatment.

Loki’s aunt Ninette asks two great questions: What about the health of our first responders?  Also, what about the stressful nature of living in New Orleans, with two or three full pages of obituaries daily as opposed to just one?  Dr. Rigamer invites one and all to the Catholic Charities free care, but it has its limits.  Holly: We get caught up in conversations about access; health is more than access, doctors and medicine.  Where we live, who our neighbors are, what we eat, these community factors are paramount, and the conversation should be broadened to include these factors.  Cecile touts 211 – more New Orleanians need to know about this.  But, an internet search of “New Orleans 211″ yields useless information.  As the G-Bitch asks, “Where’s the information? Where are the lists and hours and phone numbers?”

Short-term funding for much-needed clinics eventually runs out.  Continued care is crucial to full recovery.

Q&A: Loki mentions seeing a mental health counselor on returning to New Orleans in late 2005.  This professional had a breakdown while treating Loki and subsequently quit the profession.  (I’m sure it wasn’t Loki who drove this poor person up and over the wall.  Not at all!  :-P)  Similar thing happened to me;  I had to quit my post-K counselor after one or two sessions because it was obvious she needed therapy more than I did.  In and after a crisis situation, it is a back-breaker to be strong for everyone around you.  This is why I personally went with Pistolette‘s self-treatment.  (Hey, it worked in 1991, why not in 2006?)  Not everyone can just snap out of it, however, especially those with pre-existing, chronic, chemical and/or genetic issues and conditions.

Update: Healthcare in this country is broken on the whole, as friend Jenny and I discussed later, and this comes down to what people define as “healthcare.” Definition 1: Not taking care of yourself, be it through lack of education, motivation and/or money, and hitting the ER or Urgent Care facility for an expensive emergency procedure.  Definition 2: Annual physical exam, preventive care, exercise, eating well, education as ongoing armor against illness.  Definition 3: Preventive care mentioned in 2 as well as available, affordable care in case of accident, cancer, childbirth, etc.  A lot of people in New Orleans and America think healthcare is Definition 1, while what we need is people thinking in terms of Definitions 2 and 3, a healthy mix of personal responsibility and a social net.

Suspect Device On The Public Health Option

Posted on by
Reply

From Greg, whose lovely wife my parents and I met right after his valve replacement.

Like I was saying, “Employment and personal wealth should not be the only ways for an American to access a basic and low-cost yet good healthcare plan.” Especially not when health insurance exists to benefit from the healthy and not to cater to the really ill. We need better options as people live longer (but not necessarily better), the economy worsens and sick is the new norm of American health.

Karen In Public Health Option Video Spot

Posted on by
2

Below is my friend Karen Gadbois (looking good!) in a MoveOn.org video speaking on behalf of the public health insurance option. Karen is a breast cancer survivor and one of many New Orleanians suffering without proper healthcare since The Flood and what I call Recovery Stalling severely crippled the Charity system.  Honestly, I don’t know whether the public option is a good idea or not.  Will it ensure healthcare access for every American or is it simply robbing Peter to pay baby boomer Paul’s upcoming social security and Medicare tabs?

I am quite sure of two things, however: 1) As it stands now, private insurance is not you handling your money or choosing from a long list of competitive health brokers.  It is not The Individual’s Choice when you are saddled with a large insurance company that your employer has partnered with and are subject to their plans, rates and doctors.  So, enough talk of the Glorious Free Market when that market is mostly two big insurers with enough government backing to be the damned government, and 2) Employment and personal wealth should not be the only ways for an American to access a basic and low-cost yet good healthcare plan.

The current system sucks, but is this the answer?  All I know is Karen, her daughter and many other hardworking Americans should not have to languish in ill health because of a private or public bureaucracy’s greed.

Day 1273: EPIC SCIENCE FAIL

Posted on by
2

VatulBlog has been quiet for a week.  Mardi Gras and being sick during Mardi Gras can do that to a blog.  The inflammation under my ear is still around, so I bought it furniture and gave it a name.  D refers to it as my second head, so Zaphod was a possibility, but we’re going with Pancho for now.  If nothing else, Erik Estrada has been contacted in case Maitri’s Earache: The Movie goes into production.

The doctor told me to suck on lemon drops, massage the area and drink a lot of water if I want Pancho to move out.  This is essentially everything I’ve been avoiding over the last week to ease the pain.  FAIL.

On top of that, I have a sinus infection which is just now starting to respond to the anitbiotic-Mucinex combo.  And I have to take the antibiotic all the way through Monday (Lundi Gras) night in order for the stronger bugs not to develop a resistance to the antibiotic and take up residence where Pancho has not.  I’ve quit taking antibiotics mid-course in the past, which may explain a few things.  Bob, who rode in the King Arthur parade with D and is here until Ash Wednesday, and I talked about how I had effectively helped bacterial evolution along, while rendering myself the weaker species.  As a scientist, that is EPIC SCIENCE FAIL.  To which, Bob deadpans, “LOL.”

The point of this whole post about my illness: Take your antibiotic to the very last pill, drink a lot of water, bundle up and enjoy Mardi Gras.  It can be done.  May the Pancho be with you.

Also, I caught every possible Muses throw.  Every last one.  Muses rocked!

Day 1136: Unemployed Man Kills Family, Self

Posted on by
2

CNN article

Authorities said [Karthik Rajaram] had an MBA in finance but appeared to have been unemployed for several months and had worked for major accounting firms, such as Price Waterhouse, police said.

… the victims included Rajaram’s mother-in-law, Indra Ramasesham, 69, and his 19-year-old son Krishna Rajaram, a Fulbright Scholar and honor student at UCLA.  Also dead were Rajaram’s wife, 39, and their two other sons, 12 and 7.

This eloquent statement by the deputy police chief stuck with me:

“This is a perfect American family behind me that has absolutely been destroyed, apparently because of a man who just got stuck in a rabbit hole, if you will, of absolute despair, somehow working his way into believing this to be an acceptable exit.”

In desparation, Rajaram would have taken solely his own life.  Killing his whole family was nothing short of all-out madness.

How humans, including and especially Indians, go about the very real malady of mental illness shows that we have not arrived as a species.  Why is it generally something not to be talked about with a friend or an expert and as treatable, or at least bearable, with a combination of counseling and short-term or permanent medication?  What good is a taboo to be pushed into the pit of one’s stomach and overcome through Denial and Will Power?   What makes mental illness somehow a flaw in the Strong Genetic and Moral Fibre of an Upstanding Person and not something all too normal in creatures made of chemicals and emotions?

Don’t get me wrong, I do not advocate talking about your depression or anxiety with everyone who will listen. Privacy and propriety are important to a lot of people, and for that matter, the “liberated” West itself has a long way to go in widely accepting mental illness as just that, an illness.  Also, as someone who thinks modern Americans are an overmedicated society, I will not suggest that every bout of ennui should immediately be followed up with a double dose of Xanax.  What I do recommend is an accepting society that encourages a person to confront his or her demons with the right amounts of the right tools.

What if Mr. Rajaram hadn’t felt all alone in the world and not considered this a way out?  What if being man enough to confront his problems was not by killing himself and his family, but through a support system of friends, relatives and the knowledge that he was not the only one in his predicament?  What if he had shlepped himself to the nearest clinic and just talked to someone?  What if he had felt sure of himself as a man to do that?  What if human interdependence were alive and well?  What if?  For starters, his wife, three children and mother-in-law may still be alive.

A few years ago, a brilliant woman I went through college with killed herself after a lifelong battle with depression.  She was not one of the nicest, but definitely one of the smartest and most passionate, people I have known.  In lieu of flowers, her family asked that we donate to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.  I am not asking that you do the same, but suggest we learn more about mental illnesses and support legislation that, at the very least, treats them as an individual and societal problem which warrants respect and more research.  With the economy doing poorly and all of these pink slips and home foreclosures, I can’t help but wonder if there’s going to be more gruesome news like today’s.  For this and more, we need all the mental health we can get.