"micky" wrote in message
On Thu, 8 May 2014 19:39:07 -0400, "Robert Green"
stuff snipped
There is a Canadian film my wife and I watched a while back about the
thalidomide kids growing up that would make even a grizzled Navy Seal
cry.
Kids reaching for and trying to play with toys that a normal child could
reach for a grab easily. Even the youngest of them knew that something
was
terrible wrong. It's one of the saddest films I've ever seen and the
wife
went through a substantial number of tissues she wept so much (and she's
a
retired Army colonel who grew up in New England and who prides herself on
her ability to remain stoic and unemotional when required).
There are a lot of painful things I won't watch anymore. I've learned
more than enough about the suffering in the world and I won't forget.
But I don't have to watch more, either.
Yeah, we've adopted the same attitude. For her it was when Flowers of
"Meerkat Manor" got killed. For me it was a Nature program where a mother
lemur abandons, with great and obvious anguish, her injured offspring who's
unable to keep up with the troupe. If she stayed she risked being rejected
by the troupe if she was ever able to catch up to them.
It's part of the "super realism" trend in nature documentaries I could do
without. "See these cute lion cubs? In just one minute the new male lions
who have taken over the pride will kill them all." No thanks. Time to
watch "Big Bang Theory" instead.
I think the film really bothers women because they are so worried about
delivering healthy babies. My mom (and others) have said that as soon as
the nurse handed me to her she counted all my fingers and toes and
checked
This probably goes back thousands of years.
I think you're right about that.
my ding-a-ling to make sure nothing was missing.
OTOH, this one, these days, for last 60 or more, is not such a serious
problem. The most common problem is undescended testicles, and I
thought http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undescended_testicles would say
they can almost always be fixed, but there were a lot of words and I got
confused.
That's interesting because studies with rats have shown that severe
overcrowding increases both congential sexual defects and homosexuality.
It's as if Nature knows there are too many rats and works to reduce the
population. I guess that's not a shocker because even pond scum knows when
the available water surface is exhausted. Apparently the cells that reach
the edges of the pond release a chemical inhibitor that stops the other
cells from reproducing further and the scum enters a 'steady state"
existence. (There's a straight line in there somewhere, I am sure.)
I just had a discussion with my MD about how impossible it is for layman to
make good medical decisions because we just don't have the training and
education to do so. So a lot of us resort to thinking along the lines
"well, Joe had the same sort of surgery they're proposing for me and he got
worse instead of better." That's actually true in my case.
My much older ex-boss had a THR and not only did it not improve his
locomotion, he ended up with a severe case of metallosis from a defective
artificial hip. Yet we both know a guy somewhere between us in age (my
ex-boss graduated from West Point the year I was born!) who's on his 2nd
successful artificial hip (they wear out through use) and he plays tennis
every morning.
It did say this much. .
" About 3% of full-term and 30% of premature infant boys are born with
at least one undescended testis. However, about 80% of cryptorchid
testes descend by the first year of life (the majority within three
months), making the true incidence of cryptorchidism around 1% overall."
My back doctor had cryptorchidism (latin for hidden flowers aka testicles!)
and when they did the surgery back in the 50's they actually stitched the
testes to the thigh temporarily. OUCH!!! They gave up on that when it was
determined it really didn't help them stay descended any better.
Since this was probably always the case, I guess a lot of parents were
scared unnecessarily.
I had a very devout Catholic friend whose son was born missing the
connection between the esophagus and the stomach. It's hard to describe how
such a joyous event (they had been trying for ten years!) became such a
never-ending tragedy.
The surgeons made an artificial one but that kid spent a good part of his
infancy in the ICU here at Children's Hospital. In a moment of terrible
doubt when his son was near death from a rupture in the repaired connection
he basically asked why God had forsaken him. How do you respond to
something like that? I said he was merely testing your faith. That
family's ordeal reminds me how true is that old saying: "There but for the
grace of God go I."
We lost touch after one day, when talking on the phone with the cat on my
lap, the cat "peeled out" off my lap ripping huge scratch marks in my thigh.
Naturally I screamed "Jesus Effing Christ" and I knew I had crossed the line
with my poor ex-seminarian friend. Sigh The law has a term for what I
did: "Excited Utterance" although I can't seem to recall (or even find) the
proper Latin term.
Under the Federal Rules of Evidence, an excited utterance is defined as a
statement that concerns a startling event, made by the declarant when the
declarant is still under stress from the startling event. An excited
utterance is admissible under an exception to the hearsay rule.
http://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/excited_utterance
Having your groin area skin flayed by a "hot to trot" cat that suddenly got
scared for no reason certainly is a "startling (and painful) event."
Res Gestae!!! My brain certainly has slowed down since I cross the 60 year
line a while back.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Res_gestae
Statements that can be admitted into evidence as res gestae fall into three
headings:
1.. Words or phrases that either form part of, or explain, a physical act,
2.. Exclamations that are so spontaneous as to belie concoction, and
3.. Statements that are evidence of someone's state of mind.
Whenever someone rails against our "horrible" regulatory system I think
of
the thousands of kids that got to lead normal lives because our FDA
refused
Doesn't the current budget cut funds for the FDA? Also the IRS, even
though the IRS brings in money.
Don't get me started. They're trying to crucify the head of the VA, one of
the most honest and caring general officers I know of, for people dying
before they are able to get proper care. It seems more than a little
hypocritical to starve an agency of funding and then ream them out about
what was pretty predictable. Cut funding and care HAS to suffer. It's like
trying to do brain surgery with a dull cleaver instead of a scalpel.
Something's guaranteed to get cut that shouldn't be.
stuff snipped
Hmm. My girlfriend says her direction-finding capabilites were
destroyed when cell phones got popular.
Does she have a wasp waist,
I wish.
I've been watching old reruns of Linda Carter as Wonder Woman. Now there's
a wasp waist!
wings, a black and yellow behind and a taste for honey? (0:
Fortunately, she doesn't have those things either.
What? She doesn't like honey? My wife loves it and claims it's a miracle
food. I like maple syrup better, though. Tree blood instead of insect
vomit. (-;
--
Bobby G.