Now That’s A First Lady!

A Generation Y Wedding

Awesome.  Even grandma in the front row likes it!

Morning Thought

So what is up with these crazy “Birther” movement people?  You know, the fringe wingnuts who believe the President is actually a naturalized citizen of Kenya?  When I watched the above video yesterday on Hardball I wanted to throw my shoe, err my couch, at the television.

Now I don’t know the life story of the woman asking the question at the town hall and I don’t who got her to buy into all this conspiracy stuff, but I do know one thing: It is one of the most pathetic movements I have ever witnessed / read about.  She waves that little American flag while she’s preaching and it kicks in my gag reflex.

It’s also, just a bit scary.

I wish these people would just go away.  If I’m lucky, by the time my future children will be of voting age… these people will have become so marginalized  that they can only exist in packs of 2 – 10 and only have fellow Freepers as at outlet for their bile, biggotry, and hatred.

MDM: Stye vs Chalazion

Since I’m wildly in love with medicine and thoroughly enjoy pontificating to other people, this routine post should be useful to everyone involved!  I think I’ll call it Mid-Day Medicine (MDM).

Further – since I work in Ophthalmology (OPH-THAL-MOLOGY), the first topic should be about the eye.  Why not?

A lot of patients with a lump in their eye come into our clinic and label it as a ’stye’.  I remember as a kid using that word to self-diagnose every type, colored, shaped, and painful lump that appeared neat my eye ball.  Truthfully, however, there’s another kind of lump that I see a lot more often then the former discussed one: Chalazion.

To sum up the difference of stye vs. chalazion you really have to look at where the inflammation is occurring.  Styes, quite simply, are an infection / inflammation of the glands in your eyelids – often resulting from blocked eyelash follicles.  As a result you will more likely then not see styes as pimple-like bumps on the edge of your eye lid.  They’re usually more painful then chalazia and often resolve themselves after coming to a head and draining.

The chalazion, however, is often caused by the body’s inflammation response to a blocked or ruptured sweat glad (meibomian gland) within the eye lid.  These buggers can get huge – and I mean huge.  One patient I examined had a lump that measured just under 3 cm in diameter!  They are also more prone to outlast a patient’s attempt to relieve them by warm compress and cleaning.  Unfortunately, they may end up needing a procedure known as I & D (Incision and Drainage) to finally eradicate them.

Hope you enjoyed that little factoid.  And just for shits and giggles, I’ll throw in a medical word that you’ll understand now the next time your Dr uses it.

Pruritis = Itching.

Morning Thought

Considering all we know about carbon dioxide and its effect as a greenhouse gas, you would think an overwhelming number of people would understand how much of an impact we have on the planet?  Yet time and time again I hear “opponents of climate change” (which just sounds stupid so I put it in quotes) say that there’s no way we could possibly have a global impact… the Earth is just too big and our species too insignificant.

New rebuttal: Do you believe we put a hole in the ozone with chloroflourocarbons?  Do you believe we’ve helped reduce that hole by agreeing to the Montreal Protocol?

I just want to make sure that we have no impact globally…

Morning Thought

According to the Washington Post, President Obama’s approval rating has dropped below 60% for the first time.  My thought?  Oh reaaaally?  Say it ain’t so!

This is really isn’t surprising to me.

Walter Cronkite

With the death of Walter Cronkite I can’t help but think that this is just another blow to the already crippled body of American Journalism.  I know that Mr Cronkite hasn’t been an active anchor for some time – and my earliest (and fondest) memory of him was as a narrator of Dinosaur! The Complete Dinosaur Story – that doesn’t change the fact that we’ve lost a titan.

What does it mean to be America’s most trusted man?  I would imagine it was a title that Mr Cronkite took very seriously – a burden, even.  Most importantly, it was a position of incredible power that he earned over a very long career.  That being said I would like to expand on some things.

When I think about the 24 news cycle and how it’s altered the manner in which we not only receive news – but process it – I cringe.  MSNBC, CNN, and Fox News all have “media personalities” who all have their own agenda.  If you’re like me and can’t get enough news and current affairs, then cable news is like crack.  But do I ever feel reassured about the quality and reliability of the information I’m getting?  Most often I’m not.  I’m always double checking and fact finding, ever vigilent of being duped.

So I wonder… why do we have the Bill O’Reilly’s and the Sheppard Smith’s and the Lou Dobb’s and the Keith Olbermann’s of the media world?  Because information is so easily accessible these people have to put on a show for us.  Their job is be the court jester while chewing over the same story 100 times with 12 different talking heads!  Even the evening network news anchors are plagued by stories that act as fillers because they know we’ve probably heard about their story already.

We become detached from these anchors, or, news-regurgitators.  That detachment, I believe, is fatal.

Imagine being Walter Cronkite on the day that John F. Kennedy was shot and killed.  There was no mass tweet under the topic #JFK.  Our imaginary BB’s and iPhone’s didn’t buzz with breaking news.  Their was just you and Walter.  You’ve come to trust him and accept him into your family and you looked to him for reassurance.  This certainly sounds cliche but it was that kind of influence that made Walter Cronkite appreciate news the same way Judges appreciate the law – as something that should be pure and honest.  Back then we kept “them” honest because they knew they had to be.

Now to be fair, I must also admit that the freedom I have to access limitless numbers of articles by zipping around the web frees my own mind from potential bias and lies.  This kind of individual intellectual exercise should be applauded and repeated.  But at this moment, when I see Larry King running endless specials on Michael Jackson’s nose and Keith Olbermann telling me who he believes in his omnipotent wisdom who the worst person in the world is …

… I long for someone in a smooth baritone to tell me, “and that’s the way it is.“

Crazy Talk

So here we have Laura Inghram talking about how Obama was channeling “his best Jeremiah Wright accent” while speaking before the NAACP.  During her pontificating she asks the audience to think about whether or not he is essentially faking this accent to convince those in the room of his agenda.

Even separating out my own personal bias against most things Inghram, as I watched the clip I found myself wondering how anyone could be offended by the words of the President:

But if John Lewis could brave Billy clubs to cross a bridge, then I know young people today can do their part to lift up our communities.

If Emmet Till’s uncle Mose Wright could summon the courage to testify against the men who killed his nephew, I know we can be better fathers and brothers, mothers and sisters in our own families.

Huh?  Those are beautiful words with a fantastic message for the black community.  Instead of spending that 1 minute and 10 seconds she had with her massive TV audience applauding the President for standing up in favor of strong families and education … she spent it dressing him down over accent.  Over affect.  I’m sure she can’t fault the man for being excited and filled with energy.  Her dear friend Glen “GEEEET OFFF MYYYY PHOOOONE” Beck has his own special affect for when he’s excited too.

Back?

We’ll see.

Barely Isn’t Enough

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-slansky-/a-note-to-bill-clinton_b_128755.html

An excellent note to a former Commander-in-Chief who is well known for his mood swings.  I can’t help but feel the same way towards Mr Clinton as I still haven’t completely forgiven him for his slanders against Obama during the campaign.