Archive for the Category ◊ News ◊

26 Feb 2008 Thanks Democrats for taking more of my money
 |  Category: News, Rant  | Tags: , , , , ,  | Comments off

I hate MN democrats. Why would the republicans be so willing to not vote for the new transportation bill, and the stupid democrats be so willing to tax us? Think about it, the democrats are all about helping the ‘unfortunate’, the middle class and lower.  Why, then, did they raise taxes that will hurt just those people? According to KARE 11, MN is the 12th most taxed state per capita. Where does all that money go? I urge you, to contact your state legislator, and tell them what you think. Find your legislator here I just don’t get it. Whomever thinks the billboards are a great idea ‘thanking’ for the higher taxes, you are misguided. Did you know that it will not help any bridge projects, light rail, or pretty much anything else? Whatever. I guess I’ll try to find a better way to work. Oh, wait. I want a life that doesn’t involve riding a bus for 3 hours a day. Thank you Tim Pawlenty and MOST of the republicans for vetoing/ voting against this ludicrous bill. McCain/Pawlenty ’08? I hope so. He definitely has MY best interests in mind.

15 Nov 2007 My 15 Minutes
 |  Category: News, video  | One Comment

I got my 15 minutes of fame at Children’s on Tuesday. A camera crew came in to film ‘general lab stuff’, and I was performing some of it, so they filmed me. The video is from Myfoxtwincities.com and aired on November 13th. There are four spots where you can see me:
-My hands pipetting
-My lab coat and Children’s logo
-Me moving something from the centrifuge to a test tube rack
-Me going to the tube system to pick up a sample for processing.
Oh yeah, the story is really cool too.

01 Oct 2007 Yeah October 1st!
 |  Category: News  | Comments off

October 1st has come to Minnesota, and with it, a ban on smoking in restaurants! Now I can go to Boston’s with friends after work and not smell like an ashtray! w00t w00t! Thanks MN government!

20 Aug 2007 9/11 is coming, bring on the conspiracy theories
 |  Category: News, Personal, Political, Rant  | Comments off

It must be getting close to September 11th, because the shows on TV have shifted to the numerous documentaries on 9/11. Usually I hate watching these because they’re so one sided. They only show what ‘really’ happened, but don’t tell both sides. I’ve watched several of the Internet documentaries, including Loose Change. I tend to believe or at least agree with what mainstream media and the government have to say about what occurred. Although I do find some of the conspiracy theories interesting, I find them just that, conspiracy theories that are usually easily proven to be UNTRUE.

One of the best REAL documentaries I’ve seen so far is “9/11 Conspiracies – Fact or Fiction” on the History Channel. This show did a great job of debunking or at least refuting some of the claims of the conspiracy theorists by showing the theories, and then refuting them with actual expert analysis. I say ACTUAL expert analysis instead of going using some guy who used to do construction in some city somewhere who said that it looked like a controlled demolition. I liked one statement in particular where an investigative journalist said that as an investigative journalist, they put together all of the pieces and connect the dots, whereas some of these so-called journalists that put out movies (“Loose Change”) they don’t connect the dots, they just spread gossip by saying a completely false statement and then saying “…you decide.”

What I liked about this documentary is that it showed actual clips from films like “Loose Change” and then had real experts and people who were there and whose sound bytes were used as the context for most of these conspiracy theories telling us that they were profoundly not true. I find it repulsive that some of these conspiracy theorists prey on people who mourn the people who died. To say that the government actually kept a secret and did something like blowing up and killing its own citizens is ludicrous. It is insulting to my intelligence that they would say that. The worst I’ve seen is the idiotic ‘journalists’ from Loose Change ON September 11, 2006 at Ground Zero arguing with FDNY and others about how they need to “Ask Questions, Demand Answers” about what REALLY happened. Most people, I believe, are content with the fact that their family member, loved one, friend died in the collapse of one of the towers or in one of the planes that were used as weapons that day. I’m sure that THEY (those mourning) find it insulting that idiots that are searching for ‘answers’ by coming to a memorial on a day of remembrance and saying that their family, friends, loved ones were in on the conspiracy and didn’t do anything about it.

Sorry conspiracy theorists, I just don’t believe you. I’ve watched, but everything you say, although sensational, is very easily debunked. Where’s the MythBusters when you need them to build a full scale model to prove what happened and show that these ideas are not even ‘plausible’ or ‘confirmed’ but flat out BUSTED!

27 Jul 2007 Clinical Training
 |  Category: News, Personal  | Comments off

Yeah! I found out my clinical site last week, and I had my interview today. It went great! I will be at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis. Everyone there was really nice and friendly. I can’t wait to finally get into the field and work full time like a ‘normal’ person! I can’t wait for this Fall. I start the day after labor day. Oh, and I’m done with ALL of my homework for the semester! Even my portfolio (apparently I’m the earliest person to ever get it done too!).

25 Jul 2007 Lindsay Lohan is going down
 |  Category: Funny, News  | Comments off

Well, after her most recent arrest, Lindsay could be going away for a while. Hopefully longer than Paris Hilton did. She was caught driving drunk, in possession of cocaine, on a suspended license. <sarcasm>I can’t believe the star of a classic like “Mean Girls” could do such a thing?</sarcasm> I guess she’ll get what she deserves. Read more about it here.


Mug shot of Lindsay

23 Jan 2007 Wired News: The Invisible Enemy In Iraq
 |  Category: Miscellaneous, News, Political  | Comments off

This is a great article that I read in my most recent issue of Wired Magazine (15.02). It talks about the spread of multidrug resistant Acinetobacter baumannii through hospitals and along the evacuation route of injured soldiers in Iraq. It turns out, as the author states, that by making the time it takes to get to the US about two days for an injured soldier, it also increases the risk of infection, especially when medical records are not properly transferred as well. Thought this was very interesting and pertained to Microbiology. I never knew that such a harmless organism in normal people could be so deadly in the immunocompromised.

“Wired News: The Invisible Enemy In Iraq”
A homemade bomb exploded under a Humvee in Anbar province, Iraq, on August 21, 2004. The blast flipped the vehicle into the air, killing two US marines and wounding another – a soft-spoken 20-year-old named Jonathan Gadsden who was near the end of his second tour of duty. In previous wars, he would have died within hours. His skull and ribs were fractured, his neck was broken, his back was badly burned, and his stomach had been perforated by shrapnel and debris.

Gadsden got out of the war zone alive because of the Department of Defense’s network of frontline trauma care and rapid air transport known as the evacuation chain. Minutes after the attack, a helicopter touched down in the desert. Combat medics stanched the marine’s bleeding, inflated his collapsed lung, and eased his pain. He was airlifted to the 31st Combat Support Hospital in Baghdad, located in an old health care facility called the Ibn Sina, which had formerly catered to the Baathist elite. Army surgeons there repaired Gadsden’s cranium, removed his injured spleen, and pumped him full of broad-spectrum antibiotics to ward off infection.

Three days later, he was flown to the Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, the largest American military hospital in Europe. He was treated for his burns, and his spine was stabilized for the 18-hour flight to the US. Just a week after nearly dying in the desert, Gadsden was recuperating at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, with his mother, Zeada, at his bedside…
(read more)

(Image)
The operating room at Ibn Sina Hospital in Baghdad, an Army facility implicated in the spread of Acinetobacter baumannii. Peter Van AGTMAEL/POLARIS