Medical Meltdown

From Discover magazine, "Iraq's Medical Meltdown":

In one of the most damning reports of American policy failures, "Iraqi Hospitals Ailing Under U.S. Occupation," journalist Dahr Jamail cites a litany of horrors evident in Iraqi hospitals in and near Baghdad. At Arabic Children's Hospital, patients brought their own food because the hospital lacked funds to provide meals. Chuwader Hospital operated with only 15 percent of their necessary water supply. The toilet on the intensive care unit at Al-Karkh Hospital looked like a sewage nightmare of the most noxious order.
....
According to the report 'Medical Support of the U.S. Army in Vietnam 1965-1970,' U.S. military clinicians treated some 220,000 Vietnamese civilians a month through the Medical Civic Action Program (MEDCAP) in 1970. As a result of the Military Provincial Health Assistance Program,teams of 16 Americans augmented the clinical staff in each of 30 civilian hospitals.

"I don't think there are many MEDCAP missions at all now," says Burke. "There is no presence of U.S. military in Iraqi hospitals. Our troops get space-age medicine, but 70 percent of the Iraqis injured in the same blast die."
......
Although the Iraqi Ministry of Health has refused to report the number of injured civilians, the medical journal The Lancet estimtes the number of seriously wounded Iraqis at nearly a million. According to the World Health Organization, there were a total of about 35,000 hospital beds in Iraq in 2005.

According to my calculations, that's approximately 30 seriously wounded Iraqis per hospital bed.

Over the weekend I watched The Russian Dolls (thanks to Stu for the idea, apparently his favorite film of last year) and it is probably the best movie sequel I've ever seen. Along with its predecessor L'Auberge Espagnole, these are two fun yet honest films about young adult relationships. Yes, both movies are mostly in French, but please don't let that intimidate you, these are really worth seeing, even if you have to read subtitles for a couple of hours.

I finally checked the results of my poll...it's 4-1 dogs. Who needs cats anyway? Thanks to the five of you who voted. I also attempted to create a new poll about the presidential candidates but Blogger is having some issues.

Randomness

- It's all over--I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But I will hold off writing about it so as not to give away the plot. Now I can read the reviews and see if I agree with them.
- Cloudy weather depresses me.
- Has anyone seen anything good on TV lately? I am trying to find a series to start following. I watched an episode of Mad Men on AMC the other day. It was OK but I don't think I'll start watching it regularly. Then last night I started watching Damages on FX, but Glenn Close's character seemed too mean to sympathize with. I also watched John from Cincinnati on HBO but it seemed stupid to me. I suppose I should give these shows more of a chance before I decide that they are not worth watching. They all seem sort of the same to me, like they cloned one HBO series over and over, complete with self-absorbed characters and gratuitous adult content. Maybe when the fall TV season starts I'll find something worth watching.

From a funny essay about swimming pools in TIME: "Most people, like most pools, have a deep end and a shallow one." The house I grew up in had a pool in the backyard. Steve Rushin is right--a swimming pool is dangerous and indulgent but also tons of fun.

Another interesting word

anomie - n. 1. Social instability caused by erosion of standards and values.
2. Alienation and purposelessness experienced by a person or a class as a result of a lack of standards, values, or ideals: "We must now brace ourselves for disquisitions on peer pressure, adolescent anomie and rage" (Charles Krauthammer).

Source: American Heritage Dictionary via dictionary.com

I caught the mouse

Yesterday morning I caught the mouse. My mom and I really hadn't been too aggressive about catching it before. We had set out some wimpy glue traps and moved some of its food sources out of the bottom cupboard thinking that would give it incentive to move on. But enough is enough. I was seeing it nearly every night, I could sometimes hear it gnawing inside the kitchen cabinets, and I kept finding droppings in the kitchen. On Wednesday night I laid out two heavy-duty glue mousetraps, basically long plastic trays coated with about a quarter-inch of super-sticky glue.

The next morning the mouse got caught in the sticky mess. It was a tiny gray-brown thing. Its little legs were trapped in the goo and it was exhausting itself trying to get out. I grabbed the trap, a bottle of oil, and a pencil (to unstick it with) and went outside. I went down the block and crossed the street to where there is a huge expanse of desert. I poured some oil into the tray and proceeded to try to unstick the mouse. Its hind legs came free, then I tried its front ones. It wiggled like crazy and I grabbed it and tried to pull it free. At that point the mouse bit my finger, hard. But it was now free from the trap and I dropped it into the dirt. It stayed next to a bush for a few moments, its fur stained with oil, and that was the last I saw of it. I turned away, crossed the street again, and when I got to the house I immediately washed my finger.

My hand hasn't turned black and I am not foaming at the mouth so I don't think I got some deadly disease from the mouse bite. But poor mouse. It was so cute, cute enough to be a pet. But this was no pet mouse. I thought of how I'd seen the mouse previously, how it moved so smoothly and quietly in the night. It could get into the tiniest of spaces. Then I thought of it in the trap, having the crappiest day of its life so far, trying so hard to get out. And me dumping it out in the desert. At least I didn't kill it outright with poison or with a snap trap. I don't think I could have taken that. Did I effectively kill it by leaving it out in the desert? On this point I think ignorance is bliss.

So that's the end of the story with one mouse. There might be another one roaming around. Mom supposedly saw a fat mouse in the kitchen cupboard one morning and the one I trapped was definitely not fat, so the traps will stay out. I really hope I won't have to do this again, though. Bugs are one thing, I don't think twice about killing them, but causing harm to cute little rodents is not something I enjoy doing.

Funny mime performance of Natalie Imbruglia's Torn (scroll down to No. 9). Natalie Imbruglia is a really good sport.

- Progress on Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: p. 137. I'm generally not a very fast reader. I usually like to take my time reading a book, even with Harry Potter.
- The mouse made another appearance last night. As far as I know we have cut off its major food supply. Hopefully it will move on soon.
- "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" is currently playing on Pandora, reminding me that The Darkness is a pretty cool band.
- I keep wavering between wanting the summer to be over and wanting it never to end. I'm conflicted.

Try this banana pudding recipe

I've been cooking more in the past few weeks. Yesterday I made tuna patties (tuna, carrot, onion and bread crumbs dipped in egg and cooked on a skillet) for dinner. I also made brownies for dessert :-). Two weeks ago I attempted my mother's favorite recipe for banana pudding. It was surprisingly easy and it is really delicious (recipe reprinted from this site on about.com):

INGREDIENTS:
1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk (NOT evaporated milk)
1-1/2 cups cold water
1 (4-serving-size) package instant French vanilla pudding and pie filling mix
2 cups (1 pint) heavy whipping cream
40 vanilla wafers cookies (about)
3 to 4 medium bananas, sliced and dipped in lemon juice from concentrate
4 vanilla wafers, crushed to crumbs for garnish

PREPARATION:
Combine sweetened condensed milk and water in a large mixing bowl. Add pudding mix and beat on medium speed for 3 minutes. Refrigerate pudding mixture for 15 minutes. Meanwhile, whip heavy cream to stiff peaks. Fold whipped cream into chilled pudding mixture until combined. Select a large (3-quart) decorative glass bowl. Spread 1/2 cup of pudding around the bottom of the bowl and top with one-third of the vanilla wafers, followed by one-third of the bananas and one-third of the remaining pudding. Continue layers, finishing with pudding on top. Sprinkle with crushed vanilla wafer crumbs. Chill at least 4 hours before serving. Refrigerate leftovers.
Yield: 8 to 10 servings

Fandango

Inspired by an article in the El Paso Times from a few weeks ago, I ordered Fandango from Netflix. This movie is the very definition of gonzo and I can understand why it is considered a cult classic. It's about five guys (the "Groovers") taking a road trip through West Texas after their college graduation. It's over-the-top and there are gaping holes in the plot but this is the type of movie where the plot is besides the point. And of course I loved the setting for the movie; if you've ever driven through West Texas you will recognize the landscape. The ending was filmed in San Elizario, and my dad informed me that my great-uncle was an extra. Very cool.

In August issue of Discover magazine, Bruno Maddox speculates on why science fiction has ceased to matter:

For one, it was around that time, the mid-1990s, that fiction—all
fiction—finally became obsolete as a delivery system for big ideas. Whatever the
cause—dwindling attention spans, underfunded schools, something to do with the
Internet—the fact is these days that if a Top Thinker wakes up one morning
aghast at man’s inhumanity to man, he’s probably going to dash off a 300-word
op-ed and e-mail it to The New York Times, or better still, just stick it up on
his blog, typos and all, not cancel his appointments for the next seven years so
he can bang out War and Peace in a shed. If one truly has something to say,
seems to be the consensus, then why not just come out and say it? If your goal
is to persuade and be believed about the truth of a particular point, then what
would possess you to choose to work in a genre whose very name, fiction,
explicitly warns the reader not to believe a word she reads?

It's an interesting essay, worth reading in its entirety.

Anticipation

Thirteen hours until the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. I am probably more excited than I should be considering that I'm 25 and not 10. For the first time I'm even considering going to one of those midnight release parties. It would be just for fun since I already pre-ordered a copy via Amazon. It hasn't been easy to avoid reading anything about the plot of the book. Somehow the NY Times already has a review. How did they manage that? Anyway, I'm looking forward to getting the book and sequestering myself in the house for a few days.

Mouse in the house

This is gross to admit but there are mice living in my house. In the past month or so I've seen mice scampering across the floor a few times, usually at night. A few weeks ago an exterminator gave my mom and I some sticky mousetraps to trap them but with no luck. Then this morning Mom found a fat mouse in the cupboard eating flour. She trapped it in there but the question is what are we going to do with it now? I don't want to kill it. Is it really so bad to have a few mice living in your house? Any suggestions?

I upgraded the blog template and added a new poll about pet preferences on the sidebar. Dogs all the way for me. Props to Blogger for adding the new functionality. I was able to change the template while losing only a few of the changes I had made to the sidebar, a major breakthrough.

Best (and worst) concerts I've been to

I'm not too much of a concert-goer, especially lately as funds for concert tickets have been low. But I've been to a few good concerts (and a few bad ones) and I thought it might be worth recalling the best and the worst:

The best:
1. Trans-Siberian Orchestra: Classical music on steroids. The music was top-notch, the light show was mind-blowing, and last time I went they even had fake snow. Wow.
2. John Mayer, opening act Maroon 5: Maroon 5 was near the peak of their initial popularity and they played an amazing set. Could it also be that I have a tiny crush on John Mayer? Possibly. John Mayer is a great guitar player and he played through the gap between the last song and the encore, a poke at the stupidity of encores that I thought was hilarious.
3. Vertical Horizon, opening act Sister Hazel: My first concert. Sister Hazel played a cover of "Every Little Thing She Does is Magic" that I loved. And Vertical Horizon had a whole line-up of great songs.
4. Matchbox 20: Maybe Matchbox 20 is way too Top 40 in a lot of ways but you forget that these guys are actually pretty good musicians. The band played a fantastic cover of "Jet".
5. Fleetwood Mac: For being older, this band put on a very energetic show. And Stevie Nicks, need I say more?

The worst:
1. Hall and Oates: It's kind of embarrassing to admit that I went to a Hall and Oates concert. I don't know how you manage to make elevator music more boring, but they did. A very rote performance and they barely talked to the audience at all.
2. Nickelback: I had to stand through the whole concert, I got beer spilled on me, and halfway through I realized that I don't like Nickelback's music very much.

- I am oddly excited that David and Victoria (Posh Spice) Beckham are coming to America. But it just makes so much sense to me, the glamour couple coming to live in Hollywood.
- There's nothing like The Motorcycle Diaries to make you realize how bad your Spanish is.

Sicko

Yesterday I went to see Sicko, Michael Moore's documentary about the need for health care reform in America. It's a documentary that makes you laugh and makes you cry and then makes you want to write to your congressman or woman. I liked seeing this movie in the theater because you could hear other people's reactions to it. I was on the verge of tears a couple of times during the film and there was a collective gasp at seeing the amazing benefits of the French social welfare system. And Michael Moore gets out the bullhorn one more time, this time on a boat outside of Guantanamo Bay. Even as the movie was still playing, I could hear a guy start to discuss it with the person next to him, kind of annoying but it's cool that a movie is able to inspire that kind of reaction.

What's sad is that the health care horror stories in Sicko probably won't be surprising to most of us, since if you live in America you've most likely experienced yourself and/or heard others' stories of the unfairness and cruelty of the current system. It's a system based on greed where the interests of the patient often come last. We treat health insurance like it's a luxury when it really is a necessity.


I know Michael Moore's movies tend to be one-sided and not show, for example, the downside of having a generous social welfare system. But after seeing this movie I was completely convinced that a government-run health care system is the way to go, even if it means higher taxes. In the current system, it's a struggle to even get insurance in the first place, and even then you really don't know what will happen if you get sick--your insurance company may drop you or refuse to pay for treatment because it's 'experimental', and even with coverage you may still go bankrupt paying sky-high medical bills. There's no peace of mind. Maybe state-sponsored health care won't fly with conservatives (sigh), but at the very least couldn't we have a system where everyone has at least a minimum amount of health insurance? And some way to control health care costs? It's about time. Sicko is definitely a thought-provoking movie and I hope it will inspire some desperately needed reforms.

"Shall we gather by the river
Where bright angel feet have trod;
With its crystal tide forever
Flowing by the throne of God?"

From my piano book, lyrics from "An American Hymn" by Robert Lowry. Almost as pretty as the music.

Excellent NY Times editorial mapping out a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq:

This country faces a choice. We can go on allowing Mr. Bush to drag out
this war without end or purpose. Or we can insist that American troops are
withdrawn as quickly and safely as we can manage — with as much effort as
possible to stop the chaos from spreading.