Too Old To Work, Too Young To Retire
Paramedicine, politics, guns, a little Country Western music
If you watch The Big Bang Theory, you probably know what M.O.N.T.E. is. If you don’t here is a helpful link to introduce it. Funny stuff, at least to me.
This is even funnier, because it’s real, not TV.
From the article it seems that the real Robogames predates the Southern California Wobot Fighting League Wound Wobin Invitational, but either way it’s pretty funny. At least to me.
Willie Nelson is one of my favorite song writers, although he’s not one of my favorite singers. Back when his voice was at it’s prime, it was pretty good. Not terrific like people such as Johnny Bush, Ray Price, or Eddy Arnold, but certainly not stick your fingers in your ears bad. Enjoyable in fact. The only time that I heard Willie Nelson in person, he was well past his prime, although some of that was the venue. Still, I’ve always thought that he was a better lyricist than singer.
Many of his big hits weren’t big hits by him, they were covers by other artists of songs that he wrote. Patsy Cline had a huge hit with “Crazy”, which was written by a then little known Willie Nelson, but rearranged by her producer. Nightlife has been covered by just about everyone from Ray Price to Leon Russell and it’s great song. By the way, this site notes that Nightlife was sold by Willie for $200.00, although he bought back 1/3 of the rights later on. Faron Young had a #1 Country hit with “Hello Walls”. I could go on, but I think you get the point.
Ironically, two of his biggest early hits were songs that he didn’t write. Go figure, right?
Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain, written in 1945 by Fred Rose for Roy Acuff. Nelson released it on his 1975 album “Red Headed Stranger”. It charted at #1 on Billboards Hot Country chart in 1975.
You Were Always On My Mind, written by Johnny Christopher, Mark James, and Wayne Carson, and recorded by too many people to list, including Elvis Presley and of course Willie Nelson. For whom it charted at #1 once again on the Billboard Hot Country chart.
Finally a song both written and performed by Willie Nelson. Angel Flying Too Close To The Ground, was a 1981 #1 single on Billboards Hot Country chart.
In case you’re curious, he’s had 14 #1 singles to date.
Happy Medic said it in response to Ambulance Driver,
One nail, hit on head. I’ve said this before and I no doubt will say it again. There is no shortage of paramedics. What there is, is a shortage of paramedics who are willing to work for the low pay, high call volume, crappy or non existent benefits, sitting in an ambulance for 8-10-12 or more hours, not able to even go to the bathroom without asking for permission, lowest common denominator medicine, that is EMS in much of the country. It’s arguably worse in the private sector, but you have to look no further than NYC to know that the public sector treats much of it’s EMS work force like crap.
Until that changes, until EMT and paramedic educational training programs are little more than diploma mills, until EMS defines itself as at least a trade if not a profession, then nothing will improve.
I’m not sure why AD thinks that 75% of the people in EMS are overpaid, I certainly don’t see them. My service pays better than the average, by far, and yet I don’t know that we are overpaid. I’d guess, knowing him as I do, that he’s seen too many lazy medics who do just enough to get by. No doubt they exist, because they exist in every field of endeavor. Happy Medic no doubt knows fire fighters who do just enough to skate by, I know that there are police officers who do exactly that. I’ve seen doctors who do that too. Many lawyers are cringing as they read this because they know that it’s not how they operate. Still, in every field, those are the fortunately rare exceptions.
Most of the EMTs and paramedics I know work their asses off. What’s odd is that I know a lot of people who left higher paying jobs to become EMTs or paramedics because there was something in their previous careers that just didn’t make them happy.
Either way, for whatever reason, most EMS jobs pay far less than they should. It’s been that way since I started in EMS and I expect it to be that way long after I’ve gone.
If you’re in EMS and want to know why, look in the mirror.
I just bought a new Android based phone. It’s a lot different than my Crackberry, that’s for sure. I need some aps put on it, though. I already installed a flashlight ap, and I’m going to put on Lemon to track receipts, but I need more. EMS related, not EMS related, serious aps, fun aps, all kinds of aps.
Send me suggestions, please.
I wrote My Handgun Is Fractured back in early March, but didn’t get the revolver to Smith and Wesson until April 12th. Five business days later I got a call from Smith and Wesson Customer Service. As I already knew, the frame was indeed cracked, which makes the gun unrepairable. Well, let me clarify that a bit. Back in 1993 Smith and Wesson reintroduced the “Centennial” J frame revolver as the model 442. Unlike the original Centennial, the 442 was made with an aluminum allow frame to save weight. All of the Centennials, which was the name used by S&W before they started to assign model numbers had no exposed hammer and were double action only. The “Airweight” versions such as the 442 were made to be light to carry in a holster or a pocket and intended for self defense use. They were, and are, a variation on the J frame Model 36 Chief’s Special. Nice guns, they sell well and are very popular. S&W makes a lot of variations of the gun, including some in .357 Magnum. Which brings me back to my gun.
My 442 was an early production gun. Made in late 1993 it was within the first several thousand produced. It was also rare in that it had a very nice satin nickle finish which made it less susceptible to corrosion. Being early production it was made on the standard J frame chassis. In 1996 bowing to popular demand for more powerful small revolvers, S&W started to produce what is called the “J Magnum Frame”. The frame and cylinder are just a bit bigger to handle the more powerful .357 Magnum round. This is when the standard J frame chassis was dropped from production and why my gun can’t be repaired.
Frame cracking on aluminum framed pistols is the most common failure in the “Airweight” J Frame guns and that includes both older revolvers and new ones (1996 and on) built in the J magnum frame. If you have one of the newer revolvers what S&W does is give you a new frame and barrel with the cylinder and internal parts from you old gun. They then stamp your existing serial number on the new frame, scrap the old one, and send your repaired revolver back to you. It’s a simple process and because you are getting a repaired revolver with the same serial number, they can send it right back to you directly.
If you are like me and have an older revolver, they can’t do that. They don’t have the old frames in stock, they don’t have the dies to make the old frames, and if they did have dies, they’d have to stop production of other guns to stamp one out on one of their forges. That’s just not going to happen. So, what do they do for customers like me with older revolvers that are still covered by their lifetime warranty, but for which they don’t have parts?
Simple. They send you a whole new gun. When the customer service representative called the other day he explained this (in a much abbreviated form) and he explained that in addition to the frame size no longer being available, the Satin Nickel finish was no longer available. Double boo. My choices were a 442 in a nice S&W Blue finish or a 642 in Matte Silver, which is as close as they come to Satin Nickel these days. Which is what I chose. But of course it’s not that simple. Since this is a brand new gun with a brand new serial number, it can’t be shipped directly to me. It has to be shipped to a Federal Firearms License (FFL) dealer who can then transfer it to me. Not a big deal, there is a dealer near me that I’ve done some business with. I’m sure they’ll be willing to do the necessary paperwork and I’ll get my revolver.
Then there is the lock versus no lock issue. A few years ago, for reasons that no doubt meant sense to S&W management and lawyers, they started to produce revolvers with an internal lock. The lock guns have a reputation for the lock engaging inadvertently, usually at the most inopportune time. Now, I think that’s probably an internet myth, but I just don’t like the aesthetics of the lock pistols. Still, most revolvers are made with the internal lock these days. Most people don’t seem to care and I don’t want to look like a Smith and Wesson snob, but I prefer to have a no lock gun. Which means I might have to wait weeks to over a month until S&W gets around to making a batch no lock 642 revolvers. No rush, since I have other alternatives for when I chose to carry a firearm.
All in all, I’m very happy with the response of Smith and Wesson to my problem. They looked at the revolver within four days, called me on the fifth, are going to replace my fractured frame revolver with a brand new one, gave me my choice of not only finish, but frame style. All of that on a revolver that is almost twenty years old.
I think that’s great customer service.
Pictures well follow when I receive the revolver, because I know you want to see it.
BALTIMORE, Md. — If you are severely injured, a helicopter flight to a top-level trauma center will boost your chance of survival over ground transport. That’s the conclusion of a rigorous, national comparison of the effectiveness of helicopter versus ground emergency medical services, published in the April 18, 2012, issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.
According to this study, if you are severely injured and get to a trauma center faster (by helicopter) as opposed to slower (by ambulance), you stand a better chance of survival. That makes sense, since in many cases quicker surgery results in better survival rates. We’ve known since the Civil War that getting patients into surgery earlier increases the chances of survival. Not exactly news.
Survival after trauma has increased in recent years with improvements in emergency medical services coupled with the rapid transportation of trauma patients to centers capable of providing the most advanced care. What has not been clear until this study, is the effectiveness of helicopter emergency medical services (HEMS), a limited and expensive resource, compared to its alternative, ground emergency medical services (GEMS).
Well, not exactly true, and this study isn’t going to answer the real question. Which, as has been raised for a number of years now, is this. Are we (as an industry) flying too many patients for whom time is not important and who will do as well by being driven as opposed to flown. In other words, where is the cutoff in acuity for flying versus driving?
“We looked at the sickest patients with the most severe injuries and applied sophisticated statistical analyses to the largest aggregation of trauma data in the world,” says the study’s principal investigator, Samuel M. Galvagno Jr., D.O., Ph.D., assistant professor, Department of Anesthesiology, Divisions of Trauma Anesthesiology and Critical Care Medicine, University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We were careful at every step to balance all the potential other factors that could explain any benefit of the helicopter. After all that, the survival advantage of helicopters remained,” says Galvagno.
Dr. Galvagno is on the staff of the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center at the University of Maryland Medical Center, where many of the life-saving practices in modern trauma medicine were pioneered. The Shock Trauma Center was the first fully integrated trauma center in the world, and remains the epicenter for trauma research and training both nationally and internationally today.
The principal investigator for this study works at the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, which coincidentally is heavily invested in HEMS. How surprised should I be that a study run by a doctor at a trauma center that gets the vast majority of it’s patients by helicopter shows that patients who arrive by helicopter fare better than those that don’t?
“The use of helicopter emergency medical services in the United States has been a controversial subject over the last decade or so, centering on the costs and the potential for crashes, says Thomas M. Scalea, M.D., the Francis X. Kelly Professor of Trauma in the Department of Surgery; director of the Program in Trauma, University of Maryland School of Medicine; and physician-in-chief at the R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center. “Previous studies have found a survival benefit by using helicopters, but the studies were small and left some doubt. This study in JAMA is very robust,” says Dr. Scalea.
Dr. Scalea as you will note is the boss at the R. Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center, so presumably he’s Dr. Galvagno’s boss. So, the guy who is the boss to the guy that says that helicopters are better is the guy who runs the center that is heavily invested in having patients coming in by helicopter. Another big surprise here.
“Dr. Galvagno’s research demonstrates how statistics and technology can be used to help researchers mine huge databases for useful information to help determine best care for patients and appropriate utilization of limited health care funds,” says E. Albert Reece, M.D., Ph.D., M.B.A., vice president for medical affairs, University of Maryland; the John Z. and Akiko K. Bowers Distinguished Professor; and dean, University of Maryland School of Medicine.
Were I the skeptical type, I’d says that Dr. Galvagno’s research shows how statistics and technology can be used to prove anything you want to prove. Good thing I’m the non skeptical, trusting sort.
The question that isn’t answered here, in fact it’s not even asked, is where is the cutoff for sending patients in by helicopter as opposed to sending them by ground ambulance? The second unasked question is, when do patients need a trauma center? The study looked at severely injured patients, those who unquestionably needed a trauma center. It looked at two different modes of transportation, one faster, one slower. It asked which would do better, those getting to definitive care sooner or those getting to definitive care later. Unsurprisingly the study found that severely injured patients did better when they get to trauma centers more quickly. You don’t need a Ph.D. to figure that one out, but surprisingly Dr. Galvagno used this research as part of his Doctorate in Public Health program.
This study was performed without any commercial funding or extramural sponsorship. Dr. Galvagno was funded, in part, by an institutional training grant when this study was initiated as part of his Ph.D. program at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Pretty neat, getting your homework published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. All I ever got was mine taped to the refrigerator.
Still, it seems like a PH.D. in Duh! to me. Getting acutely injured patients to definitive care faster means that more of them will survive. We’ve only known that since the 1860s, but now we have numbers to prove it. Even at that, the study showed that one life was saved for each 65 or 69 patients flown to a Level 1 or Level 2 trauma center. Now, we need to compare that in a meaningful way to the number of crashes and lives lost to see if the cost in lives outweighs the benefits lives or vice versa.
Again, what we don’t know is where is the cutoff for defining who goes by air and who goes by ground. Until we know that, which is what patients will have a good outcome or no change in outcome no matter which mode of transport is used, we can’t have a real debate over to what extent helicopters are really helpful in saving lives.
Theoretically, if we were able to use teleportation to instantly transport patients they’d do even better. Dr. McCoy said so, didn’t he? Then again, if our molecular pattern were stored in the transporter’s memory banks, what is to keep patients from being treated by being transported and using the molecular pattern to restore them to their pre injury state of health? I need a grant. Well, two. One to invent the transporter and one to see if patient’s do better when beamed to Shock Trauma as opposed to being flown in by archaic helicopters. But, I digress into Sheldon Cooper like fantasy.
The big question yet to be answered, and I’m repeating it for the sake of clarity, is where is the cut off for flying patients versus driving them? The related question is, where is the cut off for patients needing to be in a Level 1 or Level 2 trauma center and those that will do just as well in a community hospital?
Once we know the answers then we’ll have a much more realistic idea of when patients need to be flown and when they don’t.
Twenty brand-new RAF Spitfires could soon reach for the sky following a deal reached with Burma yesterday.
Experts believe they have discovered the locations of around 20 of the Second World War fighters buried at airfields around the country.David Cameron has secured an agreement that they will be returned to Britain.
But the Mark II Spitfires in the secret haul never saw action. Earl Mountbatten issued an order for them to be hidden in 1945 to prevent foreign forces from getting their hands on them as the British army demobilised. The aircraft, straight from the production line, were buried in crates at a depth of 4ft to 6ft to preserve them
I think they might have the variant wrong, so it will be interesting, to say the least, to see what version these really are. The Mark II was an early version of the Spitfire, used during the Battle of Britain. By 1945 there had been over 20 different variants of the Spitfire built, so it seems unlikely that the Mark II was still being built. Then again, I’m no expert so maybe they are right.
Either way, it will be exciting to see what is finally unearthed.
Update: Another article says that these are Mark 14s, not Mark IIs.
Lost Squadron Of Pickled Spitfires Found
This article also indicates that the planes and crates were covered with preservatives making their preservation more likely.
One more article with more details.
British farmer’s quest to find lost Spitfires in Burma
15 years and 130,000 British Pounds. That’s an investment. I hope that the government at least reimburses him for his out of pocket costs.
Generally it only hurts the person or people whom it is about.
Which brings me to this tidbit,
The city will appeal a Supreme Court ruling this week requiring City Hall to release a scathing analysis of the city’s trouble-plagued 911 system.
Fire Department unions have subpoenaed the analysis and all of its drafts but the city has objected to their release, saying the report is not ready for public viewing.
Let me turn on the media translator and explain what this means.
The fire department union wants to use this report to increase pay and staffing for fire fighters. They will use it to bludgeon the city’s negotiators at contract time. Interestingly, any parts of the report that suggest that more EMS units are needed will be ignored by both sides.
The existence of the report, first denied by City Hall, was disclosed by The Post last week.
Again, let me translate. The Mayor doesn’t like what the report says and so he ordered that everyone in his administration pretend that it doesn’t exist. Another failed coverup.
On his weekly radio show yesterday, Bloomberg said the damning report, officially called “911 Call Processing Review,” “was just a bunch of stuff thrown together.”
The mayor commissioned the review after the city’s disastrous response to the 2010 Christmas blizzard.
WASHINGTON—In baseball terms, the first Roger Clemens trial was a rainout in the top of the first inning.
Not because it actually rained, but because one of the teams turned on the sprinkler and left it running.
Only two witnesses had been called last July when U.S. Judge Reggie Walton declared a mistrial, famously declaring that prosecutors had made a gaffe that even a “first-year law student” wouldn’t make.
First, metaphor fail. For a supposed sports writer, this is a pretty weak. If anything, it’s a balk, which is any number of illegal moves by a pitcher that result in a penalty against his team. In this case the federal prosecutors showed a video taped interview with Andy Pettitte’s wife in which she recounted what Pettitte had told her that Clemens had told him about steroids. If you think that’s gossip, you’re not alone. The judge had ruled the testimony inadmissible as “hear say”, which is the legal term for gossip.
To help make sure there’s not another misstep, the Justice Department now has five lawyers on the prosecution team, up from two at the first trial.
Got that? Five federal prosecutors working on a case where a baseball player is alleged to have lied to Congress about using steroids. You see, it’s illegal to lie during a Congressional hearing. In case you’re wondering, it’s NOT illegal for a Congresscritter to lie to you and me about, well anything. If it were, then sessions of Congress would likely have to be held in Leavenworth.
So, instead of prosecuting say, drug cartel members, organized crime figures, smugglers, and any sort of other criminal, they want to prosecute a baseball pitcher.
The prosecution has to be wary of the perception that the government has more important things to do than pursue than a costly case centered on a baseball player’s truthfulness. Some of the jurors in the first trial felt that trying the case a second time would be “a waste of taxpayers’ money at a time when we have significant fiscal problems in our country,” Walton told both sides last September, according to a newly discovered transcript.
Apparently, some of the jurors felt the same way as I do. I imagine that the prosecutors would have had a hard time ‘splaining the danger that Clemens posed to public safety.
Here’s a longer article on the story,
Indeed, the Clemens team has six lawyers working on the case, led by Houston lawyer Rusty Hardin, whose Rusty Hardin & Associates has represented sports stars such as quarterback Warren Moon, baseball star Wade Boggs and NBA great Scottie Pippen, each a Hall of Famer
Clemens has six lawyers, the government has five. How many would you or I be able to afford if the government decided that we had committed some heinous crime like tearing the tag off a mattress?
In my case, the answer would be zero. Which is what the government often counts on in federal cases. They have an unlimited amount of money (ours), to throw at any case that a federal prosecutor decides is worthy. Roger Clemens may not have unlimited amounts of money, but he has a lot of money. Hence he can afford a team of lawyers.
The Justice Department wants to be extra careful not only because of the first trial, he said, but also the botched prosecution of the late Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, which infuriated trial judge Emmet G. Sullivan. The department withheld evidence from Stevens’ attorneys so often that Attorney General Eric Holder, in his first months on the job, asked that Steven’ conviction be overturned; Sullivan agreed. A 525-page report by a special prosecutor presented an unflattering glimpse behind the scenes of Stevens’ 2008 prosecution.
In case you don’t remember Ted Stevens was a US Senator from Alaska. Back in the Bush Administration, the government charged, tried, and convicted him of accepting a bribe in the form of work on one of his houses. Stevens was subject to ridicule in the press, loss of his Senate seat, and of course conviction in federal court. Turns out that the federal prosecutors had hidden testimony that called into questions the credibility of a key witness. The conviction was vacated and the prosecutors were fired, but interestingly they weren’t prosecuted, weren’t even disbarred? Why, you ask? Because the special prosecutor investigating the misconduct determined that the trial judge had not clearly told the prosecutors that they were required to follow the law.
Got that? Federal prosecutors frame a US Senator and escape punishment because the federal judge doesn’t specifically order them to follow the law. Which, presumably they know being lawyers and such. Yet, you, I, or Roger Clemens tell a story that the federal prosecutors don’t like and we’re indicted for perjury. That’s even if it’s a matter of you said A and I said B, and there is no proof of who is right. If the prosecutors like your story better than mine, it’s off to a federal grand jury and the almost sure to follow indictment. Most people end up pleading guilty to some charge because they can’t afford an attorney to fight the case for them. You might qualify for a federal public defender, but good luck with that.
So there, you, I, and maybe even Roger Clemens are convicted felons in federal court. Prison is a distinct possibility, even if it’s at a minimum security federal facility. But, it doesn’t end there. Now that you are a felon, you lose your right to possess firearms and vote. Interestingly, while you lose your Second Amendment Rights, you don’t lose your First Amendment Rights. Apparently, not all Rights are created equal.
Voters and taxpayers should be outraged by this, but mostly they aren’t even aware of it. Instead of being an election year issue, it’s just a blip on the sports page.
I’d like to think that the next Congress and President will act to reign in an out of control system, but I know better.
Your tax dollars at work, putting petty criminals (if that) in federal prison for minor offenses.
Sheesh.
I'm a paramedic working in a largish city in the Northeast corner of the U.S. I've been in EMS all of my so called adult life. I'm more than just a little opinionated, but that comes with having been around the block more than once. [Read More …]