Ranting and Rambling

     Politics is an area where it is easy to see how much has changed in our world in regards to social media over just a few short decades. When we entered this century social media wasn’t even a thing and political campaigns were run through traditional media. The only real chance a politician had to make their thoughts on a subject heard was during debates and those were only for the people who bothered to tune in and weren’t distracted by whatever happened to be on the other television channels that night.      There were both advantages and disadvantages to seeing politics in the old fashioned way. It’s true that we usually only saw the things about our politicians that their campaigns wanted us to see. Comments were usually prepared well in advance and it was rare to get a personal connection or even to see a politician as a person. There wasn’t much difference in news channels and most everyone saw the same news about both parties. Fake news was no...

       We live in a world full of alternative facts and inconvenient truths. It has become accepted that those in power will lie and that those lies will be repeated to the point that the common man will often have difficulty separating fact from fiction. Far too many people are willing to lend credence to a statement they have read or heard online as long as it sounds right without taking the time to do a fact check. When I stop to think of how we got to this Post Truth Era as Daniel Levitin (2017) calls it, the only answer I can come up with is the popularity of social media. People have begun to confuse facts with opinions.       The world of social media has created a platform in which every person gets a voice and everyone can share their message. In many ways, this can be a positive thing but it becomes a problem when every voice is given equal weight without the fact-checking that used to go behind the worlds we once read online and in prin...

I find myself in the uncomfortable position of having to explain to my young children why there are people in the streets lighting police stations on fire. There are no easy answers here. The sad reality is that if this had happened a year ago George Floyd would have been lucky to trend for a day before he was forgotten. But this is 2020 and the world has changed. People who a year ago would have scrolled past his unfortunate death are now becoming emotionally involved in the suffering of a stranger. Thanks to the pandemic and the subsequent quarantine people who once felt safe and secure are now feeling scared, angry, helpless, and hopeless. How do you fight a disease you can’t even see. A global pandemic is so much bigger than any one individual and the numbers have grown so large that they have become unreal. People throughout the country are now suddenly able to emotionally connect to a man who died feeling helpless, begging for one last breath as he was crushed beneath something b...

  How to Make a Mask Cover Or… How to be Fashionable During a Plague Welcome to a tutorial on how to use basic crafting to extend the life of your personal protective equipment. This lesson is also known as how to be fashionable during the plague.   Materials needed: Cotton fabric with matching thread Scissors Ruler Iron Sewing machine The first step is finding appropriate fabric. For nurses, this is the perfect time to make use of those old scrub tops that never get worn anymore. Otherwise, any regular cotton fabric is acceptable, cute prints are optional. Quilters are an excellent resource for fabric. Once you have your fabric you need to cut out two rectangles of fabric as shown in the photo below. The cut fabric measures 7 ¾ in x 7 ½ in. When looking at your print the longest measurement should be lengthwise. Use a fabric marker or a highlighter to mark your pressing lines. This makes it easier to do the pressing. It will be easier to see the lines if you Mark the wro...

I keep hearing people complain about the fear being spread about the corona virus being overblown. I can’t even recall how many times I have heard people make statements like it’s just a cold or the flu is worse. As a nurse I am in a unique position to see the impact of this virus. It’s true that this virus has a low mortality rate and that most people will recover from the virus. The reason why we need to be concerned is not because of how many people will be killed by the virus. We need to be concerned about the people who get the virus and need to be hospitalized in order to ensure we continue to have this high recovery rate. In this country we have 3 ICU beds for every 1000 people and we are dealing with a virus that has been shown to have a 15% hospitalization rate. This means that if everyone gets sick today we will have 150 people who need an ICU beds and only 3 available. This disparity is why social distancing and flattening the curve is so vital in keeping people safe. If we ...

Iron is important for humans. It is important for all of the tools that have shaped our civilizations and our live. It has been used to create the weapons to take those lives. When you look at the red of blood you have iron to thank. Without this component of our body we could not carry oxygen to our cells and life would not continue. It seems like such a plentiful thing that we often think nothing much about it but we all carry it literally within our hearts. Iron may be found commonly on Earth but it can not be made here. Iron can only be created in the heart of a dying star. It is only in its death throws that the substance we need for life can come to exist. Each and every person on this earth carries within them a little bit of a star that has gone out. Nothing is ever gone, it just changes. Those stars exist forever in each of us. We are all stardust.

Reading is a huge part of who I am. It's rare to find me without a book within arms reach. I have lived a thousand lives between those covers and as a result the person I am today reflects the books that resonated with me. Each of these title hold a facet of my soul.  I fully expect to keep adding to this list in the future but I wanted to start with the bare minimum. Stranger In A Strange Land (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) by Robert A. Heinlein (1995-08-01) A bizarre chance to look at humanity from an outsiders perspective as a human raised by an alien culture tries to learn what it is to be man. This was my first introduction to the idea that all living creatures are God and that we are all God together. Honestly, if Heinlein had been the one to form a church instead of Hubbard I would probably be getting up every Sunday morning. The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph A modernized introduction to the concepts of Stoicism ...

Who are you really? Do you know? Are you the person people see on a sunny day at the park, a good day at work, after finishing a productive project? Or is the real you the one who can’t stop sobbing at 2am, the one who feels broken and overwhelmed, the one who tries to keep going when everything seems to be going wrong? The reality is that adversity is our greatest blessing. You can’t know who you really are until you have to deal with the worst day of your life and come out the other side. When you fail do you blame those around you or your circumstance or do you dig in and try harder. No one really learns anything from success except a momentary boost to the ego. If you really want to learn and grow then you have to accept that suffering is your best teacher. Until you can accept the idea that everything that happens is your responsibility, until you realize that the only thing you control in life is how you respond, you won’t grow. It’s easier to be the victim and be pitied. It’s ha...

Why are spirituality and science such polarized forces? Why does it seem like they are incapable of being integrated? Arthur C Clarke taught us that a sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic. So why can’t we accept that spirituality is just something we can’t yet measure. Many organized religions make things more difficult by saying that faith is something you must accept without proof when science is based on the things that we can weigh and measure. The difficulty in making these two concepts work together has caused cognitive dissidence in people far smarter than I will ever be. But maybe it’s all about looking at things from a different perspective. Most doctors will tell you that auras are pseudoscience but they all believe in the electrocardiograph. Why is it so hard to believe that both of these things are simply the electrical field that keeps our meat suit powered up for the duration of our time on this planet? Maybe the key is just more science ...