James' shared items
Grant writing makes you crazy and also forces bloggers to stoop to ever lower levels. Hence this from the Discover Magazine blog via Boingboing.
While trawling for gold in the medical case literature they struck it rich with the story of the 15 year old girl with no vagina who got pregnant by giving her boyfriend a blow job (British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology: 1988 Sep;95(9):933-4). Not possible? You be the judge:
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...
Made up words that you may find useful.
A little while ago, the Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational asked its readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and then supply a new definition.
Turns out many of the winning entries would be particularly useful in augmenting our professional nursing vocabulary:
- Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
- Bozone:
The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating.
As in “the bozone layer”. - Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
- Cashtration: The act of paying medical bills, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.
- Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
- Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
- Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
- Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
- Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease.
- Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
- Decafalon: The grueling event of getting through the night shift without coffee.
- Glibido: All talk and no action.
- Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
- Arachnoleptic fit: The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
- Beelzebug: Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
- Caterpallor: The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.
- Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.
Real words that you may find useful:
And whist we are enhancing our prosaic word power, here are a few more descriptors that, with a little imagination, can be wedged into your nursing progress notes:
- Girn – To bare your teeth in anger and sadness
- Wamfle – To walk around with flapping clothes.
- Franch – To eat greedily.
- Nazzard – A lowly or weak person.
- Cachinnate – To laugh noisily.
- Sesamoid – Having the size and shape of a sesame seed.
- Yerk – To tie with a jerk.
- Crurophilous – Liking legs.
- Glabella – The space on your forehead between your eyebrows.
- Fample – To feed a child.
- Coprolalomaniac – Someone who compulsively uses foul language.
- Glossolalia – Gibberish; babble
- Gash-gabbit – Having a protruding chin.
- Sneckdraw – A sneaky or mean person.
- Hircine – Something that smells like a goat.
- Wallydrag – A completely useless person.
- Onygophagist – A person who bites his or her nails.
- Pronk: — A weak or foolish person
- Pulveratricious— Covered with dust
- Ithyphallophobia – Fear of Erections
Finally, just to throw a little Japanese phrase into the mix, you might like commit the following to memory:
“Ara! Onara suru tsu-mori datta keh-do, un-chi ga de-chatta.”
The literal translation of this phrase is “Oops! I meant to fart but poop came out”.
Might just come in handy one day.
Stargate Studios Virtual Backlot Demo from Stargate Studios on Vimeo.
Over at Radio Lab,1
Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich present a fascinating show on the power of the placebo effect. Through a series of short narratives they examine the very real physical effects that belief, imagination and symbolism can have on patients, and indeed the doctors that are treating them.
Make yourself a quiet cup of tea, dim the lights and settle back in a comfy chair for this one.
Pinpointing the Placebo Effect
All over the world, people say they are healed by things that turn out to be placebo. So it’s easy to think that they must have been faking in the first place if all it took was a little sugar pill to assuage their ailments. But keep your scoffing at bay. That little white pill may be inducing some very real effects. We talk to placebo experts Fabrizio Benedetti and Tor Wager who tell us about the well-stocked pharmacy in our brains, just waiting to be unlocked. Then pain expert, Dr. Daniel Carr, takes us to the WWII Battle of Anzio, where a puzzled young medic sees that the same bullet can create very different experiences of pain. And Daniel Moerman tells us how the color of a pill effects how well Italians sleep.The White Coat
Next up: a look at the placebo effect from the doctor’s perspective. How the medical context alone can be the key into the brain’s healing resources. We’ll hear the story of Dr. Albert Mason, who found he had super-powers, used them for good, and then lost them forever. Then, we’ll witness the real, measurable power of the white coat up-close as Jad follows his dad, Dr. Naji Abumrad, into the examining room. And then we’ll visit the moment of transformation from medical student to healer: the white coat ceremony.Faith Healers
The very first placebo-controlled trial may have been the debunking of the charismatic Anton Mesmer (the enigmatic source responsible for the verb “to mesmerize”), an enlightenment figure with a healing technique that Ben Franklin, for one, thought was basically placebo performance. Historians Ed Cohen and Ann Harrington fill in the details. Last, producer Gregory Warner takes us into the tent of a Christian faith-healing, where preacher Steve Buza treats all sorts of ailments, including scoliosis and carpal tunnel, and the healed reflect on the relationship between pain and doubt.
RadioLab: Placebo
Listen to the whole show
Download the show as an MP3
- my very favorite podcast subscription – anyone who has not yet discovered the insightful, introspective, and entertaining aural magic of this show should check it out…stat.
