Category Archives: Life

At Least the Cop Wasn’t Thinking At the Time

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A high school student in South Carolina disrupted a class by talking on her phone. The teacher and a school administrator demanded that she leave the room. She refused. A police officer assigned to the school was summoned. He told her again to get out of her chair and leave the room. She was now sitting quietly and no longer using her phone. She said she had done nothing wrong and wanted to stay.

He reacted by flipping her and her chair upside down and dragging her across the floor. The white police officer, who is also one of the school’s assistant football coaches, did not break the black girl’s neck.

From the New York Times article, which includes a link to the video:

Witnesses to Monday’s incident said that in an Algebra 1 class, the girl, a sophomore, was on her phone, and the teacher told her to put it away. The teacher summoned an administrator, who brought in the deputy. The adults repeatedly asked the student to get up and leave the class, but she refused.

When the altercation occurred, students stood up, confused about what was happening, but the deputy told them, “Sit down, or you all will be next,” said one student, Charles Scarborough, 16. Adding to the surprise and confusion, several students said the girl was usually quiet and not a troublemaker.

The deputy also detained a second student, Niya Kenny, 18, who told a local television station that her only offense was objecting to his treatment of the other girl.

“I was crying, like literally screaming, crying like a baby,” Ms. Kenny told WLTX. “I’d never seen nothing like that in my life, a man use that much force on a little girl.”

As she protested, she said, “he said, ‘Since you’ve got so much to say, you’re coming, too.’ ”

I can almost understand the cop’s reaction. He got frustrated and gave in to his worst impulses. He didn’t de-escalate the situation. He treated the girl as if she were a dangerous criminal. He treated her worse than he’d treat a dog. But I presume he wasn’t using all his mental faculties at the time. His lizard brain, his adrenaline and his racism took over.

What I can’t understand at all is that people read the article and watched the video and then composed a comment to the Times suggesting that the girl was responsible in any way whatsoever for what happened to her. She disrupted the class. She refused to get out of her chair. She wasn’t respectful of authority. Maybe she provoked the cop’s reaction. We should wait for all the facts before passing judgment.

What total bullshit. Let’s face it. Many of our fellow citizens here in the United States would make good Nazis and there doesn’t seem to be much the rest of us can do about it. (All right, I do understand it.)

There’s more here, including how a police officer using more of his brain could have handled the situation.

It Was the Understatement of the Year

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Planned Parenthood’s president Cecile Richards said it this morning when she testified before the Republican-run House Oversight and Reform Committee:

It doesn’t feel like we’re trying to get to the truth here.

If only Ms. Richards had noticed the inscription on the wall behind her.

Richards

“We are not trying to get to the truth here” is the committee’s official motto.

Of course, I made that last part up (with apologies to the Associated Press), but it might as well be true.

For more sober coverage of today’s event, National Public Radio has a few choice audio clips that “you should hear”, Jezebel has a summary that’s painful to read and Mother Jones shows how to make a misleading chart by leaving out the y-axis.

It’s My Blog and I’ll Rant About My Visit to the Doctor If I Want To!

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Yesterday, a friend and I happened to get on the subject of restaurants, waiting rooms and (yes) elevators that have televisions. We agreed that the relatively recent practice of putting a TV everywhere possible in order to entertain or distract us is annoying. Obviously, some may enjoy watching TV while they’re waiting to see their doctor or eating lunch in a cafe or riding in an elevator. Also obviously, some people don’t. 

So I was psychologically primed when I entered a doctor’s office today and found a TV in the far corner of the empty waiting room. It was tuned to a talk show about cooking. Even worse, the sound was extremely loud. Instead of politely asking the staff if it would be possible to turn off the TV, I did it myself. In retrospect, I should have asked, but since I was the only one in the room, pushing the “off” button seemed like an acceptable thing to do. (Have you ever noticed that they never leave the remote control next to the television, a courtesy we patients might appreciate? Given how loud that TV was today, I think it’s really there for the office staff, who happen to be in a different room.)

After a while, one of the staff noticed that the TV was off and used the remote to turn it back on. I objected, saying that I had turned it off. We went back and forth a bit, and I raised my voice a little (no personal attacks were made). The staff member said the TV was there “for the entertainment of the patients” and having it off was merely my preference. Since another patient had entered the waiting room by then, I gave up. Even when I was alone again, the TV kept going, albeit with reduced volume.

Eventually, I got to see the doctor. He seemed upset about something. He spoke very fast and not very clearly. He was brusque, interrupted me when I asked questions, and kept telling me I didn’t understand his precise reasons for doing an MRI of my hip. Near the end of the examination, I said “Well, it will be good to find out what’s going on in there” (referring to my hip). I thought that was a pretty innocuous thing to say, but he insisted on again repeating why an MRI was a good idea (it was merely to rule out the presence of an anatomical abnormality or a tumor, not “to find out what’s going on in there”).

Having agreed about getting an MRI, I then made the mistake of asking about a different bone-related issue, since this doctor is an orthopedic surgeon who specializes in knees and shoulders and similar bones. My question was “Is surgery often done for bone spurs in the foot?”. He told me in no uncertain terms that asking a doctor a question like that is the worst thing a patient can do. He gave me a brief lecture, explaining that you should never ask a doctor about anything the doctor isn’t prepared or qualified to talk about. He seemed quite upset and left the room. I called after him “Should I follow you?”, he made a noise and I did.

While waiting for the MRI to be scheduled, I asked him if I could speak to him about something else. He said “No”. I then said I wanted to discuss the TV issue. I said that if a patient wants the TV off, it would be a good thing for the staff to honor that request. In response, he severely criticized my failure to initially ask the staff to turn off the TV, instead of pushing the off button myself. “How would you like it if I came to your house and drove your car? Or came into your house and turned off your television? It’s not your television. It’s ours.” (Gosh, I thought the TV was for the entertainment of the patients.) I admitted I would have asked if there had been anyone else in the room, but still felt what I had done wasn’t so bad.

At this point, I told the doctor that he had the worst bedside manner of any doctor I’ve ever visited (and I’ve visited a lot). Talking fast, interrupting, constantly correcting my choice of words, saying he didn’t “give a sh@t” about something and generally looking and sounding pissed off. He said he was still willing to treat me. I said “I don’t think so” and left. (This area isn’t short of orthopedic surgeons.)

Now, I assume this guy was angry about the TV thing when he entered the examining room. Maybe he heard my exchange with his staff. Maybe one of them mentioned the difficult patient in the waiting room. But if he was already angry with me, it would have been much better (and more “professional”) if he’d said so up front. He might have even declined to treat me. I would have been surprised but would have left quietly. Instead, he behaved like a jerk (another word came to mind, but this aims to be a family-friendly blog). Or maybe he treats lots of patients that way and it had nothing to do with the television.

So here’s a good part of this story (ok, this saga). I thought it would be appropriate to share my strange experience with the rest of the world (meaning the part of the world that, for some mysterious reason, doesn’t read this blog). Since we now have the internet, I went to a couple of those doctor-rating sites, Healthgrades and Vitals. That last site allows you to enter comments. So I did.

My conclusion was that this doctor might be very good, except for his personality. The treatment plan (the MRI) he recommended made sense. But I wouldn’t recommend him and would never see him again. 

After entering my comment, it occurred to me that maybe I was being a little unfair to the guy. Maybe he was having a bad day. So I looked at the other comments. These are some of my favorites:

Only drawback – he is very hard to talk to or get understandable information from. He gets very impatient with explanations.

He has a big ego. He does not like being questioned…. Instead of giving you understandable answers and showing that he cares, he gets impatient and annoyed very easily.

AVOID [Dr. X] AT ALL COSTS. There is not enough room for his ego and the patient in the exam room.

My experience with [this doctor] was disastrous.

... a horrible and unprofessional surgeon… As [the vomiting] got progressively worse I decided to page [Dr. X]… His words went something like this (and keep in mind I could barely talk because I was vomiting so often) He basically told me that I was interrupting his dinner and that it was not right that I was doing so….I actually started crying so my amazing sister took the phone … This is but one of my horrible experiences with [Dr. X]. Please Please Please Please, I beg you not to see this Doctor!!! 

One of the worst experiences of my life… I told him about the problems I was having after the surgery. He went off the handle and acted very unprofessionally by yelling at me. His behavior made me cry and I never went back to him.

I echo all of the negative comments already posted here: he is impatient, belligerent, insulting, difficult to comprehend, excessively … antagonistic when you explore his incomprehensible answers, actually told me one of my questions was “Bullsh-t”, and that I was wasting his time by asking questions…I would not feel comfortable going under the knife of such a disordered personality. I think he’s sociopathic.

Of course, there are glowing reviews as well. But the lowest grade he gets is for (surprise!) “bedside manner”. All I can say is that if you’re ever in the market for an orthopedic surgeon in or around Springfield, New Jersey, be careful. It’s a jungle out there!

PS — Other people object to all these televisions. From a doctor:

Welcome to the world of the “captive audience… Take them out. Take them all out. That includes the four flat screens on different channels at the local restaurant. I can’t find a single study that shows any legitimate health benefit to support their presence in a doctor’s office, but I can think of 100 reasons to take them out.

From an educational site for doctors:

An informal survey conducted in a variety of waiting rooms found that the presence of television adds to stress, especially when people believe they are unable to control the volume or programming…. If your waiting room includes a television, consider offering patients options. Rather than exposing them to specific programs at a certain volume, for instance, offer television with closed captioning or hygienic headphones on loan from the waiting room desk.

And keep them out of the damn elevators too!

Cutting the Cord (the Saga Ends)

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Four weeks ago, we began the convoluted process of breaking away from Comcast, the cable TV giant that is one of America’s least admired companies. We had a package deal for television, internet and phone service with Comcast that wasn’t worth the monthly fee, especially since we weren’t watching much live television. With the arrival of Verizon’s fiber optic internet service in our neighborhood, it was a good time to consider alternatives.

First, I called Comcast to see if there was a way to lower our monthly bill. They told me that was impossible. Even if we completely eliminated our cable TV service, we wouldn’t save money (the combined price of Comcast’s internet and phone service bought separately would be almost as much as what we were paying for internet, phone and television as a bundle). 

Like Comcast, Verizon offers its best deals to new customers. Unfortunately, most of these deals weren’t as good as they first appeared. For example, to get TV through Verizon, you pay an additional fee for every television you hook up. That makes sense, except that Verizon assesses this additional fee even if you’ve only got one television! I believe this is known as “chutzpah”. (“Since you don’t actually have a television, you can get Verizon cable TV for the advertised price!”)

It turned out that even with an introductory offer, we’d pay Verizon almost as much as Comcast if we got Verizon’s phone and television services in addition to the internet. So our best option was to buy as little as possible from Verizon. That meant getting their internet service and nothing else. The good news was that Verizon offered a faster internet connection than Comcast for the same amount of money (and installation was free).

Not wanting to give up our current home phone number, we then signed up with Ooma, an internet phone company. Ooma doesn’t charge a monthly fee. You buy one of their boxes up front. You also pay a fee if you want to keep your old number. After that, you pay Ooma a few dollars each month (in our case, $4) to cover federal and state taxes. 

Finally, there was the television problem. Many people don’t realize you can still get a lot of channels free with an antenna connected to your TV, kind of like the old days. It’s called OTA (“Over The Air”) television now. The bad news is that the broadcast signals aren’t as strong as they used to be. I looked at a Federal Communications Commission website to see which channels are available where we live. There weren’t very many. even though we’re only 20 miles from a big city. A quick experiment with a borrowed antenna confirmed that we would need an expensive antenna up on the roof to get more than one or two channels. 

That led us to Roku, an internet streaming service. Like Ooma, our new phone company, you buy one of their boxes up front. If you stick with the free channels, there is no monthly fee. And the free channels could be sufficient, since Roku has more than 2,000 of them. The bad news is that maybe 1% of Roku’s free channels are worth watching. For example, about 1/3 of them are devoted to religious programming, and looking at their many “special interest” channels didn’t reveal anything interesting.

The Roku website isn’t very clear about it, but what you get free is easy access to loads and loads of videos that can be played whenever you want. Very few channels have live feeds. For instance, you can watch videos from PBS and the Smithsonian Channel. You can also watch video segments from the network news shows.

For live news, you have the BBC and Sky News (also British) and a strange collection of American stations (in case you want to watch the local news from Sacramento or Little Rock). If you want to watch much live television or so-called “premium” cable channels, Roku says “the service may require additional fees”. However, so far as I could see, the “may” in that sentence always means “does”. If you already subscribe to something like Netflix or Showtime, you can access those channels through the Roku device.

In conclusion, we’re happy so far. We may eventually spend a bit more to add some live television (some sports, in particular), but for now our total monthly payment is $90 less than before. Taking into account the Ooma and Roku boxes we bought, the Ooma phone number transfer fee, and some new internet security software (Verizon doesn’t include security software in its standard package like Comcast does), and then spreading those costs over two years, we’ll still be saving $75 every month.

One other note: I didn’t have to tell Comcast that we’re moving to Iceland in order to easily disconnect our account. Fortunately, once I told them we’d already switched to Verizon, there wasn’t much to talk about.

Young Thoreau on Thinking and Writing

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In his journal, Thoreau (age 23) explains why thoughts don’t usually come to us in smooth succession:

…the flow of thought is more like a tidal wave than a prone river, and is the effect of a celestial influence, or sort of ground swell, … each wave rising higher than the former and partially subsiding back on it. But the river flows, because it runs downhill, and descends faster, as it flows more rapidly. The one obeys the earthly attraction, the other the heavenly attraction, The one runs smoothly because it gravitates toward the earth alone, the other irregularly because it gravitates towards the heavens as well [January 22, 1841].

Furthermore, if there are any valuable thoughts expressed in a journal (or in a blog?), they’re most likely hidden amid the clutter, only to be found later: 

Of all strange and unaccountable things this journalizing is the strangest. It will allow nothing to be predicated of it; its good is not good, nor its bad bad. If I make a huge effort to expose my innermost and richest wares to light, my counter seems cluttered with the meanest homemade stuffs; but after months or years I may discover the wealth of India, and whatever rarity is brought overland from Cathay, in that confused heap, and what perhaps seemed a festoon of dried apple or pumpkin will prove a string of Brazilian diamonds, or pearls from Coromandel [January 29, 1841].