This is not public health…

This is not public health…

Say What?!?!

I don’t even know what to say about this. Whatever your views are if you are a nurse or physician or medical assistant or whatever, if you practice in the medical field and see patients you CAN NOT insert your beliefs and will onto the individuals who come to see you!!!! Patients expect to get the full breadth of medical options when they see a doctor, not the delineated personal view of that specific doctor.

Key paragraph:
This story seems a good, although frightening, reminder that the “provider conscience” rule went into effect on Tuesday (January 20th) and isn’t affected by Obama’s immediate order to halt Bush’s pending federal regulations. Until the rule is reversed by the Obama administration, religiously or morally guided medical professionals — like nurse Olona, assuming the allegations are true — will find it much easier to get away with denying women the medical treatment they want and need.

- suse

Welcome to Independence!

Unreturned library book leads to woman’s arrest, really? I’m not quite sure if this falls under the category of irony as the book this lady kept is about getting people to write. If it was about getting people to read, then most definitely call it ironic, in this situation, I dunno. But it is definitely not a good way to encourage people to use your local library and read books (which for you bibliophiles and bookworms is a great way to save some big bucks in the current economic situation, library cards are the best!). Can you imagine being the arresting officer for this?

- suse

PB+J+Salmonella!

Fun story, so I clicked on the abc story about peanut butter crackers being pulled off the shelves because of a nationwide salmonella outbreak. The short ad before the story? For Reese’s peanut butter cups. Worst pairing ever.

- suse

Oh those rich folks…

Best thing I’ve read today, courtesy of NYC’s Plaza resident Suna Said (tried to find info on her, but alas, the internet was lacking this time). She is speaking in reference to the charity she founded called the Plaza Foundation:

“The Plaza has always been on the cutting edge of class. And what’s more classy and avant-garde than finding meaningful ways to give to those less fortunate?”

I imagine a slight (elderly) woman, in a skirt suit, wearing pearls, with unmoving hair, impeccable shoes, and accompanied by her Yorkie Poos saying this as if she’s the first person to think of helping the ‘less fortunate’. Someone should remind her that avant-garde means ‘unorthodox or daring; radical’ (Random House Unabridged Dictionary).

- suse

For the story from which I lifted the quote see ‘Eloise Sheds A Tear’ written by Evgenia Peretz in the January 2009 issue of Vanity Fair.

Oh Oprah (sigh)

Living where I do it is quite often that we get articles about good ol’ Oprah Winfrey. This past week we were treated to another oh-Oprah-you-really-aren’t-doing-good-and-you-needed-someone-else-to-point-it-out-to-you story. Oprah has a 42 acre parcel out in Montecito that she christened ‘Promised Land’, no joke. Turns out since she bought the property in 2001 the water consumption of the property has more than doubled. So let’s do a little math! If Oprah is using 10.6 million gallons of water per year and an average family of four uses 146,000 to 511,000 gallons per year (depending on where they live and on which source of info you use) how many families could live at the Promised Land?

I get the west wing!

That’s right! 72 to 20 families could live with Oprah!

So yeah, Oprah is using enough water on her estate out in Montecito for 80 to 284 people to live off of. Keep in mind that using 511,000 gallons of water a year is the Palm Springs estimate, where they are using more water than they really need to be. So even 20 families living in excess could do just fine out at the Promised Land. Now even better (sorry, more math), Oprah has been out there since 2001, so that’s almost seven years of consumption now. Meaning a total usage of about 74 million gallons of water. That’s 37 million gallons that were available for others before she moved in.  Fantastic job Oprah!

But it gets better. Turns out that the area where Oprah’s estate is continuously uses more water than the district can provide. Meaning that in the last two years the district has bought additional state water. The cost this year of the extra water? $816,000! That’s right folks, this area of super and ridiculously wealthy people is not only consuming precious water willy-nilly, they are having the taxpayers of the area pay for their excess water use! Now granted, they are supplied by the Montecito Water District, but this covers Montecito AND Summerland. Median income for a family in Summerland: $64,700. Median income for a family in Montecito: $151,937. So while Summerland peeps aren’t super hurting for cash, they’re not exactly making the level of Montecitans. And it is the Montecitans who are using more water.  Good job well off people!

The Montecito water district has done a number of audits in their area, usually decreasing water consumption by 10-30% at each property. Big surprise, there doesn’t seem to be any damage to the plants! Apparently reps have continuously tried to get a hold of Oprah on this issue. They never got to talk to her or any of her representatives, but they think possibly their message got through, Promised Land’s water usage fell by 40% compared to last July’s usage. Maybe she’ll do a show on saving energy/water/money now that she’s gone through the experience and we can all give her a big pat on the back for being such a great citizen.

- suse

Oh, Park Slope! (part 1 of ? parts)

So I have about 24124823234238 stories about what I’ve seen and heard in Park Slope so far, but I’m only going to post the best one:

I was in line at CVS behind two girls who couldn’t have been older than maybe 20 years old. One girl was telling the other about how one of their other friends keeps trying to get her to critique the photographs he takes, but she doesn’t want to tell him that he sucks and all his pictures look “amateur”. I guess the gist of their conversation was that they were both PROFESSIONAL PHOTOGRAPHERS (um, just like every other girl who lives in brooklyn, right?) and they hate amateur photographers. At one point one of the girls told the other that she was the INSPIRATION for her starting photography because she actually took portraits and didn’t just take pictures of flowers (how novel!) and apparently was always really good at photography. Anyway, after that part of the conversation I did my best to tune them out before my head exploded.

Stuff White People Like?

Re-blogging a story covered at Fashion Indie because it made me too apoplectic to pass it up (Remember Lewis Black’s “Someone says the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard…and then it goes…in your ear!”)

This is way worse than when my Chinese American roommate from San Jose wore her FUBU shirt around campus because she had no idea what it meant.  That was, like, a sitcom-level misunderstanding (Balki Bartokomous, where art thou?  Borat is no comparison.)  This is like, well, um, hate crime level ignorance?  FUBU is like, an acronym that they may have skipped in “Black People Love Us 101″ but, um, you do know what slave means? Or “enslaved African,” I think is the person-first language term that docents at Colonial Williamsburg have adopted.  Right.  And, Obama is a phenomenon that we’re familiar with?  Hope? Change? Yeah, um, ironically identifying yourself as a slaver and fictional owner of the man who will hopefully be our next president, who you have probably heard is of African descent (Kenyan, to be more precise.  But I don’t see race…) well, that’s even more satirical than the lovely New Yorker cover that got so much ado.

That T-shirt is literally, figuratively, and every which way, fighting words.

And the IDF cap on the dude who apparently designed it just makes things more confusing.

- Ferrrosha