Quickfire 1: PCD
PCD is an acronym for two conditions that go hand in hand.
Pre-Call Depression: A feeling of loathing of life descends as you walk around the hospital all day knowing that you're not going home that night. Five o'clock comes around and people are smiling and cheerful as they walk out the door.. but all you can do is hope for a quiet night as you don your scrubs and prepare for a rough 24 hours. It usually presents with irritability and feelings of anger. Lashing out is a common symptom.
Post-Call Delirium: Lack of sleep coupled with an overworked mind lead to a delirious state. Someone once told me that being post-call is equivalent to having drank two pints of lager. Some people burst into spontaneous fits of giggles at inappropriate times while others say and do the most outlandish things. Everyone looks like absolute crap post-call. In extreme conditions when associated with a busy day, lack of food and a developing headache, it can actually escalate into a full blown migraine or a hypoglycemic attack.
1 Comments:
John Berlau, renaissance man and supersonic scientist.
He's a failure at investigative journalism, his efforts to infiltrate the US sex trade fizzled. He seems to had grand plans of interviewing prostitutes and their clients, all part of a scheme to legalize prostitution. The sad news it developed into an obsession for Berlau, he became fixated on a Korean prostitute and was then threatened by Korean organized crime who didn't want him poking is nose in where they thought it did not belong!
His usual method of getting "inside" information, by threatening to smear those who refuse to work with him, has been widely exposed.
So now he turns to science. He's written a book called Eco-Freaks. It is clear from this book that Berlau has no scientific training whatsoever. This does not stop him from advocating increasingly silly things.
The heart of the book is that global warming is a fiction. Why does he say this? Because the oil industry wants him to!
Berlau works at a place called the Competitive Enterprise Institute. It is almost completely funded by Exxon. Also at the CEI is Myron Ebell who is a well known consultant not only to Exxon but to "big oil" US law firm Baker Botts.
Baker Botts is the inspiration for a lot of the plot in the film Syriana.
Now I have to wonder how history will treat Berlau's book? I think you'll be seeing it at very low prices very soon.
I'd compare it with Hawking's A Brief History of Time. A classic by a well respected scientist. Stephen Hawking, by the way, believes in global warming.
I think a debate between Hawking and Berlau would be very interesting!
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