Think!

This road saftey video posted on Purple Plus made me snigger. However then it lead to me thinking of my all time favourite, from the late genius TV show Monkey Dust:

Yeah, a pointless YouTube post. And there you were thinking I’d returned to intelligent, meaningful blogging

Panique Au Village!

It’s been a while since I last offered some recommended watching. But now I’m trying to avoid reading papers, so I offer Panique Au Village:

A selection of Belgian stop-motion short (5mins) films. Who could ask for more on a dreary Wednesday morning?

Stuck in my head

Hah, just realised that the title is a pune, or play on words. Because the thing that’s stuck in my head is the song Tongue Tied from Red Dwarf. Get it?

Canteen

You never get this at the Cav…

Clowning around

Shamelessly taken from The Trouble with Spikol, we bring you another piece of social commentary from The Simpsons (YouTube link for facebook)

Recommended watching.. TWO!

Yeah, it’s a Time Crisis joke. I’m such a geek.

Anyway, in another “here’s how to waste time while you should be revising”, I give you: Louis Theroux meets “The most hated family in America”

Yup, it’s Fred Phelps and his family (at least, the bits of his family he still likes) in The Westboro Baptist Church.

Words cannot do this justice. Just watch the show, and you’ll see why.

Recommended watching

Panarama on Scientology

I’ve never been able to quite pin down what it is about Scientology that bothers me. Is it the horribly overt cash-for-enlightenment policy? It might just be Tom Cruise? Or perhaps it’s just that they never got back to me regarding my free personality test?

No, I think the main one is the anti-pyschiatry campaign. The one that leads to mentally unstable people murdering because they didn’t get the correct treatment.

Oh, and while I’m on the subject of death, what about Fair Game? Hunting out and harrassing those who oppose Scientology? And even killing them? But of course, it was stopped years ago!. As you can clearly see in the cancellation letter.

I could rant more, but I have revision to do.

Me? Exercise? You know nothing of the crunch!

I (or rather, Ana) have noticed that my once fairly thin belly is taking on a rather distinctive pot-like shape, and pretty soon I might need to consider a training bra. So I have decided to do something about this, and start on…

Drumroll please…

An exercise routine!

All is well and good with it, until I near the end, and encounter my arch-nemeis – Crunches. For some reason, I’ve never been able to do them well, and now with my extra padding the extra exertion leaves me worried that I have given myself a hernia after just a single situp. However, it does give me an excuse to post this:

(Which can also be seen here, if facebook has blocked out the embedded video)

Bariatic hospitals, and AEDs (unrelated – this isn’t a medical paper!)

I’ve been meaning to post this for a few days, but haven’t got round to it with all the packing and going home and then even doing some work (dammit!). But anyway, turns out I’m now trained to use an AED. This scares me.

It doens’t scare me that I might have to use it (well, not in the same way). It doesn’t scare me in the “weee, I have n thousand volts at my disposal to maim people with!” way (it won’t let you do that, apparently). It scare me that I was never taught this before. Well, I say taught. More qualified.

Why? Well, here are some idiot proof instructions on how to use an AED (yes, it really is this simple):

1. Press the on button

2. Do what it says

The only thing it doesn’t tell you to do is call an ambulance, but I’d have thought that pretty obvious (though the Laerdal FRx does remind you to do so after you’ve shocked them). The FRx even tells you how to do CPR if you didn’t know it already!

They are designed for members of the public to use – that’s why they are stuck in train stations, airports and shopping centres. So why do I need a certificate to say I can use one on duty? Why isn’t this taught as part of basic (and I mean as basic as ECS) first aid? I’ve always felt so useless on duty carrying one around, knowing that I wouldn’t be able to use one if necessary despite the fact that I knew perfectly well how to work one, and I could even give it to some random to use instead!

On a mildly (as in slightly clinical) related note, I watched a show called Half Ton Hospital. As you can imagine, it followd the patients of Brookhaven Hospital in the US where very, very obese patients are treated. Watching them was shocking. Some were perfectly happy the way they were, or rather they complained that they were depressed about the way they were, but did nothing about it. Whereas some people there were dieting and exercising, others were content to lay in bed all day and order takeaways from across the street.

The worse part for me was seeing one of the patients, named Dennis having some form of arrest (they never went into it). However it took 3 paramedics, a winch and what appeared to be an entire fire crew to get the gentleman (who weighed nearly 3/4 of a tonne) 20 minutes to get him onto the special made bed (over twice as wide as a normal stretcher) and into the widened, bariatric ambulance and on his way to intensive care.

And Britain is heading that way…