[kenberg]

pilowsky, on 2021-May-19, 15:14, said:

A TIA is not a stroke of any kind. It is a "transient ischaemic attack" - it just means that for some reason or another the supply of blood (oxygen) to the brain is very briefly interrupted. TIA's only last a few minutes (maximum) because otherwise, they would be a RIND - a "reversible ischaemic neurological deficit" - RIND's can last up to a maximum of 24 hours and then any deficit is completely reversed.
A stroke big or small is where there is a permanent loss.
AHI -apnea-hypopnea index is the amount of time you spend with low or no breathing during a sleep study - obviously it is bad not to breathe because it reduces the oxygen supply everywhere - including the brain.
Sleep apnoea is commonly associated with hypertension and/or obesity.
Intermittent narrowing of the upper airways because of fat in the airways combined with other mechanical factors causes it - even so, non-obese people can also get it.
The main treatment - a device sold by RESMED - generates a continuous positive pressure in the airways when you are asleep.
It was invented by a friend of mine from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital - Sydney University - Dr Colin Sullivan.

Blood pressure measurement - when, where, who - is a big problem in the diagnosis of high blood pressure. This is why the gold standard is a 24-hour ambulatory measurement (see above). The ABPM is the blood pressure equivalent of a Holter monitor which checks your ECG for 24 hours.

In a way, it is also political. Successive Australian governments have decreased funding for medical research and training. Now they complain that we aren't making and distributing vaccine because of 'supply problems' - not at all surprising when you remove funding from all the 'suppliers'.
Trump's contempt for research - "I could have been a scientist - it's easy - I know all this stuff - the Doctors are amazed" - to paraphrase - was a massive problem.

Progress was made because the residual infrastructure worked around him.

Most of this I knew, although not the details. Although a TIA is not a stroke, and this was exp[lained to me, the docs were concerned that it could be the forerunner of a stroke. The search for the cause was not all that different than the search for the cause of a stroke. And as I get it, a high AHI can trigger a TIA and it can trigger a stroke. Maybe trigger is not the exact word, you are more inclined toward exact phrasing than I am, but I stand by my belief that discovering and treating my apnea was perhaps life-saving. And I will repeat that I really liked that doctor. Some docs are stingy with info, maybe because they fear the patient is not able to understand or not up for hearing it. She spoke in a way that did not need deciphering. My older daughter has had medical issues and we share a view on this. As she phrased it "You want me to trust you? Tell it straight." Anyway, the doc discovered the apnea, I am very grateful.

I have an ASV, made by Phillips. Seems to work well, since the AHI is around 2. There is a story around that also, but enough, at least for this thread. Send me an email if you want more details. kenbecky@gmail.com

As to Trump and his bragging, what can I say that hasn't been said?

[pilowsky]

kenberg, on 2021-May-19, 17:21, said:

Most of this I knew, although not the details. Although a TIA is not a stroke, and this was exp[lained to me, the docs were concerned that it could be the forerunner of a stroke. The search for the cause was not all that different than the search for the cause of a stroke. And as I get it, a high AHI can trigger a TIA and it can trigger a stroke. Maybe trigger is not the exact word, you are more inclined toward exact phrasing than I am, but I stand by my belief that discovering and treating my apnea was perhaps life-saving. And I will repeat that I really liked that doctor. Some docs are stingy with info, maybe because they fear the patient is not able to understand or not up for hearing it. She spoke in a way that did not need deciphering. My older daughter has had medical issues and we share a view on this. As she phrased it "You want me to trust you? Tell it straight." Anyway, the doc discovered the apnea, I am very grateful.

I have an ASV, made by Phillips. Seems to work well, since the AHI is around 2. There is a story around that also, but enough, at least for this thread. Send me an email if you want more details. kenbecky@gmail.com

As to Trump and his bragging, what can I say that hasn't been said?

Could not agree more.
I won't detail all the possible causes of 'stroke', but in the sense that anything that deprives the brain of oxygen for long enough will cause permanent damage to (irreplaceable) neurons then yes, this can be called a 'stroke'.
Typically, doctors reserve the word 'stroke' for brain damage that is caused by vascular problems. Of course, you can get similar-looking damage from all kinds of pathology.
Watching Fox news will probably cause "functional" brain damage.
In my opinion, television is a neurotoxin, but not everyone agrees.


In some ways, Doctors are like Bridge players. None of them knows everything. All of them know something and some know more than others.
I think that's why it's best when they work in teams.
Like Bridge, in the end, you only get one chance to get it right.


It pays to be an inquisitive patient. Some Doctors find this annoying - you seem to have struck gold with yours.

[y66]

Jimmy Kimmel said:

You know, when a violent mob attacked our embassy in Benghazi, Republicans in Congress investigated it eight times. A violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol, they’re like: ‘Tourists! What are you gonna do?’

Quote

Republicans say a commission should only be established if it can investigate other protests, including the racial-justice demonstrations last summer following the murder of George Floyd. Right, good thinking. There’s got to be some way to blame Black people for this, and you found it.

Stephen Colbert said:

One person I was surprised to learn voted ‘no’ on this measure was Indiana Representative Greg Pence, who is Mike Pence’s own brother. Certainly changes the meaning of this text from Greg: ‘Hey, bro, wanna hang this weekend?’

[y66]

Linda Greenhouse at NYT said:

The Free Ride May Soon Be Over for Anti-Abortion Politicians

If there is any good news to salvage from the court’s announcement this week, it is this: the free ride that anti-abortion politicians have enjoyed may be coming to a crashing end.

Ever since the 2010 election ushered new Republican majorities into state legislatures, politicians there have been able to impose increasingly severe abortion restrictions without consequence, knowing that the lower courts would enjoin the laws before they took effect and save the people’s representatives from having to own their actions.

It’s a dim memory, but a salient one, that in Mississippi itself, a voter referendum that would have amended the state Constitution to grant personhood status to a fertilized egg was defeated in 2011 by a margin of 58 to 41 percent, despite endorsement by leading politicians and widespread predictions that it would pass. That’s when the anti-abortion forces decided that friendly legislatures were a better bet than the will of the people.

Last fall, in each of four nationwide polls, including one conducted for Fox News, more than 60 percent of registered or likely voters said they did not want the Supreme Court to overturn “Roe v. Wade.” I put the case in quotes because that’s how the pollsters asked the question; although Roe obviously carries strong symbolic meaning, the 1973 decision is in many respects no longer the law.

The question as the polls’ respondents processed it was most likely “Do you want to keep the right to abortion?” And no wonder the answer was yes: nearly one American woman in four will have an abortion. (Catholic women get about one-quarter of all abortions, roughly in proportion to the Catholic share of the American population.) Decades of effort to drive abortion to the margins of medical practice have failed to dislodge it from the mainstream of women’s lives.

For the cynical game they have played with those lives, politicians have not paid a price. Now perhaps they will. Of course, women themselves will pay a heavy price as this new reality sorts itself out, particularly women with low incomes who now make up the majority of abortion patients.

And there’s another price to be paid as justices in the new majority turn to the mission they were selected for. The currency isn’t votes, but something even more important and harder to win back: the institutional legitimacy of the Supreme Court of the United States.

There’s no free ride for the court either.

[Winstonm]

Quote

The Free Ride May Soon Be Over for Anti-Abortion Politicians

I think I'm gonna be sad
I think it's today, yeah!
The girl that's driving me mad
is going away, yeah!
She's got a ticket to ride
She's got a ticket to ride
She's got a ticket to ride
But she don't care.

[johnu]

y66, on 2021-May-20, 05:47, said:

Quote

Republicans say a commission should only be established if it can investigate other protests, including the racial-justice demonstrations last summer following the murder of George Floyd. Right, good thinking. There’s got to be some way to blame Black people for this, and you found it.

Clearly the name of commission/bill "National Commission to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol Complex Act" was misleading and prejudicial to the twice impeached one term Manchurian President and Grifter in Chief, and his GOP stooges (is that redundant)?

There was overwhelming GOP support for the

"National Commission to Investigate Black Lives Matter Rioting and Demonstrating While Black" bill.

There would also have to be restrictions that no GOP politician could be investigated or named in the final Commission report. Those partisan Democrats refused to go along with these bipartisan changes so the GOP had no choice but to vote no and maintain their dignity, honor, and integrity.

[Winstonm]

The Democrats must stop playing Charlie Brown trying to kick the football to the Republicans’ Lucy as ball holder.

[Chas_P]

Winstonm, on 2021-May-21, 18:55, said:

The Democrats must stop playing.

Good luck with that.

[pilowsky]

White House press conferences are very boring now.
Occasionally Peter thingamy or the Newsmaxie asks a question, but the 'straight bat' sarcasm from not-Kayleigh is nowhere near as much fun.
I almost miss the old days.

[kenberg]

pilowsky, on 2021-May-21, 19:37, said:

White House press conferences are very boring now.
Occasionally Peter thingamy or the Newsmaxie asks a question, but the 'straight bat' sarcasm from not-Kayleigh is nowhere near as much fun.
I almost miss the old days.

This stuns me, I have to say that. I cannot recall when I last watched a White House press conference and I live in this country. I am pretty sure that I have never watched the Australian analogue, whatever it would be called. Do you also watch French press conferences and British ones? Do you know other Australians who watch the American ones?

I have no idea who Peter thingamy is, or the other people either. I do know who Jen Psaki is, and, inspired by your comments, I tried watching a press conference:
https://www.youtube....h?v=cewrM6HQeBY
I learned that Gina McCarthy sees multiple pathways across all sectors, something I was unaware of. Very good to hear.

I acknowledge that some people pay more attention to what is going on in the world than I do, but I often find that in casual conversation I am aware of events that others are unaware of. So I don't think of myself as totally uninformed. Imagining a bunch of Australians watching a WH press conference is difficult for me.

But we should be aware of multiple pathways across all sectors. Sounds important.

I guess I am agreeing with you about "very boring", it's just the "now" part I am having trouble with.

[Winstonm]

pilowsky, on 2021-May-21, 19:37, said:

White House press conferences are very boring now.
Occasionally Peter thingamy or the Newsmaxie asks a question, but the 'straight bat' sarcasm from not-Kayleigh is nowhere near as much fun.
I almost miss the old days.

Personally, I don’t miss the Conway lies. But then I don’t watch pro wrestling, either.

[pilowsky]

kenberg, on 2021-May-22, 08:06, said:

This stuns me, I have to say that. I cannot recall when I last watched a White House press conference and I live in this country. I am pretty sure that I have never watched the Australian analogue, whatever it would be called. Do you also watch French press conferences and British ones? Do you know other Australians who watch the American ones?

I have no idea who Peter thingamy is, or the other people either. I do know who Jen Psaki is, and, inspired by your comments, I tried watching a press conference:
https://www.youtube....h?v=cewrM6HQeBY
I learned that Gina McCarthy sees multiple pathways across all sectors, something I was unaware of. Very good to hear.

I acknowledge that some people pay more attention to what is going on in the world than I do, but I often find that in casual conversation I am aware of events that others are unaware of. So I don't think of myself as totally uninformed. Imagining a bunch of Australians watching a WH press conference is difficult for me.

But we should be aware of multiple pathways across all sectors. Sounds important.

I guess I am agreeing with you about "very boring", it's just the "now" part I am having trouble with.

A friend of mine once described a compellingly attractive young woman as being "like a shark in a swimming pool" - fascinating to watch, but you wouldn't go for a swim.
The entire former US administration was (and to some extent continues to be) absolutely riveting viewing.
That's what happens when fake TV stars think they are real.
No doubt you have seen or read Jerzy Kosinski's "Being There" when Chance the Gardener is mistaken for a supremely intelligent being.
The moment Tr**p was elected, I knew that Life was imitating art.
At the start, people thought he was a big joke who could do no harm. No-ones laughing now.
What the modern Republican party has become is so malevolent, it is incomprehensible. And I speak as a person who has looked at documents describing the murder of his family members by Germans as a "state policy".
Tr**p is just the tip of the pustulent boil that infects the whole organism.
Whenever the world appears to be making progress towards a civilised society, the impulse to slide back into feudal warlordism seems to overwhelm.
Tr**p was the "lottery ticket" or "long shot" that people buy when they are desperate - it's the same reason that stocks in gambling companies surge during hard times.
Create a system that dispossesses large swathes of the population from adequate Health Education and Welfare and Tr**p or Hitler types will emerge.
Tr**p isn't the problem. There's a reason that one-third of the eligible voting population threw in their lot with him.
It isn't just minorities discriminated against when a tiny proportion of the population is permitted to own nearly everything, and everyone else is just fodder.

Do I watch other countries? Yes, where it is available and of interest.
America is unusual because it is the elephant in the room.
Incompetence or bad behaviour by the American President affects the whole world.
The stupidity and incompetence that is rampant in Australia affect only a few.

I lived in New Zealand for a while. Pretty strange and horrible things happened there as well but it's such a small place no one really cared.
America is different. Anything the American government does touches the whole world - and not in a nice way.

Quote

What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft on Ceylon's isle;
Though every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile.

The funny thing about that quote is that it's from a hymn "Greenland's icy mountains" which Tr**p wanted to buy.

[Winstonm]

Heard on a talking head show today a guest claim that the spread and continued deference to the lie about the “stolen election” is the greatest threat to US democracy since the Civil War, and I wondered what our WC posters think about that claim.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2021-May-23, 08:59, said:

Heard on a talking head show today a guest claim that the spread and continued deference to the lie about the "stolen election" is the greatest threat to US democracy since the Civil War, and I wondered what our WC posters think about that claim.

I think we have entered a very difficult time. I don't think I want to evaluate a claim of "greatest threat", it suffices to say we have a huge problem. Or suffices for me anyway. I have more than once said that I am optimistic about my personal life but pessimistic about the way our society is headed. But that's not enough. I know it's not.

[barmar]

Winstonm, on 2021-May-23, 08:59, said:

Heard on a talking head show today a guest claim that the spread and continued deference to the lie about the “stolen election” is the greatest threat to US democracy since the Civil War, and I wondered what our WC posters think about that claim.

The country has gone through many problems, economic and social. But I pretty much agree that these are the ones that struck at the heart of our democratic principles.

[pilowsky]

Normally, the idea of Democracy is premised on the principle that all citizens and legal residents are entitled to vote to decide who governs them.
In America, the founding principle was no taxation without representation. This is subtly but importantly different.
Currently, it appears that at least one party is firmly of the belief that the right to vote is something that only certain legal residents ought to be allowed to exercise.

This notion sits behind the rhetoric of the current Republican party.
They don't believe that everyone is entitled to vote.

In South Australia, we had a parliamentarian who put it like this: "How can you talk about one vote one value when 90% of the state only gets 10% of the rainfall?"
He was a member of the Conservative parties.

[Winstonm]

pilowsky, on 2021-May-24, 03:00, said:

Normally, the idea of Democracy is premised on the principle that all citizens and legal residents are entitled to vote to decide who governs them.
In America, the founding principle was no taxation without representation. This is subtly but importantly different.
Currently, it appears that at least one party is firmly of the belief that the right to vote is something that only certain legal residents ought to be allowed to exercise.

This notion sits behind the rhetoric of the current Republican party.
They don't believe that everyone is entitled to vote.

In South Australia, we had a parliamentarian who put it like this: "How can you talk about one vote one value when 90% of the state only gets 10% of the rainfall?"
He was a member of the Conservative parties.

I have been convinced that here in the U.S. religious belief is the overarching principle affecting political choices. This band of extremists is as certain of their rightness as any Taliban Just recently now ex-Attorney General Bill Barr gave a speech castigating the secular nature of public schools - as if Christians were victims of government overreach.

Quote

Former Attorney General Bill Barr, in his first speech since leaving the Justice Department, railed against what he called the "secular progressive orthodoxy through government-run schools," and questioned the constitutionality of funding such public institutions, during an event in Florida on Thursday.

"The time has come to admit that the approach of giving militantly secularist government schools a monopoly over publicly funded education has become a disaster," Barr said in Naples. Fox News' "The Story" first obtained the video.

Barr said public schools have become totally incompatible with traditional Christianity and other major religions in the U.S., and therefore, "it may no longer be fair, practical or even constitutional to provide publicly funded education solely through the vehicle of state-funded schools."

When people like Barr and Pompeo (ex-Secretary of State) , who both allow their religious views to cloud their guardianship of democracy, are wildly supported to be allowed to hold power, the fate of the experiment is in dangerous territory.

[hrothgar]

barmar, on 2021-May-23, 22:49, said:

The country has gone through many problems, economic and social. But I pretty much agree that these are the ones that struck at the heart of our democratic principles.

The "stolen election" lie is a symptom, not a cause.

For me, at least, there are two much more significant issues

1. The conservative news ecosystem
2. Systemic gerrymandering and the Senate, both of which empower the craziest parts of the right

[y66]

Winstonm, on 2021-May-23, 08:59, said:

Heard on a talking head show today a guest claim that the spread and continued deference to the lie about the “stolen election” is the greatest threat to US democracy since the Civil War, and I wondered what our WC posters think about that claim.

The greatest threat is the growing class divide between people who have a college degree and people who don't have a college degree.

[kenberg]

y66, on 2021-May-24, 08:29, said:

The greatest threat is the growing class divide between people who have a college degree and people who don't have a college degree.

This is true, and it is so *&*&^* unnecessary. I have a Ph.D., my father finished 8th grade, we got along fine.