Tag: Teaching

We last discussed the first side of the seminal album, Quadrophenia, by The Who, entirely written by Peter Townshend.  Since that time I have done more extensive research, and found some interesting things that I hope will be illuminating for everyone.  They were for me.  Without too many details in the introduction, I can say with a good bit of confidence that this record almost dissolved the band.

Roger put Pete in hospital with punches, Kit was almost banned, and the fraud that the management was doing to the band was discovered.  That was part of the genesis for the song “How Many Friends Have I Really Got” that was part of The Who by Numbers some time later.  But there is more!

I have a frank correction to make, and then what is more like a clarification as to the original characters who were combined to make Jimmy.  I also have a stupid one to make, about the name of the album itself.  Shall we begin?

Sorry to be late tonight.  I was occupied earlier this afternoon than I had planned and got a late start.  However, I wanted to produce a quality piece even though it did not post exactly at 9:00.

This the last part in our three piece series on anesthetics.  We have covered general anesthetics of the inhalation type and of the IV type, and now will discuss local anesthetics.  The primary difference betwixt general and local anesthesia is that in general anesthesia the patient is generally unconscious or at least highly sedated, whilst in local anesthesia the awareness of the patient is generally not impaired, although sometime they are sedated by other agents.

The term “local” is not as descriptive as one might think.  While it is true that very small areas can be anesthetized, often much larger areas are.  By the way, it is likely that local anesthesia is much more ancient than general anesthesia, for reasons to be explained later.

I apologize for posting late tonight, but a very rare event happened.  The International Space Station made a transit directly overhead at posting time, and I did not want to miss it.  Besides, my lovely friend wanted to watch it with me.  It was a spectacular sight, and the ISS was not bad, either, LOL!

Second, I was going to add a new crosspost site that is run by our friend ninkasi23, but never figured out how to make it so.  I trust that she will email or call me to help me over my stupidity.

I was going to write about the compilation album, Meaty, Beaty, Big, and Bouncy this time but we have already discussed every song on that record.  However, I will make a comment about the title.

Most people think that the title was just sort of a dirty joke, but it actually was a description of the band members.  I think that Lambert came up with it, but I am not really sure.  Here is the meaning:

At the time, and still, Daltrey was pretty fit, so he was Meaty, meaning all muscle and no fat.  Moon, of course, kept the beat, so he was Beaty.  Entwistle, aka The Ox, was a really big guy, and of course Townshend was always leaping about the stage, so he was Bouncy.  Now you know, as Paul Harvey used to say, the rest of the story.

Last week we started this three part series with inhalation anesthetics, and here is a link.  This week we shall discuss injected anesthetics, and finally shall finish up the series next week with local ones.

We should once again stress the difference betwixt anesthetics and analgesics.  In general (this rule is not 100%, but darned close), anesthetics render the patient unconscious so that surgical procedures can be performed with no physical pain during the procedure.  In addition, many anesthetics cause muscle relaxation which makes surgical procedures less traumatic.

Analgesics, on the other hand, are not designed to render the patient unconscious, but rater to moderate the sensation of pain caused by many reasons.  A few analgesics can be used as anesthetics, but in general depress the medulla such that respiratory difficulties often result.  

Freaks and Geeks is one of the few TeeVee shows with a predominately child and adolescent that ever had much appeal to me.  Part of the appeal was that the program was masterfully written and directed, and another part is that the acting was really very good.  It ran only for one season, 1999 through 2000, and even then not all of the 18 taped episodes were aired.  It was an NBC show and was the precursor for later, more successful shows like That ’70s Show.

Even though it aired in 1999 and 2000, it was set in 1980 in a made up suburb of Detroit.  The production team did a really good job with getting the period right, in particular the cars that were often used as unifying devices in several episodes.  I have to tell you a personal reason that I immediately liked the show.  As a really big admirer of SCTV, the fact that Joe Flaherty was cast as the father of the protagonist made me watch faithfully.

Anesthetics are as essential to modern surgery as are sterile fields and antiseptics.  There are a couple of reasons for that, the most obvious being that the patient most likely could not survive the shock and pain of any but the least invasive procedure with out them.  Interestingly, the use of anesthetics in the modern sense is quite recent, dating only from the mid 1800s.

There are two major divisions of anesthetics, general anesthetics and local ones.  General ones cause a more or less complete loss of sensation and consciousness, whilst local ones cause a loss of sensation for only a relatively small part of the body and leave the patient conscious.  In addition, general anesthetics fall into two wide classes, inhalation ones and intravenous ones.  We shall discuss, in general terms, inhalation general anesthetics tonight.

One metal that we take for granted is tin, something that most of us see and handle every day in the form of “tin” cans, long used to store food.  Actually, this invention dates only from the early 1800s when canning itself was invented, although tin plated iron and steel date back much earlier.

Tin is used it lots more than cans, however.  Much of the tin used today is in the form of solder, used for joining other metals, particularly copper and brass, together.  Formerly a 1:1 by mass mixture of tin and lead was used for soldering copper water pipes, but because of increased awareness of the dangers of lead, other solder compositions are now used for potable water.

Let us take a few minutes to explore this interesting metal.

This is an extremely difficult piece to write, because the only living soul who understands it is Peter Townshend, and he still has a bit of difficulty articulating the concept in terms that we mere mortals can understand.  This is not in any way a criticism of Mr. Townshend, but more of a comment of my own poor understanding of his high goals.

In a nutshell, perhaps a cracked one, the concept for Lifehouse was sort of like A Brave New World, or 1984, in that society has been overtaken by a monied elite and thought suppression was the norm.  Does that sound timely?  I think that Townshend has presaged the ideas that the “modern” Republican Party is trying to impress on us all, but perhaps I give him too much credit.  I think not.

The concept that I finally came with was that individuality was suppressed, and group think was being imposed by the technocrats that ruled.  I ask for everyone’s thoughts on this, because it is so hard to decipher.

Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) is one of the most common viral infections in the population.  HPV causes nuisance conditions such as common warts up to deadly cancers.  Some estimates indicate that essentially all cervical cancers are caused by various strains of HPV.

There are very many strains of HPV, most all of them highly contagious.  Let us spend a few moments discussing this important group of infectious agents.  Before we get started, let me make it clear that this discussion will be frank and might seem to be extremely graphic to some.  That is just the way it is, and to water down the content would not do a service to anyone.

When the term yeast is used, most people think of freshly baked bread.  Many people will also think of a cold, foamy headed beer.  Both are made possible by yeast, but there are many more applications.

Yeast has been used to raise bread and make beer and wine since prehistory, and the work is very ancient.  It comes to us in modern English via the Old English gyst, which in tern derived from the Indo-European word yes, meaning quite literally to bubble.  Thus the word is very much older than our understanding that yeasts are living things, dating from the 1850s due to the work of Louis Pasteur.

When we think of yeast, we normally are referring to a single species (out of around 1500, give or take), Saccharomyces cerevisiae.  This single species is responsible for raising bread, making wine and much of the beer that is drunk, as well as alcohol for beverage and industrial purposes.  Unless I qualify, when I use the term “yeast” this is the species to which I refer.