Posts by adamah

279

Golden Age Goodies

by Leolaia in

recently i had the pleasure to examine a stash of 1920s and 1930s golden age magazines, among the rarest of watchtower publications.

i thought it would be a fun idea to have a thread in which i share with you some of the amazing, ridiculous, hilarious things contained therein.

hence, this is the first post of a series of excerpts, scans, etc.

Yeah, Apo, i've read the thread, and see many posters saying stuff like it's all from the imaginations of WT editors or the GB, when it's not. Some of it is unattributed talk about certain news stories of their day (although most not as outlandish as the stuff that appears in the tabloid papers talking about aliens hijacking cars and leading state troopers across 3 States, etc), and some of it is the ego-driven jealousy with Judge Rutherford's rival on the radio waves, the Catholic Father Coughlin.

As I said above, it shows the lack of God's "spirit direction" to print such nonsense in the first place (eg God doesn't know that hair doesn't fall out from cutting it?), but the escape clause is the same one offered by JWs today to dismiss "new light" flip-flops of the GB: "they're only human!"

Or even better yet: "What should they do: continue to be wrong and not change their position?" (A statement which completely misses the point that it's not that the GB changes to be correct, but that they were WRONG in the first place.)

279

Golden Age Goodies

by Leolaia in

recently i had the pleasure to examine a stash of 1920s and 1930s golden age magazines, among the rarest of watchtower publications.

i thought it would be a fun idea to have a thread in which i share with you some of the amazing, ridiculous, hilarious things contained therein.

hence, this is the first post of a series of excerpts, scans, etc.

adamah

I haven't read the entire thread, but in the interests of fairness it seems as if the "Golden Age" was actually a forerunner of "Watching The World" columns in back of the Awake!, serving as a "news aggregator" of sorts; it's not stuff fantasized by WTBTS or doctrinal stances taken by GB.

Reason I say that is I was interested in the 'Mary Kate Ware' story above (posted a year ago by Black Sheep) to find out if doctors ever figured out what her "Zodiac Malady" was, so Googled, only to find the same report had hit the 'Associated Press News And Universal Telegraph And Cable Service' and was printed in the Reading, PA Times on 26 March 1935 (about 5 months before the story ran in the Golden Age):

http://www.newspapers.com/newspage/48188217/

Point being, it's a tad unfair to blame 'Golden Age' for passing on the outdated news stories of the day or claim it as coming from the GB, although it DOES point out how Divinely-uninspired the WTBTS was/is to pass along ideas of the day which science has later demonstrated to be false (a flaw from which the Bible also suffers, talking about long-disproven ideas from the World of cosmology, human anatomy, bacteriology, etc, etc).

285

Dead pregnant woman forced to stay on life support, due to TX State law

by adamah in

there's an interesting medicolegal issue arising out of tx, a pregnant women who suffered a pulmonary embolism in november and died (when she was 14 weeks pregnant).. however, the body has been kept on life-support all this time (against her and her husband's wishes), due to an ambiguous tx state law (tex hs.

code ann.

166.049) which actually blocks the ability of the patient and family to decide:.

adamah

Sammielee, note the qualifers, "child IN UTERO", "unborn child", "unborn victims", etc. They're all paradoxical, i.e. contradictory on their face, since they all contain an element of using a term before they've met the accepted criteria, so it's qualified.

We also use the phrase 'student doctor' to refer to medical students seeing patients under the supervision of a licensed doctor who's already earned a degree, but it's technically not correct to call the student a doctor yet, since they haven't actually completed the required coursework that entitles one to be given a doctorate degree, and the right to use the honorific title of 'doctor' (they also need to apply for a license from the State and pass their boards in order to see patients on their own, unsupervised).

Student doctors still have to complete the coursework, but we assume they WILL, even though it's not yet 'in the bag' (i.e. they might drop out of school before even their very-last finals, due to illness or death, etc, and they won't graduate). So why do we call them 'doctors'? Since they're treating patients on clinical rotations, and most patients would be reluctant to allow an 'unlicensed (but supervised) medical student' treat them vs the same individual who's identified as a 'student doctor'.

The word 'doctor' carries weight with the general public, just like the words 'child/baby/infant' (vs the more technically-correct terms like 'zygote/embryo/fetus' which by definition indicate that the individual is not yet born).

108-212 allows for an amplification of charges, but as the Munoz case shows, there's many who'd grant full and equal rights to the unborn from the moment of conception, even placing the rights above the would-be mother's (who's obviously already been born). Exactly where to draw the line is the debate, and obviously there's many opinions and feelings on the issue.

285

Dead pregnant woman forced to stay on life support, due to TX State law

by adamah in

there's an interesting medicolegal issue arising out of tx, a pregnant women who suffered a pulmonary embolism in november and died (when she was 14 weeks pregnant).. however, the body has been kept on life-support all this time (against her and her husband's wishes), due to an ambiguous tx state law (tex hs.

code ann.

166.049) which actually blocks the ability of the patient and family to decide:.

adamah

BOTR said- The hospital should be sanctioned in some manner.

In a perfect World, BOTR.....

Being that JPS relied on a legal-technicality which didn't come out until pressed on the point (i.e. the difference between 'clinical determination of death' vs 'declaration of death', where the obvious assumption is one should follow the other without significant delay, and certainly NOT intentionally-delayed for over TWO MONTHS!), it looks to be driven by the hubristic attitude of "doctor is God".

The ones who should be worried are the citizens of the Great State of Texas, since unless I'm missing something here, the Munoz finding is actually a 'one-off' ruling, and NOT setting any precedent which prevents using the same strategy; nothing prevents JPS or another hospital from playing the same game by failing to pronounce death for a clinically-dead pregnant patient, until they're good and ready to say she is dead.

So family members would still need to force hospitals to fess up to having determined clinical death (and Erick, a paramedic, saw the words noted in her chart and knew what it meant, unlike most lay-people); if the hospital fails to declare death, the next-of-kin would STILL need to seek a court order forcing hospital to do so (I doubt the broader statute found in 671.001 defining clinical criteria of death would be sufficient, without the pressure of a statute to put "teeth" into it).

Instead, there should be a TX state law (and already may be; I haven't looked, or checked if UDDA states time-lines) requiring physicians to declare death within a reasonable period of time (say, 1-2 days) after a clinical determination of death is made, as that would prevent a recurrence of similar episodes.

With such a state law, doctors would face criminal prosecution and have to defend their licenses before the Texas Medical Board, accused of unprofessional conduct after a complaint is filed by the family. It's funny how easily doctors 'remember' to do things and not play such games when it's their license on the line....

Will such a law be passed in pro-life Texas? I wouldn't hold my breath (and if anyone does, hopefully someone will respect your DNR)!

285

Dead pregnant woman forced to stay on life support, due to TX State law

by adamah in

there's an interesting medicolegal issue arising out of tx, a pregnant women who suffered a pulmonary embolism in november and died (when she was 14 weeks pregnant).. however, the body has been kept on life-support all this time (against her and her husband's wishes), due to an ambiguous tx state law (tex hs.

code ann.

166.049) which actually blocks the ability of the patient and family to decide:.

adamah

Sooner said- I would really like to know if Mr. Perez has any medical training except for googling things that he agrees with pertaining to healthcare.

Hmmm, why don't you google it and see what you can find?

Paralip- There is such a difference between when a fetus is recognized legally and when it is alive. To a loving couple, it is alive from the moment they learn of it. It is a baby and their child and the loss is traumatic.

Thanks for adding your thoughts, Paralip.

That actually reminds me of something that wraps up a few lingering questions.

Apparently there's a distinction JPS was drawing between 'meeting the clinical criteria of brain death' and actually being 'pronounced brain dead'.

It seems that during the past two months, her JPS attending physician never quite got around to signing her death certificate (they must've been too busy doing other things). This explains the hospital's little 'game' of holding off on pronouncing her death, because they didn't even consider her officially dead.

The JPS defense (in the affadavit) was based on asking the judge for clarification of applicability of 166.049, since their unstated assumption was she still was alive, despite meeting all the clinical criteria of death, simply based on their failure to take the last step and officially certify her death! So although the patient died on Nov 28th and met the clinical criteria of death at that time, the hospital only conceded that point in writing just a few days ago, only hours before the judge heard the case.

Their lack of pronouncement of death also explains why the JPS lawyers failed to mention the Martin case in their affadavit, since in the eyes of JPS, the fact-pattern was sufficiently different (Martin had been 'declared dead', a factor which triggered the reversal of the ruling) didn't apply to Munoz (who hadn't yet been 'declared dead').

From the LA Times article:

Given the clarity of this statutory language, it is hardly surprising courts have determined it inapplicable after a determination of death. For example, in a similar case in Houston, a Texas court ordered a hospital to continue treatment for a comatose Tammy Martin, who was then 15 weeks pregnant. But the court reversed the order, a few weeks later, once Martin had been declared dead.

As hinted at earlier, JPS' strategy seems to have been to drag their feet on declaring death until after the fetus hit the age of viability, maintaining her on life-support for the sake of the fetus and then performing a C-section, and only THEN pronounce her dead, so they weren't even guilty of mutilating a corpse.

In their eyes, JPS was not even violating Section 42.08 (Abuse of Corpse) by failing to turn over her dead body to Erick, since she hadn't yet been declared dead by them!

This also explains why the judge's ruling not only mentioned the non-applicability of 166.049 (since JPS admitted only hours earlier that she met the clinical criteria of death found in 671.001), but also included the order for JPS to pronounce her dead before 5PM Monday (apparently a judge cannot pronounce death, but CAN order the hospital to do so).

I'd call it brilliant, if it weren't so downright Machiavellian, suggesting intent of the State to rob the personal liberties of citizens.

18

4000 year old cuneiform tablet says Ark was "round".

by designs in

a cuneiform tablet from around 1750bce describes a noah type named atra-hasis building a 2/3rds stadium size round ark to save humans and animals from the gods wrath.

one of the gods, enki, informs atra of the other gods plans along with how-to instructions.. www.haaretz.com under archeology.. why couldn't we have had a god named enki, is that cool or what.... .

.

adamah

EOM said- and no, that life size one hasn't broken up

EOM, that's intellectually dishonest, posting a pix and saying it's stable, but forgetting to mention this ark replica was built in Netherlands and rests on a platform built of modern metal barges.... The wooden construction in the pix is decorative touches added to dress it up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan%27s_Ark

A full-sized (135 m / 450 ft) version is in Dordrecht, open to the public. [ 4 ] This Ark is carried on a platform made up of 25 LASH barges and has a coaster's seaworthiness license.

11

Fallacies Illustrated

by jgnat in

found today:.

http://twentytwowords.com/2013/09/17/silly-illustrations-of-logical-fallacies-12-pictures/.

a long-time favorite:.

adamah

Jgnat said- I see Logic and Contemporary.... is also available second-hand, $4.

Thanks, I see Alibris has it used from $0.99 (ships from Indiana):

http://www.alibris.com/Logic-and-Contemporary-Rhetoric-The-Use-of-Reason-in-Everyday-Life-Nancy-M-Cavender/book/8945328

Thanks for the Cohen TED talk: good stuff to remember.

285

Dead pregnant woman forced to stay on life support, due to TX State law

by adamah in

there's an interesting medicolegal issue arising out of tx, a pregnant women who suffered a pulmonary embolism in november and died (when she was 14 weeks pregnant).. however, the body has been kept on life-support all this time (against her and her husband's wishes), due to an ambiguous tx state law (tex hs.

code ann.

166.049) which actually blocks the ability of the patient and family to decide:.

adamah

FHN said- Im looking at your chart again, Adam. Let me point out that the picture representing the word foetus is of an embryo.

FHN, sorry for not providing a link to the commonly-accepted definitions used in medicine and biology; the pix was chosen as a short-cut so as not to get buried down in the details, but since you asked, here's the wikipedia page which discusses the stages of life for human development:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_development_%28biology%29

We can go to more heavy-duty medicine-based sources, if you want....

On the embryo vs fetus distinction:

In humans, the embryo is referred to as a fetus in the later stages of prenatal development. The transition from embryo to fetus is arbitrarily defined as occurring 8 weeks after fertilization. In comparison to the embryo, the fetus has more recognizable external features, and a set of progressively developing internal organs.

Also, note this:

Childbirth is the process in which the baby is born. Age is defined relative to this event in most cultures.

Physical stages

There are no universal definitions for terms of age-related physical development stages, but following are some approximate age ranges:

Stages in prenatal development.

Prenatal (sperm fertilizes egg - birth)
- Embryo - fertilization - 8 weeks after fertilization)
  - Zygote, the single cell stage which occurs after fertilization
  - Blastocyst, the stage prior to implantation, when the embryo is a hollow sphere
  - Post-implantation embryo, the period 1 – 8 weeks after fertilization (3 to 10 weeks gestation)
- Fetus, (10th week of pregnancy - birth)

Approximate outline of development periods in child development.

Childhood/Juvenile (Childbirth)(0 - 19)

Further information: Child development and Child development stages

- Neonate (newborn) (0 – 30 days)
- Infant (baby) (0 month - 12 months)
- Toddler (1 – 3 years)
- Play age (4–5 years)
- Primary school age (middle childhood also called prepubescence) (4-12)
  - Elementary school age (6-12)
  - Preadolescence (preteen.The child in this and the previous phase are called schoolchild (schoolboy or schoolgirl), when still of primary school age.) (10 – 12 years)
- Adolescence and puberty (13 – 19 years)
  - Peripuberty (8 [ 3 ] -10 [ 4 ] until 15 [ 4 ] -17 [ 5 ] )
Adulthood (20+ years)
- Young adulthood (20 – 39 years)
- Middle adulthood (40 – 59 years)
- Advanced adulthood/Senior citizen (60+ years)
Death (occurs at various ages, depending on person)
- Decomposition (breakdown of the body after death)

285

Dead pregnant woman forced to stay on life support, due to TX State law

by adamah in

there's an interesting medicolegal issue arising out of tx, a pregnant women who suffered a pulmonary embolism in november and died (when she was 14 weeks pregnant).. however, the body has been kept on life-support all this time (against her and her husband's wishes), due to an ambiguous tx state law (tex hs.

code ann.

166.049) which actually blocks the ability of the patient and family to decide:.

adamah

Lisa Rose said-

Munoz described in a signed affidavit filed Thursday what it was like to see her now: her glassy, "soulless" eyes; and the smell of her perfume replaced by what he knows to be the smell of death. He said he's tried to hold her hand but can't "Her limbs have become so stiff and rigid due to her deteriorating condition that now, when I move her hands, her bones crack, and her legs are nothing more than dead weight," Munoz said.

I posted a link to the full affadavit Erick submitted on Thursday, and it's worth reading it all....

Putting ourselves into his shoes, it's not hard to imagine what it would be like for Erick to be caught in a catch-22, facing criticism if he didn't visit the body (accused as being the heartless bastard who wanted to kill the child so he could be free), or having to see his dead live's body in a slow state of decay.

We bury bodies for a GOOD reason: it allows the living not to be forced to watch the bodies of our loved ones decompose in front of our eyes, on a day-by-day basis, covering up the process that occurs after we die by placing a wall of separation between the living and the dead.

The irony is that the State was forcing him in the position of having to watch the decompositional process of death in the name of protecting life.

Comatose said-

Adam I usually always agree with you. :) But, it seems like you are just asserting what the NIH meant in your last post. I would think this is shaky ground to be on, since FHN could likewise just assert what she thinks they meant. Just pointing out the obvious.

Like I said, there's NO doubt that the medical community has a very-specific meaning for words like 'fetus', 'zygote', 'baby', etc which are more-clearly restrained than the layperson's use of the words. The NIH headed by doctors, but they obviously are going to tow a fine-line to not cross any lines and serve as a taxpayer-funded public interest group, communicating with the public.

And much like the WTBTS, gov't agencies often rely on 'weasel words', as a way to allow the public to read whatever interpretation they want into their words, thus keeping everyone happy.

Besides, pointing out the ambiguous use of words is not me picking one over the other: I'm only pointing to their ambiguous use of language which allows both sides to think they understand the author's intent, when they really don't (but are relying on the power of assumption).

Adam

285

Dead pregnant woman forced to stay on life support, due to TX State law

by adamah in

there's an interesting medicolegal issue arising out of tx, a pregnant women who suffered a pulmonary embolism in november and died (when she was 14 weeks pregnant).. however, the body has been kept on life-support all this time (against her and her husband's wishes), due to an ambiguous tx state law (tex hs.

code ann.

166.049) which actually blocks the ability of the patient and family to decide:.

adamah

FHN said- And keep arguing that a fetus is not a baby. The US NIH does not agree with you.

I suspect you're unconsciously inserting concepts into their words, colored by what you WANT it to say....

So remembering that the definition used within medicine is that a baby (AKA infant) is the life stage that starts upon birth (and last from 0-1 yrs old), let's look at what the NIH said.

NIH says: This article discusses how a human baby is conceived and how the baby develops inside the mother's womb.

The NIH could've used the word 'toddler' (1-3 yrs old), and it would just as true:

NIH says: This article discusses how a human toddler is conceived and how the toddler develops inside the mother's womb.

The NIH could've used the word, 'adult', but now we're getting further away from the fetus life stage so it's pushing it:

NIH says: This article discusses how a human adult is conceived and how the adult develops inside the mother's womb.

But what about using the proper term, 'fetus'?

NIH says: This article discusses how a human fetus is conceived and how the fetus develops inside the mother's womb.

That's more accurate and truthful, but it doesn't have the emotional power of using the word 'baby' (since we've ALL seen and even held babies, but few of us have any real-life first-hand experience with a fetus, since most people aren't doctors who performs abortions).

Point being, the NIH used the life stage just immediately AFTER the fetus, which is ambiguous enough to allow the reader to do the time-shifting on their own, mistakenly assuming the NIH is calling the fetus a baby when they're not, but only allowing the reader to 'fill in the blanks' to create a desired interpretation.

Ironically, that seems to be what happened in the Munoz case, where the hospital decided to read intent into a law which wasn't there.

Adam