Push hard, push fast

The American Heart Association changes its cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) guidelines every five years. The last update was in 2005, when the standard became thirty compressions to every two breaths. That's the CPR that I last learned.

Today, the AHA made one of the biggest changes in its history of CPR guidelines. The new CPR procedure is this: no more rescue breaths. Just keep pumping hard and fast at 100 compressions per minute. I guess they made the change now as opposed to in 2010, the next scheduled update, to get more people to perform CPR when necessary.

The theory is that anytime compressions stop, blood is not being circulated, and the amount of oxygen given in rescue breathing really is not enough to justify the interruptions in the compression cycles. Furthermore, sometimes the victim gasps on their own a little bit during the arrest anyways, although banking on that fact seems incredibly risky and irresponsible. Furthermore, the committee that made the changes in hope that more people are willing to perform CPR now that the real fear factor of needing to put your lips on someone else's is gone.

What they did not consider was how this may deter two-person rescue. If possible, CPR should always be performed by two people, one person continually giving compressions and the other person giving slow, one-second long breaths every five to six seconds. That way, circulation doesn't stop and the victim is being ventilated at the regular rate. With this new recommendation, if somebody requires immediate CPR, the bystanders will all think the same thing: "Only one person is required to do CPR. Somebody else can do it." Effective CPR is thus compromised because of this new common paradigm because nobody is willing to be the second rescuer with the "knowledge" one person can take care of it all.

Of course, if there is only one available rescuer, the AHA's recommendation makes more sense - make sure circulation happens. So the recommendation isn't totally bullshit. However, I don't see the AHA pushing for two-person CPR - that should be their priority because it's definitely the most effective method of prehospital care, should the situation call for it.
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Last Wednesday, the AHA changed the mnemonic device for stroke from FAST (Face, Arms, Speech, Time) to this "Give me 5" stroke awareness crap. The 5 are Walk, Talk, Reach, See, and Feel. How is that easier to remember than FAST? Ok, so FAST doesn't have a visual component in the acronym explicitly, but partial facial paralysis will very likely compromise the vision on that side as well - they go hand in hand; there really is no need for a separate checklist item for vision.
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Pharmaceutical companies are bullshit. Delaying crucial evidence in order to rake in billions of dollars, evidence that could potentially hurt the customer simply because it's more expensive than Zocor and does the same job is unprofessional and sickening.

Catching up

Just came back from coffee with Susie. Kicked some old talk around.
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This was an interesting exchange with my professor not too long ago.

But first, context: I was up really late the night before finishing up physics homework answering questions about how radio stations work and how transformers change 120V to 240V or something, so I went to class (not physics lecture) incredibly exhausted. I like to sit in the front row because this professor's handwriting is mind-numbingly poor and I like to see what he's writing so I know the important stuff to write down and the stuff to tune out. It just so happened that I fell asleep in the middle of lecture in the front row. Knowing me, I was probably snoring in front of the whole class. Anyways, I woke up about five minutes before class ended, took some very confused notes, and proceeded to ask him a question about the material right when class ended. The exchange:

Me: "Excuse me, I have a question about this concept you mentioned..."
Prof: "I tell you what. If you're not going to respect me enough to stay awake during my lecture, then I see no reason to respect you enough to answer your question."

Exit stage left. Or whatever.

One of my incredibly unusual habits

Sometimes, when I can't go to sleep or I'm up late studying for a midterm or doing homework or writing a paper, I'll kill a ton of time looking up New York City, specifically Manhattan. I don't know what it is, but I have always had this incredible fascination with the City of New York. I have this really stupid romanticized fantasy image of it in my head, constructed almost entirely out of cliched movie scripts, late night slow jazz radio, and television dramas. (Watching Carrie, Charlotte, Sam, and Miranda certainly don't help. And shut up. Everyone gets one guilty pleasure trash show.)

Here's what I do: I look up a picture of New York City by Googling something like "NYC map" or "NYC boroughs." I scroll through the map and look at all the different names of neighborhoods that I've heard of through movies, books, magazines, television, what have you. I then Wikipedia those neighborhoods and read about all the cool things, people, and places around there. I look up the local universities (ok, Columbia) - I practically know the Columbia campus by now because I've done their online tour so many damn times. I know the names of the neighborhoods and I know some major defining characteristics of the important ones.

Most importantly, I look up all the best eateries in the area. More than architecture, more than the history, I think the local specialties are what really define areas. Maybe it's just because I love food too much, but picking out great places to eat is definitely one of my favorite activities. It's especially important when I have to show friends around or even just go out to eat with the usual suspects - a meal can make or break an evening. The eateries are my North African battlegrounds, and I am their Rommel. Without the whole, you know, forced to commit suicide thing post-failed-Hitler-assassination-plan thing.

Here's why I think I'm so fascinated with New York: based on all the crap that I read about how each neighborhood has its own special flavor, history, and culture, I want to try to understand and maybe even feel out what those special characteristics may be. I've never been to New York. I had the chance in junior year of high school for the band trip, but leave it to my Achilles' Tendon to give out like a whiny bitch (and by whiny bitch I mean like a dominatrix giving me lashes for being an oh-so-naughty boy). It's almost as if my body desperately wanted to stay in California and therefore took extreme measures to keep me here...extreme measures that led to a smoking hot, five-foot-even, 32-22-34 Filipina nurse inserting a Foley catheter into my...how you say...penis while the lower half of my body was still completely numb in order to relieve my bladder of the ridiculous amount of urine that was stored. But I digress.

I really want to visit New York City and fall for all the tourist traps. I want to run around and take fifty million pictures while furthering the stereotype of the Asian tourist.

Maybe I'm just too Californian. I seriously love California to death, but I think it may be necessary for me to get out of this sunshiny, palm tree lined, perfectly-weathered bubble after I graduate. I'll definitely be applying to schools out east, and if given the opportunity (and that opportunity is good enough), I will get to experience really cold weather and this supposed "East Coast tough" that I read about so much. I've never been a fan of old money douchebaggery, what with their yacht clubs and ivy-lined houses and WASP culture and shit. Not that there isn't any of that out here on the Left, but I feel that the yuppie culture is somewhat more dominant here. Maybe I simply haven't been exposed to the world enough to really know what I'm talking about.

Then after I'm done with school out east, I'm pretty sure I'll move back to California after I realize how much the east coast licks monkey balls.

5:04 AM, and I am still a bitch.

In high school, I started a Xanga account in which I frequently wrote. As a matter of fact, up until about a month ago, I still wrote in it, albeit in recent years the updates have been far less frequent. I've decided that Xanga simply had too many frills for me and I'm going to switch over to a simpler, more direct format, hence this new blog. Speaking of which, I hate the word "blog" (damn you, Peter Merholz). Also, my close friend Albert began writing in a joint site with our mutual friend Yue, which made me think about whether or not my Xanga was worth keeping. My writing skills have never been particularly sharp or witty or even entertaining for that matter. My writing read like bland grocery lists except without the detailed accuracy or the excitement. It read exactly like a high schooler trying to act all creative and shit, and by shit I mean deep and insightful. And shit.

Then along came college and, like the history of the Irish, I was given bitchslap after bitchslap unto my round, completely undeserving ego/face/ass. My writing patterns quickly slowed to a lull, no thanks to the addition of Smash and that oh-so-wonderful elixir of youth and freedom that opens doors and loosens whores. (Booze.) Waiting for me to update my entries was like watching flies fuck: nobody did it. So here I am. This will be updated much more regularly because I like the look of the site, I like writing stuff down and sharing funny/interesting events with my friends, and it just feels...right.
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Most importantly, I really like chicken.