ABC Wednesday Archives - Page 35 of 91

J is for James Harrison, blood donor

Doctors were struggling with cases of a potentially fatal condition called Rh incompatibility

On one of those less-than-reliable news feeds that accompany some websites, I found a mention of a “super” blood donor.

It turns out, though, that Australian blood donor James Harrison has saved 2 million babies.

“James Harrison was born on 27 December 1936. At the age of 14, he underwent major chest surgery, requiring 13 litres (3.4 US gallons) of blood. After surgery, he was in the hospital for three months. Realizing the blood had saved his life, he made a pledge to start donating blood as soon as he turned eighteen, the then-required age.”

From NPR:
“Doctors were struggling with cases of a potentially fatal condition called Rh incompatibility, also known as rhesus isoimmunization or Rh disease. It occurs when a pregnant woman has an Rh-negative blood type but the fetus she’s carrying is Rh-positive.

“In some pregnant women, Rh disease causes their antibodies to attack the fetus’s red blood cells. Scientists needed a way to turn this reaction off, and in Harrison’s blood, they found it: a rare antibody known as Rh (D) immune globulin or anti-D.

“Doctors believe Harrison has anti-D because of the blood he received at age 14. And so Harrison became the first anti-D donor in Australia — and the most prolific.”

There are many iterations of the story, from CNN to Medical Daily when one Googles James Harrison blood donor.

He, with over 1000 donations of blood plasma, averages one donation every three weeks. He makes my 150 or so donations, mostly whole blood, seem like a piker’s effort.

ABC Wednesday – Round 18

Is intellectualism dead in U.S. politics?

“It was almost no trick at all to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth…”

There is a distinct lack of intellectualism in the politics in the United States. One can disagree on policies, but that does not appear to be the crux of the arguments.

I came across this article in The Daily Beast from March 2014, which lays out the case that this phenomenon is not just a 21st century trend:

There is great intelligence in Americans, just as there is great professionalism. The problem is that professional intelligence is mechanical and functional – utilitarian. It is about the completion of an assignment, and the execution of a formula…There are only so many ways to do a job, and since many Americans learn at a very young age, that their entire lives are about the job they will one day have, they begin to think with the variety of appliance assembly methods in an instructional manual.

“The mystique of practicality,” to use [Richard] Hofstadter’s increasingly relevant words, stupefies people into voluntarily enlisting into the “curious cult of practicality.”

This seems to explain at least one candidate for President, who I’ve read described as a fachidiot, pronounced “fak ee dee oat”. It is a “derogatory term for a one-track specialist who is an expert in his field, but takes a blinkered approach to multi-faceted problems.” It could be a person highly accomplished in his field who is out of his depth in politics, for instance.

When has it ever been “practical” to study philosophy? Or art history? Or English literature? No one studies the humanities or fine arts for their practical value. They meticulously examine Van Gogh’s paintings, or closely analyze Hemingway’s novels, because it makes them feel more fully human. It enlarges the imagination, rattles the emotions, and offers the promise that through the intellectual mine work of artistic and philosophical discovery, they might emerge from the pit of the mountain with something more valuable than silver, gold, or coal — the truth.

The truth that is accessible only through the exploration of ideas is no longer in fashion.

Here’s a Catch-22 quote by Joseph Heller that singer Bette Midler recently tweeted that sums up at least some of the current crop of candidates:

“It was miraculous. It was almost no trick at all, he saw, to turn vice into virtue and slander into truth, impotence into abstinence, arrogance into humility, plunder into philanthropy, thievery into honor, blasphemy into wisdom, brutality into patriotism, and sadism into justice. Anybody could do it; it required no brains at all. It merely required no character.”

Someone else recently noted the state of American politics by quoting the magnificent language of Aaron Sorkin:

“People want leadership,” says the presidential aide. “In the absence of genuine leadership … they’ll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership, and they’re so thirsty for it, they’ll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there’s no water, they’ll drink the sand.”

To which the President replies, “People don’t drink the sand because they’re thirsty. They drink the sand because they don’t know the difference.”

— from the screenplay for “The American President”

Here’s hoping we don’t drink the sand.

ABC Wednesday – Round 18

H is for hero pose

A couple surgeons on the TV show Grey’s Anatomy utilized the superhero pose.

“When you’re weary, feeling small,” taking on the hero pose, specifically the stance of a comic book superhero may help.

“The ‘superhero stance’ — the physical pose in which the superhero stands with legs spread apart, arms on hips, elbows bent…. projects power. It’s an example of what psychologists refer to as an open posture, in which limbs are spread out in a way to take up more space…

“Open postures contrast with closed postures, in which the body takes up relatively little space. Numerous psychological studies have demonstrated that open postures convey a sense of the individual having power and closed postures convey a sense of the individual having little power.”

One article suggests the methodology: “Have a high-stakes event in the next few minutes? Before it begins, find a place to strike some grand heroic pose(s). Hold the aforementioned pose(s) for 2 minutes. That’s it.”

It has become so much of the culture that a couple of surgeons on the TV show Grey’s Anatomy utilized the technique.

Amy Cuddy, one of the researchers on power posing, along with Dana Carney and Andy Yap, has done a well-regarded TED talk on the topic.

John Marcotte has also done a TED talk, with an emphasis on getting women and girls to #PoseLikeASuperhero. He “challenges the audience to look beyond what is labeled as ‘girly’ or ‘feminine’ by covering everything from his superhero loving daughters, and the problem with genderized toy aisles, to the effects that Barbie, Mrs. Potato Head, ‘princess culture,’ and Frozen have on both girls and boys.”

Totally coincidentally, the Daughter is working on some Science Fair project involving the Pose, with herself as the subject. How one objectively measures feeling “better” I don’t know, yet.

ABC Wednesday – Round 18

G is for the Greenwood Riots

“Thirty-five blocks of Greenwood were burned to the ground, wiping out businesses” that decimated the section of town.

The Greenwood riots of 1921 represent a piece of U.S. history that is not widely known. They took place in the part of Tulsa, OK known as the “Black Wall Street.” As this PBS link notes: “Most black people lived in the racially segregated ‘Greenwood’ section of the city, which contained stores, shops, hotels, banks, newspapers, schools, theaters, and restaurants. Greenwood had several wealthy black entrepreneurs…”

Indeed, following World War I, Tulsa boasted one of the most affluent African American communities in the country, which created resentment and “pure envy”, as Ebony magazine put it.

“By 1921, membership in the Ku Klux Klan was rapidly spreading throughout America and an active chapter had been formed in Tulsa. The riot was triggered over a Memorial Day weekend by a report in two white newspapers that a black youth had tried to rape — or at least assault — a young white woman elevator operator. One of the newspapers allegedly editorialized that the youth ought to be hanged,” although the Tulsa World, in an extensive history of the period, says that the publishing such a piece “does not seem likely. For one, the Tribune actually editorialized against lynching, both before and after the riot.”

In any case, a “group of armed African-American men rushed to the police station with the intention of preventing a lynching from occurring. There was no lynch mob but a confrontation developed between blacks and whites… As the news spread throughout the city, mob violence exploded. Thousands of whites rampaged through the black community, killing men and women, burning and looting stores and homes. Some blacks claimed that policemen had joined the mob; others claimed that a machine gun was fired into the black community and a plane dropped sticks of dynamite.

“When the National Guard arrived, it arrested blacks rather than white rioters. Some four thousand to five thousand men and women were held in custody for several days before being released. No whites were arrested even though many of the mob members openly boasted of what they did. Thirty-five blocks of Greenwood were burned to the ground, wiping out businesses” that decimated the section of town. “Reports of the number of blacks killed ranged from 25 to 300. Approximately 20 whites were killed.

“Despite promises to help, the city did not support those who lost their homes and jobs despite claims for over 1.5 million dollars in damage. Most support came from the black community and a few sympathetic whites. Only in recent years has white Oklahoma begun to accept any responsibility for what happened.”

In this 2014 report, Greenwood riots survivors tell their stories. More recollections are out there, many from 2011, the 90th anniversary, in the New York Times and The Root, e.g. Here’s a video from the History Channel.

Wikipedia has White American riots in the United States. In response to the primarily black violence in Baltimore following the death of Freddie Gray in Baltimore police custody, Salon notes: “White pogroms against blacks are a fixture of American history.”

ABC Wednesday – Round 18

Bottom photo from here.

F is for fear

Fear is natural, instinctual. It “is a vital response to physical and emotional danger—if we didn’t feel it, we couldn’t protect ourselves from legitimate threats.”

What we do with fear is what matters. Living in fear can negatively affect our health. As I recall, FDR said something on the subject.

I notice the Capital District Transportation Authority’s rotating messages on the buses. They often tout the energy efficiency of public transportation, or occasionally root for local college teams in the NCAA tournament, or wish us happy holidays. Right after the massacre in San Bernardino, CA, in which 14 people were killed, the buses read, “If you see something, say something.” Sad, but understandable, I suppose.

Less comprehensible was the call from one of the Presidential candidates to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Not only was it abhorrent, and of dubious Constitutional standing, it played right into the hands of DAESH. As Ted Koppel, former anchor of the ABC News program Nightline, noted: The “tough talk” made Donald Trump “in effect the recruiter in chief” for the terrorist organization.

In the introduction of the anthem We Shall Overcome, on the seminal 1963 album Live at Carnegie Hall, Pete Seeger says, “The next verse is ‘We are not afraid’… Like every human being in the world, We HAVE been afraid. But we still sing it. ‘We are not afraid.'”

One of my pastors explained Seeger’s exhortation in terms usually associated with scripture. It is the “prophetic present tense,” a future hope stated as if it has already come to pass. Think the Pledge of Allegiance’s “with liberty and justice for all,” more goal than achievement.

The Transitional Presbyter for Albany Presbytery, Rev. Shannan Vance-Ocampo wrote: “Our fears are the things that hold us back.” There may be fearless people out there, I suppose. But most of us have fear, afraid to do certain things; optimally, we find a way to do it, fear notwithstanding.

ABC Wednesday – Round 18