Oh Christ you're one of those fucking people. Fuck you! Don't say hi to me, don't even look at me. If you clutched your chest I wouldn't put any of the hours and hours of First Aid and CPR classes to good use. I would watch you die because you're a horrible person who shouldn't be invading other peoples lives with your fatuous pleasantries. Just Die!


/Scrooge

Starting to wonder if this is now part of the interview at southwest.

"Ok, so you're clearly qualified for this... years of flight attendant experience, first aid courses, good customer service ratings. congratulations! Just drop us a rhyme or two and you're hired"

Lived in Ontario (28 years), Brisbane, Australia (5 years), Alberta (7 years), and now Texas (14 years).

Agree with pretty much with Boneremake on Alberta, gets more points than Ontario. My Australian experience was good, in both the city and rural (blew an eardrum due to infection in Longreach QLD at Xmas... the doctor was drunk when they wheeled him into emerg, but he was a gentle, caring drunk).

Small things in Ontario are manageable - anything requiring stuff beyond typical emergency room patching up in more rural locations (my definition - anywhere far enough from Toronto that you can't see the nighttime glow, so north of Newfenmarket sort of) is quite lacking (v. long wait times for things like weekly dialysis, MRI, even open MRI, GI tract scoping, ultrasounds, contrast X-rays etc). Parental unit #1 with diabetes requiring 3 times a week dialysis almost snuffed it as there were only 4 chairs in the unit 14 miles from home, got on the list and had to wait for someone to die before getting on the team. Finally snuffed it when they shut down these 4 chairs and the new unit was now a 90 mile round trip 3 times a week for man who could barely walk or see. Died from exhaustion, not diabetes. 2nd parental unit needs an MRI for some serious GI issues, can't keep food down, losing weight rapidly. Wait 4.5 months and we'll see if we can get you in. I'm having her measured for the box.

Having said that, the situation is easier to describe in Texas, the land of excess (excessive wealth and excessive poverty).

Good health insurance plan, preferably through employer with lots of employees = wait times for advanced procedures measured usually in minutes or hours, sometimes days, but not weeks or months. You get taken care of, and your birthing room at the local maternity ward looks like the Marriott (just Couryard though, so no mini-bar or microwave).

Mediocre or no health insurance plan = pray you never get sick enough to require more than what you can buy at the CVS or splint up by watching do-it-yourself first aid videos on youtube, because an unplanned night in the hospital or a trip to emerg in the short bus with swirly lights followed by admission can, for many, wipe them out or sure eat up Bobby's college fund. No exaggeration. I have insurance, but for a reference point, one night in hospital (elective) for a turbinectomy (google it people) including jello and ice cream came in at $14,635. Yes, one night. 24 hours. Do the math. An emergency room visit for a forearm cut requiring 13 stitches (and I didn't even bleed on their white sheets - just cut through the skin to the fat tissue) was billed at $2,300 bucks. Our new baby tried to exit the meatbag as a footling breach, so emergency C-sectioned him out, and one extra night in hospital (2 in total) - all up, billed at just shy of $24K. We now have 3 full service hospitals within 5 miles of our house, and a full service children's hospital in the same radius. And they just started building another. Somebody's making money. If you don't have insurance, or your insurance is shitty (huge deductibles, huge copays) you will eat much of these types of costs. Rule: cheaper to die than get sick.

Ontario and AB might have longer wait times, but even an 83 year old woman in a rural Ontario village with no pension, insurance, income or large stacks of cash can (eventually) get the health care she needs without spending unjustifiable amounts of money. Happy birthday mom.

My 2¢

I am listening to moody, atmospheric soundtracks;

Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Drive
Solaris (from the Clooney version)

Then I put some First Aid Kit on to change things up.

I mostly listen via my PC and I do not have an ipod.

That is my audio story.

(Copy-paste of my comment on my friend's Facebook post of this video):
That's an awesome video. I've done first aid courses twice, and not long after completely forgot the timing for cpr that they said 'X presses down then a breath, then x more at a rate of blah blah blah', and a few different combinations thereof based on age of person. Completely forgettable and ended up with me thinking I should do nothing instead of trying because I wouldn't do it the right way. Switching to hands only, and having something as genius as a well known song to do it to in your head is just A+.

>> ^zombieater:

>> ^ghark:
I just completed a first aid training certificate and the trainer advised that these are the only spiders that we actually consider deadly (which was a bit surprising). The other spiders like the red back etc are not really known to kill people. So now you know - if you die from any spider other than a funnel web your doin' it wrong!

Gah! No! This is not that taxon! Your trainer is thinking of the Australian funnel web spider (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_funnel-web_spider), not this one. There are many different types of funnel web spider (and this isn't even one!), most (99%) of which are harmless.
N00bs...


oh! cheers for that, so which type is this?

>> ^ghark:

I just completed a first aid training certificate and the trainer advised that these are the only spiders that we actually consider deadly (which was a bit surprising). The other spiders like the red back etc are not really known to kill people. So now you know - if you die from any spider other than a funnel web your doin' it wrong!


Good on you doing a first aid course - not enough people do it.

The red back is still deadly, it's just a very rare occurrence. The last death was way back before the anti-venene was developed. Even then it was not common to die from it (but it was a possibility).

The Sydney funnel web on the other hand is shit your pants deadly in regards to their venom but still account for half of all spider related deaths in Australia (the other half are red back spider deaths). So it's just as rare an occurrence.

I'd be much more worried about eastern brown snake bites - which are super mega shit your pants deadly. And they are much more common.

>> ^ghark:

I just completed a first aid training certificate and the trainer advised that these are the only spiders that we actually consider deadly (which was a bit surprising). The other spiders like the red back etc are not really known to kill people. So now you know - if you die from any spider other than a funnel web your doin' it wrong!


Gah! No! This is not that taxon! Your trainer is thinking of the Australian funnel web spider (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_funnel-web_spider), not this one. There are many different types of funnel web spider (and this isn't even one!), most (99%) of which are harmless.

N00bs...

I just completed a first aid training certificate and the trainer advised that these are the only spiders that we actually consider deadly (which was a bit surprising). The other spiders like the red back etc are not really known to kill people. So now you know - if you die from any spider other than a funnel web your doin' it wrong!

papandreou is a fucking idiot. So he accepts the money and agrees to the terms of the loan, then proceeds to fall short of what was asked to do, then needs more money, says yes, and all of the sudden says: "you know what? I think I'll hold a referendum instead". What a fucking moron. If he wanted to have held a referendum he should have done it BEFORE accepting the first aid.

>> ^raverman:

I'll lift up a car... but I ain't touching anything more than your floppy shattered leg to drag you out.
Move you far enough from the car to be actually safe? What am i a f--king taxi?
But i'll be damned if i sit by you, see if you're breathing, perform cpr or provide any comfort until help arrives.
Good on them I suppose... but that's the least compassionate non-commital rescue i've ever seen.


I have a different take on this. If you were watching people in a normal environment doing something non-stressful then I'd agree with you. But we're not. We're watching people doing something that could well be the most stressful thing they'll ever do. As far as they know the car could explode at any time, or it could fall on them trapping them in the flames or any number of other things. Whether these things are actually likely or not is immaterial, it's all the things that would be running through these people's head. But they overcame that and did what they had to do.

I have a very close friend who is a fireman and he deals with situations very differently to me. He's used to the stress of the situation. He's used to seeing death. It's just his job and he's de-sensitised to it. I'm not. I was driving along behind a truck in rush hour traffic a few years ago. Long story short, the truck in front of the one in front of me braked very suddenly and the truck in front of me didn't notice. Drove into the back of the other truck and crushed the cab. I screeched to a stop, jumped out and ran to the front of the lorry to see what had happened an if I could help. I'm first aid trained so I should be of some use. I was stood in the middle of the road looking at a crushed cab with the driver crushed against the wheel, unconscious. There was blood dripping from the cab. I looked back to the huge queue of traffic that was stopped behind my car and saw the most terrible thing I've ever seen. Just a huge row of people, all just sat in their cars waiting for someone else to deal with the problem. It was probably the worst moment of my life. No-one else gave a shit and I was watching a man die.

My phone was dead so I ran back to the car behind mine and asked the woman driving to call an ambulance, which she did. I ran back to the cab to see if there was anything I could do and I just froze. I couldn't deal with the stress, my brain just tried to shut down. What snapped me out of it was a guy running toward me to help, from about twenty cars further back down the queue. Just having someone else help - not being alone - was enough and we got the guy out of the cab. Eventually a few other people helped, but it took them a while to come forward.

Every one of the people in this video is risking their life to help someone they don't know. They stepped forward and the guy survived. To sit back in your comfy chair and criticise a construction worker in an incredibly stressful situation not doing precisely the right thing is just the wrong way to look at it. They manned the fuck up and saved his life. You've just seen a lot of very ordinary people do something incredible and they deserve credit for that. If I saw a fire crew do the same thing I'd be disgusted, but that's not what they are.

Your mind goes blank and it takes a huge amount of effort to get anything done in that situation. I've got all the time in the world for every one of the people in this video. It wasn't text book, but they saved him, and deserve all the credit for it.

Stop and do what? Get in the way?

If it was on a secluded bit of the race and I knew first aid then I'd probably stop but otherwise I don't see the point.

First rule of racing: NEVER STOP!

You always obey the flags that the marshals hold out, as they are under race control so will know about everything that is happening, not just in the 6 feet of tarmac you are on. Should you stop, you become a target for the next guy leaping through the wall of fire. Now you have two accidents...

There is no flag to stop competitors either. A red flag means that the *race* has been stopped, but that doesn't mean that you actually stop riding. You reduce your speed and await further instructions, being prepared to stop on the circuit *if* directed to do so. Marshals are posted within sighting distance of each other, so someone would have seen it and been able to deal with it.

Ultimately, this guy was through so quickly that even trying to stop would have covered a big distance (at 150mph+) so going back to help wouldn't have made much difference. As a rider you're probably not trained in first aid either, so it's best left to the professionals. On my first race out I couldn't even keep count of the number of laps I had done as I was concentrating so hard on riding as fast as possible!

Personally I'm surprised he slowed down as much as he did...

>> ^Yogi:

That's cool...but why doesn't he stop?! At least to tell some of the orange jackets that there's been a horrible crash!

Actually that's not a dumb thing to say at all; moving when injured (as in trying to get to a bathroom or a first aid kit, etc) can aggravate certain injuries, so if someone is nearby and is getting ready to help it's the right thing for them to say.

>> ^P1ggy:

Why, whenever someone gets hurt and is down on the ground, is there some annoying busy body shouting "Stay there, Don't Move!" WTF is the person going to do, get up and do jumping jacks?

All you do not want to know about White craft glue.

http://www.gamblincolors.com/msds/pva.html

MATERIAL SAFETY DATA SHEET

Manufacturer's Name:
GAMBLIN ARTISTS COLORS CO.
PO Box 15009
Portland, OR 97293

Product: Poly Vinyl Acetate (PVA) Glue

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SECTION 1—PRODUCT IDENTITY
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date prepared: 7/09/97 Emergency telephone no. 503/235-1945

Preparer's Name: R. Gamblin

Chemical name: Ethlyene/Vinyl Acetate Coplolymer

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SECTION II—HAZARDOUS INGREDIENTS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Chemical names CAS# Wt% OSHA PEL ACGIH TLV
This product contains no hazardous
materials under the current OSHA standard.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SECTION III—PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Boiling range: 212 F Specific gravity: 1 - 1.4
Vapor pressure: 17 % volatile (volume): 45%(water)
Vapor density: 0.62 Evaporation rate (BuOAc = 1): 1

Solubility (specify solvents): Soluble in water. Insoluble in solvents.
Appearance and odor: white liquid; slight odor.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SECTION IV—FIRE & EXPLOSION DATA----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------
Flash point: >220 degree F
Extinguishing media: CO2 , dry chemical, water fog
Special firefighting procedures: water or foam may cause frothing if directed into
container of burning material. Use water to cool containers exposed to heat.

Unusual fire & explosion hazards: Immerse in water after use.
Reactivity: product is stable
Hazardous polymerization: will not occur
Conditions to avoid: avoid extreme heat

Hazardous decomposition products: Stable under normal pressure.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SECTION V—HEALTH HAZARD DATA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Route(s) of entry: Eye contact, ingestion of paint
Acute health effects: Eye contact may cause redness or irritation
Poly Vinyl Acetate (PVA) Glue MSDS Page 2

Inhalation: N/A
Ingestion: No known adverse health effects.
Skin contact: No know adverse health effects.

EMERGENCY FIRST AID PROCEDURES:
Eye contact: Wash with clean water for at least fifteen minutes. If irritation persists,get medical attention.
Inhalation: If swallowed, induce vomiting.
Skin contact: Flush with water; use soap if available.

CHRONIC HEALTH EFFECTS:
Not listed as a carcinogen by the NTP, IARC, or OSHA; no adverse long-term
effects are known.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SECTION VI—SPILL OR LEAK PROCEDURE
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Steps to be taken in case material is spilled: Soak up spill with absorbent materials and place in containers.
Waste disposal method: Spill area can be washed with water; collect wash water for approved disposal. Do not
flush to storm sewer or waterway.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SECTION VII - SPECIAL PROTECTION DATA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Respiratory protection: none normally required
Ventilation: none normally required
Protective gloves: none normally required
Eye protection: safety glasses if eye contact is likely; eyewash fountain should be accessible.
----------------------------------`----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SECTION III—STORAGE & HANDLING DATA
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Precautions to be taken in handling and storage: store away from high temperature. Read and observe all
precautions on product label.

Other precautions: wash hands after use.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The information contained herein is based on the data available to use and is believe to be correct. However,
Gamblin Artists Colors Co. makes no warranty, expressed or implied, regarding the accuracy of these data or the
results to be obtained from the use thereof. Gamblin assumes no responsibility for injury from the use of the product
described herein.