The anxiety about surgery continues. Last night, I finished the only book on it that was written by a doctor. I've read parts of two others - one by a cheerleader socialite who clearly hates fat people, and hated herself when she was fat; the other by someone looking for all the bad - the deaths, disabilities, unhappiness. She solicited personal memoirs of surgery over the internet and tries to pretend it's an unbiased sample.
These last two books are so badly conceived and written that I want to write to the publishing houses to complain. But why should I be surprised that bad science is what passes for science in the popular press and the popular imagination? (Case in point: that deep-freeze movie about NYC.) You would think that regular Americans, who've gone through all that so-called critical thinking that we supposedly teach in our public schools would have a clue about how to deconstruct fuzzy, biased, weak arguments. But no - if sloppy partisan thinking sells, then by all means, sell it!
The whole notion of "what is safe" has gotten so twisted; our sense of what constitutes personal safety is elevated, rarifed, and made oh-so-precious. Kids stay inside and play video games or watch TV (thereby boosting the pre-teen obesity epidemic) because their parents fear it's not safe for them to play outdoors unaccompanied. They don't walk to school because parents fear for them in traffic or fear they'll be abducted. People in neighborhoods go to meetings about cleanups of hazardous waste and won't accept any finding except "it will be completely safe" - which you will NEVER hear from an environmental engineer. The concept of graduated risk is completely foreign; safety has become an all-or-nothing proposition.
And don't even get me started on the new corollary, our "safety as a nation." I don't believe that there is anything that any federal official (blue or red) can do to protect this nation completely from terrorism. A more effective strategy would be to understand the thinking that motivates fundamentalism, and marginalize it through cultural, economic, and diplomatic means. But no - Bush says "bring 'em on," so Kerry has to talk tough so people won't think he's a wuss.
Ok, enough ranting. I'll post something about the surgery tomorrow (for all you readers who actually KNOW B. - but it will be pretty late.)
Posted by otto0114 at August 2, 2004 05:02 PM