it's a small, small world

From the pages of The Economist:

A British climber made the first mobile-phone call from the summit of Mount Everest. He took advantage of a Chinese mobile-phone base to ring his family, presumably to ask if he should pick up anything on the way home.

I think I'd have asked him to bring me a snowball. Or a really big rock. Or maybe both.

Amazing that there is cell phone coverage up there but not in some remote parts of Lower Sackville (a suburb of Halifax).

the cold river

One of the best summaries I've seen for the situation unfolding in Lebanon:Or, if you prefer text, here is a good start.

it's funny cuz it's true

So here's the short version: there's this grad student. Who's been there for too long. Finally, he gets motivation to finish. And does. His wife tries to understand what he does. His supervisor doesn't really care. After eventually submitting his thesis, his wife decides to be the only one who ever actually reads it...

everybody's talking about it

For those of you that read Canadian news online, you know the The Globe and Mail recently started allowing people to comment on their stories. At least that's most of the time. Sometimes, for certain overly heated topics where people start to get personal and racist, the Globe decides not to allow comments on a story. But most of the time, you can see what the (verbal and often uninformed) masses think about climate change, or Afghanistan, or the Queen of England, or the Ontario peach farming industry.

I often find it interesting to see what it is that people are talking about. So much so, that I actually bothered to write a script that queries the Globe website, sees what articles are being up for comments, and how many comments the stories have received. (It's also a good way to see the headlines without trying to load a page that sometimes crashes my browser.)

Anyway, here's what people are talking about this morning:

Comments as of 9:49 ADT, 18/4/2007
Article	comments/hour	# of comments
Loonie hits highest level since 1978	50.00	10
Southern Ocean drowning in carbon dioxide	12.34	232
Cost of new tanks $1.3-billion, double initial estimate	11.09	112
A House divided against itself: Can it stand?	7.88	36
Arab world debates fate of Canadian brothers	6.97	80
As gas prices soar, so does transit use	6.54	28
Israel pounds Gaza as Hamas, Fatah battle	6.20	19
Britain allows animal-human hybrid embryos	5.06	117
Arrest fails to stem tide of leaks	4.62	19
Wolfowitz to leave World Bank at end of June	4.35	60
Newfoundland held back faulty cancer data	3.55	22
Teen pregnancies drop to a new low, abortions continue decline	2.48	57
Parched Australian farms soak up best rains in a decade	1.75	4

Sometimes, I find it interesting to read the news this way first. Just see what people care about.

opposite sides of the world collide at superstore

How is it that after a 12-hour day, and when I'm doing my dinner's grocery shop at 7:45 pm, I just happen to choose the line-up where the cashier doesn't know the difference between Brussels sprouts and kiwis?

After overhearing that error in identification (two people in line ahead of me), I realized that I might as well pick up that latest issue of People, and start reading. (Oh, the article about bad bridesmaid dresses.... priceless!)

those who can't teach...

Here's one that the child psychologists will make a killing on (sorry, bad pun).

A group of teachers in Tennessee thought that it would be a good idea to discuss with their students what to do if a gunman attacked them. All in all, not necessarily an absolutely completely terrible idea. I mean, we've all heard about the school shootings, and having a pre-plan of how to deal with such a horrific situation is probably not the worst thing imaginable. But talking and doing are two different things, you could argue, so maybe it's not a bad idea to actually have a drill where you go through the routine of what you should do.

So following that logic, it is usually a good idea to talk about the exercise before being immersed in it, so that you can at least try to apply your knowledge. However, as you know, and as I know, and as everyone knows, it takes a lot of discipline to go through a drill with the same urgency as a real situation. And chances are if you discussed it first and then were suddenly thrust into a real situation, you would probably assume it was a drill. And let's face it... If adults would likely not treat it as seriously, neither would 12-year olds. I guess that's why we never knew exactly when the fire drills were going to happen in grade school. So perhaps, it's best not to tell the kids that it's a drill, and perhaps it's best not to talk about it before.

So far, the logic is impenetrable. But there's more. Surely if a gunman is going to shoot a bunch of school-kids, he wouldn't do it at, say, a school. Nooooooooo, he'd probably do it in a place that is unfamiliar to the kids. And it would probably be at night, too. Because that's when bad people come out from their poorly lit, dingy trailers.

So, what did the bright teachers decide to do? Stage an attack at night while on a field trip. They told the students a gunman was on the loose in the area, that it was not a drill, and that they should hide under the tables. Then a teacher, who disguised himself by wearing a hoodie (!), tried to get into the room while the kids cried and pled for their lives.

So who's idea was this brilliant plan? The assistant principal.

That kind of reminds me of a line somebody once wrote on a blackboard in high school. Those who can do. Those who can't, teach. Those who can't teach become principals. Seriously, though, how did this guy become a principal? And how did the teachers go along with it?

worshipping Hypnos and Morpheus

Tomorrow morning will be the first time since April 22 that I will not be getting up at or before 6:30. I can hardly wait. It's not even noon, and I'm thinking about sleep...

...a night in the woods ends

So I recently left you with the not-so-cliffhangered to-be-continued.

But first, a brief synopsis of what I was doing last week first. Many of us remember taking a first aid course at some point. Maybe it was to get our babysitting certificate when we were 12, maybe it was to become a life guard. Me? I took my first course only 3 years ago. It was a wilderness first aid course, i.e. what do you do when the ambulance is a few hours away or more?

The course was excellent. I'd recommend it to anyone who has 3 days to kill enjoys hiking or biking or skiing or camping or canoeing or ... you get the idea.

Well, these courses expire every 3 years and I thought, while I have the time to take a week off, I may as well upgrade to the first responder course. What's the difference? Well other than taking almost 3 times as long, you get to play with toys and do more detailed patient assessments.

Okay, so because this was a wilderness course (with a lot of situational learning), we had an overnight scenario. After our warm-up, we proceeded down to a lake and "set up camp". Except we
didn't do that. We knew we wouldn't be spending any time there so we didn't really bother with trivial things like tents and fires. We had dinner, and chilled out for an hour or two. Chilling included things like a discussion of whether our instructor was a pirate and one man's randition of Acuna Matata from start to finish. Scary what a 30-year old camp director knows.

We were sitting there for quite a while wondering what was going on. Then, just as the last sun beam trickled over the horizon, we saw a flare shoot over the lake. Show time...we haphazardly get our stuff together, and started to organize. Which team is doing what? Another flare goes off. I guess our instructor thought we were taking too long and was getting impatient.

We had previously divided into 3 teams. One went straight to the north end of the lake where we thought the flares were coming from. My team did a shoreline search. I don't know what the third team did.

After about 10 minutes, my team came across somebody in the water. He was cold and shivering, and of course his clothes were soaked. We pulled him out of the water and called in the other teams for help. We removed his clothes and set up a hypothermia wrap using sleeping bags, tarps, emergency blankets, and rope. Our team started the monitoring the patient and the other two teams went off chasing other flares.

The patient was of course cold. An effect of being cold is that your blood vessels constrict a little. As a result, water is removed from your blood and directed to your bladder. (Ever wonder why you always have to pee after spending time outside in the winter?) So in addition to being cold, a hypothermic is also dehydrated. So water was one concern.

The other concern, of course, is warmth. The usual, intuitive, thought for how to warm somebody up is to put them next to a fire. If the person is actually seriously hypothermic, however, being too close to the fire can be leathal. Napoleon's doctor observed this when trying to invade Russia. The reason is because the blood in the extremeties becomes too warm, and shocks the heart when it is pumped back to the body's core. So the best way to rewarm somebody is to roll them up in blankets and let them warm themselves from the inside. Food is always good for getting your furnace going.

So what's a good backcountry solution? Hot Jell-o! (In liquid form. No need to wait for it to set.) There's a reason Jell-o's part of every hospital meal...it's easy to digest and nutritious. So we are periodically heating water with a camp stove, pouring Jell-o powder into it, and feeding it to our patient. Over time, however, it becomes clear that he is going to need oxygen, too. Our dispatch "radioed in" to 413 squadron asking for help, preferably a SAR-Tech. Of course, we couldn't get that as it would defeat training purposes, but a kit was dropped nearby and we were given its GPS location.

By now, just to give an idea of the time, it's probably about 11 pm.

I went off to find the oxygen at about 12, with a member of another team. It took a while, trying to navigate a maze of trails in the dark, but with the GPS we found it. We also brought back the stretcher and a bunch of blankets, just in case. By now it was probably 1 or 1:30.

After that a slow night of monitoring continued for us until somebody broke their femur (for the sake of the exercise). Breaking one's femur can actually be a life-threatening injury if the leg is not put into traction, so while two of us stayed with the hypothermic patient, the rest dealt with the broken leg. After probably half an hour, things were not going well for the broken leg victim, there was constant screaming and shouting from the group. I decided to go check it out.

That's when I discovered they were dealing not only with a rather big guy (probably weighing about 190 lbs), but also the whole situation was happening on a steep and rocky slope with no good footing. His leg was put into traction and the screaming subsided. The team had a
litter (stretcher) and were preparing to move him onto it so they could get him off the slope. As I approached them I leaned on a tree for support and found it was rotten and that it started to give under my weight. I looked to the bottom of the tree trunk and saw the litter
was secured to it!

I moved myself into a position where I could notify the "climber guy" in our group, who I guessed had secured the litter. Right then, I suddenly hear someone yelling "Traction! Traction!" I almost had to laugh when I saw the wood used for the traction splint was rotten and
had snapped. Three of us worked in rotation to keep his leg in manual traction while a group went and found a new, solid piece of wood. I told somebody about the situation with the rotten tree and that was also dealt with. About 20 minutes later, a new traction splint was put into place, and we started to move him. The in the litter was clearly a little concerned about where he was and that we were moving him, and so I spoke to him a little bit and calmed him
down, reassuring him we'd do it slowly and deliberately. The terrain was not good and it 8 of us about 5 minutes to move him 15 metres. At that point, he was in a stable location. The temperature was about 5 degrees so we decided to leave him there for the night but firt cover him in blankets and a tarp to keep him warm.

By now it was about 3:30. We were all very weary by this point. Our very active day had officially started 19 hours ago. It was about 4 degrees out.

We had two patients that needed monitoring. 4 of us stayed up, two with each patient, and 4 of us went to sleep. I volunteered to stay up, mostly because all my gear was in the hypothermia wrap. My hat and gloves were being used as well. Somebody lent me a tent fly and I sat there, wrapped up in that.

I feel asleep in that time, and woke up in semi-sitting position, shivering at 5:15. I realized I needed to get warm. I stumbled down to where peole were sleeping, and woke up the guy with the -20 sleeping bag. It was his shift for monitoring the patient. I took my boots off and my jacket, and crawled into his sleeping bag. I got one hour's sleep before being woken by the instructor. Time for the debrief.

So, I guess that's one way to spend a Friday night.

Encyclopedia of Life

I have to admit, when I first read about this "Encyclopedia of Life" it sounded kind of kooky. But I checked out the website, and watched their little video promo. It starts with a rather elegant description of the planet's biosphere.

Constantly reconfiguring, morphing, decaying, the natural world is at once confounding, sublime, brutal, and unspeakably elegant.

That last part, about being unspeakably elegant, is what I think drives all fundamental research, and is what made me trust that the people behind this website will see it through.

As I watched the video, I thought this site will actually be really cool. This is the kind of resource that anyone with a curiosity about animals would be able to use.

That said, with the millions, of known and unknown species, it is a rather formidable project. I also wonder how it will cope with genetic realizations that, at least at the microbial level, the lines between strains and species are very smeared.

Still, I think this is a cool idea, and hope they are successful.

a night in the woods begins...

As Friday was winding down for most, mine was just beginning. This week, I have been involved in a wilderness first responder course as part of may SAR training, and last night was what they called the 'overnight' component.

It started with a bit of a warm-up, a search for a couple thought to have been at a cabin in the area. We had three teams. One stayed behind with the first response gear, and the other two ventured into the woods following clues. After half an hour of slow, deliberate searching, the radio silence was broken. Crackling over the radio one of the teams called in

The cabin exploded! We need help.

And that was it. Dispatch new the location of the cabin and sent us the coordinates.

My team of three was first on the scene. There were three people hurt. One guy's finger had been blown off and his other arm was broken. Another had second degree burns to his shins and first degree burns to his hands, and was trapped by the smouldering cabin. A third fellow, had serious inhalation burns. After a quick triage, it was clear that he needed oxygen ASAP and radioed to dispatch. Evacuation was also necessary but because of our location and the weather, it wasn't happening any time soon.

As soon as we arrived on the scene, I locked onto the man with the burns on his hands and shins, pulling him from the collapsed cabin. I ran down to a nearby bog and filled zip-lock bags with mud -- cold packs for the burns. When I got back, the fire had spread from the cabin and into the forest around where we were positioned. The smoke in the air was thick, with some odd chemical smells, and it was starting to affect his breathing. If we stayed, it was a matter of time before we both had issues. Despite the pain in his legs, we had to move.

I helped him up and we hobbled away from the danger. The others were also moved. Setting him down, I got him to hold the cold packs on his shins with his hands, and ran back to get our gear, but the fire had spread and I could not recover his.

Refocusing from the lost gear back onto the patient, we started a complete survey of the situation. He was out of danger, for now, but we weren't out of the woods. The pain in his hands and legs was high. The best I could do was offer Ibuprofen. He took some pills, but I don't know what it would really be able to do.

Out of the smoke, his breathing was improving, but it was still laboured. He was feeling sick from the smoke and vomited. I collected a sample and put it in a bag to give to the paramedics upon their eventual arrival. That was when he told me he'd already thrown up before I even arrived on scene. How am I going to keep him hydrated? I thought as I tied shut the glove used to collect the sample. My thoughts started to spin. Was it only the smoke that was making him sick? Did he hit his head and not recollect? There were no obvious signs from an examination of his head and pupils, but time might make that story evolve...

His breathing was still a laboured. Did he inhale more smoke than I'm realizing? Time felt like it was racing by on me. Where was the first response team? Where was that oxygen?

Stop.

Focus.

Do what you can, and keep monitoring for developments.

Since the burns were going to take some time too cool off, I decided to take the opportunity to get buddy up off the ground. Fluid leaking from the burns was dehydrating him, and he needed to be stabilized. I pulled out my camping mattress, an emergency blanket, and a tarp, and got him into a warmer environment. But that wasn't going to stop dehydration. He needed water, as much as he could take. We found, through trial and error, that in small amounts he could keep it down. Slowly he could take more. Soon, he'd be able to eat too.

The first response team arrived, with only one oxygen kit. Clearly the guy with the inhalation burns needed it more. My patient would survive without it, so long as no complications arose. While focusing on my patient, it was clear that the he was not the one in the worst situation. I felt like I was gaining control of the situation, and that things were stabilizing.

And, as though the gods were taunting that illusion of reality, it started to rain. As I focussed on my patient, members of the first response team got busy. Tarps were going up and shelters from the rain were created. The patients were relocated to sheltered areas. Now, the long monitoring was to begin. But we were in a precarious position. We couldn't be evacuated, and the fire was getting worse. We were going to have to move again. After a good talk with my patient, it was clear he was lucid and okay with the idea of me leaving him in the care of someone else, so two of us started scouting for a better place to stay the night. The rain slowed, then stopped, and the exercise ended.

The whole affair started at about 4:30. It was over around 6. And that was the warm up for a sequence of events that lasted (for me) until 5 the following morning.

[... to be continued ...]

As a quick update. I have not been blogging much because I've been

adventure racing

watching my pregnant girlfriend die in front of me while deprived of my meds

dealing with an overdosing teenager that had a stick through his arm

breaking my nose and back on while sea kayaking

handling potential spinal situations in the backcountry

hearing war stories from a retired sniper

Some of those are real. Some of those are mocked up scenarios that I've been acting out.