Thursday, March 31, 2005

Hate Radio at New Ruskin College

www.NewRuskinCollege.com

Lecture Notes: 03-24-05
Hate Radio Talk Show Host’s Brain

You see they are for the “culture of life” and their opponents are for the “culture of death.”

You might think, ‘No, they are just arguing with strawmen again!’ and you would be correct.

Several callers trapped Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity into acknowledging that they had been evading the real issue. Everyone, it was finally revealed, agrees that if the person is dead their body should not be kept “alive”, merely functioning, kept on the air as a Hate Radio Talk Show Host for example. We should “pull the plug” rather than have their ignorance and pomposity and arrogance, their fat relentless egos, running on and on interminably. When forced to discuss the actual issue raised by the instant case both Beck and Hannity did finally agree that they also believe that when a patient is pronounced dead the body should not be kept alive artificially.

For it is not just hatred which is poured out hour after hour, hatred for everyone who disagrees with them, the “judges,” the legislature, the over 60% who do not want the issue politicized; for mainly we are witnessing ignorance of a very willful and deliberate kind.

Sadly this kind of willful ignorance is often confused with “religion.”

They were told, for example, that if they believed in Christ they would have eternal life. So they will themselves to believe in Christ, as an act of their egos. But their understanding of “eternal life” is merely of the continuation of the small, selfish, ignorant ego that they have known all their lives. They imagine eternal life as a continuation of their egos on into eternity, a base projection of their puny neurotic lives.

So Laura Ingraham describes herself as “livid” and so “upset” that she can not read her own script. We educate her at Dartmouth, including a law degree, and this is what we get and emotionally distraught little girl, so afraid of death, that she is incapable of reviewing the law, let alone the philosophy of the various positions, to say nothing of being incapable of displaying any evidence of a religious education. We were not surprised that Rush Limbaugh should fulminate against the courts and judges who “allowed hearsay evidence” apparently unaware that it was the State Legislature of Florida which specifically provided that in the absence of any writings oral evidence could be considered. But we expected more of Ingraham.

Hannity put on a known quack and introduced him as a Nobel Prize “nominee”, you know, like with the Oscars? (A congressman “nominated” the quack. (A Republican no doubt, God help us.)) But we have to tune into Randi Rhodes Show to find out that the “doctor’s” evidence had been considered by the courts and exposed for the fraud that it was. No published studies. No peer review ---- well no peer review of any studies, but the fraud’s claims, his suspicious testimony has been reviewed by the medical and scientific community, and he has been shown to be a liar.

But we have to find out about this doctor imposter, (Dr. Hammesfahr by name (http://www.newshounds.us/2005/03/22/sean_hannity_misrepresents_doctor_in_schiavo_case.php )), about the CAT scan, about the rulings from courts that have reviewed this evidence for some 15 years from Randi Rhodes? How shameful. Not just a competitor but a liberal! To find out the facts we have to tune into a liberal? We used to turn to the conservatives to find out the truth! What a disgrace. How shameful.

And why? Because these small minded hypocrites feel it is their “religious” duty to lie to us. Beck and Hannity were forced by their callers to admit that they too feel that when a patient is pronounced dead they should be allowed to die. Ingraham and Limbaugh are so dishonest they would not discuss the real fundamental issue behind this instant case.

Weiner of course is insane. He was wildly recalling his brother’s murder in a “home” an “institution.” And again, surprise!, everyone who disagreed with him were all NAZIS. O’Reilly could not make up his mind, but he was concerned that tax dollars were being spent to keep Terri alive. (At least he is consistent. The others say they do not believe in medical care for the poor, however, when confronted with Terri they break down in emotionalism imagining themselves as the last defenders of the “culture of life.” Once again hypocrites hardly covers their dishonesty. Which is it? Do you believe in guaranteed medical care paid for by tax dollars, or not? (http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/business/11213910.htm ) Answer the question, or, or, we will pull your plug. (Turn off the radio.) They are so dishonest they will not say. Willful ignorance. Hundreds of patients a day face these very same issues. (http://www.xenos.org/ministries/crossroads/donal/pvs.htm#Note9#Note9 ) But the Hate Radio Host, the carnival barkers are so dishonest, they will not address even this obvious and mundane issue. This is why they are called hucksters. Examine the issues? It might interfere with their ratings.)

But the saddest case is Ingraham. Pitifully claiming to support the “culture of life” against her strawmen opponents: the “culture of death.” Really. Laura, where are your children? The biological clock is running. No adoption? Culture of life? Where is it? You have squandered your life. First and most obviously you are unprepared to layout the moral and ethical issues for your audience. You are too “livid.” For example, what about a statute that sets up the presumption that no one would want to be kept plugged in, on the air, after their brain has stopped working?

Lee Rogers was close to winning the prize for most pathetic. “Any person of conscience . . .” He actually said this. He knows how Mrs. Jack Swanson, Don Imus, Michael Weiner, Michael Krasney, he knows about all of them, how they have conspired, how they burglarized my rooms, followed me from job to job, . . . culture of life? Conscience? Hypocrites and liars.

Then in the next breath Rogers said he hoped he could “pull the plug” on one of the many doctors who disagreed with him and had determined that the patient had died years ago. But he has no sense of his gross dishonesty. His ego is such that even when he directly contradicts himself, he still thinks he is right!

Before I could not understand how they could use their influence to oppress me, to follow me from place to place, over all these years, and still make claims to honor and honesty. I thought it was just me. They were blind to their cruelty to me. But now with this issue we can see that this is how they are about everything. They are blind to their dishonesty, even seeing it as “religious” duty! This is the fat relentless ego on radio.

CAT Review
By Cerebrocrat (rewrite by Plinio Designori)
http://www.miami.edu/ethics/schiavo/CT%20scan.png

That a MRI would give a better structural picture of a Radio Talk Show Host’s brain does not at all mean that the existing CAT allows one, if you are sufficiently familiar with brains and brain images, to see how severely the brain in the pictured CAT scan is damaged. ( The MRI was not possible because of the electrodes implanted in the brain in a futile attempt to “stimulate” the damaged brain would interfere with the MRI.)

This single image shows a very severely damaged brain. The large “blue blobs” in the middle are ventricles, also present in healthy brains (you can see the two little dark crescent shapes in the brain on the right) that have expanded to such a large size because the overall brain volume is so low.

The cranial space that would have been filled by the “gray matter”, neurons, is now filled with cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). And the surrounding blue space is cerebrospinal fluid that is filling up space left behind after the necrotic brain tissue, which has been scavenged and removed by the body.

The white squiggly things are “white matter”, the connective tracts that have the loose uncoiled look about them, because, again, the “grey matter” which once compressed them is no longer there, so they are left to “float” loosely in CSF.

All of this, the gigantic ventricles, expanded white matter, and undifferentiated blue space in that scan all point to the same inescapable conclusion: massive loss of grey matter in the cerebral cortex. You don’t need an MRI to tell you that, it’s clearly visible in this devastatingly clear CAT scan.

It is true that given the poor resolution of this image, it’s possible that some cortical tissue has been spared. But that doesn’t alter our conclusion. Whatever wisps of cortex we might be missing in this image, (located as they are down at the base of the scull), are not enough to sustain behaviors that could differentiate the Radio Talk Show Host’s Brain from any other vertebrate.

All the neural equipment you need to do ocular following and emotional responses is subcortical. The whole of that portion of the brain needed to be a self-aware, to reason, to be what we mean when we say “human being” is cortical, and is here shown to be missing in a typical Radio Talk Show Host’s brain. And since I understand that this image was made some time ago, the present condition of the brain can only be worse.

There is no way any qualified doctor or scientist could look at this image and suggest that significant recovery of brain function is possible. The fact that we could have all this discussion on the subject is a triumph of politics over science, base pandering emotion and appeal to ignorance over reason. Tragic for Terri Schiavo, and really for us all.

From post by Cerebrocrat : Cerebocrat CV: I AM a recent behavioral neuroscience PhD, a research fellow in a neurophysiology lab at a major institution, and I took clinical neuroanatomy in the medical school of my graduate institution as part of my coursework; neurology rounds and clinical evaluations of CAT and MRI scans were part of the curriculum. In addition, the jewel in the crown of my graduate program was a research-dedicated MRI, which meant that many of my peers did imaging work and I had to sit through countless (zzzzzzz) departmental colloquia featuring functional brain imaging. So, no argument from me - I am not the most qualified person to evaluate Terri Schiavo’s status from one small CAT picture on the web; that would be someone who evaluates scans professionally (or at least, regularly). But part of the point of my post was that I don’t have to be - I know how brains work (I mean, up to a point, obviously), I know what healthy ones and sick ones look like, and I know what I’m looking at when I look at a brain image. Schiavo’s damage is so severe that it doesn’t take an *expert’s* eye, but merely an *educated* eye, to understand the basics of her status. That’s why I’m so amazed that her prognosis is being discussed as if it were controversial.

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