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Welcome to the USS Avenger Medical Division!


What do you think of when you think of Medicine? Going to the doctor, and staying healthy, right? In fiction, the Medical Division has its focus on the health and well-being of the crew, along with conducting research on alien life and on diseases and conditions that affect the various species known to the Federation and its allies.

In reality, the Avenger's Medical Division is all about being healthy, and learning about medicine and how it works. If you're interested in the human body, health and disease, and even ways that people have fun, Avenger Medical may be the place for you.

 

Avenger's Medical Division is divided into five Departments. They are:

Physical Medicine Functions from surgery to what was once referred to as "general practice" fall into this department. Doctors and technicians in Physical Medicine may also be found assisting in rescue operations, giving support to far-flung bases or colonies the ship may visit, and making sure the ship's crew stays healthy on a day-to-day basis. If you like general health and medical-related topics, this is the place.
Pathology Explores the causes and effects of diseases or conditions. Do you get curious about why, or how, people get sick, and how doctors can make them better? Pathology may be right up your alley.
Mental Health This is where, in TNG and its sister series, the Counselors are. Classic Trek didn't have that term, but the people were there anyway, all the way back to the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before." Psychologists and psychiatrists often deal with how people respond to stress and trauma, as well as just the normal stresses of day-to-day living. Do you like helping people feel better emotionally? Are you curious about how the mind works? It's a fascinating subject, and the Mental Health Department has members who are curious, too.
Nursing In fiction, these folks function in often-crucial "caregiver" roles, as well as assisting in the division's research efforts. Nursing is a very important part of the practice of medicine, and without nurses, the doctors would be nowhere. This department in the club honors those very important people, and is a place for members interested in what they do.
Recreation This department is far more than just "play." But play is important, too, as a way to relieve stress and just to let the mind relax a bit, which is important in staying healthy. In fiction, Recreation plays a critical role in maintaining the mental and physical health of the crew by providing ways for them to relax when not on duty. It also oversees celebrations of all types, from holiday parties to religious observances to firewatch gatherings. Parties, gaming, get-togethers, and just plain fun, too, are all part of what Recreation does.


So.... What's important to members who join the Medical Division? People, that's what! Medical is about people.


 

For further information, or if you have any questions, contact the Chief Medical Officer;

Commander Mike Balewitz
dymondust@optonline.net

 

 

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

This Blog To Be Restarted Soon!




Saturday, March 13, 2004

More misery to come after term paper season. April, instead of this month, shall be devoted to TB.

squeakout




Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Bonus the first!

Go to www.pbs.org/wnet/secrets/case_plague/index.html for a fun review of a semi-recent "Secrets of the Dead" episode on guess what! I never did catch this ep, but I saw one or two on other morbid mysteries and thoroughly enjoyed it. The PBS page has two freebie downloads - one of wallpaper (you have a choice between skulls and a cemetary-ish scene. the skulls are way better - official squeaky desktop material!) and a screensaver, which i haven't grabbed yet. THe preview of the saver want' all that thrilling, but if you like it, you know what to do!

Bonus the second!

The ratings rats have insisted I stick some pro-rat material in here, so i went foraging for sites on domesticated rats kept as pets:

-http://www.omsi.edu/visit/life/lab/ratcam/rats.cfm This is the OMSI (Oregon Museum of Science and Industry) RatCam's "All about rats" page. It's got rat 101 info, plus the cute pics. oh, and look at the baby rats on the bottom of the page! ^_^

-http://www.afrma.org/rmindex.htm The AFRMA (American Fancy Rat and Mouse Assoc.) keeps an info links page here, since domesticated rats and mice are so misunderstood. check it out...

-http://www.nfrs.org/ The National Fancy (think "pure-bred") Rat Society!


squeakout...the rats are happy now





Back to Death for Dummies (tm), now fortified with 9 essential bacteria! Send in 3 proofs of purchase (plus S&H) and be the first kid on your block to own a genuine imitation Grave Shroud! The machine-wrought embroidery is just like great-great-great-great-great-great-Gramma used to do!

Death for Dummies (tm), a useless part of this complete breakfast, er, weblog!

::squeak!::

Looking back, I think I should’ve put up a general overview of the Black Death –facts and figures, the aspects of culture it touched. Since “should’ves” are worthless, I shall do that with March’s featured disease, Tuberculosis!

On to the vileness!

3.) Plague and Public Health in Renaissance Europe
By:?? of ??
URL: http://www.iath.virginia.edu/osheim/plaguein.html

Firsthand accounts: www.iath.virginia.edu/osheim/marchione.html, /pistoia.html, /sercambi.html

RATing: 1.10 rats - one because it appears to be abandoned, and it’s got a crappy design, .5 because of what might've been, and another .5 cause of the accounts (see below)

Frelling boring to look at! There's something to be said for simplicity, but Squeaky needs pretty things. All-text has its charms, but the unbroken chunks of it are hard on the eyes. Someone present at the site creation just did not believe in paragraph breaks or indentation. I oughta set my grammar-school english teachers on ‘em. You can practically hear the rating rats keeling over from the flagrant vision-safety violations!

This is a forsaken page, folks. The Very first line under the title reads as follows:

“This project involves the creation of a hypertext collection of materials on the Impact of Bubonic Plague on Renaissance Society between the initial outbreak in 1348 and the mid-sixteenth century.”
And where is it? ::listens to the virtual wind whistling thru the corridors:: If anyone wants to do additional research or even try and contact the founders to find out, be my guest! Or we could let it remain a mystery.

The content, however, is an ever-so-slightly different story. If you can figure out how to get ‘round the archive-let (it’s not linked together, far as I can tell) you’ll find some firsthand accounts of the plague’s effects. These, although as poorly formatted as the intro page, are attention-worthy because they are the “voices from the past” that really enrich any historical study. They are dry in spots, thanks to the 14th century writers documentations of edicts and laws, but those were part and parcel of the era. I found them cool ‘cause It’s one thing to read facts and figures but it’s quite another to gain a mental image of the horror people went through. Anyone care to compare the terror and paranoia of, say, Florence in 1348 with America in 2004? Quite a few not-so-pretty parallels could be drawn between the cultures and politics, I’ll bet. Few things so fascinating as a culture afraid.






Wednesday, February 18, 2004

Seeing Double........


My Junior-Senior Moments have struck again and I gave y'all a double dose of the first plague post. hmm. I remember looking there and thinking "Gee, why ain't my entry showing? I'll do it again in case it didn't go thru" Well it did. Ah, well - a little extra pestilence won't hurt you any more than the original dose! Ah, morbid humor....moving on.

Flea for Two and Two for Flea: A somewhat ok site what left me lukewarm.

2.) The Black Death 1347-1350

By: Melissa Loftus, Alex Sherman, Ashley Quan, Mieko Griffin (then-students at the Thornton Jr. High School in Fremont, California) Stop snickering, those kids (at least I hope they are) did a lovely job for seventh graders!

URL: (plague page) http://www.insecta-inspecta.com/fleas/bdeath/index.html

RATing: judging from a college-kid standpoint, I'd give it 2.30 rats for an interesting point here or there, as well as doing their homework, but no more. However, this aint' so bad when you think of the age groups it's aimed at, so it would get more if I was reviewing this for kiddies. It's sort of a kids r us for budding entomologists.

Ok, for us old-fart types, this ain't much. Rather garish design on the plague pages (really dark background + bright red text!) and overlarge fonts - how-e-ver....big fonts for little eyes, so I'll over look that bit. But, it *is* was easy to navigate! Kinds of like a pestilent Teletubbie land. Wait! Let's ride that train of thought: MorbidTubbies, Plague Tubbies, The Seven Deadly Tubbies. Tubbies of the Niiiiight! ooooh......

Back on target: It's bug-biased, naturally, including some details on the Oriental Rat Fleas actually responsible for transmission. I always thought the fleas were overlooked in favor of the rats, since the squeakies do have a bad reputation, so I was rather glad to come across a resource (however small) devoted to fleas! (gee, how often do i say that?!)

Aside from the creepy-crawly and it's lifestyle, there's not too much. The main page states that the plague in question started in 1347 - I always thought it was 1348, but that seems a small matter enough - exact dates in a topic like this are hard to pin down. The "Transmission" page is rather informative if one is unclear on how the disease spread from fleas to humans (it's not pleasant) - there's a semi-flowchart-looking thingy that explains it all. And succinctly, too. The three varieties of the plague (bubonic, septicemic, and pneumonic are briefly touched upon in respect to how they spread (it is, after all, the transmission page). This, too is not pretty, but that's death!

On the "Efforts to Stop the Plague" page, there's a rather long quotation detailing some of the less-than-effective remedies that folks back then used to prevent the spread of sickness: incense, perfume, ringing of bells and firing of cannons. I had but one minor problem - the lack of (even simple) emphasis on relativism. It's never too early to teach young'uns the value of changing perspectives. For instance, a little aside put in that would explain how, even tho firing cannons and "spritzing" perfume sounds silly to us when it comes to preventing disease, but it made perfect sense to those people in their world, because they had a different point of view. I *am* a stickler for such things.

The "Effect on Music and Art" page may as well have not been bothered with, since there's little more then a couple sentences and two images. But, with a name like "insecta inspecta", are they really caring about art? The changes that altered the economy are summed up in a paragraph on the (surprise!) "Changes in the Economy" page, which I found ok - show the tykes how the power balance shifted and how different classes were affected.

All in all ok for a *total* newbie or a gradeschooler interested in such nasty topics (I was!)

Next Time, the Site That Hardly Was.






Saturday, February 14, 2004

Hello and Welcome to the very first installment of "Death for Dummies" This month's focus The Bubonic Plague!

February has such a reputation for flowers and candy and romance. I thought it could use a few festering sores and a shroud, because I just think like that. This particular plague has been a longtime interest of mine, and I'm subjecting you to it because I can - aren't weblogs a wonderful thing? There was hardly an aspect of Medieval/Renaissance life that the Black Death didn't touch - the economy, society, religion, politics, and (my favorite) art! Yes, instead of engravings and sculptures depicting hale 'n' hearty folks, we now had skeletons wrapped in shrouds boogie-ing around with mortals! We had rotting corpses carved atop sarcophagus covers (or whatever they were called)! Oh, it's heaven for the morbidly minded art fiend!

So, since this completely non-academic, utterly pointless, and long overdue exercise, I shall trudge blithely on with it. Bear in mind, I'm typing this while I watch The Simpsons, so if there's a mistyped URL, tell me about it....

1.) HWC, The Black Death
By Dr. E. L. Skip Knox of Boise State University
URL: http://history.boisestate.edu/westciv/plague/01.htm
RATing: 3.75 plague rats for accessibility and info presentation, but if this was a beauty contest, it'd luck out

The Rats have it - this is a good stop for research if you need factoid-style verbiage. It's set up rather like notes for a presentation, so it's not all that engaging. Dr. Knox is (or at least was at the time of making this page...could still be...) an adjunct history professor at Boise State U with a couple of impressive degrees: an M.A. in Medieval European history and Ph.D. in the history of Early Modern Europe. Sweet. And it assures that he knew what he was talking about. The site is easy to navigate, offering buttons and a "table of contents". It's well balanced! Dr. Knox views the plague as a "convenient divider" between the middle and late Medieval ages. (Yes, they were more than simply the Dark Ages!) This "divider" is a notion I personally like, and haven't really seen put forth anywhere else so far. When epochs change, there's oodles of turmoil (think the 1960s), and the Plague was just the thing to usher a new age in. Knox points out, however, that "the Black Death did not cause the crisis" - we cant' blame the plague for the "tone of crisis" that colored the late Middle Ages - makes sense to me! He puts forth an interesting hypothesis on the cause of the first plague outbreak (in early 14th century China) on the "Origins of the Plague" page - go check it out yourself!

Aside from that, there is a nice page devoted specially to the art of the plague era, which I find spiffy - spiffy as in "wow, he actually took the time to detail this!". The origin of the "danse macabre" motif is given in the art page (something which I hadn't previouly known myself!) I don't' want to give it away, so go have a look. All in all pretty good, but nothing fun to look at. Might be a good stepping stone for dabblers that would like to research more thoroughly.

Next week, "Flea for two and two for flea"!

-squeakout




Tuesday, February 10, 2004

Hello and Welcome to the very first installment of "Death for Dummies" This month's focus The Bubonic Plague!

February has such a reputation for flowers and candy and romance. I thought it could use a few festering sores and a shroud, because I just think like that. This particular plague has been a longtime interest of mine, and I'm subjecting you to it because I can - aren't weblogs a wonderful thing? There was hardly an aspect of Medieval/Renaissance life that the Black Death didn't touch - the economy, society, religion, politics, and (my favorite) art! Yes, instead of engravings and sculptures depicting hale 'n' hearty folks, we now had skeletons wrapped in shrouds boogie-ing around with mortals! We had rotting corpses carved atop sarcophagus covers (or whatever they were called)! Oh, it's heaven for the morbidly minded art fiend!

So, since this completely non-academic, utterly pointless, and long overdue exercise, I shall trudge blithely on with it. Bear in mind, I'm typing this while I watch The Simpsons, so if there's a mistyped URL, tell me about it....

1.) HWC, The Black Death
By Dr. E. L. Skip Knox of Boise State University
URL: http://history.boisestate.edu/westciv/plague/01.htm
RATing: 3.75 plague rats for accessibility and info presentation, but if this was a beauty contest, it'd luck out

The Rats have it - this is a good stop for research if you need factoid-style verbiage. It's set up rather like notes for a presentation, so it's not all that engaging. Dr. Knox is (or at least was at the time of making this page...could still be...) an adjunct history professor at Boise State U with a couple of impressive degrees: an M.A. in Medieval European history and Ph.D. in the history of Early Modern Europe. Sweet. And it assures that he knew what he was talking about. The site is easy to navigate, offering buttons and a "table of contents". It's well balanced! Dr. Knox views the plague as a "convenient divider" between the middle and late Medieval ages. (Yes, they were more than simply the Dark Ages!) This "divider" is a notion I personally like, and haven't really seen put forth anywhere else so far. When epochs change, there's oodles of turmoil (think the 1960s), and the Plague was just the thing to usher a new age in. Knox points out, however, that "the Black Death did not cause the crisis" - we cant' blame the plague for the "tone of crisis" that colored the late Middle Ages - makes sense to me! He puts forth an interesting hypothesis on the cause of the first plague outbreak (in early 14th century China) on the "Origins of the Plague" page - go check it out yourself!

Aside from that, there is a nice page devoted specially to the art of the plague era, which I find spiffy - spiffy as in "wow, he actually took the time to detail this!". The origin of the "danse macabre" motif is given in the art page (something which I hadn't previouly known myself!) I don't' want to give it away, so go have a look. All in all pretty good, but nothing fun to look at. Might be a good stepping stone for dabblers that would like to research more thoroughly.

Next week, "Flea for two and two for flea"!

-squeakout




Monday, January 26, 2004

Wait for it......................

First round o' reviews is done, but you'll see it in February. The first week of the month- all the better to keep track!



squeakout