Brobdingnagian Lumberhulks

Throughout my life, I generally have felt that there is no way to meaningfully combat the government or special interest groups like big tobacco, big pharma, big oil, etc. This is because humans are inherently flawed and avaricious. Those who desire to wield power should never be allowed to possess it. Yet they do, and have unlimited resources and finances to pursue whatever ends they choose. And so my mentality has been to carve out a life, keep my head down, and not allow their eyes to fall upon me.

But with this issue, I feel energy coursing through me to do something about it. I was never able to quit smoking, not with any of the available replacements. Not with the gum, the patch, or hypnosis. Not with auricular therapy, cold turkey, or Chantix. Many of you no doubt feel the same. Some of you may even be smoking and wondering what in the hell the electronic cigarette is. With this device I have not smoked in over a month and it was not even difficult. I can already breathe better and I feel better than I have in quite some time. I am secure in the knowledge that propylene glycol was deemed safe in the 40′s and that I am no longer inhaling thousands of carcinogens present in regular cigarettes.

Unfortunately, sales of various types of electronic cigarette, along with the “juice” that fuels it – a mixture of propylene glycol and/or vegetable glycerin, flavoring, and nicotine have cut into the profit margin of pharmaceutical companies like Pfizer, who market Chantix, tobacco companies who want you to buy their cigarettes, and all manner of companies who sell the nicotine patch, lozenge, and gum. What does this mean for the consumer?

It means that this success must be cut short. How is this being done? Surely, you reason, if people were able to stop smoking by using a safe alternative, no one would block their progress. You would reason incorrectly, then, because the World Health Organization and the FDA are currently battling a leading manufacturer of ecigs in court to outright ban the right to use the electronic cigarette, or to at least regulate it under strict guidelines.

Either way, the ex-smoker loses. Australia and Canada have already banned them. Oregon has banned them. California would have, but Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill. The American Lung Association has released statements that ex-smokers who have quit with the e-cig (a.k.a. personal vaporizer) should go back to smoking. Pfizer contributes millions to the ALA each year. Coincidence?

The arguments are ridiculous. One is based on a flawed study done by the FDA where they found diethylene glycol (a much different molecule than propylene glycol) in one batch of cartridges from China. The health risks are unknown, they say, but potentially horribly dangerous. Interestingly, propylene glycol is in tobacco. The mentality seems to be that smokers should stick with what they know kills them rather than use something that may or may not be dangerous. The other argument is that teenagers will get addicted because there are flavors like grape, bubble gum, and watermelon. And yet there is only data to support that teenagers are still buying regular cigarettes.

One can only assume that these entities, like the FDA and ALA, are not in place to protect citizens, but to profit from them. If heath was their primary concern, they would wholly embrace any possibility which could save lives and meaningfully reduce health care cost from lung disease, heart disease, and cancer.

Until one begins researching all the facts, this essay might seem to be moving far, far to the left, amidst the murky waters of conspiracy theory.

If you smoke, look at the alternative. I’m glad I did. If you already use a personal vaporizer (PV), educate others. If you are not a smoker, think about the benefits for you. Loved ones who smoke can move to a safe alternative. “Vaping” does not smell and will not bother you. The taxes you pay will no longer go towards the multi-trillion dollar industry that funds treating diseases brought on by cigarettes.

Below I have placed some invaluable resources.

General Resources:

• CASAA.org – The Consumer Advocates for Smoke-Free Alternatives Association
  A wonderful source of information regarding the actions being taken for and against the electronic cigarette.
• Tests for the Chronic Toxicity of Propylene Glycol and Triethylene Glycol on Monkey and Rats by Vapor Inhalation and Oral Administration – A research study conducted in the 1940s, in which they placed one group in air heavily concentrated with propylene glycol and one in regular room air.
• Summary of Results – Various research results regarding e-cigarettes and propylene glycol
• E-Cigarette Forum – An e-cigarette forum filled with useful information and populated with experienced, mature users.

 
Reputable Suppliers:

• Vapor4Life – Makers of the VaporKing. They have many delicious juices and fairly nice cartomizers.
• VaporNine – Wonderful “turbo” cartomizers. Good juice.
• Tasty Vapor – Awesome juice. Custom flavors you design.
• NHaler – Makers of the Xhaler, a powerful ecigarette that can run at 6volts!

You constantly hear arguments that NPs are destroying medicine. And doctors will blatantly flaunt the idea that they are the real experts on patient care. Even intelligent doctors, at times, will use words like “supervision.” It is all very tiring.

I do not even bother to compare NPs and MDs. Their models differ. One is not better than the other. The schooling – minus the residency – is nearly equivalent in terms of time spent. The problem is that NPs don’t get a long enough residency. If you take a NP and a MD, both with 20 years clinical experience, the MD does not know more than the NP. Sure, he had a few extra classes 20 years ago – which he does not remember – but that’s about it.

NPs are not trying to steal MD meal tickets, they are attempting to better serve patients. Research has shown irrefutable proof that patient satisfaction and outcomes are just as high, if not higher in certain cases, when being treated by a NP rather than a MD. Some of this data is no doubt skewed because many MDs are so overwhelmed with patient loads that they simply cannot spend the time to provide competent care, but I see that as the fault of the MD for taking on too much.

Finally, I laughed when I read comments on various web sites about “once there was a gold standard – the physician.” That was no doubt true. Unfortunately, it’s not NPs that tarnished that reputation. It’s the fact that nearly 60% of practicing MDs got their degrees in unknown schools in Pakistan, India, or China. Then they did a residency in the U.S. These “physicians” can barely speak English, and if they provide good patient care, the patient certainly doesn’t know it. Next you have the American MDs who went to some Caribbean University for a 6 year medical degree. MDs straight out of reputable schools like Duke or Harvard or Washington University are a rarity these days.

Very soon, the idea that NPs are somehow “less” than MDs will change. A doctor is any learned person with an advanced degree such as a Phd, DNP, etc., and MDs are simply doctors of medicine. Eventually, when the Board of Healing Arts collapses in its ridiculous battles to slow NP progress, only patients will benefit. And NPs will no longer be asked, “Damn, you spent more time in school than a doctor. Why didn’t you go to med school?”

The answer will be obvious.

A friend of ours (a.k.a. “White Gold”) directed us to this excellent poster. You should print it out and hang it on your wall. Study it closely, particularly you religious folk or those who believe Pi is rational. Despite these precautions, whoever makes first contact will doom the human species. The reason for our demise will be that two rednecks with a shotgun, a school of jellyfish, and a few ornery camels will act hastily.

Our time machine – see Automated Customer Service Will Be Destroyed – shows us the following will occur unless there is an intervention:

“Hey, Dale, what’s that there thing?” the skinny man in the camouflage asked, then belched loudly and farted. His beady eyes were set high on an enormous skull shaped like a basketball, its baldness offset by a wild beard. He took a swig of his Budweiser, the foam coating his red bristles, and pointed vaguely at the writhing mass of tentacles which was sliding towards them.

Dale’s belly hung over his faded jeans so far that if he had been pant-less, his genitals would have been safely hidden. A filthy umbilicus poked out from beneath a mat of curly black hair. He snorted, spit, and stopped leaning on the old Ford they’d brought out tonight. “Damned if I know. Ugly fucker, though.”

The pile of tentacles was perhaps fifteen feet tall and was covered with a purplish, gelatinous substance which gave off an incandescent light. It stopped twenty feet from them and waved its tentacles. Dale and basketball-head stared at it with disgust. It sat there, nonchalantly wriggling its tentacles. After twenty minutes, it began bouncing up and down, still not moving towards them or showing any sign of aggression.

The tentacle beast stopped bouncing and waved first one, then two, then three tentacles in the air. Rick pulled a fully automatic combat shotgun he’d stolen from his days as a Marine from the back of the truck. The creature now wiggled four, five, then six tentacles in the air, paused momentarily, and started again at one. Dale leveled the matte black firearm at it.

Basketball-head threw down his beer and screamed, “Shoot the fucker, Dale! Blow that bitch back to Eye-Rack!”

Dale’s bellow of “Yeeeee Haw!” was drowned out by the thunderous report of his shotgun, which blew off eight tentacles and sent glowing slime into the air. The creature made a noise like a deep sigh and tried to move backwards, feebly dragging itself by the stubs of its tentacles. Dale’s second shot blew the thing in half. The two humans whooped and slapped each other on the back. They drank beer and Old Crow around what was left of the mass of tentacles until they were quite drunk. They sang patriotic war songs interposed with “Hooah!”

Unbeknownst to them, a gigantic spaceship, floating far enough outside of Earth’s orbit to be undetectable to any human satellite, grimly watched the festivities. The avatar they’d sent had been crafted to resemble one of the millions of aquatic creatures they’d studied, one of many they had dispersed about the planet to make contact. By some clerical error which would no doubt end in demotion for the guilty party, the region’s marine avatar had been placed on land and the region’s land avatar had been placed deep in the ocean. Both had been met with swift and brutal violence. On land, two of the bipeds had fired a projectile weapon so crude Xrnlgr’mth had not at first recognized it as an implement of destruction. Exactly 345 leagues within the ocean, several thousand invertebrates had quickly descended on the biped they had accidentally submerged, sucking at the synthetic polymer meant to resemble flesh.

Further research would normally be required. One might hypothesize from the mistake that the two factions, the invertebrates and the bipeds, were at war. Had they sent the avatars to the correct locations, perhaps the response would have been entirely different. However, even the desert avatar with its yellowed teeth and large humped back, had not fared much better. Several of its kin had trampled and spit upon it within minutes. As the planet was classified in the holo-data as obscure at best and trivial at worst, Xrnlgr’mth did not think he would be demoted or – Universe forbid – rezzed if he streamlined the research.

He projected “Permanent Stage 1 – Violent – Unthinking – Irredeemable” to the holo-data, classifying the small planet as Tier 1, the slight better of space debris. This move would save him much work and his superiors would not notice the omission. After all, at best the inhabitants might be Stage 1.1, and based on their reactions, would not reach Stage 2 for millenia, if ever. He projected “Sanitize – Planet 2134.23.”

Below, Dale and Basketball-head were dancing about the tentacled creature’s remains, which by this point they’d tossed onto their newly made campfire. The gelatinous limbs cracked, popped, and blackened in the fire. The rednecks hollered and told lewd jokes and were quite pleased with themselves. The jellyfish in the ocean had suctioned themselves to the human avatar and were in the process of raising the one who had delivered the final sting as their new leader. They quivered with pleasure and excitement. The food would last for months. Four camels stood about the corpse of the desert avatar, coating it with their acrid urine.

At this moment time stopped for Earth’s inhabitants because it was vaporized. The planet simply ceased to exist. Well, that is not quite true. The matter of the Earth was superheated within a nanosecond, resulting in a mote of sand floating aimlessly about the galaxy. The benefit, though, was that Earth’s moon floated away, finally free, thanks to Dale, Basketball-head, a school of enthusiastic jellyfish, and several grumpy camels.

What We Are Doing About It:
Brobdingnagian Lumberhulks are working on eliminating the aggressive response in all species. With humans, this requires a large amount of modified THC. The added benzene ring does not allow one’s motivation to be affected, and is therefore palatable to all. Furthermore, we are educating others, with the help of this poster, on the proper means of responding to first contact. B.L. are currently developing methods for the other species.

The poster: