28 weeks later

Saw the movie a few days ago, and it's a great zombie flick. It also is a shining example of why, if you leave things up to the Army, you'll just end up with the world being destroyed. Consider this a spoiler alert as well as plot elements are about to be discussed below.

So, like I said before, this movie really is fantastic. I love it. It's hard to go wrong with zombies anyway. However, as I said before, I did note the whole shebang was entirely the fault of the Army, which is nothing new :) I suppose that's what you get for not using devildogs.

Mistake #1 - Army security lets 2 children escape the safe zone. Had the children not escaped, the carrier mom would probably not have been found (or if she had, an entirely different outcome). Its not as if the kids were super pirate ninjas either.

Mistake #2 - Once carrier mom is discovered to be a carrier, and thus highly dangerous as she can infect anyone, she is not placed under armed guard. She's just simply left tied down in a locked room. A couple of marines standing post, dad would have been turned away, or shot, when he tried to get into the room. No dad, means no infection, since they were about to kill her anyway. Which leads to a submistake - mom should have been terminated immediately upon finding out she was infected, or put into a super sterile, highly secured set of rooms (prison would be perfect) until a cure / vaccine for the virus could be found.

Mistake #3 - Army sniper decides *not* to shoot the little boy when he's given a direct order to shoot everyone on the ground to stop the infection. Thanks to Full Metal Jacket, we know that Marines have known the secret to shooting women and children for a long time when need be. Since the sniper didn't shoot the boy, and the boy - like mom - has genes to be a carrier, the boy eventually makes it out of England and to France, carrying the virus. France subsequently is infected and now the crap has really hit the fan. Yeah it might be a bit cruel in the short term, but its better than having 6 billion zombies running around the face of the planet.

Mistake #4 - Army Apache pilots have miserable aiming when shooting at the get away car. Just when hope is lost, they are given another, near perfect chance to stop the future spread of the infection. Yet, they are unable to hit a moving vehicle. As such, the children make it to the extraction point alive, and kill France (and the world to follow for certain).

Mistake #5 - Army helo pilot ignores his orders to not pick anyone up, lands in the standium, and decides to take the two kids out of England, across the channel,and to France. By this point in time, the boy is a carrier, having just recieved the virus from zombie dad. The world could have been saved yet again, but it seems we are all doomed now.

And that's my rant :) Of course, if you have a good zombie movie, you obviously have to have an escalation that leads to lots and lots of zombies. Hopefully there will be a 3rd installment to the series, and maybe it will redeem the U.S. Army in terms of what actions they might take.

Noooo!

My secret love, Miss Snark will be no more! I just headed over there for my semi weekly dose of fun, and she's retiring. And seeing how this isn't April 1st, it would seem to be the serious sort of post.

Sigh.

Marker!

This post is more of a marker than anything. I gave communion to a pt I've been seeing for a week and a half now. It was his first in a long, long time. It was my first (giving) ever. You'd think after nearly two years of doing this work I would have by now, but nope. Mostly because we have people that come in and do it daily, and then partly because my particular demoniation doesn't like you to do it unless fully ordained. I'll manage to sleep I'm sure.

Terminal Patients and the not so quite dead yet

This post is sort of piggy backing on the previous. Let's assume there is no family - just to keep them out of the picture.

Where exactly does the pt. get to say "No" to life saving treatment, and when is the line crossed when the hospital gets to say "Too bad, we've taken over."

For example, we have something called a DNR, and as far as I know, everyone can fill them out anywhere in the US. A DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) basically states if your heart stops beating, or you stop breathing, the hospital will not do anything like CPR, paddles, vent, etc. and as such, you will die shortly (Tho technically, if your heart stops, you are legally dead). Most (again, never all) people say you can fill out a DNR w/o any troubles.

Most would say you can refuse treatment if and when terminal in order to have quality instead of possible quantity of days. Metastatic, end stage cancer comes to mind and is a good example.

But how far down the tree can you go? What if moden medicine can treat it? Let's say you are diagnosed with an active tuberculosis (you can simply carry it around, and thus not have an "actice" infection). Let's also assume you won't be exposing your self to others in order to take out another factor. Do you have the right to refuse treatment that in all probability will lead to your death & where modern medicine can save your life?

I don't have a hard opinion on this, but its something to think about.

Here's one to ponder

Most (it's never all) people in the medical community feel that it's ok to withdrawl life support from a person that is terminal, especially if the person is in a vegitative state. Many (slightly less than the previous veg state) feel that its ok to stop active treatment if the prognosis is terminal and the patient says "I don't want to be treated anymore". And by ok, I mean morally acceptable.

So I got into a bit of a discussion the other day with some peers about the subject. Just how far does this extend? Is it ok for a person to say "I dont want any more treatment" no matter what the illness is, even if it eventually leads to a pretty much sure demise? Is it ok for the pt. to make such a decision without the input of friends/family? Or even if it the pt. does consult them, and they say "we want you to be treated" is it morally acceptable for the pt. to say "I'm stopping anyway. I can't/don't want to do this." Who is being selfish in such a case? The pt for ignoring any one else, or the others who aren't respecting what the pt. desires?

Merriam Webster slacking?

So I wanted a very accurate definition for a pet project I'm writing, and looked up the very accurate definition of "syllable" which I found right here. If readers will kindly look at the first definition in the list, specifically the first part: "a unit of spoken language that is next bigger than a speech sound and consists of one or more vowel sounds alone or of a syllabic consonant alone or of either with one or more consonant sounds preceding or following" (emphasis mine)

I stared at it a bit dumbfounded the first time I saw it. Surely I must be reading something wrong. I even dumbed it down for my dumbfoundedness just to test how awful it was. "a dog that is next larger than a dog..." I even called in the grammatical guru of the household, who likewise found it at the very best, an atrociously constructed bit of phrasing.

Maybe it just me (or us at this point) but reference material, especially reference material on the subject of words and things, should be impeccable in the realm of - well - words and things.

I'm a virus!

I seem to have infected a couple others with Universal Salvation / Reconciliation. The weird - and maybe it's not that odd - way this process works (and did with me) is just playing a little bit of pretend.

As a side, pertinent note, I've been with a few seperate groups of people, all of different background, all talking about studying Scripture in one way or another. I didn't offer any opinion either way as I was just observing, but each group stated the premise of "letting Scripture interpt Scripture" - which is always a good start, in theory at least. Its a lot easier said then done because we all bring our own agenda and views.

So, back to the topic. When I first started this endeavor, I tried to play pretend. And when I posed the question to my 2 new infected people, I got them to play pretend too. "Let's just pretend for a moment, we don't think there's a "hell" in the sense we think of it just yet. And let's play pretend that we don't think of God not saving only some. We can call it a hypothesis if we want." Once I/we've agreed to that, the challenge is then to scriptural and historical support for the hypothesis.

I'll admit it was a little odd at first, and rather challenging at times to read a bit of Scripture and have to say "This is only what it says. Nothing more, nothing less."

On the same overall subject, I've sent off some inquiries for input on the usage of aionas/aionon. I'm not expecting anything earth shattering, but since my Greek is not nearly as strong as those I'm inquiring, I figure its at the very least, good practice.