Rural Rounds

Tonight I went to an independent film theater here in my town called Ragtag Cinema-Cafe. Me and my roommates and two other friends watched George Clooney's Good Night, and Good Luck It was quite entertaining, and a good break from studying (which I have done plenty of lately and is cause for the lack of updates; tests are now only two weeks away). It is about CBS reporter Edward Murrow's criticism of Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950's for his methods of hunting communists. The result of the historical confrontation was Senator McCarthy being investigated by the Senate. I think the film is great and I highly recommend it. I think oftentimes people in power can go on such "witch-hunts", looking for opposition or attempting to find opposition in order to create a scare, and help to keep themselves in power. Sometimes it's manipulative, but what if it wasn't? What if the person in power themselves were convinced there was a danger? What if evidence did point t...

It’s been more than a week, and I think an update is due. Plus, I can give updates on my own status with my heart murmur, having seen the doctor this past Friday. The only thing that has kept me from updating until now is simply laziness (in other words, I was far too busy studying/eating/cleaning/sleeping to actually relax and write). This past Friday I went to the Student Health Center to see my doctor about the previously mentioned murmur recently discovered. My doctor presumed it was most likely an innocent flow murmur, which occurs if a heart valve doesn’t close all the way or in time when the heart beats, allowing blood to flow back the opposite way, and the blood causes turbulence heard as noise. If you’ve ever heard turbulent water flowing over and through rocks and back upstream in eddies in a river, you should get the idea of what a murmur is. It was recommended that I have an echocardiography done, or an ultrasound picture of my heart. This would allow us to see exactly how ...