#robbins patho

[alfalfaaarya]

19.02.2024// Monday

Today was good.

microbiology lecture was interesting, we learnt about Complement ( antigen antibody complement)

Surgery clinics have started and we are just having lectures this week on history taking and special symptoms so it's chill , the teachers are nice.

Patho lecture was boring af.

Patho practicals were okay

I came home and had snacks and started studying

Studied Patho: Cell adaptations -

Hyperteophy

Hylerplasia

Atrophy

Metaplasia

their def, moa, and eg

Went for a run , honestly it feels amazing. From not being able to run for even 40 sec straight to running for 5 mins without stopping, it def sounds less, but for me it's a really big thing cause I'm finally making actual effort to do some physical activity with the little time I get .

Now I'll probably do some micro reading of what was taught today .

Tata

[shiningwizard]

Dragonslayer (Matthew Robbins, 1981)

The first actual dragon i've come across during dragon month. And, man, everything i'd want from one. All composites, from huge talon models, to puppetry, to green screen, to Ray Harryhausen-style stopmotion. Palpable effort and experimentation through limitation (though a Disney/Paramount-funded and ILM-executed limitation). The story, action, humour, pathos, world etc. is everything it should be for this kind of earnest fantasy movie. Maybe the pinnacle. Above and beyond what i assumed were (Willow, Legend, Ladyhawke). Really impressed. Shot in Snowdonia, which is another plus.

[amcsociety]

Bard Theatre's rendition of Shakespeare's 'Much Ado About Nothing' takes us on a captivating journey to 1950's Hollywood, where the glamour of Messina, a summer villa, becomes the stage for a romantic comedy that mirrors the dazzling world of starlets, crooners, and political elites. Set against the backdrop of a venerable entertainer's prestigious award celebration, director Thia Thompson brings forth a delightful adaptation that captures the essence of Shakespeare's classic, with a Hollywood twist.

The stellar cast, led by the charismatic Erica Flor as Beatrice and the charming Ryan Golding as Benedick, delivers performances that seamlessly blend the wit and humor of the original play with the glitz and charm of Golden Age Hollywood. The chemistry between Flor and Golding is electric, bringing to life the banter and romance between their characters in this glamorous setting.

Chloe’s Moissis shines as the enchanting Hero, while Jonah Robbins portrays the dashing Claudio with a mix of vulnerability and passion. John-Thomas Hanson as Leonato anchors the ensemble with gravitas, and Sherman Christensen's portrayal of Don Pedro adds an extra layer of sophistication to the production.

Frances Domingos, as both Don John and Verges, brings a captivating dual performance, adding depth to the intrigue that unfolds. Polina Litvak, in the role of Dogberry, provides comedic relief with impeccable timing, and the supporting cast enhances the overall theatrical experience.

Under the direction of Thia Thompson, the play unfolds with seamless choreography by Sherman Christensen, creating a visually stunning and emotionally resonant experience. The 1950s Hollywood setting is not just a backdrop but an integral part of the narrative, enhancing the timeless themes of love, deception, and redemption.

Bard Theatre, a new troupe in San Francisco, makes a bold statement with this production, showcasing a commitment to innovative interpretations of classic works. The Victoria Theatre provides an intimate and immersive setting, allowing the audience to be transported into the glitzy world of Messina.

'Much Ado About Nothing' at Bard Theatre is not just a play; it's a celebration of Shakespeare's enduring brilliance, skillfully brought to life in a setting that adds a touch of cinematic magic. The performances, direction, and choreography culminate in a must-see production that captivates from the first act to the grand Hollywood ending. Catch this theatrical gem at the Victoria Theatre until Nov 12."

"Much Ado About Nothing" by William Shakespeare is a delightful comedic play that explores the complexities of love, deception, and mistaken identity. Set in the sunny town of Messina, the narrative unfolds with the return of soldiers Don Pedro, Claudio, and Benedick from a victorious war. The central characters, Beatrice and Benedick, engage in a battle of wits and a dance of denial, while their friends Claudio and Hero navigate the rocky road to love. The play is characterized by its sharp wit, intricate plot twists, and a masterful blend of humor and pathos.

The plot kicks into motion as the soldiers arrive at the estate of Leonato, the Governor of Messina. Leonato welcomes them with open arms, setting the stage for a series of events that will intertwine the fates of the main characters. The atmosphere is charged with the excitement of love and celebration, a perfect canvas for Shakespeare's exploration of human relationships.

One of the central motifs of the play is the contrast between two couples: the witty and independent Beatrice and Benedick and the sweet, naive Hero and Claudio. The verbal sparring between Beatrice and Benedick is a highlight, showcasing Shakespeare's gift for wordplay. Both characters are determinedly single, dismissing the idea of love and marriage. However, their friends conspire to bring them together, creating an intricate web of deception.

Claudio, smitten by Hero's beauty, quickly falls in love and seeks the help of his friends, Don Pedro and Benedick, to woo her. The stage is set for a joyful union, but the conniving Don John, Don Pedro's illegitimate brother, has other plans. Don John plots to undermine the budding romance, sowing seeds of doubt and deception that will have far-reaching consequences.

The pinnacle of the deception occurs during the masquerade ball. Disguised as others, characters engage in a dance of mistaken identities, leading to a series of miscommunications and misunderstandings. Claudio, manipulated by Don John's schemes, erroneously believes he witnesses Hero's infidelity, resulting in a public humiliation of the innocent bride-to-be. This dramatic turn of events forms the emotional core of the play, introducing a darker undertone to the otherwise lighthearted comedy.

The play's second half shifts from mirthful banter to somber reflection as Hero is wrongly accused of infidelity. The fallout from the accusation creates a stark contrast to the earlier scenes of revelry. Hero's innocence is eventually proven, but not before the characters and the audience are taken on an emotional rollercoaster.

Central to the resolution is the bumbling constable Dogberry and his watchmen, whose comic ineptitude unwittingly unravels the truth behind the malicious plot against Hero. Dogberry's malapropisms and comedic antics provide a refreshing counterpoint to the play's more serious themes. Through Dogberry's unintentional detective work, the truth is revealed, paving the way for redemption and reconciliation.

www.bardtheatresf.com

The play concludes with a series of marriages that restore order and happiness. Hero's innocence is proven, and Claudio is given the chance to redeem himself by marrying her. Meanwhile, Beatrice and Benedick, whose witty repartee has entertained and enamored the audience throughout the play, finally admit their love for each other. These unions mark the resolution of the play's romantic entanglements, and the characters, having weathered the storms of deception and heartbreak, can finally revel in the joy of true love.

"Much Ado About Nothing" is a testament to Shakespeare's ability to navigate the complexities of human relationships with wit and insight. The play's exploration of love's triumph over deception, the consequences of mistaken identity, and the comedic interplay of its characters make it a timeless classic. The rich tapestry of humor, romance, and drama ensures that "Much Ado About Nothing" continues to captivate audiences across centuries, reminding us that love, laughter, and the occasional bit of mischief are universal experiences that transcend time and place. Complete cast are Erica Flor as Beatrice, Ryan Golding as Benedick, Chloe’s Moissis as Hero, Jonah Robbins as Claudio, John-Thomas Hanson as Leonato, Sherman Christensen as Don Pedro, Frances Domingos as Don John/Verges, Polina Litvak as Dogberry, Julie Lamb as Margaret/Sexton, George Alexander K. as Conrade/Friar, Cameron Langill as Borachio, David Klein as Antonio, and Fiof Gallagher as Messenger/Seacole.

[evilhorse]

He may be an android—a perfectly simulated human imitation—but the Torch is in love with Jacqueline!

[a-young-doctors-journey]

I’ve been inspired by @optomstudies to share this picture of my digital notes. We have a massive final exam in pathology and there’s just no way I can handwrite all these highlighted parts from Robbins, so I’ve started to type notes up into this simple template header I made. It’s really basic (only has the topic #, title, and a little area for a summary for when I’m reviewing, so I can write the key ideas) but this way I don’t have to keep redoing the font/style for each new topic. 

[If anyone’s interested, I’ve shared the template with you guys here, but it’s really very basic, so don’t get your hopes up.]

[trip-downtheriverstyx]

Complications || Helle

They were in the hospital. 

Belle was extremely upset with him. 

Hades, however, was staying calm. He had arrived home with the appointment already booked, having described Belle’s grogginess and confusion and received a confirmation that Robbins thought it good to come in, whether or not something was wrong, especially considering the unpredictability with magical pregnancies. This alone justified Hades’ feelings, and he had argued Belle down with some reason, but mostly with an appeal to pathos: do it for me, please. If nothing’s wrong, you can nag me all night. 

He had a feeling it was the latter statement that got Belle into their Uber, looking quite put out with him. 

But she also just looked tired. She’d been looking tired for a while. Once again, his concerns from last year reared their head. Belle never knew when to slow down. She was once again overcommitting herself--between carrying two babies instead of one, caring for Opal, and studying for her upcoming licensing, she had forgotten the basics: food, sleep, relaxation. So even if this trip to the hospital meant nothing more than Belle taking a night off from her usual antics, he’d consider it a win. 

And he did hope he was wrong, by the way. He liked being right, but Lou’s immediate concern had crawled under his skin. Robbins had acted calm when first coming into their room, but he thought he saw something in her eye as she was asking Belle questions and looking at her initial work-up, something in the lines around the woman’s mouth at the sight of Belle’s blood pressure levels. 

But all they could do was wait for Robbins to come back with their lab results. All Hades could do was hope the problem, if there was a problem, was small and easily fixed. Maybe it meant Belle eating more salty foods-- or less. Maybe she’d need to quit her internship.

She’d fight him on that, but in the end, he trusted her to do what was best for their babies. 

“You look like you’re thinking of creative ways to off me,” Hades said to break some of the tension in their room, while the clock tick-tick-ticked on the wall. 

@labellerose-acheron

[leblogdemarinaetjm]

SAMEDI 3 OCTOBRE 2020 – (Billet 1 / 4)

« BLACKBIRD » (1h37)

Un film de Roger Michell, avec Susan Sarandon, Kate Winslet, Mia Wasikowska, Sam Neil…

Ci-dessous la critique « professionnelle » qui se rapproche le plus de ce que nous en avons pensé, avec juste un bémol pour Marina. Nous y reviendrons en conclusion.

____________________________

"Blackbird" : Susan Sarandon magnifique dans un drame sur l'euthanasie

Réalisateur de "Coup de foudre à Nothing Hill", Roger Michell rassemble un trio d’actrices exceptionnelles sur le sujet de l'euthanasie.  

Une réunion familiale dans une maison à la campagne, la fin d’une époque, « Blackbird » a tout d’un drame tchekhovien mais sur un sujet d'actualité : l'euthanasie.

Lily (Susan Sarandon) et son mari Paul (Sam Neil) invitent leurs deux filles, conjoints et enfants, lors d’un week-end. Atteinte d'une maladie dégénérative incurable, Lily leur annonce qu’elle a décidé de mettre fin à sa vie au terme de cette ultime réunion de famille. Jennifer (Kate Winslet), l’aînée, s’y oppose, alors qu’Anna (Mia Wasikowska), la cadette, accepte la résolution prise par sa mère. Entre règlements de comptes familiaux et secrets révélés, la tension monte jusqu’à l’échéance programmée.

Bien qu'à huis-clos, le film est animé de nombreuses relances, comme la décision de faire du dîner d’adieux un réveillon de Noël hors saison pour recréer la fête de famille reine, avec sapin et cadeaux. La dernière partie ne tombe pas dans les clichés. L’ambiguïté d’un secret remet en cause la décision apparemment réfléchie de Lily, avec un suspense bienvenu. L’écriture et l’interprétation sont donc les deux atouts de « Blackbird ».

Un recul qui sied au sujet, privilégiant l’expression des sentiments sans pathos ni lyrisme. Sauf peut-être cet oiseau noir qui plane au-dessus de la maison avec insistance, et qui donne son titre au film. Sujet majeur du cinéma américain qui ne rate jamais une occasion de la glorifier, la famille s’en retrouve plus unie. Un beau récit où, mise à mal, la famille s'affranchit des oiseaux de mauvais augure. Emouvant.

(Source : « francetvinfo.fr »)

_____________________________

Nous vous l’avons déjà dit, nous avons bien aimé ce film. Marina un peu moins, à cause du sujet, dérangeant évidemment. JM a mieux fonctionné mais, depuis « La dernière marche » de Tim Robbins avec Susan Sarandon et Sean Penn, Susan pourrait lire en plan fixe le Bottin téléphonique de A à Z (au fait, les Bottins existent-ils toujours ?), il serait capable de payer sa place de cinéma pour aller la voir !

Il faut saluer le travail très soigné de la photographie. Les couleurs et la lumière s’incarnent dans des paysages maritimes de toute beauté, et surtout une demeure familiale, très bien filmée, qui endosse presque un rôle de personnage à elle toute seule. 

Malgré quelques réserves, c’est un film que nous vous recommandons. Marina lui a donné ♥♥♥ et JM ♥♥♥,5 sur 5.

[birdlord]

Everything I Watched in 2018

I neglected to write this list up this time last year, so I’m catching up! 2019 is soon to come.  Every Movie I Watched in 2018

The number in parentheses is year of release, asterisks denote a re-watch, and titles in bold are my favourite first watches of the year. 

01 So I Married an Axe Murderer (93)* possibly the most early/mid-90s film ever made. Centre parted hair, slam poetry, pre-tech boom San Francisco, Steven Wright cameo?!

02 The Florida Project (17) first theatre movie of the year came early!

03 The Long Goodbye (75)

04 Call Me by Your Name (17) I and some friends made an effort to see movies we thought might be oscar-nominated this year, so there’s a few of those coming up. 

05 LA Story (91)* a forever rewatch

06 Personal Shopper (17) Feels like there’s a thin veil between K Stew and the characters she chooses.

07 I, Tonya (17)

08 Comfort and Joy (84) 80s Glasgow!

09 Faces, Places (17) made me want to pick up a camera again

10 A Futile and Stupid Gesture (18)

11 Creed (15) not for me. 

12 Black Panther (18)* I found this lost a lot of its lustre the second time around. 

13 Ghost (90)

14 Youngblood (86) Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze hockey movie filmed in 80s Toronto? Sign me up!

15 The Living Daylights (87)* basically sometimes I want to see a Bond film, and really any of them will do. 

16 Brigsby Bear (17)

17 The Ice Storm (97) 

18 Disclosure (94) strong competition for Most 90s Movie, this time set in a Seattle CD-ROM company. One of those movies I remember staring at the cover of, in the movie rental place. 

19 Saturday Night Fever (77)*

20 Barry Lyndon (75) God, the look, the costumes, the performances! This killed me dead.

21 Fried Green Tomatoes (91)* Another forever rewatch!

22 Howard’s End (92)* rewatch prompted by watching the new series version. 

23 Sense & Sensibility (95)* keep those costume dramas coming...

24 The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (01)*

25 The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (02)* 

26 Breakfast at Tiffany’s (61)*

27 Paterson (16)

28 Three Kings (99)*

29 The Talented Mr Ripley (99)* 99 was a good film year...I’ll go to this version of Italy anytime. 

30 The Equalizer (14)

31 Paddington (14)

32 Paul (11) the initial charm doesn’t carry the movie through til the end.

33 The Virgin Suicides (99)*

34 Friday the 13th (80)

35 Sea of Love (89)

36 Won’t You Be My Neighbor? (18) a great opportunity to shed some tears in a movie theatre.

37 Star Wars: The Last Jedi (17)*

38 Wild (14)

39 Housekeeping (87) love me a Bill Forsyth, as you can see. 

40 Predator (87)* if it bleeds, etc

41 Close Encounters of the Third Kind (77)*

42 Fever Pitch (05) the US remake...

43 Fever Pitch (97) ...the UK original 

44 Bridget Jones’ Baby (16)

45 Stand by Me (86)*

46 Three Identical Strangers (18) 

47 Mission Impossible: Fallout (18)

48 Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (11)*

49 Election (99)*

50 The Killing Ground (17) utter brutality in the Aussie bushland

51 Eyes Wide Shut (99) never saw this at the time, and thought Nicole Kidman’s perspective was more important within the film but GUESS WHAT, IT ISN’T

52 Repulsion (65)

53 Crazy Rich Asians (18)

54 Halloween (78)* the start of Spooker Season

55 A Star is Born (18)

56 The Hunger (83)

57 Annihilation (17)

58 Scream (99)*

59 Halloween H20: 20 Years Later (98) this was...terrible

60 Halloween (18)

61 Deep Red (75) one of the better Argentos, imo, but no Tenebrae

62 Dead Ringers (88)

63 Rocky Horror Picture Show (75)*

64 Silence of the Lambs (91)*

65 Nosferatu (22)

66 The Italian Job (69)

67 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (01)*

68 Harry Potter and The Chamber of Secrets (02)*69 Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (04)*

70 Gangs of New York (02)* Wow, I hated this! If I never see sweaty Leonardo DiCaprio again, it’ll be too soon. 

71 Shirkers (18)

72 Terminator 2 (91)*

73 Little Women (94)*

74 The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (18)

75 Life Itself (18) this movie has left my mind ENTIRELY, wow did it even happen?

76 National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (89)*

77 Home Alone (90)*

78 Gremlins (84)* turns out I’d forgotten more of this than I remembered??

79 The Shop Around the Corner (40)

80 You’ve Got Mail (98)*

81 Mr Smith Goes to Washington (39)

82 Widows (18)

83 Roma (18) I did see this in theatre, so the surround-sound experience was in full effect. 

84 Ghost Stories (17)

85 200 Cigarettes (99)

DOCUMENTARY:FICTION - 3:82

THEATRE:HOME - 11:74

I had no idea I’d watched so many movies from 1999 this year! It was certainly not done on purpose, but that year had some great movies. Spooker Season was a particularly strong one this year, too, with ten horror/spooky movies over the course of October. It’s always interesting to me to see how many comfort viewings vs more challenging fare that I manage to watch in a given year (probably correlated to how many times I was sick and/or had a rough work day). 

Every TV Series I Watched in 2019

01 The Crown S2 - the difficulties of royal marriage are a strong theme in this season, but there’s also some great sister-sister material between Elizabeth and Margaret. 

02 Lady Dynamite S2 - too weird to live, I guess?

03 High Maintenance S2 - this is the second HBO season, and the first one that really tries to grapple with high-level world events, in this case Trump’s election, spoken about as if it was a natural disaster.

04 Queer Eye S1, S2 - I’d never seen the original series, so this was my first exposure to the concept. It aims for pathos, but you have to accept a pretty rosy world to get into it. Easier to enjoy before any of the boys had book deals/got Milkshake Duck’d.

05 Love S3 - still watching for Bertie, I love her.

06 Collateral - thorny British political police procedural, ultimately pretty forgettable, barring Carey Mulligan’s performance. 

07 Alias Grace - the Atwood adaptation that people *weren’t* talking about. It’s great, though!

08 Atlanta S2: Robbin Season - Atlanta got weirder, more idiosyncratic, and even better in its second season. 09 Barry S1 - Barry got a lot of plaudits this year, and while I really liked the cast, and the plot was engrossing, something didn’t stick for me, and ultimately I didn’t watch the second season. 

10 Howard’s End - it is a truth universally acknowledged that most books are better adapted as a miniseries than a single movie. Not that I hate the ‘92 movie, but this gets deeper into the class relations than it ever could. Plus: TIBBY!!

11 Killing Eve S1 - the series that hackneyed “smart, stylish and sexy” critic descriptions were made for.

12 Detroiters S2 - pouring one out for my fave pals, who never got a chance to make another season of this little darling (though there were a couple of episodes in this season that didn’t do it for me). 

13 Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat - perhaps the only adaptation of a cookbook that I’ve ever seen, and certainly one of the best food shows ever. 

14 Big Mouth S2 - More of the same, so if you could hack it in the first season, then keep it up!

15 Bodyguard - another in the sexy/dark/procedural vein, with bonus Scotsman from Game of Thrones.

16 Utopia/Dreamland S1-S3 - an Australian comedy series about a government infrastructure department, which has apparently spawned real such departments in the country, even though it doesn’t come off all that well. The first title is the Aussie one, it’s known as Dreamland everywhere else. 

17 Baroness Von Sketch S3 - Canadian series that I actually watch are rare as hen’s teeth, so I was delighted to find a woman-centric sketch show that has kept me laughing. Plus, sometimes I see my neighbourhood? That’s fun!

[positive-infinity]

Hi ate bana! Saw you were reviewing Patho. Can you please please pleeeease share a list of your go-to Patho, Pharma and Surg books or Reviewers? 😊 God bless you 💖🦋

Hello! Here’s the list of my preferred books and reviewers for different subjects:

Pathology - Robbins, BRS Patho, Topnotch Pathology (I think you can get this copy in different photocopying centers around medschools here in PH)

Pharma - Lipincott, Katzung, and the board review version of Katzung. The board review version is very concise and enough for me.

Surgery - I liked reading the Topnotch reviewer for surgery and I find it helpful to read Schwartz along with it.

Hope this helps! No reviewer is perfect but if you’re reviewing for boards, they told me to stick to one reviewer for one subject so you don’t get overwhelmed with a lot of readings. Hehe.

[aion-rsa]

Green Lantern Cast: When Even Talent Can’t Save a Sinking Ship

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Our favorite movie stars can usually buoy a bad production into being passable, but sometimes a film is so misguided that not even a great cast can save it. Look at any one of Garry Marshall’s holiday movies, Brian De Palma’s infamous Bonfire of the Vanities adaptation, or shudder at the thought of Movie 43 and you’ll see that no number of Oscar winners or box office titans can save a truly bad film. It doesn’t matter if George Clooney is in your cowl when the Batsuit has nipples on it.

A notorious, shining example of the “great cast, bad movie” phenomenon is 2011’s Green Lantern. Making a paltry $220 million on a $200 million film budget (let’s not bring up marketing costs) and gaining near-universal derision from critics, Green Lantern is one of the most high-profile bombs of the 2010s. Featuring Ryan Reynolds as the titular “space cop,” Green Lantern also featured performances from Blake Lively, Tim Robbins, Mark Strong, Taika Waititi, Peter Sarsgaard, and Angela Bassett, with vocal performances from Michael Clarke Duncan, Geoffrey Rush, and Clancy Brown. It’s a practical murderer’s row of talent that was wasted on a muddled superhero snooze fest with bad CGI.

Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively

Reynolds himself has gone to great lengths to trash the film and his involvement, even going so far as to insert digs into his other superhero franchise via the far more successful Deadpool 2. It’s interesting to compare Reynolds’ performances in his two big superhero projects; whereas Deadpool is Reynolds at his most impish, delivering something quippy and dripping with personality, his Hal Jordan in Green Lantern is bland and anonymous. Only Reynolds’ scenes with Lively have any juice to them, and it makes sense considering the two would marry after meeting on the set.

Still, the flirty scenes featuring the pair does not save either of their performances from feeling wooden and stilted. Which is all the more baffling since both charismatic performers tend to only spark more when they’re sharing the stage, or riffing off each other, including in marketing for Reynolds’ other unexpected casting: as Detective Pikachu.

Angela Bassett as Amanda Waller

The film’s overstuffed plot also keeps some of the other actors from showcasing their talents. Bassett, an Oscar nominee after her ferocious performance in What’s Love Got to Do with It in 1993, should’ve stolen the show as Amanda Waller, but her character is barely a blip in the bloated proceedings. Many DC fans don’t even recall that Waller was a part of the Green Lantern film. But then it took even several attempts with the peerless Viola Davis playing her in Suicide Squad movies until they got it right.

Robbins appears to be completely phoning it in as Sen. Hammond, and poor Peter Sarsgaard has the opposite problem, going way over-the-top as villain Hector Hammond. Sarsgaard and Reynolds might as well be starring in completely different movies; if Reynolds had matched the gonzo panache that Sarsgaard brought to his performance, perhaps the film would be more fun.

Mark Strong and Taika Waititi

Meanwhile Strong as Sinestro and Waititi struggle to overcome bad writing. Waititi’s recent performance in Free Guy proves he’s one of the most fun comedic performers gracing screens today, even when he isn’t casting himself as a vampire or an imaginary version of Adolf Hitler. But before any of that, Green Lantern saddled him with a boring “minority best friend” supporting role that does him no favors.

Strong makes an impression as Sinestro, but the film makes the mistake of presuming there will be a sequel, so they hold back on giving Sinestro a meatier part in favor of going with a ridiculous space cloud that is voiced by Clancy Brown as the film’s Big Bad. Which must’ve made sense in a committee room somewhere.

The most frustrating part about rewatching Green Lantern with hindsight is that we now know that many of the performers can excel in comic book movie parts. Reynolds has turned Deadpool into a household name and one of the most beloved comic book movie characters of the century. Bassett brought gravitas and grace to Black Panther in a supporting role worthy of her time. Strong got another crack at playing a DC baddie in Shazam! and helped to make that film one of the very best entries in the DCEU. He also turned out to be a strangely affecting presence in the comic-based Kingsman films. And Taika Waititi has shined both in front of and behind the camera in the MCU, essentially saving the Thor franchise by injecting equal amounts of humor and pathos while voicing a sidekick that is the opposite of trope-y or forgettable. He also picked up an Oscar for screenwriting, so there’s that.

Now streaming on Netflix, Green Lantern is worth a watch just to see how one film could squander so much talent. HBO Max is hard at work bringing a new Green Lantern adaptation to the streaming service featuring Finn Wittrock as a different lantern, Guy Gardner. Hopefully, the new series doesn’t get lost in evil’s might and waste the time of its cast and audience alike. 

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2X7tXG3

[mdramblings]

Road to Step 1 2018: Leggoo

And so it begins, my road to Step 1 and more importantly the daunting yet undoubtedly great journey to residency is officially a go!

Time, and time again, I’ve heard infamous tales of students who pick too many resources for Step 1 and end up shooting themselves in the foot. So between my serious FOMO and hoarding complexes, I’ve had to become particularly strict in the selection process of my USMLE resources. After reading endless forums, watching dozens of med vlogs and becoming virtually a free trial scavenger; I’m proud to say I have finally managed to create a feasible study schedule

Getting to this point has taken a great deal of thought, and now that the first order of business has been taken care of. I think it’s only fitting I share the resources I deemed most worthy for the feat, and ultimately made the cut:

Main (Daily) Resources:

1. First Aid (FA) USMLE STEP 1 (2017): A no brainer - the USMLE bible... if you don’t know now you know.

2. Pathoma: Between the shear amount and intertwining clinical complexities; it is no wonder that pathology is the USMLE’s top gun. Pathoma’s integrated yet succinct approach to teaching the subject make these videos invaluable. 

3. Boards & Beyond: All your non-patho material in one place, undoubtedly one of the best kept secrets in my opinion. 

Seriously God bless Dr. Jason Ryan for BB and Dr. Husain Sattar for Pathoma - you guys are heaven sent. 

4. Bros Anki Deck = Pre-made FCs on basically everything. As someone who doesn’t have a photographic memory; spaced learning using this deck is a quintessential part of my learning. 

5. UWorld Q Bank = The Holy Grail -  be ready it’ll have you pulling out the big bucks, but don’t think twice because this one is an absolutely must have for USMLE prep.  

6. USMLE Rx Q Bank = I find the best way to learn and make sure I really know something is to test myself. Would say this is more open to preferential choice but I personally find it to be a good tool to concurrently check my FA learning as it is created by the same people that make First Aid. 

Add. Revision Material:

- Robbins & Cotran - Review of Pathology

- FA Q&A

- FA Case Files

Add. Background Review:

- FA BS General Principles

- FA BS Organ Systems

- BRS Physiology

- Kaplan Anatomy, Anatomy Recall & Anatomy Coloring Book 

- HY Neuroanatomy

- Sketchy Micro

- Sketchy Pharma & Class Notes (Based on Lippincotts)

P.S. Be sure to check out my upcoming vlog post detailing how I integrate all these resources to study for Step on AsToldByPala.com.

Dreams Dont Work Unless You Do.

Road To Step 1 2018.

Follow The Journey.

...to infinity and beyond.

Blessed Christmas & A Happy New Year!!!

[alfalfaaarya]

23.11.2024//Saturday

Guys

My brother is home , on vacation after his semester ended. I have exams .

Cry ah rha hai .

So the past few days weren't very productive but still I managed to get stuff done.

I missed posting about day 2 and 3. Let me give you a brief of what I did .

Day 2 , my brother arrives, no work done , just endless talking and catching up on stuff. Day 3 , came home after college to find out , plans to go out for dinner have been made. I agreed to go , knowing very well I have a medicine test tomorrow and dermat ward leaving .

How did they go ? Good . Because I woke up at 3 am on the day of the test and studied for 4 hours continously. Test started at 7:55 am. ( fr)

Studied for dermat test while walking to the ward . ( nailed it by the way , especially with the level of preparation which was zero.) But then what mattered was , paying attention in the classes that happened , and I had class notes which is Supreme.

Now ,

Day 5 of 12 day productivity challenge

Went out for lunch after college with mom and brother. The place was lit , best food ever.

Came home , slept , catching up with the lack of sleep.

Studied

Pharmac : Monobactams

Patho : Emphysema

Chronic bronchitis

Read my tb robbins.

Wasn't much but will do better tomorrow!

[evilhorse]

But there’s a real “Grim Reaper” out there, in the darkness—waiting for all of us

[ratherhavetheblues]

THE COENS’ THE BALLAD OF BUSTER SCRUGGS “All day I’ve faced a barren waste/Without the taste of water, cool water…”

© 2019 by James Clark

     In many ways, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs (2018), looks to a past leaving it nearly an anachronism. The helmsmen here, Joel and Ethan Coen, have, in their business affairs, been forced to locate their complex communications in the swill of the multi-cocktail Happy Hour known as Netflix. (Years before, David Lynch, apropos of the vein now virulent, was heard to declare, “I didn’t make this picture for your damn phone.”)

As you probably know, the boys are nothing if not resilient, and with this unwelcome matter in the air they prove to be even more feisty and irreverent than usual. Their strategy to be large as life is a wild and wonderful tour de force. Inasmuch as this film with a vengeance is multi-faceted, let’s ease into it by way of its amusingly wicked parody of Millennials, those softies utterly disinclined to show up at a theatre to see a Coens’ film.

You might think the lads are staging some kind of revival of Cowboys and Indians entertainment, inasmuch as the setting is the “Wild West,” and its six vignettes comprise the product seen to be slices (in various tones) of the fateful drama of what used to be a big money-maker. Actor, Tim Blake Nelson—directly addressing the audience as if it were packed with fast friends—leads off with a singing cowboy, Buster Scruggs, so hilarious in enjoying his domain that we barely register that the song he so confidently sings is about dying of thirst (“Cool Water”) and that he takes low-key umbrage that one of his wanted posters accuses him of being a misanthrope (his horse whinnying in support when prompted to consider that the charge is patently unfair). That he brightens up with the thought that “Song never fails to sooth my restless heart,” constitutes the first of many displays of assurance that heavy baggage can be exorcised on the order of a good cleaning lady. (The writer/ performer of the song, “Cool Water,” Marty Robbins, was not only a country/Western musical profit-centre in the Nixon-era, but also a NASCAR driver, always in the hunt. On one racing occasion, he was seriously injured swerving into a wall to avert smashing into a stalled vehicle. Hold that thought in fathoming the protagonists stalled here, in other ways.)

Buster visits two bars along that musical afternoon, and although his tenderfoot appearance elicits disdain from the regulars, he manages to maintain some of the tenets of a civilization which emphasizes sweetness and light, and also systematic/ mechanistic advantage. On the first visit, asking for whisky, he’s told that, “This is a dry county…” Noticing that everyone is drinking, he points out the discrepancy and his temerity tweaks someone to recognize him as, “The Texas Twit.” Buster corrects that whisky-driven rudeness to, “The Texas Kid” and, being a virtuoso technician has to shoot the uncontrolled mental-health victim with a bullet symmetrically placed in his forehead. That is followed by Buster’s vigorous massacre of the bad-mouth’s friends, including one wounded at the doorway to be needles, “I’ll leave you to the wolves and the gila monsters.” Confidently moving along to the bar in the next town, the straight-shooter complies with the establishment’s gun-check policy. He soon (ever the games-player, presaging cyber-mayhem) is at a poker table being coerced to take up the hand of somebody, perhaps feigning, needing to leave quickly. Buster takes exception to the irregularity, eliciting from the pushy, burly and surly contestant the problem of a six-shooter in his face. Always expecting from others sweet reason, the Texas Kid points out the violation of the authority’s rules of passivity. Of course the unreasonable one prepares to do away with an obstacle, but he meets acrobatic Buster’s resort to stomping on the several planks consisting of the gaming table, each time breaking parts of the gunman’s face. Our protagonist goes into a victory lap, singing about the loser in terms of “Surly Joe,” a bit of professionalism and wit which enthralls the room and also us, somewhat. We are especially touched—beyond the volatile emotional outpouring—by Buster’s being located in a social media heaven, going viral. (Part of the deadly improv consisted of the plaint, “He never really took to empathy…” followed by the smug axiom, “When you’re unarmed, your tactics might gonna be downright Archimedean ” [the latter being remembered for an effective screw].) Interrupting the fun, the victim’s brother cries out, “You killed my brother!” and he demands a shoot-out on the dusty street. The muddled and aged aggrieved is far from a gun-geek and the people’s choice toys with him, shooting off four of his fingers. (He had swaggered out to the site, remarking, “I should go into the undertaking business.”) Supposedly charming us with his bonhomie, he grants the “geezer’s” not knowing give-up; and, with only one bullet left (having geared up with the six-shooter but not the pair of effete collectible micro-shooters which he calls “princesses”) he decides on a “trick shot” with a mirror and shooting backwards (his supposed constituents holding firm). With that show done, another begins. A man in black, the sartorial opposite to Buster’s creamy white (would you call the former, “Death?”), playing a doleful harmonica, rides slowly to the trick-shot zone. And, being another simplistic country/ Western singer, he declares he’ll reap the bounty on Buster’s head. Buster, unarmed now without his gadgetry, has a moment of less insulation (“I should have seen this coming, Can’t be top dog forever…”). Shot symmetrically in his forehead, our majoritarian has taken the easy way to sustain joy. To the song the hunter in black sings, “When a Cowboy Trades his Spurs for Wings,” Buster is shown with angel wings coursing high above problematical life. His parting words here have to do with certainty of life after death, because—conformist-style—so many have written to that effect. Likes!

A scintillating Buster like that comes down the pike rather seldom. In the second chapter, the young hacker can’t even gain the affection of his horse. Thinking a solitary bank, manned by another geezer, would be something to keep him in 5-star dinners for a while, he discovers that the old are not always the weak and the ridiculous. The contretemps involves him having a shot-up leg in being suckered that the big denominations are near the floor, under the counter. While the sprightly banker repairs for some protective coating, our protagonist clears out the till and limps to the stone well in the yard. There he’s snubbed by his less than wonder-horse, who could have effected an escape. (Settling for a clunker seeming OK, if you imagine a life of ease has to involve an angel replacing every wreck.) The banker returns wearing pots and pans, and the marauder’s efforts to kill him bounce off. An uncool local posse strings him up, the horse now on hand to lurch forward and let the rope on the tree branch work the nose. The officiating judge tells him he now has his opportunity to say his piece, before dying. First, he decries, as a primordial crisis, the unfairness of the banker’s armor. An argument erupts about who gets the horse, and the voice of the new declares no one should get it. At this juncture of smallness an Indian war party appears, sending arrows into necks and putting an end to reveries for those whose reveries go nowhere. The nemesis here is as shallow as the one in the first episode, the Coens’ irreverence being truly wild. The dude with the noose is spared by a chieftain on the (false) basis of thoroughgoing challenge of authority. With everyone in sight dead, except the tied-up complainer and his recalcitrant horse, there ensues the clown-show, slow-motion acrobatics of his attempting to dismount without strangulation—he leaning back, and the inattentive mount meandering as he nibbles on some weeds. He sees a horseman and a few cattle, calls out, is rescued, and soon they regard each other as “sidekicks.” Within the same hour the newcomer bolts away from an oncoming posse after cattle rustlers; and the bank robber goes to the gallows on an erroneous charge. His having recently escaped one execution seems to have allowed him to strike a brazen tone in the vicinity of the hangman. (But perhaps he and many of his sidekicks, from years before, had been beneficiaries of a stunning leniency.) Tied up on a four-noose extravaganza in a town turned out for the morbid event, the failed bank-robber looks for something good turning up. An elderly felon cries and the insouciant youngster asks, “Your first time?” He spots a pretty woman in the crowd. Their eyes meet, and she smiles. The black hood covers his head. From the perspective of inside the hood there is a crunch and a cheering clientele. What wouldn’t miss, missed.

Another presumptuous figure, follows. But unlike the first two, he generates far more cogent passion. In the wintry Northwest mountain ranges, where mortals find nothing easy, a young man with no arms and no legs sings for his supper on a cold roadway as enclosed by a proscenium arch and stage, doubling as a caravan. His “song” involves declaiming stirring instances of a fate of finitude few mortals take to heart. The eeriness of his presence is enough to whet curiosity. But, far from a freak-show, as we discern this outreach, his skill in dramatic expression is of a caliber to haunt and maybe elicit reflection. A keynote of his performance is the sonnet, “Ozymandias,” engaged by the poet Shelley. as drawn to lyricism by the “recent,” 19th century discovery of a Pharaoh’s tomb—far more mineral than personal. Not only does he convey the emotive pathos of the impermanence of all creatures; but in reciting the Gettysburg Address he brings to bear the paradox of powerful love for human kind. Moreover, in an onstage scene called, “The Sash my Father Wore,” his commitment iterates the exigency of going to war—perhaps military, perhaps the wider and deeper factors of struggle every day of one’s life. This first performance we see is well appreciated and rewarded. The impresario feeds him some morsels of meat; but such a viable constellation does not last long—the fickle clientele far more amenable regarding the catchy enough oddity than the rare spoken and facially powerful gifts. The burden of “Ozymandias” and the fading of fame bites rapidly to the point of the businessman, seeing how popular a “mathematical chicken” could be, changing the show and dumping the orator into a rushing cataract. That the food had become indigestible and then no more was one more (and monstrously problematic) ingredient of the dubious calculus counting upon the world to gratify one’s thriving. Also, the performer’s insufficient food and mounting desperation resulted in a fine heart becoming a mediocrity. Perhaps his campaign was based upon suddenly needing to find kindred spirits to help him survive. As such he would be a barometer of his era’s sensitivities, and ours. There is a scene where the “Professor,” still caring to a point, visits a bordello, with his carrying his associate; and he turns the little man facing away from the bed. The hooker wonders if all of his appendages are gone. That excruciating, shared strangeness, flows to the measure of remorse after the murdering. Zaniness arrested, this singular expediency widens, deepens and tempers the jolly hatchet job.

Chapter Four features a protagonist even older than the impresario, who becomes an unlikely inspiration to those not finnicky about the full measure of facticity, in their film experience. Whereas the foregoing three dramas had been situated in badlands or austere, cold darkness, here we have a near paradisal valley, replete with many monarch butterflies and ravishing woodlands creatures. An elderly prospector and his cute donkey enter this range through a narrow opening in a thick, green forest, and the jaunty protagonist, a veritable Santa Claus, proceeds to pan for gold in a lovely stream. Before finding his mother lode, he had climbed a tree to loot four owl eggs, with a beautiful mother owl watching untroubled nearby, giving you just one of many moments that only a Mexican strategist and his far-flung fans could like. Perhaps Disney sanguinity infuses the sequel, where those owl eyes have an effect, and he replaces three of the four eggs. The rationale, “She won’t have remembered how many she had,” smacks of a constituency of shoplifters. As if this were not alone Academy Award enticement, the old elf comes to us in song—“Oh, God keep you, Mother McCree…” After back-breaking toil and impressive savvy, he finds the Bonanza, only to be attacked by a gunman. Shot in the back, his jersey becoming a blood-red blotter, he waits his turn to turn the tables. He kills his adversary and walks out of the pit where his gut was blown away, revealing his intestines pouring out on the ground. He’s heard to insist, “It didn’t hurt nothin’ important.” Next day, he’s in a clean shirt and looking pretty good, looking like The Revenant. His tag-line, “There’s a pocket up there. Where, I don’t know,” is a limp cliché. But it conceals everything the virals won’t touch. Similarly, the declamation, “I’m old but you’re [the gold] older,” mocks the primordial, with self-satisfaction.

Demonstrating that there are vast options to skin a cat, we now come to a composition called, “The Girl Who Got Rattled.” Our protagonist may be a young nineteenth-century woman taking orders from a brother about a spiel of very lucrative matrimony which would greatly help his floundering business career; but it is her own reckoning which tells us something about life today. At a boarding house in a “civilized” State of the Union, she’s made much of by the presiding host, in sharp distinction from how the latter regards an elderly woman who has fallen asleep at the dining table. That the girl’s imminent trip by covered wagon train to Oregon has been speculative with no firm commitment of marriage in sight (not unlike Buster’s being drawn to heaven); and only the feckless urging of an underperforming and exaggerating sibling to count upon, introduces to us, notwithstanding the era, to a figure sanguine to a fault. (Another boarder, a middle-aged man, who would, over the months, have seen through their effete wishfulness, strikes a tone of down-to-earth being disregarded in not only unpleasant ways but also in very dangerous ways.)

Once on the go, the weak brother soon dies of a cholera phenomenon which, to put the matter in full relief, could be called a plague. (The optics of the ox-wagon train must put into critical relief a very different protagonist, namely, Emily, in Kelley Reichardt’s film, Meek’s Cutoff [2010], a figure evincing a progress of courage and circumspection truly of another world from the placid and vaguely safety-net-assured, Alice Longabaugh [pronounced, Longbow].) The Coens’ film’s momentum of upending, has, by this stage, spotlighted not a single trace of strong coherence. Here, though, there is a partial equilibrium, requiring the rather reckless depiction of Indians being very inept, whereby to place Alice in a fool’s paradise, or Wonderland. This circuitous range of parody may best be disclosed with regard to the recently-deceased brother, and his spunky terrier, “President Pierce.” She remarks, after the burial on the range that Gilbert, her brother, “did very little,” but radiated intense political views, which she abhorred (in her once-over-lightly way). President Pierce, the politician, was a one-term American President just before the Civil War, whose lack of consideration for blacks sowed much turmoil. As with the rough trade about “wild Indians,” Alice, being remarkably confrontational, in her pat, namby-pamby way, channels to the present time, where political correctness has become a gigantic and cirrhosis creed, particularly amongst young, diet-puritan women. Hearing about her plight and her brother’s politics, the handsome young straw-boss of the junket, namely, Billy. is quick and pleased to pronounce, “He was a failure.” That ruthless assessment, by one being a member of her generation, clearly coincides with the protagonist’s needs. In the same vein, she’s in a quandary about many of her fellow travelers’ annoyance caused by President Pierce refusing to stop barking. He offers to put down the dog, and she doesn’t bat an eye finding it the way to go. She plugs her ears  The Good Samaritan, however, flubs the shooting.  He tells her, “We’ve seen the last of the President.” A few days later he’s back She finds she has had Gilbert buried many miles back, having left all of her funds in one of his pockets. The youngster tending to the oxen—having been promised a wildly inflated salary—begins to want some down payment. Billy promises to deal with the matter; but he soon admits he doesn’t have a clue. More of the same, the young outdoorsman finds that Alice, the low-wattage misadventurist, is his kind of girl. He proposes, and she quickly accepts. Though neither has any skills for life in a frontier town, they plan to settle down there. Their ace-in the hole is a one-off  premium for married couples.

Apparently inured to the neighbors taking umbrage, she’s seen, with the canine survivor on her lap, straying away on her pony from the train and having a Saturday Night Live giggle about a prairie dog colony. Her Wonderland quickly sours when an Indian war party comes to play. The senior guide, Mr. Arthur, had noticed her disappearance and was able to single-handedly rout the dubious warriors. But, with the battle in doubt, Alice, crouching in a sort of pot hole, uses the suicide revolver, a sort of magic cake, provided for the possibility that the expert warrior might be killed. A lack of fight, extending beyond unruly mobs.

In the final vignette, middle-aged stage-coach riders hope to convince their fellow-travelers that they have everything figured out. (Here, in contrast to Alice and Billy, in having a flood of facile clichés, most of the premises in the coach have been subjected to long-term perception.) A trapper displays his gift for clever gab, as disarming the assumption that he is of no account. He had for years lived with an Indian woman who knew no English, just as he knew nothing of her language. His kernel of discovery involves that range of communication whereby it is possible to share a remarkable level of understanding by body language. His own pell-mell fluency, however, lands him in a bemusing embarrassment. Shifting from elevated one-to-one to amateur anthropology, the laborer hastily insists, “People are like ferrets.” A lady coming to reunite with her husband (a minister of the cloth and a theologian), after being with her daughter and the latter’s children for three years, begs to differ. She posits the more complicated situation of the upright and the sinning. That brings into the fray an elegantly dressed French bounty hunter, who, with Cartesian confidence, concludes that “one can’t know another’s soul.” The lady counters with, “Any decent person knows of eternal love, the love of the Creator.” A Polish gambler ridicules her position, and gets hit over the head with her umbrella. He then goes forward with a probability that her daughter had been eager to get her out of the household; and that her husband could not have sustained love during her long absence. His Slavic accent and poker deceptiveness adds to the aura of certainty about the traditional bonds rotting away, to the advantage of cynics and fatalists. (More important than the ideas floating around, is the gulf between this series of taking a stand by going to some trouble, and the smoothie addiction in the foregoing stories.) The French killer, with a lucrative corpse on the roof, has a partner. The latter is the one pulling the trigger while the diminutive Parisian chats up the prey to lull the victim to an easy death. This more middle-of-the-road figure has a fine singing voice and he proceeds to shower the company with a heartfelt rendition of, “The Streets of Laredo.” “I saw a young cowboy wrapped up in white linen…” Within the calm in effect from the song, the Gallic spellbinder treats the assembly to the land he really inhabits, and its conveyance. He evokes an aura derived from the moment the wanted man realizes his death has commenced. “The passage to death.” (Conjuring such intensity accomplishes [or hopes to accomplish] more than a disclosure of matter of fact. The French connection has opened a door to the surreal, the more real. Such mood enacts energies surpassing normal communication, but including its generally underestimated sensual presence. Soldiers of fortune. What could that mean, about change going forward?) Though that pristine moment fades, and on reaching the hotel the pair joke about possibly displaying the corpse along a corridor for the night, the mystery of that passage to death holds forth in another way. With the travelers in their hotel late at night, the coach makes a turn-around and races at full speed passed the place of arguers and swayers of truth. The tight linkage of the team of horses recalls the engagement of another group of flounderers being dragged along a nondescript countryside by the spectacle of Death, in Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.

Aspects of that latter film saturate The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and their presence here add to the questioning about happy (even goofy, even lethal) trails in the 21st century. With happy-go-lucky Buster on horseback and singing, we have an amalgam of, first of all, the vigorous, bawdy, Squire Jons, far more viable than his precious master, the knight, Block. But in the gathering of that harp and those angel wings, we have a Buster buying into Block’s obsession for immortality. Jons excels in cleaning up nasty bars and other places where inferior entities should not be, though they pose extreme difficulty; but, in the end, he joins with Block in that linkage driven by the phenomenon of Death. (The veer to pointlessness for those once on top of the world, being a cinematic volatile, endowment of the other kind of energy our energy-mad planet won’t touch.) The song Scruggs (a name first of all seeming too rude for his wit and couth) sings for us at the fanfare carries a quirky version of Bergman’s duo of persistent ease, and a down-to-earth warrior/ wag. First, we have Jons: “All day I’ve faced the barren waste/ Without the taste of water, cool water/ Old Dan and I with throats burned dry for water/ Cool, clear water.” [Now Block] “The nights are cool and I’m a fool/ Each star’s a pool of water/ Cool, clear water. And with the dawn I’ll wake and yawn/ And carry on to water/ Cool, clear water.” And now, a sorely put-upon employee denounces that unhinged leader. (Here the factor of misanthrope comes forward with its paradoxical juggling.) “Keep a-movin’, Dan, dontcha listen to him, Dan/ He’s a devil, not a man/ And he spreads the burning sand with water…” Back to the deus ex machina (a millennial instinct as old as the hills). “Dan, can ya see that big, green tree?/ Where the water’s runnin’ free/ And it’s waiting there for you and me?/ Water/ Cool, clear water” [always metaphorically there for the right acrobat]. “The shadows sway and seem to say/ Tonight we pray for water/ Cool, clear water/ And way up there He’ll hear our prayer/ And show us where there’s water.”

The most notable feature of the ho-hum robber, in the second episode—over and above his being an inveterate predator upon wealth he doesn’t own, and, therefore a version of the clergyman who became a thief upon victims of the plague, in The Seventh Seal—is his being a witness to the noisy and blood-letting flagellants peeking out from that Indian war party, temporarily saving his skin. Here the boys touch upon—here, and later—the matter of a Happy Hunting Ground, supposedly reached by such observances. Irreverence, reminding us that other passions (far less showy and presumptuous) occupy the field and spread a frisson for those who have taken the trouble.

The lucky “sweetheart” in the gold business brings aboard The Seventh Seal’s reflective performer, Jof, the inventor of acrobatics and impossible juggling. The childish prospector serves as a contrast to real uncanniness and delight.

The tale of the damaged thespian evokes the mad woman prisoner, caged and headed for burning at the stake (in our Bergman shoot-out), on the pretext that it was she and her impiety who caused the plague—when, in fact, you could say the plague has always been here, and always will, millennials bringing on, with their overexposure to cheap thrills, their special poison.

Alice and her tepid Wonderland traces to the caravan of Jof’s wife (the “practical one”).

And the coach in the last hurrah—pegged as a death march along the sightlines of The Seventh Seal—now shows, in the unstinting power and flair of the horses, a fresh dynamic. A bit stressed though our helmsmen might be, they’re still alive and kicking.      

[envicorppersonhood]

Post 5: Invention and Style in Legal Arugments

1.  Read about the Dalkon Shield Case in the following source   http://multinationalmonitor.org/hyper/issues/1986/0115/  How are ethos and pathos used in Lord's speech? How are enthymemes and examples used?  What topoi, both common and specific, govern the invention of Lord's arguments? What stylistic qualities does Lord's speech display? Search for Robbins' Company responses to Lord's speech. They argued that the Judge exceeded the proper boundaries of judicial conduct in his speech. In this sentencing speech, we see something similar as in the Auqualina sentencing speech of Nassar. Thinking through classical rhetorical art of legal rhetoric, what are the proper boundaries of judicial conduct in sentencing speeches? Do Lord and Auqualina use a rhetorical art in keeping with classical standards of an ethical art?

2.  Draft an aims statement for your research project in this class. What do you aim to study?  Supply one link to a text that will be central to your study. Explain why this text is so important, and using what you know about classical legal rhetorical theory, offer what you think will be some key rhetorical foci for your project.

1: Lord’s Justice

I’ve built my post on a plethora of examples that I can refer back to later to understand the implication of each topoi

Ethos and Pathos:

Within his argument, Lord integrates ethos and pathos into his use of the common topoi. Within my analysis of his use of the common topoi, I plan to talk both about ethos and pathos. However, one point Lord makes stands out as a significant establishment of his own character. It is as follows;

“I suggested to the hundreds of ministers of the gospel who constitute the Minnesota Council of Churches that the accumulation of corporate wrongs is, in my mind, a manifestation of individual sin.”

Within this, he establishes that 1.) he is respected enough to give advice to hundreds of ministers and 2.) that he is in touch with some sort of spirituality. This statement of ethos also pairs well with the concept of precedent. This assertion of precedent actually gives him more credit, because it establishes a commonality within his actions as an individual and a judge. He has a set of morals that he adheres to.  Along with that, one of the most blatant appeals to pathos within his speech is his call to action to these three men. He states that they have set their standards at the bottom line, then implores them to, “[..] in the name of humanity, lift your eyes above the bottom line” (Lord’s Justice).

Enthymemes:

“Under your direction, your company has in fact continued to allow women, tens of thousands of women, to wear this device a deadly depth charge in their wombs, ready to explode at any time... The only conceivable reasons you have not recalled this product are that it would hurt your balance sheet and alert women who already have been harmed that you may be liable for their injuries.” (Lord’s Justice)

He follows the argument, though does not spell out the middle of his argument—‘because these products do harm to women, they have taken you to court’. His entire tone in this section appeals to pathos, as he builds a strong argument as to why the company would hide this fact, as well as how it makes the company completely amoral.

Past Fact:

“And when the time came for these women to make their claims against your company, you attacked their characters. You inquired into their sexual practices and into the identity of their sex partners. You... ruined families and reputations and careers-in order to intimidate those who would raise their voices against you. You introduced issues that had no relationship whatsoever to the fact that you planted in the bodies of these women instruments of death, of mutilation, of disease.” (Lord’s Justice)

This statement acts as a major stop against the defense’s stasis that they presented during their case. It also marks the defense’s precedent to manipulate the facts presented in court in order to win their case.

“Another of your callous legal tactics is to force women of little means to withstand the onslaught of your well-financed, nationwide team of attorneys, and to default if they cannot keep pace. You target your worst tactics for the meek and the poor.” (Lord’s Speech)

This past fact relates completely to the fact that the women who have been majorly impacted by this device are poorer women. This past fact is troubling to Lord, due to the fact that this company will go on to manufacture more products and continue to sell them to women who are poor. This past fact feels almost like Lord dissecting the company’s precedent as well as predicting of the future fact.

Opposite:

“If one poor young man were, by some act of his-without authority or consent-to inflict such damage upon one woman, he would be jailed for a good portion of the rest of his life. And yet your company without warning to women invaded their bodies by the millions and caused them injuries by the thousands.” (Lord’s Justice)

In this, Lord positions the treatment of the wealthy against the position of the poor. Not only have the poor women not been well represented in this case, be it because they do not live in the U.S. to attend the case or that they could not receive medical treatment and passed away or that they simply could not afford the lawyers, if anyone in a similar social status as these women went about ruining people’s lives like Lord, they would be persecuted to the highest extent of the law. However that is not that the case, and it seems that it will never be the case.

Precedent:

“If this were a case in equity, I would order that your company make an effort to locate each and every woman who still wears this device and recall your product.” (Lord’s Justice) The past precedent would require something far more stringent of the company, and Lord makes it clear that he would prefer to take this route, however the times of equity are over. Thus, Lord cannot rely on the precedent, but instead he must find a new, fitting justice that matches the times.

“I did not know." "It was not me," "Look elsewhere." Time and time again, each of you has used this kind of argument in refusing to acknowledge your responsibility and in pretending to the world that the chief officers and the directors of your gigantic multinational corporation have no responsibility for the company's acts and omissions.” (Lord’s Justice) This precedent Lord observes comes completely from the past behavior of other rich individuals as they try to protect themselves from the damages that could come as they are prosecuted. He thus invalidates their claims of innocence. On top of that, as he draws more connections to the defense being guilty, he reminds the people around them of the repetitive lying the defense has done.

Meaning of a name: “You, Mr. Robins, have been heard to boast many times that the growth and prosperity of this company is a direct result of its having been in the Robins family for three generations. The stamp of the Robins family is upon it. The corporation is built in the image of the Robins mentality.” (Lord’s Justice) With this, Lord subverts Robins’ intended meaning of his name. The ‘strength’ of his name, is quickly flipped on its head to represent the true horror of what happened due to the Dakon Shield.

Definition: “You, Dr. Lunsford, as director of the company's most sensitive and important subdivision, have violated every ethical precept to which every doctor under your supervision must pledge as he gives the oath of Hippocrates and assumes the mantle of one who would help and cure and nurture unto the physical needs of the populace. You, Mr. Forrest, are a lawyer-one who, upon finding his client in trouble, should counsel and guide him along a course which will comport with the legal, moral, and ethical principles which must bind us all. You have not brought honor to your profession.” (Lord’s Justice) Within these lines of his speech, Lord outlines the two professions that both the lawyer and head of the medical part of the company and then the specific moral responsibilities that their professions require. After outlining the professions, he states that they have done disservice to their jobs. This invalidates the ethos that their jobs could have bestowed upon them in any capacity. It acts as a full stop in their narratives of power and prestige.

Did Lord’s Speech go too far?

In my opinion, the matter was already somewhat decided when the judge gave his speech. Therefore, the judge is allowed to present their own feelings on the matter. And in cases like the Nassar case and this one, power listens to power. Without truly showing the amount of wrong-doing, it’s possible to be partisan in these cases. The judges both obviously felt that there was no room for this partisan behavior and clarified their reasoning in their judgement.

2. AIMS:

In this project I aim to explore the concept of environmental protection through an exploration of the Laws of the Rights of Mother Earth. I wish to contrast this legal view of the earth with the North American and European views of the autonomy of the planet with this view held by Bolivia. The text I will be including is the legal text that sets the parameters of the rights of the planet. This is incredibly important because it gives a clear idea of how much power this law gives to the planet and give direct comparisons to the views held in N. America and Europe. I hope to focus on Past Fact, as well as the view of Possible/Impossible in this piece. Often times, saving the planet is viewed as “impossible” but Bolivia is proving that it is indeed possible.

http://www.worldfuturefund.org/Projects/Indicators/motherearthbolivia.html

Bibliography: Aristotle. “Aristotle's Rhetoric.” The Internet Classics Archive | Rhetoric by Aristotle, MIT, 2009, classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/rhetoric.html. Caplan, Harry. (Cicero) Ad C. Herrennium: De Ratione Dicendi (Rhetorica Ad Herennium): with an English Translation by Harry Caplan. Harvard University Press, 1964. Frost, Michael. Introduction to Classical Legal Rhetoric: A Lost Heritage. Routledge, 2016.

Mifsud Comments: good analysis of "inartistic ethos"--a reference to qualifications and prior success, not a proof built within the present speech, focus most on the artistic ethos, how does Lord for ethical proofs? How does he prove his good moral character as one who must be listened to for justice? Remember the common topos is past fact/future fact.  All legal argument is past fact, so that part alone is not helpful in generating rhetorical analysis and insight into arguments and their operation and effects.  What is the future fact that the judge uses as his inventional tool throughout the speech?  Perhaps instead of proceeding with analysis by frontloading the classical categories of analysis that emerge from classical rhetorical legal theory, you could focus on analyzing each argument made, perhaps sometimes each sentence, showing how each sentence invents a line of thinking or way of seeing, how each sentence/argument operates enthymematically and helps to build ethos and pathos in the speech. Be specific about pathos, too, the emotions of anger, shame, and the hope of redemption are powerful in this speech, but your analysis is a bit shy of naming them. Work to study the emotions being used as proof, how they are used, and what emotions specifically are being generated from which justice is being administered (or not, which is sometimes the case). I LOVE THIS AIM!  I'm so happy you are doing this, I have wanted a student to study this for so long, mainly because I am fascinated with how these argument get made. I do not know--so I will be so happy to learn along with you! These arguments are so unheard of, yet there are more familiar arguments about the rights of corporations that govern our civic lives together in "Western" European and U.S. American societies.  This text is a perfect for your foundational legal text. You will gather, in Foucauldian style, all the related discourses as well--media discourses, scholarly discourses, etc. to aid your rhetorical analysis of the arguments that give rise to protecting Mother Earth.

Response:

1. In Lord’s Justice I found that I made a few decent points, but also a few mistakes. I focused heavily on the different topos found in classical legal theory. That being said, the side of ethos I focused on was the more blunt statements of ethos instead of the more artful creations of it. In fact, this has been something I’ve constantly missed when understanding legal ethos. In actual speeches and other documents I usually can see the more subtle ethos. However the more I consider this issue, the more I realize that the legal blinders that are inherent to our judicial system prevent me from looking too deeply into the nuance of these arguments.   On top of that, Dr. Mifsud clarified the area in which past fact/future fact exists. Legal cases are all past fact where as the ruling and anything the judge predicts to happen falls into future fact. I think I somewhat reversed my understanding of how articulating these topos are properly explained.  On top of that, the way I chose to design my post ended up hindering my actual presentation of topos. I agree with Dr. Mifsud’s suggestion that a line by line analysis would have been more helpful to parsing apart each of the topics within the speech. I chose to read through the speech and write down the general topics I identified then work my way backwards from there. Understandably so, I missed whatever wasn’t the most obvious in the moment. I find that one of the most lacking details of this post.

2. My aims here were very succinct and to the point of what I wanted to discover, however my initial struggle to find legal support of this case. This is, in turn, what would be the downfall of this aims statement. While my plan may have been solid to begin with, it would eventually fall apart as I searched deeper. 

[plantrock]

Hi Internet!

It’s that time of year again. I’m pleased to report that even with moving, traveling, and starting school again, I still managed to read 53 books in 2017. Not as many as last year, but given the chaos my life has been through in the last 12 months I am not in the least upset. 50 books is a good goal for me, as it’s roughly one book a week–though in reality I read in jumps and spurts. Sometimes a book will take two weeks, whereas, in weeks like this one, I’ll read three books in one week.

For this year’s recap I am going to separate the books I read into categories by my ratings, as well as give a one-sentence (ish) review. Want more info? Message me or look up the book!

FIVE STAR

THE POWER, Naomi Alderman

   Women around the world spontaneously obtain the ability to generate and control electricity and the chaos that ensues left me shaken in the best way. (WORLD WAR Z meets THE HANDMAID’S TALE.)

GLAMOUR ADDICTION, Juliet McMains

A very readable academic analysis of the socioeconomic landscape of competitive Ballroom dance that had me excitedly annotating from page one.

HAMILTON: THE REVOLUTION, Lin-Manual Miranda & Jeremy McCarter

I mean do I really have to explain this–there’s a million things I haven’t done, but just you wait.

THE END OF THE DAY, Claire North

A slow-but-emotional travelogue of the adventures of the Harbinger of Death–not my favorite of North’s novels, but contains her characteristically beautiful prose.

THE COLLAPSING EMPIRE, John Scalzi

The first installment in a cinematic space opera series by sci-fi giant Scalzi, EMPIRE is tightly plotted, has fascinating characters, and the far-future world feels familiar without exactly copying others in the genre.

REJECTED PRINCESSES, Jason Porath

Tired of the Grimm and Disney versions? This collection of women from myth, legend, and history around the world explores less convenient and less kid-friendly tales of women who stuck to their guns and caused a ruckus.

SO YOU’VE BEEN PUBLICLY SHAMED, Jon Ronson

Though slightly dated in our modern light-speed internet world, this exploration of the power of social media is required reading for anyone participating in the Feed.

PANDEMIC, Sonia Shah

Yes, I’m a sucker for the world-wide-plague book, but this non-fiction depiction of how epidemics begin, spread, and shape the world we know today is excellent.

SPINNING MAMBO INTO SALSA, Juliet McMains

An ethnographic and historical comparison of the three US cities that spawned Salsa and Mambo, this book is a must-read for anyone interested in social dance and the phenomenon that is Salsa.

EVERYTHING I NEVER TOLD YOU, Celeste Ng

A deft and moving family drama about immigration, middle-class America, and the secrets we keep from those closest to us.

FOUR STAR

SAILING TO SARANTIUM & LORD OF EMPERORS, Guy Gavriel Kay

A lyrical and occasionally violent duology that walks the line between alt-history and fantasy based on the Byzantine empire.

THE REFRIGERATOR MONOLOGUES, Catherynne Valente

THE VAGINA MONOLOGUES meets every superhero story ever–this short-story collection is piercing look at (loosely) veiled comic book tales and the women they have wronged.

THE NURSES, Alexandra Robbins

A non-fiction account of lives of those in the medical field who often seem to play second-fiddle to doctors. (Honestly I don’t remember much about this one, but I must have enjoyed it.)

STORIES OF YOUR LIFE, AND OTHERS, Ted Chiang

A mind-bending collection of science fiction short stories, including the one that inspired the 2016 movie ARRIVAL.

VAMPIRE GOD, Mary Hallub

The most comprehensive academic analysis of vampire media in the 19th through 21st centuries I have ever read.

IT DEVOURS!, Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor

This second book in the Night Vale world tackles science vs religion, and though they miss the mark a little, I will always love their prose and the universe they have built.

DANCE WRITINGS AND POETRY, Edwin Denby

This collection of original poetry and arts reviews contains gems from mid-20th-century dance critic Edwin Denby, including a fascinating interview regarding classicism with George Balanchine himself.

THE CITY AND THE CITY, China Mieville

  Is it science fiction? Is it artfully written detective fiction? I don’t think I’ve read a book so able to walk that line between fantasy and reality–as the characters walk the lines between their inexplicably separated cities.

BEAUTIFUL FLESH: A BODY OF ESSAYS, edited by Stephanie G’Schwind

 A collection of essays from a variety of authors, each focusing on a particular body part and their relationship to it. My personal favorite was a musing on the heart and humans’ relationship to electricity from an author with an implanted defibrillator.

WHAT IS LIFE? HOW CHEMISTRY BECOMES BIOLOGY, Addy Pross

A systems chemists attempt to re-frame how we think about life and its origins on our planet. This book is short but technically dense–good for the trained scientist, less so for the layperson.

THE BEGINNING OF THE WORLD IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT, Jen Campbell

A quietly creepy collection of fairy tale and folk-lore-influenced short stories. My favorite was the first story, about a man who buys his girlfriend a new heart to ensure that she won’t leave him.

THE QUEEN OF BLOOD, Sarah Beth Durst

A bit of a guilty pleasure read, this fantasy series opener explores a world where the ruler of the realm must fight back malevolent natural forces.

AMBERLOUGH, Lara Donnelly

 CABARET the musical in novel form–this darkly beautiful story details the rise of facism in a fantasy world and how it impacts a colorful cast of miscreants.

THE ESSEX SERPENT, Sarah Perry

A beautiful and suspenseful tale of romance and loss in Victorian England, set again the backdrop of a hunt for a fantasy creature.

HILLBILLY ELEGY, J. D. Vance

  Both an autobiography and an attempt to explain the socioeconomic situation of Appalachian folks–but I’m conflicted on how much to buy into his arguments. Worth a read, though.

THE DIABOLIC, S. J. Kincaid

This story of a test-tube-grown bodyguard finding her humanity in a crumbling, corrupt space empire is the first YA sci-fi in a while that I didn’t hate!

BALLROOM DANCING IS NOT FOR SISSIES, Elizabeth & Arthur Seagull

Despite the sub-title, there is nothing R-rated about this how-to guide in balancing relationships and ballroom dancing.

DANCE WITH ME: BALLROOM DANCING AND THE PROMISE OF INSTANT INTIMACY, Julia Erickson

Despite the author’s obvious disdain for GLAMOUR ADDICTION (see Five Stars), this sociological analysis of studio ballroom culture lands on many of the same points as that other title, in addition to a hilariously accurate layout of the different performances of gender roles seen on the social dance floor.

THREE STAR

FOSSE, Sam Wasson

High on the drama and the page count, this biography of choreography legend Bob Fosse wastes no opportunity to dip into his sordid history and the seedy side of Broadway.

FUTURE HOME OF THE LIVING GOD, Lousie Erdrich

Despite its lovely prose, this novel doesn’t rise above the fact that it’s basically a less-good retelling of THE HANDMAID’S TALE.

MINDSET, Carol S. Dweck

My boss at my old job ‘suggested’ I read this. I remember nothing about it.

 THE MAD SCIENTIST’S GUIDE TO WORLD DOMINATION, Edited by John Joseph Adams

This collection of mad-science-themed short stories was sadly a mixed bag of quality–I loved one or two, barely finished others.

THE AERONAUT’S WINDLASS, Jim Butcher

A rollicking romp through a steampunk fantasy world, though I found the characters stock and the world forgettable. (The cat, though, is worth the price of admission alone.)

THE PALACE THIEF, Ethan Canin

Four not-particularly-memorable short stories concerning isolation and mid-century masculinity.

THREE DARK CROWNS, Kendare Blake

You’d think I’d have learned by now that YA fantasy does not float my boat, but, alas, I went into this tale of warring island factions and powerful queens-to-be expecting more than it delivered.

HOW TO BUILD A GIRL, Caitlin Moran

Sadly the details of this book have also faded, though I recall not understanding the nuances of British classism.

HEADS IN BEDS, Jacob Tomsky

A bit memoir, a bit how-to on cheating the hotel system of years gone by, a bit forgettable.

YOU’RE NEVER WEIRD ON THE INTERNET (ALMOST), Felicia Day

I’ve been a fan of Day since the Guild years, but this memoir suffers from the same problem as most of its internet-personality cohort–her story isn’t over, and the book feels unfinished.

JEROME ROBBINS: HIS LIFE, HIS THEATER, HIS DANCE, Deborah Jowitt

An interesting but dense biography of Broadway legend and second-fiddle-to-Balanchine Robbins. I was glad of the information, but am wary of glorifying a man who had a reputation as a tyrannical director.

DANCING OUT OF LINE: BALLROOMS, BALLETS, AND MOBILITY IN VICTORIAN FICTION AND CULTURE, Molly Engelhardt

Some interesting comparisons between Regency era and Victorian era social dance norms, but this book’s focus on dance depictions in time-period fiction did not hold my interest.

THE HOUSE OF GOD, Samuel Shem

A bizarre and polarizing account of the lives of medical residents in the 1970s that reads like a fever dream.

THEN WE CAME TO THE END, Joshua Ferris

I think this fictionalized account of office life was supposed to be equal parts pathos and satire, but I found it just vaguely sad and forgettable.

FROM BALLROOM TO DANCESPORT: AESTHETICS, ATHLETICS, AND BODY CULTURE, Caroline Picart

The author makes some interesting points about changes necessary to the DanceSport world in order for the sport’s inclusion in the Olympics, but the rest of the book is superseded by GLAMOUR ADDICTION (see Five Star).

AN EMBER IN THE ASHES, Sabaa Tahir

Again with the I-apparently-don’t-like-YA-Fantasy, and this one had the added bonus of being way too violent for my tastes.

THINKING WITH THE DANCING BRAIN, Sandra Minton

Neuroscience 101 for dancers–a nice refresher for me, but not much beyond that.

THE CROWN’S GAME, Evelyn Skye

Romance! Czarist Russia! Romance! Magic! Sadly I didn’t get into the relationship of the main characters.

TANGO AND THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PASSION, Marta E. Savigliano

This academic analysis of the history of tango and the socioeconomic forces at work during the dance’s creation had some interesting tid-bits, but I found it difficult to read and some stylistic choices hard to decipher.

TWO STAR

ZONE ONE, Colson Whitehead

I love zombie novels, but this one tries to be ‘litrary’ and cerebral and I just found it dull,  forgettable, and overly wordy.

THE ANUBIS GATES, Tim Powers

The cover of this absurdist time-traveling fantasy promises way more Ancient Egypt than I actually got. Crazy premise, idiotic characters, and only enough rollicking fun to laugh at.

YOU ARE A BADASS, Jen Sincero

For all its bluster and wanna-be subversiveness, BADASS is a pretty standard self-help book. Sadly I am one of the most self-motivated people I know, so the get-up-and-go was lost on me.

THE BLACK PRISM, Brent Weeks

The fascinating magic system was the only thing carrying me through this mess of unlikable characters and fantasy tropes.

ONE STAR

BALLROOM! OBSESSION AND PASSION INSIDE THE WORLD OF COMPETITIVE DANCE, Sharon Savoy

Never have I disagreed so completely with advice given and conclusions drawn as I did from those of professional-ballet-dancer-turned-cabaret-division-star Savoy. Want a rant? Ask me more.

  And that’s a wrap! If you made it all the way down here, thank you for reading, and may you have a wonderful New Year!

A Reading Re-cap: 2017 Hi Internet! It's that time of year again. I'm pleased to report that even with moving, traveling, and starting school again, I still managed to read 53 books in 2017.