[Photo] Walk Here

A random scene just next to where I live.

[Photo] The Darkroom, The Lightroom

Just a random shot of my room with a cheapskate starburst lens filter :P

Michael Jackson - Man in the Mirror

Gotta make a change
For once in my life
It's gonna feel real good
Gonna make a difference
Gonna make it right

As I turned up the collar on
A favorite winter coat
This wind is blowin' my mind
I see the kids in the street
With not enough to eat
Who am I to be blind
Pretending not to see their needs

A summer's disregard
A broken bottle top
And a one man's soul
They follow each other
On the wind ya' know
'Cause they got nowhere to go
That's why I want you to know

I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change, yey
Na na na, na na na, na na na na oh ho

I've been a victim of
A selfish kinda love
It's time that I realize
There are some with no home
Not a nickel to loan
Could it be really pretending that they're not alone

A willow deeply scarred
Somebody's broken heart
And a washed out dream
(Washed out dream)
They follow the pattern of the wind ya' see
'Cause they got no place to be
That's why I'm starting with me

I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make a change

I'm starting with the man in the mirror
I'm asking him to change his ways
And no message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make that change

I'm starting with the man in the mirror
(Man in the mirror, oh yeah)
I'm asking him to change his ways, yeah
(Change)
No message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself and then make the change
You gotta get it right, while you got the time
'Cause when you close your heart
(You can't close your, your mind)
Then you close your mind

(That man, that man, that man)
(That man, that man, that man)
(With the man in the mirror, oh yeah)
(That man you know, that man you know)
(That man you know, that man you know)
I'm asking him to change his ways
(Change)
No message could have been any clearer
If you wanna make the world a better place
Take a look at yourself then make that change

(Na na na, na na na, na na na na)
Ooh
Oh yeah
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah
(Na na na, na na na, na na na na)

Oh no
Oh no, I'm gonna make a change
It's gonna feel real good
Sure mon
(Change)
Just lift yourself
You know, you got to stop it yourself
(Yeah)
Oh
Make that change
(I gotta make that change today, oh)
(Man in the mirror)
You got to, you got to not let yourself, brother oh
Yeah
You know that
(Make that change)
(I gotta make that make me then make)
You got, you got to move
Sure mon, sure mon
You got to
(Stand up, stand up, stand up)
Make that change
Stand up and lift yourself, now
(Man in the mirror)
Make that change
(Gonna make that change, sure mon)
(Man in the mirror)
You know it, you know it, you know it, you know
(Change)
Make that change

Please DON'T Call Cardiac Arrest A Cause of Death (3)

[Continued from here]

CNN has a good conversation between Anderson Cooper and Dr Sanjay Gupta about this topic:

Please DON'T Call Cardiac Arrest A Cause of Death (2)

[Continued from here]

More about the cardiac arrest business.

When I say it's silly to say someone "died of cardiac arrest", I am not saying that it's *wrong* - in fact it's absolutely true that a lot of people die when their heart stops. What I am saying instead is that calling cardiac arrest "the cause of death" is quite meaningless. It's almost like asking "Why was TDM hospitalised?" only to hear the answer of "The doctor asked him to stay". Absolutely accurate, but absolutely not answering the question too. I want to hear what illness he had that made him stay in the hospital; not whether the doctor, the surgeon or the physiotherapist asked him to.

It's technically correct to say someone died of stopping of the heart, but we shouldn't call it "THE cause of death" without knowing what caused the heart to stop in the first place. Cardiac arrest, or "the stopping of the heart", can be due to thousands of reasons.

• Being immersed under the arctic ice cap for one hour.
• Being electrocuted.
• Dumping shit load of potassium ion into one's circulation.
• Being born with a heart with screwed-up wiring.
• Being born with thickening of certain parts of the heart (how many young athletes have sudden death).
• Getting overdosed on drugs (which is currently one of the top hypothesis in MJ's case because he has been getting opioids from his doctor).
• Having a massive heart attack.
• Having a sick heart from a previous heart attack.
• Having a huge clot in the pulmonary aorta.
• And the list goes on.

In fact, almost any disease process or injury would kill you by stopping the heart in the end, with the exception of brain death due to brain injury. In brain death, even though their heart might still be beating, we also consider them dead because there is no longer a person in that body.

*****

What about calling it a heart attack, some might say. THIS is another peeve of mine in the whole media report. Yesterday all the Fairfax newspapers in Australia reported that MJ has died from a heart attack when the official sources said NOTHING about a heart attack. It appeared to me that the Fairfax journalists have equated a cardiac arrest with a heart attack, which is to me as atrocious as equating bacteria to virus.

And NOW you see why I am so worked up.

Heart attack is a specific entity, and we say someone's got heart attack when his coronary arteries (which are the arteries that supply the heart itself) got blocked off by clots. Heart attack can cause death, and when someone dies in a heart attack they often die via cardiac arrest (i.e. when their heart finally stops). But in the process a lot of things could happen, their heart wiring may run amok, their heart walls may rupture, their heart will beat out of synchrony. And so on. And all that could be the precipitant for the eventual cardiac arrest.

In MJ's case, the current official word is cardiac arrest, and no official word has said he's got a heart attack. But I can see that some Australian media has automatically translated cardiac arrest to heart attack, which is quite misleading. In the early hours BBC also used the word "heart failure", which was also another term with a specific meaning in medicine.

It's probably the public health educator's fault that many people are unable to tell the difference between a heart attack and a cardiac arrest. The difference might not be that crucial for laymen, you might argue, and you are probably right. However, in the case of journalism, I don't think it's acceptable for a journalist to substitute "cardiac arrest" with "heart attack" without any verification and disseminate the information to millions of people. This is a count of irresponsibility.

[Continued here]

Please DON'T Call Cardiac Arrest A Cause of Death

What would you think if you come across a conversation like this:

A: Hey do you know why Mr. Rockefeller was rich?
B: Oh of course, he's rich because he had earned lots of money.
A: Ahh thanks for telling, that's helpful!

Sounds dumb, no?

Well, what about this conversation.

A: How did he die?
B: He died because his heart stopped.

Sounds dumb, no?

Now time for some pseudo-medical-jargon 101:

Cardiac - adjective - related to the heart.
Arrest - noun - Stopping.

YES when you read a paper that says "Michael Jackson died of cardiac arrest", they are telling you "Michael Jackson died of the stopping of his heart".

And they irk my nerd-sanity big time. Too tired to write more right now, I will update this post tomorrow.

[Continued here]

RIP Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson died.

I am not really a huge fan of his but at various points of my life I have been touched by his music and inspired by his performance. Who amongst us have never been touched by some of the works like "we are the world", "heal the world", "man in the mirror", "strangers in moscow" or "you are not alone"? Who amongst us have never been electrified by or danced to "beat it", "black or white" or "remember the time" or "thriller"?

I know I have - and for that I mourn the loss. Yes he has his eccentricities and sins, but let's leave it for another day, or for someone above if it is there.