Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

The news today is dominated by the story of Mohamed and Ahmed Ibrahim, conjoined twins from Egypt who were separated by doctors in Dallas during a 34-hour surgical marathon.

I”m a compassionate guy (ok, maybe I”m not), but stories like this really bother me.

To make life better - not to save their lives, even - for these two people from Egypt, some of the most talented American medical professionals swung into action. Consider these facts as presented by Children”s Medical Center in Dallas on the website built to fill the public”s hunger for information about Mohamed and Ahmed:

• The surgery occurred after a “year of intense preparation” that included “extensive diagnostic tests” and “customized surgical equipment”

• The surgical team included more than 60 members of the hospital”s medical staff, including five neurosurgeons, two craniofacial surgeons, a pediatric plastic surgeon, a pediatric general surgeon, an oral surgeon, nine anesthesiologists, six pediatric nurses, six surgical technologists, four respiratory therapists, four anesthesia technicians and support staff

• The separated twins will now spend about a week in the hospital”s pediatric critical care unit

• Follow-up care will include reconstructive surgeries that will be done in stages and could take several years. The twins will travel from Egypt to Dallas for the surgeries

• The direct costs of the initial surgery are $125,000, with total costs estimated to be $2 million. The World Craniofacial Foundation raised the initial $125,000 to pay the hospital

• The surgeons, hospital and “hundreds of professionals” involved have donated the time they have spent and will spend on the twins” care

… all to make life better for two people from Egypt.

I don”t find references to public money being spent, so I”ll assume this project is mostly a private effort - the money comes from donations, the hospital, surgeons and staff chose to donate their time, etc.

But how can the hospital, its surgeons and staff and the people who donated to this cause justify all of this? Sure, it”s a feel-good thing to make life better for these twins, but what about the opportunity costs?

I”d hazard to guess there are plenty of children in Texas whose lives could be made significantly better if these medical resources were made available to them rather than devoted to making life better for two people from Egypt.

How about spending that “year of intense preparation” providing pre-natal care for poor women in the state? I bet there are plenty of poor pregnant women who could use “extensive diagnostic tests”.

Why not use the 10 surgeons and support staff occupied by the twins to perform neurosurgery, craniofacial surgery, plastic surgery, general surgery and oral surgery for procedures for children who need those surgeries in Texas or elsewhere in the U.S.?

Instead of more reconstructive surgeries and follow-up care for these two people from Egypt, maybe you could perform reconstruction on car accident victims who otherwise would remain disfigured?

Perhaps the $125,000 (and ultimately $2 million) donated to make life easier for two people from Egypt might do more good if donated for indigent care at Children”s Hospital?

Couldn”t the “hundreds of professionals” who donated all this time for more than a year make more of an impact by donating their time at free clinics or by visiting schools to give poor kids the routine checkups they probably don”t get now?

And the hospital could have spent the time and money it took to create the special twins website on a site that provides better health information for the community.

But no.

In the judgment of the hospital, its doctors, nurses, support staff and the people who donated the money for this procedure, making life easier for two people from Egypt is a more important cause than anything else that could have been done with these tremendous resources.

And multiply this by the number of times we see this happen - remember the conjoined Guatemalan twins at UCLA - and there are no doubt thousands of people in the U.S. who could benefit from the time and money being devoted to the care of a handful of people who are fortunate enough to tug at the heart strings of America.

I find that sad.

Well, LSU finally pulled an LSU and turned to shit when it mattered. Florida came in with an excellent gameplan to counter our pressure-heavy defense, and Chris Leak made few mistakes, but my Tigers just didn”t come to play.

Stupid penalties; dropped passes; an inability to stop Florida”s ground game and short passes; and just a lack of interest, it seems, spelled doom from the outset. We could be 6-0 right now and ranked 4th in the country. But no, this is LSU. We screw the pooch, fall to 5-1, give Auburn the clear shot to Atlanta, drop to No. 10 in the polls and hand Georgia our No. 4 spot. Lovely.

One could argue that LSU should still be ranked higher than Georgia, seeing as their one loss is to us … but after UGA”s rout of Tennessee, it”s clear they are the class of the SEC East and deserve the conference”s top ranking.

So I blew the LSU call, but got all my other Saturday picks right. Factor in my “miss” of the Thursday game … 6 - 2 for the week; 42 - 14 for the season, 5 - 1 on LSU picks.

In Ole Miss” ongoing efforts to be more “inclusive” and shed its image as a relic of the Confederate South, Colonel Rebel was banned from football games this year.

Colonel Rebel as window cling

Colonel Rebel is the 25-year-old school mascot, who resembles a disgruntled Colonel Sanders with horrible fashion sense.

It”s worth noting that the university still licenses the Colonel Rebel image for sale on all sorts of Ole Miss merchandise. Political correctness is fine as long as it doesn”t impact licensed product sales, I suppose.

In any case, the Colonel is no longer welcome at football games. I think each entry gate at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium has a photo of the Colonel with “DO NOT ADMIT!” written under it now.

In his place, university officials came up with two potential new mascot designs and asked students, season ticket holders and other Ole Miss VIPs to pick the winner by online vote.

The contenders were:

• “Rebel Bruiser” - He looks kind of like the Colonel”s bastard son. He”s gone prematurely grey, is apparently pumped up on steroids and wears football pants, a fashionable Britney-cut bare-midriff shirt and a pimp hat. The Bruiser, I suppose, represents Ole Miss” traditions translated to the modern age; he”s your typical Mississippi redneck wearing the pimp hat and goatee in a desperate attempt to cling to the glorious past of the Old South. In other words, he”s a member of Kappa Alpha.

• “Rowdy Rebel” - Yep, he”s rowdy alright. And he”s damn sure pissed off at something. He”s clinging to a football, but is also lunging toward us and is ready to clock somebody with a left hook. The look on his face tells me perhaps he was just gang-raped by a bunch of KAs or something. Maybe he”s a pledge.

Over the past two decades, Ole Miss have been told they can”t wave the Stars and Bars (hence the ridiculous “Battle M” flag - which the school appears to have retired now) at football games. The school took Colonel Rebel off the helmets some years back, and has banned him from games altogether now.

So when the interested Ole Miss fans were asked to vote for either the redneck KA member of the anally-raped KA pledge as their new mascot, they ignored the request in overwhelming numbers. Of the 40,000 people qualified to vote, only 2,400 bothered, prompting the embarassed athletic department to cancel the vote and put off any decision on a new mascot.

And, thus, the Rebels will remain mascot-less.

Big weekend for both the SEC West and SEC East races. Enough talk … get to predictions …

LSU plays host to the Florida Crocodiles. Once again we face the consistency test. By all measures, the 2003 Tigers are better than the 2003 Crocs, but historically this is also when we fall apart.

But I am going to continue putting my faith in Nick and the boys. Chris Leak will be rattled and play even more freshman-like than he has so far; and our offense will continue to show good execution. LSU, 31 - 17

• Georgia at Tennessee - This is the game for the SEC East, barring any real collapses by the Dawgs or Vols later. As I”ve mentioned, I have not been all that impressed by Tennessee, but they are growing on me. And Knoxville is always, always tough for Georgia. And as much as I would like to see Georgia get another roadblock in its march to Atlanta, I don”t see it happening here. UGA, 34 - 24

• Auburn at Arkansas - Apart from each of these teams” games against LSU, this is the game for the SEC West. After this week, Arkansas really only has the LSU game left as a challenge, so they need a loss here. Auburn still has to play Georgia and LSU, so my motivation is clear. And it looks like Auburn is about as good as people thought. So, Auburn, 21 - 17

• Kentucky at South Carolina - Hey, who knew this was a Thursday game? My bad. I”d have picked Kentucky to break out their offense here, so I”ll take the loss. Kentucky, 100 - 0

• Southern Miss at Alabama - Meaningless unless you”re Mike Shula. Alabama, 24 - 14

• Arkansas State at Ole Miss - Meaningless unless you”re Eli Manning or Colonel Rebel, who”ll be watching from home. Ole Miss, 42 - 10

• Memphis at Miss. State - Meaningless unless you”re Jackie Sherrill. MSU, 28 - 20

• Navy at Vanderbilt - Just plain meaningless. Navy, 24 - 10

I woke up this morning and checked in on the wife”s blog to see what she was working up last night as I drifted off to sleep around 9 (I haven”t been sleeping well, and it caught up to me).

Turns out one of the “what”s pissing me off today” items she linked to was my blog about Jesus” apparent (if you are to believe Trot Nixon) preference for the Boston Red Sox to prosper at the expense of small children and other humans.

I like that blog of mine. I think I did a pretty good job of making fun of “Christians” like Nixon who think Jesus gives a rat”s ass about baseball.

But the wife”s reference to it (and her mention in her subsequent blog about buying “shares” of Cap”n Ken) is pure web log pity.

See, the wife is a rising star in the blog world. She”s had Pulitzer Prize-winning writers wanting her to comment on news stories, she”s been featured on MSNBC.com”s web log column and her readership is loyal and growing.

Here at Cap”n Ken”s, I consider it a good week if both Tom and Will stop by to read me.

I think I have a good blog. Apart from the SEC football stuff, which I include for my own amusement and future reference, I think the stuff I write about is often interesting and I like to think I have an entertaining writing style.

I am, after all, a trained and formerly professional journalist.

But Cap”n Ken”s Homespun Wisdom gets less traffic than a cul-de-sac in Dawson County and generates less buzz than a burned-out light bulb.

Meanwhile the wife is a certified Blog Star.

This used to bother me. It”s not that the wife doesn”t deserve her success; she”s extremely bright, a keen observer of the world and a good writer to boot. She used to be a semi-professional writer as well. We”re just very competitive. And I”m losing at the blog thing.

But yesterday I came across a study conducted by Perseus about web logs that explains a lot.

According to the study, not only are women more active blog creators (56% of blogs are created by women), but women are more likely than men to stick with their blogs.

Apparently women are just more interested than men in creating blogs and in reading each other”s blogs.

Women bloggers also benefit from the “girls who blog” link lists that form an instant community based just on gender (of course, if women make up the majority of bloggers, it would be more logical to have “guys who blog” to represent the actual minority. But that wouldn”t work).

So my scapegoat for the lack of success at Cap”n Ken”s is the blog culture itself. Apparently it”s a girl”s game.

Florida looks bad, mkay?

I think Mr. Leak is going to have a tough time handling the crowd at Tiger Stadium, seeing as he was rattled by his home crowd against Ole Miss.

To the recap!

• Auburn / Tennessee. I didn”t hear a single commentator, analyst or announcer pick the No. 7 Vols over the unranked Tigers before the game. And with good reason. Auburn is a good team with a bad start. The West is still LSU/Auburn/Arkansas. So I got this one right.

• Georgia / Alabama. As predicted, an easy win for the Dawgs, although they did their part to make it an ugly, ugly second half.

• Florida / Ole Miss. Florida is bad, mkay? Missed this one.

• MSU / Vandy. The pride is back in Starkville!

For the week, 3 - 1. For the season, 36 - 12. Still 5 - 0 on LSU.