Tag Archives: University of South Florida

Plants, Research

Red Tide is Engulfing West Florida

Red tide is really bad right now in southwest Florida. According to reporting by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission and the University of South Florida, the concentrations of the bacteria called red tide are at high levels on the beaches. Qualitative and quantitative data from a variety of sources are being distributed by these outlets.

At the moment we’re not feeling the effects of this red tide on the northern beaches. We’re still in the dead heat of the summer, so the multiplication of the bacteria which is fueled by heat isn’t expected to slow any time soon.  If this red tide does continue, and if we get a decent storm or a south flow the red tide could be sent up towards the west central Florida beaches. Any potentially significant storm is at least a week and a half out.

Reports from county officials in southwest Florida and secondary reports from Florida Fish and Wildlife officials are listing tons of red tide affected dead fish being cleared from the beaches.  It’s a real mess down there right now.


If a big storm comes into the gulf, I wouldn’t recommend a trip down to Venice. Consider that the abundance of red tide bacteria is at high levels there. Of course, it was like this last year. People still decided to make the trip down there to surf the jetties. It’s not going to kill you, but if the red tide is really intense you could find that breathing without coughing is somewhat difficult. Check out this August 3rd red tide incidence status report.

Opinion

Thoughts on Education, Healthcare, and Money

This article is just a quick piece on how the reality is, you’re not getting what you paid for. You paid for it, but you’re not getting it, it’s good quality healthcare by the best people. It’s basically a summary of what an educated student perceives about the topics broadly and generally relating to education, healthcare, and money. Of course this will not serve to further your understanding of the depths of these concepts, only to clarify what an absolute joke healthcare appears be to me. I’m going to discuss my experiences with the concepts from an educational and experiential perspective.

Let me start by saying that healthcare looks like a monopoly in my area, which makes anyone who is unhappy with the healthcare they’re providing plain and simply out of luck. If a company holds a monopoly on something they are the judge, the jury, and the executioner. Freedom is non-existent. If you want a job in healthcare you’ll have to satisfy that one company. Don’t get along with an unjust boss, too bad, you don’t have any other choice. Want to try another hospital because the care you received wasn’t what it should have been, you’re just out of luck my friend.

As a precursor to the next topic, healthcare education, I’ll first start by saying that if you take a look at my educational background, it’s pretty thorough. A bachelors degree in psychology, an honors thesis, various mentors, I’ve heard speakers at professional conferences from Harvard, NIH/NIMH, iconic and influential psychologists, and the list goes on. I sat in on the USF I/O department’s Brown Bag presentations for a year after college graduation, the program ranked 2nd in the country this year by US News and World Report. I was on the Dean’s List of Scholars at USF.  I know my information; I know when something is done poorly, and I know when something is done well.

This brings us into the topic of education for healthcare. I’m currently enrolled in a course called Anatomy and Physiology 2 and Anatomy and Physiology 2 lab at Saint Petersburg College. It’s truly sickening to think that this course, which is reiterated and reiterated again, as such an important course, a course that is used to determine who gets into and who doesn’t get into any and all healthcare educational programs, can really be so arbitrary and poorly done. If the materials like the 1000+ page book are so incoherent and grammatically incorrect that a college educated person can’t read it, then something is seriously wrong. I have to depend on other sources of information, like the teacher, or prepared materials. If there aren’t any prepared materials I have to depend on the teacher. In this case very little course website information was created specifically for the course this semester. Each semester I’ve taken a different teacher teaching out of the same book using previously prepared material. They’re teaching from materials that were basically transcribed from a book I plan on throwing in the garbage after I’m done. Honestly, it just seems like a way to discriminate against the people who are smart, and are frustrated by lackadaisical work.

Questioning the reality of things isn’t easy. What’s really going on? A couple things come to mind to answer the question as to why the course appears to be discriminatory. Money is, of course, in the forefront. It seems likely that corruption related to money is probably going to be a possibility. On the most basic level, the book Saint Petersburg College uses may not have been chosen based on the quality of the materials, it could just be that they are considering who made the book and who they’re going to be paying to write the book, and if that person is going to be their business partner. On the  other hand, it seems entirely likely that the economics of producing a 1000+ page book isn’t feasible. There may just not be enough healthcare jobs to go around.  I know that when I looked up the job openings for the profession I’m pursuing there were only four full time jobs in the entire Baycare system. There are a number of possibilities as to why this class is so terrible. There’s bad instruction, bad administration, bad program direction; all seem likely, because this isn’t just something that’s occurring this semester. Something to keep in mind when trying to decide for yourself is that this is an ongoing problem I’ve experienced when dealing with SPC from 2004-2018. The education that is supposed to be preparing people for jobs and the instructors providing that education is sorely lacking the majority of the time.

In Anatomy and Physiology 2, the class I ended up dropping and taking again because it was so terrible, the same class I’m talking about now, a classmate sided with the teacher saying, yea, I’m going to need to know what a positive feedback loop and a negative feedback loop is to be a paramedic. I looked at him and told him, without even any knowledge of the day to day activities of a paramedic, I said, you probably need to know something like 20 lifesaving techniques, and the basic background around those techniques. You’re not going to need 2 years of learning other random information that has nothing to do with your actual role as a paramedic. Wisdom is good, but not all education is wisdom. When education holds your hand for two years before they let you give someone Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), you’re just being oppressed.

It’s just so sad that healthcare is managed not just by healthcare, but by many, many entities all working together to achieve their selfish interests. The lack of freedom is one of the biggest challenges.

Plants

Red Tide of April 2016

Red Tide of April 2016

Yep, red tide is back at Clearwater Beach and Honeymoon Island.  It’s been hanging around since the beginning of April.

Red tide is an organism, a phytoplankton.  The over abundance of phytoplankton is commonly known as red tide.  Its scientific name is Karenia brevis (genus, species), or K. brevis shortened.  Red tides is when there is an over-abundance of pytoplankton in the water(called an algae bloom).  The algae blooms are often during the warmer months in the Gulf of Mexico, but its timing can be somewhat unpredictable.

Continue reading Red Tide of April 2016 →