Monday, February 18, 2013

Back Again, Also What Diversity?

I have a new job as a nurse on a telemetry floor, which explains why once again, I have been extremely busy and neglecting this blog.  hopefully now I can make myself post on a more regular schedule.  Also once again I've been intending to write this post for a little while.

At my new job, I had to go through a week long orientation session along with all the other new hires in the nursing services for the hospital I work for.  During this orientation, we listened to a presentation by the spiritual services director which was essentially about how there are people who are available to come by and minister to the spiritual needs of the patients if they need.  Keep in mind that this is not a religious hospital. Where it started to get interesting though was when he proudly presented the slides with the people who could come and offer spiritual assistance.  It was made up almost exclusively by Christians, with the one  exception being a Jewish Rabbi from a local synagog that they could contact to come and make calls to patients rooms on select days of the week.  It then got somewhat more interesting as he proceeded to tell us that we have to be sensitive to the religious considerations of our patients, and that because we are going to be working with the public we should expect to interact with people of different faiths.  This lead to him listing the different faiths our patients might have and how we should be sensitive to their beliefs.  The part that was really interesting about that though, was that his list of faiths contained solely Christian denominations.  At that, Mormons were also left off the list.  While it would be hard for me to judge accurately since this group of orientees consisted of 70+ people, I would guess from knowing, talking to, and observing a fair number of them that about 95% were Christians.

This all lead me to wondering what it is that people here think diversity means.  To be fair, there is a large population of black people in Shreveport, but its still pretty segregated in a lot of ways.  There seem to be a fair number of Muslims, theres even a mosque in town apparently  but I almost never see them outside of Walmart and the two or three families that live in the neighborhood behind my apartment.  Similarly, you do not see many Asians around town.  There are some Jewish people in town, but not very many, and their number is getting smaller.

So is the idea of diversity in Shreveport really that they have to interact with people who go to a church with a different take on Christianity than their own?  It really seems like it.  This is after all the 2nd most religious city in the US (http://rcms2010.org/), and it is also the city where a local buisiness was boycotted briefly because someone got a dollar bill with "in god we trust" crossed out as change on their purchase http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2012/12/07/when-godless-money-hurts-a-business/ (I couldn't find the newspaper story on it, but here's the Friendly Atheists take).

This has however given me an idea.  I had been thinking about going to services at a couple of the local churches every so often and seeing what it was like to go as an out atheist, but now I think I might want to try going to the local mosque and meeting the people there.  While obviously I woln't have much in common religiously with them, they are the next most hated minority in this town (and much more visibly so) so there might be some commonalities there.  If this idea leads to fruition, it should make for an interesting story.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Some friends...

So I've been busy  but I finally graduated from nursing school, and hopefully will have a job soon.  In my down time, I had a few things happen I will be talking about on here in the near future.  However since it is almost 5 am here I'm going to keep my "I'm back/alive" post short.  So here is a thread off one of my Facebook friends posts.  I highlighted the parts I'll actually bother to talk about, because if I wrote about all of the fail in this thread it could take up several pages.  Because I'm tired, I'll keep this brief.

First off, he obviously didn't bother to look this up.  I'll freely admit I don't always fact check things either, especially when it is painting a politician or pundit I don't like in a bad light.  However when its this conspiratorial and crazy... yeah I try and take that shite with a grain of salt.

The next part I like is where he discounts the fact checking site Snopes.com, because anything that doesn't agree with the anti-Obama message has to be a lie...  Not that the other guy did very well backing Snopes up with Wikipedia, but to equate Snopes with the Onion puts JS way out there in crazy conspiracy land.  This is the part I almost decided to jump into the fray....

...and then I got to the bottom and realized there was about as much of a point in commenting here as there would be in painting a wall with a dry paint brush.  A whole lot of effort and nothing to show for it.  However, his last two comments do show what I see so much of in people who associate with the Tea Party, and to a large extent around here, in the people who embrace the modern Republican party.  It's an attitude of "I know my facts, and your facts are irrelevant no matter how unreliable my source is or how good your source is". It is also the lack of regard for what is actually true, as long as I get to get some laughs while "sling poo at the a-hole".  The person that posted all of this is not someone I have been friends in real life with for quite some time, however here in Louisiana I have several friends who on most other matters are completely reasonable people, once the conversation turns to politics or anything to do with liberals or Obama this sort of "I hate them so I can say whatever I want and believe the craziest conspiracies about them" thinking seems to take over.  I know there are people on the left who are like this as well, but I just don't see it being nearly as prevalent.  Maybe it's because I'm living in a place where you are expected to be a conservative Christian Republican, so the majority of people who can break out of that kind of thinking are the people who actually think for themselves.  Perhaps in more liberal areas the reverse is true.  When I was living in Colorado though I didn't see much evidence of that though (possible I could have missed it because of my personal biases.)

Something I have to wonder about with this though, if he can acknowledge (kind of) that this claim against Obama has no merit and is based on a conspiracy theory, how does he not reach a point where he has to wonder about the accuracy of all the other terrible things he believes about the left and the president?  I also wonder what it is that causes him to be so full of hate and animosity to Obama and the left.  Perhaps I will just have to ask.



  1. JS------ shared tacticaltshirts.com's photo.
    Usama bin Obama is such a tool.
    What the hell is this about? People are sick. Fake Sandy Hook parents! --Marky www.tacticaltshirts.com
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