Some people go through training in order to prepare for the eventuality they may be called upon to save a life, and some of those people actually expect the need to arise.  They feel prepared.  They feel ready.

And then they, as you would, try their best, using the skills they learned.

But it doesn’t always work out for various reasons, and the reason here is, well, I don’t have a word for it at the moment.

A truly tragic for all involved, the story is here.

It will be a long time dealing with it, I’m sure, for a lifeguard.

Here’s what AD has to say:

This is why you should take everything you read in the paper with a grain of salt.

If the girl had started breathing again, the life guard was perfectly correct in stopping CPR. It is physically impossible to have breathing without a heartbeat. Your heart can beat for several minutes after your breathing stops, but the opposite is not true.

I don’t know who Dr. Christopher Duke is, but his statements are irresponsible and cast serious doubt on the article’s assertion that he is a “heart expert.” CPR in the UK is taught much the same as it is in the United States. Both of them comply with the ILCOR (International Liaison Committee On Resuscitation) guidelines, which state that once adequate breathing resumes, CPR compressions are to stop and the patient placed in the recovery position - just as the lifeguard did.

We no longer teach laypeople to check for a pulse, either. Studies show that laypeople fail to detect a pulse when one is present more often than not, and over half the time think they have felt a pulse when none is there. Instead, we teach laypeople to look for “signs of spontaneous circulation,” such as coughing, spontaneous movement, or BREATHING.

Thanks, AD!

First of all, folks need to take responsibility for their actions in choosing their heroes.  That term “hero” is so much overused we’ve become ignorant of its original meaning.   If people choose to hold athletes, who live largely in another social universe, as role models, or worse, the next step, as heroes, that’s their business. 

But those people need to take responsibility for their selection.  Did they actually research anything about the individual?  Can they elucidate those specific actions that merit such a lofty position?

Have they forgotten that no matter who it is, there is always fault, past, present, or future, even in role models and heroes?  Do they really expect perfection, as if they’d discovered the perfect human being?

Tiger Woods owes me no apology because I have always taken him for what he is — he’s an athlete.  Just an athlete, as in, “athlete” is a job. 

Yes, he’s a darned god technician at what he does, but so are a hell of a lot of others in this world, including teachers, pharmacists, plumbers, truck drivers, clerks, carpenters, and any other line of work you care to name.  There are outstandingly talented and skilled people in all walks of life and there isn’t a job in the world that can’t be done with a finer touch or a little more efficiently by them.

Perhaps it’s the fast-rising sense of entitlement that causes such hero search and worship.  Is it because more people feel they are owed a hero, someone to whom they can point rather than doing the hard work themselves?  It is a lot easier to point one’s children, after all, to someone far away as a role model, rather than providing that role modeling oneself.  Life would sure be easier that way — a parent can be lazier and more free if they can be absolved of the responsibility for providing the right picture and deferring that responsibility to someone else, an athlete, for instance. 

But having that sense of entitlement to abandon their responsibility, when the hero suddenly turns out to be human, folks are offended.  Their sense of entitlement hasn’t been fulfilled and they have to get off their collective asses and either be responsible themselves or hope another likely and equally worthy hero pops up quickly.

Mr. Woods, Tiger, if I may, I resent your skipping golf tournaments year after year that are held on local-to-you PGA certified courses, have your picture emblazoned on the premises, and are for a most worthy charitable cause.  Just because you’ve made enough money by that point in the season is no reason in my mind not to support both the cause and the fans who would like to see you play.  I happen to not be one of them because I don’t care for golf, but that is totally beside the point.  That annual tournament is held less than an hour’s drive from your home, but you repeatedly choose to ignore it.

However, regarding the choices you’ve made in your personal life, you owe me no apology.  I have never held you to a standard above anyone else other than expecting I’d see you at the top of the leader board in golf, a technical exercise, and it was an expectation, not a desire.  It was simply a fact based on past technical performance.  Your personal life is of no concern to me – you are simply an excellent technician at what you do and I congratulate you for it, but no more so than I congratulate the roofer and the plumber who did an outstanding job here at my house when I needed them.

The ice cream truck passed a few minutes ago.  THAT is the indicator.

I stopped him and offered 5 bucks last year if he’d change the music every other day.

He didn’t think it was funny.

I wasn’t kidding.

Source and complete article.

Report: Officers lose 243 Homeland Security guns
February 18, 2010 10:04 a.m. EST
 
Of the 243 guns lost by Homeland Security agencies, 179 are gone because officers didn’t secure them, a report says.

Washington (CNN) — Nearly 180 Department of Homeland Security weapons were lost — some falling into the hands of criminals — after officers left them in restrooms, vehicles and other public places, according to an inspector general report.

The officers, with Customs and Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, “did not always sufficiently safeguard their firearms and, as a result, lost a significant number of firearms” between fiscal year 2006 and fiscal year 2008, the report said.

In all, 243 firearms were lost in both agencies during that period, according to the January report from Inspector General Richard Skinner. Of those, 36 were lost because of circumstances beyond officers’ control — for instance, ICE lost a firearm during an assault on an officer. Another 28 were lost even though officers had stored them in lockboxes or safes.

But 74 percent, or 179 guns, were lost “because officers did not properly secure them,” the report said.

Puts a whole new twist on the term “tree hugger,” eh?

See article here.

Thanks to Weasel Zippers for the point on this one.