Flatline Constructs Quotes

Dr. Mark Crisplin, a Portland, Oregon, ER doctor, reviewed the original EEG readings of a number of patients claimed by the scientists as being flatlined or “dead” and discovered that this was not at all the case. “What they showed was slowing, attenuation, and other changes, but only a minority of patients had a flat line, and it [dying] took longer than 10 seconds. The curious thing was that even a little blood flow in some patients was enough to keep EEGs normal.” In fact, most cardiac patients were given CPR, which by definition delivers some oxygen to the brain (that’s the whole point of doing it). Crisplin concluded: “By the definitions presented in the Lancet paper, nobody experienced clinical death. No doctor would ever declare a patient in the middle of a code 99 dead, much less brain dead. Having your heart stop for 2 to 10 minutes and being promptly resuscitated doesn’t make you ‘clinically dead.’ It only means your heart isn’t beating and you may not be conscious.”31 Again, since our normal experience is of stimuli coming into the brain from the outside, when one part of the brain abnormally generates these illusions, another part of the brain—quite possibly the left-hemisphere interpreter described by neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga—interprets them as external events. Hence, the abnormal is interpreted as supernormal or paranormal.

The US has fewer primary-care physicians as a share of its population than almost any other rich country, despite having the world’s most expensive health-care system. This shortage is partly by design. In the early 1980s, a special committee established to review the state of American medicine reported to the US Department of Health and Human Services that the US was on the verge of a massive surplus of doctors. Physician groups backed up the finding. “The size of medical schools must be diminished,” Charles Evarts, the president of the American Orthopaedic Association, said in a 1985 speech. “Certain programs need to reduce their numbers, others must consolidate, and others need to terminate voluntarily or be terminated.”68 Starting in the 1980s, the government cut its support for medical schools and medical students, and many universities agreed to freeze the number of new studies and stop construction on medical programs. Between 1980 and 2005, the number of medical-school matriculants essentially flatlined69 as the US added 70 million people.70

El poder ha completado el espectáculo al hacerlo interactivo; pero, al hacer esto, ha terminado con el espectáculo como tal, ha inaugurado un sistema nuevo, un sistema completamente inclusivo, que obsolesce toda noción de alienación (y, por consiguiente, toda su crítica).

He slotted some ice, connected the construct, and jacked in. It was exactly the sensation of someone reading over his shoulder. He coughed. "Dix? McCoy? That you man?" His throat was tight. "Hey, bro," said a directionless voice. "It's Case, man. Remember?" "Miami, joeboy, quick study." "What's the last thing you remember before I spoke to you, Dix?" "Nothin'." "Hang on." He disconnected the construct. The presence was gone. He reconnected it. "Dix? Who am I?" "You got me hung, Jack. Who the fuck are you?" "Ca--your buddy. Partner. What's happening, man?" "Good question." "Remember me being here, a second ago?" "No." "Know how a ROM personality construct works?" "Sure, bro, it's a firmware construct." "So I jack it into the bank I'm using, I can give it sequential real-time memory?" "Guess so," said the construct. "Okay, Dix,. You are a ROM construct. Got me?" "If you say so," said the construct. "Who are you?" "Case." "Miami," said the voice, "joeboy, quick study.

It was disturbing to think of the Flatline as a construct, a hardwired ROM cassette replicating a dead man’s skills, obsessions, knee-jerk responses. . . .