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Popular 'Culture'

I am at a course on fetal echocardiography. Not adults, not children. Fetuses. I am presenting a research project here about detecting cardiac anomalies in fetuses 6.5 mm long. Not the heart, the whole fetus is 6.5 mm long. We used doppler imaging as well as grey scale. I'm proud of the project, and I'm surrounded by people far more accomplished than I am. I heard a lecture from the first fetal cardiologist, about fetal vascular dynamics in response to hypoxia. I loved it, and spoke with him afterward about the differences between the responses of fetal lambs, in which the research was done, and human fetuses.

All this simply reinforces my well-established reputation for being odd, and a nerd. Most people don't understand this stuff, and most OB/Gyns are put to sleep by discussions of fetal hemodynamics. It is well-known that I don't like popular culture, and that I have spent my entire adult life not watching TV, and not seeing the great majority of movies. Ensconced as I am in a hotel room, I am looking at Foxnews.com, and they have a scroll of popular stories. This post is about those stories.

Among other items I learned about, Britney Spears apparently looks sizzling in a neon swimsuit. Why this is news is beyond me, especially since gynecologic-level images of her body are readily available on the internet. I suppose that fetishists who like women in spandex will love her in neon green?

I also learned that Kanye West thinks Taylor Swift won her music awards because of racism. Well, that's obvious, because no black performer ever won a music award. I think Kanye is desperate for attention because he's irrelevant, not ignored because he's black, but then I'm probably a racist too.

Apparently The Biggest Loser TV show does not result in permanent weight loss. Shocking! Really? And I thought Gilligan's Island was real! Does anyone take these shows seriously? Reality TV is a contradiction, a statement about the banality of our reality rather than the banality of TV, which is a given.

There is a breast cancer survivor who has had a double mastectomy. She is going to walk 1,000 miles topless in support of breast cancer awareness. I suppose this is technically legal, as she has no breasts. How this will help breast cancer awareness is beyond me, since breast cancer is already overfunded and overhyped. If she wants to do anything for cancer awareness she ought to be doing it for lung cancer. Or maybe skip walking and have a web site.

There is a proposed Sex Park in Brazil that is getting Christians upset. I had no idea they would be troubled. Christians go to bars and have every bit as many extra-marital affairs as anyone else, and as much pre-marital sex. I think this is like the old joke about Baptists never recognizing each other at a bar.

Finally, there is a teen who is facing multiple counts of obscenity with minors for taking a dare to expose his penis in a yearbook team photo. This makes me laugh even as I am typing. Somehow no one saw his penis exposed? It must be a very little matter....I think the responsible party is the photo editor, not the kid. I don't think, however, that most photo editors spend a lot of time looking for penises in team pictures. Or maybe they do, but don't talk about it? Whatever, it's weird.

So, here I am in a hotel room, at a conference learning about things hardly anyone understands, while in the outside world there are people drooling over Britney Spears' genitalia encased in neon spandex, or howling over a teen's exposed penis, or worrying about sex parks.

Is this the state of our 'culture'? Are we really interested in a pop 'star' in a bathing suit, or a silly kid's penis? I fear we really are interested. Let's put it this way. There would be a line around the block to see Britney Spears in a bathing suit, while the line to hear the greatest fetal cardiologist in the world doesn't stretch out of a small room. Let's just get everything over with. Let's put Britney Spears and this poor teen in the Brazilian Sex Park. They'll sell millions of dollars in tickets, someone will get rich,  and endow a fetal surgery program. Thus the money thrown away looking at what everyone has will ultimately fund good medical care. Maybe the teen will have sex with Spears and her pregnancy will be scanned for fetal cardiac defects. I don't know. Short of these fantasies I can see no relationship at all between the world I enjoy and the world of pop culture.

Thank God!

TT

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