HOT EATS, SILK SHEETS

Here's an email I was forwarded from a listserve I belong to. This is a single viewpoint from many complex ones. And while I myself am unclear on who's justified to be doing what, you simply must pay attention to what those in thick of it are experiencing. This reads like Katrina/NO all over agin.


From xxxxx -

I have started coughing, but I don't know why. I am not sick. I don't
have a
cold. I think it's a reaction I'm having to stress. My body feels
weak. My
mouth is always dry, no matter how much water I drink. And I'm afraid to
drink too much water because I don't want it to run out!

Last night was probably the most frightful night I have ever
experienced in
my whole entire life. I was so tired and exhausted... have not slept in
days. When there is finally a quiet moment, the tension in my stomach
and
heart prevents me from falling asleep.

Last night we counted at least 15 bombs falling into Dahiyeh (Beirut
Suburbs).. and these were just the ones we heard. At some point
during the
night, I said to myself that if I didn't at least try to get some
sleep that
I was going to go crazy from fatigue; and that that was what was
going to
kill me. Haven¹t been able to eat either, so am losing physical
strength.
It¹s all psychological at this point. I know I have to be strong, and
I will
be, but I can't deny what I¹m going through. And I think it's
important that
people hear about the downside as well as the bravery. So many of us are
already working hard to fix things, we are running around Beirut
trying to
get food and water and medicine to people, we are doing things
online, etc,
but it doesn't mean we are not scared, sick or tired.

So, last night amidst the worst shelling we've had so far, I realized
that I
was not afraid of the noise anymore; how quickly you get used to it. I
realized what was hurting the most was the "UNKNOWN". What is going to
happen tomorrow? When will this all end? How are we going to start
re-building again? Are the refugees going to be ok? How are the
people in
the south? And why punish a whole country? What is the real plan
behind all
of this? How much worse is it going to get?

My husband and I have been housing foreign "refugees" helping them to
find
their way out of the country. Two managed to leave this morning, a
German
and Swiss. The other two are British and American. The craziest thing is
that out of all people, the American embassy has been the LEAST
helpful to
its citizens here. The phone line to the embassy has been practically
out of
service. My friend, Amanda, (whom I just met a few days ago, by the
way) had
to hire a cab to take her to the embassy (which is a ride out of
Beirut) and
all they could tell her was that they didn¹t know what they were
going to do
and to keep checking the website. Only thing she has gotten on the
website
is that she now knows that there is going to be an evacuation (5 days
later), but when it happens, she is going to have to pay for it! Yes,
they
are saying to their citizens that they are going to bill them for
their ride
out! Can you believe that?!

Trying to evacuate people has put me under stress. The question is
what am I
to do if I had the opportunity to leave? Would I leave? What do I do
with my
friends? My family? My art studio? I have a British passport; I could be
evacuated with my husband. But what would happen to my best friend
Maya? She
has a very rare and bad case of CANCER! I have been taking care of
her since
she was diagnosed a few months ago and I know that my care for her is
what
has helped her do so well. Her type of cancer is "untreatable", but
ironically, the day the shelling started, her doctor told us her
tumors had
shrunk! Unbelievable- a true miracle. I can't leave Maya!

What about art work in my studio? What about all my brushes and
paints and
glitter and books! All my books! Again- the crazy things that cross your
mind.

What about our photo albums? All our family pictures? The memories...

What about the doodles I drew on my balcony a few summers ago when I was
suffering from a bad break up?

What about all the love letters I have saved? Letters that document
my youth
that I wanted to some day give to my daughter.

What about my other best friend? My dog, Tampopo? My beautiful Jack
Russel
Terrier who has never let me down. Who has always been a source of
purity
and compassion... Who has eyes of an angle... Dogs are not allowed to
evacuate. My American friend Christine is going to have to leave her dog
with me; a black pug named Baousi (means Kiss in Arabic). She is
heartbroken! She almost didn't want to evacuate. She went to so many
embassies to try and register with them and see if they would take
her dog.
Don't worry Christine, I will take great care of Baousi.

My sister has been volunteering to help the refugees who are being
sheltered
in public schools. Right now they are calling on Lebanese citizens to
help
out with money, medicine, food, water, blankets and mattresses. She
has been
going to people and asking for money and then going out to buy
medicines for
refugees- her own initiative! My mom has joined in too. a friend has put
together a website for accepting donations:

http://atrissi.com/helplebanon/

Biggest cynical statement of the day:
Israel has told people to evacuate from the south because they are
going to
annihilate the south of Lebanon. However, the people can not leave
because
all the roads have been destroyed/blocked. And yesterday when people
did try
and leave, the Israelis opened fire on them! A massacre is happening!

Update on the attacks, as of yesterday:
- Israelis have been bombing the south of Lebanon with phosphorus and
other
chemical bombs.
- Israelis have bombed all ports along the coastline of Lebanon.
- Israelis have bombed all our local army radars and some outposts
- Israelis have bombed/attacked the fire fighting brigade and the
Search and
Rescue Brigade in the South. Innocent civilian lives were lost. It was a
massacre- the buildings were also housing refugees.
- Israelis have continued to bomb the suburb of Beirut, Dahiyeh & Haret
Hreik
- Israelis have now killed over 100 civilians and there are several
hundreds
wounded
- Š and they continue to bomb the south
- Israelis have started hitting roads that lead to the mountains.
They hit a
main one leading to the Shouf.
-Israelis have hit a gas plant in the mountains

... I can't keep up with what they have hit.

*** Israel has begun to target Lebanese army outposts. They have killed
Lebanese soldiers. They are no longer just targeting Hizuballah. They
mean
to kill all of Lebanon.


The reality:

Israel is trying to bring Lebanon to its knees. Israel is trying to
destroy
Lebanon and the Lebanese spirit. Israel is trying to turn Lebanese
against
each other. Israel is trying to turn us into animals scrounging for
food,
water and shelter. Israel and the United States of America are trying to
drag Syria and Iran into this too. They are using Lebanon as bait.
Lebanon
is stuck in the middle. The Americans and Israelis are trying to
launch a
regional war!!

Please help in any way you can. Please pass on the message, this email-
reprint if you wish. Please tell people what is going on. Please put
pressure on your respective governments to step in and do something.

Lebanon is a peaceful country. We are the only country in the region in
which people of all religions co-exist peacefully.

It is unbelievable how biased the news is. They are not reporting the
real
damage being caused. They don¹t report that the Israelis are killing
innocent civilians. It seems from this end that all they are focusing
on is
G8!

Are the Israeli & US government really just trying to wipe us all out??
Well, you can tell them that I¹m not leaving. And there are many of
us who
are not leaving. We love Lebanon. We love what we have spent our lives
building.

Tell them about people like me.. who build culture and tolerance. Who
work
for peace and understanding. Who work to educate. Who work to promote
love
and compassion. There are thousands like me here. What about us?

Tell them about people like me, that despite all of this, I have
still not
learnt to hate. They can take everything from me, but not my dignity.
Not my
morals and beliefs. They will never never break my spirit.

Tell the Israeli citizens what their government is doing to us. Tell
them
that violence begets violence. Remind them that Lebanon is their
neighbor
and that co-existence is possible. How are we going to ever reach an
understanding through violence? We were so close... We were so close...

Please stop this brutality!

Still with love,
xxxxxx

By the way, did I mention Maya's tumors are getting smaller?
Did I mention there was a wedding across the street yesterday?

Man Uses Chip to Control Robot With Thoughts

By ANDREW POLLACK
Published: July 12, 2006

A paralyzed man with a small sensor implanted in his brain was able to
control a computer, a television and a robot using only his thoughts,
scientists reported today.

The development offers hope that in the future, people with spinal
cord injuries, Lou Gehrig?s disease or other ailments that impair
movement might be able to better communicate with or control their
world.

?If your brain can do it, we can tap into it,?? said John P. Donoghue,
a professor at Brown University who led the development of the system
and was the senior author of a report published today in the journal
Nature.

In separate experiments, the first person to receive the implant,
Matthew Nagle, was able to move a cursor, open e-mail, play a simple
video game called Pong and draw a crude circle on the screen. He could
change the channel or volume of a television set, move a robot arm
somewhat, and open and close a prosthetic hand.

Although his cursor control was sometimes wobbly, the basic movements
were not hard to learn. ?I pretty much had that mastered in four
days,?? Mr. Nagle, now 26, said in a telephone interview from the New
England Sinai Hospital and Rehabilitation Center in Stoughton, Mass.,
where he lives. He said the implant did not cause any pain.

A former high school football star in Weymouth, Mass., Mr. Nagle was
paralyzed below the shoulders after being stabbed in the neck during a
melee at a beach in July 2001. He said he was not involved in starting
the brawl and didn?t even know what sparked it. The man who stabbed
him is now serving ten years in prison, he said.

There have been some tests of a simpler sensor implant in people, as
well as tests of systems using electrodes outside the scalp. And Mr.
Nagle has spoken about his experiences before.

But the paper in Nature is the first peer-reviewed publication of an
experiment using a more sophisticated implant in a human.

The paper helps ?shift the notion of such ?implantable neuromotor
prosthetics? from science fiction towards reality,?? Stephen H. Scott
of Queen?s University in Canada wrote in a commentary in the journal.

The implant system, known as the BrainGate, is being developed by
Cyberkinetics Neurotechnology Systems of Foxborough, Mass. The company
is now testing the system in three other people whose names have not
been released ? one with a spinal cord injury, one who had a
brain-stem stroke and one with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, known as
Lou Gehrig?s disease.

Timothy R. Surgenor, the president of the company, said Cyberkinetics
hoped to have an implant approved for use as early as 2008 or 2009.
Mr. Donoghue of Brown is a cofounder of the company and its chief
scientist. Some of the authors of the research paper work for the
company, while others work at Massachusetts General Hospital and other
medical or academic institutions.

The sensor measures 4 millimeters ? about one sixth of an inch ? on a
side and contains 100 tiny electrodes. The device was implanted in the
area of Mr. Nagle?s motor cortex that is responsible for arm movement,
and was connected to a pedestal that protruded from the top of his
skull.

When the device was to be used, technicians connected the pedestal to
a computer with a cable. So Mr. Nagle was directly wired to a
computer, somewhat like a character in the ?Matrix? movies.

Mr. Nagle would then imagine moving his arm to hit various targets, as
technicians calibrated the machine, a process that took about half an
hour each time. The implanted sensor eavesdropped on the electrical
signals emitted by nearby neurons as they controlled the imaginary arm
movement.

Scientists said the study was important because it showed that the
neurons in Mr. Nagle?s motor cortex were still active, years after
they had any role to play in physically moving his arms.

Cursor control was not very smooth. In a task where the goal was to
guide the cursor from the center of the screen to a target on the
perimeter, Mr. Nagle hit the target about 73 to 95 percent of the
time. When he did, it took an average of 2.5 seconds, though sometimes
much longer. The second patient tested with the implant had worse
control than Mr. Nagle, the paper said.

By contrast, healthy people moving the cursor by hand can hit the
target almost every time and in only one second.

Dr. Jonathan R. Wolpaw, a researcher at the New York State Department
of Health in Albany, said the BrainGate performance did not appear to
be substantially better than a non-invasive system he is developing
using electroencephalography, in which electrodes are placed outside
the scalp.

?If you are going to have something implanted into your brain, you?d
probably want it to be a lot better,?? he said.

Dr. Donoghue and other proponents of the implants say they have the
potential to be a lot better, because they are much closer to the
relevant neurons. The scalp electrodes get signals from millions of
neurons all over the brain.

One way to improve implant performance was suggested by another paper
in the same edition of Nature. In a study involving monkeys, Krishna
V. Shenoy and colleagues at Stanford University eavesdropped not on
the neurons controlling arm movement but on those expressing the
intention to move.

?Instead of sliding the cursor out to the target, we can just predict
which target would be hit, and the cursor simply leaps there,?? said
Mr. Shenoy, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and
neurosciences.

He said a patient using the system could do the equivalent of typing
15 words a minute, about four times the speed of the other devices.

Other obstacles must be overcome before brain implants become
practical. The ability of the electrodes to detect brain signals
begins to deteriorate after several months, for reasons that are not
fully understood. Also, ideally, the implant would transmit signals
out of the brain wirelessly, doing away with the permanent hole in the
head and the accompanying risk of infection.

Mr. Nagle, meanwhile, had his implant removed after a bit more than a
year, so he could undergo another operation that allowed him to
breathe without a ventilator. He can control a computer with voice
commands, so he does not really need the brain implant. But he said he
was happy he volunteered for the experiment.

?It gave a lot of people hope,?? he said.

This is off the new Shadow LP, The Outsider, and also features Q-Tip on the album version.

...and my cousin (the cartoon-dude strolling) Lyrics Born's video, too, just for kicks...



I saw this video before I knew he was my cousin, which I find amusing.

Here's an article from 2004 with some insight into the psyche of Zidane, explaining how insults to his ethnicity and upbringing has always made him go a little Ron Artest-y.