Friday, June 5, 2009
Masterstroke: Man who couldn't even draw stickmen wakes from brain surgery... as a talented artist
Stroke of genius: Alan Brown was unable to draw even stickmen before his life-saving brain operation
For most, stroke and brain surgery can be devastating but for Alan Brown it sparked a previously unseen talent... as an artist.
When Alan, 49, emerged from a grueling 16-hour operation following his stroke, he found he had become a reborn 'Michelangelo' and was able to paint and draw with incredible detail.
Alan, from Malvern, Worcestershire, believes the surgery must have 'flicked a switch' in the creative part of his brain.
Until the stroke, Alan was unable to draw or paint, and the best he could manage was a simple 2D stickman.
The father-of-three spent two months recovering in intensive care before he was well enough to write and 'doodle' to pass the time and this is when he discovered his bizarre new talent.
Alan, who is divorced, said: 'I was out of the danger zone but still in intensive care and a nurse came up to me and said I looked bored and suggested I start drawing.
'She gave me a pencil and some paper and photograph of her dog which I copied almost perfectly.
'She looked at it and asked me if I was an artist. I said no and she said I should look into doing a course. Since then I've never looked back.'
Alan has just completed a fine art degree and has plans to open his own gallery
Alan, who used to run a double-glazing firm, collapsed at his home six years ago after suffering a bout of migraines.
He was rushed to Worcestershire Royal Hospital for a scan where doctors discovered a burst blood vessel, or aneurysm, in his brain.
He was transferred to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford for surgery.
Creative streak: A display of Mr. Brown's work
During a mammoth 16-hour operation - which involved a team of 15 surgeons - Alan almost died twice after suffering a major stroke.
He said: 'Going through this illness brought out a creative side of me that I never even knew existed.'
'I had never even set foot in an art gallery, let alone tried creating my own art work.'
Alan, who has three children, Joshua, 16, Ellie, 10 and Maisy, eight, is now about to graduate from Worcester university with a Fine Art Degree.
He has also decided to open his own art gallery in Malvern after turning his back on selling double-glazing.
He said: 'The stroke left me without the use of my left arm which would mean I'm pretty useless at work.
'I thought long and hard about what I wanted to do and art felt like my calling.
'I'm incredibly proud of my work. I don't have a particular style because I love all kinds of art from portraits to landscapes.'
Last month, Yorkshireman Chris Gregory, 30, shocked his family when he woke up from a brain-op with a thick Irish accent.
The American West: On the Road with Michael Blake Dinner and a Movie
Michael Blake, the Oscar-winning author and screenwriter of Dances With Wolves, will show and discuss his new documentary, The American West: On the Road with Michael Blake, in which he embarks on a road trip through the American West exploring historic battle sites and places of conflict between Whites and Indians. Through the unique lens of this impassioned storyteller, viewers gain a fresh look at the people, events and landscapes that shaped our country. Joining Blake for this special evening will be the film's director, Emmy Award-winner John Carver.
The very special Movie Dinner Theater at Radisson Poco Diablo Resort with Academy Award-winner Blake is co-presented by The Sedona International Film Festival and Festival of Native American Culture on Saturday, June 6. The event will begin at 6 p.m.
While most documentaries focus on the past or present, The American West combines both in a visually engaging, musically driven narrative blend. Blake hosts a unique journey back during modern life that carries the viewer from now to then … and back again.
Together with his horse, Breeze, Blake rides through the incredible scenery of the American Southwest telling the stories of the Chiricahua Apache. He tells of the deceit imposed on the Apache Chief Cochise igniting 25 years of conflict between the Apaches and Whites. The storytelling continues about the famed Apache Leader Geronimo and the final and permanent deportation of the powerful Chiricahua Apache from their homeland. The story concludes with the unique encounter of Blake's great-grandfather Lieutenant J.Y.F. Blake with Geronimo. Lieutenant Blake escorted Geronimo and his people to a reservation more than a hundred miles away. On arriving, the two made an exchange of gifts, one of which still exists and is featured in The American West.
This documentary film was inspired by Blake's Indian Yell, a non-fiction book that focuses on critical historical conflicts between Indians and Whites in the American West.
Blake's professional writing life began in the U.S. military at age nineteen and continued in college where he worked as an editor and investigative reporter for several university newspapers. In 1971, his career in journalism ended when he left an editorial position at the legendary underground weekly, the Los Angeles Free Press, to pursue fiction in both movies and books. In the early eighties, a screenplay made it to the screen in the form of a low-budget, independent film originally titled Double Down, starring a then-unknown actor named Kevin Costner, in his first featured role.
Blake's first novel, Dances With Wolves, was published as a mass-market paperback in 1988, receiving no attention until the film version was released to worldwide acclaim in the late 1990s. The phenomenal success of the movie ended more than twenty years of impoverished struggle to make a living out of literature and resulted in a downpour of awards, including the Oscar®. Equally prestigious awards were produced by protracted efforts at public service, among them the Eleanor Roosevelt Award for work with minorities and the environment: the Animal Protection Institute's Humanitarian of the Year; the U.S. Air Force's Americanism Award; the American Library Association's Hero of the Year; and Cancervive's Survivor of the Year.
If it’s Yellowstone, leave it mellow-stone?
Urine Trouble
After editing Grist's recent three-part series on poop, it's sort of hard to stop thinking about all the bodily waste flowing inexorably out humanity's gut and into the streams, rivers and oceans of the world. Six billion people, relieving themselves several times a day, every day ... well, you get the picture.
Yellowstone National Park's yellow-tinted hot springs sure can be tempting…Courtesy jimbowen0306 via FlickrSo with too much poop on the brain, it's easy to explain why the weird news out of Yellowstone National Park caught this writer's attention.
As multiple news outlets have reported, six men were arrested for getting a little too close to Old Faithful geyser last week, and two of them apparently urinated on the geological landmark.
Terrible! How could they! Right?
But is there an eco lesson here? Was their act of public pissing actually a statement about America's self-destructive fascination with the flush toilet—a water-wasting, river-polluting method for disposing of our No. 1s and 2s? Were the "Yellowstone Six" saying, "We are here today to pee on Old Faithful to draw attention to the need for a sanitation system that returns nutrients to the eco-system"?
Doubtful. These guys were being stupid, of course, and they happened to get caught on the park's live webcam.
But Grist being Grist, we snickered at it and thought to ourselves, "There's gotta be a way to tie this to the environment, right?"
Probably not. Still, it's kinda funny. And we wonder, what other parks are public urination worthy?
(Note to self: When urinating in national parks, check first for webcams.)
Will Obama End 'War on Drugs'?
Editor's Note: President Barack Obama has shied away from George W. Bush's phrase "war on terror" and also is abandoning Richard Nixon's earlier phrasing "war on drugs," but are these changes much more than semantics?
In this guest essay, writer Sherwood Ross examines the consequences of the "war on drugs" and the chances that Obama might be serious about moving in a new direction:
Efforts by President Obama to put an end to the nation's failed "War on Drugs" can't come an hour too soon – if that's his intent. From his actions, it's hard to know.
Drug offenses account for about half the 200,000 Federal prison inmates behind bars, compared to just 15 percent of prisoners convicted of violent crimes involving weapons, explosives, or arson. If America leads the world with 2.3 million prisoners in all its prisons, jails, and assorted lock-ups, it is largely because we have criminalized drug addiction, not treated it.
President Richard Nixon first declared a "War on Drugs" in 1969 to dramatize his fight against drug addiction. Nixon – who had a knack for waging wars he could not win – got the country headed down a wrong road from which it may only now be just turning around.
Gil Kerlikowske, Obama's new head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, has renounced even the use of the phrase "War on Drugs" on grounds it favors incarceration of offenders rather than treatment. But talk is no substitute for action.
To his credit, Obama has long appeared to be open to a fresh approach. In an address at Howard University on Sept. 28, 2007, then Sen. Obama said, "I think it's time we took a hard look at the wisdom of locking up some first time nonviolent drug users for decades."
"We will give first-time, non-violent drug offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in the type of drug rehabilitation programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior," he added. "So let's reform this system. Let's do what's smart. Let's do what's just."
And as prison overcrowding worsens and governors currently whine they can't balance budgets, the public might get some real relief.
Last year, more than 700,000 of the country's 20-million pot smokers were arrested for marijuana possession, according to NORML, an advocacy lobby that works for decriminalization. Over the past decade, 5-million folks got arrested on marijuana charges, 90% of which were for "simple possession, not trafficking or sale," NORML says.
"Regardless of whether one is a 'drug warrior' or a 'drug legalizer," writes Bob Barr in the May 25 Atlanta Journal Constitution, "it is difficult if not impossible to defend the 38-year old war on drugs as a success."
That's because, "Illicit drugs are every bit as easy to score on America's streets and in her schools now as they were more than three decades ago. Last year, just under 84 percent of the 12th graders considered that marijuana was 'very easy' or 'fairly easy' to obtain; virtually the same as in a 1975 survey."
What accounts for the 547 percent spurt in prison population between 1970 and 2007, Barr writes, is that "the primary focus of the federal anti-drug effort has been enforcement, interdiction and incarceration as opposed to demand reduction, prevention and treatment."
Mary Ellen DiGiacomo, of the Action Committee For Women in Prison(ACWIP), of New Jersey, says, "There's long waiting lines to get into (substance abuse) programs, and they don't have drug treatment programs at most women's institutions. You get one therapist, one counselor you talk to but that does not constitute drug treatment."
This may be one reason Bureau of Justice Statistics finds two out of every three released convicts within three years wind up back inside.
Cheney shoots political enemy (and all of us) in the face
Former Vice President Dick Cheney has shot former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke in the face, metaphorically.
The attack came Monday as Cheney continued his daring, 50-state propaganda spree at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
Asked about a recent Clarke op-ed piece critical of the administration, Cheney said, "You know, Dick Clarke. Dick Clarke, who was the head of the counterrorism program in the run-up to 9/11. He obviously missed it."
Pow.
Cheney's muzzle-load of bull-shot richocheted straight into the face of every American, especially those who know that Richard Clarke spent the months leading up to 9/11 carpet-bombing the White House with messages warning of an al-Qaeda attack, begging unresponsive Bush officials to take heed.
Cheney blasted away at Clarke despite a smoking-gun paper trail of correspondence from the counterterrorism boss, including:
"Bin Ladin Public Profile May Presage Attack" (May 3, 2001)
"Bin Ladin's Networks' Plans Advancing" (May 26)
"Bin Ladin Attacks May Be Imminent" (June 23)
"Bin Ladin and Associates Making Near-Term Threats" (June 25)
"Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile Attacks" (June 30)
"Planning for Bin Ladin Attacks Continues, Despite Delays" (July 2)
Finally, unable to interest the White House in this urgent, imminent peril, Clarke emailed Condoleezza Rice on Sept. 4, 2001, asking, "Are we serious about dealing with the al-Qaeda threat?"
Wow.
Supertower offers glimmer of hope in polluted Chinese city
Pearl River Tower in Guangzhou is being billed as a green beacon amid the pollution of China's construction boom
You can see the carbon emissions rising by the day over the skyline of Guangzhou, where armies of construction workers are busy throwing up skyscrapers that will soon surpass anything in New York in terms of height and energy consumption.
It is the same story all over China where, despite the economic crisis, engineers are completing four more tower blocks every day – almost all fitted with air conditioning, heating, lighting and lifts that will run on coal-powered electricity.
The country is in the middle of the greatest building boom in human history. Six of the world's 10 tallest buildings completed last year were in China, including the 492-metre-tall Shanghai World Financial Centre. Even taller structures are on their way – such as the Shanghai Centre, 632 metres, and at 600 metres, the Goldin Finance 117 in Tianjin.
But among the giants there is one that could hold out hope for a low-carbon future. The Pearl River Tower, now being erected in Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong province, is being billed as the most energy efficient superskyscraper ever built.
With wind turbines, solar panels, sun-shields, smart lighting, water-cooled ceilings and state-of-the-art insulation, the 310-metre tower is designed to use half the energy of most buildings of its size and set a new global benchmark for self-sufficiency among the planet's high rises.
Engineers say the tower could even be enhanced to create surplus electricity if the local power firm relaxes its monopoly over energy generation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/may/27/china-green-supertower
Let’s say no to nativism
THE RHODE ISLAND General Assembly is again poised to vote on legislation to require firms to participate in a troubling federal bureaucracy (known as E-Verify) to try to prevent them from hiring undocumented immigrants. I am voting against this legislation with history as my guide.
Reasons for immigration vary year by year and generation by generation, but there are two basic themes: Flight from violence, and flight from destitution. There's a parallel constant: It's sadly evident that we can expect anti-immigrant sentiment to manifest itself generation by generation as well. We learned growing up that the infamous "no Irish need apply" signs were wrong, discriminatory, even primitive. And it was wrong to turn back the boats of European emigrés in the 1930s and '40s, many of whom went on to their deaths at the hands of the fascists.
The Germans came here en masse in the early and mid-1800s because they couldn't find work in the cities — as machines reduced the need for labor — and because of political upheaval in the 1840s and '50s. The German "aliens" were a source of great consternation for many Americans of British background. Even Ben Franklin's writings evidence a xenophobia:
"Those who come hither are generally of the most ignorant Stupid Sort of their own Nation. . . . I remember when they modestly declined intermeddling in our Elections, but now they come in droves, and carry all before them, except in one or two Counties. . . . In short unless the stream of their importation could be turned from this to other colonies . . . they will soon so out number us, that all the advantages we have will not in My Opinion be able to preserve our language, and even our Government will become precarious. . . . Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a Colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion."
The Irish came to avoid famine, disease and British oppression. Many American Protestants weren't happy — hence the famous employment discrimination. But most of the above-mentioned people did indeed come here "legally" because there were largely no laws against immigration (save against those Chinese who were not among the indentured servants who built our railroads).
Then the Italians and Portuguese and eastern Europeans started coming — legally, at first, even "With Out Papers" (whose acronym became an infamous pejorative). But sadly, many Americans — many of whose own families had only recently entered the country — wanted to keep the prize to themselves.
And so for the first time, we saw broad restrictions on European immigration. With the First Quota Law in 1921 and the Johnson-Reed Act, in 1924, the anti-immigrant, "nativist"' forces clamped down on immigration from southern and eastern Europe, in favor of immigration from Europe's north and the west — the ancestral lands of the American political class of the era.
Make no mistake about it: Immigration law began to change because longer-standing Americans of the early 20th Century didn't like people with names like Tavares, Segal and Carcieri. We were swarthy, we were unskilled and we were considered dimwits.
http://www.projo.com/opinion/contributors/content/CT_segal2_06-02-09_FREAGNM_v25.449189f.html
Pawlenty Says He'll Certify MN Senate Race After State Court Process Completes
Update: Coleman may throw in towel if he loses at MN Supreme Court, according to Roll Call 'sources'...
Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (R) informed MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell:
I can't sign the certificate until the State court process is complete. We don't know who the winner is, but as soon as that process is complete and they give direction as to signing the certificate, I'm going to sign it…
Pawlenty's remarks are consistent with MN Election Law as interpreted [PDF] by the MN Supreme Court in Franken v. Pawlenty. MN law prevents either Governor Pawlenty (R) or Secretary of State Mark Ritchie (D) from signing the certificate once an election contest has commenced and before it is completed in state court. It is also consistent with the legal argument presented by Al Franken in his MN Supreme Court brief [PDF] that the MN Supreme Court should order the Governor and Secretary of State to perform what amounts to a "ministerial duty" to sign and countersign the certification of election upon the completion of the state court process. This statement follows, within one day, Pawlenty's announcement that he would not seek a third term as Governor.
[Hat-tip BRAD BLOG commenter 'FreedomOfInformationAct']
UPDATE 6/4/09: Roll Call now reports that Coleman also may be ready to throw in the towel if he loses at the MN Supremes: "Sources close to Coleman say the former Senator would likely give up his legal battle and accept defeat if the Minnesota Supreme Court decides in Franken's favor. That's because Coleman anticipates that Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) would ultimately sign Franken's certification papers."
Cheney Acknowledges Passing The Buck On GM: Bush Didn’t ‘Want To Be The One Who Pulled The Plug’
Last night on Fox News, Vice President Cheney admitted that the Bush administration deliberately decided to pass the buck on GM and let President Obama deal with the problem. Cheney admitted that he thought the "right outcome was going to be bankruptcy," but that President Bush didn't want to "be the one who pulled the plug." Instead, the Bush administration put together a costly auto bailout to stem the tide until President Obama took office:
CHENEY: Well, I thought that, eventually, the right outcome was going to be bankruptcy. … And the president decided that he did not want to be the one who pulled the plug just before he left office.
VAN SUSTEREN: Why?
CHENEY: Well, I think he felt, you know, these are big issues and he wouldn't be there through the process of managing it, but in effect, would have sort of pulled the plug on GM and that was one of the first crises the new administration would have to deal with. So he put together a package that tided GM over until the new administration had a chance to look at it, decide what they wanted to do.
VAN SUSTEREN: But it's cost us billions to get — I mean, you know —
CHENEY: It has. … And now the government owns a big chunk of General Motors. That bothers me. I don't like having government own those kinds of major financial enterprises. I think it's — it does damage to our long-term economic prospects when we get government involved in making those kinds of decisions.
Watch it:
When announcing his $17.4 billion auto bailout in December 2008, Bush said that "bankruptcy now would lead to a disorderly liquidation of American auto companies." Cheney is now saying that they were thinking about bankruptcy all along, but instead used billions of dollars of taxpayer money to push their problems onto the Obama administration.
It’s increasingly evident that Obama should resign
by Ted Rall
MIAMI — We expected broken promises. But the gap between the soaring expectations that accompanied Barack Obama's inauguration and his wretched performance is the broadest such chasm in recent historical memory. This guy makes Bill Clinton look like a paragon of integrity and follow-through.
From health care to torture to the economy to war, Obama has reneged on pledges real and implied. So timid and so owned is he that he trembles in fear of offending, of all things, the government of Turkey. Obama has officially reneged on his campaign promise to acknowledge the Armenian genocide. When a president doesn't have the nerve to annoy the Turks, why does he bother to show up for work in the morning?
Obama is useless. Worse than that, he's dangerous. Which is why, if he has any patriotism left after the thousands of meetings he has sat through with corporate contributors, blood-sucking lobbyists and corrupt politicians, he ought to step down now — before he drags us further into the abyss.
I refer here to Obama's plan for "preventive detentions." If a cop or other government official thinks you might want to commit a crime someday, you could be held in "prolonged detention." Reports in U.S. state-controlled media imply that Obama's shocking new policy would only apply to Islamic terrorists (or, in this case, wannabe Islamic terrorists, and also kinda-sorta-maybe-thinking-about-terrorism dudes). As if that made it OK.
In practice, Obama wants to let government goons snatch you, me and anyone else they deem annoying off the street.
Preventive detention is the classic defining characteristic of a military dictatorship. Because dictatorial regimes rely on fear rather than consensus, their priority is self-preservation rather than improving their people's lives. They worry obsessively over the one thing they can't control, what George Orwell called "thoughtcrime" — contempt for rulers that might someday translate to direct action.
Locking up people who haven't done anything wrong is worse than un-American and a violent attack on the most basic principles of Western jurisprudence. It is contrary to the most essential notion of human decency. That anyone has ever been subjected to "preventive detention" is an outrage. That the president of the United States, a man who won an election because he promised to elevate our moral and political discourse, would even entertain such a revolting idea offends the idea of civilization itself.
Obama is cute. He is charming. But there is something rotten inside him. Unlike the Republicans who backed George W. Bush, I won't follow a terrible leader just because I voted for him. Obama has revealed himself. He is a monster, and he should remove himself from power.
"Prolonged detention," reported The New York Times, would be inflicted upon "terrorism suspects who cannot be tried."
"Cannot be tried." Interesting choice of words.
Any "terrorism suspect" (can you be a suspect if you haven't been charged with a crime?) can be tried. Anyone can be tried for anything. At this writing, a Somali child is sitting in a prison in New York, charged with piracy in the Indian Ocean, where the U.S. has no jurisdiction. Anyone can be tried.
What they mean, of course, is that the hundreds of men and boys languishing at Guantánamo and the thousands of "detainees" the Obama administration anticipates kidnapping in the future cannot be convicted. As in the old Soviet Union, putting enemies of the state on trial isn't enough. The game has to be fixed. Conviction has to be a foregone conclusion.
Why is it, exactly, that some prisoners "cannot be tried"?
