The Chronicles

Language barriers lead to health barriers: study

2008-12-26T10:02:00.001-05:00

The comments people made about this story are appalling. Sometimes grandparents move to Canada with their grown children and they're unable to learn the new language. I agree that if you are moving to Canada, you should have functional English skills, which do not often include medicalese. What if you've just moved to Canada? What if in your culture, it's impolite to ask too many questions? What if you're not educated enough to know to ask these questions? Quite often, even if you speak English fluently, in times of emergency you get flustered and confused, and may have trouble understanding basic ideas.

There should be some sort of solution to this, a phone-in interpreting service. Perhaps even a database of commonly used expressions translated to various languages just to help out with things. Doctors with multiple languages is not the solution.

From: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/12/24/health-language.html#socialcomments

Language barriers lead to health barriers: study

Last Updated: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 | 9:30 AM ET Comments13 Recommend4

CBC News

A new study on health care and language indicates that immigrants in Canada's largest city may not be getting the care they need.

According to the study, published in the current issue of the Canadian Journal of Public Health, language is an enormous barrier for many newcomers, especially when it comes to communication between health-care providers and patients.

The report says that in some instances, the language barrier is preventing patients from understanding their treatment options.

At the Immigrant Women's Health Centre on College Street in downtown Toronto, Karen Chow checks on her client. Chow is able to talk to the patient in Cantonese, a service that is unavailable in most clinics in the city.

Chow said that at other clinics and at hospitals, this Cantonese woman is mostly oblivious to what is going on around her. The problem, said Chow, is language.

"She may have a problem so she may need to bring somebody to interpret [at a clinic or hospital]. Here she doesn't need to bring anybody."

The study says language is not just a barrier to communication and understanding. It may also prevent many immigrants from seeking the health care they need.

Kevin Pottie, the study's lead researcher, says his team looked at data collected from a Statistics Canada questionnaire.

He said the study shows many immigrants don't have health literacy. In most cases, they can't navigate the health-care system, understand health information or apply that information to their lives.

"We're concerned this could have implications on the access to health care or maybe directly on their health," he said.

Pottie is hopeful the study will lead to the implementation of translation programs to help newcomers.

Fwd: hipsters

2008-09-27T11:42:00.001-04:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Omer
Date: Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 10:09 PM
Subject: (no subject)
To: Hana

"The dance floor at a hipster party looks like it should be surrounded by quotation marks"
http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/79/hipster.html

The Problem with Open-Source

2008-08-22T13:12:00.000-04:00

The error was corrected within 2 minutes of reporting. It took 15 minutes to figure out how to report.

Feel Shame No Longer!

2008-08-11T10:08:00.001-04:00

From: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2008/08/11/tech-invisible.html

Scientists closer to developing invisibility cloak

Last Updated: Monday, August 11, 2008 | 9:21 AM ET

The Associated Press

Scientists say they are a step closer to developing materials that could render people and objects invisible.

U.S. researchers have demonstrated for the first time they were able to cloak three-dimensional objects using artificially engineered materials that redirect light around the objects. Previously, they only had been able to cloak very thin two-dimensional objects.

The findings, by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, led by Xiang Zhang, are to be released later this week in the journals Nature and Science.

The new work moves scientists a step closer to hiding people and objects from visible light, which could have broad applications, including military ones.

People can see objects because they scatter the light that strikes them, reflecting some of it back to the eye. Cloaking uses materials, known as metamaterials, to deflect radar, light or other waves around an object, like water flowing around a smooth rock in a stream.

Metamaterials are mixtures of metal and circuit board materials such as ceramic, Teflon or fibre composite. They are designed to bend visible light in a way that ordinary materials don't. Scientists are trying to use them to bend light around objects so they don't create reflections or shadows.

It differs from stealth technology, which does not make an aircraft invisible but reduces the cross-section available to radar, making it hard to track.

The Berkeley research was funded in part by the U.S. army's research office and the U.S. National Science Foundation's Nano-Scale Science and Engineering Center.

Ohio inmate says he's too fat for execution

2008-08-05T11:30:00.001-04:00

Ohio inmate says he's too fat for execution

Lawyer claims his client's weight could make lethal injection 'excruciating'

The Associated Press

updated 7:58 p.m. ET, Mon., Aug. 4, 2008

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A death row inmate scheduled for execution says he's too fat to be put to death, claiming executioners would have trouble finding his veins and that his weight could diminish the effectiveness of one of the lethal injection drugs.

Lawyers for Richard Cooey argue in a federal lawsuit that Cooey — 5-feet-7 and 267 pounds — had poor veins when he faced execution five years ago and the problem has been worsened by weight gain.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in federal court, also says prison officials have had difficulty drawing blood from Cooey for medical procedures.

Cooey, 41, is sentenced to die for raping and murdering two young women in 1986. His execution is scheduled for Oct. 14.

His attorneys say a drug he is taking for migraine headaches could affect the execution process. The drug Topamax, a type of seizure medication, may have created a resistance to thiopental, the drug used to put inmates to sleep before two other lethal drugs are administered, Dr. Mark Heath, a physician hired by the Ohio Public Defender's Office, said in documents filed with the court.

Heath says Cooey's weight, combined with the potential drug resistance, increases the risk he would not be properly anesthetized.

"All of the experts agree if the first drug doesn't work, the execution is going to be excruciating," Cooey's public defender, Kelly Culshaw Schneider, said Monday.

Prison system spokeswoman Andrea Carson and Jim Gravelle, a spokesman for the Ohio Attorney General's Office, both said Monday they hadn't seen the lawsuit and couldn't comment.

Last year, Carson cited the obesity of condemned inmate Christopher Newton as one of the reasons prison officials had difficulty accessing his veins before his execution. Newton was 6 feet tall and weighed 265 pounds.

Two years ago, convicted killer Jeffrey Lundgren was put to death after a federal appeals court rejected his claim that he was at greater risk of experiencing pain and suffering because he was overweight and diabetic.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26014962/

Turns out Smoking is Bad

2008-07-30T10:39:00.001-04:00

http://www.smoke-free.ca/warnings/Brazil%20-%20warnings.htm

I want to quit seeing stop smoking ads.

Family Hero

2008-07-29T08:39:00.001-04:00

I'm surprised news like this wasn't close to home sooner. At least it was preventative.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/23/world/middleeast/23israel.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=tractor%20+%20israel&st=cse&oref=slogin

Yaki is a relative. All I can say is: wow.

Six Feet Under

2008-07-27T14:43:00.001-04:00

I'm writing a paper and watching Six Feet Under and am wondering to myself if this is what actually goes on next door.

2008-07-15T11:07:00.001-04:00

It smells like dishwasher.

Big in Japan.

2008-07-14T10:48:00.001-04:00

http://www.explosm.net/comics/1341/

Fwd: (no subject)

2008-07-08T16:55:00.001-04:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Omer
Date: Wed, Jun 18, 2008 at 11:17 PM
Subject: (no subject)

http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2008/06/02/top-x-gadgets-that-g.html

Scroll down to the first video, 'facial flex' ....

2008-06-28T23:42:00.001-04:00

http://en.eidfaxi.is/Stallions/

Am I the only one who finds this really, really funny?

Some good puns...

2008-06-28T23:10:00.001-04:00

...as though there's such a thing as a bad pun!

http://www.bestweekever.tv/2008/06/06/the-50-best-pun-stores/

Check out this picture I found

2008-06-26T08:49:00.000-04:00

Hana found this picture on the web and thought you would enjoy it.

Visit this address at Worth1000.com to see it:

http://www.worth1000.com/view.asp?entry=398311

Be sure to check out the image galleries while you're there....funny
stuff!

Also, are you a cool news junkie? Check out Plime.com!

http://www.plime.com

This email was sent by a visitor to the Worth1000 website from this IP
address: 99.226.195.164

Your email address was not recorded by Worth1000.com or added/resold to
any lists.

Person collapses in Iceland

2008-05-27T13:24:00.001-04:00

Person collapses in Iceland

A PERSON collapsed in the frozen food section of Iceland in Broadfield.

Fire and ambulance crews were called to the scene at around midday today (May 27) and fire crews performed first aid before medical assistance was on hand.

A fire spokesman said: "We were called to a person who collapsed in Iceland's frozen food section and we rendered first aid while we waited for the ambulance.

"The ambulance took them away."

The person has not yet been identified and it is not yet known why they collapsed.

http://www.worthingherald.co.uk/crawleynews/Person-collapses-in-Iceland-.4124192.jp

Fwd: history

2008-05-20T13:59:00.001-04:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Inna

Date: Tue, May 20, 2008 at 1:57 PM
Subject: Re: history
To: Hana

herd of humans makes for a nice little rhythm
it's a shame
i think a syntax revolution is needed

Fwd: Baked Goods

2008-05-19T14:11:00.001-04:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Omer
Date: Fri, May 16, 2008 at 5:29 PM

http://shapeandcolour.wordpress.com/2008/05/15/kittiwat-unarrom-body-bakery/

Office Eavesdrop

2008-04-28T14:09:00.001-04:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jenna

Date: Mon, Apr 28, 2008 at 2:00 PM
Subject:
To: Hana

BEST phone convo EVER this is what I just heard:

"so you need a strap?"
"what size nuts are you using it with?"
"seriously, you're going to use a strap on nuts that small???"
"ok, I'll order you your strap but I worry that your nuts might break"

Absolutely incredible.

2008-04-10T08:11:00.001-04:00

I was reading the New York Times and I accidentally figured out something awesome. If you double click on any word, a new window pops up with the definition. I mean any word, I first hit "of" and then "rural." So that was just an fyi, I guess.

Cutest Comment Ever

2008-04-09T13:45:00.001-04:00

This is what happens when your significant other edits your papers and begins to lose their mind by the second page:

Stats

2008-04-08T16:22:00.001-04:00

From previous post

Cool, Fun, Refreshing

2008-04-08T16:17:00.001-04:00

Drink this up.

People are so weird

2008-04-06T16:31:00.001-04:00

http://www.geekologie.com/2007/11/26/lifesize-lego.jpg

ha!

2008-04-06T13:29:00.001-04:00

http://i248.photobucket.com/albums/gg166/webhittz/mcDs.jpg

2008-04-03T14:36:00.001-04:00

http://www.drgrammar.org/faqs/

The Spaghetti Harvest

2008-04-01T08:20:00.001-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SyUvNnmFtgI

Instead of my blog...

2008-03-27T12:41:00.001-04:00

...everyone just get stumble

http://www.curiobot.net/index.php?s=0&c=0&p1=0&p2=0&o=-1

Everyone has facebook

2008-03-25T18:10:00.001-04:00

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/03/25/face-book.html

This is FUN!

2008-03-23T12:38:00.001-04:00

http://producten.hema.nl/

BEWARE!!! GNOMES!!!

2008-03-16T21:45:00.001-04:00

http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/article902014.ece

Neat!

2008-03-13T17:42:00.001-04:00

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/great-idea/brush--rinse-toothbrush-creates-mini-water-fountain-286718.php

NZ dolphin rescues beached whales

2008-03-12T14:16:00.001-04:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7291501.stm

Via Inna

Fwd: (no subject)

2008-03-10T14:42:00.000-04:00

A good response to "WAR"

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Omer
Date: 2008/3/4
Subject: (no subject)
To: Hana

http://ingesidee.de/resourceviewer.php?pgid=63&subpage=1&lang=en

What time is it? What's my sign?

2008-03-10T12:15:00.001-04:00

http://www.ohgizmo.com/2008/02/26/citizen-astrodea-celestial-watch/

Song Images

2008-03-02T17:00:00.001-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/slowburn/2290748401/in/pool-songchart/

Like This

2008-02-27T20:46:00.001-05:00

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/read.php?CATEGORY_PK=&TOPIC_PK=2282

Apts

2008-02-24T14:56:00.001-05:00

New place is up and running. It's nice. You'll be invited over shortly.

Bad news: I have free cable. Worse news? Mystery Channel is free-previewing this weekend. This means almost 24 hours of Law & Order variety hours and naps (/no work being done).

Please visit me.

Sincerely,

Hana

Fwd: FW: (no subject)

2008-02-22T10:07:00.001-05:00

> Date: Thu, 21 Feb 2008 14:59:21 -0800
> From: Omer
> Subject: (no subject)
>
> Great gifts for children:
> http://www.giantmicrobes.com/ca/products/ecoli.html
> http://www.giantmicrobes.com/ca/products/salmonella.html

Big News Day

2008-02-19T17:07:00.001-05:00

It was a big day in political news. Si?

Pakistan Peoples Party wins a plurality in the Pakistani general election following delays caused by a state of emergency and pre-election violence.
Toshiba announces it is ceasing production of HD DVD equipment, conceding the high definition format war to the rival Blu-ray Disc format.
Fidel Castro (pictured) announces his retirement as the President of Cuba.
Bank Julius Bär secures a permanent injunction against the domain registrar for Wikileaks, forcing the website offline.
Kosovo's parliament endorses a unilateral declaration of independence from Serbia; response from the international community is mixed.
The British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, announces plans to nationalise the Northern Rock bank following credit problems caused by the subprime mortgage crisis.
Václav Klaus is re-elected as the President of the Czech Republic.

Conveniently from www.wikipedia.org

Ice Cube Tray

2008-02-15T17:51:00.001-05:00

http://www.worldwidefred.com/frozensmiles.htm

The reason there's all these random posts is that I've started emailing stuff to the blog instead of posting (hassle due to the conflict of separate google accounts).

This should be tagged with:

For the apartment

Just for my reference, since I'm not about to login and tag it.

Dancing Dissertations

2008-02-14T20:37:00.001-05:00

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/14/dancing-dissertations/

Why'd the chicken cross the road?

2008-02-14T15:54:00.001-05:00

Why did the chicken cross the road?


DR. PHIL:
The problem we have here is that this chicken won't realize that he must first deal with the problem on 'THIS' side of the road before it goes after the problem on the 'OTHER SIDE' of the road. What we need to do is help him realize how stupid he's acting by not
taking on his 'CURRENT' problems before adding 'NEW' problems.

OPRAH:
Well, I understand that the chicken is having problems,
which is why he wants to cross this road so bad. So instead of having the chicken learn from his mistakes and take falls, which is a part of life, I'm going to give this chicken a car so that he can just drive across the road and not live his life like the rest of the chickens.

GEORGE W. BUSH:
We don't really care why the chicken crossed the road.
We just want to know if the chicken is on our side of the road, or not.
The chicken is either against us, or for us. There is no middle ground
here.

COLIN POWELL:
Now to the left of the screen, you can clearly see the
satellite image of the chicken crossing the road...

ANDERSON COOPER - CNN:
We have reason to believe there is a chicken, but we
have not yet been allowed to have access to the other side of the road.

JOHN KERRY:
Although I voted to let the chicken cross the road, I am
now against it! It was the wrong road to cross, and I was misled about
the chicken's intentions. I am not for it now, and will remain against
it.

NANCY GRACE:
That chicken crossed the road because he's GUILTY! You
can see it in his eyes and the way he walks.

PAT BUCHANAN:
To steal the job of a decent, hardworking American.

MARTHA STEWART:
No one called me to warn me which way that chicken was
going. I had a standing order at the Farmer's Market to sell my eggs
when the price dropped to a certain level. No little bird gave me any
insider information.

DR SEUSS:
Did the chicken cross the road? Did he cross it with a
toad? Yes, the chicken crossed the road, but why it crossed I've not
been told.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY:
To die in the rain. Alone.

JERRY FALWELL:
Because the chicken was gay! Can't you people see the
plain truth?' That's why they call it the 'other side.' Yes, my friends,
that chicken is gay. And if you eat that chicken, you will become gay
too. I say we boycott all chickens until we sort out this abomination
that the liberal media white washes with seemingly harmless phrases like
'the other side. That chicken should not be crossing the road. It's as
plain and as simple as that.

GRANDPA:
In my day we didn't ask why the chicken crossed the
road. Somebody told us the chicken crossed the road, and that was good
enough.

BARBARA WALTERS:
Isn't that interesting? In a few moments, we will be
listening to the chicken tell, for the first time, the heart warming
story of how it experienced a serious case of molting, and went on to
accomplish its life long dream of crossing the road.

ARISTOTLE:
It is the nature of chickens to cross
the road.

JOHN LENNON:
Imagine all the chickens in the world
crossing roads together, in peace.

BILL GATES:
I have just released eChicken2007, which
will not only cross roads, but will lay eggs, file your important
documents, and balance your check book. Internet Explorer is an integral
part of eChicken. This new platform is much more stable and will never
reboot.

ALBERT EINSTEIN:
Did the chicken really cross the road,
or did the road move beneath the chicken?

BILL CLINTON:
I did not cross the road with THAT
chicken. What is your definition of chicken?

AL GORE:
I invented the chicken!


COLONEL SANDERS:
Did I miss one?

DICK CHENEY:
Where's my gun?

Useful

2008-02-12T20:09:00.001-05:00

http://www.dresscodeguide.com

Fwd: (no subject)

2008-02-11T22:22:00.001-05:00

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=18842053

from Ohms

Canadians prefer to watch sports, not participate: StatsCan

2008-02-07T12:34:00.001-05:00

--> Why are we suprised?

Aging society becoming less active

Last Updated: Thursday, February 7, 2008 | 11:13 AM ET

The Canadian Press

A new study says that when it comes to sports, at least, Canadians like to watch.

The Statistics Canada study found that barely three in 10 Canadians aged 15 and over participated regularly in at least one sport in 2005, down dramatically from nearly half in the early 1990s.

The report estimates that 7.3 million people, or about 28 per cent of the adult population, participated in some form of sport.

That's down substantially from 8.3 million, or 34 per cent, in 1998, and 9.6 million, or 45 per cent, in 1992.

"Many more of us were spectators," says the study, released Thursday. "In 2005, an estimated 9.2 million adults were 'involved' in amateur sports as spectators, a 20.3 per cent increase from 1998."

Furthermore, the sport Canadians liked best to play was rather more leisurely than the one they used to prefer. Golf replaced ice hockey as the most popular sport in Canada in 1998.

Continue Article

By 2005, almost 1.5 million adult Canadians were golfers, three-quarters of them men. Hockey drew 1.3 million. Other sports — in order of popularity, swimming, soccer, basketball, baseball and volleyball — all drew between 500,000 and 800,000 participants.

The study found the decline in participation was widespread, cutting across all age groups, education levels, income brackets, both sexes and almost all provinces.

Teenagers aged 15 to 18 had the highest participation rate but that, too, declined to 59 per cent in 2005 from 77 per cent in 1992. "The downward trend in sport participation does not necessarily mean that Canadians do not engage in physical activities," said the report. "Many exercise regularly through various physical programs or classes, while others enjoy jogging, gardening or other such activities."

Aging population participates less

The study blamed the aging population for much of the decline. In 1992, people aged 35 and over represented 60 per cent of the adult population and about 36 per cent of them participated in sports, it said. By 2005, two-thirds of Canadians were in this age group, and their participation rate was down to 22 per cent.

"Society is aging and becoming less active," said the report. "Only 17 per cent of Canadians aged 55 and over participated in sports, well below the proportion of 25 per cent in 1992."

Other factors included family responsibilities, child-rearing, careers, lack of interest, and participation in other leisure-time pursuits such as watching television and surfing the internet.

For many, a time crunch is to blame: 30 per cent of non-active Canadians reported lack of time as the major factor for their physical inactivity. This proportion jumped to 45 per cent of those aged 25 to 34, "a group that was probably busy raising young families and pursuing careers," said the study.

Among older non-active Canadians aged 55 and over, 28 per cent indicated that age was the biggest factor. Almost a quarter of them reported health conditions, while another quarter cited lack of interest in sport. "Canadians spent an average of only 30 minutes a day on active sport," said the study.

"The rest of the day was spent working (paid and unpaid work), participating in civic and voluntary activities, sleeping, having meals, socializing, reading, surfing the internet, watching television, going to the movies and participating in other entertainment activities."

Biggest drop in sports participation in B.C., Quebec

The study found participation in sport declined in all provinces between 1998 and 2005, except Prince Edward Island. The biggest declines occurred in Quebec and British Columbia.

A third of Nova Scotia's population participated in some sport, the highest provincial rate.

While active participation declined, the study found indirect involvement in sports on a voluntary basis actually increased. The number of amateur coaches reached 1.8 million, or seven per cent of the population, in 2005. This was up from 1.7 million in 1998, and more than twice the 840,000 in 1992.

from: http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2008/02/07/sports-statscan.html

Ads back in the 40's & 50's

2008-02-06T10:01:00.001-05:00

Re do?

Can you believe these ads back in the 40's & 50's?

Ads back in the 40's & 50's

2008-02-05T17:02:00.001-05:00

Can you believe these ads back in the 40's & 50's?

Google Today

2008-01-28T09:15:00.001-05:00

http://www.google.ca/logos/lego08.gif
www.google.ca

:D

Suzie Schnozz has sent you an eCard from BlueMountain.com

2008-01-24T09:42:00.001-05:00

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: eCard from BlueMountain.com <ecards@bluemountain.com>
Date: Jan 24, 2008 9:39 AM
Subject: Suzie Schnozz has sent you an eCard from BlueMountain.com

Suzie Schnozz has sent you an eCard.

To view your eCard, choose from the options below.

Click on the following link:
http://www.bluemountain.com/view.pd?i=183506003&m=9741&rr=z&source=bma999

For your security, if you'd prefer not to click on links within this email:
1. Type http://www.bluemountain.com/?source=bma999&rr=z into your web browser
2. Locate the eCard pickup button in the upper left-hand area of the page
3. Enter the following code --> 1835060039741

Please do not reply to this email. To help resolve your issue or question, go to:
http://www.bluemountain.com/help/index.pd
We have an extensive help center that may answer your questions, or you can choose to email us from there.

To read about email protection, type http://www.bluemountain.com/emailprotection into your web browser.

Thank you!
Your friends at BlueMountain.com

All You Ever Wanted...

2008-01-20T21:46:00.001-05:00

Now you don't have to wait for someone to help you put on your favourite bracelet or necklace - just use the Bracelet Buddy! The Bracelet Buddy holds the ringlet end in place so you can fasten the clasp by yourself - no more struggling with a chain that continually slips off your wrist. Ideal for the elderly, singles, and couples who don't help each other dress. 7" long.

#0224 Bracelet Buddy

from... http://www.hedonics.com/store/prodinfo.asp?number=0224&variation=&aitem=1&mitem=67

Watch this video

2008-01-19T13:08:00.000-05:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YUxbDEPFiM

Starbucks Again...

2008-01-18T12:35:00.001-05:00

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/the-skinny-at-starbucks/

This makes sense to me

2008-01-13T10:54:00.001-05:00

... is that weird?

http://tinyvices.com/Marten_Lange

Trollsens

2008-01-10T08:27:00.001-05:00

Facebook

2008-01-09T13:30:00.001-05:00

Do you have one?

IHT.com Article: Bombarded by rockets, an Israeli town reels

2008-01-09T08:51:00.001-05:00

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Message-Id: <20080109134956.027E4FA31@dumpty.iht.com>
Date: Wed, 9 Jan 2008 08:49:56 -0500 (EST)

This IHT.com article has been sent to you by: meat.eater@hotmail.com

------------------------------------------------------

Bombarded by rockets, an Israeli town reels
By Steven Erlanger The New York Times
Wednesday, January 9, 2008

Less then two months ago, Raziel Sasson emerged from his rocket-proof closet, willing now to sleep just outside it, with the rest of his family, on mattresses circled on the living room floor.

Raziel, 13, and known as Razi, still gets his father, Moshe, up three times a night to walk him to the bathroom and stand guard outside it. Sometimes he sleeps between his parents, said his mother, Shula, 45, and sometimes he does not sleep at all.

Four years ago, Razi was climbing a tree to retrieve a soccer ball when a Qassam rocket, fired from nearby Gaza, flew over his head and exploded nearby. He remembers the spinning contrail of the crude rocket and its fierce whistle. The shock of the blast blew him to the ground.

"I grabbed the tree, but I flew out," he said. "I felt my knees attached to my stomach."

In the four years since, Sderot, a working-class town of immigrants less than three kilometers, or two miles, from northern Gaza, has been hit with about 2,000 rockets, according to the Israeli police. Twenty-two have hit in the last eight days. Eight Sderot residents have been killed by the rockets that fall almost randomly from the sky.

Razi has seen 15 therapists. "He wouldn't leave the house to go to school for a year," Shula said. "He wouldn't take a shower upstairs. He wouldn't sleep alone. He would hold on to me and his father. He wouldn't to go the toilet alone. If a door closed too hard, he would wet his pants."

Finally his older brother, Rafi, 22, decided to do what the state would not. Using his exit pay from the army, roughly $4,000, Rafi built Raziel a little bomb shelter of his own in the living room, with a steel door and heavy cement walls, and Razi used it like a concrete cocoon.

"I had to do something for him," Rafi said. "He was completely paralyzed."

Shula threw up her hands. "This is life in Sderot," she said.

The government and the military have been unable to stop the rockets, which are easy to launch, and officials have moved slowly to fortify this small, angry and anxious town, whose residents are as trapped by the conflict as the ordinary Palestinians of Gaza - unable to stop the fighting or have much lasting political impact on their leaders.

The problems of Sderot - and of a Gaza run by Hamas - are at the heart of Israel's fundamental security concerns. But those concerns, like Hamas itself, are present only in the abstract in the American-led peace process begun in November at Annapolis, Maryland, which features negotiations between Israel and the president of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah, who has no control over Hamas or Gaza.

President George W. Bush arrives in Israel on Wednesday to try to give some impetus to the talks. But his visit and the talks themselves seem irrelevant to the people here, who worry only that his presence will prompt Palestinians who oppose negotiations to send a larger barrage of Qassams on Sderot.

"When Bush comes, he should come to Sderot," said Moshe Sasson, 49, who gets up before 6 every morning to get the bus to his job as a prison warden in Beersheba. "What do we matter to Annapolis?" he asked. "For seven years now, we're just pushed into the corner, while life elsewhere in Israel goes on as normal."

The Israeli Army has installed a system to warn of incoming rockets. Suddenly, throughout a placid, sunny Sderot, a tinny woman's voice echoes on loudspeakers, intoning, "Tseva Adom, Tseva Adom," or "color red." Residents have no clue where the rockets may land, but know they have only 15 to 20 seconds to find shelter.

With a population of 24,000 down unofficially to perhaps 17,000, the people of Sderot live in a most un-Israeli hush, so they can hear the alerts.

The man in the market who sits on a stool and yells out the prices of his cheap underwear has been told to stop using a megaphone.

People sleep with the heating system off and a window open on the coldest night. There is no muzak in the grocery store. People keep their car windows open and their radios and televisions on low volume, even in the town's few bars or pubs.

They take quick showers, afraid to miss an alert, no longer sleep in upstairs bedrooms and avoid public places at what are considered peak Qassam times.

And when the alert sounds, people drop everything - including their unpaid groceries in the aisles, costing him more than $100 a day, said Daniel Dahan, who owns "Super Dahan," the grocery his father started - to run to one of the square concrete shelters, known as "betonadas," after the word for cement, that increasingly dot the town. Then they pull out their cellphones, to check on their children.

"What kind of life is this, when you can't even make your home safe for your children?" Shula Sasson asked. Their house, like most in Sderot, was built before the first Gulf War and lacks a "safe room," protected against rocket attack. Under political pressure, the government has been reinforcing schools, building betonadas and has began a survey to see how much it would cost to provide every home a "safe room."

One of the surveyors, working under contract, said that in her third of Sderot, there were 1,700 houses and apartments without safe rooms; they would cost an estimated $25,000 each to install.

The Sassons have another son, Aviran, 19, who just finished his basic training. In May 2006, he was finishing his prayers at school when a Qassam landed in the classroom next door. It stuck in the floor but did not explode. Aviran, too, required therapy and tranquilizers.

A little over two weeks ago, on Dec. 13, Shula's daughter, Nofit, 21, was on the roof terrace hanging out laundry when she heard the red alert and then saw a Qassam whistling toward her. She ran screaming down the stairs. The rocket hit the house next door, exploding and embedding itself in the wall between the two houses, just next to canisters of bottled gas, shattering windows and cracking walls.

"Razi was on his bike," Shula said. "I heard the explosion and saw the smoke and ran to the door of the house, and I met him there," she said. "And I felt a huge pressure in my chest and I fell, and he started screaming and crying to see me on the ground."

She looked over the holed wall to the ruined house next door. "It's good that people know, even at the end of a spoon, what people go through here," Shula said. "It's too bad we can't enjoy what we have. This is such a good town."

In the quiet city center, surrounded by a choice of betonadas, a smiling Razi was riding his bike. During the alert that day, he said calmly, he ran to a shelter. Then, in the sky, there was the low sound of airplanes, and suddenly he was transformed, his body rigid, his eyes locked into a stare of panic. "Did you hear?" he asked urgently. "Did you hear?"

"They're your planes, Israeli planes," he was told, but he stayed rigid. "No, no," he said. "They'll shoot back," and his eyes swiveled with fear, hunting for a shelter.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/01/08/africa/israel.php

Portraits

2008-01-04T14:39:00.001-05:00

It's nice to have ex-roommates who still care.

On 1/4/08, Jenna wrote:

This is you (complete with buck teeth):

       ####

   ###(. .)###

####(_o_)####

          "

          |

    +---------+

          |

          |

        / \

      /      \

    ^         ^

The Right Direction....?

2007-12-18T17:08:00.001-05:00

Police Reward Good Drivers With Coffee

1 day ago

RANCHO CORDOVA, Calif. (AP) — Happy holidays. Now pull over to the side of the road.

Motorists may be in for a surprise if they spot flashing red lights in their rearview mirrors in this Sacramento suburb during the holiday season.

Police are stopping law-abiding motorists and rewarding their good driving with $5 Starbucks gift cards.

A traffic officer came up with the idea to "promote the holiday spirit and enhance goodwill between the traffic unit and the motoring public," police Sgt. Tim Curran said.

Local businesses donated money to buy the gift cards.

"They raised a substantial amount of money," Curran said. "They'll be pulling over a lot of people."

from: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5htAuRX-Y-ie1ld3CDzSeEX8XwH0AD8TJD4JO0

mmm free lunch.

2007-12-17T16:14:00.001-05:00

my mom is adorable.

----- Original Message -----

From: Ilana

To: Hana

Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 3:54 PM

Subject: Re: hi

just to reminde you your benefit includes lunch

love you so much

----- Original Message -----

From: Hana

To: Ilana

Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 3:50 PM

Subject: Re: hi

i'll let you know tonight ok?

----- Original Message -----

From: Ilana

To: Hana

Sent: Monday, December 17, 2007 3:36 PM

Subject: Re: hi

we have lots of work so as much as you time you can spare will be appreciate let me know if you can work this week?

2007-12-11T08:18:00.000-05:00

When I Grow Up

I want to develop my philosophical thinking as well as my rap skills, so that I can refer to myself as a "philosorapper".

One marketing challenge is people might think I'm a dinosaur.

from: http://jakoblodwick.com/post/21280225

IHT.com Article: Flying humans, hoping to land with no chute

2007-12-10T18:36:00.001-05:00

Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

Message-Id: <20071210233425.544DEFA34@dumpty.iht.com>
Date: Mon, 10 Dec 2007 18:34:25 -0500 (EST)

This IHT.com article has been sent to you by: meat.eater@hotmail.com

------------------------------------------------------

Flying humans, hoping to land with no chute
By Matt Higgins The New York Times
Monday, December 10, 2007

Jeb Corliss wants to fly â" not the way the Wright brothers wanted to fly, but the way we do in our dreams. He wants to jump from a helicopter and land without using a parachute.

And his dream, strange as it sounds, is not unique. Around the globe, Corliss said, at least a half-dozen groups â" in France, South Africa, New Zealand, Russia and the United States â" have the same goal in mind. Although nobody is waving a flag, it is a quest that has evoked the spirit of nations' pursuits of Everest and the North and South poles.

"All of this is technically possible," said Jean Potvin, a physics professor at Saint Louis University and skydiver who performs parachute research for the Army. But he acknowledged a problem: "The thing I'm not sure of is your margins in terms of safety, or likelihood to crash."

LoÃ¯c Jean-Albert of France, better known as Flying Dude in a popular YouTube video, put it more bluntly: "You might do it well one time and try another time and crash and die."

The landing, as one might expect, poses the biggest hurdle, and each group has a different approach. Most will speak in only the vaguest terms out of fear that someone will steal their plans.

Corliss will wear nothing more than a wing suit, an invention that, aeronautically speaking, is more flying squirrel than bird or plane.

He plans to land on a specially-designed runway of his own design. It will borrow from the principles of Nordic ski jumping and will cost about $2 million, which explains why he is so much more vocal than the others about his quest.

Jean-Albert figures he could glide to a stop on a snowy mountainside. "The basic idea is getting parallel to the snow so we don't have a vertical speed at all, there is no shock, and then slide," he said.

Then there is Maria von Egidy, a wing suit maker from South Africa, who said she had begun creating a suit that would allow pilots to land on their feet on a horizontal surface.

"I think people will recognize this makes sense," said Von Egidy, who has been pursuing financing for her suit. "Why didn't someone think of this long ago? I'm hoping that will be the reaction."

That depends on whom you talk to â" the endeavor is either quixotic or brave. Even Evel Knievel had the sense to pack a parachute when he climbed into his Skycycle X-2 to jump Snake River Canyon in 1974.

This spring, Corliss will attempt the first of three tests to prepare for his goal. Wearing his wing suit, he will jump from a plane, which will then execute a 270-degree turn and descend in a steep angle. He will fly down to the plane and re-enter it. This will be his second attempt at the benchmark. His first failed when he missed the plane; he deployed his parachute and glided safely to earth.

"The plane was flying too fast," said Corliss, who gained a degree of notoriety in April 2006 when the police arrested him after he was stopped from jumping off the Empire State Building's observation deck. A judge dismissed the charges.

Wing suits are not new; they have captured the imagination of storytellers since man dreamed of flying. From Icarus to Wile Coyote, who crashed into a mesa on his attempt, the results have usually been disastrous.

But the suits' practical use began to take hold in the early 1990s, when a modern version created by Patrick de Gayardon proved safer and led to rapid innovation.

Modern suit design features tightly woven nylon sewn between the legs and between the arms and torso, creating wings that fill with air and create lift, allowing for forward motion and aerial maneuvers while slowing descent.

As the suits have become more sophisticated, so have the pilots. The best fliers, and there are not many, can trace the horizontal contours of cliffs, ridges and mountainsides.

"Wing suit flying totally changes the way you fly and you jump," said Jean-Albert, who is seen in his YouTube video skimming six feet above skiers in the Swiss Alps. "It creates a third dimension because in normal skydiving your trajectories are pretty vertical."

Some wing suit pilots have briefly slowed the vertical descent to about 30 miles an hour. But they are moving forward horizontally at 75 m.p.h. Even if a pilot could achieve such speeds, Potvin said, any slight wrong movement could cause a crash and certain death.

Corliss said he could land safely at about 120 m.p.h. To protect his neck, he said he would attach his helmet to a rigid-framed exoskeleton with the wing suit.

"Is there some crazy person out there who might beat me because he's willing to do something more dangerous than me?" Corliss said. "Yes, but I'm not that guy."

Corliss has plenty of experience jumping from high places. A BASE jumper â" someone who leaps from buildings and cliffs and lands with a parachute â" he has made more than 1,000 jumps, including from the Eiffel Tower and the Golden Gate Bridge.

He was encouraged by the response to his plans from Vertigo Inc., an aerospace company in Lake Elsinore, California, that has worked on projects for NASA and the United States military.

"Is it possible?" said Roy Haggard, a founder of Vertigo and a skydiver himself. "Yeah."

Haggard had a plan like Corliss's, but he said he had neither the time nor the money to pursue it. If Corliss can raise enough money, Haggard's company would help him design and build the runway.

"Everybody wants to be the first one to do it," Haggard said.

Which leads to an obvious and inevitable question: why?

"Because everybody thinks that it's not possible," Corliss said. "The point is to show people anything can be done. If you want to do amazing things, then you have to take amazing risks."

http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/12/10/sports/10flying.php

Some good advice

2007-12-05T12:13:00.001-05:00

Parents! Tell your children your dreams.

(from Ina's blog about her Erasmus semester in Lisbon...oh yeah her blog is in German but there are some nice photos.)

What I learned...

2007-11-28T14:19:00.001-05:00

Doing a research project that could potentially result in my expulsion from my program (not for content, just my lack of aptitude) I have learned something important this afternoon. It has occurred to me exactly how important translators are.

Most of you know that my project focuses on Haiti and the dismal situation there, French-speaking minority controls the country, whereas the Creole-speaking minority, who does not speak French, is stuck, as everything, including the government and schools operate entirely in French. Imagine if schools were taught in Creole and French and that more books were available in Creole. A translator could do this. A translator can get the wheels of change moving and help a country that has been in trouble for over 200 years. Suddenly, I am inspired to be a translator.

New Link

2007-11-25T10:08:00.000-05:00

So I'm a grad student, right? New link on the left there, now I feel like I can reference to it, something I couldn't do last year during "undergrad."

An expression needs to coined:
1. Grad school isn't all being poor and ramen noodles.
2. Grad school isn't all coffee and seminars.
3. Grad school isn't all being poor and coffee.

More suggestions?

so cute, so cute.

2007-11-21T12:49:00.001-05:00

Someone get me one of these:

I've watched this about 15 times already and it still cracks me up and makes me go "awww."

Old Roommates are Phenomenal

2007-11-18T19:22:00.001-05:00

Jenna-Michelle: says:
ooo I got your non-denominational-celebration-of-nothing-religious
present this weekend. it's wrapped and under my non-religious tree
with the plastic version of a ball of burning gas on the top.

Rhetorical Question

2007-11-15T11:12:00.001-05:00

Feel free to answer.

Does anyone ever feel like their life has an audience? My life is more
like American Idol I think: People get to vote on the outcome.

There was something better I wanted to say here.

I am tired and beginning to wear myself out. Perhaps some rest and
relaxation will happen this weekend, but my social life is picking up
again, so no chance.

Conclusions!

2007-11-07T12:32:00.000-05:00

Regarding my last post... the guy found her and posted an update on his website: http://nygirlofmydreams.com/

It'd be incredibly sweet if it worked out. Understandably, we'll never really know. How flattering for the girl though, no?

Painfully Adorable

2007-11-05T12:34:00.000-05:00

Check this out:

http://www.nygirlofmydreams.com/

How painfully cute is that? That type of thing happened to me once this summer actually and it's the only time it happened. Flight Toronto to Munich, the kid in front me and I exchanged grins for the whole flight. We both even had connecting flights and saw each other again...then he wandered by on the moving sidewalk and that was where it ended. *tear*

I hope this guy finds the girl as he's put quite a bit of innovative effort to try and find her.

On This American Life, they had a story about this girl who met a guy in line for a concert when she was 13 and he was 20. They hit it off and started dating, but she was in junior high and he was an out of work actor and things eventually ended. Twelve years later, they picked each other up in a line at a concert again. She thought this was incredibly romantic until she realised he was still the 20-year-old out of work actor he was twelve years prior. The moral of that story is, I suppose, that sometimes it is just a coincidence.

Anyone else have something like this happen to them?

PS I kind of feel like perhaps I should include the dates and flight numbers in case he happens to search for them. Coincidence, coincidence, you neurotic fool.

Rambles from a Supposed Translator

2007-10-31T12:56:00.001-04:00

"More information results in less meaning. The number of e-mail messages continually increases in the in-box but there are no epiphanies, only stress and witlessness"
p 65, Cronin, "Translation and Globalization"

That's pretty much the name of my course.

Globalization is not recognized by gmail as a word.

I read something else which compared translators to magicians, except that everyone wants to know the how of magic, but no one cares about the how of translation. But both are equally expected to perform. There's a lot more to translation than you or I can imagine. Maybe at the end of this program I will be able to elaborate more. Right now I am sifting through a lot of information that I am having trouble processing.

Many translators have died for the cause. Recently, in Iraq. Bilingual Iraqis (or actual Iraqi interpreters) hired by Americans lead very dangerous lives. Perhaps people should care more? And not just when they make mistakes...but that's the nature of our world.

That just took an unexpected turn. Uhh...awkward.

Banter of the Best Variety

2007-10-28T08:44:00.001-04:00

"In spite of considerable talk about the "death of distance" and "the end of geography," computer technology appears to accentuate the importance of place, both physical and virtual."

From: "The World Wide Web and Contemporary Cultural Theory" Chapter: "Webs of Myth and Power" by Vincent Mosco (there are no page numbers to cite).

I hate to say that this describes my relationship with several friends. While email, blogs and photo-sharing brings us closer together, it emphasizes the physical distance between us. It's a very basic interpretation of what this means.

Lately I've been attempting to blog more but in shorter posts. It's not going so well. Maybe more short thoughts. I should see if I can text my blog or something, so if you see posts that look like this "toronto is gr8 i want 2 note here" you will surely understand why.

Using too many unsuitable adjectives as always,

yours truly,

Hana

Really?

2007-10-23T10:24:00.001-04:00

After 4 days of downloading 6 episodes of some show I didn't really want to watch, I found out they were all dubbed in Italian. Seriously?

Comments...and questions

2007-10-17T22:37:00.000-04:00

All right so here's something I've meant to post for a while and I really don't know what to say about it:

http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1773014

And there's this, which for one reason or another needed to look up:

Never Ever...

2007-10-09T10:08:00.000-04:00

During my web surfing, I came across this: http://www.beingfamous.com/blog/wordpress/?p=488

A guy listing all the things he's never done and encourages other people to list theirs. After looking at his list, I've done everything on there (as I'm sure most people have). I kept trying to think of other things so I could be cool and create a list myself. On my own, the only thing I could come up with was: never ate bacon/ham and also places I've never been. It was kind of annoying until I realised that it's probably a good thing I couldn't list things I've never done since it's good to try new things/not live avoiding things.

After looking over other people's list I've gotten this:
1. never eaten ham/bacon, etc.
2. never gone snowboarding
3. watched a reality show from start to finish (I've caught clips here and there, actually kind of glad about this one)
4. been a boy band fan
5. read or watched Harry Potter

What's the point of this list? It's not like it's anything I want to do.

Expect Nothing Less

2007-09-27T13:13:00.001-04:00

Two weeks ago something happened to me. Here's a bit of a recap.

On my way to school, I got on the bus at my stop and was wearing my UN shirt. This man comes over to me and says "can I talk to you about something?" and I'm thinking "dude, I just got on the bus, what could I have possibly done?"

He proceeds to tell me how he works for the UN association and wants to promote UN Day, etc. and asks what I know about it, I say nothing and he explains the goals of this project (provide awareness and support for the UN). Clearly, I was super interested in everything and volunteering and such. I gave him my email address and kept talking to him as we're still on the bus. And then I realise that he's doing this against the wishes of the UN, as in he's done this before and they've asked him not to continue doing this - which is get individual people to support the UN. He's done this three times and been met with the same answer from UN headquarters. The whole time though, he's really enthusiastic even though it hasn't worked before, he thinks that this time it'll work. He has plans for the future, a long term concept. He talked to me for 45 minutes, half an hour on the bus and another 15 on the subway. Our conversation ended around this point: he asked me what value I wish I had, I didn't understand the question so he answered it himself first. He wishes he had unconditional love and the ability to make miracles. My thought at this point: Does he want to be god?

Here's a bit of history about JP, he's about 50 and from Belgium. He used to be a butcher until he decided that the animals he was cutting were more intelligent than humans, so he decided to travel. He's been traveling for about 10 years. About 4 years ago when in northern Canada somewhere he heard Bush's declaration of war on Iraq against the wishes of the UN and decided that something needed to be done. Why wasn't the UN doing anything? So he started to get involved in the Toronto UN association, an organization linked to the UN.

The next day, he sent me an email:

Hello Hana,

The mission of the UN62 Project is raising awareness and strength for the United Nations, by celebrating our common humanity in all its aspects, on UN-Day, October 24th 2007.

This creates the possibility to unite people from all over the world and also offers us the opportunity to make a difference and profoundly change history.

I would like to acknowledge you for your courage and intention to forward the UN62 Project by contributing your communication skills and abilities in making UN62 truly happen.

How would you think and feel about the possibility in accepting a leadership position and spearhead crucial UN62 translations into French?

Opportunity: We did not touch the topic of drafting a general UN62 Communications strategy, neither how to integrate and use the potential contributions, skills and abilities of every one applying for assistance in the (broad) UN62. What would you suggest undertaking in the broader UN62 Project?

Please feel free at any time to communicate anything you, or we, might not be totally clear about.

Timeframe:

UN62 faces a tight dead line. Any groundwork or achieved action contributes and inspires our other UN62 team members

For any question, please contact me anytime!

Looking forward to hear from you.

Very best regards,

J-P

And included in this email was his CV! Clearly, I had to include it.

EDUCATION

· Accounting & Business Administration Certificate. St Henri College, Comines, Belgium.

· Meat Processing and Management Certificate, Kortrijk, Belgium.

· Laureate of a national course ‘Meat Processing’.

WORK EXPERIENCE (1980 – 1997)

· Managing own meat shop. Kortrijk, Belgium

· Transformed traditional meat shop to Organic Meat and Deli Shop.

· Stopped business activities. (1997)

EXPERIENCE IN BELGIUM

· Military service in Germany. (1975 – 1976)

· Founder and President ‘The Flemish Horse’. Restoring an ancient Belgian draft horse breed. (1988 – 1993)

EXPERIENCE ABROAD

· Contemplative stay in Lavra Netofa Monastery. Galilee, Israel. (1997)

· Syrian Church. Pilgrims reception. Jerusalem, Israel. (1998-2001)

· Teacher French. Alliance Française. San Pedro Sula, Honduras. (2001)

· Volunteer Vice President for the United Nations Association. Toronto (2003 – 2004)

Conception and coordination of the UN58, UN59 support actions.

· Independent UN60 Project endorsed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, South Africa. (2005)

UN Flag raised on Toronto’s city Square on UN-day, October 24^th 2005.

· Contemplative stay in Lavra Netofa Monastery. Galilee, Israel (2006)

OTHER SKILLS & INTERESTS

· Languages: Fluent in Dutch, English and French

Conversational in Spanish, German and Afrikaans

Basic: Hebrew, Arabic

· Sailor’s License, Puerto Cortes, Honduras. (2001)

· Drivers License Small trailers and mini-buses.

· Dog sledding guide/assistant. Sundridge. Canada. (2003)

· Designing a Self Improving and Management System, SiMS. (2006 – 2009)

· Designing a Model to break through Self Obstructive Behaviors. (2006 – 2009)

· Travelling, Judo.

· Walking, nature.

Being entirely freaked out by the whole thing, I decide that this needs to end regardless of it's potential for entertainment value. I explain this. He replies:

Thank you Hana.

I wish you the very best in this important phase in your life.

Perhaps later we can join forces

All the best,

J-P

I swear this actually happened.

Remember fun?

2007-09-23T08:28:00.000-04:00

Here are some enjoyable links that will hopefully result in some laughter. Enjoy.

Crazy Prank

Tony Ochre

And if you get this.

Pretty funny video too.

Here is a picture to balance this post.

Shirts Shirts Clothes.

2007-09-15T20:25:00.000-04:00

Hey Everyone. It's probably been months since I've posted anything resembling a real post. This might resemble something like a real post, but not really.

I have 20 minutes to kill right now, so here's a post.

This is an incredibly cool website.
http://www.com-pa-ny.com/

Hana needs more shirts. Not more graphic shirts, but I like those too much not to get more.

BustedTees is a super cool shirt store. Here are a few I like. Opinions?

Entourage?

I (heart) dinozores.

hahahah. yeah.

it took me a second to get it.

I am in love with this website.

hahaha

I also love Denmark.

Alternatively, you can tell me where I can find normal shirts.

Home Home Home

2007-09-02T08:07:00.001-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I have returned. Expect updates soon, perhaps.

Norweigan Words

2007-08-18T15:55:00.001-04:00

Hi Everyone!

It's Saturday night and we're at an Internet cafe in Oslo (capital of Norway), apparently going to Europe still leaves you uncool. Today we saw a vikingship museum and a Norweigan town that was put together from old Norweigan houses, it was actually pretty cool.

The last week was nothing short of crazy. After we left Kuopio, Finland, it took us two days to get to Kiruna, Sweden and involved us walking from Finland to Sweden. Upon arrival to Sweden, we were greeted with an IKEA. HAHA.

Kiruna was all right, the ice hotel freezer thing was neat, we got to hang out at the ice bar. Desperately wanting to get out of Kiruna, we naturally missed our bus, which left from the train station and not the bus station which caused a domino effect.

Missing this bus meant that we got to Narvik, Norway a lot later than intended and had to spend the night there, instead of hopping on a series of ferries. It was an all right town though and allowed us to reschedule the rest of trip accordingly. The next day (I have little idea what day things happened I can't give you any references) we finally got the ferry from Narvik to Svolvær and then this famous ferry line called Hurtigruten - fun to say - to Stamsund where we had to walk 1.5 km with our bags in order to reach the most amazing hostel ever.

Anyway, time is up.. but we leave for Fjord land tomorrow!

byee for now

Hana

hey guys! Look at me I'm stuck in this pretty bad town as we missed a bus connection ...and I'm contributing. the ice hotel town wasn't that great, the ice hotel is actually about 20 minutes away and in a freezer...with only one bus a day! It was pretty cool though. Sorry for the brief email, I realised I had about 3 minutes of internet left.

After Helsinki, we went to Kuopio, home to the world's largest word sauna, but we didn't go... there was a sauna at the hostel though. It was a pretty cool town though. From there we took the train as far as we could, hopped on a bus to the border with Sweden and then walked from the Finnish station to the Swedish one, to be greeted by an IKEA on the Swedish side..hahah!!! From there we went to this town called Lulea, which was pretty dead. The hostel was all right, we met 2 brits, 2 swiss-germans, and one whale hunting norweigan (the facts of the latter are yet to be confirmed). We spent the night there and then took off for Kiruna...
Kiruna ended up sucking, but we did run into this British guy we met in Lulea (where we were before Kiruna) and that was all right. The hostel in Kiruna was like a man convention, it was really weird. Turns out it's a base city for hikers. And now we're in beautiful Norway, the landscape changes literally after you cross the border.

Greetings from the Arctic Circle

2007-08-10T11:41:00.001-04:00

Hey Everyone,

Currently I'm sitting in a town inside of the arctic circle and it is drastically colder than the town we were in this morning, about 400 km south of here (Lulea). It's rather cold for August, but you know we're in Kiruna, Sweden, home to the original ice hotel, which is being contained inside a freezer, we'll see that tomorrow morning, so you can kind of expect that. We've met some interesting characters in our journey so far and have stayed in some pretty odd hostels, including one which had a sloalam ski jump, go figure.

Anyway, lots to do before the day is out,

hope all is well

Hana

Stockholmes

2007-08-03T15:14:00.001-04:00

hej! (that's hello in Swedish)

I'm in the land of Swedish chefs.. it's pretty hilarious. The hostel is pretty nice and the city is great too. It was kind of rainy today so we couldn't go to this village but we did see a 400 year old ship, so that was cool. Umm... we did a lot of wandering around and stuff. The city is fairly small it seems, but it's ridiculously clean, the water not so much.

We're leaving for Helsinki tomorrow via night ferry.

Tonight we hope to check out an ice bar, should be good.

Cheers,

Hana

Momentum

2007-07-23T18:02:00.001-04:00

There are currently 17 minutes until I can leave the office for the day. Four more days of work. Four. Seven until I leave for a month long adventure in Europe. There's also a good friend's wedding in between now and then. It's all quite nerve wracking. For the wedding, I am so excited and scared for my friend. She'll be happy, I'm sure and I just want this day to go well, to be amazing for her. The rest of her life starts in a week or so. By the time I return, she'll have moved to another city to be with her husband. That's mildly scary. It's something I kind of expected. Everyone thinks of me as the one who travels everywhere and goes away and does all sorts of things that are away from home, but look at me, I've committed myself to at least a year of staying in the city, when most of my friends will be gone. I saw it coming. I'll be honest though, I do want to stay here and settle here, but I also want to move far away, at least temporarily. There is something to that loneliness of a new city. Maybe some day my job will lead me all over the place. This entry has gone in an entirely direction than I thought.

In reality, I wanted to talk about how I'm finally getting excited about my trip, even though I don't know what September holds (still waiting for good ol' grad school folk to tell me which courses to take). It'll all work out, won't it? It seems like it always does. I didn't think I'd get in anywhere and everyone somehow thought I was fit for their different and unique programmes. Didn't see that coming. I hope that I made the right decision and that I didn't just take the easy route. We'll have to find out, I guess. Anyway, that aside, I'm no longer too stressed about my life. I'll find a place to live and I'll find some friends and I won't live at home, even if I can't really afford it. During the first week of classes, I'll be jetlagged because I'm a snob who just came back from travelling in Europe with friends. It seems like this trip will never happen, but it hasn't been two years in the making like the first backpacking adventure. That was hype. We'd planned it since we'd met. The second trip fell together within a month and it was an inspiration for this trip - its chaotic nature and location. Each trip we approach with a new attitude as we both enter different stages in our lives. Trip one, I'd just finished high school and she was nearly done. Round two, she'd just returned from 6 months in Australia and I was in University, this time we're both students and ambitious ones. We'll approach things academically and with hysterical laughter, I'm sure.

July 2003, we arrive in Florence, Italy and drop our stuff in a 4 bed room in the most beautiful hostel I've ever been to since, my first hostel ever. There's one bag next to a bottom bunk, it's from Mountain Equipment Co-op, a Canadian, how disappointing. We met her later that day and sure enough, she was from Scarborough, very disappointing. She'd finished her undergrad and was heading off to do a Master's in Psych. I was kind of in awe as I was just about to start undergrad. A Master's? She must be smart, I thought. It was still a disappointment that the first person I met in a hostel was a Canadian, she did not feel that comraderie that Canadians often feel in foreign places. She didn't offer me any travelling advice, she just participated in the regular hostel banter. I hope I'm not that person for someone else.

Something I've realised is that now that I'm excited, this week will inch away slowly to the sound of This American Life podcasts from many years past as I work in the warehouse. My life feels now that it should be narrated by Ira Glass.

Comma Down

2007-07-17T15:41:00.001-04:00

From: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19762074/site/newsweek/page/1/

The Sad Fate of the Comma

By Robert J. Samuelson

Newsweek

July 23, 2007 issue - I have always liked commas, but I seem to be in a shrinking minority. The comma is in retreat, though it is not yet extinct. In text messages and e-mails, commas appear infrequently, and then often by accident (someone hits the wrong key). Even on the printed page, commas are dwindling. Many standard uses from my childhood (after, for example, an introductory prepositional phrase) have become optional or, worse, have been ditched.

If all this involved only grammar, I might let it lie. But the comma's sad fate is, I think, a metaphor for something larger: how we deal with the frantic, can't-wait-a-minute nature of modern life. The comma is, after all, a small sign that flashes PAUSE. It tells the reader to slow down, think a bit, and then move on. We don't have time for that. No pauses allowed. In this sense, the comma's fading popularity is also social commentary.

It is true that Americans have always been in a hurry. In "Democracy in America" (1840), Alexis de Tocqueville has a famous passage noting the "feverish ardor" with which Americans pursue material gains and private pleasures. What's distinctive about our era, I think, is that new technologies and astonishing prosperity give us the chance to slacken the pace. Perish the thought. In some ways, it seems, we Americans have actually become more frantic.

Evidence to support this hunch hasn't been hard to find. Exhibit A is a story a few months ago in The Washington Post headlined, TEENS CAN MULTITASK, BUT WHAT ARE COSTS? We meet Megan, a 17-year-old honors high-school senior. After school, she begins studying by turning on MTV and booting up her computer. The story continues:

Over the next half an hour, Megan will send about a dozen instant messages discussing the potential for a midweek snow day. She'll take at least one cellphone call, fire off a couple of text messages, scan Weather.com, volunteer to help with a campus cleanup [at the local high school], post some comments on a friend's Facebook page and check out the new pom squad pictures another friend has posted on hers.

Whew! And remember, she's also studying. Naturally, the story includes the obligatory quote from a brain scientist, who worries that so much multitasking will turn young minds into mush. "It's almost impossible," says the scientist, "to gain a depth of knowledge of any of the tasks you do while you're multitasking."

In reality, multitasking isn't confined to the young. It's hard to go anywhere these days—including restaurants and business meetings—without seeing people punching furiously on their BlackBerrys, cell phones or other handheld devices. More mush, maybe. At the least, serious questions of etiquette have arisen. In one survey, almost a third of the executives polled said it is never appropriate to check e-mails during meetings.

Next, there's work. Unlike most rich nations, the United States hasn't reduced the average workweek over the past quarter century. In 2006, annual hours for U.S. workers averaged 1,804, barely different from 1,834 in 1979, reports the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. By contrast, the Japanese cut annual hours by 16 percent to 1,784, the Germans 20 percent to 1,421 and the French 16 percent to 1,564. One commentator in the London-based Financial Times calls America "the republic of overwork." A study by economists Daniel Hamermesh of the University of Texas and Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan argues that long working hours, especially among the well paid, may be an addiction, akin to alcoholism and smoking. (The paper is titled "The Economics of Workaholism: We Should Not Have Worked on This Paper.")

I could go on, but the column's only 800 words, and more evidence would simply reinforce the point: de Tocqueville's "feverish ardor" endures. There's always too much to do, not enough time to do it. The comma is a small victim of our hustle-bustle. If we can save a few seconds a day by curtailing commas, why not? Commas are disparaged as literary clutter. They're axed in the name of stylistic "simplicity." Once, introductory prepositional phrases ("In 1776, Thomas Jefferson ... ") routinely took commas; once, compound sentences were strictly divided by commas; once, sentences that began with "once," "naturally," "surprisingly," "inevitably" and the like usually took a comma to set them apart.

No more. These and other usages have slowly become discretionary or unacceptable. Over the years, copy editors have stripped thousands of defenseless commas from my stories. I have saved every last one of them and piled them all on a secluded corner of my desk. They deserve better than they're getting. So here are some of my discarded commas, taking a long-overdue bow: ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,.

I'm not quitting quietly. By my count, this column contains 104 commas. Note to copy desk: leave them be.

Something to Read

2007-07-08T19:35:00.000-04:00

This was found on top of a pay phone. I hate to post it due to its personal nature, but it's so damn interesting. We did try to call the individual with no luck.

The future holds..what?

2007-06-25T16:17:00.001-04:00

As decision time closes in, I'm beginning to realise that I've graduated. Work, friends and planning have been distracting me and it's time to decide. I'm almost certain about where I'm heading and even with that, I have a potential escape plan. I am not scared of commitment.

To my friends and I, this "accomplishment" isn't something grand. Maybe I wouldn't have expected anything less from us. Is a Bachelor's degree not worth as much as it once was? My parents sure are thrilled though and yeah, I guess we should be proud of ourselves, all that studying and drinking, they amounted to something.

We're all doing different things with our lives and when that settles in, it'll make the distinction clearer. Is this not supposed to be some epic mark in our lives? I thought it was and tried to explore this further, but it seems that in actuality, I've gained a few fancy sheets of paper with my name on them.

Heading My Way

2007-06-19T21:45:00.000-04:00

The lack of posting has some reasons, I've been working like crazy and also been partying/out accordingly and therefore have had no time except to do my Spanish homework. Spanish is done now, unfortunately.

Another reason for my lack of posting time is excessive planning. Only July 30, I embark on what can only be described as the Chaos Reunion Tour (this is part 1 - though that was trip 2), which will be mine and Ina's third backpacking trip together. The reason it's going to be so epic is because well here is the basic plan:

Fly: July 30 Toronto->Munich->Stuttgart
Drive: July 31 Stuttgart->Ulm (Ina's hometown)
Train: August 1 Ulm->Augsburg (Ina's university town)->Berlin->Stockholm
See map. the cities in red are where we spend at least one night. I hope you can see it. The white line across the top is the arctic circle, yeah.
Train: August 22 Gothenburg -> Berlin (arrive August 23)
Train: August 28 some city->Nuremberg
Fly: August 31 Nuremberg->Munich->Montreal->Toronto->crash

That is all for now. Thoughts? Opinions?

Graduation.

2007-06-05T12:39:00.001-04:00

This article actually gave me goosebumps. I can't imagine being in this situation. It really makes me consider what it took me to finish university and how it seemed like a struggle. It is interesting nonetheless.

From: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/world/middleeast/05college.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

Cheated of Future, Iraqi Graduates Want to Flee

By DAMIEN CAVE

Published: June 5, 2007

BAGHDAD, June 4 — They started college just before or after the American invasion with dreams of new friends and parties, brilliant teachers and advanced degrees that would lead to stellar jobs, marriage and children. Success seemed well within their grasp.

Ali Yussef/Agence France-Presse-Getty Images

On May 13, students walked around large barriers of concrete placed around Mustansiriya University to protect against car bomb attacks. The university has been the target of a number of such attacks.

Kareem Raheem/Reuters

Men carried a student at the economics and administration college of Mustansiriya University in Baghdad who had been wounded in a suicide bomb attack in February.

Four years later, Iraq's college graduates are ending their studies shattered and eager to leave the country. In interviews with more than 30 students from seven universities, all but four said they hoped to flee immediately after receiving their degrees. Many said they did not expect Iraq to stabilize for at least a decade.

"I used to dream about getting a Ph.D., participating in international conferences, belonging to a team that discovered cures for diseases like AIDS, leaving my fingerprint on medicine," said Hasan Tariq Khaldoon, 24, a pharmacy student in Mosul, in the north. "Now all these dreams have evaporated."

Karar Alaa, 25, a medical student at Babil University, south of Baghdad, said, "Staying here is like committing suicide."

The class of 2007 came of age during a transformation that according to students has harvested tragedy from seeds of hope. They are the last remnants of a middle class that has already fled by the tens of thousands. As such they embody the country's progression from innocence to bitter wisdom amid dashed expectations and growing animosity toward the Americans.

They said would leave their country feeling betrayed, by the debilitating violence that has killed scores of professors and friends, by the growing influence of Islamic fundamentalism and by the Americans, who they say cracked open their country, releasing spasms of violence without protecting the moderate institutions that could have been a bulwark against extremism.

"I want to tell them thanks for liberating us, but enough with the mistakes," said Abdul Hassein Ibrahim Zain Alabidin, a Shiite Turkmen studying law at Kirkuk University, in the north. The errors, he said, "led to division and terrorism."

Iraq's roughly 56,000 graduates began their college careers under far different circumstances. With the world's strongest power expected to democratize and modernize their country, they said, they felt special, chosen, about to be famous on the worldwide stage.

"I thought we would be like stars," said Ahmed Saleh Abdul Khader, 21, a biology student in the southern city of Basra.

"I was thinking that Iraq would be like Las Vegas, especially Kirkuk, which has oil," Mr. Alabidin said. Instead, after an initial period of hope after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein's government, the students said they watched in awe as Iraq's underlying sectarian and ethnic conflicts emerged and flourished.

At the country's 21 universities, the decline started with chaos. Looters stole ancient artifacts and destroyed buildings at Basra University, for instance, only days after British troops reached the area in 2003.

Violence followed. In June 2004, a geography professor at the University of Baghdad was killed after leaving the campus. He would not be the last.

"We've lost over 200 professors, being killed," said Abed Thiab al-Ajili, Iraq's minister of higher education. "A number of others have been kidnapped."

Scores more have fled, he said, leading the perpetually upbeat Mr. Ajili to spend much of his time trying to persuade those still here to stay. It is a particularly difficult task; in November, dozens of ministry employees were kidnapped in broad daylight by gunmen wearing police uniforms.

"I'm not going to say we are in a good position," Mr. Ajili said. "We are surviving. We are trying our best to have an educational system to be as good as we can."

Students said Iraq's university system had significantly declined, dragged down by chronically canceled lectures and decrepit equipment, all in an atmosphere of growing terror and violence.

Mr. Alabidin said his class of law students in Kirkuk had shrunk to just 30 at graduation, from 85 in 2003, because of the bloodshed and fear. He acknowledged that more Shiites were entering college than before. He was even one of the students who said he did not plan to leave, declaring that "I am no better than those who have suffered or been killed."

But he could not contain his frustration with the country his class would inherit. He said he and his friends constantly discussed "the ugliness of terrorism, the free-for-all of killing in Iraq, Americans' mistakes, the way they humiliate Iraqis, the shameful stance of neighboring countries and the loss of the Iraqi identity to divisions by sect and ethnicity."

"I blame Saddam because he sold Iraq and was behind the coming of the occupiers," Mr. Alabidin said. "I blame the American administration for its mistakes in dealing with Iraqis."

The mood was even darker last week at Mustansiriya University in Baghdad. In January, two car bombs and a suicide bomber killed at least 70 people at the school. A month later, a woman laced with explosives blew herself up at the university entrance, killing 40 more.

Diana Oliva Cave for The New York Times

Ahmed Bahir, left, and Mudher Rafid are dentistry students at Baghdad University. A classmate of theirs was killed by a bomb in a locker.

In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, charred metal, bloodied notebooks, glass, fingers and makeup cases littered the ground. Students later buried the detritus of the attack in a courtyard where they regularly gathered.

The memorial, a mound of dirt with banners containing the names of those who died, now acts as a constant reminder of the horrors this year's graduates have endured.

"We even have a mass grave now in the university," said a student who would give only his first name, Saif, for fear of retribution. "Imagine flesh and body parts — we buried that here at Mustansiriya University. Imagine how bad our situation was."

Several students about to graduate said the attacks had only hardened their resolve to complete their studies. Indeed, at a number of universities in Baghdad the class of 2007 has tried to make the best of a difficult situation.

At a graduation party at the University of Technology here in April, students sprayed silly string on each other near cardboard simulations of mortar tubes and rockets — macabre parodies of Iraq's situation.

At Baghdad University, students shared jokes about the violence over their cellphones. Graduates from the dentistry department recorded a song with verses that poked fun at each student for his or her quirks.

Three of the song's subjects, Mudher Rafid, 22, Ahmed Bahir, 22, and Hasan Haitham, 22, said humor had helped them stay sane through the chaos. On a recent afternoon in eastern Baghdad, speaking English well and wearing T-shirts with brand names like Diesel and Ecko, they said they wished the world would remember that not all young Iraqis wanted to kill one another.

They acknowledged that some of their classmates supported jihad against Americans as part of what they called "the resistance." But they said most Iraqi college students did not participate, because they wanted the same things every student wants: a job, a family, a little fun, the opportunity to look cool.

Iraq, Mr. Rafid said, "is like any other country." Then he caught himself. "Well, the bombings aside," he said, "it's just like any other country."

In fact, he and his peers risked their lives to complete their studies.

Mr. Haitham, wiry and soft-spoken, with sensitive eyes, enrolled at Mosul University but transferred to be closer to his family. In Mosul, he said, his car was shot full of holes on his way to and from class. Baghdad is not much better, he said: on some days his mother has seen bodies in the road seconds after dropping him off.

"I had a plan one day to have a wife and kids and my own dental clinic," he said. "They were good dreams. They're gone."

For most of the past four years, he said, his schedule has been limited to attending school and returning home. His dentistry class has shrunk to 200 students from 315. A Sony PlayStation soccer game — "a single-player game," he said — has often been his only companion.

For Mr. Haitham and his classmates, the decision to leave Iraq was confirmed by an attack on campus in April. Just before 8 a.m., with a lesson just beginning, a bomb exploded in a locker.

Mr. Haitham rushed to the scene and saw a student lying flat on the ground. When he put his hands under the victim's back to carry him to safety, he felt shrapnel and mangled flesh. The blast had torn through the student's organs from behind.

"He couldn't breathe, but he was still alive," Mr. Haitham said, adding, "We carried him to the doors of the college, where he died."

Another student, the son of a government minister, appeared to have been the target of the attack. He lost four toes.

The explosion altered the class's plans. University officials canceled a graduation party, fearing more violence. The students were granted one concession: they could take a class photo. At the event last month, their proud parents snapped pictures as they held up a poster of the student who had been killed. Most mothers and fathers looked relieved to see their children graduating.

The wounded student and his family did not attend. It was unclear if he would be able to finish his studies.

"He had just a few days to graduate," Mr. Rafid said, "and they took all this away from him."

Mr. Rafid said the decision to leave Iraq was wrenching but unavoidable. "This is my country," he said. "Of course I will feel sad to leave my family and my friends who cannot go with me somewhere else. But it's my security. It's my life. I think after what I saw, there is no more future here."

AHH

2007-05-26T21:05:00.001-04:00

We've had people with us for the last month...maybe soon I can get my act together and post something. Sorry.

Deaf Karaoke

2007-05-08T12:03:00.000-04:00

Something pretty hilarious. There are a lot of them there, so check them all out.

The trip planning progresses. I still don't have a cdn passport however, so this may be a mild issue. We've scrapped the idea of most, if not all of Eastern Europe for safety issues, we don't really want to go with a guided tour either. I still have a few months but we need to start booking asap. Well that was boring, sorry.

Potential Plan

2007-05-02T18:53:00.000-04:00

Someone does love me. This is a guide on how to study for exams.

In other news, here is a list of cities I got mailed (on paper!) for the chaos tours reunion tour. It will appear in either this order or in reverse.

Ulm (Germany) -> Copenhagen (Denmark) -> Oslo (Norway) -> Stockholm (Sweden) -> Helsinki (Finland) -> Tallinn (Estonia) -> St. Petersburg (Russia!) -> Riga (Latvia) -> Vlinius (Lithuania) -> Warsaw (Poland) -> Ulm (Germany)

Then
-> Nuremberg

I hear some of these countries are not a good idea to visit. Feedback?

Invention.

2007-04-18T08:56:00.000-04:00

From here.

Mr. Vonnegut

2007-04-12T08:24:00.000-04:00

This is a nice article about him. If you've never read any of his books, get on it right now.

Some random things.

2007-04-01T20:23:00.000-04:00

Natalie sent 3/27/2007 9:53 PM:
you are unique. never forget that.

Today I was waiting for the bus to leave the mall. My mind was blank and I sat listening to music, the song seemed to describe exactly how I felt in that moment. It was a soundtrack for that moment. Nothing in that song related to me in any way, but as I looked around at everyone, I imagined their lives coinciding with the tales told.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/133/413710068_f8ab7989d8.jpg

I never thought about it...

2007-03-23T15:58:00.000-04:00

Here's a question I was posed today and was to answer in 250 words:

Does every generation have to rewrite history?

So what now?

2007-03-13T21:53:00.000-04:00

Currently I have 7 minutes until 10:00 PM and I don't know what to do with myself, right now or in the future. Things are starting to come apart. The previous post suggested going to Sweden to learn Swedish, while that would be one hell of an experience, but I am very well aware of the fact of how entirely useless this would be.

Blank slate. Anyone have any ideas for my summer? I want to travel...but need to be around for July 29 (and probably the 28th). Also, I would like to learn a new language.

Here are some fun links to compensate for my lack of good posting.. I am so busy that I don't know when I'll be able to post again, rather when I can think up something good.

Useless Japanese Inventions

Karen's blog. One of my companions to NYC. My photos will be up when I get everyone else's and a lot of free time.

Summer Plans

2007-02-22T09:50:00.000-05:00

The last few days I've spent thinking about what I will do this summer. I would like to learn a new language and go to Europe. Clearly these two ideas came together fairly quickly and now I am set on learning Swedish in Sweden for four weeks. Why Swedish? Becuase Danish (Denmark) and Norweigan (Norway) wouldn't work and I'm not all that keen on Spanish.. plus in the summer it will be rather hot in Spain. And I already am fluent in French and have a good knowledge of German that I wouldn't want to go to school there - work or something (i.e. travel), would be cool though.

I am so spoiled. Holy crap.

The Upside of Time-wasting Websites

2007-02-15T17:14:00.000-05:00

I'll be honest, I never saw this coming.

MySpace-style websites perfect for disaster survival

19:00 15 February 2007
NewScientist.com news service
Celeste Biever

Dialling emergency services when a major disaster strikes is a typical first response. Now US computer scientists are recommending useful follow-up: logging on to a social networking site, such as MySpace, to share information and survival tips.

A bird flu outbreak among humans or a major earthquake will leave emergency call centres quickly overwhelmed, say Ben Shneiderman and Jennifer Preece at the University of Maryland, US. They came up with the idea of creating a web-based emergency alternative, along similar lines to social networking sites MySpace, Wikipedia and YouTube.

Citizens would use PCs or cellphones to access the site and receive vital updates from the authorities while also sharing information with one another.

This kind of "many-to-many" information exchange, which might include sharing photos and video clips, could be at least as valuable as an emergency call centre or a radio or TV-based alert system.

"The web is a very effective way of disseminating information," Sheiderman notes. "There seems to be a remarkable effort from people to provide information and develop relationships in the electronic environment."

Emerging emergencies

Shneiderman has applied for a grant to build a web-based emergency social network for his university campus. The idea is for participants to register beforehand and access the site should disaster strike.

"The current success stories from social networks are so provocative that it is worth giving it a try," says Shneiderman. "We have an opportunity to engage these emerging technologies for social benefit."

A number of web-based emergency systems already exist, like the Department of Homeland Security's Information Network in the US and the Emergency Response Grid in Europe.

Tough sell?

Sheiderman says these existing systems focus primarily on sharing information, support and communication between professionals. "There is a great deal to be done on the side of the resident," he says.

B. J. Fogg at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, US, describes the idea as "super-interesting" but says it could be necessary to employ moderators – or "credibility filters" – to ensure information is pertinent.

Fogg adds that it may be more practical to make use existing social networking sites, such as MySpace or Facebook, rather than requiring people to register with a new site altogether. "To get people to do a new social network is going to be a tough sell," he believes.

Journal reference: Science (vol 315, p 944)

Almost like seeing the future

2007-01-26T11:38:00.000-05:00

Read this and think about how you'd never heard of it before.

You have the power.

2007-01-17T09:44:00.000-05:00

Learn something fun.

Then look at this photo and this one.

So I forgot

2007-01-04T17:11:00.000-05:00

All right, I didn't actually forget about blogging but after the snow storm, I didn't have time/motivation to post anything.

I am back from Mexico and I have many tales to tell. I don't really have any accurate impressions of the country though. We went to a tourist town and didn't see the real Mexico City, but I did have a few glimpses.

It was quite difficult to see a five-year-old child selling cigarettes to cars stopped at an intersection. How do I react? I know why he's doing it and he has no choice. There's very little I can do to improve his situation. If I smoked, maybe I would have bought a pack, it's hard to say. I find that I would much rather donate to an organization than an individual because I have more faith in the organization - you know that feeling you get that the person on the street is just going to spend the money on drugs. It's by the same token that I would rather buy them something to eat, but am too scared to even offer (not of them, but of people in general, most people who know me realise how shy I actually am). That's different than a child on the street, not necessarily a homeless child. I want to send him to school and I want to fix his country. It's a tough situation. I wasn't there to help, I was there to vacation and that's clear to me. Maybe some of those people are happy with their lives and don't want to change anything.

We spent three days in a town about five hours north of Mexico City called Guanajuato (gwana-chwa-to) and I got the impression that only a handful of the 110,000 people living there speak functional English. It's a popular tourist town, there were other English speaking people there, as well as Germans and Asians (from where, I'm not sure) and I feel that the town would prosper incredibly if services were available in English. Maybe they don't want their town to change and be popular with non-Spanish speaking people.

Like I said, I was there for too short of a time to be able to make any sort of judgement on the country. The people I stayed with are well off and so their love of Mexico is biased by their way of life. All I can say is that I enjoyed my stay there.

The Chronicles

Language barriers lead to health barriers: study

Language barriers lead to health barriers: study

Last Updated: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 | 9:30 AM ET Comments13Recommend4

CBC News

Fwd: hipsters

The Problem with Open-Source

Feel Shame No Longer!

Scientists closer to developing invisibility cloak

Last Updated: Monday, August 11, 2008 | 9:21 AM ET

The Associated Press

Ohio inmate says he's too fat for execution

Turns out Smoking is Bad

Family Hero

Six Feet Under

Big in Japan.

Fwd: (no subject)

Some good puns...

Check out this picture I found

Person collapses in Iceland

Person collapses in Iceland

Fwd: history

Fwd: Baked Goods

Office Eavesdrop

Absolutely incredible.

Cutest Comment Ever

Stats

Cool, Fun, Refreshing

People are so weird

ha!

The Spaghetti Harvest

Instead of my blog...

Everyone has facebook

This is FUN!

BEWARE!!! GNOMES!!!

Neat!

NZ dolphin rescues beached whales

Fwd: (no subject)

What time is it? What's my sign?

Song Images

Like This

Apts

Fwd: FW: (no subject)

Big News Day

Ice Cube Tray

Dancing Dissertations

Why'd the chicken cross the road?

Useful

Fwd: (no subject)

Canadians prefer to watch sports, not participate: StatsCan

Aging society becoming less active

Last Updated: Thursday, February 7, 2008 | 11:13 AM ET

The Canadian Press

Ads back in the 40's & 50's

Ads back in the 40's & 50's

Google Today

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Last Updated: Wednesday, December 24, 2008 | 9:30 AM ET Comments13 Recommend4