Blind, Yet Seeing

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

From the new York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/23/health/23blin.html?_r=1

 

blindsight

William Duke
BLINDSIGHT A patient whose visual lobes in the brain were destroyed was able to navigate an obstacle course and recognize fearful faces subconsciously.

Blind, Yet Seeing: The Brain’s Subconscious Visual Sense

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: December 22, 2008

The man, a doctor left blind by two successive strokes, refused to take part in the experiment. He could not see anything, he said, and had no interest in navigating an obstacle course — a cluttered hallway — for the benefit of science. Why bother?

When he finally tried it, though, something remarkable happened. He zigzagged down the hall, sidestepping a garbage can, a tripod, a stack of paper and several boxes as if he could see everything clearly. A researcher shadowed him in case he stumbled.

Continue reading Blind, Yet Seeing

For the Man Who Hated Christmas

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

(For Christmas, this story via PEERS.

(I don’t know if you’re familiar with the PEERS project. It puts out a periodical email with stories that are sometimes inspirational, always informative. If you’d like to subscribe, go to http://www.WantToKnow.info/subscribe)

Dear friends,

The short, inspirational Christmas story below was originally published in the December 14, 1982 issue of Woman’s Day magazine. This moving story inspired the creation of The White Envelope Project, a caring nonprofit organization dedicated to developing the next generation of givers, civic leaders, and philanthropists. May this inspirational story remind us all of the true meaning of Christmas and giving during the holidays and throughout the year.

With very best wishes for a wonderful Christmas season,
Fred Burks for PEERS and the WantToKnow.info Team

Continue reading For the Man Who Hated Christmas

Bottom-Up Stimulus

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

The weakness in this approach is that the people whose needs are greatest are typically seriously underrepresented in the halls of economic and political power. (Why do you think their needs are greatest?) Still, this is vastly better than some top-down approach in which the bright boys who brought on the crisis pretend to solve it.Via opednews

Bottom-Up Stimulus

by Yossef Ben-Meir

What development projects deliver short-term relief to people and long-term economic structural change for sustained growth and should therefore be part of the upcoming economic stimulus package? The answer: projects determined and managed by the local communities they are intended to benefit.

Depending on life conditions and challenges rural and urban communities face and the ideas they have for local development, projects communities typically prioritize to implement include roads, schools, clinics, community centers, daycare, and cooperatives. They are in private sector development, pubic health, green initiatives, training, and empowering people. They are in agriculture, manufacturing, and human services and development.

Continue reading Bottom-Up Stimulus

Bush, the shoe, and John F. Kennedy

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

In the summer of 1963, John F. Kennedy visited Ireland, Berlin, and Central America, and was greeted with wild enthusiasm. (Naturally, that popularity wasn’t enough to protect him from those who killed him to get him out of the way of their own vested interests and their own insane certainties. After all, one could hardly expect these bright boys to take the will of the people into account.)

Now, 45 years later, the president who was appointed by the Supreme Court is in his final month in office, thank God. The contrast couldn’t be more pointed. He, having done the dirty work he was elected to do (or to allow) is in no danger of assassination. He is merely pitied by most, despised by many and hated by some.

It isn’t just a contrast of personalities, though.

Continue reading Bush, the shoe, and John F. Kennedy

We’d find the money

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

There was a congressman, during the depression, who argued that the government should spend the money required for economic recovery regardless of the fact that the experts said “there’s no money.” He said, rightly, that if there were a war, they find the money somewhere. And of course, that’s just what happened.
I’ve been thinking about that.
You and I just saw the government create $750 billion basically out of thin air, in order to assure that the banking system would survive, or in order to restore liquidity to international markets, or to avoid another Great Depression, or to pay off political allies, or to continue the ongoing looting of the American economy that has been rolling merrily along since Ronald Reagan. Choose one or more answers.
For whatever reason, when the government decided it needed an additional $750 billion for reasons that seem sufficient to itself, it — how shall we say it? — it “found” the 750 billion.

Continue reading We’d find the money

The flutter of their wings….

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

Don’t know the name of the woman who wrote this, and don’t even know if it’s true, but I do know that the underlying idea is true. God has no hands but ours, the saying has it. The story came to me via a mass-email from a friend — which in itself sort of demonstrates the point.

The flutter of their wings….

This was written by a Metro Denver Hospice Physician:

I was driving home from a meeting this evening about 5, stuck in traffic on Colorado Blvd., and the car started to choke and splutter and die – I barely managed to coast, cursing, into a gas station, glad only that I would not be blocking traffic and would have a somewhat warm spot to wait for the tow truck. It wouldn’t even turn over. Before I could make the call, I saw a woman walking out of the ‘quickie mart’ building, and it looked like she slipped on some ice and fell into a gas pump, so I got out to see if she was okay.

Continue reading The flutter of their wings….

An obvious answer

Posted on by Frank DeMarco

It’s an obvious answer, and therefore will not be tried. George Ure asked, Saturday morning, in his urban survival site: www.urbansurvival.com

“THE problem of the new Obama administration is this: How can the US (and for that matter, the whole civilized world) both find meaningful jobs and at the same time increase consumption of goods and services, so that we ‘bottom out’ and turn this economy around?”

The answer is obvious enough.

Continue reading An obvious answer