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The Daily Whim

The Daily Whim

Fair and Unbalanced

Odysseo, Final Bow

Odysseo

For her 50th birthday, I took my wife for a surprise trip to see Odysseo. They don’t allow photography at the show, but I sneaked this one of the final bow. Yes, that’s a lake and a mountain. Amazing performers, two-legged and four-legged, paired with a huge set & stage, and very impressive stagecraft.

Public discussion of the Wall Street protests has focused on the movement’s indictment of the economic elite, but Occupy Wall Street marks an equally profound critique of the country’s political system. As the weeks tick by, the protests at Zuccotti Park and across the nation are driving home this profound realization: this is a fight that can’t be won by voting. The crisis that most fundamentally shapes our lives cannot be solved through the legislative process. This is not because the agenda is unpopular—54 percent of Americans support OWS, with only 23 percent opposed—but because the system is corrupted beyond repair.

I went to Washington in 2009 because, like many others, I believed the moment was finally ripe to make progressive changes for working people. But I discovered what we all kind of knew beforehand: if the Republicans are cheerleaders for the 1 percent, most Democrats are quiet collaborationists. I met some very dedicated and hard-working people in Congress. But ultimately the Democrats are too beholden to big money. In last year’s Congressional elections, more than two-thirds of all campaign contributions came from one-quarter of 1 percent of the population. Even Democratic candidates got ten times as much money from corporations as they did from labor unions. There is simply no chance that the little people will triumph over big business in this process.Gordon Lafer

Fri. Oct 28, 2011

Brain Matters: My First BrainDay

Some who’ve been through this call it their “Annie”-versary, Annie being the nickname they’ve given their aneurysm. I never gave mine a nickname, and if I had, it would have been “The Little Bastard.”

But, at this moment one year ago, there were fingers in my brain. Extremely talented fingers, performing a most delicate task. The chief of neurosurgery at Emory, Dr. Daniel Barrow, was using a tiny titanium clip to block off the blood flow to the unruptured aneurysm on my right main cerebral artery.

One year later, it’s as if it didn’t happen. I mean, yes, the problem is just as extinct as it was post surgery, but I am very very very fortunate that I’ve had no side effects and no adverse post surgery reactions.

Well, my right temple is slightly more concave than my left, due to some atrophy of the temporalis muscle, likely due to nerve damage. But compared to the troubles many experience after having similar surgery, that hardly even seems worth mentioning.

I’ve had no memory issues, no headaches (literally, not one since I left the hospital), no personality changes, no seizures … nothing, except for normal life. As I said a month after surgery, the entire ordeal was perhaps 20% as painful and traumatic as I had anticipated.

And on a day like today, I think it’s important to note and remember just how freakin’ fortunate I have been. And to thank those who made it happen: Dr. Daniel Barrow and the staff at Emory Hospital, and my wife, for getting me through recovery.

Even my hair is “all better”!

I AM NOT MOVING - Occupy Wall Street

If you’ve been wondering what this whole “Occupy Wall Street” movement is about, this short movie does a decent job of visually spelling it out. Often using our leader’s own words.

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