what do you think of it? What is wrong with it? Nothing? Come on there’s a terrible flaw in it! Look closer. Notice how Dr Jordan Tang holds the Micropipette, that’s not only unorthodox and against the protocol but it’s also impossible to achieve. Notice how this guy holds the micropipette:

You see the micropipette is not called micropipette for nothing it is an instrument used for minute quantities and accurate applications, and Dr Tang is obviously manipulating a cell culture preparation. How is he going to control the micropipette if he holds it like that? We should only hold it like that when we are sucking up substance from a recipient and no precision is required. You see that’s the cool thing about a micropipette, it’s automated it only takes the exact amount of substance, with remarkable precision.
This picture just frustrates me! Now of course Dr Tang knows how to hold a micropipette, but you see this is just Hollywood work, he wasn’t actually manipulating that stuff he was just posing for the camera. You see people like Dr Tang is a head of a research unit he probably never bothers to work on any real manipulation, he has small Indian/South American assistants to do all the hard labor while he works on the abstract aspect. By the way, his findings are pretty interesting, Human Trials Begin For Enzyme Inhibitor Alzheimer's Drug, no I won’t annoy you with the annoying details, but this advance has actually had some success among scientific literature lately… Anyway, back to the subject.

Now what I find most annoying about this is the lack of professionalism in the article that was posted, not that the site is unprofessional, no they give very interesting information, I am in fact pretty much addicted to it. But notice the picture they have posted, so lame! Just so that they would post a picture! They didn’t have to, they didn’t even label the picture well. Now I don’t the poor design of this site, it’s ok, it’s about the content not the looks, but what bothers me is the Bibliography in their articles:
Note: This story has been adapted from a news release issued by the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation
Which news release? At which date? Which page? Tell us something, ANYTHING! But still I read this site everyday.

Do you people remember when the BigPharaoh was whining about some pesky Brazilians claiming their Amazon is longer than BigPharaoh’s nile? Well just so you wouldn’t be so bothered about it, and just to help you sleep at night, don’t worry, that Brazilian-Peruvian team is almost wrong. You see there are two flaws in his analysis:

1. their study was performed during the rain season, it is not even certain if this river’s water flows all over the year, it might just be a seasonal river! They must wait till the September expedition confirms the continuous flow of this river before hailing victory.


2. And even if waters flow all over the year, that proves nothing! You see scientists choose the starting point of a river in a rather subjective way We take the longest, straightest tributary, explains Jennifer Runyon, a researcher at the U.S. Geological Survey's (USGS)… Oh yes! The Americans ran to salvage the Nile’s honor when Arab scientists, yet again, failed to do so. So what do we conclude? NOTHING! In fact both the Nile and the Amazon could be considered as THE longest river of the world depending on the subjective choice of the starting point.

Hey don’t look at me people, it’s not the objective scientists’ fault if nature doesn’t care. After all, nature couldn’t care less if the Amazon or the Nile is the longest river, what difference can that possibly make?! Both Egyptians and Brazilian/Peruvians are still dying of hunger and poverty, it’s just a damn title, that will just amuse the people who can afford to buy the Guinness book of records and annoys the children who are blessed enough to go to school.
Source: Olé! Amazon Longer Than the Nile—Or Is It? By David Biello , on June 22, 2007, in the Online edition of the Scientific American

Before resuming blogging, I was busy with my moderating responsibility in the forum and had no time to check the blogosphere so often. So I used to check them in a hastily and just read headlines, except for my favorite blogs, those read in details but skipped comments of course. Now ever since I resumed blogging I actually realized what I was missing all the time, a few blogs I have newly discovered to be very interesting. These blogs rely on long posts so you need to take a few minutes reading them in order to understand them and appreciate their content.


Jeha’s nail:
Now when I first noticed his blog I found it rather cute, it had cute pictures in the corners (personally I never relied on pictures in that context), it had a cute overall interface. Over the last year I couldn’t follow well his blog and now that I have taken the time to read it in details I found it very interesting. First of all he has gained much more confidence in expressing his ideas, check the pictures in the sidebar, it’s much balder than before. He also relies on linking at other sites/articles/blogs, apparently he now knows his way around things, he has an article to support every word he says, he used very accurate terms that he never loses time on explaining (instead he just links to the appropriate article exhaustively discussing it) as a result when you read an entry you would be very interested but you find nothing to say as a comment, he does his homework well. And finally he expresses a strong interest in caricatures.

My impression as I analyze all that in my head is imaginative, a little sarcastic, not very confrontational preferring to attack with a joke, he is excessively reflective to the point where he would go from one journal to another to find that twist in a small article or a small sketch, in fact I get the impression that he finds it difficult to find a satisfying way to express his ideas and thoughts so he looks in what others have written to find that twist. Another thing about him, he is both opinionated and politically correct. Well maybe not exactly the right word to describe it but that can wait a second. First of all he’s opinionated, not necessarily stupidly stubborn but he doesn’t change his mind easily, after all his opinions and his stands have been taken after deep reflections and much reading. So in other words he wouldn’t have took that stand or adopted that point of view if he hadn’t questioned it, read about it, asked about it… In brief he puts a lot of effort in the idea he expresses so it isn’t so simple for him to change his mind. After all, he has probably heard a thousand times all the arguments with or against a certain idea; it’s unlikely for anyone to come up with some new argument to prove him wrong. Which takes us to the second point: Political correctness. Now I don’t mean to say he is a ass kisser or a hypocrite, in fact I am not even saying he’s diplomatic in the sense where he believes you’re wrong but tells you you’re right anyway, no. But before forming any opinion and as I have said before he did think about it a lot and thought of all sides of the story which means that he knows that there is not cutting line between the right and the wrong, he knows that he might take this side but those that took the other side have their arguments and their reasons to do so. So when he says something he avoids abusive and insulting terms (most people would use such terms believing they have the right to do so (if I call him an idiot it’s because he is an idiot kind of arguments). As a result he takes no sides, for example he is not clearly with any political group, probably because he fears stereotypical attacks against the arguments he gives.
One last clear thing about him, he’s a perfectionist by all means, under any angle… A perfectionist, his care in well positioning the pictures, the absence of dynamism in his blog, the way he insists/wants/needs that every entry would be grammatically flawless, no typos, every entry must be exactly like the first, the font, the size, the colour, the everything! Perfectionism in everything he does, from the way he forms his ideas to the way he expresses them.
In general I enjoy the atmosphere of his blog… Had I known him in person I would have asked him to review my analysis and tell me how accurate or inaccurate it is. But since I don’t know him at all I just hope he doesn’t notice all this unsolicited and rather nosy analysis coming from someone who really knows nothing about him, but I can’t help it, it’s in my blood to try and dissect everything to reach the core of everything.

This semester I had exams before this one, actually one exam, our biotechnology Lab exam though it was strictly written exam there fore it was more like a course exam rather than a lab exam. Anyway that exam went well, actually it went so well that when I reached the 3rd question (out of 4) I was so happy that I had done so well, and noticing that I wasn’t so sure of my answer for the 4th question, especially that I was late and only had 5 min… I didn’t do it. Hey! The 50/100 is certain so what the hell anyway?

Now about yesterday… On Tuesday night I wasn’t hoping so much, I was late, I had 5 chapters to study all and all, on Tuesday I had only finished 2 chapters: Respiratory and Cardiac system (but had many blackholes in my memory since it needed revising) and had studied lightly 50% of the Digestive system and studied well some 30% of the Excretory system and hadn’t even opened the Microcirculation chapter… this was around midnight. I know it may sound fucked up how I partially studied so many bits of chapters but it was far better than I had studied for my exams last semester! So I had to make the choice: to study further or to sleep. I decided to take a bath and then review what I had already studied. And so I did, sleeping at around 2 am. I woke up very scared and nervous about the exam. But I thought to myself, I better study the respiratory system and the cardiac system since I know that will have much more notes than the other system (because this is a written exam for the lab work we had done, the lab work was mainly about the heart, respiration and adaptation of circulation).

My dad took me to college as he does everyday on his way to work, in college I learned the following shocking details:

• My exam was at 10am and not 8 am….. but that’s not bad I got 2 additional studying hours


• The digestive system was not for this exam (it was for the final course exam in a week!) which sucks because I had wasted so much time studying it and I had skipped studying the Excretory system to study the digestive system!
  

Ok not problem I survive, I focused on the respiratory and the cardiac system! Yalla courage! And I was pleasantly surprised to realize that my partial and limited knowledge exceeded my friends’ information, which meant that my studies had paid off and that I was doing a good job at it as I was able to explain it to them.

At 10am we read the questions…. The shock!!! All the questions were about the frog dissection we had done in lab! I forgot to study the lab shit! I was too busy studying the course that I forgot to check the 3 pages of lab instructions, that certainly cost me valuable notes but I didn’t give up I did as good as I could and tried to be as reflective and as analytic as possible, that’s what the Dr wants anyway.

As a conclusion I think I did pretty well… nshalla. But none of my classmates agreed, you see in the Lebanese University these people are used to plain and simple question, if you study hard you get 100% no thinking required. This teacher is different, not only she requires analysis and overall understanding but she also adjusts her exams in a way where even the best student would reach his/her limits, it’s almost impossible to have 100/100 with her, there’s always a detail you’ve skipped a small note you forgot there’s always a higher level to which you can take your answer… As far as I am concerned this is one of the best teachers I have ever met in the Lebanese University, in addition to the paleontology professor we had last year, I can’t imagine greater perfection in both lecturing and exams.


But the long day isn’t over yet, after this mind blowing exam, we had a lab session, this session was supposed to take place last week but back then it was postponed because of PM Walid Eido’s assassination. This was more or less fun and more or less instructive, but the heat, the lack of concentration and the headache the whole class suffered from made it intolerable. That was over at 2 15pm.

Then I had to work on fixing my memoire with my partner in the memoire from 2 30 till 6 pm. And still it wasn’t over, we needed some details about how to fix the bibliography in the end so we called the teacher in charge of our memoire she wasn’t home and her husband’s cell phone was with her son! FUCK! So we gave up, I took the memoire with me home and called her a while later.

So you can see my day was both productive and exhausting, and that’s why I was so absent lately. And about the braderie…. Ouuuu I hope I can go today! I have to wait till my mom comes home and see if I can leave G with her, she might have to take him to work with her… nshalla nshalla

At last! The event I have been waiting for the last 12 months! Ever since my first visitLa braderie du livre is finally here. I had suspected that the event wouldn’t take place due to the situation in Lebanon. Apparently, there were some difficulties, but not security issues, in fact the French embassy had some renovation works or something and the even won’t take place inside the building it will take place in the campus of the USG (Université Saint Joseph) facing the Embassy.

For all Lebanese living in Lebanon: BE THERE!

---

BRADERIE DU LIVRE

Vendredi 22 juin - dimanche 1er juillet 2007
16h - 21 h
Faculté de médecine de l’USJ
Rue de Damas



L’Ambassade de France engage des travaux pour améliorer l’accueil des publics à son entrée de la rue de Damas. Ces travaux dureront plusieurs semaines et nous empêcheront d’organiser la traditionnelle Braderie annuelle.

Cet événement réunit chaque année 10 000 visiteurs qui viennent choisir tout aussi bien des beaux livres que leurs lectures de l’été. Devenu incontournable pour les Libanais, le Syndicat des importateurs du livre l’organise cette année. Nous tenons d’ores et déjà à les remercier à la fois de leur détermination et de leur enthousiasme à prendre en main cet événement si attendu.

Nous vous y attendons très nombreux.

We’ve heard it all too many times, under all too many angles and from all too many perspectives. And since I am just an average main-stream, biased, westernized, uncivilized Middle-Eastern I must add my contribution.

The occident has often adopted one out of two attitudes toward the Middle East:

• The colonial attitude:
  Easy to spot, circle and define. It consists on dominating and despising the Middle East, yes those adopt this attitude do admit the existence of intellectual and civilized Middle Eastern people, but they regard them as an exception, they often advise them to leave. This attitude results from a sense of western superiority over the Middle East. The USA is the most flagrant example of this attitude, but not all Americans adopt this attitude and not all non-American are exempt from it.



• The Maternal attitude:
  Now this attitude is far more complex it’s usually a long term result of the first, once the occupation is removed the people of both the occupant and the occupied country tend to establish bonds, due to the cultural improvements/mutilations done to the original country of the occupied country. For example, in Lebanon, many regard France as the “mother” of many orphaned Lebanese. It was first the Maronite Christians who adopted such an attitude due to the hostility of their Muslim environment and the absence of any natural ally. In general, Europeans tend to have this attitude toward the Middle East, they regard Arabs and Middle Eastern nations as retarded nations that require support not military intervention.

However, people in the Middle East don’t see it that way. In order for our culture to resist globalization and Westernization, they adopt defensive mechanisms, usually they hold on to the old “they have everything but we have morals” attitude, yes we usually regard you Western people as immoral, stupid and going to hell. Many Middle Eastern people see the Middle East as roughly equal to the West but with some social and financial difficulties.

Now all my life I was raised under these influences, being born in this Middle East I was taught to take pride in our “morals”, something that the west lacks. As a Lebanese I was taught at the same time to be very attached to our unique position, to our unique role as pioneers in the Middle East. As a Christian Lebanese I was taught to be very fund of our connection to the West, for many Maronites we are not even Arabs. So you could say I stand with neither sides. But what has always amazed me about this Orient/Occident is the distinction but not the difference. Ok I am not sure how clear what I have just said may sound so let me explain.

Take the notorious Abou Ghreib scandal. When this scandal first broke out many Americans felt outraged, insulted infuriated! The press hammered President Bush for this scandal, they attacked him ferociously. It was unacceptable.

ON the other hand, many Arabs also felt outraged, insulted infuriated! The press hammered President Bush for this scandal, they attacked him ferociously. It was unacceptable.

But the two camps didn’t do so for the same purpose, the Americans did so as an act of moral protestation, an act of responsibility (the political forces and balances are certainly not to be neglected). The Arabs’ motive was to attack the Americans, sort of a defensive act to avenge the Arab impotence facing the American occupation of Arab lands.

In my own environment, it was neither reactions, when average Lebanese heard this news s/he was amused by the vulnerability of both the Arabs and the Americans demonstrated by the film. Americans were hit where it hurt most: Their idealization of their mission in Iraq, not only things didn’t go according to their own plan but their own units were sodomizing the Iraqis they were here to salvage. We were amused most of all by what seemed like the shallowness of both the Americans and the Arabs… What were they expecting? It’s war! Lebanon went through a very difficult civil war that had left us very accommodated to such atrocities. We actually laughed at Americans for being so surprised, like DUHHH! Everyone knows that these things happen during “interrogations”.

I just read the following article: White House denies prior knowledge of Abu Ghraib abuse. No of course the interesting part is not that the White House denied prior knowledge, but rather the details:

T he ex-general, who retired in January, spoke of other, undisclosed material on the Abu Ghraib abuse, including descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees.
He also told the magazine he saw "a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomising a female detainee," adding the video was never made public or mentioned in any court or in public.
Maj Gen Taguba says all high-level officials had avoided scrutiny while the jail keepers at Abu Ghraib were tried in courts-martial.
"From what I knew, troops just don't take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups," Maj Gen Taguba told the New Yorker, adding his orders were to investigate the military police only and not their superiors.
"These (military police) troops were not that creative," he said. "Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority.”

And I find myself asking: Does it even need to be mentioned? Of course they knew!
But then again, what does this attitude indicate? If not the fact that Americans just want what’s better than this. We as Arabs know what’s going on, we know that this is what is going to happen for as long as their will be power in the hands of some and a need to oppress the others there’s going to be torture and humiliation. Or is it just that we have given up on ourselves and, unlike Occidentals, we don’t work to improve our environment, we are too busy destroying each other…

Ok this story is a little old but I have to share it with you. It was last Saturday and it’s about my little brother (he’s 7). Now as most of you already know, my parents work almost all the time and my elder brother also works and doesn’t even live with us, he comes on weekends only; which leaves me with my little brother most of the time, especially now that his school is over.

Now on the last day of school my brother had, instead of the regular sports class, a gymnastique class. And he literally LOVED it. He’d go on and on about how super cool it was, how his teacher Mr. Fouad (yes like our prime minister) was super cool, how he could stand on his hands and WALK O_o!! The kid was hypnotized I say, Gymnastique was all he could think of… All day long, and out of no where he would start:

Bil Gymnastiiiique, there is a trampoline, I climbed over it and I jumped.
Bil Gymnastiiiique, I can grow my muscles.
Bil Gymnastiiiique, we can learn how to do all sort of stuff.
Bil Gymnastiiiique, Mr Fouad can stand on his hands and he can WALK on his hands!!
Bil Gymnastiiiique, Mr Fouad said that we can come every Saturday from 10 to 12 and train.
Bil Gymnastiiiique, Mr Fouad said he’d be waiting for us.
Bil Gymnastiiiique, Mr Fouad said that we will only have to pay 5000L.L. (that’s around 3$ 60 cents, in fact my mom asked in the gym and they said the 5000LL was for one week session if he wants to register for a whole month it’d be 20 000LL or 13$ 60cents)and this time only to register!
I want to go this Saturday and every Saturday for EVER!


Now personally I was 100% with the idea, the kid has poor social skills and he spends way too much time watching TV without moving a muscle, our bad financial situation is an obstacle to most outdoor activities. This gymnastic class will certainly help him move his muscle, release all his energy and hopefully socialize better. Now in her extremely prudent manor, my mom answered him by saying: “We’ll see”. Now this “We’ll see” is a family tradition. It means…. Well it means: “We’ll see”. I didn’t think she’d refuse but on Friday evening my brother was starting with his : Bil Gymnastique… poem and my mom’s answer was:

NO

Shit! What the hell?! Why did she do that? Personally I didn’t argue or make a scene on one hand I suspected my parents didn’t even have the goddamn 13$ and besides I trusted the little kid’s persistence to get what he wanted. He pledged he cried he even yelled nothing worked. On Saturday, my mom went to work and I was all alone with him at 8 am he turned off the TV, took off his pajamas and put on his sports outfit, he dug out a towel (I am not sure where he got it from since the towels are put at the top of the closet he can’t reach them), he unfolded it then refolded it so that it wouldn’t take much space (it looked like a big sushi!). He got his bottle of water, emptied it and refilled it, placed it on the table next to the towel. He even opened his wallet pulled out a 50 000 LL bill and asked me: Is this a 5000LL, when he was informed he was mistaking he put it back to its place and pulled out the right 5000LL bill. Then he brushed his teeth, washed his face and sat down calmly. Amused of his independent attitude, I asked:

And where are you going?

3al Gymnastique

He was not asking permission he was not waiting for my answer, he was just stating a fact! Well since I had nothing to say about this I just asked him to change his outfit (it was a winter outfit!) and to change his socks, I also let him know that it’s too early to go, but he didn’t mind he patiently waited. Now of course I didn’t use his 5000LL to pay for his registration, I took money from my elder brother and paid with it (and in fact it was 30 000LL and not 20 000LL but anyway).

At noon I took him back home he was SOOOOO happy and sweaty, he accepted to take a shower (something unusual for him!) and he didn’t nag for the whole weekend! He even ate like a hungry beast! Above all I was pleased with his attitude… My brother has a character! I never had that, I was such an inhibited, sheltered unconfident child, I just love to see him like this, it makes me worry a little less about him.

Ok call me a geek if you like (actually I take pride in being called a geek anyway!). But I want to share these two articles with you:

1. Some Blood Diseases May Stem from Cells' Environment

   
   By Nikhil Swaminathan
   
   As part of my mémoire this year I had to study a little about leukemia (since it’s one of the diseases associated with Trisomy 21 (or Down’s Syndrome). Now by definition, Leukemia is the “a cancer of the blood in which new and functionless cells form and replicate at an uncontrollable rate; leukemia originates in the bone marrow and quickly spreads elsewhere” [1] or “A slowly progressing cancer that starts in blood-forming cells of the bone marrow. Leukemias are the result of an abnormal development of leukocytes (white blood cells) and their precursors. Leukemia cells look different than normal cells and do not function properly.” [2]
   
   Now if you read a little about leukaemia you are most likely to stumble upon a statement like “The four types of leukemia each begin in a cell in the bone marrow. The cell undergoes a leukemic change and it multiplies into many cells. The leukemia cells grow and survive better than normal cells and, over time, they crowd out normal cells.”[3]. Now of course this is not the only site to make such statements, it’s a generally admitted fact that the problem with leukaemia is the cell itself. It’s probably the most logical thing to believe after all. That’s why many studies focus of finding genetic mutations of the lymphatic cells; this is also why we cure Leukaemia by killing these defective cells.
   
   But a recent study, reported in this article in the Scientific American’s website suggests that maybe just MAYBE we’re looking at the wrong direction. MAYBE the problem is not in the lymphocyte itself but in it’s environment. Maybe the problem is in the set of substances surrounding the Lymphocyte. Now the study points the finger at a large spectrum of diseases grouped under the title of myeloproliferative syndrome: Any of a group of conditions resulting from a disorder in the rate of formation of cells of the bone marrow and including chronic granulocytic leukemia, erythremia, myelofibrosis, panmyelosis, and erythroleukemia.[4]
   





2. The Magic Touch: When vision lets you down
   

   by Martina Mustroph

   
   Now this is even more interesting, but this one is actually so well described I won’t say much and let you enjoy a few excerpts of what Ms. Martina actually wrote herself:
   
   

   When you're typing, your senses of touch, hearing, and sight align. You feel, see, and hear your fingers touch the keyboard. Now imagine that you are outdoors and you feel a drop of water hit your hand. If you are like me, then it probably immediately occurs to you that it was a raindrop, so you stretch out your hand to see if more will come, and you look up at the sky for menacing clouds. Let's say the sky is blue and clear as far as you can see. Now your senses of touch and sight are at odds: your sense of touch just told you it was raining, but your sense of sight said it was not. In this case, you don't go running for cover; you choose to go with the information you get from your sense of vision and not the information you got from your sense of touch, probably because you only felt that one drop.
   But what if you don't get much more information from one sense than from the other? A team led by Jean-Pierre Bresciani showed people flashes on a screen. At the same time, a device tapped these people's right hand a certain number of times. The screen was set up so that it obscured people's right hand from their field of vision, and the flashes occurred where the right hand would be. People could only feel--but not see--their hand being touched. People were instructed to either count the number of flashes they saw on the screen or the number of taps they felt on their hand, but they were never told to pay attention to both simultaneously. The number of taps given differed from the number of flashes by plus or minus one.

   
   
   
   

   They were never told to pay attention to both flashes and taps, yet apparently, people do automatically pay attention to both. How do we know this? Even though they were told to focus just on the taps or just on the flashes, their accuracy of counting changed whenever the second number of events differed from the one they were focusing on (in other words, the added taps or added flashes messed them up). Take a look at this graph of the results:

   
   
   
   
   
   

   Did their counting variability also change? Yes!

   
   
   
   

   One final thing: At the start of the experiment, Bresciani and his team found that when people are only shown flashes or only given taps, their counting is very reliable. When people are shown both flashes and given taps at the same time, there is another interesting thing that happens. Even though you're paying attention to flashes, feeling a tap messes you up. It only sort of works the other way. The effect of touch on vision is more pronounced than the effect of vision on touch. When you're paying attention to taps, vision only rarely messes you up. Seems strange, right? Actually, that's explained by touch being the more reliable sense. We appear to give more weight to the more reliable sense. The fact that vision, the less reliable sense, still affects people's counting of touch, the more reliable sense, means that we automatically process both, but then treat each sense with a weight corresponding to its relative reliability. If we just blocked out the information we get from one sense, then when counting taps, people should not be less accurate when flashes are added, but their count is affected by them, meaning that they do process the flashes.
   

   
   
   
   Ok I don’t know, you’re probably snoring by now but this is, for me, fucking amazing! Do you know what this lady is telling us? Our Brain relies more on tactile stimulation than it does on visual one!






3. Massive Animal Herds Flourishing Despite Sudan War, Survey Reveals

   
   By Nick Wadhams in Nairobi, Kenya
   Nationnal Geographic
   
   And Finally let’s not forget to highlight the marvelous dissociation of scientific romance and real life shit, let’s highlight, yet again, the painful choice any self respecting ecophilic dreamer has to make: Environmental preservation or human preservation?
   
   But again, there is no choice to make here. People are not being killed for the sake of saving the antelopes! No, actually the truth is much darker than this, people are being killed, as if they were animals, for no reason what so ever. Somehow animals are having a prosperous life, and somehow that pleased the scientists working on that study. Well I guess it’s good to know that Sudanese wildlife is receiving the luxury many Sudanese human beings are deprived of: LIFE!





4. Ok let’s be silly:

   
   
   Compare my last entry to this one… Well what do you notice?
   
   I discovered how to format my text to: “justify” I found the grail!
   
   It’s actually very simple, the tag is < h1 align=justify> without the “space” after the “<”.

Well I am sure all of you people have been wondering where have I been all this time and why haven’t updated in ages… Well I don’t really feel like sharing much details but I will tell that effectively what was consuming most of my time was my activity in a Lebanese public forum: One Lebanon. It was a wonderful experience, especially that it had put me in contact with a lot of interesting Lebanese people that I didn’t know existed in the Middle East, I even managed to become a Moderator there in a very short period, but it’s time I move on with something else.

Another important twist in my life was the fact that my mom went to the hospital recently, she gave me one of those terrors! The worst thing ever is that, the hospital being very close to my home, I arrived first to the hospital and there were no one else from the family with me. None of the staff told me anything about my mom and I spend a frightening hour in total ignorance, now a friend was there with me but I needed to know what was wrong with my mother and no one would tell me, I was certain that my mom was dead and no one wanted to tell me. What made things worse was the fat that when my dad arrived (along with my uncle) a doctor talked to them! Like what the fuck?! I am a 22 years old person I can handle anything they could have said, and there were nothing to say anyway! Why didn’t she talk to me, leaving me for a whole hour mentally preparing myself to my mother’s funeral! Now of course the main thing is that my mom turned out to be fine, probably a minor intoxication (my mom does have a history of extra fragile digestive system) but she had to spend 24h in the Intensive Care Unit. When I first went in to see her she was so volatile, aggressive and disturbed, she seemed like someone had given her some sort of drug or something. But after all she lost her consciousness for more than an hour! I can imagine that the hormones and substances that her body released to save her are more than enough to make her very very stressed. She was blabbering about how the nurses were mean, doctors were neglectful (actually I did agree on these two points), she insisted she wanted to leave immediately insisting only she knows what best for her (yes she wasn’t making sense) then she almost burst in tears as she complained on how much 24h in the Intensive Care Unit would cost (actually it cost us nothing cause she had insurance and everything and even if it cost a fortune we couldn’t care less) she even tried to remove the oxygen tube from her nose, she begged me to help her get dressed and leave… My God! I have never seen my mom like this, in the evening when we went back to visit her she was much more “normal”. She was fine and went to work in a couple of days.

What else can I tell you about my life? Oh did I mention that in the previous semester I failed 3 out of 3 exams I had? Which raised the number of exams I had for the summer to 5 exams… So no summer work for me! Fuck it I don’t care (yeah RIGHT!)

Ok Ok enough bad news want to hear awesome news? Well do you people remember the depressive phase I talked so much about? Well almost a month a ago I snapped out of it! I just woke up one day and felt happy! It’s over. I am no longer depressed and now more than ever I can say: it was not my fault, it was my chemistry, I just couldn’t feel happy no matter what I do and no matter what happens, though things have been worse than before (more stress more drama…) I feel…

HAPPY

Ok ok! Ecologists have spent decades trying to make raise awareness and revive the naturalistic nature of Man, unfortunately, they miserably failed, they warned us about global warming, the yelled Apocalypse!... Nothing worked.

But I believe I have found the ultimate way to address the public is a Humanly comprehensible manor:

*drum*

Global warming makes you FAT!

*undrum*

You see the principle is very simple, the body usually accommodates to heat stress by (among other methods of course) increasing transpiration (sweat). But there are certainly limits to how much a body can adapt (in this case sweat), so the body's water cannot drop for more than 0,5% maximum. Now, always keep in mind, sweat is an immediate reaction, a short term adaptation. Our bodies rely most of all on long term adaptation, so what happens is that our body needs to increase the amount of water it can dissipate by transpiration, the 0,5% being constant, the body will proceed by increasing its stock of water in the body hence increasing body weight.

Tell people that they will go fat if the climate continues to warm up and you'll see them doing everything to reduce the temperature. Now this approach is totally falsified and the increase of weight is insignificant but we don't need to tell them that much details, after all President Bush took the USA to war saying there are arms of mass destruction...

The main point is that people are hypocrites, there were a documentary a while back about medical tests for a disease very wide spread in Africa (wish I could remember which illness) but the project couldn't provide sufficient financial support to produce the substance as the disease is most spread in Africa and there fore the patients won't be able to pay money (it will be mostly donations and stuff) so there were not enough profit. The project was stopped. Then a few years later, this same substance was discovered to have beneficial effects on the skin, so it was incorporated into a cosmetic product... The project became profitable for pharmaceutical companies, so now the drug is being produced in parallel and dependently of the production of that cosmetic substance. Apparently, the beauty of rich women's skin is far more important than the lives of poor people. I wish I could scream against imperialism and the globalisation, but I can't because it isn't modernism that created this injustice, modernism just revealed it, and also revealed our impotence against it.