Trying to sum up this incredibly thought-provoking piece would simply not do it justice, so here it is in full.

The rubble doesn’t stir; things are very quiet. But a faint tapping emerges from somewhere below. You shout “Can you hear me?” and more tapping ensues.

You have an idea. “If you can understand me,” you yell, “tap once.” A single tap. “If you’re injured,” you then say, “tap twice.” Two taps. There’s someone there.

The scene conjures the aftermath of a natural disaster like January’s earthquake in Haiti. But it could also stand as a compelling metaphor for the discovery of a human being struggling to be heard though the rubble of a body that is just too hard to move.

A group of European scientists has employed a high-tech means of, in effect, hearing the tapping of a mind trapped in an unresponsive body. Four patients diagnosed as vegetative and assumed to be unconscious were demonstrated to in fact be aware, despite their inability to move or signal their awareness by moving in any way, even just blinking.

The discovery was the result of the creative use of something called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which shows cellular activity across brain regions. What it demonstrated was that the patients were hearing and thinking. And that they could communicate.

The researchers’ discovery utilized the fact that when a person is thinking about active movement, cells in one area of the brain become active; when he visualizes navigating a familiar area, a different area shows cellular activity. The researchers asked the physically unresponsive patients first to imagine swinging a tennis racket and then to imagine moving through the rooms of their houses. The fMRI scan showed activity in the respective, separate areas of the brain with each thought.

That was impressive in its own right. But then the researchers posed a series of factual yes-or-no questions to each patient, like whether he had a parent or sibling with a certain name, and instructed the patient to respond “yes” by imagining playing tennis and “no” by imagining walking through his home. Each patient was instructed to concentrate on the “yes” or “no” thought-activities for a full 30 seconds, well beyond the range of any random brain activity artifact, and they were able to respond accurately.

The results were striking. The answers provided by the four patients, who were part of a tested group of 54, were all correct, demonstrating that consciousness can reside in a body seemingly severed from the world. Before fMRI, such an assertion could have been no more than a statement of faith. Now it is fact. Left for us to speculate is whether some even more sensitive future technology might one day reveal consciousness even in patients whose brains cannot generate signals detectable by current methods.

No one knows what degree of consciousness persists in a body unable to move. But now we know that some degree can persist in some such bodies, belonging to people many would previously have thought of as something less than people.

Some still aren’t convinced they are, in fact, still people. In an editorial in the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr. Allan H. Ropper, a neurologist, warned against, in the New York Times’ words, “equating neural activity [like that seen in the brain scans of the four patients] with [human] identity.” He asserted that “Physicians and society are not ready for ‘I have brain activation, therefore I am.’ That would seriously put Descartes before the horse.” Quite the punster, that Dr. Ropper; but the issue is most serious.

Writing in Great Britain’s The Guardian, University of Glasgow Professor of Law and Ethics Sheila McLean doesn’t treat “brain activation” as casually as Dr. Ropper. On the contrary, she assumes that patients like those who communicated their answers to the European scientists are in fact thinking. Nonetheless, she asks whether “if recovery truly is impossible, is it compassionate to keep people alive in this condition?”

“Frankly,” she asserts, “the only thing worse than being in a vegetative state must be being in one, but being aware.”

Perhaps. But then again, perhaps not. Professor McLean is too quick to discount the value of even such a physically imprisoned life. Is only our movement meaningful?

Men and women in extremis often find themselves facing the question of life’s meaning. Not all of us at the end of our life-journeys will experience epiphanies, but all of us have the potential to be so blessed. And many of us, even if immobile, physically unresponsive and without reasonable hope of recovery, might still engage most important matters — things like forgiveness, repentance, acceptance, commitment, love, G-d — perhaps the most momentous matters we will ever have considered over the course of our lives. Are such vital encounters worth less than running and jumping? Is ending a life of pure contemplation less objectionable that ending one that includes physical activity?

And, as Professor McLean notes, “the consequence of a diagnosis of permanent vegetative state is that it can be lawful to withdraw assisted nutrition and hydration” — resulting, of course, in the patient’s death.

Back to the aftermath of the natural disaster. What would we think of someone who looks down at the immobile rubble, hears some faint tapping… and just walks away?

A tip of the ol’ homburg to my father for bringing this to my attention.

While most critics of Israel at least acknowledged the humanitarianism and generosity of the country, there are still some despicably evil, black-hearted people so full of hatred that they cannot even recognize an altruistic action for what it is, and instead look for ways to slander and malign what every sane person agrees is an outright kindness.

For one of the most disgusting examples of this, here is a transcript of a couple of verminous bottom-feeders on Syrian TV actually spinning Israel’s benevolence into some sort of conspiracy to harvest organs for trafficking. All I can say is: may these sick, twisted maniacs wake up one day in an alley somewhere missing a kidney (or worse) and know what real organ harvesting is.

The transcript is from MEMRITV.org, and the actual video can be viewed at this link.

The following are excerpts from a televised debate on the so-called Israeli trafficking in human organs, which aired on Syrian TV on January 27, 2010.

Reporter: Israel is aiding the people stricken by the Haiti earthquake. This is a wonder unto itself. But the real reason is to steal organs from the corpses of the Haitian dead, in the greatest catastrophe this poor country has ever witnessed. Once the reason is known, there is no need to wonder – the Israeli delegation, which came to Haiti under the pretext of helping these fate-stricken people, exploited the tragedy and the suffering of the Haitians, by stealing their human organs for trafficking.

This was confirmed by American activist T. West, who documented this heinous crime and posted the film on Youtube. The film shows Israelis engaged in stealing organs from the earthquake victims. It seems that the [Israeli] entity of killing, destruction, and terrorism, which has become skilled in killing women and children in ice-cold blood, is now expert in stealing human organs and trafficking in them.

For years, human organ trafficking has been on the rise in Israel. The work of the traffickers has become an international trade, with offices in Europe and Africa. This has brought Israel to the third place in the world in organ trafficking.

Swedish journalist Donald Boström, who visited the occupied territories, confirmed, in a report published by the Swedish paper Aftonbladet, that the occupation soldiers were kidnapping Palestinian youth in the West Bank and Gaza, and were returning them to their families as stiff corpses, after having ripped out their organs. In addition, the Israeli authorities force Palestinians sentenced to death to sign documents consenting to organ donation after they are hanged.

The Swedish report linked these acts to the Jewish network that was caught last July in the American city of New Jersey, and to the rabbis who were accused of trafficking in human organs, in Israel and other countries.

[...]

Moderator: Dr. Jassem, the question poses itself.

Dr. Jassem Zakariya, Professor of International Relations, Damascus University: Of course, when we watch the scenes in this fine report, Shakespeare immediately comes to mind…

Moderator: Shylock…

Dr. Jassem Zakariya: Shylock, yes. As we see, the Jew has not changed – especially the Zionist Jews, who are now gathered in the so-called “Israel,” which is the largest concentration in history of war criminals, who committed crimes against humanity. This is how they will be remembered if they continue with this.

Of course, the fact that the tragedy of the Haitian people benefits them is undoubtedly evidence of the imminent end of this entity, because this is the ultimate crime.

They began with our folks in Palestine – with the prisoners, the wounded, and the martyrs. They began with terrible crimes, through which they established their entity. To this day, they persist with their crimes, while the loathsome image of the Jew, the Zionist, the alien who came as an invader, an occupier, makes another appearance – this time in Haiti, not Palestine – so the whole world – anyone with a heart, ears, eyes, and insight – can realize that these people are the enemies of all mankind, not just of the Palestinians, the Arabs, and the Muslims.

This is a very important matter. At the very time that we are witnessing the dignity, courage, and humanity of the besieged people of Gaza, who make donations to Haiti… This is civilization, this is Arab identity, this is history, while these [Israelis] are just a bunch of murderers and criminals. They have never been anything else, and therefore, they will pay the price, sooner or later.

Moderator: Dr. Mustafa, is Israel really in need of these organs, or does it reflect their total disdain for the human soul? Before the show, you mentioned something about Abu Ghreib, and I told you to keep it for the show.

Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Al-Habash, Department of Transplantation, Al-Mouassat University Hospital: Israel is a country devoid of moral values and principles. When it takes human organs from various places worldwide… I have read many reports, over many years, about how they took organs from Croatia. I recently read on the Internet that an American activist claimed that Israel had taken organs from prisoners in Abu Ghreib in Iraq.

In the face of such a thing, I say: “How can Israeli doctors act this way?” After all, they are part of this system. Medicine is like music. It is a universal language of ethics…

Moderator: It does not officially prohibit the stealing of human organs…

Dr. Muhammad Mustafa Al-Habash: That’s true. Israel is not deterred by this abomination.

Former Enron adviser Paul Krugman takes note in his New York Times column of what he calls “the incredible gap that has opened up between the parties”:

Today, Democrats and Republicans live in different universes, both intellectually and morally.

“What Democrats believe,” he says “is what textbook economics says”:

But that’s not how Republicans see it. Here’s what Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate, had to say when defending Mr. Bunning’s position (although not joining his blockade): unemployment relief “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”

Krugman scoffs: “To me, that’s a bizarre point of view–but then, I don’t live in Mr. Kyl’s universe.”

What does textbook economics have to say about this question? Here is a passage from a textbook called “Macroeconomics”:

Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect. . . . In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of “Eurosclerosis,” the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries.

So it turns out that what Krugman calls Sen. Kyl’s “bizarre point of view” is, in fact, textbook economics. The authors of that textbook are Paul Krugman and Robin Wells. Miss Wells is also known as Mrs. Paul Krugman.

It seems Krugman himself lives in two different universes–the universe of the academic economist and the universe of the bitter partisan columnist. Or maybe this is like that episode of “Star Trek” in which crewmen from the Enterprise switched places with their counterparts from a universe in which everyone was the same, only evil.

Like Spock, the evil Krugman is the one with the beard.

Let’s start with the headline: “Dozens hurt in clashes at revered Jerusalem mosque“. As you can see, the focus is on those Muslim terrorists hurt at the “revered mosque”. Reuters conveniently fast-forwards already past the whole first half of the story, which is the reality that the “clash” started with those same terrorists hurting Jewish worshipers below, unprovoked.

Immediately in the second paragraph, Reuters reports that, “In a statement, Abbas appealed to Washington to hold Israel back to prevent a ‘war of religion’ in the Middle East.” Abbas’s incredibly loaded and baited statement is one of such hyperbole, and for Reuters to repeat it as though it has any validity is evidence of their bias. How does stopping terrorists from harming innocent civilians amount to a “war of religion”?

In the third paragraph, they start rewinding the story a little, by saying, “It started after weekly prayers at the third holiest site in Islam, in an area that Jews also revere as the site of their biblical Temple.” Interesting to note how the mosque is unequivocally declared the “third holiest site in Islam”, while the Western Wall, the absolute holiest site in Judaism, is merely described as “an area that Jews… revere.”

Then, you have this paragraph:

Several witnesses, including a Reuters journalist, said squads of police fired stun grenades to disperse several dozen youths. Five people were arrested, said police, who also said Palestinians threw stones at Jews worshipping at the Western Wall, below the compound housing the mosque.

Here, Reuters pits actual eyewitnesses describing police action against “youths” (funny how terrorists are whitewashed as youths) against police who “also said” that these Palestinians were committing acts of terror. So, the reports of the Israeli police response comes from “witnesses”, while Reuters somehow could only get the stories of what caused that response in the first place from those same “violent” police, and  apparent not from any actual witnesses. (Makes you wonder who those Reuters reports prefer to talk to…)

Reuters then goes on to describe the injured Palestinians, without nary a word on who was injured at the Western Wall. In fact the only mention of the entire violent terrorist provocation in the whole story remains just that of the “police” who “also said”.

And Reuters wonders why their credibility is going down the toilet amongst intelligent people.

You just gotta see it to believe it:

The Mossad needs to be ashamed of its actions… They sent 26, 27 persons to assassinate one man who was involved in the capturing and killing of two Israeli solders.

So, let me get this straight: because they sent an overwhelming search-and-assassinate party to take out a known terrorist with blood on his hands—as even admitted by the moronic Dubai police chief himself (not to mention Hamas’s admitting it themselves)—that this somehow makes it a “shameful action”?

By his logic, most large-scale police manhunts that take place around the world would fall under such as “shameful” label.

And this idiot is actually a police chief?!

While I’m on the subject, I can’t help but notice the bizarre focus that is being made by a number of governments on the subject of the phony passports that the Mossad agents supposedly were using. Did everyone conveniently forget the fact that al-Mabhouh himself was traveling with multiple phony passports?

I’d love to hear one single plausible explanation as to why no one is investigating all his phony passports, and instead everyone is focusing on the assassins’ passports.

Mosab Hassan Yousef, nicknamed the “Green Prince”, spied for Israel’s Shin Bet security service for over a decade, using his connections and knowledge as the son of Sheikh Hassan Yousef, one of Hamas’s founding members! Yousef, a convert to Christianity, saved countless lives and did it all not for money or favors, but simply for the sake of saving lives.

His Shin Bet handler said, “So many people owe him their life and don’t even know it… The amazing thing is that none of his actions were done for money. He did things he believed in. He wanted to save lives. His grasp of intelligence matters was just as good as ours — the ideas, the insights. One insight of his was worth 1,000 hours of thought by top experts.”

Yousef’s compassion for life is evident as well in his amazingly strong statements about Gilad Shalit, the young soldier who was kidnapped by Hamas never to be seen since, and the current and ongoing prospect of trading terrorists for Shalit:

I wish I were in Gaza now… I would put on an army uniform and join Israel’s special forces in order to liberate Gilad Shalit. If I were there, I could help. We wasted so many years with investigations and arrests to capture the very terrorists that they now want to release in return for Schalit. That must not be done.

This has all come out recently, as Yousef is releasing a book next month, entitled Son of Hamas, which promises to be a very interesting read.

This beautiful compilation includes an all-star cast of Obama, Biden, Reid, Clinton, Feinberg, Schumer, Dodd, and more, all of whose words are now coming back to bite them in the ass, as they once attacked the Republicans for considering the option (which the Republicans never ultimately utilized).

How about Biden telling Republicans at the time: I pray God when the Democrats take back control we don’t make the kind of naked power grab you are doing.

Or Obama: He [Bush] hasn’t gotten his way, and that is now prompting, you know, a change in the Senate rules that really I think will change the character of the Senate forever… That’s just not what the founders intended!

Or Hillary Clinton: So this president [Bush] has come to the majority here in the Senate and basically said, “Change the rules! Do it the way I want it done!” And I guess there just weren’t very many voices on the other side of the aisle that acted the way previous generations of senators have acted and said, “Mr. President, we’re with you! We support you! But, that’s a bridge too far. We can’t go there. You have to restrain yourself Mr. President!”

Or Schumer: We are on the precipice of a crisis, a constitutional crisis… the checks and balances which have been at the core of this republic are about to be evaporated by the nuclear option. The checks and balances which say that if you get 51% of the vote, you don’t get your way 100% of the time. It is amazing, it’s almost a temper tantrum… They want their way every single time, and they will change the rules, break the rules, misread the Constitution… so that they will get their way.

The most incredible part about this is that these shameless self-righteous blowhards probably don’t even realize how ridiculously hypocritical and idiotic they sound!

These brazen crooks should all be thrown out on their asses, and replaced with people who have actual integrity and honesty. How long are we going to put it with sanctimonious, pompous phonies like this???

Enjoy this hilarious video and pass it along so that everyone can enjoy it to the fullest!

Prison walls were no obstacle for a man in western Germany who was being separated from his love. But breaking into her cell every night turned out to be a very bad decision.

Ah, love. It drives us to do the craziest things: climb the highest mountains, run through the fields, scale city walls or walk for miles. Love even drove one man in the western German city of Bielefeld to break into prison. And not only once, but night after night — until he got caught.

The suspect, 33-year-old Daniele E., was arrested in November for scaling a steel fence to break into the prison where his girlfriend was serving time for drug-related offenses, according to the local daily Westfalen-Blatt. On Tuesday, the Bielefeld public prosecutor charged Daniele E. with trespassing and announced a trial date in March.
Lawyer Carsten Ernst, who is representing Daniele E., said he thought the charges were excessive. “Couldn’t we have just laughed this one off and cancelled the trial?” he commented.

According to the indictment, things got pretty hot in Cell 13 of Detention House C 7 — not to mention loud. As Friedhelm Sanker, the deputy head of the minimum-security prison, told the paper: “Some of the other women felt that their sleep was being disturbed, while others feared that the man might try to come and visit them, too.” In response to the complaints, prison officials installed a video surveillance camera.

Nov. 8 proved to be the fateful night for Daniele E. When prison officials noticed a man climb over the fence and enter the building where the woman was being held, they called the police. Using dogs, the police sniffed the unlucky lover out — in his girlfriend’s cell.

“I love her — we’re engaged!” Daniele E. reportedly pleaded with the arresting officers.

The nightly prison break-ins surprised and confounded prison officials. “The two of them could have visited each other during the day, seeing as the woman was in a minumum-security prison,” Sanker told the paper. “But they apparently felt very lonely at night.”

Since his arrest, things have only gone from bad to worse for Daniele E. He is now being held in prison on suspicion of having robbed a number of gas stations. In addition, his requests to be granted conjugal visits with his lover have been turned down.

Prison policy states that such visits will only be permitted when they concern “relationships deserving of support.” Unfortunately for Daniele E., his girlfriend gave the name of another man as her partner when she was first admitted to prison.

See if you can guess the topic of the New York Times op-ed piece whose first paragraph is this:

Baseball may be our national pastime, but the age-old tradition of taking a swing at Congress is a sport with even deeper historical roots in the American experience. Since the founding of our country, citizens from Ben Franklin to David Letterman have made fun of their elected officials. Milton Berle famously joked: “You can lead a man to Congress, but you can’t make him think.” These days, though, the institutional inertia gripping Congress is no laughing matter.

Wrong! The subject is why Evan Bayh is leaving the Senate. The author is Sen. Evan Bayh. We figured out the subject from the headline, which reads, “Why I’m Leaving the Senate.”

And it’s a good thing the Times used that headline, because without it we’d have read the whole 1,600-word op-ed and had no idea what it was about. Bayh doesn’t say a single word about why he’s leaving the Senate!

Still, the op-ed makes the answer clear: Bayh is leaving the Senate because the place is full of blowhards. His departure won’t solve that problem completely, but it will reduce the number of blowhards by one.

“Audiences Hate Modern Classical Music Because Their Brains Cannot Cope”: an arresting headline from London’s Sunday Telegraph. This is the argument of a new book, “The Music Instinct” by Philip Ball:

Mr Ball believes that many traditional composers such as Mozart, Bach and Beethoven subconsciously followed strict musical formula to produce music that was easy on the ear by ensuring it contained patterns that could be picked out by the brain.

In the early twentieth century, however, composers led by [Arnold] Schoenberg began to rally against the traditional conventions of music to produce compositions which lack tonal centres, known as atonal music.

Under their vision, which has been adopted by many subsequent classical musicians, music no longer needed to be confined to a home note or chord.

But such atonal music has been badly received by audiences and critics who have found it difficult to follow.

These modern compositions “confuse listeners’ brains,” Ball argues, and thus put them off. The idea may have broader implications:

Dr Aniruddh Patel, a researcher at the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, California, said that tonal music such as traditional classical music uses some of the same mechanisms needed for processing language.

“This may be one reason such music is congenial to the human mind,” he said. “It may be a reason why atonal music is more difficult when first encountered.”

Hmm, does this remind you of anything? Here’s a hint:

Still, this is a complex issue, and the longer it was debated, the more skeptical people became. I take my share of the blame for not explaining it more clearly to the American people.

That, of course, is President Obama, in his State of the Union Address, on the failure of ObamaCare. His excuse so closely parallels Ball’s explanation of modern music that you could have written essentially the same headline: “Voters Hate ObamaCare Because Their Brains Cannot Cope.”

But what’s striking about the Telegraph piece is that Ball and others who study this stuff go out of their way to avoid making any qualitative judgments. After explaining that Schoenberg’s music is “fragmented,” making it “harder for the brain to find structure,” Ball adds this disclaimer: “That isn’t to say, of course, that it is impossible to listen to, it is just harder work. It would be wrong to dismiss such music as a racket.”

Yet David Huron of Ohio State University describes such music this way: “The result is an overwhelming feeling of confusion, and the constant failures to anticipate what will happen next means that there is no pleasure from accurate prediction.”

So the modern compositions sound disorderly and give the listener no pleasure. Is this not the definition of a racket? Ball seems to be suggesting that while these pieces are aesthetically displeasing because they are defective in form, some sort of underlying substance makes them worthy. But this is bunk. The value of music consists only in its appeal to the human mind.

On this point, the analogy to politics and policy breaks down. It is possible for a good policy to be inartfully presented (or, for that matter, for a skilled politician to make a bad policy attractive). The claim that ObamaCare is a good idea but Obama presented it badly is not inherently absurd, as is the claim that a piece of music is good even though it sounds bad.

Or is it? Obama is asking voters to believe that ObamaCare is a good idea and that the reason they think it is a bad idea is that he isn’t good at persuasion. But if he can convince them of that, he can convince them of anything–which means that the claim that he is bad at persuasion is wildly false.

The result is an overwhelming feeling of confusion. It would be wrong not to dismiss ObamaCare as a racket.

This is no way for our undergraduate students to behave. We have an opportunity to hear from a policy-maker relevant to one of the most important issues facing this planet, and you are preventing not only yourself from hearing him but hundreds of other people in this room and hundreds of other people in an overflow room. Shame on you! This is not an example of free speech.

This was particularly insightful because he made sure to call them on their presumable “free speech” defense, which is an incredible farce. Too many people use “free speech” as a cover to stifle other people’s opinions. One such clown is Salam al Marayati, the Executive Director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council.

As Dr. Albert Arking eloquently puts it:

Salam al Marayati is asserting a new civil right that has not heretofore been recognized: the right to deny other people their rights.  He defends the action of the 11 students at UC Irvine who were arrested for attempting to prevent Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren from speaking.  The defense amounts to an assertion that the students were exercising their rights when they repeatedly interrupted Ambassador Oren with loud shouting.  The hecklers ignored the moderator, who implored the protesters to allow the speaker to be heard, after which there would be time for questions and discussion.

In making such an assertion, Mr. Marayati is making the work of his organization, in protecting the rights of Muslims against discrimination, that much more difficult.  How would the Muslim Public Affairs Council react to someone asserting a right to prevent Muslims from speaking?

Of course, we all know the answer to that likely rhetorical final question, because anyone following Palestinian politics knows quite well the double standards that are employed almost as a matter of Palestinian policy. So, what’s considered “free speech” for a Palestinian would of course be “hate speech” or “discriminatory speech” for an Israeli.

To watch these Muslim students disgracing themselves (and to hear Michael Oren speak), the video can be viewed here:

As it turns out, much to what must have been the BBC’s horror, they were given a final product actually sympathizing with Israel. With the prospect of censoring such a decorated and respected hero being an impossibility, they went ahead and aired this piece—one so out of step with their usual daily attacks on Israel.

The video can be viewed here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/8470100.stm

And some of the script can be read here: www.conflictzones.tv

And, according to a recent CNN poll, that’s exactly where Obama stands right now. 52% of respondents would prefer to elect someone else, rather than have Obama serve a second term in 2012.

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Must be more and more people are finally “seeing” the emperor’s new clothes…

Translation:

Weather and Meteorological Forecasting Rock

When the rock is wet — it’s raining.
When the rock is dry — it’s not raining.
When the rock is covered on top with a white layer — it’s snowing.
When there are chunks of ice on the rock — it’s hailing.
When the rock is not visible — there is heavy fog.
When the rock is swinging in all directions — there is heavy wind.
When the rock is missing completely — there was a hurricane.
When the rock is moving up and down — there is a strong earthquake.
When the rock tastes salty — there was a tsunami.