Good afternoon lieblings,

It's lovely and sunny here in Norwich, and I've just completed some therapy for my arms and neck, hence my being able to type and blog for a few petty minutes.
I'm still desperately weak, and can hardly move at all.

I've included a sumptuous video below, which is my current favourite song, and is also a graphic masterpiece, (which mirrors my own feelings right now), so please take a coffee, a tea, latte, ribena or lucozade, sit back, chill, and enjoy 6 minutes for yourself...you'll feel better, you know you will.

Love,
Ed
xx

"As we prepare for takeoff, please make sure your tray tables and seat backs are fully upright in their most uncomfortable position."

"There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are only 4 ways out of this airplane..."

"Your seat cushions can be used for floatation, and in the event of an emergency water landing, please take them with our compliments."

"We do feature a smoking section on this flight; if you must smoke, contact a member of the flight crew and we will escort you to the wing of the airplane."

"Smoking in the lavatories is prohibited. Any person caught smoking in the lavatories will be asked to leave the plane immediately."

"Good morning. As we leave Dallas, it's warm, the sun is shining, and the birds are singing. We are going to Charlotte, where it's dark, windy and raining. Why in the world y'all wanna go there I really don't know."

Pilot - "Folks, we have reached our cruising altitude now, so I am going to switch the seat belt sign off. Feel free to move about as you wish, but please stay inside the plane till we land... it's a bit cold outside, and if you walk on the wings it affects the flight pattern."

Pilot - "Folks, if you were with us last week, we never got around to mentioning that it was National Procrastination day. If you get a chance this week, please try to celebrate it. If you can't get to it, then maybe try to do it at the weekend, but no big rush. Have a nice day."

And, after landing: "Thank you for flying Delta Business Express. We hope you enjoyed giving us the business as much as we enjoyed taking you for a ride."

As we waited just off the runway for another airliner to cross in front of us, some of the passengers were beginning to retrieve luggage from the overhead bins. The head steward announced on the intercom, "This aircraft is equipped with a video surveillance system that monitors the cabin during taxiing. Any passengers not remaining in their seats until the aircraft comes to a full and complete stop at the gate will be strip-searched asthey leave the aircraft.

As the plane landed and was coming to a stop at Washington National, a lone voice comes over the loudspeaker: "Whoa, big fella...WHOA..!"

"Should the cabin lose pressure, oxygen masks will drop from the overhead area. Please place the bag over your own mouth and nose before assisting children or adults acting like children."

"As you exit the plane, please make sure to gather all of your belongings. Anything left behind will be distributed evenly among the flight attendants. Please do not leave children or spouses."

And from the pilot during his welcome message: "We are pleased to have some of the best flight attendants in the industry... Unfortunately none of them are on this flight!"

Morning dear friends,

It's a sunny day here in Norfolk, and very mild again...

...my paralysis is still dreadful, with neck, arm and leg movements now extremely limited, but I seek a glimmer of hope in every movement possible.

...as I'm dealing with M.E. I found this article quite interesting, as the mind has always fascinated me, with it's oddities and profundities.

Finding a friend in a crowd, searching for a nickel in a pile of coins, and locating a jar of mustard in the refrigerator are examples of visual search tasks. Two University of Iowa, Iowa City, researchers have made an important step forward in understanding how these tasks are performed by the human visual system.

Geoffrey F. Woodman, a graduate student, and Steven J. Luck, associate professor of psychology, found that, when humans look at collections of objects, attention is focused on a single object at a time and moves from one to the next in about a tenth of a second. Research has shown that the more complex a visual image is, the longer it takes for the human brain to process the entire scene. Scientists have long debated the reason for this, with some arguing that the longer processing time indicates serial processing and others believing that it indicates parallel processing.

As an analogy, Luck notes that serial processing is like a construction company with 100 employees who work together to build one house at a time, whereas parallel processing is like a company that erects 10 houses simultaneously with 10 employees working on each house. Similarly, the human brain might devote all of its capacity to one object at a time and shift rapidly from one to the next, or it might process all of the objects in a visual scene nearly simultaneously, with just a fraction of the brain's capacity devoted to each.

Woodman and Luck are the first to show definitively that the human brain processes complex images serially--attending to one thing at a time, but shifting rapidly from object to object. "This may seem counterintuitive because it doesn't feel like we perceive only one object at a time," Luck indicates. Although it may seem that when you look at a scene you are seeing the whole picture, each object in the scene commands your attention in rapid succession.

The researchers demonstrated serial processing by having subjects search for a specific object in a display containing many other objects. They were shown a group of squares and told to search for the one with a gap in the left side. Most of the squares were black, but the picture also included one red and one green square on opposite sides of the image. The subjects were told that the target square probably would be red, but might be green. This was done to bias the subjects to search in a specific order.

Woodman and Luck used EEG recordings, which monitor brain waves in the same way as an EKG monitors heart activity. To track attention with the EEG, they measured a brain wave that indicates where attention is focused. They found that attention, as indicated by this brain wave, shifted rapidly from the red square on one side of the image to the green square on the other, which demonstrates serial processing.

Woodman compares this type of visual activity to searching for a piece of a jigsaw puzzle among a pile of pieces that will make up the completed picture. You can ignore pieces that are the wrong color, just as the subjects in his experiment ignored the black squares. Once you find several pieces that are the right color, though, you must focus your attention on them individually to see if they also have the correct shape.

Luck says this research will contribute to the long-standing quest to understand exactly how human vision works, which some day may lead to computerized visual systems. He cautions, however, that there is still a long way to go before robots or other forms of artificial intelligence that can match human vision can be created. "A huge proportion of the brain is devoted to vision. We have so much brain power devoted to vision that perceiving scenes seems easy, but it is really an incredibly complex process."

from, Society for the Advancement of Education.

Good evening dear friends,

Not much to report, other than my worsening condition again, and flow through the peaks and troughs unfortunately...this time though, I've suffered paralysis of the legs and arms for long periods, and a deepening pain that itensifies my emotional state, which is of course anxiety and frustration.

I did pick up one point from the news though, which made me smile, and it came from BT, who monitored their phone boxes in Scotland and found that 6 had not been used at all in the past year!!! What a thought. I believe one was in Edinburgh, so they were hardly remote.

I'll try to get round to visiting your posts when I have the power to do so. In the mean time, have a great evening.

Love,
Ed
xx

Hello dear friends,

I'm back to my useful 'home' in the ward now, and able to resume my pc usage, albeit slightly.

I've been filled with medicines and a whole host of "anti-anxiety" tablets for my recent condition and for the operation that awaits in well under two weeks.

I've a special programme of therapy to perform until then, and regular rest as my stomach is still desperate, after the damage it suffered last year. Perhaps that will never be the same.

I'm delighted to learn this morning that Norwich City won again, making it 11 unbeaten in the league, and now rising to 13th in the table. Glenn Roeder has turned us around, well worth a cheer I think.

Have a happy Sunday dear friends, now it's time for my rest once more!

Ed
xx

A man died and went to heaven. As he stood in front of St. Peter at the Pearly Gates, he saw a huge wall of clocks behind him. He asked, "What are all those clocks?"
St. Peter answered, "Those are Lie-Clocks. Everyone on Earth has a Lie-Clock. Every time you lie the hands on your clock will move." "
Oh," said the man, "whose clock is that?"
"That's Mother Teresa's. The hands have never moved, indicating that she never told a lie."
"Incredible," said the man. "And whose clock is that one?"
St. Peter responded, "That's Abraham Lincoln's clock. The hands have moved twice, telling us that Abe told only two lies in his entire life."
"Where's George Bush's clock?" asked the man.
"Bush's clock is in Jesus' office. He's using it as a ceiling fan."

Some desire is necessary to keep life in motion.

~Samuel Johnson

Hello everyone,

I'm awake to the roaring sound of the wind howling outside within the eddy of hospital buildings. What an ironic name...

Yesterday I had some scans for my spinal cord and neck, and some physio, traction, and then treatments and injections. I felt euphoria for an hour or so, then deep depression. Being filled up with harder drugs is not a good path to take, but I realise it may be the only one. (I now reterm it, mediSIN.)

The scan revealed some rather disconcerting news; I will need yet another major spinal operation on February 12th.
I'm just not ready for this, how can it be? Am I still unconscious? This just cannot be happening to me.
It is a surprise at how soon it is, because usually they 'offer' surgery several months hence, but not this time.

So that means I'll have to find some more resolve in just two weeks.

It's got to be better than this, surely....surely...

Have a lovely day,
Ed
xx

The unexamined life is not worth living.

~Socrates

Still I see (Nothing)

Twilight, and another pall of darkness descends
beneath the revered Oak's bough I await life's threads
a calling, of spine chilling wintry frequence
am I lost? Yes, most definitely a numbing maelstrom
I care not for the grey area of this malignant outcome
for the heart reels again and again in the hours of absence

thirteen minutes past six and still nothing's flown
this junction of a heavily congested emotional zone
no guesses as to why, and no key for hope to imply
memories remain on the bench, now the game's nearly over
ninety minutes have flown by, without extra-time for the younger-
half of me, unto the tournament of life instigating reasons why

working on the basis of memory, is that hope enough?
life and death are twins of our very being which we cannot rebuff
continually looking into our subconsciousness and daily torsion
no positive way to turn when the pull of loss is so intense
falling to four or five degrees with no more warmth left to dispense
it's now dark, calm, heartbeats fade through an unknown curtain

a sequacious passing surprisingly benign as if nothing's happened
where on earth am I? nature's healing talent has deadened
picturesque souvenirs, ethereal tints, a paraph unseen
the human touch raised with motherly tenderness
without which life becomes a skyward finial so aimless
what I now 'see' is a moment of icy stillness unforeseen.

by wensum24
©2008wensum24

Because of the crisis in the world today that is
causing people to worry about stocks, bonds, loans,
credit, inflation and the value of money several of my
close internet friends (and a few of my everyday
friends here) have been talking to me about their own
financial situation. A few are asking for advice.

Contemplating all of this I realized very few
understand any of this at all. So, here, as short as
I can make it, off the top of my head, are some
answers, and, some good advice.

LESSON ONE

For thousands of years as a human culture would
develop and a government to oversee that culture would
get established those in power realized that something
would need to be created to act as a symbol of the
effort placed through labor into the production of
"goods", and, that symbol would also need to represent
the value of those goods produced by that labor.

Money is a created thing. From nothing, a ruler says,
this symbol represents your value. Use this symbol to
declare your value is promoted by the ruler.

The rulers would then cause these symbols to be mass
produced. When the rulers bought things or ordered
people to work for them they would "pay" for these
things with these symbols. Thus these symbols would
filter out into the hands of private persons. Those
citizens would use the symbols themselves. Bartering
for labor or for goods was replaced with symbols of
worth.

Rule #1 - Money is just a symbol, and, what gives it
power is the belief by those using the symbols that
they have a firm value.

Rule #2 - When this belief gets stressed out because
of trouble touching the lives of the people within a
given culture these symbols of worth change in value.

Rule #3 - When a society fails so do these symbols
fail. Eventually every monetary system from history
eventually failed and those money symbols became
worthless.

Rule #4 - Eventually the symbols used today as money
by every varied culture on earth will fail and become
worthless.

The question today that needs to be asked by everyone
is this. How do I protect myself from financial
failure? What are the things I can do to help insure
when symbols of worth are in trouble because of events
within my culture that I also will not get into
trouble?

I will try to simplistically explain the truth
everyone needs to know and also reveal an ancient
hidden secret of how someone can easily secure their
economic future. (hint - DO NOT GAMBLE - INVEST IN
SOMETHING THAT IS NOT JUST A SYMBOL)