Challenge Your Imagination…
I couldn’t resist posting these excellent abuses of Adobe Photoshop:
As a side note, this site is celebrating its ninth birthday today. That’s insane. Try and think back nine years and remember what you were doing. I was apparently being anti-social and designing a web site.
Here is an excerpt from an article by Paul Elias posted on the Associated Press newswire this morning with regard to medical research efforts derailed by Katrina, such as the world-famous Bogalusa Heart Study:
About 300 federally funded projects at New Orleans colleges and universities worth more than $150 million including 153 projects at Tulane were affected in some way, according to an initial survey by the National Institutes of Health.
One of the biggest blows is the likely destruction of frozen urine and blood samples from thousands of patients enrolled in the Bogalusa Heart Study, the world’s longest-running racial study of risk factors for heart disease.
Samples collected and frozen since 1973 thawed out when the hurricane knocked out electricity and backup generators failed at a Tulane lab in New Orleans.
“It’s irreplaceable. That’s decades of research,” aid Dr. Paul Whelton, senior vice president for health sciences at Tulane. “It makes you want to cry.”
If the blood and urine samples are damaged or contaminated, future tests can’t be done using them. However, Bogalusa’s chief researcher, Tulane cardiologist Dr. Gerald Berenson said he had analyzed much of the data already collected and saved it on his computer, which was not damaged.
“The Bogalusa Heart Study will go on,” said Berenson who visited New Orleans, but not his lab, on Tuesday. “We’ll just have to pick up the pieces from what we have.”
Tulane cancer specialist Dr. Tyler Curiel was one of the few researchers who decided to ride out the hurricane in New Orleans in an effort to salvage decades worth of research.
After the storm passed, Curiel spent the first few days transferring vials from broken freezers to liquid nitrogen tanks with the help of a flashlight.
He later fled to his in-laws’ house in Denver and then returned to his lab for a day, grabbing whatever he could in an effort to save blood and tissue samples from an ongoing ovarian cancer project.
One thin silver lining to all the lab damage: It appears that no deadly diseases were released from the area’s “hot labs,” where researchers routinely handle and store some of the world’s most dangerous germs.
It has been hard to find any programming on the major networks this week other than coverage of New Orleans and Biloxi. Images of the destruction from Hurricane Katrina and the resulting chaos are being covered on every media outlet available, yet there seems to be a serious disconnect between the help our citizens need and the assistance the Federal government has been providing. Maybe it’s a case of too many cooks in the kitchen, but it’s hard to avoid criticizing the entire mess when there are pictures of people dying unnecessarily because they’re waiting for help. I know I’m not the first person to jump on my blog and wax poetic about the abysmal response from the Feds in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, but I can’t help but feel absolutely saddened and embarrassed by how this is being handled.
For example, Anderson Cooper, host of Anderson 360 on CNN, interviewed Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu last night and got right to the heart of the issue. Cooper introduced Landrieu and immediately asked, “Does the federal government bear responsibility for what is happening now? Should they apologize for what is happening now?” Landrieu told him “there will be be plenty of time to discuss those issues,” and proceeded to begin thanking various government officials for their disaster relief support. Amidst the overflowing thank-yous, Cooper interrupted her:
Senator, I’m sorry… for the last four days, I have been seeing dead bodies here in the streets of Mississippi and to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other – I have to tell you, there are people here who are very upset and angry, and when they hear politicians thanking one another, it just, you know, it cuts them the wrong way right now, because there was a body on the streets of this town yesterday being eaten by rats because this woman has been laying in the street for 48 hours, and there is not enough facilities to get her up.
(Transcript Credit: Think Progress)
Meanwhile, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin has been lashing out at officials, criticizing the slow response and complete lack of support for a country’s own citizens. A NY Times editorial published yesterday, adequately titled “Waiting for a Leader”, opened with the following:
George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.
I’m not really sure how to end this post, as I could continue writing for hours about this issue. Argh.
I came across this photograph (AP Photo/David J. Phillip) on a news site and wanted to share it. It’s a shot of the floodwaters from Hurricane Katrina as they filled the streets near downtown New Orleans this morning. Absolutely amazing.
