Post Doctoral Fellowship
| Post Doctoral Fellowship Chemoselective ligation and protein design / Division of Physical Biochemistry - National Institute For Medical Research / Date of entry: 06/07/09 
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off topic and political, but important
(if you can’t see the pic, click on the box to view) Activists send female underwear to Burmese embassies Martin Hodgson Activists exasperated at the failure of diplomacy to apply pressure on Burma’s military regime are resorting to a new means of protest against the regime’s recent crackdown: sending female underwear to Burmese embassies. Embassies in the UK, Thailand, Australia and Singapore have all been targeted by the “Panties for Peace” campaign, co-ordinated by an activist group based in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The manoeuvre is a calculated insult to the junta and its leader, General Than Shwe. Superstitious junta members believe that any contact with female undergarments - clean or dirty - will sap them of their power, said Jackie Pollack, a member of the Lanna Action for Burma Committee. “Not only are they brutal, but they are also very superstitious. They believe that touching a woman’s pants or sarong will make them lose their strength,” Ms Pollack told Guardian Unlimited. So far, hundreds of pairs of pants have been posted, according to another campaigner, Liz Hilton. “One group sent 140 pairs to the Burmese embassy in Geneva,” she said. The campaign was a serious attempt to allow ordinary women to express their outrage at the regime’s response to democracy demonstrations led by Buddhist monks, Ms Pollack said. “Condemnation by the United Nations and governments around the world have had no impact on the Burmese regime. This is a way of trying to reach them where they will feel it,” she said. “The junta is famous for its abuse of women: it is well documented that they use rape as a weapon of war against ethnic minorities. This is a way for women around the world to express their outrage.” The Burmese government has claimed that 10 people were killed and nearly 2,100 arrested, but dissident groups estimate that dozens or even hundreds died during the recent crackdown and its aftermath. A message on the activists’ website reads: “This is your chance to use your Panty Power to take away the power from the SPDC. You can post, deliver or fling your panties at the closest Burmese Embassy any day from today. Send early, send often.” An official at the Burmese Embassy in London was unable to confirm if any garments had yet been delivered. OK, girls, ante up! Send these guys your panties! This is one of the more creative protests I’ve heard of. Here are some embassy addresses: “Not only are they brutal, but they are also very superstitious. They believe that touching a woman’s pants or sarong will make them lose their strength,” Ms Pollack told Guardian Unlimited. So far, hundreds of pairs of pants have been posted, according to another campaigner, Liz Hilton. “One group sent 140 pairs to the Burmese embassy in Geneva,” she said. The campaign was a serious attempt to allow ordinary women to express their outrage at the regime’s response to democracy demonstrations led by Buddhist monks, Ms Pollack said. “Condemnation by the United Nations and governments around the world have had no impact on the Burmese regime. This is a way of trying to reach them where they will feel it,” she said. “The junta is famous for its abuse of women: it is well documented that they use rape as a weapon of war against ethnic minorities. This is a way for women around the world to express their outrage.” The Burmese government has claimed that 10 people were killed and nearly 2,100 arrested, but dissident groups estimate that dozens or even hundreds died during the recent crackdown and its aftermath. A message on the activists’ website reads: “This is your chance to use your Panty Power to take away the power from the SPDC. You can post, deliver or fling your panties at the closest Burmese Embassy any day from today. Send early, send often.” An official at the Burmese Embassy in London was unable to confirm if any garments had yet been delivered. “Not only are they brutal, but they are also very superstitious. They believe that touching a woman’s pants or sarong will make them lose their strength,” Ms Pollack told Guardian Unlimited. So far, hundreds of pairs of pants have been posted, according to another campaigner, Liz Hilton. “One group sent 140 pairs to the Burmese embassy in Geneva,” she said. The campaign was a serious attempt to allow ordinary women to express their outrage at the regime’s response to democracy demonstrations led by Buddhist monks, Ms Pollack said. “Condemnation by the United Nations and governments around the world have had no impact on the Burmese regime. This is a way of trying to reach them where they will feel it,” she said. “The junta is famous for its abuse of women: it is well documented that they use rape as a weapon of war against ethnic minorities. This is a way for women around the world to express their outrage.” The Burmese government has claimed that 10 people were killed and nearly 2,100 arrested, but dissident groups estimate that dozens or even hundreds died during the recent crackdown and its aftermath. A message on the activists’ website reads: “This is your chance to use your Panty Power to take away the power from the SPDC. You can post, deliver or fling your panties at the closest Burmese Embassy any day from today. Send early, send often.” An official at the Burmese Embassy in London was unable to confirm if any garments had yet been delivered. OK, ladies, ante up! Send these guys your panties NOW! It’s the least you can do for our brothers and especially our sisters in Burma. Here are some addresses: United States of America: Permanent Mission of the Union of Myanmar to the United Nations: United Kingdom: Canada: Someone have the addresses for the embassies in Australia and New Zealand? |
| Computing Infrastructure Manager –No_Dept– - King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) UK Ltd / Date of entry: 06/07/09 
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| picking up the pieces I haven’t posted in over two weeks, bad on my part. I think I was so shell-shocked a couple of Sundays ago that it’s taken me this long to recover. That night was INSANE.we had 9!!!!!! admissions. That in itself would have been bad enough, but ER here is prone to sending them up in batches, and at one point we got 4 literally at once. It was so bad that at one point there was actually a traffic jam at my end of the hall, with two stretchers, patients aboard, trying to go in opposite directions, neither willing to yield the right of way. When it was getting on toward morning, the charge nurse stopped by and asked if I was going to be able to finish up by time to leave. I said I thought so, although I couldn’t possibly figure out what I had done and what I had left undone. She just rolled her eyes and said, “I know.and I don’t know what I *don’t* know any more!” As if that wasn’t enough, the patients I already had were very needy. One in particular, I shall call her Ms. S, who had end stage COPD (emphysema kind of stuff, for any non-medical types). I felt genuinely sorry for her in a lot of ways; she’d had breast cancer a few years back, and according to her, the chemo and radiation had basically caused her body to completely fall apart. The problem I had with her wasn’t going into her room, it was getting OUT. It just seemed there was always something *else* she needed, and she was in love with her call light. Last weekend wasn’t nearly as bad.busy, but steady-busy, not insane-busy, at least for me. As the day nurse I traded off with said, “You couldn’t hand pick a better team.” There were the two guys I thought of as the Twin Tummies, with the same diagnosis, symptoms, and meds, just that one was 20 years older than the other and just a bit sicker. There was the lady with the mystery diagnosis, and I wonder if they ever figured out what it was. And then there were the assorted wheezers and coughers. But they were all nice, and nobody was crazy, more than I could say for some of the others. One of my friends had Ms. S on Friday night and reported that she was going down fast. The lady had been a DNR but had rescinded it, much to the consternation of the nurses who saw which way things were going. I could sort of understand it.the lady wanted to go her own way, kicking and screaming.but she didn’t have much to work with, and we all knew that. Sometimes you’ll hear nurses say, “I’ll WALK to that code,” but when it comes right down to it we’re going to try just as hard to save that life as any other. And that’s what happened to Ms. S. Sometime on Saturday she went abruptly down the tubes and ended up in ICU with tubes down her. Around 2:30 Sunday morning a bunch of us were standing around the nurses’ station when “code blue, ICU B” was called overhead. We all looked at each other and more or less simultaneously said, “I wonder if that’s Ms. S?” It was, of course. Later on, at shift change, we heard that she actually coded three times and her husband made her a DNR again. As of then she was still hanging on, but she went later in the day. (I hope you found peace, Ms. S) |