Tales of a Desk Jockey

Flowchart to help you figure out where to...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 17:52:34 -0500

Flowchart to help you figure out where to eat

thisshouldbeit:meltinyourmouth:

from this site

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 12:59:08 -0500

from this site

Photo

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:28:25 -0500

Photo

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:28:05 -0500

Photo

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:27:38 -0500

Space shuttle Atlantis lifts off from pad 39A at the Kennedy...

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:15:29 -0500

Space shuttle Atlantis lifts off from pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, Monday, Nov. 16, 2009. (AP Photo/John Raoux)

dailyme:

Beautiful contrails

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:44:35 -0500

Beautiful contrails

Fall is almost over. This was a vwry strange fall in that it was...

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:43:31 -0500

Fall is almost over. This was a vwry strange fall in that it was mostly crap weather and not much chance to enjoy the leaf colors… I could go for a run in the neighborhood but I am feeling rather lazy today…..

Photo

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:41:24 -0500

Chester is also enjoying basking in the 70 deg sunshine!

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:30:25 -0500

Chester is also enjoying basking in the 70 deg sunshine!

It is an Indian summer day and I m just being lazy on my balcony...

Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:26:18 -0500

It is an Indian summer day and I m just being lazy on my balcony enjoying the warm temps and first really blue sky in weeks!

xplanes: “Two U.S. Air Force Lockheed F-104A-15-LO...

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 23:10:10 -0500

xplanes:

“Two U.S. Air Force Lockheed F-104A-15-LO Starfighters…in flight with Lockheed RC-121D-LO Warning Star, circa late 1950s or early 1960s.”

dailyme: German Navy sailors are seen near the Arc de Triomphe...

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:55:37 -0500

dailyme:

German Navy sailors are seen near the Arc de Triomphe during Armistice Day ceremonies in Paris, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009. France is commemorating the end of World War I hand-in-hand with the country vanquished in the so-called “Great War” as German Chancellor Merkel joined President Sarkozy to remember the fallen and to celebrate peace. (AP Photo/Philippe Wojazer, Pool)

dailyme: A group of Navajos including Code Talkers from the...

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:46:28 -0500

dailyme:

A group of Navajos including Code Talkers from the World War II era, pose for a picture on Veterans Day in New York, Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009. The young Navajo Marines, using secret Navajo language-encrypted military terms, helped the U.S. prevail at Iwo Jima and other World War II Pacific battles. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

"In January 1961, Sigrid Paul gave birth to a little boy in a Berlin hospital. Her first child, it..."

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:22:22 -0500

“In January 1961, Sigrid Paul gave birth to a little boy in a Berlin hospital. Her first child, it was a difficult labour and the baby was whisked away to intensive care. As she lay recovering, Sigrid had no idea that little Torsten, as she had named him, would become inextricably and cruelly caught up in cold-war politics. Eight months later, the Berlin Wall would go up, initiating, says Sigrid, “a sequence of events with consequences beyond our wildest imagination”.

It’s the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall on Monday. Only now does Sigrid, 75, finally feel able to tell the story of how, nearly half a century ago, she and her son were trapped in a twilight zone between communist east and capitalist west. […]

[Her infant son] Torsten was given an artificial diaphragm, oesophagus and antrum (stomach exit), and in July Sigrid was finally allowed to take him home to East Berlin. He was still fragile and needed medicine and special food, both only available in the west. Every Monday, Sigrid would travel across the city to pick up Torsten’s life-saving package.

Then, on 12 August, everything changed. At midnight, the police and units of the East German army were given orders to close the border. Barbed-wire entanglements were rolled out and the building of the Wall began. By the time Sigrid woke on the 13th, the route from east to west was closed. She applied for a permit to the west to obtain Torsten’s food and medicine but was refused. “Our baby food is good enough,” was the reply from the German Democratic Republic (GDR) health ministry.

Within days, Torsten started coughing up blood and Sigrid took him back to the Charité hospital in east Berlin. There, a doctor named Schneeweiss did everything he could. He pumped Torsten’s stomach, but he got sicker and his temperature got higher. Sigrid was beside herself. In the early hours of the morning, Schneeweiss sent her home. “Years later, Dr Schneeweiss told me what happened,” says Sigrid. “He realised that neither he nor any other doctor at the Charité could help. The only doctors who could help were on the other side of the Berlin Wall.”

Transferring patients across the Wall was now forbidden, with one exception – heart cases. Schneeweiss knew Torsten could die if he stayed in the east. He confided in another doctor and together they falsified Torsten’s papers and listed him as a heart patient. Schneeweiss had sent Sigrid home so he could illegally spirit her baby to the other side of the Wall. “That was the moment Hartmut and I were separated from our sick child,” says Sigrid. “Torsten’s life was saved by a piece of benevolent deception schemed up by two doctors.” The decision was to shape the rest of their lives.”

- The Berlin Wall kept me apart from my baby son - The Guardian

Read the whole thing.

Wow. What a story.

(via davereed)

Cost of MRI in the United States: $1200, Cost of MRI in Japan: $98

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 21:50:35 -0500

Cost of MRI in the United States: $1200, Cost of MRI in Japan: $98:

(via soupsoup)

The night of 9/10 November is not only the 20th anniversary of...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 15:49:30 -0500

The night of 9/10 November is not only the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (which was a high point in German history), but also the 71st anniversary of one of the lowest and saddest points in German history. It is important to remember Kristallnacht, which occurred in 1938. Kristallnacht was a changing point in the persecution of Jewish people in Germany, going from the economic, political, and social to the physical with beatings, incarceration, and murder, as well as destruction of property. All the broken glasses from shop windows resembled crystals, hence Night of the Crystals (literal translation of Kristallnacht).

Berlin celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the...

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 11:06:44 -0500

Berlin celebrates the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berliner Mauer on the night of 9 November 2009 with dramatic fireworks….

via 0049:maxschulze:(via altoembole)

From Goodbye Lenin!

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:39:32 -0500

From Goodbye Lenin!

"In the summer of 1990, the German national soccer team exceeded its production target and won the..."

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 22:17:32 -0500

“In the summer of 1990, the German national soccer team exceeded its production target and won the world championship.”

- Goodbye Lenin!

I love this quote - how it sounds so much like something out of a socialist propaganda newspaper….