LIVE EARTH: 7/7/07: Concert for a Climate in Crisis

Live Earth will bring together more than 150 of the world's top musicians for 24-hours of music from 9 concerts across all 7 continents. Live Earth will bring together an audience of more than 2 billion at the concerts and through television, radio, film, and the Internet.

Live Earth Concert Lineup:
USA: AFI, Akon, Alicia Keys, Bon Jovi, Dave Matthews Band, Fall Out Boy, John Mayer, KT Tunstall, Kanye West, Keith Urban, Kelly Clarkson, Ludacris, Melissa Etheridge, Roger Waters, Smashing Pumpkins, Taking Back Sunday, The Police

UK: Beastie Boys, Black Eyed Peas, Bloc Party, Corinne Bailey Rae, Damien Rice, David Gray, Duran Duran, Foo Fighters, Genesis, James Blunt, John Legend, Kasabian, Keane, Madonna, Metallica, Paolo Nutini, Pussycat Dolls, Razorlight, Red Hot chili Peppers, Snow Patrol, Spinal Tap, Terra Naomi

My ECP score is 204

How does your carbon footprint compare with that of your friends? See how you can reduce your environmental impact.

http://www.earthlab.com/carbonProfile/LiveEarth.htm?CID=1000&ver=8

* Your ECP score is linked to your private earth conservation plan.
* Scores range from 150-900, lower is better.
* The average score in the USA is 325; in Canada 305
* The average carbon output in the USA is 20 tons; in Canada 17

My average carbon output is 4 tons. What is yours? Go here to find out.

What is Earthlab?
Launching on 07.07.07 in conjunction with the ″Live Earth - Concert for a Climate in Crisis″ worldwide event, Earthlab™, will be the leading online worldwide community for earth friendly individuals and companies, Earthlab was established to generate social capital through education and motivation.

In addition to exclusive Global Warming / Climate Crisis related content, experts, easy to understand information, analysis and community features, Earthlab will be an exclusive provider for the upcoming SOS event, ″Live Earth - Concert for a Climate in Crisis″ on 07.07.07. Live Earth will be presented via Multi-platform distribution (television, radio, internet, wireless) reaching in excess of 2 billion people across the globe. Based in Kirkland, Washington, EarthLab has forged strategic partnerships with The Alliance for Climate Protection led by its Chairman, Al Gore, Live Earth 7/7/07 – The Concert for a Climate in Crisis, Oberon Studios and MSN.

Parallels in Lives of Others

I just wanted to note a couple of parallels that I found intriguing in the movie Das Leben der Anderen that I watched Saturday night. I especially love this movie because it gives me the opportunity to think about the cross-sections between so much of what I enjoy thinking/writing about: arts in our lives, histories and their (re)writings, the gray spaces of moral and ethical dilemmas, the private vs. public domains, the temptation of power and ideology, etc.

* Georg Dreyman is a playwright, and author of various pieces of writing depicting life in the GDR. He writes their lives into articles that are then published for others to read. He creates plays that others then act out in order for people to understand some critical, internal aspect of human culture.

* Wiesler is a Stasi spy who listens in on the lives of Dreyman and Sieland, and then writes meticulous reports about those lives. Eventually, in the effort of saving them, he begins re-writing the accounts in his reports, changing bits and pieces of their actual goings-on in order to protect them from the secret police. In a way, on paper, he is creating a different kind of history, a sort of play that is different than the one he is currently witnessing.

* Grubitz tells Wiesler that he must reconsider where his allegiances lie, pressuring Wiesler into choosing a side.

* Dreyman aks Sieland a question that forces her to make a decision about which love means the most to her. She is conflicted by her love for her art, her life, her profession, and by her love for him.

* Wiesler writes fictional accounts of Dreyman's life, creating a different kind of man named Dreyman, which blurs the boundaries between the real vs. the unreal Georg Dreyman.

* Dreyman eventually writes a novel titled "Sonata for a Good Man," and dedicates it to Wiesler; however, Dreyman never really names him at all, just uses the code name. Again, the blurring of lines between the true vs. the untrue Wiesler.

The Lives of Others: Das Leben der Anderen

On Saturday night, a group of us watched one of the loveliest films that I've seen in theaters recently. The movie Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) has been a cinematic gem in theaters around the world, and has won many awards, including the Academy Award for best foreign language film.

For me, I prefer knowing how a book or movie or play concludes because I find that it makes my movie-watching experience fuller. In fact, knowing the basic storyline allows me time during the viewing to focus on minute details that enrich the story, and I can still concentrate on the minutiae even while enjoying the story's unfolding. But some folks disagree. Some prefer finding the mystery and the unexpected. What follows is a rather complete synopsis of The Lives of Others. If you don't want to know how this excellent movie develops, stop reading now.

Film Synopsis
At once a political thriller and human drama, THE LIVES OF OTHERS begins in East Berlin in 1984, five years before Glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall and ultimately takes us to 1991, in what is now the reunited Germany. THE LIVES OF OTHERS traces the gradual disillusionment of Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Muhe, best known for his lead roles in Michael Haneke’s FUNNY GAMES and as Dr. Mengele in Costa-Gavras’ AMEN), a highly skilled officer who works for the Stasi, East Germany’s all-powerful secret police. His mission is to spy on a celebrated writer and actress couple, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch) and Christa-Maria Sieland (Martina Gedeck).

Five years before its downfall, the former East- German government (known as the GDR, German Democratic Republic) ensures its claim to power with a ruthless system of control and surveillance via the Stasi, a vast network of informers that at one time numbered 200,000 out of a population of 17 million. Their goal is to know everything about “the lives of others.”

Devoted Stasi officer and expert interrogator Wiesler is given the job of collecting evidence against the famous playwright Georg Dreyman. The job begins after Lieutenant Colonel Anton Grubitz (Ulrich Tukur), a former classmate of Wiesler's who now heads the Culture Department at the State Security, invites Wiesler to accompany him to the premiere of the new play by Dreyman, also attended by Minister Bruno Hempf (Thomas Thieme). Minister Hempf tells Grubitz that he has doubts about the successful playwright's loyalty to the SED, the ruling Socialist Unity Party, and implies that he would approve of a full-scale surveillance operation. Grubitz, eager to boost his own political future, entrusts the monitoring, or "Operative Procedure," to Wiesler, who promises to oversee the case personally. Wiesler is also convinced that Dreyman cannot possibly be as loyal to the Party as has always been assumed. However, Hempf’s distrust of Dreyman is not politically motivated. Hempf cannot take his eyes off the attractive lead actress Christa-Maria Sieland, Dreyman’s girlfriend.

While Dreyman is away from their home, his apartment is systematically bugged. A neighbor who notices the operation is forced to keep silent by a personal threat. Wiesler sets up his surveillance headquarters in the attic of Dreyman's apartment building, thus beginning Wiesler’s cold and calculating observation of the lives of the playwright and his girlfriend.

At first Weisler’s observations show that, unlike most of his artistic peers, Dreyman does not display any outwardly disdain for the GDR. Dreyman’s position slowly changes however, as he discovers that Christa-Maria has been pressured into a sexual relationship with Minister Hempf. When his close friend, theater director Albert Jerska (Volkmar Kleinert) is driven to suicide after seven years of unofficial “blacklisting” by the government, Dreyman can no longer remain silent about the GDR. Now determined to alert the outside world about the conditions of life under the GDR, he begins a plot to place an article with the famous West German publication Der Spiegel, exposing the GDR’s policy of covering up the high suicide rates under the regime.

Wiesler, who has been monitoring all of Dreyman’s activities, finally has the proof he needs to destroy his subject and to serve the GDR by foiling Dreyman’s plot. But Wiesler’s unemotional façade is showing signs of erosion. While he observes the day-to-day life of Dreyman and Christa-Maria, he begins to be drawn into their world, which puts his own position as an impartial agent of the GDR into question. His immersion in “the lives of others,” in love, literature and freethinking, also makes Wiesler acutely aware of the shortfalls of his own existence.

When the anti-GDR article is published, the regime is thoroughly embarrassed and Grubitz is ordered to discover the identity of the article’s author. Dreyman is one of the prime suspects, but Grubitz cannot believe that the trustworthy Wiesler would have failed to discover the plot. At the same time, Hempf’s discovery of Christa-Maria’s drug addiction forces her to expose her lover as the author of the Der Spiegel article, but a search of Dreyman’s apartment does not yield any incriminating evidence. Convinced that Weisler knows more than he is revealing, Grubitz summons him to interrogate Christa-Maria in order to find the one item linking Dreyman to the Der Spiegel article.

Wiesler, who has known all along about the source of the article and purposely failed to disclose the information to his superiors, must now decide where his allegiances lie. If he does not extract the information from Christa-Maria, his life and his career as an elite Stasi officer will undoubtedly be over. If he succeeds, Dreyman’s fate will be sealed.

In 1991, two years following the fall of the Berlin Wall, Dreyman is in for a rude awakening when he runs into ex-minister Hempf and learns that he had been the subject of a Stasi surveillance. Immediately afterward, he finds the cables and microphones secretly installed years earlier behind the wallpaper in his apartment. In disbelief, he sets out to research and discovers the different reality of his past, which not only has a profound impact on his life but also surprises him with shocking revelations.

Just a bit of Riesen

I will not be joining the cast of House, unfortunately. As of Friday evening, I was cleared of all skeletal remains of aquatic vertebrates. (My apologies for not reporting this sooner.) I have lost the fishbone, but have gained a newfound appreciation of the body and its mechanisms. This is the last and final update on my fishbone swallowing incident:

Up through Friday morning, I was still coughing with phlegm because the bone was still stuck somewhere in the back of my throat. By lunchtime, there was a consistent throbbing pain to the right side of my neck, but lower, slightly closer to my clavicle. Plus, I started feeling a heaviness in my chest cavity -- the weight felt similar to a bronchitis-infected lung. I knew my body was trying to fight the foreign object in whatever way possible.

I called the Advice Hotline again after lunch and the Advice nurse took all the information and consulted with the triage nurse, Dr. Oliver, who suggested that I come into the Emergency Room. The coughing and phlegm were indicators that they needed to examine me and the clinic probably didn't have the necessary equipment to look down my throat (if it came to that).

It's a trout bone -- very fine, tiny -- and also impossible to see, apparently, so I didn't think it was a big deal. I just thought it would pass eventually, and going to the ER seemed quite excessive. Of course they had to say that I needed to go to the doctors. They didn't want me suing them for giving bad advice just in case the bone I swallowed was 5 cm long. Partially to relieve my own anxieties and partially to let her off the hook, I told the nurse that I would go to the ER.

By 3:30 p.m., it was much more uncomfortable, and the heaviness in the chest was much more pronounced, so my sister and I went to the ER. Looking back, it seems rather silly, and a tremendous waste of time. Nevertheless, I trekked in and the ER guard scanned me then sent me into the waiting room. They filled out paperwork, paid my $50 co-pay and met with the triage nurse, Doug Clark (who looked like the elder brother of Rob Lowe, by the way). He took all my info and tried to get my blood pressure three times. Then they told me to wait for an x-ray.

I was standing in that x-ray room when it fully dawned on me how utterly stupid I was for wasting all this time, energy, and money on such a minor thing. Add to that, the x-ray technician thought it was extremely funny that this was not the first time I swallowed a fishbone. Bless his heart he tried his very best to not say what I'm sure they were all thinking in their heads.

It took two doctors plus an ENT doctor (Ear, Nose, Throat) to say that they could not find a bone in my x-ray. However, according to the nurse, b/c my x-ray "looked weird" (it must be a medical code or something? haha!), they had to have a doctor examine my throat. By now, I was extremely uncomfortable, and it wasn't because I still had the invisible fishbone in my throat but b/c I was waiting in the ER hallway on one of those roll-away beds while ER staff were wandering about trying to help really sick people.

Nurse Adaobi gave me one of those fancy hospital gowns with the "fetching" slit in the back and I waited for Dr. So-and-So. He was a short statured man, who tried his best to be serious and listened to my explanations with as much interest as he could muster. Then they poked down my throat. Adaobi held the flashlight, and the doctor used all the gauzes and gloves and stuff they had available to hold my tongue while poking around with one of those long handled silver sticks with a flat mirror on the end. Anyway, save for him almost gagging me to death he couldn't find anything for certain. Actually, what he said was he thought he saw something but wasn't sure. He ran in and out of my room and the x-ray viewing room several times looking down my throat and checking the x-rays, but in the end, it was useless.

They could not find any bone, without any certainty, so they had to say there was a possible foreign object in the back of my throat. To avoid gagging me to death, the ENT folks would have to use special equipment to look down my throat. Unfortunately, they were already began a four-hour operation on a patient so I would have to wait or come back. None of us thought it was important enough to warrant my waiting for four hours, so he pre-scheduled an appointment for me with the ENT department on Monday morning just in case I needed to come back in. He said thank you and that was all. Threehours and $50 later, I was done.

We went to get the car and paid for our parking. As I waited to exit the lot, I ate a piece of Riesen candy -- and would you believe it -- the chewy, chocolatey candy dislodged the bone. It was a teensy bit of trout bone, and I'm sure the doctor helped dislodge the bone when he and his nurse was examining my throat. The fishbone itself was quite insignificant. A minor blip among the many, many greater things in life, yet it caused the most drama I've had in ages.

Given everything that has happened, I've decided that I will hold off on eating fish for a little while. It will just have to be lobster from now on.