Dreamways

"The exotically shaped creatures that began to sprout silently all over the cozy lecture hall were soon spilling onto empty chairs and into women’s laps and shopping bags.“ Uh oh. "When fully grown, these curiously animate forms will find a home as part of a mammoth version of the Great Barrier Reef.“ This waking dream, reported by Patricia Cohen ("Want to Save a Coral Reef?  read more »

"The makers of antidepressants like Prozac and Paxil never published the results of about a third of the drug trials that they conducted to win government approval, misleading doctors and consumers about the drugs‘ true effectiveness, a new analysis has found.“ This disturbing news comes in an article by Benedict Carey ("Researchers Find Bias in Drug Trial Reporting,“ The New York Times, 17 Jan 08).

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The photo image of Martin Luther King’s face takes up most of the visual field of the black and white ad that covers the bottom half of this Martin Luther King Day (21 Jan 08) Denver Post page. His hands are held together, fingers interlocked, at the level of his chin. He is facing us, his eyes looking into the distance somewhere to his right. His gaze is relaxed, focused and pensive.  read more »

"A series of irrelevant incidents had brought me, for the first time in my life, into a college astronomy lecture. It was long before the days of audio-visual teaching techniques, but the lecturer had invented his own. He leapt from one contraption to another with an attention-riveting agility. First it was a projector showing a series of slides which, he explained, had been taken by a fixed camera that recorded the position of each of the planets at the same hour every night for a year.  read more »

"After suffering a devastating stroke four years ago, Susan Brown was left in a wheelchair with little hope of walking again. Today, the 57-year-old woman has regained use of her legs and has begun to reclaim her life, thanks in part to encouragement she says she gets from an online virtual world where she can walk, run and dance.“

"Robert Salvatierra, long imprisoned in his home by his terror over going outdoors, has started venturing outside more after gaining confidence by exploring the three-dimensional, interactive world on the Internet."
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"Worker shot in legs when gun fires in cubicle“ (The Denver Post, 01 Nov 07). This headline is not particularly jarring for a jaded 21st century newspaper reader. Gunfire in an office cubicle? Old stuff! Is this a by now overly-familiar scenario of a disgruntled co-worker or dumped lover seeking revenge? Hardly! The story announced by the headline is the humorous stuff of waking dreams.

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"Judge Overturns Iowa Ban on Same-Sex Marriages“ touted the headline in The New York Times (31 Aug 07). It seemed a dream-come-true for gays, and not just in Iowa!

"A Polk county judge on Thursday struck down Iowa’s law banning same-sex marriage and ordered the county recorder to permit gay and lesbian couples to marry. Less than two hours after word of the ruling was publicized, two Des Moines men applied for a marriage license, which was accepted and filed.“ Unbelievable! In America’s heartland!

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"My gut feeling, and it’s nothing more than that, is that there’s a 20 percent chance we’re living in a computer simulation.“ So asserts Dr. Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Oxford University (John Tierney, "Our Lives, Controlled from Some Guy’s Couch,“ The New York Times, 14 Aug 07).

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"Mermaid Star Visits School, Stage That Set her Dreams Afloat“ reads the headline of an article by Jeremy P. Meyer in The Denver Post (29 Aug 07). The article reports that "the star of the Broadway-bound musical, The Little Mermaid, on Tuesday stood on the George Washington High School stage where her career began and told students to reach for their dreams. ‘This is where I got my start,‘ said Sierra Boggess, who plays the lead role of Ariel in the Disney spectacular that opened in Denver and heads to New York in November.  read more »

In his essay "When Sadness Is a Good Thing“ (Time Magazine, 27 Aug 07), John Cloud ruminates about sadness and depression. "In the 1960s, the pharmaceutical company Sandoz marketed its new tranquilizer Serentil with ads in medical journals suggesting the drug be prescribed to 'the newcomer in town who can’t make friends … The woman who can’t get along with her new daughter-in-law ... The executive who can’t accept retirement.‘ But the FDA stopped the ads.  read more »