Morana

Epilepsy is a general term for recurring seizures or electrical disturbances in the brain. They can sometimes be caused by brain injury or infection, or it can be an inherited abnormality. In a lot of cases the cause is unknown.

A cure is still a long way off, but we are getting good at controlling the number of seizures an epileptic has through anti-convulsant drugs. A new drug was just approved this week to add to the dozen or so others have become available over the last ten years. The trick is to find the drug or combination of drugs that is right for the individual sufferer.

If we could find a drug that stopped seizures altogether, that would be as good as a cure. A study this month estimates that more than a million epileptics suffer uncontrolled seizures despite the available drugs; more than double the number we thought.

Some people have surgery to remove the part of the brain where the seizures originate. Sometimes there's a surgery to separate the two sides of the brain to prevent the seizure from spreading.

There are some promising - http://www.futureofeducation.com/main/search/search?q=promising early trials in a number of areas... The hope is that better targeting of drugs to different parts of the brain will help control and ultimately stop seizures.

Gene therapy treatment has shown some early promise in animals, and the search for genetic causes may also eventually help us better understand how the brain works and https://www.phhm6ajt.online - https://www.phhm6ajt.online help find a cure.

Deep brain stimulation similar to that used in Parkinson's patients, where an implant is buried deep into the brain may also someday help with seizures. There is also a nerve stimulator that attaches to the vagus nerve in the neck that is effective for some in controlling seizures in some people. Some doctors envision a day when transplanted nerve cells could be used to rewire the areas of the braithat are affected.

©MMII CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

The poster, which went up in June in the western city of Poznan just steps from a synagogue, is an Italian artist's take on what he calls the "horrors" of the American lifestyle and is one piece of artwork in a contemporary art exhibition opening in the fall.

But the reaction shows that there is little appetite in Poland for satirical or artistic uses of images linked to Nazi Germany, which invaded Poland in 1939 and built ghettoes and death camps across the country in which millions were murdered.

"This art provocation is a form of violence against the sensitivity of many people," said Norbert Napieraj, 포커 순서 - http://coursely.co.il/blog/%ec%99%9c-%eb%8c%80%eb%b6%80%eb%b6%84%ec%9d%9... a city council member who asked prosecutors to ban the poster.

Billboard Linking Obama, Hitler Draws ComplaintsAnne Frank Story Gets Graphic Novel Treatment

Prosecutors, however, determined that the poster is art and does not violate the country's laws against glorifying Nazism.

The poster has been vandalized twice since it first went up, and on Tuesday was no longer stretched across a building in the city center. Despite the uproar, gallery - http://www.buzzfeed.com/search?q=gallery director Maria Czarnecka said she plans to put it back up.

"Art should be provocative and controversial," she told The Associated Press, insisting that the poster does not seek to propagate Nazism but instead wants to explore "symbols and how they work."

"The Mickey Mouse head and swastika are on the same level - they don't mean anything and they are both part of the globalized world," Czarnecka said.

Jewish leaders, who have been outraged at the poster, would disagree, saying the swastika still means something very real to many Poles, Jews and non-Jews alike.

Poland was once home to Europe's largest Jewish community, which numbered close to 3.5 million people before it was nearly wiped out in the Holocaust. The Nazis also committed atrocities against the non-Jewish population, and killed some 6 million Polish citizens, about half Jewish and the other half Christian.

The head of Poznan's Jewish community, Alicja Kobus, 64, described being overwhelmed by revulsion when she first saw the poster. She had just been with Jewish visitors from Holland to the synagogue, which the Nazis turned into a swimming pool - http://www.squidoo.com/search/results?q=swimming%20pool .

"It is a shock for people still scarred by the hell of the Holocaust," she said.

The work - "NaziSexyMouse" by Italian artist Max Papeschi - is part of a series works that blend iconic American cartoon figures with images of warfare or destruction.

Papeschi explains on his website that the series - which he dubs "Politically-Incorrect" - is meant as commentary on the United States, revealing "all the horror of this lifestyle."

His images - Mickey Mouse as a Nazi or Ronald McDonald as a machine-gun bearing soldier in Iraq - lose "their reassuring effect and change into a collective nightmare," Papeschi said.

"NaziSexyMouse" also went on show this week in Berlin as part of an exhibition at a sister gallery. But the image has not been displayed publicly there and has sparked no outcry.

A Berlin art gallery manager said older people often do not understand that the combination of pop culture icons like Mickey Mouse and historical symbols like the swastika are meant to be satirical.

"For the younger generation, this painting is just a joke; older people sometimes don't like it or don't find it funny, but nobody has taken any offense so far," said Agnes Kaplon, manager of the Abnormals Gallery in Berlin.

A Russian art exhibition that also used the iconic Disney character's image has also been at the center of a legal case in Russia. Two Russian curators who angered the Russian Orthodox Church with an exhibition that included images of Jesus Christ portrayed as Mickey Mouse and Vladimir Lenin were convicted Monday of inciting religious hatred and fined, but not sentenced to prison.

Associated Press Writer Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin contributed to this story.

But CBS 2's Paul Moniz reports that an experimental surgery is allowing some to put their specs away.

Ophthalmologist Barrie Soloway performs the surgery, which was part of a Food and Drug Administration trial. He considers it a breakthrough.

"This procedure is basically used to bring people back to a younger age when they weren't required to use reading glasses for their near vision," he explains.

The surgery may be just what baby boomers are looking for: many are shocked when they suddenly can't read newspapers and menus as they enter their forties..

To make matters worse, there is no laser surgery to correct presbyopia, the inability to focus up-close. It eventually affects everyone in middle age, even if you've never worn glasses.

The 20-minute procedure, called scleral expansion surgery, involves implanting four tiny plastic discs in the whites of one eye.

The discs, slightly larger than the tip of a pen and virtually undetectable, allow the lens room to expand, https://www.cvkr27dw.online - https://www.cvkr27dw.online restoring its focal ability.

The surgery is controversial not only because it's experimental but because it bucks conventional theories on why presbyopia occurs in the first place.

Further, it's hardly a sure thing: results on 30 patients in the nationwide study vary widely, from 10 percent effectiveness to 90 percent.

If the FDA approves the surgery, it could become a gold mine for doctors. Experimental patients are shelling out $5,000 for the procedure.

About 1,000 of these procedures have been performed in France, South America and Korea.

But because this surgery is still in its experimental - http://www.fool.com/search/solr.aspx?q=experimental stages, its long-term - http://www.cbsnews.com/search/?q=long-term results have yet to be proven.

The longest anyone has had the discs is four years.

The good news is that if they don't work, they can be removed without injuring the eye.

©MMII CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed

BAGHDAD -- Islamic militants overran parts of Iraq's second-largest city of Mosul on Tuesday, driving security forces from their posts and seizing the provincial government headquarters, security bases and other key buildings. Gunmen cruised through neighborhoods, waving black banners while residents fled.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki pressed parliament to declare a state of emergency.

The fight for Mosul was a heavy defeat in Baghdad's battle against a widening insurgency by a breakaway al Qaeda group, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, which has been trying - with some success - to seize territory both in Iraq and neighboring Syria.

Earlier this year, the group captured another Iraqi city, Fallujah, in the west of the country, and government forces have been unable to take it back after months of fighting. The far larger Mosul is an even more strategic prize. The city and surrounding Ninevah province are a major export route for Iraqi oil and a gateway to Syria.

Regaining Mosul poses a daunting challenge for al-Maliki. The city has a Sunni Muslim majority and many in the community are already deeply embittered against his Shiite-led government. During the nearly nine-year American presence in the country, Mosul was a major stronghold for al Qaeda and U.S. and Iraqi forces carried out repeated offensives there, regaining a semblance of control but never routing the insurgents entirely.

Islamic militants and Iraqi troops have been fighting for days in Mosul. But Monday night and into early Tuesday, the government forces in the city appeared to collapse.

More in The fight against ISIS

Insurgents overran the Ninevah provincial government building in the city - a key symbol of state control - in the evening, and security forces fled many of their posts. The fighters stormed police stations, bases and prisons, capturing weapons and freeing prisoners.

On Tuesday, Mosul residents said the militants appeared to be in control of several parts of the city, raising the black banners that are the emblem of the Islamic State. The residents spoke to The Associated Press by telephone on condition of anonymity, fearing for their safety.

The fighters also seized helicopters at Mosul airport and seized heavy equipment and weapons depots, parliament speaker Osama al-Nujaifi - a Sunni from Mosul - said in a televised address. South of Mosul, several villages and a military air base around the town of Shurqat, in Salahuddin province, also fell to militants, al-Nujaifi said.

"What happened is a disaster by any standard," he said. "The presence of these terrorist groups in this vast province ... threatens not just the security and the unity of Iraq, but the whole Middle East."

Al-Nujaifi said the terrorists are now setting their sights on Salahuddin, a province just north of Baghdad.

Al-Nujaifi blamed the fall of Mosul on "negligence" on the part of army forces and their withdrawal from the city.

Al-Nujaifi said he spoke to U.S. Ambassador Robert Beecroft, requesting U.S. support to repel the terrorists' attack by virtue of the Joint Cooperation agreement between the two countries. Ambassador Faily promised to promptly convey our request to the U.S. administration, al-Nujaifi said.

In a nationally televised press conference Tuesday, al-Maliki asked parliament to declare a state of emergency, acknowledging that militants had taken control of "vital areas in Mosul." He said the public and government must unite "to confront this vicious attack, which will spare no Iraqi."

State TV said parliament would convene Thursday. Under the constitution, parliament can declare a 30-day state of emergency on a two-thirds vote by its members, granting the prime minister the necessary powers to run the country. Legal experts said that could include powers to impose curfews, restrict public movements and censor the media.

"What happened is a disaster by any standard," al-Nujaifi - a Sunni from Mosul - said in a televised address. "The presence of these terrorist groups in this vast province ... threatens not just the security and the unity of Iraq, but the whole Middle East," he said.

He said militants had seized helicopters at Mosul airport and captured weapons depots, and captured several villages and a military airbase further south in Salahuddin province, he said.

Residents began fleeing Mosul - though the size of the flight was not yet clear. A government employee who lives about a mile from the provincial government building, Umm Karam, said she left with her family Tuesday morning.

"The situation is chaotic inside the city and there is nobody to help us," she said, speaking on condition she be identified by a nickname for fear of her safety. "We are afraid ... There is no police or army in Mosul."

The assault in Mosul is also a sign of Iraq's reversals - http://www.purevolume.com/search?keyword=Iraq%27s%20reversals since American forces left the country in late 2011. Militants ramped their insurgency back up over the past two years. The Islamic State has presented itself as the Sunni community's champion against al-Maliki's Shiite-led government as the group fights on both sides of the border in what Iraqi officials have said is an attempt to carve out an enclave for itself in western Iraq and eastern Syria.

The group, which was once al Qaeda's branch in Iraq, was thrown out of the terrorist network after it expanded its operations in Syria against the orders of al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahri. It is considered one of the most ruthless rebel forces fighting to topple President Bashar Assad in Syria, where it has in seized a major city in the east and other territory.

In Iraq, the group rose up earlier this year to take over Fallujah and parts of the nearby city of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province. It has also been carrying out a campaign of bombings and other violence in Baghdad and other parts of the country.

In the Mosul fighting, insurgents armed with machineguns and rocket-propelled grenade launchers stormed the provincial headquarters building late Monday, https://www.uzplxb5ac.online - https://www.uzplxb5ac.online overpowering guards in a short firefight, according to Ali Mahmoud, the media official for Ninevah province.

He confirmed accounts by Mosul residents that many of the police and army forces that had been stationed in the city had disappeared by Tuesday.

Provincial governor Atheel al-Nujaifi, the parliament speaker's brother, was in a nearby guest house. He managed to escape the area and left the city, though he continues to monitor the situation, Mahmoud said.

On Monday, the governor had urged residents to fend off the attackers.

"I call upon the men of Mosul to stand firm in their areas and to defend them against the strangers and to form public committees in their districts to help their people and to protect their areas," he said in a transcript of a speech posted online.

MONCTON, 무료 카지노 게임 - http://store.swingscience.net/2019/07/08/%eb%a3%b0%eb%a0%9b-%ed%95%84%ec... New Brunswick -- Three police officers were shot dead and two others injured in a rare case of gun violence in the east coast Canadian province of New Brunswick, officials said. Authorities were searching for a suspect.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police Constable Damien Theriault said police responded to a call Wednesday about an armed man in the north end of the city of Moncton at 7:30 p.m. Three of the responding officers were killed and two sustained non-life threatening injuries and were in stable condition.

"We are still actively looking for the shooter," Theriault said. "He is believed to still be in the Pinehurst subdivision area of Moncton. We are urging people in that area to stay inside and lock their doors and for people to stay away from that area."

Asked how he was dealing with his grief, Theriault said he personally knew the officers - then broke down and excusing himself because he couldn't complete his sentence.

Police said they were looking for 24-year-old Justin Bourque of Moncton - a city of about 69,000 people about 95 miles northeast of the capital of St. John, New Brunswick. The police force tweeted an image of a suspect wearing military camouflage and wielding two guns.

Danny Leblanc, 42, said he saw the shooter in the distance Wednesday evening, wearing a camouflage outfit and standing in the middle of the street with his gun pointed at police cars.

The construction worker said he believed it was an RCMP officer he was looking at until he heard a burst of automatic gunfire coming from the man's gun.

He said he quickly retreated - http://www.ourmidland.com/search/?q=retreated into his home and remained there with his family. At one point, a neighbor posted on social media that their kitchen window was shattered by gunfire.

Leblanc said few people on his normally quiet street were sleeping as they awaited word at midnight on whether arrests had been made.

Word that police had been killed shocked the city, Leblanc said.

"It's devastating. I don't know if he was on a hunt for them, or what," he said.

Police had a number of roads in the city blocked and traffic was backed up on major arteries across the city. Drivers were also asked to stay out of the area.

Moncton Mayor George LeBlanc urged all residents to pay strict attention to the RCMP warnings.

"It is a terrible tragedy," he said. "We as a city must pull together as a family to support those who have suffered losses."

Such violence is rare in Canada, particularly on Canada's East Coast. Theriault said the city of Moncton didn't have a homicide last year or this year until Wednesday evening.

"We have been blessed until this point," he told The Associated Press.

He said other RCMP officers from around Atlantic Canada are in Moncton assisting with the search.

The shootings brought back memories - http://ccmixter.org/api/query?datasource=uploads&search_type=all&sort=ra... of when four Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers were shot and killed in the western Canadian province of Alberta in 2005 in the deadliest attack on Canadian police officers in 120 years. They had been investigating a farm in Mayerthrope, a small hamlet in Alberta when a man shot them before he was killed.

The Horizon Health Network, a provincial health authority, said two patients were taken to Moncton Hospital with gunshot wounds. Horizon Health said the two shooting victims are in stable condition.

Sean Gallacher, who lives near the area where police were concentrating their search, said he heard what he now believes were gunshots but initially thought his daughter had dropped some toys on the floor above him.

"I was downstairs and heard a few bangs," said Gallacher, 35.

Canadian Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney tweeted that he was "shocked by the tragedy" and that his thoughts and prayers were with frontline RCMP officers.

"Learn To Fly" has been a hit Summer Song for 삼척출장만남 - https://www.samcheokopanma.club/ the Foo Fighters for almost 20 years now ... not that their long run has always been easy going, as Anthony Mason can tell us:

Under the San Bernardino sun last fall, 30,000 fans came out for an old-school rock festival.  If rock 'n' roll is supposed to be dead, then Cal Jam was a resurrection. The headliners were America's biggest rock band, the Foo Fighters, whose 49-year-old frontman, Dave Grohl, will go to any extreme to keep rock's flame burning.

Case in point: during a gig in Sweden two years ago, he fell from the stage, broke his leg and dislocated his ankle.

More in Music

When Mason asked the other band members what they thought when that happened, keyboardist Rami Jaffi replied, "That there was gonna be a lotta time off!"

But Jaffi, drummer Taylor Hawkins, and rest of the band kept going while Grohl was treated backstage, until he was carried back out on a stretcher.

For two hours, Grohl played - http://www.nuwireinvestor.com/results.aspx?searchwords=Grohl%20played on from a chair while a medic tended to his leg.

Mason asked, "Did they give you painkillers? How did you do that?"

"No, I mean, the adrenaline of the stadium, and also the obligation," he replied. "I broke it in the second song. And I felt like all those people had come all that way."

The tour was interrupted for Grohl's surgery, but he returned in a custom-built throne of his own design, which was the star attraction last  fall at the Cal Jam Museum, a tent filled with memorabilia from the Foos' nearly 25-year history, including their Grammy collection. 

They've won Best Rock Album four times and won this year for Best Rock Song off their latest record, "Concrete & Gold."

"Run," from the Foo Fighters album "Concrete & Gold":

"Yeah, it's weird," Grohl said.

What's weird about it? "Ages ago, when I was a kid, my Dad said, 'You know, this isn't gonna last, right? Savor every check like it's the last one you're ever gonna make.' And every time we make a Foo Fighters record, I think, 'Well, if this were the last one, then we had a good run,' it would have been great."

Grohl came up through the punk scene in Washington, D.C., and its sleepy Virginia suburbs.

At 17, he dropped out of the high school where his mom, Virginia, taught English.

She assured Mason she was okay with that: "I was. He just didn't like it. And he was a really great writer and such a great spirit. He said, 'I'm going to Europe to tour with Scream.' 'Go, great. Can I go, too?'"

A few years later, Grohl was invited to join an up-and-coming Seattle grunge band, after its frontman, Kurt Cobain, caught his act. 

"When most people think about Nirvana, they think about a video or a song on the radio, but to me it was a really personal experience with some friends that went from sleeping on floors to then being the number one band on the charts," Grohl said.

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," written by Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, from Nirvana's 1991 album "Nevermind":

Grohl's first-ever platinum record now resides in his mother's house.

"Still, to this day, whenever I see a new artist that's young that blows up and becomes gigantic overnight, I kind of get worried for them," he said. "I don't think anybody's cut out for it."

"How did you do up there?"

"I was the kid with long hair in my face behind drums that looked like washing machines, and I could walk in the front door of a Nirvana gig and not really get noticed. So, I didn't have to suffer a lot of the pressures that Kurt did as the frontman."

It was a four-year rocketship ride aboard what became one of the biggest bands in rock history. At the height of it all, in 1994, Cobain took his own life.

Mason asked, "Where are you right after Kurt dies?"

"Just lost," Grohl said. "I went through a really dark period where I couldn't really even listen to the radio because it broke my heart just to hear music."

But quietly, the 25-year-old Grohl began to write and record songs of his own, playing all the instruments.

"I went to the cassette place down the street, [and] said, 'Could you make 100 of these,' and made a little card to go in it. And I just started giving it out to people. And I called it 'Foo Fighters' 'cause I wanted people to think it was a group."

He took the name from the military term for UFOs. "I've always been kind of a UFO nut, but also, it almost sounded like a gang, you know, like a karate gang or something. Foo Fighters! So yeah, it worked!"

In 1995 Grohl's songs were released as the first Foos album.

Along the way, Grohl recruited Hawkins and Jaffe, Chris Shifflett on lead guitar, Nate Mendel on bass, and guitarist Pat Smear, who was a touring member of Nirvana:

To watch the music video for "I'll Stick Around," from the debut Foo Fighters album, click on the video player below:

Mason asked Hawkins, "How would you describe the dynamic of this band?"

"Dave's the leader. And our job as a band is to make sure whatever is in his head gets on tape," he responded.

"Has the Nirvana experience, you think, informed Dave's approach to the band?"

"I think it did a lot," said Smear. "He was smart enough to pull out the good and say, 'I'm gonna do things like this,' and to look at the bad and say, 'I'm not gonna do this kind of stuff.'"

When asked if there were times when the band was in trouble Grohl said yes, in 2001 – the year Taylor Hawkins nearly died after a heroin overdose. He spent two weeks in coma; Grohl did not leave his side.

Hawklins said he was aware Grohl was there every day: "That was a heavy time. But he was always there. And he's always been there."

Grohl said, "That's when you forget about the band."

"Doesn't matter anymore?"

"No, that's when it gets real."

Dave Grohl himself gave up drugs when he was 20. It's one reason the Foo Fighters fight on.

"When I tell people I've never done cocaine in my life, they think I'm lying!" Grohl said. "But I love music, and I love life. And to me, survival is the game – that's the hardest part. I just wanna play music."

"The Sky Is a Neighborhood," from the Foo Fighters album "Concrete & Gold":

       For more info:

       Story produced - http://hararonline.com/?s=Story%20produced by Jon Carras.

And throughout the neonatal intensive care unit, he heard doctors promise to try. Even if it meant cramming tubes down the children's throats, cutting open their chests or bombarding their frail bodies with radiation. Even when they knew the treatments couldn't save them, and would only fill their final days with pain.

"Some of the parents were waiting for a miracle. How do you deal with that?" said Clark, a Jesuit priest and professor at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. "In some cases, you have to give the family a little more time. But where do you draw the line?"

Clark spent a year observing medical ethics at the Washington, D.C. hospital. The dilemma he witnessed occurs daily in hospitals nationwide, and a growing number have crafted policies allowing doctors to cease aggressive treatments of terminally ill patients, even when relatives want them to keep fighting.

Within a year, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania plans to adopt ethics guidelines under which doctors could decline to admit patients to an intensive care unit if they have been in a persistent vegetative state for at least three to six months.

In such cases, the hospital would continue to offer care to ease a patients' pain, but wouldn't take invasive steps like putting the patient on a breathing machine or performing surgery, said Dr. Horace DeLisser, who co-chairs the ethics committee implementing the guidelines.

"There are certain types of injuries people suffer where one should acknowledge the tragedy that has occurred, and realize that the chances of recovery are negligible, and really redirect care toward making sure the person is as comfortable as possible," DeLisser said.

But some advocates and religious groups have argued that only patients themselves are qualified to decide whether doctors should try to save them.

Stephen Gold, a Philadelphia lawyer who represents people with disabilities, https://www.jzsznukd.online - https://www.jzsznukd.online said hospitals might be tempted to cut off expensive care - http://www.groundreport.com/?s=expensive%20care to people who lack health - http://search.usa.gov/search?affiliate=usagov&query=lack%20health insurance or are handicapped.

"It is a slippery slope they are going down," he said. "If we have a way to provide a medical treatment for people that will keep them alive, we should always provide it, unless they have a living will saying we shouldn't."

Hospitals, however, have pressed ahead. The American Medical Association recommended in 1997 that all hospitals develop a "medical futility" policy allowing for an end to aggressive lifesaving measures if doctors determine a patient cannot be cured.

Since then, most hospitals have developed some sort of guidelines, said Amy Lee, a spokeswoman for the American Hospital Association.

"But there isn't a lot of uniformity, and the standards tend to vary from region to region," she said.

Mercy Health System, which operates three community hospitals near Philadelphia, drafted guidelines two years ago that are becoming typical of hospitals nationwide.

Doctors are authorized to stop aggressive treatment for a patient against a family's wishes, but only after a lengthy appeals process. Relatives can ask for a second opinion, appeal to an ethics panel, and then file a second appeal with an interdisciplinary panel.

So far, the policy has only been invoked twice, said Clark, who serves as an ethics adviser to the hospital system. In both cases, the families initially appealed, but later changed their minds.

"We want the family to be involved in the decision," Clark said. "It's about how to balance the patient's autonomy, while protecting a physician's integrity."

Both doctors and patients report, however, that fights over end-of-life decisions often go unresolved.

Courts have struggled with the issue as well.

In the landmark 1994 "Baby K" case, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Virginia hospital must provide artificial resuscitation for a child with anencephaly, a rare malformation in which almost all the brain is missing at birth.

Scientists believe children with anencephaly are incapable of thought or emotion and doctors almost universally advise parents to withhold life support. Baby K's mother insisted, over the objection of doctors, that her child be kept alive. With the court-mandated breathing assistance, the child lived for 2 1/2 years.

"Not everyone agrees on what constitutes a life worth living," said Gold. "I had a client with cerebral palsy once who was asked to sign a (Do Not Resuscitate) order when they went in to be treated for appendicitis," he said.

By David B. Caruso

(CBS News) What would Academy Awards Sunday be without our own Oscar prognosticator - http://www.modernmom.com/?s=Oscar%20prognosticator David Edelstein?

Last year, I sat here and predicted every Oscar winner. Had I gabbed with Academy members? Nope. Can I foretell the future? Sorry. Did I just love the big winner, "The Artist"? Definitely not.

I'd simply read certain columnists who'd been spun by certain publicists who'd been hired by certain studios that had squired certain nominees around Hollywood to screenings and cocktail parties to influence the votes of a few thousand people -- most over 55, white, well-off and liberal.

More in The Academy Awards

This year it's even busier. Harvey Weinstein, all-mighty poobah of Oscar buzz, got Dr. Mehmet Oz to extol "Silver Linings Playbook" for its insights into mental illness.

Look, I like the movie. It's a good, dark rom-com about a couple of cute depressives. Maybe it's even therapeutic to see people crazier than WE are. I'm just not certain of its medical efficacy.

Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg brought in a master to spin for "Lincoln": Bill Clinton! You hire awards consultants like political consultants. You stay ahead of the message.

Or you end up like Kathryn Bigelow, whose phenomenal "Zero Dark Thirty" was an early favorite, but maybe a tad fast-and-loose with facts in saying torture led to the courier who led to bin Laden. True or false, the controversy hasn't played well -- proof in one way torture doesn't work. Reportedly. I've read this, from columnists spun by publicists working for "Zero Dark Thirty" rivals.

They also say it's "Argo" for Best Picture because people feel bad that Ben Affleck wasn't nominated for Best Director -- his loss the movie's gain. And it doesn't hurt that the film makes Hollywood types look heroic.

Oscars 2013: Take our Best Picture poll!Watch: Predicting the winners with Hollywood Reporter's Erin CarlsonWatch: A. O. Scott and Michael Phillips' Oscar predictionsComplete coverage: 2013 Oscars

Clinton might help Spielberg win Best Director. I'm guessing Dr. Oz fave Jennifer Lawrence for Best Actress, though there's a dark horse in "Amour"'s Emmanuelle Riva.

Anne Hathaway has been on the campaign trail for "Les Miserables" and she'll get it, not in spite of looking like a chicken - http://www.twitpic.com/tag/chicken when she sings but BECAUSE of it. Flamboyant anti-vanity: It sells.

I'm betting Tommy Lee Jones for "Lincoln," but some are predicting Robert De Niro for "Silver Linings Playbook" if people find Jones too much of a sourpuss, which he kind of is.

The lock, of course, is Daniel Day-Lewis, who as Shakespeare would say "doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus."

Now, none of this has much to do with what I laughingly call "artistic merit." And except for Day-Lewis, none are my choices.

Although they might be if I heard from, say, Bill Clinton . . . or better yet, Jennifer Lawrence. Call me, babe. I wanna be on the inside, https://www.ljhmn8o3.online - https://www.ljhmn8o3.online where Oscars really get decided.

"Learn To Fly" has been a hit Summer Song for the Foo Fighters for almost 20 years now ... not that their long run has always been easy going, as Anthony Mason can tell us:

Under the San Bernardino sun last fall, 30,000 fans came out for 논산출장안마 - https://www.nonsananma.top/ an old-school rock festival.  If rock 'n' roll is supposed to be dead, then Cal Jam was a resurrection. The headliners were America's biggest rock band, the Foo Fighters, whose 49-year-old frontman, Dave Grohl, will go to any extreme to keep rock's flame burning.

Case in point: during a gig in Sweden two years ago, he fell from the stage, broke his leg and dislocated his ankle.

More in Music

When Mason asked the other band members what they thought when that happened, keyboardist Rami Jaffi replied, "That there was gonna be a lotta time off!"

But Jaffi, drummer Taylor Hawkins, and rest of the band kept going while Grohl was treated backstage, until he was carried back out on a stretcher.

For two hours, Grohl played on from a chair while a medic tended to his leg.

Mason asked, "Did they give you painkillers? How did you do that?"

"No, I mean, the adrenaline of the stadium, and also the obligation," he replied. "I broke it in the second song. And I felt like all those people had come all that way."

The tour was interrupted for Grohl's surgery, but he returned in a custom-built throne of his own design, which was the star attraction last  fall at the Cal Jam Museum, a tent filled with memorabilia from the Foos' nearly 25-year history, including their Grammy collection. 

They've won Best Rock Album four times and won this year for Best Rock Song off their latest record, "Concrete & Gold."

"Run," from the Foo Fighters album "Concrete & Gold":

"Yeah, it's weird," Grohl said.

What's weird about it? "Ages ago, when I was a kid, my Dad said, 'You know, this isn't gonna last, right? Savor every check like it's the last one you're ever gonna make.' And every time we make a Foo Fighters record, I think, 'Well, if this were the last one, then we had a good run,' it would have been great."

Grohl came up through the punk scene in Washington, D.C., and its sleepy Virginia suburbs.

At 17, he dropped out of the high school where his mom, Virginia, taught English.

She assured Mason she was okay with that: "I was. He just didn't like it. And he was a really great writer and such a great spirit. He said, 'I'm going to Europe to tour with Scream.' 'Go, great. Can I go, too?'"

A few years later, Grohl was invited to join an up-and-coming Seattle grunge band, after its frontman, Kurt Cobain, caught his act. 

"When most people think about Nirvana, they think about a video or a song on the radio, but to me it was a really personal experience with some friends that went from sleeping on floors to then being the number one band on the charts," Grohl said.

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," written by Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic and Dave Grohl, from Nirvana's 1991 album "Nevermind":

Grohl's first-ever platinum record now resides in his mother's house.

"Still, to this day, whenever I see a new artist that's young that blows up and becomes gigantic overnight, I kind of get worried for them," he said. "I don't think anybody's cut out for it."

"How did you do up there?"

"I was the kid with long hair in my face behind drums that looked like washing machines, and I could walk in the front door of a Nirvana gig and not really get noticed. So, I didn't have to suffer a lot of the pressures that Kurt did as the frontman."

It was a four-year rocketship ride aboard what became one of the biggest bands in rock history. At the height of it all, in 1994, Cobain took his own life.

Mason asked, "Where are you right after Kurt dies?"

"Just lost," Grohl said. "I went through a really dark period where I couldn't really even listen to the radio because it broke my heart just to hear music."

But quietly, the 25-year-old Grohl began to write and record songs of his own, playing all the instruments.

"I went to the cassette place down the street, [and] said, 'Could you make 100 of these,' and made a little card to go in it. And I just started giving it out to people. And I called it 'Foo Fighters' 'cause I wanted people to think it was a group."

He took the name from the military term for UFOs. "I've always been kind of a UFO nut, but also, it almost sounded like a gang, you know, like a karate gang or something. Foo Fighters! So yeah, it worked!"

In 1995 Grohl's songs were released as the first Foos album.

Along the way, Grohl recruited Hawkins and Jaffe, Chris Shifflett - http://www.gameinformer.com/search/searchresults.aspx?q=Chris%20Shifflett on lead guitar, Nate Mendel on bass, and guitarist Pat Smear, who was a touring member of Nirvana:

To watch the music video for "I'll Stick Around," from the debut Foo Fighters album, click on the video player below:

Mason asked Hawkins, "How would you describe the dynamic of this band?"

"Dave's the leader. And our job as a band is to make sure whatever is in his head gets on tape," he responded.

"Has the Nirvana experience, you think, informed Dave's approach to the band?"

"I think it did a lot," said Smear. "He was smart enough to pull out the good and say, 'I'm gonna do things like this,' and to look at the bad and say, 'I'm not gonna do this kind of stuff.'"

When asked if there were times when the band was in trouble Grohl said yes, in 2001 – the year Taylor Hawkins nearly died after a heroin overdose. He spent two weeks in coma; Grohl did not leave his side.

Hawklins said he was aware Grohl was there every day: "That was a heavy time. But he was always there. And he's always been there."

Grohl said, "That's when you forget about the band."

"Doesn't matter anymore?"

"No, that's when it gets real."

Dave Grohl himself gave up drugs when he was 20. It's one reason the Foo Fighters fight on.

"When I tell people I've never done cocaine in my life, they think I'm lying!" Grohl said. "But I love music, and I love life. And to me, survival is the game – that's the hardest part. I just wanna play music."

"The Sky Is a Neighborhood," from the Foo Fighters album "Concrete & Gold":

       For more info:

       Story produced - http://photobucket.com/images/Story%20produced by Jon Carras.

And throughout the neonatal intensive care unit, he heard doctors promise to try. Even if it meant cramming tubes down the children's throats, cutting open their chests or bombarding their frail bodies with radiation. Even when they knew the treatments couldn't save them, and would only fill their final days with pain.

"Some of the parents were waiting for a miracle. How do you deal with that?" said Clark, a Jesuit priest and professor at Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. "In some cases, you have to give the family a little more time. But where do you draw the line?"

Clark spent a year observing medical ethics at the Washington, D.C. hospital. The dilemma he witnessed occurs - https://www.herfeed.com/?s=witnessed%20occurs daily in hospitals nationwide, and a growing number have crafted policies allowing doctors to cease aggressive treatments of terminally ill patients, even when relatives want them to keep fighting.

Within a year, the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania plans to adopt ethics guidelines under which doctors could decline to admit patients to an intensive care unit if they have been in a persistent vegetative state for at least three to six months.

In such cases, the hospital would continue to offer care to ease a patients' pain, but wouldn't take invasive steps like putting the patient on a breathing machine or performing surgery, said Dr. Horace DeLisser, who co-chairs the ethics committee implementing the guidelines.

"There are certain types of injuries people suffer where one should acknowledge the tragedy that has occurred, and realize that the chances of recovery are negligible, and really redirect care toward making sure the person is as comfortable as possible," DeLisser said.

But some advocates and religious groups have argued that only patients themselves are qualified to decide whether doctors should try to save them.

Stephen Gold, a Philadelphia lawyer who represents people with disabilities, said hospitals might be tempted to cut off expensive care to people who lack health insurance or are handicapped - http://www.sharkbayte.com/keyword/handicapped .

"It is a slippery slope they are going down," he said. "If we have a way to provide a medical treatment for people that will keep them alive, we should always provide it, unless they have a living will saying we shouldn't."

Hospitals, however, have pressed ahead. The American Medical Association recommended in 1997 that all hospitals develop a "medical futility" policy allowing for an end to aggressive lifesaving measures if doctors determine a patient cannot be cured.

Since then, most hospitals have developed some sort of guidelines, said Amy Lee, a spokeswoman for the American Hospital Association.

"But there isn't a lot of uniformity, and the standards tend to vary from region to region," she said.

Mercy Health System, which operates three community hospitals near Philadelphia, drafted guidelines two years ago that are becoming typical of hospitals nationwide.

Doctors are authorized to stop aggressive treatment for a patient against a family's wishes, but only after a lengthy appeals process. Relatives can ask for a second opinion, https://www.hxwbrap6a.online - https://www.hxwbrap6a.online appeal to an ethics panel, and then file a second appeal with an interdisciplinary panel.

So far, the policy has only been invoked twice, said Clark, who serves as an ethics adviser to the hospital system. In both cases, the families initially appealed, but later changed their minds.

"We want the family to be involved in the decision," Clark said. "It's about how to balance the patient's autonomy, while protecting a physician's integrity."

Both doctors and patients report, however, that fights over end-of-life decisions often go unresolved.

Courts have struggled with the issue as well.

In the landmark 1994 "Baby K" case, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a Virginia hospital must provide artificial resuscitation for a child with anencephaly, a rare malformation in which almost all the brain is missing at birth.

Scientists believe children with anencephaly are incapable of thought or emotion and doctors almost universally advise parents to withhold life support. Baby K's mother insisted, over the objection of doctors, that her child be kept alive. With the court-mandated breathing assistance, the child lived for 2 1/2 years.

"Not everyone agrees on what constitutes a life worth living," said Gold. "I had a client with cerebral palsy once who was asked to sign a (Do Not Resuscitate) order when they went in to be treated for appendicitis," he said.

By David B. Caruso