Survivor talks about Chicago killings : "'DO YOU WANT me to tie you up, or do you want to die?'" Eduardo Sanchez quoted the man as asking him. "I said 'Tie me up.' I didn't want to die."

Salon.com Sex | Torn apart: "The way we die inside is, we ignore these calls; we pretend that only what we have already chosen matters, and the rest, the tempting stranger, the puzzling attraction of Antarctica, is for some other traveler, some other lover. Why are we always shutting the window like that? Because who knows what that gust of wind will blow away."

HoustonChronicle.com - Hospital investigates death of doctor in elevator: "Officials at Christus St. Joseph Hospital today will learn more about the death of a staff doctor who was killed over the weekend in a fatal elevator accident.

...

Hitoshi Nikaidoh, 35, of Dallas, a surgical resident at the downtown Houston hospital, was stepping into a second-floor elevator about 9:30 a.m. Saturday when the doors suddenly closed, pinning his shoulders. His head was severed when the elevator car moved upwards.

...

A female hospital employee witnessed the accident and spent about 20 minutes trapped inside the malfunctioning elevator until firefighters were able to rescue her. Although she wasn't injured, the traumatized employee was taken to the hospital's emergency room to be treated for shock. "

Emotional artists: "It's not surprising that you're tired. If you were building a house, you'd get tired, too. But if you quit, the unfinished house would stand on the road like a reproachful monument to your fickleness. You'd pass it every day on the way to work and it would mock you and remind you how you gave up because you were tired and you couldn't take the pain, and it would cause you to question whether you're truly an artist, because if you were truly an artist you'd swallow the pain and finish the building.

You might wish you'd never started on the house. But you did start on the house. Likewise with this relationship. You can debate the merits of having begun. But, having begun, it's almost certain that you will gain more from seeing it through than you will from leaving. Don't you want to see how it turns out in the end? Isn't that what separates art from chaos, a well-lived life from a wasted life? If you leave, think of all the work you're throwing away; think of the floorless rooms, the wires that power no lights, the roughed-in holes for windows and doors. Art is completed work. A well-lived life is a life of completed stories. You have to stick around for the ending. "

LONI: Laboratory of Neuro Imaging: LONI seeks to improve understanding of the brain in health and disease. The laboratory is dedicated to the development of scientific approaches for the comprehensive mapping of brain structure and function.

New Scientist: "The Sun's shifting magnetic field is set to focus a decade-long storm of galactic dust grains towards the inner Solar System, including Earth.
The effect this will have on our planet - if any - is unknown. But some researchers have speculated that sustained periods of cosmic dust bombardment might be related to ice ages and even mass extinctions."

Fight to Regain Life (washingtonpost.com)

A device that produces electricity from blood could be used to turn people into "human batteries".

Researchers in Japan are developing a method of drawing power from blood glucose, mimicking the way the body generates energy from food

Dying is easy; it's living that's the challenge.

My grandmother died tonight, around 11 PM. 94 years old, she finally succumbed to the strokes that left her unable to communicate for the past four years. As I understand, she slipped quietly away, from sick to coma to dead. She went peacefully, and hopefully without pain.

Her husband died in 1968 or 1969, and she never remarried. I wonder why... Was she okay alone? Was she unable to love again, afraid to lose or maybe satisfied that she had loved enough for a life?

I don't want to be lonely -- I just want to be alone.

km