Archive for 'Culture & Arts'
Rambam’s Trauma Care in Peace Time & WAR Time
From chips to healthcare, we leave Zoran in Haifa and drive north to Rambam, one of Israel’s five major hospitals and the only tertiary care center serving the northern third of the country. They take ‘everyone’ in, so an Israeli soldier could be lying next to an Arabic terrorist. IDF soldiers, UN and US Sixth Fleet troops have all passed through these doors. Some never leave.
The center was named after Rabbi Moshe Ben-Maimon “the RAMBAM,” the greatest Jewish physician of ancient times.
A photographer follows us all into a large overly air conditioned room (I think Israelis ‘think’ that yanks need to have rooms at subzero temperatures because its so hard to find a public space in the states that isn’t “iced”…). It turns out that he typically shoots body parts during an operation.
Rambam’s Director of Public Affairs David Ratner talks to our group. We learn a bit about its history before we get the ‘emotional story.’ It was built in 1938 by the British as a government military hospital. They now take in roughly 83,000 annually, and there are 120,000 emergency department visits and 44,000 surgical procedures.
All of this is handled by only 700 physicians; 23% of these doctors are Jewish, Muslum and Christian Arabs. Located only 35 kilometers from the Lebanese border, they have gained international recognition in trauma medicine since they took care of so many wounded during war time. They’re also making significant progress in stem cell and genetic research.
They host a trauma program four or five times a year where doctors from around the world can come and learn ‘best practices’ of what the Rambam medical team learned while under attack.
When missiles started hitting in June 2006, patients were admitted to Rambam from various sources: from deadly missile attacks in the immediate vicinity, from other hospitals unable to handle the injuries and from helicopters who were bringing in wounded from the border. Today, they treat a lot of people from the West Bank. Arabs and Jews. This is not an issue.
The medical center is also located between two navy bases. During times of peace, there is an area that is being used as a parking lot. During war time, it would only take 72 hours for them to turn this lot into a place where they can treat an additional 750 people.
Trauma comes to them in many forms. David reminds us that a bus accident full of injured children is far worse than three soldiers who have been shot.
Rambam is also doing a lot of work cardiac tissue engineering. Rambam and Technicon are both working on combining cardiac stem cells and polymer to generate artificial cardiac contracting sheet.
This center deserves more recognition than it has received worldwide – perhaps not enough people know. The Rambam Healthcare Center an amazing example of co-existence in Israel and how life ‘could be.’
Israel: Start up energy to spare
In some ways, spending this week in israel is overwhelming; there’s just so much to absorb and assimilate, and I have so little context for it all. Sephardic traditions, Arab traditions, European traditions–I have no sense how they bump up against one another and how the big dose of American culture mixes it all up.
On another level, the tech world here–especially the web 2.0 corner–seems amazingly familiar.The passionate entrepreneurs, problem-solving engineers, and thoughtful VCs I’m meeting are all familar with Silicon Valley culture and building applications on a global scale (have to, Israel is such a small country).
Some of the start-ups teams that I’ve met that have me particularly energized include Pandora competitor and personalized music service meemix, where CEO Gil Shlang, Chief Scientist Dr. Ricardo Tarrasch and some kick ass musicologists/editors seem to be going at it the right way
.
Also impressed with the folks at Work Light, where marketing guy Yonni Harif is building interest in a lightweight and secure application layer that can manage document access and security from within the Facebook environment (and all sorts of other cool things, including secure RSS).
And of course my friend and mobile entrepreneur Eran Ahronson is inspiring..nothing like building one company after another..inspiring to see someone stay the course and be smart about it.
In other words, there is great start up energy here, with lots of eager developers, free floating VCs and all the talent to support that. (And are there many women-owned companies, especially technical ones? Hate to say it, but the answers seems to be…not.)
Note: Coming from Silicon Valley, it is interesting to see how knowledgeable everyone is
about our little bubble and how much the geeks we’re meeting adore and respect Scoble. For them, he’s both what the aspire to be and the man on the street–and he’s just as gracious and engaged as can be, another inspiring lesson in focus. domain owner dns information . where is domain hosted . domain dns server . ip tech info i cloud web archive . website down . apache web server word cloud . English to Armenian . Brasov Restosundsecge . peta dunia satelit
Ish & Crew
so. there was much drama and debate among “the traveling geeks” today. we got a late start and missed our first– and i guess most important?– appointment and were running late the rest of the day. we had some afternoon fun planned to go see Ish’s bedouin village and then hit up an israeli winery. everyone was super excited about this plan. except our hosts, who really wanted us to make up the meeting we flaked on. totally understandable from their end, they are paying for this trip and spent a great deal of time organizing it.
still, we wanted to see ish’s village. the thing about driving around to office parks is they look a lot like silicon valley. site rank and that’s fascinating– as are a good number of the companies– but to understand israeli entrepreneurs, you need to get more than a demo of their products. you need to get the culture.
so we rebelled and went to the village.
i’m so glad we did. let me point out that i’m feeling HORRIBLE still at this point, woozy, coughing, my stomach literally feels like it’s bleeding from the inside. politika . oh, and my left hand had just started to go numb. not sure why…but i chose to ignore it.
we drive up to a concrete three (or four?) story house in a village. it’s the land ish grew up on. but not the house. for the first 13 years of his life he lived in a tent, the youngest of 11 kids. his parents, sister and nephew could not have been more hospitable. they served us bedouin coffee– which takes hours and hours to make and is a major welcoming tradition in their culture. . you had to just shoot it — and it was hot! it was billed as beduoin “tequila”– which worried me. in my house, i’m not allowed to drink tequila because it makes me very angry. website down . ish also said it was so strong it would keep us up for three days. English to Armenian . i have to say– i do still feel pretty awake hours later.
i was talking to a guy tonight who said i saw similarities in the israeli culture because it had been “americanized.” but these people were definitely not americanized. they only got power four years ago. still, there were these moments of genuine motherly or fatherly love and affection that directly reminded me of my parents. this unspoken way of communicating. particularly, towards the end of the visit, when JD was interviewing Ish’s dad and referenced Ish’s upcoming wedding. Ish’s dad did a finally!-thank-the-heavens gesture that any parent, of any faith, anywhere the world would have done. ip information we all laughed and needed no translation.
i still don’t think i’m exactly explaining why i found the whole thing so moving. so either i’ll get more articulate later, or you’ll just have to watch the video and see if you see it for yourself. but that’s the best you are getting at 1 am when i can’t stop coughing!
(btw- renee has pictures of ish’ parents here http://www.downtheavenue.com/2008/04/a-journey-to-is.html and conflicts with me on some ish details! i’m sure i’m wrong. was half coherent. sorry ish!)
poor neglected blog…
i’ve been in israel since friday and i’m finding it very hard to write about. me? at a loss for words? i know, right? it *does* happen.
i’ve been trying to figure out why that is. part of that is because
i’ve spent far too much time in the very non-glam hotel, thanks to an
out-of-nowhere bug that i originally mistook for a simple hangover. it
seems my body had plain had enough of the jet set-three hours sleep-one
meal a day lifestyle i’ve been leading for about a week and a
half now and went on strike. i couldn’t stand, i couldn’t eat. i could
barely drink water. thank heavens for the hallmark channel. parental blocker it turns out
gilmore girls in hebrew is incredibly soothing.
today i felt better. i went out with the group starting very early,
with a very packed itinerary. all of the geeks were totally sweet
asking how i was feeling and giving me the front seat of the very
packed, sweaty van the whole day. i think they mostly felt bad that i
missed some *epic* robert scoble dancing in the clubs of tel aviv last
night…
but being back among the living, and blogging, today, i’ve still found it hard to come up with very coherent posts. i think i’m just processing. israel is such a deeply contradictory place. it’s incredibly repressed but incredibly liberated. there’s an amazing hospitality, but at the same time so much hostility. website down it’s empowering of women– yet deeply objectifies them. and again– the thing that i keep marveling at is how similar people are here– and yet how different.
the absolute highlight of the trip so far was a trip to Ish’s– our tour guide and an Israeli diplomat in San Francisco– Bedouin village. His parents were amazing. i taped a bunch of video, and hopefully can post it at some point, but you can probably get it quicker from scoble, who was also filming. the experience– and why it touched me so much– is hard to put into words. and we’re running late for a dinner so i’ll get into it later. apache web server air distance calculator besides, it really deserves its own post with none of my sick-girl whining mucking it up.
later everyone!
A Journey to Ish’ Bedouin Village
There’s a wonderful story about Ish, the Bedouin Israeli who is dragging us around the country by van — from tech and cultural centers to his Bedouin village in the north. Ish is one of eleven and lived in a tent in the desert until he was eight.
Today, he tells us about his remarkable journey. Details about this amazing man who now works at the Israel Consulate in San Francisco later. For now, meet his mother and father.
domain owner parental blocker . dns information . where is domain hosted domain dns server ip tech info i cloud domain abuse . wall cloud apache web server . dns server . English to Armenian . Brasov .
Haifa Below
Bay Area bloggers overlook greater Haifa below.
air distance calculator cote d’ivoire . politika . domain owner . parental blocker dns information . where is domain hosted . domain owner lookup ip tech info i cloud . domain abuse website down . apache web server word cloud English to Armenian . peta dunia satelit .
South Africa Approves Gay Marriages
Today, South Africa Parliament approved gay marriages. This makes South Africa the first in Africa and the fifth in the world to make gay and lesbian unions legal. Others include Holland, Belgium, the U.S., Spain and Canada.
Apparently in most African nations, homosexuality is still treated as a “crime.” A crime? Egads. Some penalties are apparently stiffer than those for rape or murder. The new law allows both heterosexual and same-sex couples to register their unions either as marriages or civil partnerships. parental blocker dns information . domain dns server list of domains ip analysis i cloud . web archive . website down . apache web server word cloud Brasov . Restosundsecge
