(via NPR)
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Libya Backs H.I.V. Case Death Penalty
I cannot believe this case has not been resolved yet!
The Libyan Supreme Court today once again upheld the death sentances imposed on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who were accused of intentionally infecting more than 400 Libyan children with the AIDS virus in 1998.
The court rejected the results of a 2003 investigation by two of the world’s leading AIDS experts, which found that unsanitary medical conditions at Benghazi Children’s Hospital were to blame for the children becoming infected with HIV. The nurses and doctor have now been in jail for nearly a decade.
Still, their fate remained uncertain today, despite the court’s ruling on the one hand, and months of recent negotiations to secure their release on the other. The European Union and the United States have repeatedly pressed the Libyan government to free the six, and groups of Nobel laureates have visited Tripoli to plead their case with the Libyan leader, Moammar Ghaddafi.
(..)
In the past year, the European Union has given substantial financial aid to Libya in hopes of resolving the case. One high-level union diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the total amount was equivalent to more than 10 million euros ($14 million) for each infected child. The union has set up treatment programs in Libya for the children, built medical facilities and purchased equipment.
(..)
Dr. Zdravko Georgiev, the husband of one of the jailed nurses, said in a telephone interview from Libya today that the families of the nurses were dismayed by the ruling. “After spending more than eight monstrous years in Libyan dungeons, we are exhausted to death,” he said. Dr. Georgiev was himself initially charged and jailed in the case; he was released after four years, but has not been allowed to leave Libya.
(..)
The six were arrested in 1999. In the initial indictment, which reads like a spy novel, Libyan prosecutors claimed that the nurses intentionally infected the children as part of a plot by Mossad, the Israeli secret service, to undermine the Libyan state. Prosecutors claimed that the nurses confessed to the crime, and that investigators had found vials of tainted blood in one of the nurses’ rooms. For their part, the nurses said they were tortured and raped while in custody, in order to extract confessions from them.
The Libyan Supreme Court today once again upheld the death sentances imposed on five Bulgarian nurses and a Palestinian doctor who were accused of intentionally infecting more than 400 Libyan children with the AIDS virus in 1998.
The court rejected the results of a 2003 investigation by two of the world’s leading AIDS experts, which found that unsanitary medical conditions at Benghazi Children’s Hospital were to blame for the children becoming infected with HIV. The nurses and doctor have now been in jail for nearly a decade.
Still, their fate remained uncertain today, despite the court’s ruling on the one hand, and months of recent negotiations to secure their release on the other. The European Union and the United States have repeatedly pressed the Libyan government to free the six, and groups of Nobel laureates have visited Tripoli to plead their case with the Libyan leader, Moammar Ghaddafi.
(..)
In the past year, the European Union has given substantial financial aid to Libya in hopes of resolving the case. One high-level union diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case, said the total amount was equivalent to more than 10 million euros ($14 million) for each infected child. The union has set up treatment programs in Libya for the children, built medical facilities and purchased equipment.
(..)
Dr. Zdravko Georgiev, the husband of one of the jailed nurses, said in a telephone interview from Libya today that the families of the nurses were dismayed by the ruling. “After spending more than eight monstrous years in Libyan dungeons, we are exhausted to death,” he said. Dr. Georgiev was himself initially charged and jailed in the case; he was released after four years, but has not been allowed to leave Libya.
(..)
The six were arrested in 1999. In the initial indictment, which reads like a spy novel, Libyan prosecutors claimed that the nurses intentionally infected the children as part of a plot by Mossad, the Israeli secret service, to undermine the Libyan state. Prosecutors claimed that the nurses confessed to the crime, and that investigators had found vials of tainted blood in one of the nurses’ rooms. For their part, the nurses said they were tortured and raped while in custody, in order to extract confessions from them.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
AIDS in Africa: Rising Above the Partisan Babble
It is hard to remember when AIDS was just a simple epidemic disease. Long ago it exploded into a global rallying cry for ideologues of every stripe, politicizing the science and the social science alike. A small army of academics and consultants now stake careers — and millions of international aid dollars — on specific and often conflicting theories of how to reduce behavioral risks for acquiring and transmitting H.I.V.
Amid the partisan babble, Helen Epstein has for years generated some of the most sensible commentary around, posting dispatches from AIDS-afflicted countries in Africa to The New York Review of Books and other publications. As a scientist morphed into a journalist, Dr. Epstein combines an understanding of the biology of AIDS with a coolly impartial view of the political and social landscape of Africa. She has now assembled more than a decade’s worth of reporting into an enlightening and troubling book.
(..)
That said, however, Dr. Epstein’s basic point is quite true: the drugs alone will never save Africa. Prevalence and transmission rates are too high, the health care infrastructure is too weak, there are too many other threatening diseases, and the costs are impossible. Instead, experts agree that hope lies in a still-distant vaccine, and in the “invisible cure” of Epstein’s title: dramatic behavioral changes to prevent new infections.
(..)
Interrupting this perfect storm requires a clear understanding of its origins, and we still cannot fully explain why heterosexually transmitted H.I.V. exploded in Africa while remaining confined to very specific communities in the West. Theories abound, and Dr. Epstein does a nice job of reviewing them.
The fiction that Africans are more “promiscuous” than Westerners has been disproved; studies have found that Africans often have fewer sexual partners during their lifetime than Westerners do.
But accepted patterns of sexual activity seem to have ignited the tinderbox in Africa. Sex there crosses social boundaries more often than in the West, and the habit of having concurrent partners — simultaneous long-term relationships in which friendship and trust may thwart routine condom use — means a single person’s infection may spread rapidly through a group.
Amid the partisan babble, Helen Epstein has for years generated some of the most sensible commentary around, posting dispatches from AIDS-afflicted countries in Africa to The New York Review of Books and other publications. As a scientist morphed into a journalist, Dr. Epstein combines an understanding of the biology of AIDS with a coolly impartial view of the political and social landscape of Africa. She has now assembled more than a decade’s worth of reporting into an enlightening and troubling book.
(..)
That said, however, Dr. Epstein’s basic point is quite true: the drugs alone will never save Africa. Prevalence and transmission rates are too high, the health care infrastructure is too weak, there are too many other threatening diseases, and the costs are impossible. Instead, experts agree that hope lies in a still-distant vaccine, and in the “invisible cure” of Epstein’s title: dramatic behavioral changes to prevent new infections.
(..)
Interrupting this perfect storm requires a clear understanding of its origins, and we still cannot fully explain why heterosexually transmitted H.I.V. exploded in Africa while remaining confined to very specific communities in the West. Theories abound, and Dr. Epstein does a nice job of reviewing them.
The fiction that Africans are more “promiscuous” than Westerners has been disproved; studies have found that Africans often have fewer sexual partners during their lifetime than Westerners do.
But accepted patterns of sexual activity seem to have ignited the tinderbox in Africa. Sex there crosses social boundaries more often than in the West, and the habit of having concurrent partners — simultaneous long-term relationships in which friendship and trust may thwart routine condom use — means a single person’s infection may spread rapidly through a group.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Spineless on Sudan
The latest from Kristof on Sudan...
In May 2006, President Bush declared: “The vulnerable people of Darfur deserve more than sympathy. ... America will not turn away from this tragedy.”
Since then, Mr. Bush has turned away — and 450,000 more people have been displaced in Darfur. “Things are getting worse,” noted Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, a human rights campaigner in Sudan.
One of the most troubling signs is that Sudan has been encouraging Arabs from Chad, Niger and other countries to settle in Darfur. More than 30,000 of them have moved into areas depopulated after African tribes were driven out.
In the last few months, Sudan’s government has given these new arrivals citizenship papers and weapons, cementing in place the demographic consequences of its genocide. And if Sudan thinks it has gotten away with mass murder in Darfur, it is more likely to resume its war against southern Sudan — which seems increasingly likely.
Within Darfur, aid groups have increasingly become targets, and in April alone three aid workers were shot and 20 were kidnapped, while hijackers tried to seize aid workers’ vehicles at a rate of almost one a day. As for African Union peacekeepers, seven of them were shot dead the same month — so they’re in no position to rescue aid workers.
The cancer has also been spreading into Chad and the Central African Republic, compounding each country’s intrinsic instability. Last month a 27-year-old French woman, Elsa Serfass, on her first assignment with Doctors Without Borders, was shot dead in C.A.R. as she drove through an area where militias had been burning villages. So Doctors Without Borders has had to suspend much of its work in the area.
(..)
Much of the news on Darfur has been a bit optimistic lately, because it has focused on recent flurries of international diplomacy. While it’s true that China is belatedly putting some pressure on Sudan to admit international peacekeepers, at the same time China continues to supply Sudan with the guns used to slaughter Darfuri children. China also just signed a 20-year agreement to develop offshore oil for Sudan, and in April China pledged “to boost military exchanges and cooperation” with Sudan.
Let’s hope that athletes who go to Beijing for the Olympics next year will wear T-shirts honoring the victims of the genocide that China is underwriting.
In May 2006, President Bush declared: “The vulnerable people of Darfur deserve more than sympathy. ... America will not turn away from this tragedy.”
Since then, Mr. Bush has turned away — and 450,000 more people have been displaced in Darfur. “Things are getting worse,” noted Mudawi Ibrahim Adam, a human rights campaigner in Sudan.
One of the most troubling signs is that Sudan has been encouraging Arabs from Chad, Niger and other countries to settle in Darfur. More than 30,000 of them have moved into areas depopulated after African tribes were driven out.
In the last few months, Sudan’s government has given these new arrivals citizenship papers and weapons, cementing in place the demographic consequences of its genocide. And if Sudan thinks it has gotten away with mass murder in Darfur, it is more likely to resume its war against southern Sudan — which seems increasingly likely.
Within Darfur, aid groups have increasingly become targets, and in April alone three aid workers were shot and 20 were kidnapped, while hijackers tried to seize aid workers’ vehicles at a rate of almost one a day. As for African Union peacekeepers, seven of them were shot dead the same month — so they’re in no position to rescue aid workers.
The cancer has also been spreading into Chad and the Central African Republic, compounding each country’s intrinsic instability. Last month a 27-year-old French woman, Elsa Serfass, on her first assignment with Doctors Without Borders, was shot dead in C.A.R. as she drove through an area where militias had been burning villages. So Doctors Without Borders has had to suspend much of its work in the area.
(..)
Much of the news on Darfur has been a bit optimistic lately, because it has focused on recent flurries of international diplomacy. While it’s true that China is belatedly putting some pressure on Sudan to admit international peacekeepers, at the same time China continues to supply Sudan with the guns used to slaughter Darfuri children. China also just signed a 20-year agreement to develop offshore oil for Sudan, and in April China pledged “to boost military exchanges and cooperation” with Sudan.
Let’s hope that athletes who go to Beijing for the Olympics next year will wear T-shirts honoring the victims of the genocide that China is underwriting.
Americans Give Record 295 billion dollars to Charities Last Year
Americans gave nearly $300 billion to charitable causes last year, setting a new record and besting the 2005 total that had been boosted by a surge in aid to victims of hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma and the Asian tsunami
Giving historically tracks the health of the overall economy, with the rise amounting to about one-third the rise in the stock market, according to Giving USA. Last year was right on target, with a 3.2 percent rise as stocks rose more than 10 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis.
(..)
The biggest chunk of the donations, $96.82 billion or 32.8 percent, went to religious organizations. The second largest slice, $40.98 billion or 13.9 percent, went to education, including gifts to colleges, universities and libraries.
About 65 percent of households with incomes less than $100,000 give to charity, the report showed.
"It tells you something about American culture that is unlike any other country," said Claire Gaudiani, a professor at NYU's Heyman Center for Philanthropy and author of "The Greater Good: How Philanthropy Drives the American Economy and Can Save Capitalism."
(..)
He said Americans give twice as much as the next most charitable country, according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation. In philanthropic giving as a percentage of gross domestic product, the US ranked first at 1.7 percent. No 2 Britain gave 0.73 percent, while France, with a 0.14 percent rate, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany.
(Tip of the hat to DocFreeze for the link)
Giving historically tracks the health of the overall economy, with the rise amounting to about one-third the rise in the stock market, according to Giving USA. Last year was right on target, with a 3.2 percent rise as stocks rose more than 10 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis.
(..)
The biggest chunk of the donations, $96.82 billion or 32.8 percent, went to religious organizations. The second largest slice, $40.98 billion or 13.9 percent, went to education, including gifts to colleges, universities and libraries.
About 65 percent of households with incomes less than $100,000 give to charity, the report showed.
"It tells you something about American culture that is unlike any other country," said Claire Gaudiani, a professor at NYU's Heyman Center for Philanthropy and author of "The Greater Good: How Philanthropy Drives the American Economy and Can Save Capitalism."
(..)
He said Americans give twice as much as the next most charitable country, according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation. In philanthropic giving as a percentage of gross domestic product, the US ranked first at 1.7 percent. No 2 Britain gave 0.73 percent, while France, with a 0.14 percent rate, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany.
(Tip of the hat to DocFreeze for the link)
Saturday, July 07, 2007
Playing Doctor
This humurous article brought back fond memories of similar experiences I had as a third year medical student, learning how to do physical exams on volunteer patients...
(..)
Sometimes it was hard for me not to laugh. Dr. A was so sweetly flustered that in a perfect Chaplinesque slapstick, he would drop his reflex hammer on the floor, bend to pick it up, and then discover that his pen had fallen out of his white coat. Dr. N wasted the first eight minutes of the exam trying repeatedly to get a blood pressure reading. The panic in his eyes seemed to say, "She appears to be alive, yet she has no vital signs." He finally solved the dilemma when he realized he was listening to my arm with the wrong side of the stethoscope. (My blood pressure readings, which require technical skills on the part of the doctor, varied from 87/60 to 125/90.) Sometimes it was hard for the student not to laugh. Shy and mousy Dr. B, after peering into my eyes and ears, said, "Now I have to look up your nose!" and let out an embarrassed snort.
From the moment petite, blond Dr. C came in the room, she took command. Before she started, she briefly told me what the exam consisted of, then explained each procedure before she did it. Her touch was confident, and she did all 45 parts of the exam without hesitation. She asked me to tell her if anything hurt or made me uncomfortable. After she listened to my abdomen and proclaimed, "Good bowel sounds," I felt gratified I was able to please her....
In France, Jogging Is a Running Joke
The sight of the new French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, jogging -- often wearing his favorite NYPD T-shirt -- has fired up a tempest in a Reebok in France and Britain this summer. Sarkozy's running is an un-French, right-wing conspiracy, suggests Paris' left-wing newspaper Libération. In response, British commentators gleefully conclude: The French have lost their mind again.
On the primary state television channel, France 2, Alain Finkielkraut, a leading French intellectual, recently demanded that Sarkozy give up his "undignified" exercise. Not only did he imply that exposing the boss's naked knees is something that never would have occurred in the time of Mitterrand, much less Louis XIV, Finkielkraut claimed strolling is the proper activity of the thinking person, from Socrates to the poet Arthur Rimbaud."Western civilization, in its best sense, was born with the promenade," said Finkielkraut. "Walking is a sensitive, spiritual act. Jogging is management of the body. The jogger says I am in control. It has nothing to do with meditation."
Sarkozy has fueled a French suspicion that running is for self-centered individualists like Americans, reports Charles Bremner, Paris correspondent for the Times of London.
"Patrick Mignon, a sports sociologist, noted that French intellectuals had always held sport in contempt, while totalitarian regimes cultivated physical fitness," Bremner writes.
"Jogging is of course about performance and individualism, values that are traditionally ascribed to the right," Odile Baudrier, editor of V02 magazine, a sports publication, told Libération.
"The Sarkozy jog, say his critics, is a sad imitation of the habits of American presidents, and a capitulation to 'le défi Américain' (a phrase that was the title of a book published here as 'The American Challenge') as bad as the influx of Hollywood movies," writes Boris Johnson, a British member of Parliament and confirmed jogger, in the Telegraph.
"I am not deterred . . . by the accusation that jogging is right-wing," he says. "Of course it is right-wing, in the sense that the facts of life are generally right-wing. The very act of forcing yourself to go for a run, every morning, is a highly conservative business. There is the mental effort needed to overcome your laziness.
"Charles de Gaulle . . . moved with the stately undulation of a giraffe, and never broke into so much as a trot..."
On the primary state television channel, France 2, Alain Finkielkraut, a leading French intellectual, recently demanded that Sarkozy give up his "undignified" exercise. Not only did he imply that exposing the boss's naked knees is something that never would have occurred in the time of Mitterrand, much less Louis XIV, Finkielkraut claimed strolling is the proper activity of the thinking person, from Socrates to the poet Arthur Rimbaud."Western civilization, in its best sense, was born with the promenade," said Finkielkraut. "Walking is a sensitive, spiritual act. Jogging is management of the body. The jogger says I am in control. It has nothing to do with meditation."
Sarkozy has fueled a French suspicion that running is for self-centered individualists like Americans, reports Charles Bremner, Paris correspondent for the Times of London.
"Patrick Mignon, a sports sociologist, noted that French intellectuals had always held sport in contempt, while totalitarian regimes cultivated physical fitness," Bremner writes.
"Jogging is of course about performance and individualism, values that are traditionally ascribed to the right," Odile Baudrier, editor of V02 magazine, a sports publication, told Libération.
"The Sarkozy jog, say his critics, is a sad imitation of the habits of American presidents, and a capitulation to 'le défi Américain' (a phrase that was the title of a book published here as 'The American Challenge') as bad as the influx of Hollywood movies," writes Boris Johnson, a British member of Parliament and confirmed jogger, in the Telegraph.
"I am not deterred . . . by the accusation that jogging is right-wing," he says. "Of course it is right-wing, in the sense that the facts of life are generally right-wing. The very act of forcing yourself to go for a run, every morning, is a highly conservative business. There is the mental effort needed to overcome your laziness.
"Charles de Gaulle . . . moved with the stately undulation of a giraffe, and never broke into so much as a trot..."
Friday, July 06, 2007
Giving Till It Hurts
But nonprofits say they are receiving an increasing number of "stretch" gifts, donations seemingly out of proportion to the givers' resources. To the shock or chagrin of friends and family, these gifts often require donors to make sacrifices or at least live more modestly than their income would allow.
(..)
People who follow philanthropy say donors like Ms. Hergenhan and Ms. Kajitani set examples that extend far beyond the gifts they make, simply by causing those around them, including children, family members and friends, to at least reconsider how much they give and how they might feel if they gave more.
(..)
Academics who study wealth say more aging Baby Boomers are choosing charity to add meaning to their lives -- and to get a buzz that lasts longer than the kick that comes from splurging on a designer watch or expensive car.
(..)
Not all family members are thrilled by these stretch gifts, however. Neurosurgeon James Doty recently gave stock currently valued at about $28 million to charity -- a gift that represents about 99% of his net worth. As a result, instead of retiring early Dr. Doty will have to save money to put his 3-year-old son, Sebastian, through college, and to fund retirement.
"I would have kept at least some of it for us," says Dr. Doty's wife, Masha Zhdanovich Doty. Though she sends money every month to relatives in the former Soviet Union -- "I believe in charity, especially in helping people directly" -- she wasn't completely supportive of her husband's giving. At ages 39 and 51 respectively, she and Dr. Doty need to plan carefully for the future of their young family, she says.
(..)
People who follow philanthropy say donors like Ms. Hergenhan and Ms. Kajitani set examples that extend far beyond the gifts they make, simply by causing those around them, including children, family members and friends, to at least reconsider how much they give and how they might feel if they gave more.
(..)
Academics who study wealth say more aging Baby Boomers are choosing charity to add meaning to their lives -- and to get a buzz that lasts longer than the kick that comes from splurging on a designer watch or expensive car.
(..)
Not all family members are thrilled by these stretch gifts, however. Neurosurgeon James Doty recently gave stock currently valued at about $28 million to charity -- a gift that represents about 99% of his net worth. As a result, instead of retiring early Dr. Doty will have to save money to put his 3-year-old son, Sebastian, through college, and to fund retirement.
"I would have kept at least some of it for us," says Dr. Doty's wife, Masha Zhdanovich Doty. Though she sends money every month to relatives in the former Soviet Union -- "I believe in charity, especially in helping people directly" -- she wasn't completely supportive of her husband's giving. At ages 39 and 51 respectively, she and Dr. Doty need to plan carefully for the future of their young family, she says.
Africa: Land of Hope
President Kigame of RwandaIn the early 1990s, Rwanda reinforced all the worst stereotypes of Africa: wretchedly poor, torn apart by war and seemingly destined to be an international basket case forever.
Yet now it has become the little nation that could. It is clean, safe and enjoying economic growth more than twice as fast as the U.S. or Europe. And Rwanda underscores something that is easy to forget: There are signs of a turnaround in Africa, and plenty of reason for optimism.
This is the last column from my win-a-trip journey in Africa with a student, Leana Wen, and a teacher, Will Okun, and the stories have been long on gloom and suffering. But there is also a cheerier side to Africa, and Rwanda reflects the continent’s potential when there is both stability and good governance.
(..)
In the early 1960s, most of Africa was richer than Asia and many economists expected Africa to zoom far ahead of Asia. Back then, the World Bank named a group of African countries that it projected to grow at 7 percent annually.
Instead, Africa drove over a cliff. Of those countries with good data, one-third now have lower per capita incomes than they did at independence (typically about 1960), and the five worst-performing economies in the world from 1960 to 2001 were all in Africa.
What went wrong? The two most important reasons were that Africa was terribly governed and that it was torn apart by wars.
The problem of conflict is as bad as ever (Darfur sums it up), but governance is getting far better.
(..)
And when African countries have enjoyed stability and sound policies, they have often thrived. Indeed, the fastest-growing country in the world from 1960 to 2001 was Botswana (South Korea was second, and Singapore and China tied for third).
More and more African countries are now following the Botswana model of welcoming investors and obeying markets. Aside from Rwanda, countries like Mozambique, Benin, Tanzania, Liberia and Mauritius are among those trying to build a future on trade more than aid.
“We’re not going to say ‘We don’t need aid,’ ” Mr. Kagame said. “But there’s no question about trade being more important than aid. There’s no question about that.”
Blame It on Mr. Rogers: Why
Signs of narcissism among college students have been rising for 25 years, according to a recent study led by a San Diego State University psychologist. Obviously, Mr. Rogers alone can't be blamed for this. But as Prof. Chance sees it, "he's representative of a culture of excessive doting."
Prof. Chance teaches many Asian-born students, and says they accept whatever grade they're given; they see B's and C's as an indication that they must work harder, and that their elders assessed them accurately. They didn't grow up with Mr. Rogers or anyone else telling them they were born special.
By contrast, American students often view lower grades as a reason to "hit you up for an A because they came to class and feel they worked hard," says Prof. Chance. He wishes more parents would offer kids this perspective: "The world owes you nothing. You have to work and compete. If you wanjavascript:void(0)t to be special, you'll have to prove it."
Prof. Chance teaches many Asian-born students, and says they accept whatever grade they're given; they see B's and C's as an indication that they must work harder, and that their elders assessed them accurately. They didn't grow up with Mr. Rogers or anyone else telling them they were born special.
By contrast, American students often view lower grades as a reason to "hit you up for an A because they came to class and feel they worked hard," says Prof. Chance. He wishes more parents would offer kids this perspective: "The world owes you nothing. You have to work and compete. If you wanjavascript:void(0)t to be special, you'll have to prove it."
Ten Questions with Scott Berkun, Author of "The Myths of Innovation"
Guy Kawasaki interviews former microsoft developer, who has just written a new book: "The Myths of Innovation"
n epiphany is the tip of the creative iceberg, and all epiphanies are grounded in work. If you take any magic moment of discovery from history and wander backwards in time you’ll find dozens of smaller observations, inquiries, mistakes, and comedies that occured to make the epiphany possible.
n epiphany is the tip of the creative iceberg, and all epiphanies are grounded in work. If you take any magic moment of discovery from history and wander backwards in time you’ll find dozens of smaller observations, inquiries, mistakes, and comedies that occured to make the epiphany possible.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
The stone-age whale hunters who kill with their bare hands
Their way of life hasn't changed for hundreds of years - a group of skilled fishermen using only their bodies and extraordinary bravery to catch 75ft-long sperm whales to provide enough food and materials for their whole village.
t is like a scene from Moby Dick, except the odds are stacked even higher against the captains of each tiny wooden boat.
These amazing images were taken during a whale hunt in one of the last places on Earth where people still use traditional methods to fish for one of the largest creatures in the seas.
Drought Forces Desert Nomads to Settle Down
These same forces of climate change are intertwined in the Sudanese conflict between Arabic nomads and native African farmers as Lake Chad continues to dry up...
BTW, there is a very nice, narrated slide show if you go to the link below...
Climate change threatens ice sheets and ecosystems, but it also threatens human cultures.
For centuries, the Tuareg people have lived as nomads, herding their animals from field to field just south of the Sahara Desert in Mali, near Timbuktu.
"Our life is basically the animals we have, so we protect them and we feed them," says Mohamed Ag Mustafa, a herder living the traditional nomadic lifestyle. "Whenever we need tea or grain or clothes, we take an animal to the market and sell it and buy something."
But this way of life has become impossible due to a change in the climate.
Over the past 40 years, persistent drought has forced the Tuareg to give up their wandering way of life. To survive they have had to start settling in villages and cultivating land to secure a food supply which is less susceptible to drought.
BTW, there is a very nice, narrated slide show if you go to the link below...
Climate change threatens ice sheets and ecosystems, but it also threatens human cultures.
For centuries, the Tuareg people have lived as nomads, herding their animals from field to field just south of the Sahara Desert in Mali, near Timbuktu.
"Our life is basically the animals we have, so we protect them and we feed them," says Mohamed Ag Mustafa, a herder living the traditional nomadic lifestyle. "Whenever we need tea or grain or clothes, we take an animal to the market and sell it and buy something."
But this way of life has become impossible due to a change in the climate.
Over the past 40 years, persistent drought has forced the Tuareg to give up their wandering way of life. To survive they have had to start settling in villages and cultivating land to secure a food supply which is less susceptible to drought.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
What We Can Do to Help
One of the most common comments we get goes: “What can I do to help? You guys talk so much about the problems, and now I want to do something.” I don’t like to bring up problems without proposing solutions. In this second-to-last entry, I propose concrete action steps to channel passion and idealism into activism and action.
Be forewarned that I don’t think that giving money is usually the best way to help. I believe that education, awareness and tangible actions multiple many times over. They are actions that, during your lifetime, will far outweigh infrequent monetary contributions.
Be forewarned that I don’t think that giving money is usually the best way to help. I believe that education, awareness and tangible actions multiple many times over. They are actions that, during your lifetime, will far outweigh infrequent monetary contributions.
Monday, July 02, 2007
Sick Joke
More from slate.com on "Sicko.."
In one of the movie's best segments, insurance-industry insiders frankly admit that their profession is rapacious
A former medical director for an HMO, testifying before Congress, delivers a scathing rebuke both of the insurance industry and of her own role in denying patients care. Another whistle-blower describes the industry's tactics with stark clarity: "You're not slipping through the cracks. Somebody made that crack and swept you toward it." A woman who does customer service for a major insurer weeps as she recalls denying sick customers coverage, then adds, "That's why I'm such a bitch on the phone to people. … I just can't take the stress."
In one of the movie's best segments, insurance-industry insiders frankly admit that their profession is rapacious
A former medical director for an HMO, testifying before Congress, delivers a scathing rebuke both of the insurance industry and of her own role in denying patients care. Another whistle-blower describes the industry's tactics with stark clarity: "You're not slipping through the cracks. Somebody made that crack and swept you toward it." A woman who does customer service for a major insurer weeps as she recalls denying sick customers coverage, then adds, "That's why I'm such a bitch on the phone to people. … I just can't take the stress."
Monday, June 25, 2007
Where Are the Doctors?
Nicholas Kristof's, two traveling companions in Africa, are producing some excellent entries in their blog, including this one, which hits upon the lack of medical infrastructure and the associated brain drain of physicians in Africa. When I was in Nigeria year before last, one of the medical chiefs at the ECWA hospital in Jos estimated that at least 1/3 of his graduating class had emigrated (mostly to Europe). This excellent post articulates the many reasons for the brain drain.In ophhlmology, there is about 1 eyeMD/million population vs 1/10,000 in the U.S...
“Can you take me back to the U.S. with you?”
Dr. Rudasingwa loves his country. He also cares about his own future. He wants to pursue specialty training in neurosurgery, which is not available in Rwanda. Everyday, he sees patients who need brain surgery, heart surgery, chemotherapy, or other specialized treatments to survive. There is no doctor who can provide these treatments. The best he can do is to watch the patients die. The only person he was able to “save” recently was a high-level official who was airlifted to South Africa after a head injury.
The problems with health care access in Africa are often attributed to lack of resources, but a more insidious and perhaps more difficult problem is the dearth of doctors.
Africa is facing a severe crisis of doctor shortage, on a scale almost imaginable in the U.S. and Western Europe. Rwanda, a country with 10 million people, has about 500 doctors — a ratio of one doctor per 20,000 people. This is less than 10 percent of the World Health Organization recommendation. The vast majority of the country will not see a physician in their lifetimes. The Congo and Burundi have similarly poor ratios. Suburban U.S. hospitals could have more than 200 doctors on staff, while in Burundi, 165 doctors serve 8 million people.
“Can you take me back to the U.S. with you?”
Dr. Rudasingwa loves his country. He also cares about his own future. He wants to pursue specialty training in neurosurgery, which is not available in Rwanda. Everyday, he sees patients who need brain surgery, heart surgery, chemotherapy, or other specialized treatments to survive. There is no doctor who can provide these treatments. The best he can do is to watch the patients die. The only person he was able to “save” recently was a high-level official who was airlifted to South Africa after a head injury.
The problems with health care access in Africa are often attributed to lack of resources, but a more insidious and perhaps more difficult problem is the dearth of doctors.
Africa is facing a severe crisis of doctor shortage, on a scale almost imaginable in the U.S. and Western Europe. Rwanda, a country with 10 million people, has about 500 doctors — a ratio of one doctor per 20,000 people. This is less than 10 percent of the World Health Organization recommendation. The vast majority of the country will not see a physician in their lifetimes. The Congo and Burundi have similarly poor ratios. Suburban U.S. hospitals could have more than 200 doctors on staff, while in Burundi, 165 doctors serve 8 million people.
Saturday, June 23, 2007
To be schooled by Segovia
This is a video in which a currently very famous guitarist, Michael Chapdelaine (who has won both national classical and fingerstyle guiarist competitions) goes to a masterclass with Segovia--very enlightening indeed!
Thursday, June 21, 2007
When Is a Pain Doctor a Drug Pusher?
And they call it a "Justice" system--unbelievable story....
Ronald McIver is a prisoner in a medium-security federal compound in Butner, N.C. He is 63 years old, of medium height and overweight, with a white Santa Claus beard, white hair and a calm, direct and intelligent manner. He is serving 30 years for drug trafficking, and so will likely live there the rest of his life. McIver (pronounced mi-KEE-ver) has not been convicted of drug trafficking in the classic sense. He is a doctor who for years treated patients suffering from chronic pain.
(..)
Prosecutors are in essence pressing jurors to decide whether an extra 40 milligrams every four hours or a failure to X-ray is enough to send a doctor to prison for the rest of his life. One doctor, Frank Fisher, was arrested on charges that included the death of a patient taking opioids — who died as a passenger in a car accident. A Florida doctor, James Graves, is serving 63 years for charges including manslaughter after four patients overdosed on OxyContin he prescribed — all either crushed and injected their OxyContin or mixed it with alcohol or other drugs. “A lot of doctors are looking for safe harbor,” Caverly said. “They want to know as long as they do A, B, C, D or E, they’re O.K.”
Ronald McIver is a prisoner in a medium-security federal compound in Butner, N.C. He is 63 years old, of medium height and overweight, with a white Santa Claus beard, white hair and a calm, direct and intelligent manner. He is serving 30 years for drug trafficking, and so will likely live there the rest of his life. McIver (pronounced mi-KEE-ver) has not been convicted of drug trafficking in the classic sense. He is a doctor who for years treated patients suffering from chronic pain.
(..)
Prosecutors are in essence pressing jurors to decide whether an extra 40 milligrams every four hours or a failure to X-ray is enough to send a doctor to prison for the rest of his life. One doctor, Frank Fisher, was arrested on charges that included the death of a patient taking opioids — who died as a passenger in a car accident. A Florida doctor, James Graves, is serving 63 years for charges including manslaughter after four patients overdosed on OxyContin he prescribed — all either crushed and injected their OxyContin or mixed it with alcohol or other drugs. “A lot of doctors are looking for safe harbor,” Caverly said. “They want to know as long as they do A, B, C, D or E, they’re O.K.”
A Student, a Teacher and a Glimpse of War
Kristof's latest from the Congo...
There was nothing special about Yohanita except that she was in front of us. In villages throughout the region, people just like her are dying by the thousands — of a deadly mixture of war and poverty.
Instead of spending a few hundred dollars trying to save Yohanita, who might die anyway, we could spend that money buying vaccines or mosquito nets to save a far larger number of children in other villages.
And yet — how can you walk away from a human being who will surely die if you do so?
(..)
What almost killed Yohanita was starvation in a narrow sense, but more broadly she is one more victim of the warfare that has already claimed four million lives in Congo since 1998. Even 21st-century wars like Congo’s — the most lethal conflict since World War II — kill the old-fashioned way, by starving people or exposing them to disease.
That’s what makes wars in the developing world so deadly, for they kill not only with guns and machetes but also in much greater numbers with diarrhea, malaria, AIDS and malnutrition.
(..)
ne measure of the international indifference is the shortage of aid groups here: Neighboring Rwanda, which is booming economically, is full of aid workers. But this area of eastern Congo is far needier and yet is home to hardly any aid groups. World Vision is one of the very few American groups active here in the North Kivu area.
Just imagine that four million Americans or Europeans had been killed in a war, and that white families were starving to death as a result of that war. The victims in isolated villages here in Congo, like Yohanita, may be black and poor and anonymous, but that should make this war in Congo no less an international priority.
Carmela Got Gold Jewelry. Hillary Wants a White House.
The New York Times satirist, Maureen Dowd, on Hilary Clinton's recently revealed campaign song...
The satire was a video on Hillary’s Web site to whip up attention for the winner of her online contest to choose a campaign song.
nfortunately, the winner, “You and I,” is definitely not for you and me. (I look forward to Obama’s new campaign ditty, “I Am Thou.”) It doesn’t bode well for the cultural health of the country that Hillary picked a song by Celine Dion, who combines the worst of Vegas and Canada.
The satire was a video on Hillary’s Web site to whip up attention for the winner of her online contest to choose a campaign song.
nfortunately, the winner, “You and I,” is definitely not for you and me. (I look forward to Obama’s new campaign ditty, “I Am Thou.”) It doesn’t bode well for the cultural health of the country that Hillary picked a song by Celine Dion, who combines the worst of Vegas and Canada.
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Here to Take Your Order (and Biting Their Tongues)
The decline of American culture through the eyes of waitstaff...
When I began researching “Hey, Waitress!,” I had two inklings. One was that waitresses, among the underheard icons of America, would have many important things to say about their work. That inkling proved true. The second inkling was that they might challenge a revered notion: that the United States of America is essentially classless.
Challenge the notion? They obliterated it.
“I had this guy the other day say to me, ‘Are you ready to take my order?’ Because is not your existence to serve and take orders?” recalled one waitress at a seafood restaurant in Kennebunkport, Me.
“What do you want? Eye contact?” an impatient man asked another waitress, who had offered to recite the specials and was waiting for his response. The scene took place at an excellent restaurant in Seattle.
When I began researching “Hey, Waitress!,” I had two inklings. One was that waitresses, among the underheard icons of America, would have many important things to say about their work. That inkling proved true. The second inkling was that they might challenge a revered notion: that the United States of America is essentially classless.
Challenge the notion? They obliterated it.
“I had this guy the other day say to me, ‘Are you ready to take my order?’ Because is not your existence to serve and take orders?” recalled one waitress at a seafood restaurant in Kennebunkport, Me.
“What do you want? Eye contact?” an impatient man asked another waitress, who had offered to recite the specials and was waiting for his response. The scene took place at an excellent restaurant in Seattle.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Rwanda, Past and Present
This blog post from Kristof's traveling companions in Rwanda highlights the leadership of President Kagazme
In 1994, Rwanda was the scene of killings at a rate of 10,000 people per day, and bludgeoned bodies literally lined the streets. When the Rwandan Patriotic Front (the current government of Rwanda) took over, they found dead people, moribund services, crumbled houses, and decimated hospitals. Latrines and lakes were stuffed with bodies, and churches were filled by the bodies of thousands of parishioners whose killings were facilitated by their own ministers. There was no government to speak of.
(..)
The successes of rebuilding and reconciliation post-genocide are in no small part due to the vision of President Paul Kagame, whom we interviewed today. A lanky and soft-spoken man, President Kagame has an unassuming yet imposing presence. He is thoughtful, and presents a clear vision for Rwanda. Reputed to read the Harvard Business Review regularly, he believes in economic development as the key to reducing poverty and advancing Rwanda. “We are not in position to turn down aid, but we know that aid is not end in itself. Trade is undoubtedly more importantly.” He is critical of he calls the culture of dependency in Rwanda. “There is a tendency to blame others for what happened. But this will not work. We need to find a way forward for ourselves. We need to work to develop a culture of integrity peace, and hard work. People may not think this can be done. But let’s show they what is possible, and then do it.”
Dinner With a Warlord
Mr. Kristof sits down to dinner with a government labeled "warlord..."
We see war coming,” Mr. Nkunda said, and he pulled out his laptop to show a map indicating that various government-backed forces are being dispatched to attack him. He added: “The only reply to war and ammunition is war and ammunition.”
I told him — a bit nervously — that such tribalism and fighting has torn apart a country that should be one of Africa’s richest. But Mr. Nkunda, who quotes Gandhi, emphasized that what counts here is simply force. “You go by strength,” he said.
There are no easy solutions here, although some steps are essential: supporting professional training and reform of the Congolese security forces, pressuring neighboring Rwanda to support central authority over the full country, bolstering the peace process, and interdicting mineral exports that finance rebel armies. But the most important step is simply for the international community to acknowledge that a war that costs four million lives must be an international priority, even if the victims aren’t staring at us from television screens.
Kristof's two guests on thttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifhis trip have their own blog ...
We see war coming,” Mr. Nkunda said, and he pulled out his laptop to show a map indicating that various government-backed forces are being dispatched to attack him. He added: “The only reply to war and ammunition is war and ammunition.”
I told him — a bit nervously — that such tribalism and fighting has torn apart a country that should be one of Africa’s richest. But Mr. Nkunda, who quotes Gandhi, emphasized that what counts here is simply force. “You go by strength,” he said.
There are no easy solutions here, although some steps are essential: supporting professional training and reform of the Congolese security forces, pressuring neighboring Rwanda to support central authority over the full country, bolstering the peace process, and interdicting mineral exports that finance rebel armies. But the most important step is simply for the international community to acknowledge that a war that costs four million lives must be an international priority, even if the victims aren’t staring at us from television screens.
Kristof's two guests on thttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifhis trip have their own blog ...
The Women of Rwandaa
“They kept raping me, even though I had maggots crawling out of me.
Claudine Mukakarisa, a 27-year old Rwandan woman, was recounting her life. Born in a Tutsi family of 12 children in the southern city of Butare, Claudine went to Kigali in 1993 to look for her sister, who had been taken there forcibly by the Interahamwe (the Interahamwe was the militia group who were the perpetrators of the genocide.) Claudine was 14. She found her sister, but ended up getting caught by the Interahamwe too. For the next year, she and her sister were tied up and continually violated by the soldiers, one after the other. “We became their sexual slaves,” she said, “Men would just come in and do what they like.” They were assaulted so much that they developed wounds all over. “We started rotting. We had wounds in our reproductive areas. Maggots were crawling out of our reproductive organs.”
When the Interahamwe cut off her sister’s leg, Claudine thought she no longer wanted to live. The sisters decided to escape by tying the remaining leg of the sister to Claudine’s leg, and managed to crawl to the edge of the lake. However, they could not commit suicide: the lake was already filled with dead bodies. This was 1994, and the genocide had begun. The Interahamwe caught up with them soon after, and while Claudine was able to escape, her sister was not. Claudine saw her die in front of her eyes.
Claudine Mukakarisa, a 27-year old Rwandan woman, was recounting her life. Born in a Tutsi family of 12 children in the southern city of Butare, Claudine went to Kigali in 1993 to look for her sister, who had been taken there forcibly by the Interahamwe (the Interahamwe was the militia group who were the perpetrators of the genocide.) Claudine was 14. She found her sister, but ended up getting caught by the Interahamwe too. For the next year, she and her sister were tied up and continually violated by the soldiers, one after the other. “We became their sexual slaves,” she said, “Men would just come in and do what they like.” They were assaulted so much that they developed wounds all over. “We started rotting. We had wounds in our reproductive areas. Maggots were crawling out of our reproductive organs.”
When the Interahamwe cut off her sister’s leg, Claudine thought she no longer wanted to live. The sisters decided to escape by tying the remaining leg of the sister to Claudine’s leg, and managed to crawl to the edge of the lake. However, they could not commit suicide: the lake was already filled with dead bodies. This was 1994, and the genocide had begun. The Interahamwe caught up with them soon after, and while Claudine was able to escape, her sister was not. Claudine saw her die in front of her eyes.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
Eye flickers key for fine detail
Tiny, involuntary movements made by our eyes when we focus on something could be more useful than we might think, scientists have found.
We may not be aware that our eyes are making these movements, but without them our vision fades.
And scientists have now found that they could also be important in helping us to see very fine details.
The research, carried out by scientists at Boston University, was published in the journal Nature.
Saturday, June 16, 2007
Diagnosis: Conflict of Interest
While those criticisms have merit, there is another culprit: the transformation of continuing medical education into an enterprise for drug marketing. The chore of teaching doctors how to practice medicine has been handed to the pharmaceutical industry. As a result, dangerous side effects are rarely on the curriculum.
(..)
According to the most recent data available from the national organization in charge of accrediting the courses, drug-industry financing of continuing medical education has nearly quadrupled since 1998, from $302 million to $1.12 billion. Half of all continuing medical education courses in the United States are now paid for by drug companies, up from a third a decade ago. Because pharmaceutical companies now set much of the agenda for what doctors learn about drugs, crucial information about potential drug dangers is played down, to the detriment of patient care.
(..)
According to the most recent data available from the national organization in charge of accrediting the courses, drug-industry financing of continuing medical education has nearly quadrupled since 1998, from $302 million to $1.12 billion. Half of all continuing medical education courses in the United States are now paid for by drug companies, up from a third a decade ago. Because pharmaceutical companies now set much of the agenda for what doctors learn about drugs, crucial information about potential drug dangers is played down, to the detriment of patient care.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Africa’s World War
Mr. Kristof is in Rwanda with a teacher and a med student from the States. Here he hits on an essential point of the efficacy of timely,outside military intervention in local conflicts...
Mr. Collier, a former research director of the World Bank, notes that when the G-8 countries talk about helping Africa, they overwhelmingly focus just on foreign aid. Sure, aid has a role to play, but it’s pointless to build clinics when rebel groups are running around burning towns and shooting doctors.
One essential kind of help that the West can provide — but one that is rarely talked about — is Western military assistance in squashing rebellions, genocides and civil wars, or in protecting good governments from insurrections.
The average civil war costs $64 billion, yet could often be suppressed in its early stages for very modest sums. The British military intervention in Sierra Leone easily ended a savage war and was enthusiastically welcomed by local people — and, as a financial investment, achieved benefits worth 30 times the cost.
Josh Ruxin, a Columbia University public health expert living in Rwanda, notes that a modest Western force could have stopped the genocide in 1994 — or, afterward, rooted out Hutu extremists who fled to Congo and dragged that country into a civil war that has cost millions of lives.
(..)
So it’s time for the G-8 countries to conceive of foreign aid more broadly — not just to build hospitals and schools, but also to work with the African Union to provide security in areas that have been ravaged by rebellion and war. A starting point would be a serious effort to confront genocide in Darfur — and at least an international force to prop up Chad and Central African Republic, rather than allow Africa to tumble into its second world war.
Mr. Collier, a former research director of the World Bank, notes that when the G-8 countries talk about helping Africa, they overwhelmingly focus just on foreign aid. Sure, aid has a role to play, but it’s pointless to build clinics when rebel groups are running around burning towns and shooting doctors.
One essential kind of help that the West can provide — but one that is rarely talked about — is Western military assistance in squashing rebellions, genocides and civil wars, or in protecting good governments from insurrections.
The average civil war costs $64 billion, yet could often be suppressed in its early stages for very modest sums. The British military intervention in Sierra Leone easily ended a savage war and was enthusiastically welcomed by local people — and, as a financial investment, achieved benefits worth 30 times the cost.
Josh Ruxin, a Columbia University public health expert living in Rwanda, notes that a modest Western force could have stopped the genocide in 1994 — or, afterward, rooted out Hutu extremists who fled to Congo and dragged that country into a civil war that has cost millions of lives.
(..)
So it’s time for the G-8 countries to conceive of foreign aid more broadly — not just to build hospitals and schools, but also to work with the African Union to provide security in areas that have been ravaged by rebellion and war. A starting point would be a serious effort to confront genocide in Darfur — and at least an international force to prop up Chad and Central African Republic, rather than allow Africa to tumble into its second world war.
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
TimesSelect Between Dust and Deliverance
Friedman hits the nail squarely on the head in this analysis...
But who offers a way forward? Right now the best Arabs can hope for are the decent, modernizing monarchies, like Jordan, Qatar, Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. I do not see any secular progressivism — a Fourth Way — emerging in the big Arab states like Egypt, Syria, Algeria and Iraq, that is, a progressivism that would effectively promote more rule of law, global integration, multiparty elections, women’s empowerment and modern education to lay the foundations of decent governance.
Far from it, Egypt had an election in 2005, and Ayman Nour, the candidate who dared to run against President Mubarak, got thrown in jail on phony charges.
(..)
“Sadly,” observed Middle East analyst Fawaz A. Gerges, in a recent essay on YaleGlobal Online, “mainstream Islamists have provided neither vision nor initiative to build a broad alliance of social forces and transform the political space. They arm themselves with vacuous slogans like ‘Islam is the solution.’ ” No wonder, he adds, that the average Arab citizen is fed up today with both their rulers and the opposition, “who promised heaven and delivered dust.”
But since the Islamic parties have monopolized the mosques and the authoritarian regimes have monopolized the public square, anyone trying to articulate an Arab Fourth Way today “is competing against either God or the state — and between God and the state, what room is left for secular democrats?” asked Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki.
Only weeds can grow there — small nihilist weeds, like Fatah al Islam in Lebanon or Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in Iraq or Islamic Jihad in Gaza. And they are growing.
But who offers a way forward? Right now the best Arabs can hope for are the decent, modernizing monarchies, like Jordan, Qatar, Dubai and the United Arab Emirates. I do not see any secular progressivism — a Fourth Way — emerging in the big Arab states like Egypt, Syria, Algeria and Iraq, that is, a progressivism that would effectively promote more rule of law, global integration, multiparty elections, women’s empowerment and modern education to lay the foundations of decent governance.
Far from it, Egypt had an election in 2005, and Ayman Nour, the candidate who dared to run against President Mubarak, got thrown in jail on phony charges.
(..)
“Sadly,” observed Middle East analyst Fawaz A. Gerges, in a recent essay on YaleGlobal Online, “mainstream Islamists have provided neither vision nor initiative to build a broad alliance of social forces and transform the political space. They arm themselves with vacuous slogans like ‘Islam is the solution.’ ” No wonder, he adds, that the average Arab citizen is fed up today with both their rulers and the opposition, “who promised heaven and delivered dust.”
But since the Islamic parties have monopolized the mosques and the authoritarian regimes have monopolized the public square, anyone trying to articulate an Arab Fourth Way today “is competing against either God or the state — and between God and the state, what room is left for secular democrats?” asked Palestinian pollster Khalil Shikaki.
Only weeds can grow there — small nihilist weeds, like Fatah al Islam in Lebanon or Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia in Iraq or Islamic Jihad in Gaza. And they are growing.
Monday, June 11, 2007
Land of Plenty
Ever since mass affluence, a phenomenon without precedent in the human story, exploded upon postwar America, social and political theorists have wondered, and worried, about the moral and even the spiritual consequences of material conditions. Putting scarcity behind us has been pleasant, but has it been good for us — meaning good for our souls?
(..)
It took confidence for Brink Lindsey, of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, to venture onto this well-plowed ground with “The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture.” This constantly stimulating book vindicates that confidence. His thesis, stated ironically with Karl Marx’s categories, is that in the second half of the 20th century, America left the “realm of necessity” and entered the “realm of freedom.” Americans “live on the far side of a great fault line” separating them from all prior human experience.
“Americans,” Lindsey writes, “have become a different kind of people,” transformed by capitalism’s fecundity. Although often “derided for its superficial banality,” materialism has resulted in “a flood tide of spiritual yearning.”Various scolds and worrywarts have exclaimed, with Wordsworth, that “getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” To such Jeremiahs, Lindsey provides an essentially cheerful, although not altogether so, counterpoint: affluence has made America a more libertarian, and hence a nicer, place.
(..)
It took confidence for Brink Lindsey, of the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington, to venture onto this well-plowed ground with “The Age of Abundance: How Prosperity Transformed America’s Politics and Culture.” This constantly stimulating book vindicates that confidence. His thesis, stated ironically with Karl Marx’s categories, is that in the second half of the 20th century, America left the “realm of necessity” and entered the “realm of freedom.” Americans “live on the far side of a great fault line” separating them from all prior human experience.
“Americans,” Lindsey writes, “have become a different kind of people,” transformed by capitalism’s fecundity. Although often “derided for its superficial banality,” materialism has resulted in “a flood tide of spiritual yearning.”Various scolds and worrywarts have exclaimed, with Wordsworth, that “getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.” To such Jeremiahs, Lindsey provides an essentially cheerful, although not altogether so, counterpoint: affluence has made America a more libertarian, and hence a nicer, place.
The Class-Consciousness Raiser
It may be that the only people with abiding faith in the power of class divisions in America are the country’s few remaining Marxists and Ruby Payne. And while Payne may not believe in class struggle, per se, she does believe that there is widespread misunderstanding among the classes — and more than ever, she says, the class that bears the cost of that misunderstanding is the poor. In schools, particularly, where poor students often find themselves assigned to middle-class teachers, class cluelessness is rampant.
Your class, Payne says, determines everything: your eating habits, your speech patterns, your family relations. It is possible to move out of the class you were born into, either up or down, she says, but the transition almost always means a great disruption to your sense of self. And you can ascend the class ladder only if you are willing to sacrifice many of your relationships and most of your values — and only if you first devote yourself to careful study of the hidden rules of the class you hope to enter.
Your class, Payne says, determines everything: your eating habits, your speech patterns, your family relations. It is possible to move out of the class you were born into, either up or down, she says, but the transition almost always means a great disruption to your sense of self. And you can ascend the class ladder only if you are willing to sacrifice many of your relationships and most of your values — and only if you first devote yourself to careful study of the hidden rules of the class you hope to enter.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
In Saudi Arabia, a view from behind the veil
This former Cairo Bureau Chief for the L.A. Times does a great job in giving a snapshot of what it is like for a Western woman to reside in Saudi.
As a woman in the male-dominated kingdom, Times reporter Megan Stack quietly fumed beneath her abaya. Even beyond its borders, her experience taints her perception of the sexes.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — THE hem of my heavy Islamic cloak trailed over floors that glistened like ice. I walked faster, my eyes fixed on a familiar, green icon. I hadn't seen a Starbucks in months, but there it was, tucked into a corner of a fancy shopping mall in the Saudi capital. After all those bitter little cups of sludgy Arabic coffee, here at last was an improbable snippet of home — caffeinated, comforting, American.
I wandered into the shop, filling my lungs with the rich wafts of coffee. The man behind the counter gave me a bemused look; his eyes flickered. I asked for a latte. He shrugged, the milk steamer whined, and he handed over the brimming paper cup. I turned my back on his uneasy face.
Crossing the cafe, I felt the hard stares of Saudi men. A few of them stopped talking as I walked by and watched me pass. Them, too, I ignored. Finally, coffee in hand, I sank into the sumptuous lap of an overstuffed armchair.
"Excuse me," hissed the voice in my ear. "You can't sit here." The man from the counter had appeared at my elbow. He was glaring.
"Excuse me?" I blinked a few times.
"Emmm," he drew his discomfort into a long syllable, his brows knitted. "You cannot stay here."
"What? Uh … why?"
Then he said it: "Men only."
(..)
I'm leaving the Middle East now, closing up years spent covering the fighting and fallout that have swept the region since Sept. 11. Of all the strange, scary and joyful experiences of the past years, my time covering Saudi Arabia remains among the most jarring.
(..)
In the West, there's a tendency to treat Saudi Arabia as a remote land, utterly removed from our lives. But it's not very far from us, nor are we as different as we might like to think. Saudi Arabia is a center of ideas and commerce, an important ally to the United States, the heartland of a major world religion. It is a highly industrialized, ultramodern home to expatriates from all over the world, including Americans who live in lush gated compounds with swimming pools, drink illegal glasses of bathtub gin and speak glowingly of the glorious desert and the famous hospitality of Saudis.
The rules are different here. The same U.S. government that heightened public outrage against the Taliban by decrying the mistreatment of Afghan women prizes the oil-slicked Saudi friendship and even offers wan praise for Saudi elections in which women are banned from voting. All U.S. fast-food franchises operating here, not just Starbucks, make women stand in separate lines. U.S.-owned hotels don't let women check in without a letter from a company vouching for her ability to pay; women checking into hotels alone have long been regarded as prostitutes.
As I roamed in and out of Saudi Arabia, the abaya, or Islamic robe, eventually became the symbol of those shifting rules.
(..)
The sleeves, the length of it, always felt foreign, at first. But it never took long to work its alchemy, to plant the insecurity. After a day or two, the notion of appearing without the robe felt shocking. Stripped of the layers of curve-smothering cloth, my ordinary clothes suddenly felt revealing, even garish. To me, the abaya implied that a woman's body is a distraction and an interruption, a thing that must be hidden from view lest it haul the society into vice and disarray. The simple act of wearing the robe implanted that self-consciousness by osmosis.
(..)
DRIVING to the airport, I felt the kingdom slipping off behind me, the flat emptiness of its deserts, the buildings that rear toward the sky, encased in mirrored glass, blank under a blaring sun. All the hints of a private life I have never seen. Saudis are bred from the desert; they find life in what looks empty to me.
Even if I were Saudi, would I understand it? I remember the government spokesman, Mansour Turki, who said to me: "Being a Saudi doesn't mean you see every face of Saudi society. Saudi men don't understand how Saudi women think. They have no idea, actually. Even my own family, my own mother or sister, she won't talk to me honestly."
(..)
Then I was just standing there, feeling stripped in my jeans and blouse. My limbs felt light, and modesty flashed through me. I was aware of the skin of my wrists and forearms, the triangle of naked neck. I scanned the eyes behind me, looking for a challenge. But none came. The Saudi passengers had watched my tantrum impassively.
I sat down, leaned back and breathed. This moment, it seems, is always the same. I take the abaya off, expecting to feel liberated. But somehow, it always feels like defeat.
As a woman in the male-dominated kingdom, Times reporter Megan Stack quietly fumed beneath her abaya. Even beyond its borders, her experience taints her perception of the sexes.
Riyadh, Saudi Arabia — THE hem of my heavy Islamic cloak trailed over floors that glistened like ice. I walked faster, my eyes fixed on a familiar, green icon. I hadn't seen a Starbucks in months, but there it was, tucked into a corner of a fancy shopping mall in the Saudi capital. After all those bitter little cups of sludgy Arabic coffee, here at last was an improbable snippet of home — caffeinated, comforting, American.
I wandered into the shop, filling my lungs with the rich wafts of coffee. The man behind the counter gave me a bemused look; his eyes flickered. I asked for a latte. He shrugged, the milk steamer whined, and he handed over the brimming paper cup. I turned my back on his uneasy face.
Crossing the cafe, I felt the hard stares of Saudi men. A few of them stopped talking as I walked by and watched me pass. Them, too, I ignored. Finally, coffee in hand, I sank into the sumptuous lap of an overstuffed armchair.
"Excuse me," hissed the voice in my ear. "You can't sit here." The man from the counter had appeared at my elbow. He was glaring.
"Excuse me?" I blinked a few times.
"Emmm," he drew his discomfort into a long syllable, his brows knitted. "You cannot stay here."
"What? Uh … why?"
Then he said it: "Men only."
(..)
I'm leaving the Middle East now, closing up years spent covering the fighting and fallout that have swept the region since Sept. 11. Of all the strange, scary and joyful experiences of the past years, my time covering Saudi Arabia remains among the most jarring.
(..)
In the West, there's a tendency to treat Saudi Arabia as a remote land, utterly removed from our lives. But it's not very far from us, nor are we as different as we might like to think. Saudi Arabia is a center of ideas and commerce, an important ally to the United States, the heartland of a major world religion. It is a highly industrialized, ultramodern home to expatriates from all over the world, including Americans who live in lush gated compounds with swimming pools, drink illegal glasses of bathtub gin and speak glowingly of the glorious desert and the famous hospitality of Saudis.
The rules are different here. The same U.S. government that heightened public outrage against the Taliban by decrying the mistreatment of Afghan women prizes the oil-slicked Saudi friendship and even offers wan praise for Saudi elections in which women are banned from voting. All U.S. fast-food franchises operating here, not just Starbucks, make women stand in separate lines. U.S.-owned hotels don't let women check in without a letter from a company vouching for her ability to pay; women checking into hotels alone have long been regarded as prostitutes.
As I roamed in and out of Saudi Arabia, the abaya, or Islamic robe, eventually became the symbol of those shifting rules.
(..)
The sleeves, the length of it, always felt foreign, at first. But it never took long to work its alchemy, to plant the insecurity. After a day or two, the notion of appearing without the robe felt shocking. Stripped of the layers of curve-smothering cloth, my ordinary clothes suddenly felt revealing, even garish. To me, the abaya implied that a woman's body is a distraction and an interruption, a thing that must be hidden from view lest it haul the society into vice and disarray. The simple act of wearing the robe implanted that self-consciousness by osmosis.
(..)
DRIVING to the airport, I felt the kingdom slipping off behind me, the flat emptiness of its deserts, the buildings that rear toward the sky, encased in mirrored glass, blank under a blaring sun. All the hints of a private life I have never seen. Saudis are bred from the desert; they find life in what looks empty to me.
Even if I were Saudi, would I understand it? I remember the government spokesman, Mansour Turki, who said to me: "Being a Saudi doesn't mean you see every face of Saudi society. Saudi men don't understand how Saudi women think. They have no idea, actually. Even my own family, my own mother or sister, she won't talk to me honestly."
(..)
Then I was just standing there, feeling stripped in my jeans and blouse. My limbs felt light, and modesty flashed through me. I was aware of the skin of my wrists and forearms, the triangle of naked neck. I scanned the eyes behind me, looking for a challenge. But none came. The Saudi passengers had watched my tantrum impassively.
I sat down, leaned back and breathed. This moment, it seems, is always the same. I take the abaya off, expecting to feel liberated. But somehow, it always feels like defeat.
Saturday, June 09, 2007
Friday, June 08, 2007
G-8 Summit Winds Down With Africa Aid Pledge
HEILIGENDAMM, Germany, June 8 — As the Group of 8 summit meeting moved toward a conclusion, leaders reaffirmed a 2005 pledge of $60 billion to counter HIV and other illnesses in Africa, but did not set any new deadlines for delivering the aid.
(..)
But critics dismissed today’s AIDS announcement, saying that little progress was actually made.
"I am exasperated," Bono, the activist rock star, told Reuters. "I think it is deliberately the language of obfuscation. It is deliberately misleading."
Collins Magalasi of ActionAids said the pledges were little more than “last-minute face saving measures,” according to Reuters.
(..)
But critics dismissed today’s AIDS announcement, saying that little progress was actually made.
"I am exasperated," Bono, the activist rock star, told Reuters. "I think it is deliberately the language of obfuscation. It is deliberately misleading."
Collins Magalasi of ActionAids said the pledges were little more than “last-minute face saving measures,” according to Reuters.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Wednesday, June 06, 2007
Monday, June 04, 2007
I Had a Home in Africa
I have many friends from Zimbabwea who could write similar memoirs...sadly...
'When a Crocodile Eats the Sun' is a haunting memoir of Zimbabwe, and a lesson for the rest of us.
The question of whether a white African is an ideal or an oxymoron goes to the heart of one of the world's most difficult problems: can ethnic strife ever be stopped?
'When a Crocodile Eats the Sun' is a haunting memoir of Zimbabwe, and a lesson for the rest of us.
The question of whether a white African is an ideal or an oxymoron goes to the heart of one of the world's most difficult problems: can ethnic strife ever be stopped?
Prescription Drugs: Where's the Free Market?
...Such abuses should not be surprising to anyone who appreciates the value of a competitive market. The root cause of all of these problems is government-granted patent monopolies that allow the pharmaceutical industry to sell drugs at prices that can exceed the cost of production by a factor of a hundred, or more. Last fall, Wal-Mart began selling hundreds of generic drugs for $4 per prescription. The vast majority of brand drugs could also be profitably sold for $4 per prescription, if it were not for the patent monopoly granted by the government.
As a result of patent monopolies, drug companies can sell drugs for hundreds of dollars that cost them a few dollars to manufacture. This situation invites the sort of corruption that NYT documents regularly in its pages.
Drug patents do serve a purpose: they provide an incentive to the industry to develop new drugs. However, there are other ways in which this research can be financed. The federal government already spends nearly $30 billion a year on biomedical research conducted through the National Institutes of Health. By doubling this amount, it could probably replace the research conducted by the pharmaceutical industry, most of which currently goes to develop copycat drugs (another problem of the patent system).
As another possible alternative, Nobel Laureate Joe Stiglitz has suggested a prize system, in which the government would buy out patents at prices determined by their usefulness. The patents would then be placed in the public domain so that all new drugs could be sold as generics.
As a result of patent monopolies, drug companies can sell drugs for hundreds of dollars that cost them a few dollars to manufacture. This situation invites the sort of corruption that NYT documents regularly in its pages.
Drug patents do serve a purpose: they provide an incentive to the industry to develop new drugs. However, there are other ways in which this research can be financed. The federal government already spends nearly $30 billion a year on biomedical research conducted through the National Institutes of Health. By doubling this amount, it could probably replace the research conducted by the pharmaceutical industry, most of which currently goes to develop copycat drugs (another problem of the patent system).
As another possible alternative, Nobel Laureate Joe Stiglitz has suggested a prize system, in which the government would buy out patents at prices determined by their usefulness. The patents would then be placed in the public domain so that all new drugs could be sold as generics.
Poker for Darfur!
An opportunity for DocFreeze!!!!
Actor Don Cheadle and poker star Annie Duke asked themselves how they could use their passion for poker to raise money and public awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan. What they came up with is the first annual [sic] Ante Up for Africa, No-Limit Texas Hold’em Tournament, which they’ll be hosting in Las Vegas on July 5, in association with the World Series of Poker.
ker with some of the biggest stars from the worlds of poker, sports and entertainment. Cheadle’s Ocean’s Thirteen co-stars George Clooney, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt are among the celebrities who have already committed to play. (Learn more about their partnership with the IRC here.)
You’ll be asked to donate 50% of your winnings to the event’s designated charities, the advocacy group Enough and the IRC, which provides life-saving assistance to the people of Darfur. That donation is 100% tax-deductible.
Actor Don Cheadle and poker star Annie Duke asked themselves how they could use their passion for poker to raise money and public awareness of the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, Sudan. What they came up with is the first annual [sic] Ante Up for Africa, No-Limit Texas Hold’em Tournament, which they’ll be hosting in Las Vegas on July 5, in association with the World Series of Poker.
ker with some of the biggest stars from the worlds of poker, sports and entertainment. Cheadle’s Ocean’s Thirteen co-stars George Clooney, Matt Damon and Brad Pitt are among the celebrities who have already committed to play. (Learn more about their partnership with the IRC here.)
You’ll be asked to donate 50% of your winnings to the event’s designated charities, the advocacy group Enough and the IRC, which provides life-saving assistance to the people of Darfur. That donation is 100% tax-deductible.
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Welcome to the Jungle
Watch this and see how it applies to ?our life and society...By the way, this also exemplifies why our next trip to South Africa will include a safari--(as opposed to an East African safari)
The U.S. Population is Functionally Illiterate
If this is true, it is scary indeed...
As I discussed recently in the Ray Bradbury post, and the discussion about the CATO expert believing we as voters are too ignorant to vote intelligently, I found something while searching on google that is dismaying to those of us who are politically and intellectually engaged.
As I discussed recently in the Ray Bradbury post, and the discussion about the CATO expert believing we as voters are too ignorant to vote intelligently, I found something while searching on google that is dismaying to those of us who are politically and intellectually engaged.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
Sudan Sanctions: Too Little, Too Late?
President Bush is imposing new economic sanctions against Sudan in an effort to pressure government officials there to end what he referred to as "genocide" in Darfur. The announcement followed a push by U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, who spent the past month seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis. More than 200,000 people have died, and more than 2.5 million residents have been displaced during the four years of conflict in the region. And some say the United States could do more.
John Prendergast, a former Clinton administration official and co-author of Not On Our Watch: The Mission To End Genocide In Darfur And Beyond, said he is unimpressed with the new sanctions. The Africa policy expert also is senior adviser to the International Crisis Group.
John Prendergast, a former Clinton administration official and co-author of Not On Our Watch: The Mission To End Genocide In Darfur And Beyond, said he is unimpressed with the new sanctions. The Africa policy expert also is senior adviser to the International Crisis Group.
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Design That Solves Problems for the World’s Poor
“A billion customers in the world,” Dr. Paul Polak told a crowd of inventors recently, “are waiting for a $2 pair of eyeglasses, a $10 solar lantern and a $100 house.”
The world’s cleverest designers, said Dr. Polak, a former psychiatrist who now runs an organization helping poor farmers become entrepreneurs, cater to the globe’s richest 10 percent, creating items like wine labels, couture and Maseratis.
“We need a revolution to reverse that silly ratio,” he said.
To that end, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, which is housed in Andrew Carnegie’s 64-room mansion on Fifth Avenue and offers a $250 red chrome piggy bank in its gift shop, is honoring inventors dedicated to “the other 90 percent,” particularly the billions of people living on less than $2 a day.
A Rocky Start for Nevada’s New Governor
Negative press coverage of Nevada vernor Gibbons has now extended beyond a number or articles from the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times:
CARSON CITY, Nev., May 24 — Life these days for Gov. Jim Gibbons of Nevada might kindly be described as suboptimal.
In the last few months, Mr. Gibbons, a Republican, announced a plan to turn coal into jet fuel to raise money (problematic, as Nevada has no coal to speak of) and proposed paying for a $3.8 billion shortfall in highway construction money by selling water rights under state highways (it turns out the state did not actually own the rights).
He told a local editorial board he could not pronounce the name of his energy adviser because she was “Indian” — she is Turkish — and vetoed a bill that would stop budget-busting tax breaks for builders of “green” buildings before issuing an executive order to end them anyway (with the exception of four companies).
Mr. Gibbons is the subject of a Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry into whether he failed to report gifts from a military contractor while serving in Congress. The governor, who would not be interviewed, has denied wrongdoing, and once suggested that Democratic operatives might have paid off newspaper reporters who have written about his troubles with the F.B.I.
And faced with a collapsing public education system and extensive state infrastructure needs, Mr. Gibbons at one point threatened to veto the $7 billion two-year state budget and shut down government largely over his desire for a security center in Carson City — an idea that law enforcement officials dislike — and his plan to save small businesses two hundredths of a percent on their taxes.
The travails have taken a toll.
CARSON CITY, Nev., May 24 — Life these days for Gov. Jim Gibbons of Nevada might kindly be described as suboptimal.
In the last few months, Mr. Gibbons, a Republican, announced a plan to turn coal into jet fuel to raise money (problematic, as Nevada has no coal to speak of) and proposed paying for a $3.8 billion shortfall in highway construction money by selling water rights under state highways (it turns out the state did not actually own the rights).
He told a local editorial board he could not pronounce the name of his energy adviser because she was “Indian” — she is Turkish — and vetoed a bill that would stop budget-busting tax breaks for builders of “green” buildings before issuing an executive order to end them anyway (with the exception of four companies).
Mr. Gibbons is the subject of a Federal Bureau of Investigation inquiry into whether he failed to report gifts from a military contractor while serving in Congress. The governor, who would not be interviewed, has denied wrongdoing, and once suggested that Democratic operatives might have paid off newspaper reporters who have written about his troubles with the F.B.I.
And faced with a collapsing public education system and extensive state infrastructure needs, Mr. Gibbons at one point threatened to veto the $7 billion two-year state budget and shut down government largely over his desire for a security center in Carson City — an idea that law enforcement officials dislike — and his plan to save small businesses two hundredths of a percent on their taxes.
The travails have taken a toll.
Thorn Artisan Master #079 - Redwood & Rosewood
A sub 100 making it's debut...wow! Hardeep is officially the international man of mystery ;) I believe an entire year went by while he contemplated the inlay design. After multiple false starts, he finally decided on ol' faithful - Firesuns :D #079 may not be as fancy as he had originally envisioned, but I believe it couldn't be any more beautiful than how it turned out. So, here comes #079:
Top: Redwood
Body: Honduran Mahogany
Neck: East Indian Rosewood
Fretboard: Brazilian Rosewood
Pickups: Lollar P-90s w/ Redwood Covers
Controls: Vol. / Tone (Push/Pull adds middle pickup) 3-way toggle, Piezo blend, mini 3-way for piezo/passive blend.
Bridge: Thorn 1-pc. Tremolo w/ LR Baggs Piezo Saddles
Color: Natural
I love the way the grain follows the perimeter of the body, especially in the waist. SteveK may recognize the fretboard too, it was cut from the same stick his 3 were. :)
Tone report:
The last rosewood neck Thorn that shipped had 3 P-90s and a koa top. It sounded amazing and I loved it. Now comes along this rosewood necked, 3 P-90s but with a redwood top...what a surprise - it sounds amazing.
I believe the softer/warmer wood tops tame the mids that the rosewood necks add, along with the P-90s adding a little bite and clarity. This combo works!
The piezo in a tremolo is a cool effect, nice shimmer when called upon.
Hardeep, the wait was very long - but I honestly believe that it will have been worth it for you. This guitar has great tone, sustains like a tuning fork, and is a looker for sure.
Enjoy my friend and thank you,
Ron
Saturday, May 26, 2007
A Quiet Revolution in Algeria: Gains by Women
ALGIERS, May 25 — In this tradition-bound nation scarred by a brutal Islamist-led civil war that killed more than 100,000, a quiet revolution is under way: women are emerging as an economic and political force unheard of in the rest of the Arab world.
Women make up 70 percent of Algeria’s lawyers and 60 percent of its judges. Women dominate medicine. Increasingly, women contribute more to household income than men. Sixty percent of university students are women, university researchers say.
In a region where women have a decidedly low public profile, Algerian women are visible everywhere. They are starting to drive buses and taxicabs. They pump gas and wait on tables.
Women make up 70 percent of Algeria’s lawyers and 60 percent of its judges. Women dominate medicine. Increasingly, women contribute more to household income than men. Sixty percent of university students are women, university researchers say.
In a region where women have a decidedly low public profile, Algerian women are visible everywhere. They are starting to drive buses and taxicabs. They pump gas and wait on tables.
Friday, May 25, 2007
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
This Is Your Life (and How You Tell It)
Yet in the past decade or so a handful of psychologists have argued that the quicksilver elements of personal narrative belong in any three-dimensional picture of personality. And a burst of new findings are now helping them make the case. Generous, civic-minded adults from diverse backgrounds tell life stories with very similar and telling features, studies find; so likewise do people who have overcome mental distress through psychotherapy.
(..)
During a standard life-story interview, people describe phases of their lives as if they were outlining chapters, from the sandlot years through adolescence and middle age. They also describe several crucial scenes in detail, including high points (the graduation speech, complete with verbal drum roll); low points (the college nervous breakdown, complete with the list of witnesses); and turning points. The entire two-hour session is recorded and transcribed.
In analyzing the texts, the researchers found strong correlations between the content of people’s current lives and the stories they tell. Those with mood problems have many good memories, but these scenes are usually tainted by some dark detail. The pride of college graduation is spoiled when a friend makes a cutting remark. The wedding party was wonderful until the best man collapsed from drink. A note of disappointment seems to close each narrative phrase.
By contrast, so-called generative adults — those who score highly on tests measuring civic-mindedness, and who are likely to be energetic and involved — tend to see many of the events in their life in the reverse order, as linked by themes of redemption. They flunked sixth grade but met a wonderful counselor and made honor roll in seventh. They were laid low by divorce, only to meet a wonderful new partner. Often, too, they say they felt singled out from very early in life — protected, even as others nearby suffered.
(..)
During a standard life-story interview, people describe phases of their lives as if they were outlining chapters, from the sandlot years through adolescence and middle age. They also describe several crucial scenes in detail, including high points (the graduation speech, complete with verbal drum roll); low points (the college nervous breakdown, complete with the list of witnesses); and turning points. The entire two-hour session is recorded and transcribed.
In analyzing the texts, the researchers found strong correlations between the content of people’s current lives and the stories they tell. Those with mood problems have many good memories, but these scenes are usually tainted by some dark detail. The pride of college graduation is spoiled when a friend makes a cutting remark. The wedding party was wonderful until the best man collapsed from drink. A note of disappointment seems to close each narrative phrase.
By contrast, so-called generative adults — those who score highly on tests measuring civic-mindedness, and who are likely to be energetic and involved — tend to see many of the events in their life in the reverse order, as linked by themes of redemption. They flunked sixth grade but met a wonderful counselor and made honor roll in seventh. They were laid low by divorce, only to meet a wonderful new partner. Often, too, they say they felt singled out from very early in life — protected, even as others nearby suffered.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Solar Flashlight Lets Africa’s Sun Deliver the Luxury of Light to the Poorest Villages
The utter darkness that sets in post sunset is one of the starkest memories I have with regard to my trips to Africa, as well as other places of destitution across the globe. The lack of light really impacts productivity of individuals in many ways...
Since August 2005, when visits to an Eritrean village prompted him to research global access to artificial light, Mr. Bent, 49, a former foreign service officer and Houston oilman, has spent $250,000 to develop and manufacture a solar-powered flashlight.
His invention gives up to seven hours of light on a daily solar recharge and can last nearly three years between replacements of three AA batteries costing 80 cents.
Over the last year, he said, he and corporate benefactors like Exxon Mobil have donated 10,500 flashlights to United Nations refugee camps and African aid charities.
Another 10,000 have been provided through a sales program, and 10,000 more have just arrived in Houston awaiting distribution by his company, SunNight Solar.
“I find it hard sometimes to explain the scope of the problems in these camps with no light,” Mr. Bent said. “If you’re an environmentalist you think about it in terms of discarded batteries and coal and wood burning and kerosene smoke; if you’re a feminist you think of it in terms of security for women and preventing sexual abuse and violence; if you’re an educator you think about it in terms of helping children and adults study at night.”
(..)
With a little research, he discovered that close to two billion people around the world go without affordable access to light.
(..)The flashlights usually sell for about $19.95 in American stores, but he has established a BoGo — for Buy One, Give One — program on his Web site, BoGoLight.com, where if you buy one flashlight for $25, he will buy and ship another one to Africa, and donate $1 to one of the aid groups he works with.
Since August 2005, when visits to an Eritrean village prompted him to research global access to artificial light, Mr. Bent, 49, a former foreign service officer and Houston oilman, has spent $250,000 to develop and manufacture a solar-powered flashlight.
His invention gives up to seven hours of light on a daily solar recharge and can last nearly three years between replacements of three AA batteries costing 80 cents.
Over the last year, he said, he and corporate benefactors like Exxon Mobil have donated 10,500 flashlights to United Nations refugee camps and African aid charities.
Another 10,000 have been provided through a sales program, and 10,000 more have just arrived in Houston awaiting distribution by his company, SunNight Solar.
“I find it hard sometimes to explain the scope of the problems in these camps with no light,” Mr. Bent said. “If you’re an environmentalist you think about it in terms of discarded batteries and coal and wood burning and kerosene smoke; if you’re a feminist you think of it in terms of security for women and preventing sexual abuse and violence; if you’re an educator you think about it in terms of helping children and adults study at night.”
(..)
With a little research, he discovered that close to two billion people around the world go without affordable access to light.
(..)The flashlights usually sell for about $19.95 in American stores, but he has established a BoGo — for Buy One, Give One — program on his Web site, BoGoLight.com, where if you buy one flashlight for $25, he will buy and ship another one to Africa, and donate $1 to one of the aid groups he works with.
The Short, Sad History of Chad’s ‘Model’ Oil Project
A well-written summary of the Chad Oil project fiasco which serves to illuminate why it can be so difficult to do business in many places in Africa...
But since the arrival of the oil money, life in Chad, a country three times the size of California with only a few hundred miles of paved roads, has gotten worse: the conflict in Darfur has spread from Sudan into Chad; the country’s government, already weak and corrupt, has become weaker and more corrupt; and bandits have become rebels. All of this in a country of 9 million people, 80 percent of whom live on less than a dollar a day.
(..)
Statistically, it’s not a surprise that oil money has destabilized Chad. Many academic studies show that underdeveloped countries that are highly dependent on money from natural resources tend to be poorer, less democratic and more unstable than similar countries without resource revenues. What’s surprising is how quickly Chad has deteriorated.
(..)
“The shorthand of what went wrong in Chad is that the revenue-management law was based on the expectation that a law could fix something in a country without the rule of law,” Ian Gary, a policy advisor for the relief agency Oxfam, who has been studying the project since its inception, told me. “Chad has no independent judiciary, no history of peaceful transfer of power and no locally elected officials. All the power is located in the presidency, and it’s only grown more concentrated over time. The [World Bank] characterized the project as ‘High risk. High reward.’ If it went well the bank would have looked good, but all the risk was born by the people of Chad.” (World Bank employees have blogged about their shock and bewilderment at being evacuated because of fighting in the capital this December.)
But since the arrival of the oil money, life in Chad, a country three times the size of California with only a few hundred miles of paved roads, has gotten worse: the conflict in Darfur has spread from Sudan into Chad; the country’s government, already weak and corrupt, has become weaker and more corrupt; and bandits have become rebels. All of this in a country of 9 million people, 80 percent of whom live on less than a dollar a day.
(..)
Statistically, it’s not a surprise that oil money has destabilized Chad. Many academic studies show that underdeveloped countries that are highly dependent on money from natural resources tend to be poorer, less democratic and more unstable than similar countries without resource revenues. What’s surprising is how quickly Chad has deteriorated.
(..)
“The shorthand of what went wrong in Chad is that the revenue-management law was based on the expectation that a law could fix something in a country without the rule of law,” Ian Gary, a policy advisor for the relief agency Oxfam, who has been studying the project since its inception, told me. “Chad has no independent judiciary, no history of peaceful transfer of power and no locally elected officials. All the power is located in the presidency, and it’s only grown more concentrated over time. The [World Bank] characterized the project as ‘High risk. High reward.’ If it went well the bank would have looked good, but all the risk was born by the people of Chad.” (World Bank employees have blogged about their shock and bewilderment at being evacuated because of fighting in the capital this December.)
Monday, May 21, 2007
How to REALLY Trade Like Warren Buffett
Many investors are disciples of Berkshire Hathaway’s Warren Buffett. Buffett learned his craft from his mentor, Benjamin Graham, author of the legendary tomes "Security Analysis" and "Intelligent Investor". Graham stated the following in 1976, shortly before his death [to the Journal of Finance]:
"I am no longer an advocate of elaborate techniques of security analysis in order to find superior value opportunities. This was a rewarding activity, say, 40 years ago, when [the bible of fundamental stock analysis, Graham and Dodd's Security Analysis] was first published; but the situation has changed. I doubt whether such extensive efforts will generate sufficiently superior selections to justify their cost."
Would the student be able to prove the teacher wrong? Buffet's Chairman’s Letter [2005] in the Berkshire Hathaway annual report indicates that the per-share book value of Berkshire Hathaway has increased at an average annual rate of 21.5% since 1965. Compared to an average of 10.3% for the S&P 500 total return including dividends, the outperformance is striking.
"I am no longer an advocate of elaborate techniques of security analysis in order to find superior value opportunities. This was a rewarding activity, say, 40 years ago, when [the bible of fundamental stock analysis, Graham and Dodd's Security Analysis] was first published; but the situation has changed. I doubt whether such extensive efforts will generate sufficiently superior selections to justify their cost."
Would the student be able to prove the teacher wrong? Buffet's Chairman’s Letter [2005] in the Berkshire Hathaway annual report indicates that the per-share book value of Berkshire Hathaway has increased at an average annual rate of 21.5% since 1965. Compared to an average of 10.3% for the S&P 500 total return including dividends, the outperformance is striking.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
How To Beat The Stock Market: Buy Companies With High Customer Satisfaction Scores
Using a back-tested paper portfolio and an actual case, the authors of a study published in the Journal of Marketing found that companies at the top 20% of the the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) greatly outperformed the the stock market, generating a 40% return.
From 1996-2003, the portfolio outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 93%, the S&P 500 by 201%, and NASDAQ by 335%.
From 1996-2003, the portfolio outperformed the Dow Jones Industrial Average by 93%, the S&P 500 by 201%, and NASDAQ by 335%.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Abuses in Enrollment Tactics Found for Private Medicare
Insurance agents in at least 39 states used illegal or unethical tactics to sell private Medicare plans, in some cases enrolling the dead and mentally incompetent, impersonating Medicare representatives, and using personal information stolen from federal records, according to interviews and documents released to Congress.
"Medicare Advantage" plans and enrollments have exploded in the past year, touted by the Bush administration as a valuable alternative to Medicare, the federal health insurance program for seniors.
"Medicare Advantage" plans and enrollments have exploded in the past year, touted by the Bush administration as a valuable alternative to Medicare, the federal health insurance program for seniors.
This Elephant Asks, What’s Your Dosha?
MENTION the name Elephant Pharmacy to people here and the response is, That’s the drugstore that prescribes yoga. In fact, Elephant Pharm, as it calls itself, offers a wide variety of alternative remedies — yoga perhaps being the most mainstream — besides traditional prescriptions. Such branding is invaluable to a small company like this, which is striving to carve a niche as the only drugstore in America thinking outside the big box.
Elephant Pharm’s mission is to become a “natural community hub,” where conventional medicine meets other forms of health care, a combination that it says is not found in any other drugstore.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Eye on helping others
My dear friends Devin and Laurie Harrison are recognized by the Washington Ophthalmologic Society for their humanitarian work!!!
Each year, the Washington State Academy of Eye Physicians and Surgeons (WAEPS) selects one of its members for the Outstanding Humanitarian Service Award. This year’s award went to Harrison. He was was honored during the WAEPS Annual Meeting on March 30, at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center in Seattle. Harrison spent over two years in Nigeria caring for those in dire need of eye care. Many of his patients overseas can now see, thanks to Harrison’s service and skills as a comprehensive ophthalmologist and cataract surgeon. In addition to removal of many cataracts, he treated numerous serious and unusual maladies of the eye and periocular tissues, many of which are never seen in the U.S. “There is one ophthalmologist per every million people over there,” he said. “There’s such a backlog of people who need help there.”
(..)
“I would love to go back to Africa,” he said, adding that there is a continual need for equipment and training augmentation. And the people he has trained simply need an occasional break.
Harrison’s wife Laurie accompanied him to Nigeria and supported his many humanitarian efforts. With them were their two young children Luke and Kiras. All four were victims of armed robbery and had to be evacuated during riots and fighting between Christians and Muslims.
“The work experience was great,” Harrison said. “Living there was sometimes a challenge.”
The award is based on criteria established by the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the national parent organization of WAEPS and the other state ophthalmology societies throughout the United States. The criteria include exceptional service to disadvantaged people in the United States or abroad, sometimes in settings of high risk to the ophthalmologist, as well as personal sacrifice.
In nominating Harrison for the award, several ophthalmologists spoke of his 24/7 humanitarianism, not just for a month or two years of service but for an ongoing ever-present calling to selflessly serve those in need. He has touched the lives of many, both here and abroad.
“That’s one of the reasons I chose ophthalmology,” he said. “I had dreamed of traveling there for years. There’s such a huge need there.”
Harrison has also been nominated by WAEPS to receive the AAO’s 2007 Outstanding Humanitarian Service Award, which will be presented during the AAO Meeting in New Orleans on November 11.
Each year, the Washington State Academy of Eye Physicians and Surgeons (WAEPS) selects one of its members for the Outstanding Humanitarian Service Award. This year’s award went to Harrison. He was was honored during the WAEPS Annual Meeting on March 30, at the Bell Harbor International Conference Center in Seattle. Harrison spent over two years in Nigeria caring for those in dire need of eye care. Many of his patients overseas can now see, thanks to Harrison’s service and skills as a comprehensive ophthalmologist and cataract surgeon. In addition to removal of many cataracts, he treated numerous serious and unusual maladies of the eye and periocular tissues, many of which are never seen in the U.S. “There is one ophthalmologist per every million people over there,” he said. “There’s such a backlog of people who need help there.”
(..)
“I would love to go back to Africa,” he said, adding that there is a continual need for equipment and training augmentation. And the people he has trained simply need an occasional break.
Harrison’s wife Laurie accompanied him to Nigeria and supported his many humanitarian efforts. With them were their two young children Luke and Kiras. All four were victims of armed robbery and had to be evacuated during riots and fighting between Christians and Muslims.
“The work experience was great,” Harrison said. “Living there was sometimes a challenge.”
The award is based on criteria established by the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the national parent organization of WAEPS and the other state ophthalmology societies throughout the United States. The criteria include exceptional service to disadvantaged people in the United States or abroad, sometimes in settings of high risk to the ophthalmologist, as well as personal sacrifice.
In nominating Harrison for the award, several ophthalmologists spoke of his 24/7 humanitarianism, not just for a month or two years of service but for an ongoing ever-present calling to selflessly serve those in need. He has touched the lives of many, both here and abroad.
“That’s one of the reasons I chose ophthalmology,” he said. “I had dreamed of traveling there for years. There’s such a huge need there.”
Harrison has also been nominated by WAEPS to receive the AAO’s 2007 Outstanding Humanitarian Service Award, which will be presented during the AAO Meeting in New Orleans on November 11.
Monday, May 14, 2007
The Witness Next Door
One of the most unusual people in New Jersey these days is a tall 34-year-old black man named Daoud Hari. Others may lose their tempers at traffic jams on the turnpike, but he’s just glad he’s no longer being tortured.
Mr. Hari has just arrived in the U.S. from Chad and Darfur, where he says he was beaten and told repeatedly he was going to be executed. He is one of just a handful of Darfuris — his lawyer knows of two others — whom the U.S. has accepted as refugees.
(..)
Interpreters and drivers are the secret to good international reporting, and they do much of the work, take most of the risks and get none of the credit. Mr. Hari regularly interpreted for other journalists, repeatedly putting himself in danger to get out the stories.
Finally, after more than a month, Sudan freed Mr. Hari along with Mr. Salopek and the driver. Eventually Mr. Hari made his way back to Chad, and the U.S. granted him status as a political refugee. It is disorienting to be with him here, where we are both clean, rested and safe.
Mr. Hari’s presence in the U.S. underscores a profound difference between Darfur and past genocides: In the past, we could always claim that we didn’t fully appreciate what was going on until too late.It was only a faint reed of an excuse, for in fact information always did trickle out about past genocides even as they were underway. But this time we can’t even feign ignorance.
A superb new documentary, “The Devil Came on Horseback,” provides a wrenching tour through the eyes of a tormented American military observer there. A handful of books chronicle the killings; one of them, “Not on Our Watch,” has hit the best-seller list with its suggestions for what citizens can do. President Bush has described the slaughter in Darfur as genocide since 2004.
Google Earth has developed a first-rate program to observe the devastation from above. On my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, you can see a man whose eyes were gouged out by the janjaweed as well as video from the journey last year with Mr. Hari.
Or, if you live in New Jersey, you can simply turn to one of your newest neighbors, and see the pain in his eyes as he wonders if his sisters are still alive.
Mr. Hari has just arrived in the U.S. from Chad and Darfur, where he says he was beaten and told repeatedly he was going to be executed. He is one of just a handful of Darfuris — his lawyer knows of two others — whom the U.S. has accepted as refugees.
(..)
Interpreters and drivers are the secret to good international reporting, and they do much of the work, take most of the risks and get none of the credit. Mr. Hari regularly interpreted for other journalists, repeatedly putting himself in danger to get out the stories.
Finally, after more than a month, Sudan freed Mr. Hari along with Mr. Salopek and the driver. Eventually Mr. Hari made his way back to Chad, and the U.S. granted him status as a political refugee. It is disorienting to be with him here, where we are both clean, rested and safe.
Mr. Hari’s presence in the U.S. underscores a profound difference between Darfur and past genocides: In the past, we could always claim that we didn’t fully appreciate what was going on until too late.It was only a faint reed of an excuse, for in fact information always did trickle out about past genocides even as they were underway. But this time we can’t even feign ignorance.
A superb new documentary, “The Devil Came on Horseback,” provides a wrenching tour through the eyes of a tormented American military observer there. A handful of books chronicle the killings; one of them, “Not on Our Watch,” has hit the best-seller list with its suggestions for what citizens can do. President Bush has described the slaughter in Darfur as genocide since 2004.
Google Earth has developed a first-rate program to observe the devastation from above. On my blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground, you can see a man whose eyes were gouged out by the janjaweed as well as video from the journey last year with Mr. Hari.
Or, if you live in New Jersey, you can simply turn to one of your newest neighbors, and see the pain in his eyes as he wonders if his sisters are still alive.
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Fisher Is a Father First, and a Jazz Player Later
The intra-arterial chemotherapy mentioned here seems like it could be a very promising way of treating retinoblastoma...
OAKLAND, Calif., May 10 — Derek Fisher had 30 minutes Tuesday morning to decide whether to remove his daughter’s left eye.
Fisher, a point guard for the Utah Jazz, sat in an office at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, across from Dr. David Abramson and Dr. Pierre Gobin, asking them how to cure the cancer that had formed in his baby girl’s retina.
“He really had three choices,” Abramson said. “Remove the eye, remove the eye or remove the eye.”
Last week in Salt Lake City, an advanced case of retinoblastoma, a cancerous tumor of the retina found in about 300 children a year, was diagnosed in Fisher’s 10-month-old daughter, Tatum. Removing the eye is the most common way to remove the tumor.
There was one other option, but it seemed too risky. Last year, Abramson and Gobin developed a procedure called intra-arterial chemotherapy, which allows them to treat the disease without removing an eye.
Friday, May 11, 2007
Thursday, May 10, 2007
Save the Darfur Puppy
Finally, we’re beginning to understand what it would take to galvanize President Bush, other leaders and the American public to respond to the genocide in Sudan: a suffering puppy with big eyes and floppy ears.
That’s the implication of a series of studies by psychologists trying to understand why people — good, conscientious people — aren’t moved by genocide or famines. Time and again, we’ve seen that the human conscience just isn’t pricked by mass suffering, while an individual child (or puppy) in distress causes our hearts to flutter.
(..)
And after I began visiting Darfur in 2004, I was flummoxed by the public’s passion to save a red-tailed hawk, Pale Male, that had been evicted from his nest on Fifth Avenue in New York City. A single homeless hawk aroused more indignation than two million homeless Sudanese.
(..)
In one experiment, people in one group could donate to a $300,000 fund for medical treatments that would save the life of one child — or, in another group, the lives of eight children. People donated more than twice as much money to help save one child as to help save eight.
(..)
“Our capacity to feel is limited,” Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon writes in a new journal article, “Psychic Numbing and Genocide,” which discusses these experiments. Professor Slovic argues that we cannot depend on the innate morality even of good people. Instead, he believes, we need to develop legal or political mechanisms to force our hands to confront genocide.
(..)
But, frankly, after four years of watching the U.N. Security Council, the International Criminal Court and the Genocide Convention accomplish little in Darfur, I’m skeptical that either human rationality or international law can achieve much unless backed by a public outcry.
So maybe what we need isn’t better laws but more troubled consciences — pricked, perhaps, by a Darfur puppy with big eyes and floppy ears. Once we find such a soulful dog in peril, we should call ABC News. ABC’s news judgment can be assessed by the 11 minutes of evening news coverage it gave to Darfur’s genocide during all of last year — compared with 23 minutes for the false confession in the JonBenet Ramsey case.
If President Bush and the global public alike are unmoved by the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of fellow humans, maybe our last, best hope is that we can be galvanized by a puppy in distress.
That’s the implication of a series of studies by psychologists trying to understand why people — good, conscientious people — aren’t moved by genocide or famines. Time and again, we’ve seen that the human conscience just isn’t pricked by mass suffering, while an individual child (or puppy) in distress causes our hearts to flutter.
(..)
And after I began visiting Darfur in 2004, I was flummoxed by the public’s passion to save a red-tailed hawk, Pale Male, that had been evicted from his nest on Fifth Avenue in New York City. A single homeless hawk aroused more indignation than two million homeless Sudanese.
(..)
In one experiment, people in one group could donate to a $300,000 fund for medical treatments that would save the life of one child — or, in another group, the lives of eight children. People donated more than twice as much money to help save one child as to help save eight.
(..)
“Our capacity to feel is limited,” Paul Slovic of the University of Oregon writes in a new journal article, “Psychic Numbing and Genocide,” which discusses these experiments. Professor Slovic argues that we cannot depend on the innate morality even of good people. Instead, he believes, we need to develop legal or political mechanisms to force our hands to confront genocide.
(..)
But, frankly, after four years of watching the U.N. Security Council, the International Criminal Court and the Genocide Convention accomplish little in Darfur, I’m skeptical that either human rationality or international law can achieve much unless backed by a public outcry.
So maybe what we need isn’t better laws but more troubled consciences — pricked, perhaps, by a Darfur puppy with big eyes and floppy ears. Once we find such a soulful dog in peril, we should call ABC News. ABC’s news judgment can be assessed by the 11 minutes of evening news coverage it gave to Darfur’s genocide during all of last year — compared with 23 minutes for the false confession in the JonBenet Ramsey case.
If President Bush and the global public alike are unmoved by the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of fellow humans, maybe our last, best hope is that we can be galvanized by a puppy in distress.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
Diet With Low Glycemic Index Slows AMD Progression
May 8, 2007 (Ft. Lauderdale) — People whose diet consists of foods that lead to a high dietary glycemic index have a substantially higher risk of progression of age-related macular degeneration (AMD), according to recent long-term results from the Age-Related Eye Disease Study (AREDS).
In fact, consumption of highly refined carbohydrates can lead to up to a 17% increased risk of AMD progression, according to a poster presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Vision and Research in Ophthalmology (ARVO).
(..)
Foods that contribute to a lower dietary glycemic index include things such as legumes, rolled oats, basmati rice, whole bran, whole grains, and even pasta if it is cooked al dente (slightly hard). Foods that contribute to a higher glycemic index include things such as instant oatmeal, overcooked pasta, white bread, and many types of potatoes, she said.
As a rule, foods that are more processed are more likely to increase blood sugar and foods that undergo less processing and are “whole” are thought to provide cardiovascular protection.
In fact, consumption of highly refined carbohydrates can lead to up to a 17% increased risk of AMD progression, according to a poster presented at the annual meeting of the Association for Vision and Research in Ophthalmology (ARVO).
(..)
Foods that contribute to a lower dietary glycemic index include things such as legumes, rolled oats, basmati rice, whole bran, whole grains, and even pasta if it is cooked al dente (slightly hard). Foods that contribute to a higher glycemic index include things such as instant oatmeal, overcooked pasta, white bread, and many types of potatoes, she said.
As a rule, foods that are more processed are more likely to increase blood sugar and foods that undergo less processing and are “whole” are thought to provide cardiovascular protection.
Doctors Reap Millions for Anemia Drugs
Two of the world’s largest drug companies are paying hundreds of millions of dollars to doctors every year in return for giving their patients anemia medicines, which regulators now say may be unsafe at commonly used doses.
The payments are legal, but very few people outside of the doctors who receive them are aware of their size. Critics, including prominent cancer and kidney doctors, say the payments give physicians an incentive to prescribe the medicines at levels that might increase patients’ risks of heart attacks or strokes.
(..)
Neither Amgen nor Johnson & Johnson has disclosed the total amount of the payments. But documents given to The New York Times show that at just one practice in the Pacific Northwest, a group of six cancer doctors received $2.7 million from Amgen for prescribing $9 million worth of its drugs last year.
(..)
The medicines — Aranesp and Epogen, from Amgen; and Procrit, from Johnson & Johnson — are among the world’s top-selling drugs, with combined sales of $10 billion last year. In this country, they represent the single biggest drug expense for Medicare and are given to about a million patients each year to treat anemia caused by kidney disease or cancer chemotherapy.
(..)
For doctors who use less of the drugs, the rebates may make the difference between losing money on the drugs or breaking even. Mr. Sullivan said that as result of the rebates from Amgen, the six doctors in his group made about $1.8 million in net profit on the drugs they prescribed.
The payments are legal, but very few people outside of the doctors who receive them are aware of their size. Critics, including prominent cancer and kidney doctors, say the payments give physicians an incentive to prescribe the medicines at levels that might increase patients’ risks of heart attacks or strokes.
(..)
Neither Amgen nor Johnson & Johnson has disclosed the total amount of the payments. But documents given to The New York Times show that at just one practice in the Pacific Northwest, a group of six cancer doctors received $2.7 million from Amgen for prescribing $9 million worth of its drugs last year.
(..)
The medicines — Aranesp and Epogen, from Amgen; and Procrit, from Johnson & Johnson — are among the world’s top-selling drugs, with combined sales of $10 billion last year. In this country, they represent the single biggest drug expense for Medicare and are given to about a million patients each year to treat anemia caused by kidney disease or cancer chemotherapy.
(..)
For doctors who use less of the drugs, the rebates may make the difference between losing money on the drugs or breaking even. Mr. Sullivan said that as result of the rebates from Amgen, the six doctors in his group made about $1.8 million in net profit on the drugs they prescribed.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
When Order Creates Itself
An anonymous commenter, responding to my previous column, suggested that my title “Our Lives as Atoms” is “more than a little puzzling,” and wondered “Where will all this lead us?” I’ve written about the amplified polarization of opinion in the political blogs, and about the abuse at Abu Ghraib prison, which had a disturbingly eerie resemblance to famous experiments at Stanford University 36 years ago. What does any of this have to do with atoms? Fair question. I’d like to start my answer by telling you about a strange phenomenon in Spitsbergen.
Where History Reigns
An interesting essay on the differences between England and the U.S. by the columnist David Brooks at the New York Times:
I got to enjoy many of the features I love about Britain: repressed emotions, overarticulate conversationalists and crustless sandwiches.
(..)
In short, Brits live with the constant presence of their ancestors. When Isaiah Berlin compared F.D.R. and Churchill, he observed that while Roosevelt had an untroubled faith in the future, Churchill’s “strongest sense is the sense of the past.”
History, in the British public culture, takes precedence over philosophy, psychology, sociology and economics. And with a few obvious exceptions, British historians have not seen history as the unfolding of abstract processes. They have not seen the human story as the march toward some culminating Idea.
(..)
Even philosophers in Britain tend to be skeptics, and emphasize how little we know or can know. Edmund Burke distrusted each individual’s stock of reason and put his faith in the accumulated wisdom of tradition. Adam Smith put his faith in the collective judgment of the market. Michael Oakeshott ridiculed rationalism. Berlin celebrated pluralism, arguing there is no single body of truth.
This skepticism permeates national life, for while the British can be socially deferential, they are rarely intellectually deferential. The French and the Germans might defer to their intellectuals, and the Arabs might defer to their clerics, but the British public is incapable. That’s why the British trade unions could take on the upper classes in their day, and why the Brits had an open debate about European unification. The British elites exerted enormous pressure in favor of union, but the tabloid readers didn’t care.
(..)
American journalists, for example, are spiritually descended from Walter Lippmann. We are always earnestly striving toward some future elevated state. British journalists are spiritually descended from Samuel Johnson. They are conversationalists enjoying the inevitable conflicts that, as W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman put it, pit the wrong but romantic against the right but repugnant.
I got to enjoy many of the features I love about Britain: repressed emotions, overarticulate conversationalists and crustless sandwiches.
(..)
In short, Brits live with the constant presence of their ancestors. When Isaiah Berlin compared F.D.R. and Churchill, he observed that while Roosevelt had an untroubled faith in the future, Churchill’s “strongest sense is the sense of the past.”
History, in the British public culture, takes precedence over philosophy, psychology, sociology and economics. And with a few obvious exceptions, British historians have not seen history as the unfolding of abstract processes. They have not seen the human story as the march toward some culminating Idea.
(..)
Even philosophers in Britain tend to be skeptics, and emphasize how little we know or can know. Edmund Burke distrusted each individual’s stock of reason and put his faith in the accumulated wisdom of tradition. Adam Smith put his faith in the collective judgment of the market. Michael Oakeshott ridiculed rationalism. Berlin celebrated pluralism, arguing there is no single body of truth.
This skepticism permeates national life, for while the British can be socially deferential, they are rarely intellectually deferential. The French and the Germans might defer to their intellectuals, and the Arabs might defer to their clerics, but the British public is incapable. That’s why the British trade unions could take on the upper classes in their day, and why the Brits had an open debate about European unification. The British elites exerted enormous pressure in favor of union, but the tabloid readers didn’t care.
(..)
American journalists, for example, are spiritually descended from Walter Lippmann. We are always earnestly striving toward some future elevated state. British journalists are spiritually descended from Samuel Johnson. They are conversationalists enjoying the inevitable conflicts that, as W. C. Sellar and R. J. Yeatman put it, pit the wrong but romantic against the right but repugnant.
Monday, May 07, 2007
Out of the Mouth of Babes...
"He never listens. I ask him everyday to clean his room and it looks like a tornado visits his room daily. He doesn't have chores. All I want him to do is keep his clean room. Is that asking too much?
As the lament over one of our older child goes on and on in rhythm with the turning of the wheels, it is as thought a dark cloud has descended directly into the front seat of the car, obscuring all else...
Out of the backseat, a beautiful, melodious voice innocently and insistently inquires,
"But do you still love him?"
Pin-drop silence as our 7 year old daughter resets reality for us....a ray of light piercing the darkness and dissolving the shadows of self-wrought distortions...
As the lament over one of our older child goes on and on in rhythm with the turning of the wheels, it is as thought a dark cloud has descended directly into the front seat of the car, obscuring all else...
Out of the backseat, a beautiful, melodious voice innocently and insistently inquires,
"But do you still love him?"
Pin-drop silence as our 7 year old daughter resets reality for us....a ray of light piercing the darkness and dissolving the shadows of self-wrought distortions...
Angela Jolie--Power Giver
Cause: Helping refugees, disaster victims, orphans. Jolie, 31, began work with the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Sierra Leone in 2001, the year she became a goodwill ambassador. She has put her time, influence and millions of dollars into helping people in Sudan, Chad and Thailand.
Impact: She donates one-third of her income to charity, and her three adopted children—Maddox, Zahara and Pax—are examples of her continuing commitment to helping those in need.
More of Angela Jolie's work with the organization, Global Action for Children:
Now Angelina has passionately joined forces with GAC, dedicating time, money and emotion to the cause. “My daughter Zahara was orphaned because of AIDS,” she told the audience in Washington, “So I don’t have to tell you how precious I think these children are.”
Sunday, May 06, 2007
The (Not So) Eagerly Modern Saudi
This article is an excellent snapshot of the state of flux in which many Saudis find themselves today. The article importantly highlights the surprisingly OPEN nature of the debate which is emerging... (tip of the hat to James)
SAUDI ARABIA, home of Islam’s holiest sites, flush with oil revenue, and increasingly the most influential player among Arab countries, has long resisted changing its ultratraditional ways. Now the intrusions of global economics and technology have begun to challenge some traditions in ways that the country’s idealists could not. And the strain that this is causing is showing in the form of surprisingly open debate about how much Saudis really want to modernize.
While the notorious religious police still roam this capital city, much is evolving in the way people live. Saudis are suddenly overwhelmed with credit card debt. Thousands have grown rich, and thousands more have lost large sums, in the stock market.
(..)
So Saudis are engaged in an increasingly public debate over their identity. Should the school curriculum be changed, with English taught before seventh grade? Should women drive? Should stores stay open past 10? What constitutes religion and what is tradition?
(..)
The surprisingly open nature of this discussion, itself a rarity in a society where people often do not know their own neighbors, has rattled nerves.
(..)
Fifty years ago, Riyadh, the Saudi capital, was a city of mud houses and people who had to make their own shoes. Today, the center of the city is wireless and has Starbucks, Saks Fifth Avenue and Baskin-Robbins.
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Friday, May 04, 2007
A Healthy Mix of Rest and Motion
...But new findings suggest that for at least one workout a week it pays to be both tortoise and hare — alternating short bursts of high-intensity exercise with easy-does-it recovery.
Weight watchers, prediabetics and those who simply want to increase their fitness all stand to gain.
This alternating fast-slow technique, called interval training, is hardly new. For decades, serious athletes have used it to improve performance.
But new evidence suggests that a workout with steep peaks and valleys can dramatically improve cardiovascular fitness and raise the body’s potential to burn fat.
Best of all, the benefits become evident in a matter of weeks.
(..)
A 2005 study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that after just two weeks of interval training, six of the eight college-age men and women doubled their endurance, or the amount of time they could ride a bicycle at moderate intensity before exhaustion. Eight volunteers in a control group, who did not do any interval training, showed no improvement in endurance.
Weight watchers, prediabetics and those who simply want to increase their fitness all stand to gain.
This alternating fast-slow technique, called interval training, is hardly new. For decades, serious athletes have used it to improve performance.
But new evidence suggests that a workout with steep peaks and valleys can dramatically improve cardiovascular fitness and raise the body’s potential to burn fat.
Best of all, the benefits become evident in a matter of weeks.
(..)
A 2005 study published in the Journal of Applied Physiology found that after just two weeks of interval training, six of the eight college-age men and women doubled their endurance, or the amount of time they could ride a bicycle at moderate intensity before exhaustion. Eight volunteers in a control group, who did not do any interval training, showed no improvement in endurance.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
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