Young Saudis, Vexed and Entranced by Love’s Rules

Asking a woman for her number can cause a young man anxiety anywhere. But in Saudi Arabia, getting caught with an unrelated woman can mean arrest, a possible flogging and dishonor, the worst penalty of all in a society where preserving a family’s reputation depends on faithful adherence to a strict code of separation between the sexes.
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That suggests that Saudi Arabia’s strict interpretation of Islam, largely uncontested at home by the next generation and spread abroad by Saudi money in a time of religious revival, will increasingly shape how Muslims around the world will live their faith. Young men like Nader and Enad are taught that they are the guardians of the family’s reputation, expected to shield their female relatives from shame and avoid dishonoring their families by their own behavior. It is a classic example of how the Saudis have melded their faith with their desert tribal traditions.

“One of the most important Arab traditions is honor,” Enad said. “If my sister goes in the street and someone assaults her, she won’t be able to protect herself. The nature of men is that men are more rational. Women are not rational. With one or two or three words, a man can get what he wants from a woman. If I call someone and a girl answers, I have to apologize. It’s a huge deal. It is a violation of the house.”
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“Love is dangerous,” Al Atti said as she sat with her sisters in the house. “It can ruin your reputation.”

Love on Girls’ Side of the Saudi Divide

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — The dance party in Atheer Jassem al-Othman’s living room was in full swing. The guests — about two dozen girls in their late teens — had arrived, and Ms. Othman and her mother were passing around cups of sweet tea and dishes of dates.

The separation between the sexes in Saudi Arabia is so extreme that it is difficult to overstate. Saudi women may not drive, and they must wear black abayas and head coverings in public at all times. They are spirited around the city in cars with tinted windows, attend girls-only schools and university departments, and eat in special “family” sections of cafes and restaurants, which are carefully partitioned from the sections used by single male diners.

Special women-only gyms, women-only boutiques and travel agencies, even a women-only shopping mall, have been established in Riyadh in recent years to serve women who did not previously have access to such places unless they were chaperoned by a male relative.

Playful as they are, girls like Ms. Othman and her friends are well aware of the limits that their conservative society places on their behavior. And, for the most part, they say that they do not seriously question those limits.
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Flirting by Phone

A woman can’t switch her phone’s Bluetooth feature on in a public place without receiving a barrage of the love poems and photos of flowers and small children which many Saudi men keep stored on their phones for purposes of flirtation. And last year, Al Arabiya television reported that some young Saudis have started buying special “electronic belts,” which use Bluetooth technology to discreetly beam the wearer’s cellphone number and e-mail address at passing members of the opposite sex.
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“My sister and I sometimes ask my mom, ‘Why didn’t you breast-feed our boy cousins, too?’ ” Shaden continued.

She was referring to a practice called milk kinship that predates Islam and is still common in the Persian Gulf countries. A woman does not have to veil herself in front of a man she nursed as an infant, and neither do her biological children. The woman’s biological children and the children she has nursed are considered “milk siblings” and are prohibited from marrying.

“If my mom had breast-fed my cousins, we could sit with them, and it would all be much easier,” Shaden said. She turned back to the stack of DVDs she had been rifling through, and held up a copy of Pride and Prejudice, the version with Keira Knightley as Elizabeth Bennet, a film she says she has seen dozens of times.

“It’s a bit like our society, I think,” Shaden said of late Georgian England. “It’s dignified, and a bit strict. Doesn’t it remind you a little bit of Saudi Arabia? It’s my favorite DVD.”

Shaden sighed, deeply. “When Darcy comes to Elizabeth and says ‘I love you’ — that’s exactly the kind of love I want.”

Burma junta 'seals cyclone zone'

Burma's military rulers have tightened access to areas hit by Cyclone Nargis, in spite of international pleas to allow foreign aid workers in.

A UN official in Rangoon says the military has erected more checkpoints to make sure foreigners cannot get to the worst-affected areas.

Thai Prime Minister Samak Sundaravej is in Burma trying to urge the generals to allow aid agencies to help the victims.

Meanwhile, forecasters say another cyclone is forming off Burma's coast.

The Hawaii-based Joint Typhoon Warning Center said on its website that "a significant tropical cyclone" could develop in the next 24 hours.

Aid agencies are warning that the ruling generals' refusal to sanction a major international relief effort will cause more deaths.

Worldwide Telescope

Want to see the same images that scientists at NASA use for their research or perform your own research with those images? Or do you want to see the Earth from the same perspective that astronauts see as they descend to Earth? How about taking a 5 minute break and viewing a panorama of a different city? Install WWT and start your explorations.

Out With the Boys for a Night of Numbering

“Could I pass for a boy?” I asked. The black skirt of my abaya still trailed the floor, but from the waist up I felt pretty pleased with the effect.

Fahad, the most talkative of the boys, snorted.

“No,” he said. “But I think that’s as good as we’re going to do. We’re going to put you in the middle seat, and if you see someone in another car staring, turn slowly away.”

We piled into the S.U.V., and Thamer clicked through a rap mix CD to find Akon’s “Smack That,” to set the right mood for an evening of numbering. The boys bobbed their heads in time to the music.

“Wanna jump up in my Lamborghini Gallardo/Maybe go to my place and just kick it, like Taebo?” Akon sang.

In reality, getting a girl to go anywhere with him, let alone to “kick it,” is a near impossibility, Fahad explained. For most young Saudi men, a night of numbering is simply a night driving around with friends, listening to music, chasing cars containing black-draped figures that could just as easily be old women as young girls. Since numbering is considered harassment, detention by the religious police is an ever-present possibility.

Hungry Burmese Child

A Burmese child asked for more food during aid delivery in Dedaya, Myanmar. It is estimated that one million people are homeless.

With or Without You - Sungha Jung

Musical instruments from around the world

Human ingenuity at its best...

Myanmar: Survivors of Cyclone Nargis

Although I have not had any contact with friends in Myanmar, apparently others have

U.N. Suspends Myanmar Aid After Supplies Seized by Junta

BANGKOK — The United Nations suspended relief supplies to Myanmar on Friday after the military government seized the food and equipment it had already sent into the country.

One United Nations official said he had never seen delays like this before in delivering relief supplies and aid officials. In Indonesia after the tsunami in 2004, he said, an air bridge of daily flights was established within 48 hours.

“The frustration caused by what appears to be a paperwork delay is unprecedented in modern humanitarian relief efforts,” said Mr. Risley. “It’s astonishing.”

Shattered Nation Proceeds With Vote

"Completely Surreal" is right...

The damage and disruptions from the storm — the death toll could rise by many tens of thousands, roadways and communications are blocked — forced the regime to postpone the voting in central Yangon and the much harder-hit Irrawaddy Delta, which lies to the south. Those areas will go to the polls on May 24. Elsewhere in the country, voting will proceed on Saturday.

Most of the international community considers the draft constitution — and the referendum — to be a sham. Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, a Brazilian lawyer and former United Nations human rights envoy who served as a liaison with the junta, ridiculed the draft constitution and the government’s ban on any public criticism of the document.

“Completely surreal,” he said.
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Among its stipulations: Parliamentary elections are scheduled for 2010 and a fourth of all seats are reserved for military officers. Also, Burmese who have married foreigners are ineligible for office, a codicil aimed squarely at Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and pro-democracy activist who remains under house arrest in Yangon. She was married to a British scholar, Michael Aris, who died in 1999.

It is widely expected that the vote will be resoundingly in favor of the draft. The government would probably not permit anything but a landslide. Soldiers, for example, will vote at their barracks, and government workers must vote in front of their bosses.

“Of course we will tick ‘yes,’ ” said a customer service agent at the new airport in Yangon. “We work for the government, what can we do?”

Aid Flows to Myanmar as Death Toll Rises to 22,500

The government's focus on passing the Constitutional Referendum in the midst of this tragedy is quite disturbing...

BANGKOK — The death toll from a powerful cyclone that struck Myanmar three days ago rose to 22,500 Tuesday, with a further 41,000 people still missing, the government said, and foreign governments and aid organizations began mobilizing for a major relief operation.

Shaken by the scope of the disaster, the authorities said they would delay a vote in the worst affected areas on a new constitution that was meant to cement the military’s grip on power.

The death toll was the latest in a steadily escalating official count since Cyclone Nargis struck Myanmar early Saturday, devastating much of the fertile Irrawaddy Delta and Yangon, the nation’s main city.

At a news conference in Yangon, the minister for relief and resettlement, Maung Maung Swe, said 41,000 people were still missing in the aftermath of the cyclone, which triggered a surge of water inland from the sea.
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The constitutional referendum was still to go ahead on May 10 in other parts of the country but would be delayed until May 24 in the worst affected regions, where more than a third of the population live.

The postponement of the vote, a centerpiece of government policy, along with an appeal for foreign disaster relief assistance, were difficult concessions by an insular military junta that portrays itself as all-powerful and self-sufficient, analysts said.

The Truth About the Spinning Dancer

A popular e-mail going around features a spinning dancer that has been touted as a test of whether you are right-brained and creative or left-brained and logical. If you see the dancer spinning clockwise, the story goes, you are using more of your right brain, and if you see it moving counterclockwise, you are more of a left-brained person.

But while the dancer does indeed reflect the brain savvy of its creator, Japanese Web designer Nobuyuki Kayahara, it is not a brain test. Instead, it is simply an optical illusion called a reversible, or ambiguous, image. Images like this one have been long studied by scientists to learn more about how vision works.

Food Politics

THE WHOLE world is feeling the impact of soaring food and commodity prices. A recent series in The Post reported that poor families in West Africa are selling precious livestock to buy staples, while some consumers in our own area have taken to hoarding cut-rate groceries. The surge in costs, unlike anything global food markets have seen since the 1970s, has many causes. It reflects one good trend -- rising demand for food as India and China prosper -- and a dangerous one -- rising oil prices. There has been drought in wheat-exporting Australia. Many countries have banned or discouraged food exports. Yet several contributing factors are made in the U.S.A. The Federal Reserve Board's interest rate cuts are weakening the dollar. They may also be driving speculators to bid up the price of commodities. And ethanol subsidies, coupled with Congress's new mandate to produce 36 billion gallons of ethanol annually by 2022, are diverting land from other crops to corn production -- and corn from food to energy.

Correcting policies that exacerbate the food crisis will be one of the next president's most urgent tasks

Surgery Shows Promise For Treatment of Diabetes

In dozens of studies involving thousands of patients, standard gastric bypass surgery cleared up diabetes in more than 80 percent of obese patients who had the disease, raising the possibility that surgery would help those who weigh less.

Financially viable healthcare systems for the rural poor

Aravind Eye Hospitals (AEH) and Narayana Hrudayalaya (NH) are two pioneering India-based social enterprises providing healthcare to the rural poor. Let us attempt to study their individual models and compare and contrast them emphasizing their long-term sustainability and scope for expansion.

"Michael Jackson meets Bhangra"

Prevention: So Many Mosquitoes, Only So Many Nets

Simple as they are, even mosquito nets generate complicated numbers games.
Only one answer is easy: more are needed.

Last Friday, as part of the first official World Malaria Day, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called for “universal coverage” by 2010.

For simplicity’s sake, most experts go along with an estimate — that the world needs about 250 million nets at about $10 each.

That is for the current United Nations goal of having 80 percent of all pregnant women and children under age 5 who live in malarial areas under nets.

The goal is somewhat arbitrary, since the ideal would be nets for all, but that would more than double the cost.

The age 5 cutoff is used because older children usually develop some resistance through repeated infection. But some experts fear a surge in deaths of children 6 and up once they “outgrow” nets. About a million people, mostly children, die of malaria each year.

The 80 percent goal contains a safety margin: research suggests that when more than 60 percent of a village’s homes use insecticide-filled nets, mosquitoes die off instead of just biting unprotected neighbors.

Nick Cave Digs Himself a Singular Niche

Nick Cave, from "Down Under", has a new CD out!
He is a gifted song writer in the style of Lou Reed..


One of my favorite songs of his is "As I Sat Sadly By Her Side"
Melodramatic melodic structure accompany lyrics such as:

"But watch the one falling in the street
See him gesture to his neighbours
See him trampled beneath their feet
All outward motion connects to nothing
For each is concerned with their immediate need
Witness the man reaching up from the gutter
See the other one stumbling on who can not see"

With trembling hand I turned toward her
And pushed the hair out of her eyes
The kitten jumped back to her lap
As I sat sadly by her side"

Here is a Youtube link:

Mr. Mugabe's Violence

THE EVIDENCE is now overwhelming that the Zimbabwean regime of Robert Mugabe is engaged in a massive, orchestrated and brutal campaign to punish and terrorize its opponents.
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n some areas, torture camps have been established where victims are taken and beaten while their homes are looted and burned.
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. While the bureaucrats drag their feet, Mr. Mugabe's campaign of terror continues in the countryside -- and virtually ensures that if a presidential runoff is held it will not be free or fair. "What we are witnessing constitutes a form of rigging," said the chairman of the human rights association.
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In few places in the world could such a brazen operation proceed without triggering intervention by neighbors or the United Nations. Sadly, Zimbabwe remains one of those places, largely because the president of its most powerful neighbor, Thabo Mbeki of South Africa, has chosen to shield Mr. Mugabe from pressure. Though the U.N. Security Council finally met to consider the Zimbabwean situation yesterday, it did so in private and issued no statement -- because its current chairman happens to be from South Africa. The Southern African Development Community has been similarly stymied, even though its chairman, Zambia's Levy Mwanawasa, has courageously stood up against Mr. Mugabe.

Beautiful website

This site beautifully showcases a very talented wedding photographer...

Nothing But Nets

This website was mentioned in the comment section of the post on World Malaria Day.
This is a neat website that deserves its own entry.
Play a game and help someone get an insecticide treated bed net--great concept!
(I love the interconnection of our time through the internet!)

We’ve got another way for you to get in the game and help prevent malaria! All you have to do to help save a life is play Deliver the Net, a cool new game created by the UN Foundation to commemorate World Malaria Day, April 25th. The challenge: race the sun and hand out as many insecticide-treated bed nets as you can to African families. The more nets you deliver – before the mosquitoes come out – the more lives you save. Once you’re done playing the game, sign up, confirm your email, and a life-saving bed net will be sent on your behalf!*

FDA takes closer look at complaints from Lasik customers

This should provide additional quality information about the procedure for patients as well as the ophthalmologists who perform this procedure (I don't).
Most studies I have read have demonstrated >95% satisfaction with the procedure by patients who have had it done. I am curious what prompted the FDA to get involved--what were the issues behind the scene that led the FDA to look into this particular procedure of all the surgical procedures that are performed across the board.
I personally don't at all mind wearing glasses and thus have never considered having the procedure.

WASHINGTON - A decade after Lasik eye surgery hit the market, patients left with fuzzy instead of clear vision are airing their grievances before federal health officials.


Make no mistake: Most Lasik recipients do walk away with crisper vision, some better than 20/20.

But not everyone's a good candidate, and an unlucky few do suffer life-changing side effects: poor vision, painful dry eyes, glare or problems seeing at night.

How big are the risks? The Food and Drug Administration thinks about 5 percent of patients are dissatisfied with Lasik. How many struggle daily with side effects? How many are just unhappy that they couldn't completely ditch their glasses? The range of effects on patients' quality of life is a big unknown.
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But doctors advise against Lasik for one in four people who seek the surgery. Their pupils may be too large or corneas too thin or they may have some other condition that can increase the risk of a poor outcome.

Solomon estimates that fewer than 1 percent of patients have severe complications that leave poor vision. Other side effects, however, are harder to pin down. Dry eye, for instance, can range from an annoyance to so severe that people suffer intense pain and need surgery to retain what little moisture their eyes form. That's the kind of question the FDA's new study is being designed to answer.

United Airlines, FedEx donate plane for new Flying Eye Hospital

ORBIS, a non-profit development organisation dedicated to saving sight worldwide, announced yesterday it would replace its current DC-10 Flying Eye Hospital with a DC-10 Series 30 freighter, with United Airlines and FedEx donating the aeroplane.
The $US 2 million donation is based on the plane’s estimated value and being funded equally by United and FedEx.

Pay Attention! Brain Scanners Detect Slip-Ups Before You Do

A mindless mistake on a monotonous task may feel like a momentary glitch, but its mental roots run deep.

In a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers used fMRI machines to record neurological patterns preceding careless errors.

The recordings revealed a cascade of shifting activity in the parts of the brain associated with focusing attention and maintaining routines. Researchers observed test subjects' minds going on autopilot up to half a minute before the subjects actually made mistakes, even though the subjects weren't aware of their own lapses of attention.

From Boston to Burma, with vision

Dr. Bill Ragan, a wonderful anesthesiologist, gives his perspective on the Orbis trip to Burma in this article published in The Boston Globe. He writes well, capturing the feeling of the country as well as the reward of treating the patients...

Across Globe, Empty Bellies Bring Rising Anger

In Cairo, the military is being put to work baking bread as rising food prices threaten to become the spark that ignites wider anger at a repressive government. In Burkina Faso and other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, food riots are breaking out as never before. In reasonably prosperous Malaysia, the ruling coalition was nearly ousted by voters who cited food and fuel price increases as their main concerns.

“It’s the worst crisis of its kind in more than 30 years,” said Jeffrey D. Sachs, the economist and special adviser to the United Nations secretary general, Ban Ki-moon. “It’s a big deal and it’s obviously threatening a lot of governments. There are a number of governments on the ropes, and I think there’s more political fallout to come.”

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Leaders who ignore the rage do so at their own risk. President René Préval of Haiti appeared to taunt the populace as the chorus of complaints about la vie chère — the expensive life — grew. He said if Haitians could afford cellphones, which many do carry, they should be able to feed their families. “If there is a protest against the rising prices,” he said, “come get me at the palace and I will demonstrate with you.”

When they came, filled with rage and by the thousands, he huddled inside and his presidential guards, with United Nations peacekeeping troops, rebuffed them. Within days, opposition lawmakers had voted out Mr. Préval’s prime minister, Jacques-Édouard Alexis, forcing him to reconstitute his government. Fragile in even the best of times, Haiti’s population and politics are now both simmering.
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The Poor Eat Mud:
In Haiti, where three-quarters of the population earns less than $2 a day and one in five children is chronically malnourished, the one business booming amid all the gloom is the selling of patties made of mud, oil and sugar, typically consumed only by the most destitute.

“It’s salty and it has butter and you don’t know you’re eating dirt,” said Olwich Louis Jeune, 24, who has taken to eating them more often in recent months. “It makes your stomach quiet down.”

Discussion Panel on Human Rights at KSU

Wow--I find this very cool!

Discussion Panel on Human Rights at KSU

World Malaria Day April 25

As per Dr. Jeffrey Sachs at the UniteforSight conference at Yale, there may be some major malaria eradication programs announced around the time of World Malaria Day.

If you want to help, consider contributing to World Vision...

Death doesn't knock, it buzzes.

Your gift will multiply 8 times it's value and help provide life-saving medicines and supplies to to fight malaria and other child killers.

Deadly malaria is spread through the unfelt bite of a mosquito, and it claims more than one million innocent lives each year. What's especially tragic is that malaria is both preventable and treatable, but many parents lack the basic tools and medicines to keep their children safe and healthy.

Jackie Greene

For local Reno denizens, a great young talent, Jackie Greene, is coming to Bartley Ranch--a great outdoor venue.
I was initially turned onto Jackie Greene, by my good friend Albert Vitale, who several months ago flew in with his wife from Salt Lake City to join us for a Jackie Greene show at the Crystal Blue Club in Lake Tahoe. It was a great show--with great energy and musicianship.

Jackie combines the troubador style of Johny Cash, the lyrical wit of Bob Dylan, and the energy of Bruce Springsteen to create a very unique style.

Check him out!

A Worsening Food Crisis

THE WORLD'S most dangerous conflicts stem from religion and ideology -- tragic proof that man does not live by bread alone. But when bread is hard to get, that, too, causes unrest. And lately, it has been very expensive indeed: The World Bank estimates that global food prices have risen 83 percent in the last three years. Hence, food riots in Haiti, Egypt and Ethiopia and the use of troops in Pakistan and Thailand to protect crops and storage centers. Many countries are banning or limiting food exports. World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick says that 33 countries are at risk of food-related upheaval. Famine may revisit North Korea, parts of Africa or, disastrously for U.S. foreign policy, Afghanistan.
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To many, the villain is biofuels. U.S. and European ethanol programs, intended as an antidote to climate change and an alternative to OPEC oil, stand accused of snatching food from the world's hungry.
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But ethanol's impact should not be overstated. The International Food Policy Research Institute, which is critical of ethanol, pins about 25 to 33 percent of the recent price rise on biofuels; the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization guesses about 10 to 15 percent. Most of the crisis is rooted in three other factors: drought in grain-exporting Australia; the surging price of crude oil, which raises food prices through the costs of shipping and petrochemical fertilizer; and booming demand for food in China, India and other newly prosperous areas of the developing world. These areas consume not only more staples such as rice and wheat but also more meat from animals fed on grain. This trend is here to stay -- and, unlike Australian drought or oil inflation, no one should want it to go away. Lifting hundreds of millions of Asians out of poverty is a historic achievement.
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To cope with the current situation, the United States must contribute its share to help the U.N. World Food Program fill a $500 million gap in its budget. Congress should change U.S. law to let U.S. aid buy food in developing countries themselves, which could boost local producers. Looking further ahead, the U.S. and multilateral institutions must also support greater investment in farming in the developing world, including funding for research into improved crop yields, which has been in steady decline over the last 25 years.

Today's crisis could be tomorrow's opportunity. If the era of cheap food is over, higher prices might stimulate local agricultural production in Africa and other places that now depend on imports. This will be likelier if the United States and Europe finally dismantle the wasteful crop subsidies and trade barriers that fatten their farmers' bank accounts -- but distort international markets at the expense of the poor.

When an Upset Stomach Roils Your Trip

Up to 60 percent of travelers to developing countries suffer bouts of diarrhea, often from unsanitary food and water.

Studies have failed to show that better meal hygiene prevents stomach problems.

An antibiotic called Xifaxan has been approved to treat traveler’s diarrhea; many doctors prescribe it for prevention as well.

Orphan boy lives in garbage dump

CNN)--He doesn't know how old he is, but he thinks he's 7. His name is Khin Zaw Lin. He's lived in a garbage dump virtually his entire life.
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Lin is one of about 300 refugees in the dump who survive on other people's trash. Many are children. Some are women with babies.

Their daily routine follows the same pattern: They mill about the dump, waiting for the next truck to arrive, hoping for enough discarded food to get them through the day.

Lin pokes through the rubbish with a machete. He says he collects bottles and plastic for three cents a sack. He shows me his feet, which were filthy and ribbed with cuts.

He tells me through an interpreter that he can't afford shoes. He walks barefoot through the treacherous landscape.
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Lin is one of about 300 refugees in the dump who survive on other people's trash. Many are children. Some are women with babies.

Their daily routine follows the same pattern: They mill about the dump, waiting for the next truck to arrive, hoping for enough discarded food to get them through the day.

Lin pokes through the rubbish with a machete. He says he collects bottles and plastic for three cents a sack. He shows me his feet, which were filthy and ribbed with cuts.

He tells me through an interpreter that he can't afford shoes. He walks barefoot through the treacherous landscape.
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Lin gives the money to his adopted mother. She tells me that Lin's biological mother gave him to her in Myanmar when he was a baby because she couldn't cope with the responsibility.

Life under the military junta in Myanmar can be brutal. The country's economy is collapsing, and torture and rape under the country's military regime is commonplace. Lin's new mother decided to flee to Thailand in search of a better life. She found a garbage dump instead.

Still, she says scavenging for food in the dump is actually an improvement on her previous life.

As I listen to Lin's story, a question keeps going through my mind: How can a 7-year-old spend his entire childhood in this squalor? Video Watch as Lin and others root through the dump »

Perhaps it's because Lin is invisible -- he doesn't have a passport or papers. He is part of special group of refugees from Myanmar that don't officially exist.
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Near the end of my meeting with Lin, I ask his adopted mother if she, and Lin, would ever escape the rubbish dump.
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Her answer is as hard as the world she and Lin inhabit.

"Never."

Global Warming Rage Lets Global Hunger Grow

A demonstrator eats grass in front of a U.N. peacekeeping soldier during a protest against the high cost of living in Port-au-Prince


We drive, they starve. The mass diversion of the North American grain harvest into ethanol plants for fuel is reaching its political and moral limits.

The reality is that people are dying already," said Jacques Diouf, of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). "Naturally people won't be sitting dying of starvation, they will react," he said.

The UN says it takes 232kg of corn to fill a 50-litre car tank with ethanol. That is enough to feed a child for a year. Last week, the UN predicted "massacres" unless the biofuel policy is halted.

We are all part of this drama whether we fill up with petrol or ethanol. The substitution effect across global markets makes the two morally identical.

The Health Insurance Mafia

Get rid of health insurance? This article in the WSJ from Dr. Kellerman, clinical professor of pediatrics and psychology at USC's Keck School of Medicine suggests we do so.


The health insurance model is closest to the parasitic relationship imposed by the Mafia and the like. Insurance companies provide nothing other than an ambiguous, shifty notion of "protection." But even the Mafia doesn't stick its nose into the process; once the monthly skim is set, Don Whoever stays out of the picture, but for occasional "cost of doing business" increases. When insurance companies insinuate themselves into the system, their first step is figuring out how to increase the skim by harming the people they are allegedly protecting through reduced service.

Insurance is all about betting against negative consequences and the insurance business model is unique in that profits depend upon goods and services not being provided. Using actuarial tables, insurers place their bets. Sometimes even the canniest MIT grads can't help: Property and casualty insurers have collapsed in the wake of natural disasters.

Health insurers have taken steps to avoid that level of surprise: Once they affix themselves to the host – in this case dual hosts, both doctor and patient – they systematically suck the lifeblood out of the supply chain with obstructive strategies. For that reason, the consequences of any insurance-based health-care model, be it privately run, or a government entitlement, are painfully easily to predict. There will be progressively draconian rationing using denial of authorization and steadily rising co-payments on the patient end; massive paperwork and other bureaucratic hurdles, and steadily diminishing fee-recovery on the doctor end.

Fuel Choices, Food Crises and Finger-Pointing

To quote from Jeffrey Sachs talk at the UniteforSight meeting this weekend:
"Rich countries can put food in gas tanks while the poor can't afford to feed themselves."

The idea of turning farms into fuel plants seemed, for a time, like one of the answers to high global oil prices and supply worries. That strategy seemed to reach a high point last year when Congress mandated a fivefold increase in the use of biofuels.

But now a reaction is building against policies in the United States and Europe to promote ethanol and similar fuels, with political leaders from poor countries contending that these fuels are driving up food prices and starving poor people. Biofuels are fast becoming a new flash point in global diplomacy, putting pressure on Western politicians to reconsider their policies, even as they argue that biofuels are only one factor in the seemingly inexorable rise in food prices.

In some countries, the higher prices are leading to riots, political instability and growing worries about feeding the poorest people. Food riots contributed to the dismissal of Haiti’s prime minister last week, and leaders in some other countries are nervously trying to calm anxious consumers.

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According to the World Bank, global food prices have increased by 83 percent in the last three years. Rice, a staple food for nearly half the world’s population, has been a particular focus of concern in recent weeks, with spiraling prices prompting several countries to impose drastic limits on exports as they try to protect domestic consumers.

Extended Forecast: Bloodshed

The interrelation of climate change and global poverty was a recurring theme in a most amazing speech I heard this weekend at Yale by Jeffrey Sachs, author of "The End of Poverty," and more recently,
Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet.



Here’s a forecast for a particularly bizarre consequence of climate change: more executions of witches.

As we pump out greenhouse gases, most of the discussion focuses on direct consequences like rising seas or aggravated hurricanes. But the indirect social and political impact in poor countries may be even more far-reaching, including upheavals and civil wars — and even more witches hacked to death with machetes.

In rural Tanzania, murders of elderly women accused of witchcraft are a very common form of homicide. And when Tanzania suffers unusual rainfall — either drought or flooding — witch-killings double, according to research by Edward Miguel, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley.
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There is evidence that European witch-burnings in past centuries may also have resulted from climate variations and the resulting crop failures, economic distress and search for scapegoats. Emily Oster, a University of Chicago economist, tracked witchcraft trials and weather in Western Europe between 1520 and 1770 and found a close correlation: colder weather led to more crackdowns on witches.

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The point is that climate change will have consequences that will be difficult to foresee but will go far beyond weather or economics. There is abundant evidence that economic stress and crop failures — as climate scientists anticipate in poor countries — can lead to violence and upheavals.

In the United States, for example, some historians have found correlations between recessions or declines in farm values and increased lynchings of blacks.

Paul Collier, an Oxford University expert on global poverty, found that economic stagnation in poor countries leads to a rising risk of civil war. Professor Collier warns that climate change is likely to reduce rainfall in southern Africa enough that corn will no longer be a viable crop there. Since corn is a major form of sustenance in that region, the result may be catastrophic food shortages — and civil conflict.

The area that may be hardest hit of all — aside from islands that disappear beneath the waves — is the fragile Sahel region south of the Sahara Desert in West Africa. The Sahel is already impoverished and torn by religious and ethnic tensions, and reduced rainfall could push the region into warfare.

“The poorest people on Earth are in the Sahel, barely eking out an existence, and climate change pushes them over the edge,” Professor Miguel said. “It’s totally unfair.”

His research suggests that a drought one year increases by 50 percent the risk that an African country will slip into civil war the next year.
(..)

The greenhouse gases that imperil Africa’s future are spewing from the United States, China and Europe. The people in Bangladesh and Africa emit almost no carbon, yet they are the ones who will bear the greatest risks of climate change. Some experts believe that the damage that the West does to poor countries from carbon emissions exceeds the benefit from aid programs.

Co-Payments for Expensive Drugs Soar

In ophthalmology, this exact scenario is faced by patients who have to pay 400$ co-pays for Lucentis for Macular Degneration. Fortunately, we have an excellent alternative in Avastin--the total cost of which is less than 50.00 total (vs Lucentis at >2000.00$).


Health insurance companies are rapidly adopting a new pricing system for very expensive drugs, asking patients to pay hundreds and even thousands of dollars for prescriptions for medications that may save their lives or slow the progress of serious diseases.

With the new pricing system, insurers abandoned the traditional arrangement that has patients pay a fixed amount, like $10, $20 or $30 for a prescription, no matter what the drug’s actual cost. Instead, they are charging patients a percentage of the cost of certain high-priced drugs, usually 20 to 33 percent, which can amount to thousands of dollars a month.

The system means that the burden of expensive health care can now affect insured people, too.
(..)
But the result is that patients may have to spend more for a drug than they pay for their mortgages, more, in some cases, than their monthly incomes.

The World Food Crisis

Most Americans take food for granted. Even the poorest fifth of households in the United States spend only 16 percent of their budget on food. In many other countries, it is less of a given. Nigerian families spend 73 percent of their budgets to eat, Vietnamese 65 percent, Indonesians half. They are in trouble.

Last year, the food import bill of developing countries rose by 25 percent as food prices rose to levels not seen in a generation. Corn doubled in price over the last two years. Wheat reached its highest price in 28 years. The increases are already sparking unrest from Haiti to Egypt. Many countries have imposed price controls on food or taxes on agricultural exports.

Trying to Figure Out the Cataclysmic Chasm in Healthcare

From "A Doctor in Manhattan:"

I mean, here we are, just plowing ahead curing everything right and left, leaving many of us to live longer and longer while women and children are dying at young ages from thing like malaria, measles and infant diarrhea. Diseases we in the developed world left behind in the history books years ago.

Really, really think about that. While we sit here worrying about which statin to take because we won't get off our fat ass to exercise, kids are dying all over Africa from malaria and measles.

That's because there's no master plan. There's no prioritizing where the money is going on a worldwide basis.

Now I know those laisse faire capitalists out there are saying "Leave it alone. Let it evolve. It's working, just not at the pace everyone wants it to. And not equally everywhere, but give it time. We're figuring it out..."

But are we figuring it out? Or are we just figuring out best how to make money doing it?

ORBIS publicity in Reno

What do you get when you meet with a fascinating reporter (that I would love to interview myself) and a photographer with a passion for international reporting and philanthropy? This: Local Publicity for Orbis!!!

The Rice Raiser

Today was a great day in that my wife and I celebrated the birthday of a friend of mine and his family at a brunch event today. Nothing like a Sunday Brunch on a sunny, Spring day at a quaint cafe, "Voila" with good friends...

During brunch, I also had the great fortune of meeting Ms. Lorri Sawatsky--visiting from Canada.
Lorrie is as example of an individual living life with courage, purpose, and vision. ( I love meeting people like this--the entire Orbis team fits into this category as well).

Lorri visited Cambodia several years ago and was appalled by the conditions of poverty she witnessed, including children using headlights to pick through garbage dumps for food...

Moved by her experiences, she has establised "The Rice Raiser" charity.
She is also working on getting non-profit status in the U.S.
Please check out her website: RiceRaiser.org

HCMC eye hospital to receive $500,000 donation

This is another example of why Orbis is the best ophthalmology NGO in existence:

Unlike many other programs, which are great in providing short-term solutions to eye care,
Orbis is totally focused, in a very comprehensive way, on sustainable eye care in the developing world, encompassing training as well as infrastructure.


Orbis International, a US non-profit organization devoted to blindness prevention in developing countries, will donate nearly US$500,000 to Ho Chi Minh City’s Eye Hospital to upgrade its pediatric department.

(..)

The project was recently approved by the municipal administration with Orbis funding US$490,000 and the hospital contributing an additional $60,000.

The plan is to equip the hospital with modern facilities, develop infrastructure and help train pediatric ophthalmologists from 22 southern provinces and cities.

The upgrades, scheduled for completion at the end of 2010, will help prevent blindness and improve the vision of children aged 15 and under in the region.

Myanmar Photos

Here are some links to photos from Myanmar on my son's Flickr sites:

Kyle's photos: http://flickr.com/photos/8758395@N04/

Ryans's photos: http://flickr.com/photos/ryandhindsa/

Which comes first (why stories matter)

From the always excellent Seth Godin blog:


Most of the time we do the work. The work is our initiative and our reactions and our responses and our output. The work is the decisions we make and the people we hire.

The work is what people talk about, because it's what we experience. In other words, the work tells a story.

But what if you haven't figured out a story yet?

Then the work is random. Then the story is confused or bland or indifferent and it doesn't spread.

On the other hand, if you decide what the story is, you can do work that matches the story. Your decisions will match the story. The story will become true because you're living it.

Leehom Helps The Blind With Online Auction

Leehom Wang (王力宏) yesterday unveiled a set of autographed t-shirts and baseball cap that he is putting up for auction to raise money for ORBIS, a charity that works to prevent and treat blindness in developing countries.

Leehom is fronting a contact lens commercial for Bausch & Lomb after becoming the company's first male face in Asia.

Bidding takes place on http://www.bausch.com.hk until 10 April. A set will be sold to the five highest bidders.

Getting to Mandalay for Orbis

Dolores, the incredibly busy Orbis travel agent, and I traded many emails to crystallize the flight to Mandalay for me and my family.

Itinerary: Reno--San Fran--Tokyo--Bangkok--Yangon--Mandalay.

Unfortunately the trip started off with a delay out of Reno.
By the time we arrived in San Francisco, our flight to Bangkok had taken off.

In San Francisco, we met with a United airline representative to re-book our flights to Mandalay.
This somewhat intellectual, actually nerdy, looking chap, confidently proclaimed that not only could he rebook our flights but that instead of having us recheck our baggage in Bangkok, he could have it checked all the way to Mandalay. The key to the success of this seemingly improbable goal was the use of some sort of “radio ID tag.” Taken in by his confidence, I stated to my wife, Shilpa, that he must be some sort of “savant” in the alternate reality of the air travel universe. Overhearing this comment and perhaps pleased that his greatness has been recognized, he glanced up from the counter with a broad smile, shook my hand vigorously and presented us with food vouchers for six hungry Dhindsa’s. Happily surprised by this gift, I took the occasion to lecture my children about the virtues of showing appreciation to strangers.

Many hours later after passing through Los Angeles, Tokyo, and Bangkok we arrived in Yangon, Myanmar! (Our suitcases, perhaps not surprisingly, did not arrive.)


When we arrived in Yangon, we saw Dr. Charlene Hsu and Dr. Jin Kim, two other members of the Orbis Volunteer Faculty team. They were having their picture taken in the airport by a tall, Middle Eastern man. For a moment, I thought that Ahmad Gomaa, the excellent and cherubic Egyptian ophthalmologist, who had been in charge of the Orbis program in Enugu, Nigeria had undergone a total makeover.

Breaking my sleep-deprived random associations, this possible male model then asked us to take his snapshot with the plane in the background… Then another set of photos—this time with the Dhindsa clan and Drs. Hsu and Kim. (At this point, I am thinking we did not get this paparazzi type treatment on our last Orbis trip in Enugu from Ahmed and Amelia). After the extended photo shoot, I asked the middle Eastern gentleman what the plan was now—pass through customs, baggage collection, get on connecting flight to Mandalay etc. ?
(I am also getting a bit nervous about all this photography in a government building—in... Myanmar.) He looks at me quizzically. I respond with my own look of confusion. Breaking the silence and dead-locked gazes, Dr. Hsu explains that this gentleman is not from Orbis , but simply a random passenger/tourist who wanted to have his photo taken, and that she and Dr. Kim then wanted their photo take with the plane in the background etc…”Okaaaay….”


Once we get through customs, we set about trying to deal with our lost luggage. Not being very facile in Burmese, we search about for an English-speaking airport official.
After a number of attempts we find someone who in halting English tells us to go wait at the “Lost Luggage” podium. Dutifully we do so. However, nobody comes to the podium for what seems to be an eternity. We try to engage airport officials passing by. They all smile politely and keep moving.

Meanwhile, my wife and I strategize:
Priority 1—Get to Mandalay by tomorrow am, as this is the official start of the program (screening day).
Priority 2—Get our luggage.

Shilpa suggests that she and the 4 kids could stay in Yangon, and hopefully catch a flight the next day to Mandalay, when the luggage arrives. I am thinking: There seems to be a dearth of English speakers (at least in the airport) and while Shilpa is fluent in Gujrati, and the kids in Latin, our Burmese vocabulary is limited to “Mingalarpar”--—“Hi.”

We will have no telephonic means of communication.-- in an unfamiliar country. As we mull together all these points, an angel appears—actually an English-speaking representative from Bangkok Air. After a bit of negotiation, she assures us that she will get our luggage to us in Mandalay. Still weighing the likelihood of this, Dr. Charlene Hsu suddenly appears with an expeditor hired by Orbis. The expeditor urgently informs us that the domestic flight to Mandalay is leaving imminently. Taking her at her word (forgetting about our luggage issues), all six of us break out into a run behind this middle aged lady expeditor, out of the international terminal, into the sweltering heat, and in to the domestic terminal, several blocks away.

In the departure lounge, we seat ourselves next to our new found friends: Drs. Hsu and Kim.

For the next 5 minutes we fan ourselves furiously prior to boarding the rather small “Mandalay Air” plane. I focus on the fact that we are now only an hour and a half away from Mandalay. Unexpectedly, about 30 minutes later the plane begins to descend. The Captain states that we are stopping in the new capital of Myanmar: "Naypyidaw." “Okaaay” …After about a 5 minute pause, the captain continues that we will let a few passengers off and take off again and head off to Mandalay."--alleviating my fear that we had boarded the wrong plane. I settle back in my seat as my mind now wanders back to the lost luggage. However, the plane remains on the tarmac for about 30 minutes, at which point the captain explains that we should be taking off in about 5 minutes-- after “technical difficulties” are solved. This "tehnical difficulty" phrase gets repeated every 5 minutes... for the next 30 minutes. It is then decided, without explanation, that the plane will be evacuated.

All the passengers are then shepherded to the terminal of the airport via a rather modern appearing (at least relative to the airplane) bus.

We are deposited in a glass encased waiting room in the terminal. We take this opportunity to get to know Dr. Hsu and Dr. Kim and some other passengers, including an American who does psychological counseling of former child soldiers in Liberia, and who is vacationing here. I am thinking her skills might come in handy any time—here as not only the kids, but the adults all seem a bit anxious. (Another example of the really unique people one meets in travel to exotic destinations). She keeps my 7 year old daughter entertained and happy by sharing roasted pumpkin seeds with her.(As I gaze at Isabelle's happy face—I ponder why we can’t all find stress relief in the ingestion of such simple morsels. Maybe that is why I am not a counselor of former child soldiers).

After about an hour, the airline officials kindly announce that we can leave our room of confinement and head off to the airport café, where they will be serving “refreshments.” The official casually notes that they are unable to repair the technical difficulties with the airplane but hopefully at some point another plane will come from Yangon to pick us up and take us to Mandalay. My wife and two little ones head through the narrow doorway toward the café’ with the child psychologist. I try to engage in conversation and even a bit of levity with Dr. Kim. But he just keeps shaking his head, muttering, “This is not good.”

Suddenly an airport shuttle bus comes up to the waiting room and starts loading up the passengers from our room. An airline spokesman, notes that the technical difficulties have been fixed. Feeling simultaneously confused and somewhat anxious in that I have no idea where my wife and little ones are, I try to exit through the door to get them. Another smiling airport official blocks my exit, gesturing me to go through the other doors to get on the bus. Unable to speak enough Burmese to explain my goals, I resort to hemi-ballistic, wild gesticulations. Out of the corner of my eye, I note that Dr. Kim and the rest of the gang are now headed off to the airplane as the shuttle pulls away.

A surge of desperation nearly propels me through the “human barrier” when my wife and kids show up at the doorway. Wipe brow. Breathe sigh of relief. Another shuttle bus comes to take us to the plane.

As we board the plane, we pass Dr. Kim, who looks up at me from his seat, shakes his head, and mutters, “This is not good.”

Fortunately, our trip to Mandalay is uneventful.

As we headed off the airplane, all six members of the Dhindsa family almost simultaneously utter one word: “Wow!”as we spotted the Orbis DC 10 flying eye hospital. It looks beautiful in its pristine white with the bold, blue logo and slogan emblazoned near the front of the aircraft: “Orbis
Saving Sight Worldwide.”

We are greeted at the airport by my old “kaibigan” (“friend” in Tagalog), Leo. Originally from the Phillipines, Leo is a scrub nurse with whom I had done thousands of cases together at the King Khaled Eye Specialist Hospital (KKESH). I had left KKESH and moved to Reno five years ago. Leo had left to work for KKESH 12 years ago to work for Orbis (which I belief is a career record for Orbis Flying Hospital staff. The intensity of the flying hospital usually can only be handled in one or two year increments). Leo was an amazingly good scrub tech back in the day in Saudi. We had a great time on the long bus ride back to the hotel catching up on our mutual acquaintances and reminiscing about the good old days at KKESH.

Once, we made it to the hotel we were greeted by Dr. Ekta Aggarwal, a most charming ophthalmologist from Chennai, and Orbis Medical Director, Dr. Hunter Cherwek. The always thinking Hunter, presciently anticipating that our luggage would be lost, bestowed upon us an extensive array of clotheing-- for all the Dhindsa’s, (his entire wardrobe?) including his famous, as I was later to learn, elastic-waisted pants). My 14 year old boy, Ryan spied a “Tiger Beer” T shirt in Hunter's wardrobe and quickly claimed it for himself.

We also had the pleasure of handing off the corneas we had brought all the way from Reno-- on ice. (Daneille had fedexed us these from the New York Orbis office the day before we left.) The kids, as Danielle had predicted, really got a kick out of our responsibility for "bringing the eyes" to Myanmar! (We were relieved to hear from the cornea specialist on the trip, Dr. Robert Pineda, that the corneas all appeared viable upon transplantation surgery).

Happy that we would not be condemned to wearing our rather “ripe” clothing much longer (Though our family is close-knit, any further sharing of body odor could lead to a rather spectacular unraveling of such ties, or so I was afraid), we relaxed in the well-appointed lobby with a hotel-provided refreshing, actually almost glowing, green lemonade drink--spiked with cayenne pepper. Savoring this unusual concoction and feeling quite content having finally hooked up with the Orbis crew, I allowed my adrenalin levels to come down-- to the strains of old Beatles standards wafting by from the local, live lobby band. Another unexpected pleasure in our first hour in Mandalay...




LEO--gets down!

TB Patients Chafe Under Lockdown in South Africa

PORT ELIZABETH, South Africa — The Jose Pearson TB Hospital here is like a prison for the sick. It is encircled by three fences topped with coils of razor wire to keep patients infected with lethal strains of tuberculosis from escaping.

But at Christmastime and again around Easter, dozens of them cut holes in the fences, slipped through electrified wires or pushed through the gates in a desperate bid to spend the holidays with their families. Patients have been tracked down and forced to return; the hospital has quadrupled the number of guards. Many patients fear they will get out of here only in a coffin.

“We’re being held here like prisoners, but we didn’t commit a crime,” Siyasanga Lukas, 20, who has been here since 2006, said before escaping last week. “I’ve seen people die and die and die. The only discharge you get from this place is to the mortuary.”

Struggling to contain a dangerous epidemic of extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis, known as XDR-TB, the South African government’s policy is to hospitalize those unlucky enough to have the disease until they are no longer infectious. Hospitals in two of the three provinces with the most cases — here in the Eastern Cape, as well as in the Western Cape — have sought court orders to compel the return of runaways.

Think Apple: It Boosts Creativity

(But all us Apple users already knew this :)


You don’t need to be a Mac owner to be a cutting-edge hipster. Turns out just thinking about Apple can make you more creative.

That’s according to researchers at Duke University and the University of Waterloo, who found that exposing people to a brand’s logo for 30 milliseconds will make them behave in ways associated with that brand. And in Apple’s case that means more creatively, Gavan Fitzsimons, one of the Duke professors who conducted the study, tells the Business Technology Blog. The study will be published in the April issue of the Journal of Consumer Research.

The Next Saffron Revolution

The Dalai Lama wants to talk peace, but the anger of his long-suffering people is only hardening.

The streets of Dharamsala, India, ordinarily a gantlet of signs for yoga schools and other New Age trekker traps, have turned into a huge open-air photo gallery of bloodied Tibetan corpses. It's a gruesome sight—awful enough, in fact, to crack the fabled composure of the Himalayan town's best-known resident, the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of some 6 million Tibetans.

Fears and Tears

I just say hmmm....


In an exclusive interview, the Dalai Lama talks to NEWSWEEK about the violence in Tibet, his vision of the future—and how he manages to sleep in spite of his distress over the killings.
(..)
Some images of the recent casualties have been graphic and disturbing. Have you seen them? What was your reaction? We heard you wept.
Yes, I cried once. One advantage of belonging to the Tibetan Buddhist culture is that at the intellectual level there is a lot of turmoil, a lot of anxiety and worries, but at the deeper, emotional level there is calm. Every night in my Buddhist practice I give and take. I take in Chinese suspicion. I give back trust and compassion. I take their negative feeling and give them positive feeling. I do that every day. This practice helps tremendously in keeping the emotional level stable and steady. So during the last few days, despite a lot of worries and anxiety, there is no disturbance in my sleep. [Laughs]

See-saw to power African schools

A young inventor is hoping to tap the unbounded energy of children in a playground to power schools in Africa.

Buddhist Monk Praying at Shwedagon Pagoda

Myanmar

I hope to be able to blog in a bit more detail about our trip to Myanmar, and more specifically my wonderful experience with the flying eye hospital. However, as soon as I came back to the States, I was on both general ophthalomology call and retina call. So I haven't had much time. At least my jet lag is coming in handy as those late night ER visits aren't that big of a deal!

China and Darfur

Is the Chinese Government orchestrating I.T. assaults on websites that advocate for Darfur?

The Save Darfur Coalition reported that it has been subject to sophisticated Internet attacks — attacks that apparently originated in China. And Eric Reeves, who runs a Darfur-related website, says that his site has been attacked as well, along with that of Dream for Darfur, an organization that focuses on pressuring China in the run-up to the Olympics because of its close associations with the Sudanese government.

Harvard Law, Hoping Students Will Consider Public Service, Offers Tuition Break

Concerned by the low numbers of law students choosing careers in public service, Harvard Law School plans to waive tuition for third-year students who pledge to spend five years working either for nonprofit organizations or the government.

Simmering Resentments Led to Tibetan Backlash

BEIJING — Chinese leaders have blamed “splittists” led by the exiled Dalai Lama for spurring violent protests in Tibet and orchestrating a public relations sneak attack on the Communist Party, as they gear up to play host to the Olympics Games this summer.

But to many Tibetans and their sympathizers, the weeklong uprising against Chinese rule in Lhasa reflects years of simmering resentment over Beijing’s interference in Buddhist religious rites, its tightened political control and the destruction of the environment across the Himalayan territory the Tibetans consider sacred. If there is a surprise, it may be that Beijing has managed to keep things stable for so long.

How a Blind Man Will Lead a State

Interesting comments follow the article as well...

In a few days, New York will have a new governor who also happens to be legally blind.

For people with sight, it’s hard to imagine how a person who is blind copes with day-to-day living, let alone the challenges of running a state. But over the years, in various interviews, Lt. Gov. David A. Paterson has given us glimpses into how he has managed his education and career in politics without sight.
(..)
Mr. Paterson also shared interesting insights into how people with disabilities are treated if they appear to be coping well.

My truest disability has been my ability to overcome my physical disability. So in other words, as soon as people see that I can be independent, then they hold me to the standard that everyone else is.

Psychotherapy for All: An Experiment

The clinic is at the forefront of a program that has the potential to transform mental health treatment in the developing world. Instead of doctors, the program trains laypeople to identify and treat depression and anxiety and sends them to six community health clinics in Goa, in western India.

Depression and anxiety have long been seen as Western afflictions, diseases of the affluent. But new studies find that they are just as common in poor countries, with rates up to 20 percent in a given year.

Researchers say that even in places with very poor people, the ailments require urgent attention. Severe depression can be as disabling as physical diseases like malaria, the researchers say, and can have serious economic effects. If a subsistence farmer is so depressed that he cannot get out of bed, neither he nor his children are likely to eat.

In India, as in much of the developing world, depression and anxiety are rarely diagnosed or treated. With a population of more than one billion, India has fewer than 4,000 psychiatrists, one-tenth the United States total. Because most psychiatrists are clustered in a few urban areas, the problem is much worse elsewhere.

As a result, most Indians with mental illness go untreated, especially in poor and rural areas. “There is a huge treatment gap for people with depression,” said Dr. Vikram Patel of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, the psychiatrist who began the Siolim project. “In most places in the developing world, 80 percent to 90 percent of people with severe depression don’t receive adequate treatment.”
(..)
After completing training, he spent two years in Zimbabwe as a researcher. He hoped to prove that Western concepts of mental illness did not apply in the developing world. Instead, he came to the opposite conclusion, that the ailments were in fact just as common and just as treatable as in the West.
(..)
ven clinicians who look for depression may miss it. For reasons that no one fully understands, depressed patients in the developing world often complain of physical symptoms like fatigue, headache and insomnia rather than emotional problems like sadness or regret.

Passion and Attention to Detail

"Passion and Attention to Detail"--Two qualities you can't teach as per Orbis medical director, Hunter Cherwek; yet, abundant in evidence in working with the Flying Eye Hospital crew this past week.
Wonderful people in their professionalism, work-ethic, skills, and enthusiasm.
Hunter is a great leader of a great team.
I am again very impressed by the Orbis organization--the best international ophthalmology NGO, by a long shot, with which
I have been privileged to work.

Time out of mind

But the quest to spend time the way we do money is doomed to failure, because the time we experience bears little relation to time as read on a clock. The brain creates its own time, and it is this inner time, not clock time, that guides our actions. In the space of an hour, we can accomplish a great deal — or very little.
(..)
The brain’s inclination to distort time is one reason we so often feel we have too little of it. One in three Americans feels rushed all the time, according to one survey. Even the cleverest use of time-management techniques is powerless to augment the sum of minutes in our life (some 52 million, optimistically assuming a life expectancy of 100 years), so we squeeze as much as we can into each one.

Believing time is money to lose, we perceive our shortage of time as stressful. Thus, our fight-or-flight instinct is engaged, and the regions of the brain we use to calmly and sensibly plan our time get switched off. We become fidgety, erratic and rash.
(..)
The remedy is to liberate ourselves from Franklin’s equation. Time is not money but “the element in which we exist,” as Joyce Carol Oates put it more than two decades ago (in a relatively leisurely era). “We are either borne along by it or drowned in it.”

In Mandalay!

We made it into Mandalay last night and I was greeted at the Mandalay airport my good friend, Leo Mercado, who I had not seen in the past 8 years. Leo was one of the best scrub tech I ever worked with while I was in Saudi Arabia. We did thousands of cases together. It was so great to see him again. We reminisced about all the great memories we have of KKESH. The other neat thing about the airport was that we could see the Orbis DC 10 on the tarmac--magnificent site!

We drove back to the Mandalay Hill Resort, where we were greeted with green lemonade with cayenne drinks in the lobby and by Hunter--medical director for Orbis. It was great to see him--a veritable waterfall of energy and enthusiasm. He and and many of the Orbis crew waited for our delayed plane and missed climbing up the hill behind the hotel to see the sunset. Very kind indeed. Even kinder, he brought down half his clothes to share with me and my 3 boys as our luggage had been lost. (Ryan, my 14 year old, was proudly sporting Hunter's "Tiger Beer" Tshirt today!)

We had a sumptuous breakfast at the hotel, a 7am meeting, and then at 8 am we started our day at the clinic. I saw about 40 patients--many patients with advanced diabetic retinopathy. The trainees are quite motivated and bright--it was a pleasure working with them. It was also nice meeting the other members of the Orbis crew and the other volunteer faculty. This is a much bigger crew than when we were in Enugu on my last orbis trip, due to the presence of the airplane. The crew comes from all over the world. Both the crew and the Burmese are striking in their kindness. It has been a great first day!

Tonight we have dinner with our hosts and tomorrow it is off to the plane to do some surgery!

Soaring Food Prices Putting U.S. Emergency Aid in Peril

The U.S. government's humanitarian relief agency will significantly scale back emergency food aid to some of the world's poorest countries this year because of soaring global food prices, and the U.S. Agency for International Development is drafting plans to reduce the number of recipient nations, the amount of food provided to them, or both, officials at the agency said.

USAID officials said that a 41 percent surge in prices for wheat, corn, rice and other cereals over the past six months has generated a $120 million budget shortfall that will force the agency to reduce emergency operations. That deficit is projected to rise to $200 million by year's end. Prices have skyrocketed as more grains go to biofuel production or are consumed by such fast-emerging markets as China and India

IN bANGKOK

Well, after numerous delays due to West Coast Fog, we finally left LA at 9pm. We were supposed to leave at 12:30pm from San Fran. 12 hour flight to Osaka was great in an Airbus 340. Individual DVD players/gaming systems per seat were great for the kids. As a bonus of the delay we got to fly Thai airways instead of United as previously scheduled. We have always loved all the Thai carriers. In Osaka, we refueled and then another 6 hours to Bangkok--can't believe how modernized the airport has become! Okay, two more flights to go...Bangkok to Yangon and then Yangon to Mandalay. But for now a few hours of R and R and surfing. (BTW read some great articles in the Feb 14 issue of the New York Review of Books--highly recommended!)

The start of the journey

Sent from my iPhone

Going back to Burma, to Burma, to B....

It's been about a decade since we have been in Burma. Blogging might be light for awhile unless I can get a decent internet connection there....

Blind Irishman sees with the aid of son's tooth in his eye

DUBLIN (AFP) - An Irishman blinded by an explosion two years ago has had his sight restored after doctors inserted his son's tooth in his eye, he said on Wednesday. ADVERTISEMENT Bob McNichol, 57, from County Mayo in the west of the country, lost his sight in a freak accident when red-hot liquid aluminium exploded at a re-cycling business in November 2005.
(Hat to tip to freeze who has a fascinating photo up on his blog btw)

Yemen’s Marginalized Class

Why does this kind of discrimination exist everywhere in the world--even in the poorest countries of the world? Why do we dehumanize those who are different than us, and consequently treat them as sub-humans? Yesterday,I was listening to a podcast interview with a Jewish lady whose son was killed by a Palestinian sniper and a Palestinian whose brother was killed by an Israeli lady. They are part of a group that is trying to bring reconciliation to the Palestinan/Israeli conflict through a non-governmental initiative. There was a statement made in that podcast worth remembering:
"We have to use our pain to help heal humanity."


SANA, Yemen — By day, they sweep the streets of the Old City, ragged, dark-skinned men in orange jump suits. By night, they retreat to fetid slums on the edge of town.

They are known as “Al Akhdam” — the servants. Set apart by their African features, they form a kind of hereditary caste at the very bottom of Yemen’s social ladder.

Degrading myths pursue them: they eat their own dead, and their women are all prostitutes. Worst of all, they are reviled as outsiders in their own country, descendants of an Ethiopian army that is said to have crossed the Red Sea to oppress Yemen before the arrival of Islam.
(..)

In one Akhdam shantytown on the edge of Sana, more than 7,000 people live crammed into a stinking warren of low concrete blocks next to a mountain of trash. Young children, many of them barefoot, run through narrow, muddy lanes full of human waste and garbage.

A young woman named Nouria Abdullah stood outside the tiny cubicle — perhaps 6 feet by 8 feet, with a ceiling too low to allow her to stand up — where she lives with her husband and six children. Inside, a thin plastic sheet covered a dirt floor. A small plastic mirror hung on the wall, and a single filthy pillow lay in the corner.

Nearby, a single latrine, in a room approximately 3 feet by 3 feet, serves about 50 people. The residents must carry water in plastic jugs from a tank on the edge of the slum, supplied by a charity group.

Wearing a brown dress, with a rag tied around her head, Ms. Abdullah said she and her family brought in no more than 1,000 Yemeni riyals a week, about $5. She begs for change, while her husband, Muhammad, gathers metal and electrical components from trash heaps and sells them.

The Little Girl by the Sea Found the Angel in Me

Lion Kisses Rescuer

Orphans of Rwanda

I didn't until just now learn that one of my favorite charities, "Orphans of Rwanda," was featured in the New York Times on my birthday!
Here is a great write-up of this organization...

Ange Benitha Bamuyugire is not your typical orphan in Rwanda. Orphans in Rwanda are generally living at or beyond the brink of desperate poverty. Ange, however, is a terrific student who’s studying computer science at the country’s finest technical institution, the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology. She’ll be starting an internship soon at a Rwandan company that develops websites. But there’s more to her story.

She survived the 1994 genocide. She saw her father brutally slain by a band of killers wielding machetes. Although she survived with her mother and sister, she lost her entire extended family: grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins.

In spite of its history and staggeringly high proportion of orphans – approximately 1 out of every 6 children – Rwanda is not exceptional. In fact, sub-Saharan Africa has more orphans than any other region in the world today. The United Nations estimates that of the 43 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa, about 14 million are AIDS orphans, a number that is expected to rise to 20 million by 2010.

So the question is: does the world really care enough to help these orphans (or non-orphans, for that matter) beyond the age 18?

PlayPump Water Systems

This is a FANTASTIC idea!!

Princeton Plans for an Early Year Abroad

This sounds like a great idea to me...

Seizing on students’ desire for a year off before college, Princeton University is working to create a program to send a tenth or more of its newly admitted students to a year of social service work in a foreign country before they set foot on campus as freshmen.

A Rip-Off by Health Insurers?

When patients visit an out-of-network doctor, insurers typically agree to pay 80 percent of the reasonable and customary rate charged by doctors in the same geographic area. The patient is stuck with the rest, and as any patient knows, that rate always seems to fall short of what their own doctor is charging. If the attorney general’s investigators are right, we can understand why.

The numbers are mainly compiled by an obscure company known as Ingenix, which — as it turns out — is owned by UnitedHealth Group, one of the nation’s largest health insurers. Ingenix collects billing information from UnitedHealth and other health care payers to compile a database that is then used by the insurers to determine out-of-network reimbursement rates.

This system is an invitation for abuse. UnitedHealth owns the company whose database will affect its costs and profitability, so both have a strong financial interest in keeping reimbursement rates low. Even Ingenix seems unwilling to stand behind its numbers. In licensing its database to insurers, it stresses that the data is “for informational purposes only” and does not imply anything about “reasonable and customary” charges. Yet that is precisely what the health insurers use the data for, as Ingenix knows, according to investigators.
(..)

The attorney general’s investigators did their own survey and concluded that $200 is the fair market rate in New York City and Nassau County for a 15-minute consultation with a doctor for an illness of low to moderate severity. Ingenix, the investigators said, calculated the rate as $77, of which United would pay $62, leaving the patient to pay $138.

My Saudi Valentine

TOMORROW will be my second Valentine’s Day in the United States. As I’ve discovered, the celebration here bears little resemblance to the one I know from growing up in Saudi Arabia.
Yes, there are dates. But in Saudi Arabia, we eat them. As for the other kind of dating — the kind that will fill restaurants here tomorrow night — don’t count on it.

Can Sugar Substitutes Make You Fat?

In a series of experiments, scientists at Purdue University compared weight gain and eating habits in rats whose diets were supplemented with sweetened food containing either zero-calorie saccharin or sugar. The report, published in Behavioral Neuroscience, presents some counterintuitive findings:

Animals fed with artificially sweetened yogurt over a two-week period consumed more calories and gained more weight — mostly in the form of fat — than animals eating yogurt flavored with glucose, a natural, high-calorie sweetener. It's a continuation of work the Purdue group began in 2004, when they reported that animals consuming saccharin-sweetened liquids and snacks tended to eat more than animals fed high-calorie, sweetened foods. The new study, say the scientists, offers stronger evidence that how we eat may depend on automatic, conditioned responses to food that are beyond our control.

College a waste of time and money for kids

And from the School of Unconventional Wisdom...

Last week I made an off-the-cuff comment in my column that stirred up several e-mails asking if I was serious. What I said was that I had no intention of sending my kids to college. I was dead serious. I find the thought of college abhorrent, particularly for 18- to 20-year-olds. Kids have a lot of energy at that point, and to deaden it with a forced, unsupervised diversity of random topics taught by mostly mediocre professors is a waste of that energy.

ne reader asked what her kid should be doing instead of college. Here are some of my responses: (READ ON)

You Remind Me of Me

Artful persuasion depends on eye contact, but not just any kind. If one person prefers brief glances and the other is busy staring deeply, then it may not matter how good the jokes are or how much they both loved “Juno.” Rhythm counts.
(..)
They have found that immediate social bonding between strangers is highly dependent on mimicry, a synchronized and usually unconscious give and take of words and gestures that creates a current of good will between two people.

Kenya’s War of Words

WHEN you find yourself at a wedding discussing how more than 800 people have been killed and more than 250,000 kicked out of their homes for having certain ethnic origins, you know there is something terribly wrong with your country. Living in Nairobi the past few months has been like living in a relatively comfortable glass cave in the middle of hell.

Diabetes Study Partially Halted After Deaths

For decades, researchers believed that if people with diabetes lowered their blood sugar to normal levels, they would no longer be at high risk of dying from heart disease. But a major federal study of more than 10,000 middle-aged and older people with Type 2 diabetes has found that lowering blood sugar actually increased their risk of death, researchers reported Wednesday.

(..)

The results do not mean blood sugar is meaningless. Lowered blood sugar can protect against kidney disease, blindness and amputations, but the findings inject an element of uncertainty into what has been dogma — that the lower the blood sugar the better and that lowering blood sugar levels to normal saves lives.

Medical experts were stunned.

Symptoms: Metabolic Syndrome Is Tied to Diet Soda

Researchers have found a correlation between drinking diet soda and metabolic syndrome — the collection of risk factors for cardiovascular disease and diabetes that include abdominal obesity, high cholesterol and blood glucose levels — and elevated blood pressure.
(..)
the risk of developing metabolic syndrome was 34 percent higher among those who drank one can of diet soda a day compared with those who drank none.

Jackson Pollack

Feeling artistic?

New Food Formula: Tastes Fine, Kills Worms

Kraft Foods, the conglomerate built on macaroni and cheese, is working on a new and unusual product line — food that is not only tasty, but kills intestinal worms.

It is not intended for sale in the United States, but is aimed at rural Asia, Africa and Latin America, where worms leave millions of children lethargic, dangerously anemic and, sometimes, passing blood.

Bring Bri Back

~ Official Brianna Information Site ~

Brianna Zunino Denison
Brianna's website is dedicated to her safe return!

Abducted January 20, 2008 in Reno Nevada
If you have any information please call now!

Reno Police Department Tip Line: 775-745-3521
Secret Witness Line: 775-322-4900

Clouds over Reno

This picture depicts the mood over Reno as we continue to search for Brianna Denison...


For more on Brianna, check out the Reno Gazette Journal updates here

Nets and New Drug Make Inroads Against Malaria

Widespread distribution of mosquito nets and a new medicine sharply reduced malaria deaths in several African countries, World Health Organization researchers reported Thursday.

The report was one of the most hopeful signs in the long battle against a disease that is estimated to kill a million children a year in poor tropical countries.

“We saw a very drastic impact,” said Dr. Arata Kochi, chief of malaria for the W.H.O. “If this is done everywhere, we can reduce the disease burden 80 to 85 percent in most African countries within five years.”

The Darfur Contagion Spreads

I just had an email from Chad that the U.N. is today evacuating Guereda, a major town in eastern Chad that has been a base for helping Darfuri refugees. Frankly, this will mean that more Darfuri refugees will die, but the U.N. has to protect its own people as well. It’s an agonizing position for aid organizations to face when their own staff are attacked.

One of the most frustrating parts of the international failure in Darfur is that we’ve allowed the slaughter to spread from Sudan to Chad and Central African Republic. We may not be able to send troops easily into Sudan itself, but we can certainly do so in Chad (and France, under Nicolas Sarkozy, is finally preparing to do that). In the meantime, the slaughter is continuing in towns like Guereda, which used to be completely stable.