Mastery, Just 10,000 Hours Away

Forget All the Talk of Natural Prodigies -- Being the Best Really Takes Hard, Hard, Hard Work

Golf's Grand Illusion is that, secretly, we're a lot better than our scores would indicate. All we need is a little more practice and a few more rounds under our belt to get there. But who has the time?

The illusion stems from the ease with which all of us, on rare occasions, drain long putts from the fringe, pitch to tap-in distance from 85 yards and hit drives on the sweet spot. Surely learning to pull off such shots regularly could only be a matter of making a little more effort.

Two recent business books concur, provided we drop that phrase "a little" from the supposition. The common thesis of "Outliers," by Malcolm Gladwell, and "Talent Is Overrated," by Geoff Colvin, is that super-high achievers are not fundamentally different from you and me, they just work harder and smarter.

Both books, for instance, debunk the myth that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a born supernatural. The musical works he composed as a child were not particularly good (and were suspiciously written in the hand of his father, Leopold, a well-known composer). Most of them, even into his late teens, were rearrangements of other composers' pieces. As for his precocious skills on stage, modern musicologists estimate that his abilities were actually only about half as advanced as those of a run-of-the-mill prodigy today.
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In explaining the development of extraordinary talent, both Mr. Gladwell and Mr. Colvin zero in on seminal research by Florida State Professor Anders Ericsson and colleagues that suggests the threshold for world-class expertise in any discipline -- music, sports, chess, science, business management -- is about 10 years, or 10,000 hours, of persistent, focused training and experience. Mr. Gladwell leaves the work component of success mostly at that, and moves on to examine how other factors, such as obscure circumstances from their early lives, contribute to the achievements of hard workers.

Mr. Colvin, on the other hand, bores into the details of all that hard work to identify the most productive components. This is where things get interesting for golfers.

The most successful performers in any area, he writes, engage in "deliberate practice." This is activity specifically designed, ideally by an expert teacher, to improve performance beyond a person's current comfort and ability level. These activities are repeatable, provide clear feedback and are highly demanding mentally, even when largely physical. The training Mozart received as a youth is a perfect example.

As Indian Growth Soars, Child Hunger Persists

NEW DELHI — Small, sick, listless children have long been India’s scourge — “a national shame,” in the words of its prime minister, Manmohan Singh. But even after a decade of galloping economic growth, child malnutrition rates are worse here than in many sub-Saharan African countries, and they stand out as a paradox in a proud democracy.

Sandstorm Riyadh March 10, 2009

Well this will wreak havoc with your sinuses! It apparently shut down the airport as well!

Saudis Race All Night, Fueled by Boredom

We used to witness a fair amount of drag racing in Riyadh as well and hence drove with extra caution on the weekends..

JIDDA, Saudi Arabia
This may be the most popular sport of Saudi youth, an obsessive, semilegal competition that dominates weekend nights here. It ranges from garden variety drag racing to “drifting,” an extremely dangerous practice in which drivers deliberately spin out and skid sideways at high speeds, sometimes killing themselves and spectators.

For Saudi Arabia’s vast and underemployed generation of young people, these reckless night battles are a kind of collective scream of frustration, a rare outlet for exuberance in an ultraconservative country where the sexes are rigorously segregated and most public entertainment is illegal. They are, almost literally, bored out of their minds.

“Why do they do it?” said Suhail Janoudi, a 27-year-old sales clerk who was watching the races from the roadside with a faint smile around 1:30 a.m. “Because they have nothing else to do. Because they are empty.”

The Rant List

I am having a tough time dealing with news that the former president of Countrywide Financial, the mortgage company that did so much to dig the hole in which we all now reside, is making a killing buying up delinquent mortgage loans from the government at bargain basement rates.

“It’s like Jeffrey Dahmer selling body parts to a clinic,” sniped one of my friends.

As Eric Lipton reported in The Times, Stanford Kurland, who was president of Countrywide during the years when it was selling mortgages with temporary low “teaser” rates that later turned into permanent unaffordable ones, now leads Private National Mortgage Acceptance Company, known to its friends as PennyMac.

In what one company official said was “off-the-charts good” business, PennyMac buys troubled mortgages from the government (which got them from failed banks) at rates like 38 cents on the dollar. Then it offers the beleaguered homeowners a chance to refinance at far more favorable terms. PennyMac makes money, the homeowner gets an affordable mortgage and the government gets a share of the profit.

Everybody’s happy! Except, of course, those of us who helped come up with the other 62 cents on the dollar.

Musicians Have Biological Advantage In Identifying Emotion In Sound

ScienceDaily (Mar. 5, 2009) — Looking for a mate who in everyday conversation can pick up even your most subtle emotional cues? Find a musician, Northwestern University researchers suggest.

‘Dead White People’s Clothes’

It's impossible to have a conversation about fashion in Africa—traditional or contemporary—without talking about the used-clothing industry and how damaging some people say it’s been.

A whole industry has cropped up around apparel that's been donated to charities located oceans away, imported throughout the African continent and then sold cheaply in African marketplaces. These low prices undercut local retailers and undermine the entire textile and garment business in Africa.

Harvard Medical School in Ethics Quandary

Mr. Zerden’s minor stir four years ago has lately grown into a full-blown movement by more than 200 Harvard Medical School students and sympathetic faculty, intent on exposing and curtailing the industry influence in their classrooms and laboratories, as well as in Harvard’s 17 affiliated teaching hospitals and institutes.

They say they are concerned that the same money that helped build the school’s world-class status may in fact be hurting its reputation and affecting its teaching.

The students argue, for example, that Harvard should be embarrassed by the F grade it recently received from the American Medical Student Association, a national group that rates how well medical schools monitor and control drug industry money.

Harvard Medical School’s peers received much higher grades, ranging from the A for the University of Pennsylvania, to B’s received by Stanford, Columbia and New York University, to the C for Yale.

Researchers Find Safer Way to Produce Stem Cell Alternative

Skin Cells Transformed Without Worrisome Use of Viruses

No Line On The Horizon

Here is an incredible deal--maybe one day only though--download the new U2 album from Amazon for 3.99$

Liked the Show? Maybe It Was the Commercials

Maybe they don’t. In two new studies, researchers who study consumer behavior argue that interrupting an experience, whether dreary or pleasant, can make it significantly more intense.

Africa’s ‘Obama’ School

DJABAL REFUGEE CAMP, Chad

After Barack Obama was elected president in November, the Darfur refugees here were so thrilled that they erupted in spontaneous dancing and singing.

Soon afterward, the refugees renamed the School No. 1 in this dusty camp the Obama School. It’s a pathetic building of mud bricks with a tin roof, and the windows are holes in the walls, but it’s caulked with hope that President Obama may help end the long slaughter and instability in Sudan.

Soon we’ll see whether those hopes are justified. Next Wednesday, the International Criminal Court is expected to issue an arrest warrant for Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, for crimes against humanity in Darfur.

That would be historic — the first time the court has called for the arrest of a sitting head of state. It would be the clearest assertion that in the 21st century, mass murder is no longer a ruler’s prerogative.

Latest Grand Rounds

Emergiblogs hosts a Napoleon Dynamite themed Grand Rounds with a number of great entries, including these:

Another phenomenal entry from the Happy Hospitalist: Dr Nurse, The PA perspective, And Your Differential Diagnosis
(I could not resist excerpting more than normal from his entry, but you really must read the whole thing at his site):


Here's my opinion, most patients have no idea if you are a doctor, a nurse, or the lab tech. Walk in a room. Pretend you know what you are doing. Be nice. Talk to them a little. Let them tell you how Cuddles,their little Chihuahua, likes to lick the enamel off their teeth. When you walk out, I bet just about every patient would tell their spouse, "My what a nice doctor that was."
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For medicine that involves the diagnosis and management of acute and chronic medical disease, there is only one type of doctor. Someone who has earned a doctorate degree in the study of medicine, not nursing. Someone who has gone on to train under the direction of medical doctors to learn their craft as defined by accredited institutions. Someone who has sat for and passed the requirements for certification as defined by the board of their medical specialty, the competency of which has been determined by other doctors who specialize in that field of training. That's what a doctor is. That's what the public expects when they get "a doctor"
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Citing another PA: "My other concern is the use of the title, "Doctor". It is true that pharmacists, PT's, and others have moved to a doctoral degree. BUT, none of those professions outside of a psychologist, use the title "Doctor" when treating patients.....why you might ask?

Simple, it is confusing to the layperson, and downright fraudulent, ..."
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Why? Because I don't define quality the way a NP or a DNP or a patient or the government will. I define it by characteristics that can't be measured in a randomized trial or tracked with outcomes data, but is at the same time, the most important aspect of independent patient care.

For me, that greatest determinant of quality care, which you won't find in any journal or on any government compare website, or in any patient satisfaction survey is the strength and quality of the differential diagnosis generated by that practitioner. Doctors are differential diagnosis generators. This is, by and far, the most important skill set a physician can offer their patient, something that cannot be learned in nursing level training or nursing level graduate school. It is what separates physicians from all other providers of independent care.

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The only way you get that good is to know your differential diagnosis. And the only way you get to know your differential diagnosis is to learn it in a doctor level training program.

When you call yourself a doctor, you are portraying yourself as a master of the differential diagnosis. Your patients will not know otherwise. But I know that's what they deserve. And other doctors know that's what they deserve. Even you know that's what they deserve. Your job is not to put your signature on a protocol. Your goal is not to achieve 85% compliance with HgbA1c data gathering. Your job is not to get high satisfaction scores. Using these markers to define your quality is a slap in the face to your patients. Your patients deserve an extensive differential diagnosis, every time.
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Here is an interesting article from The Covert Rationing Blog on a study on colonoscopies performed without conscious sedation. The interesting find is not the percentage of patients who tolerated the procedure, but why the study was performed (hint: the author or the article, works in a VA Hospital)

What’s Wrong With Summer Stiers?

And even though Turner and the others are part of the innovative new Undiagnosed Diseases Program at the N.I.H., and even though they collectively represent the very best that American medicine has to offer, they still began by approaching the big picture of Summer Stiers the way most specialists do: like the blind men, one piece at a time.

The Undiagnosed Diseases Program was designed to move past that halting first step — the inevitable result of the organ-by-organ orientation of most medical specialties — to achieve a more coherent view. Under the direction of William Gahl, a longtime N.I.H. investigator who is also the clinical director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, the program brings together scientists from most of the N.I.H.’s 27 research institutes and centers on a collegelike campus in Bethesda, Md. Organizationally, it creates a kind of superdiagnostician, whose orientation would be to look at not just one piece at a time but at the whole darn elephant.

Physician Data Restriction Program

Tired of pharmaceutical reps tracking your prescriptions?
Check out this link...

Restricting access to prescribing data should be every physician's individual choice. The American Medical Association's (AMA) Physician Data Restriction Program (PDRP) puts the choice in doctor's hands.

Time-Patients-Doctors

Kevin, M.D. with an excellent point here...

One aspect that's missing whenever healthcare costs are discussed is the so-called "opportunity cost" that patients incur whenever they wait for medical care. Granted, there are doctors who inexcusably run hours late. However, if physicians were compensated for their time, including hours spent filling out forms or wading through pre-authorization requests, I think you'll find that they'll value patients' time significantly more.

The Anti-Bono

Questions for Dambisi Moya

Q: As a native of Zambia with advanced degrees in public policy and economics from Harvard and Oxford, you are about to publish an attack on Western aid to Africa and its recent glamorization by celebrities. ‘‘Dead Aid,’’ as your book is called, is particularly hard on rock stars. Have you met Bono?
I have, yes, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last year. It was at a party to raise money for Africans, and there were no Africans in the room, except for me.

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You argue in your book that Western aid to Africa has not only perpetuated poverty but also worsened it, and you are perhaps the first African to request in book form that all development aid be halted within five years.
Think about it this way — China has 1.3 billion people, only 300 million of whom live like us, if you will, with Western living standards. There are a billion Chinese who are living in substandard conditions. Do you know anybody who feels sorry for China? Nobody.

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What do you think has held back Africans?
I believe it’s largely aid. You get the corruption — historically, leaders have stolen the money without penalty — and you get the dependency, which kills entrepreneurship. You also disenfranchise African citizens, because the government is beholden to foreign donors and not accountable to its people.

If people want to help out, what do you think they should do with their money if not make donations?
Microfinance. Give people jobs.

Not All CDs are Plain Vanilla..or Safe

It was bad enough when big banks started going under. Then, money market funds became suspect. But now, even the humble certificate of deposit has become mired in scandal.

A Promising Treatment for Athletes, in Blood

The method, which is strikingly straightforward and easy to perform, centers on injecting portions of a patient’s blood directly into the injured area, which catalyzes the body’s instincts to repair muscle, bone and other tissue. Most enticing, many doctors said, is that the technique appears to help regenerate ligament and tendon fibers, which could shorten rehabilitation time and possibly obviate surgery.

Research into the effects of platelet-rich plasma therapy has accelerated in recent months, with most doctors cautioning that more rigorous studies are necessary before the therapy can emerge as scientifically proven. But many researchers suspect that the procedure could become an increasingly attractive course of treatment for reasons medical and financial.

Yes, They Could. So They Did.

So I am attending the Energy and Resources Institute climate conference in New Delhi, and during the afternoon session two young American women — along with one of their mothers — proposition me.

“Hey, Mr. Friedman,” they say, “would you like to take a little spin around New Delhi in our car?”

Oh, I say, I’ve heard that line before. Ah, they say, but you haven’t seen this car before. It’s a plug-in electric car that is also powered by rooftop solar panels — and the two young women, recent Yale grads, had just driven it all over India in a “climate caravan” to highlight the solutions to global warming being developed by Indian companies, communities, campuses and innovators, as well as to inspire others to take action.

They ask me if I want to drive, but I have visions of being stopped by the cops and ending up in a New Delhi jail. Not to worry, they tell me. Indian cops have been stopping them all across India. First, they ask to see driver’s licenses, then they inquire about how the green car’s solar roof manages to provide 10 percent of its mileage — and then they try to buy the car.

We head off down Panchsheel Marg, one of New Delhi’s main streets. The ladies want to show me something. The U.S. Embassy and the Chinese Embassy are both located on Panchsheel, directly across from each other. They asked me to check out the rooftops of each embassy. What do I notice? Let’s see ... The U.S. Embassy’s roof is loaded with antennae and listening gear. The Chinese Embassy’s roof is loaded with ... new Chinese-made solar hot-water heaters.

You couldn’t make this up.

Comparing Global Religiositycx

Unlike Paul Kedrosky, author of the great Infectious Greed blog,this graphic pretty much parallels my experiences in traveling the globe..
Something of a diversion, but the results in this comparison of global religiosity surprised me.

Smoking Causes Blindness campaign

From Social Guerilla Marketing...
via the Happy Hospitalist

In New Procedure, Artificial Arm Listens to Brain

Amanda Kitts lost her left arm in a car accident three years ago, but these days she plays football with her 12-year-old son, and changes diapers and bearhugs children at the three Kiddie Cottage day care centers she owns in Knoxville, Tenn.

Ms. Kitts, 40, does this all with a new kind of artificial arm that moves more easily than other devices and that she can control by using only her thoughts.

“I’m able to move my hand, wrist and elbow all at the same time,” she said. “You think, and then your muscles move.”

Her turnaround is the result of a new procedure that is attracting increasing attention because it allows people to move prosthetic arms more automatically than ever before, simply by using rewired nerves and their brains.

The technique, called targeted muscle reinnervation, involves taking the nerves that remain after an arm is amputated and connecting them to another muscle in the body, often in the chest. Electrodes are placed over the chest muscles, acting as antennae. When the person wants to move the arm, the brain sends signals that first contract the chest muscles, which send an electrical signal to the prosthetic arm, instructing it to move. The process requires no more conscious effort than it would for a person who has a natural arm.

A Company Prospers by Saving Poor People’s Lives

Fascinating story here...



It all started with mosquito nets. Or, no, with guinea worm filters. Or, before that, with a million yards of wool in the mountains of Sweden.

Or, taken back another generation, to uniforms for hotel and supermarket workers.

There are plenty of charitable foundations and public agencies devoted to helping the world’s poor, many with instantly recognizable names like Unicef or the Gates Foundation.

But private companies with that as their sole focus are rare. Even the best-known is not remotely a household name: Vestergaard-Frandsen.

Its products are in use in refugee camps and disaster areas all over the third world: PermaNet, a mosquito net impregnated with insecticide; ZeroFly, a tent tarp that kills flies; and the LifeStraw, a filter worn around the neck that makes filthy water safe to drink.

Some are not only life-saving but even beautiful. The turquoise and navy blue LifeStraw is in museum design collections.

“Vestergaard is just different from other companies we work with,” said Kevin Starace, malaria adviser for the United Nations Foundation. “They think of the end user as a consumer rather than as a patient or a victim.

When Doctors and Nurses Can’t Do the Right Thing

It now appears that doctors — caught between obligations to patients and the demands of insurance companies, administrators and even, occasionally, patients’ families — are feeling increasingly “trapped” and unable to do what they believe is ethically right. Researchers from the University of Virginia recently studied I.C.U. physicians and nurses and found that while doctors on average are less frustrated than nurses, they can also suffer from intense moral distress.

This finding doesn’t surprise me. It is profoundly disheartening to haggle with disembodied voices over the phone over insurance approval for operations to remove cancers, to struggle to do everything that should be done for the rising numbers of patients a single doctor must see, and to follow the wishes of estranged relatives who swoop into the hospital during the last days of life and demand aggressive treatment.

What can we do?

Sneaking In Where Thugs Rule

Before entering Myanmar from Thailand, you scrub your bags of any hint that you might be engaged in some pernicious evil, such as espionage, journalism or promotion of human rights.

Then you exit from the Thai town of Mae Sot and walk across the gleaming white “friendship bridge” to the Burmese immigration post on the other side. Entering Myanmar (which traditionally has been known as Burma), you adjust your watch: Myanmar is 30 minutes ahead — and 50 years behind.

Already Myanmar’s government is one of the most brutal in the world, and in recent months it has become even more repressive.

A blogger, Nay Phone Latt, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. A prominent comedian, Zarganar, was sentenced to 59 years. A former student leader, Min Ko Naing, a survivor of years of torture and solitary confinement, has received terms of 65 years so far and faces additional sentences that may reach a total of 150 years.

“Politically, things are definitely getting worse,” said David Mathieson, an expert on Myanmar for Human Rights Watch living on the Thai-Burmese border. “They’ve just sent hundreds of people who should be agents of change to long prison terms.”

The Kremlin's Defenses Are Crumbling

Is Kazakhstan showing Russia the way? Kazakhstan's central bank allowed a 25% depreciation of the tenge on Wednesday. Moscow, meanwhile, is forlornly trying to control the ruble's descent. The ruble fell quickly to the central bank's new floor. Forward rates imply a further 20% depreciation over 12 months.

The cost of defending the ruble is growing. Fitch downgraded the country's credit rating on Wednesday to BBB, below Lithuania. The main concern: a rapid depletion of foreign-exchange reserves, down by about $210 billion to $390 billion in six months.

Moscow's fear of rapid devaluation stems from the 1998 financial crisis. Another panic could destroy Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's reputation as a safe pair of hands.

This Is What I Want, Now

The Happy Hospitalist sees a great future for multitouch interfaces in medicine--with a link to a very cool video from TED

You want to talk about disruptive innovation, here it is. As a physician who works in the hospital I can tell you categorically, that this technology WOULD revolutionize the way I take care of patients. This is what I want in every work station on every floor of every hospital. A multitouch interface. I want a large flat screen version in every ICU room. I want all the patient data at my fingertips. I want to be able to view all information simultaneously. And I want it to be wireless and integrated with my smart phone. I want immediate access all the time to all information on all my patients. You want to make me efficient, this is what I need. What would I put on my multitouch inteface?

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Search for a Surname to view its Map and Statistics.

Medicare ‘Rip-Off’ Strikes U.S. Elderly as Obama Maps Overhaul

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- Just as President Barack Obama starts his overhaul of the U.S. medical system, providers of U.S.- backed health plans for the elderly are jacking up prices.

Humana Inc., Health Net Inc. and other providers increased 2009 premiums by 13 percent on average, or more than five times as much as last year, for people who use the Advantage version of Medicare, according to Avalere Health, a consulting company in Washington. The elderly say higher costs for the Advantage plans, which add features such as drug coverage to Medicare, are reducing money for groceries and utilities.

Obama has vowed to control spending in the $2.6 trillion U.S. health-care system while extending coverage to more people, and, during his campaign, criticized the costs of Advantage plans to taxpayers. The premium increases, charged directly to the elderly rather than the government, are further evidence that insurers’ need for profits is ballooning patients’ expenses and reducing the efficiency of care, said Arnold Relman, former editor of the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Medicare Advantage is a rip-off,” said Relman, 85, who is also a professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School in Boston, in a telephone interview on Jan. 23. “I cannot see that they do anything better than public insurance does, and they do a lot of things worse.”

The Muddled Tracks of All Those Tears

They’re considered a release, a psychological tonic, and to many a glimpse of something deeper: the heart’s own sign language, emotional perspiration from the well of common humanity.

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Bailouts for Bunglers

When I read recent remarks on financial policy by top Obama administration officials, I feel as if I’ve entered a time warp — as if it’s still 2005, Alan Greenspan is still the Maestro, and bankers are still heroes of capitalism.

“We have a financial system that is run by private shareholders, managed by private institutions, and we’d like to do our best to preserve that system,” says Timothy Geithner, the Treasury secretary — as he prepares to put taxpayers on the hook for that system’s immense losses.

Meanwhile, a Washington Post report based on administration sources says that Mr. Geithner and Lawrence Summers, President Obama’s top economic adviser, “think governments make poor bank managers” — as opposed, presumably, to the private-sector geniuses who managed to lose more than a trillion dollars in the space of a few years.

And this prejudice in favor of private control, even when the government is putting up all the money, seems to be warping the administration’s response to the financial crisis.
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My response to this prospect is: so? If taxpayers are footing the bill for rescuing the banks, why shouldn’t they get ownership, at least until private buyers can be found? But the Obama administration appears to be tying itself in knots to avoid this outcome.

If news reports are right, the bank rescue plan will contain two main elements: government purchases of some troubled bank assets and guarantees against losses on other assets. The guarantees would represent a big gift to bank stockholders; the purchases might not, if the price was fair — but prices would, The Financial Times reports, probably be based on “valuation models” rather than market prices, suggesting that the government would be making a big gift here, too.

And in return for what is likely to be a huge subsidy to stockholders, taxpayers will get, well, nothing.

In Bolivia, Untapped Bounty Meets Nationalism

UYUNI, Bolivia — In the rush to build the next generation of hybrid or electric cars, a sobering fact confronts both automakers and governments seeking to lower their reliance on foreign oil: almost half of the world’s lithium, the mineral needed to power the vehicles, is found here in Bolivia — a country that may not be willing to surrender it so easily.

We know that Bolivia can become the Saudi Arabia of lithium,” said Francisco Quisbert, 64, the leader of Frutcas, a group of salt gatherers and quinoa farmers on the edge of Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt flat. “We are poor, but we are not stupid peasants. The lithium may be Bolivia’s, but it is also our property.”

The Hidden Curriculum of Medical School

While most of medical education and training is about the nuts and bolts of clinical care — how to treat hypertension, how to manage a ventilator, how to take out a gallbladder — the process also involves learning how to be “a doctor.” As opposed to lessons covered in textbooks and classrooms, this kind of learning is done through modeling, or what medical sociologist F. W. Hafferty has called the “informal” or “hidden curriculum.”
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A new study published in this month’s issue of Academic Medicine proves that effort does matter, and that learning is possible. Even established clinicians can be re-inspired to adopt new humanistic skills, becoming better teachers and role models in the process.

In the study, groups of established physician-teachers from five different academic medical centers met at least twice a month. During the meetings, the doctors either practiced skills designed to enhance compassion, or reflected on their own work through discussion and narrative writing.
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At the end of our phone conversation, I asked Dr. Branch if his program would work in any setting, for any doctor. “Anybody can do it, and there are groups of clinicians that have regularly held similar types of meetings for at least a decade or more,” he quickly replied. He had been part of such a group for 10 years, when he lived in another state, a group made up of academic and private practice physicians.

And then, underscoring perhaps the greatest challenge for any kind of reform, Dr. Branch added, “But they would have to believe that such work was important.”

Packing the Right Credit Card

Traveling frugally means more than just cadging free bar snacks in Bologna or hopping low-cost flights between third-tier European airports. To keep costs to a minimum, you have to plan well in advance, and that means getting your finances in order.


The first thing you’ll want to do is apply for a new credit card. See, most card issuers charge fees for overseas transactions. American Express, for example, adds 2.7 percent to every overseas transaction (up from 2 percent last summer), while Bank of America, Chase, Citibank and HSBC tack on 3 percent, according to Curtis Arnold, who runs CardRatings.com, a Web site that tracks credit card fees.

Are You Happy Now?

Good tips here--worth a read...

Gretchen Rubin shares tips and takes your questions about happiness.

Spread of Malaria Feared as Drug Loses Potency

TASANH, Cambodia — The afflictions of this impoverished nation are on full display in its western corner: the girls for hire outside restaurants, the badly rutted dirt roads and the ubiquitous signs that warn “Danger Mines!”



Chet Chen, 18, lying listless with malaria in Tasanh, Cambodia.

But what eludes the naked eye is a potentially graver problem, especially for the outside world. The parasite that causes the deadliest form of malaria is showing the first signs of resistance to the best new drug against it.

Combination treatments using artemisinin, an antimalaria drug extracted from a plant used in traditional Chinese medicine, have been hailed in recent years as the biggest hope for eradicating malaria from Africa, where more than 2,000 children die from the disease each day.

Now a series of studies, including one recently published in The New England Journal of Medicine and one due out soon, have cemented a consensus among researchers that artemisinin is losing its potency here and that increased efforts are needed to prevent the drug-resistant malaria from leaving here and spreading across the globe.
(..)
“Many of us think this should be treated on the same order as SARS,” said Col. Alan J. Magill, a researcher at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Maryland. “This should be a global emergency that is addressed in a global fashion.” SARS, the respiratory disease that spread rapidly through Asia and beyond in 2003, killed more than 700 people.
(..)
Different regions rely on different artemisinin combinations. The Cambodian government recommends that artemisinin be combined with mefloquine, which was developed by the American military and is known commercially as Lariam. Artemether, a derivative of artemisinin, is often combined with another antimalarial drug, lumefantrine. This was recently judged to be the most effective combination in a study of children in Papua New Guinea.

The same combination is also expected to be approved for sale in the United States soon, marketed by Novartis and mainly intended for people traveling overseas or for those who arrive in the United States with malaria.

The mosquito responsible for transmission of malaria is still endemic in the United States. But modern housing, better access to health care and the use of insecticides have virtually eradicated the disease in wealthier countries.

Coffee Linked to Lower Dementia Risk

After controlling for numerous socioeconomic and health factors, including high cholesterol and high blood pressure, the scientists found that the subjects who had reported drinking three to five cups of coffee daily were 65 percent less likely to have developed dementia, compared with those who drank two cups or less. People who drank more than five cups a day also were at reduced risk of dementia, the researchers said, but there were not enough people in this group to draw statistically significant conclusions.

(..)

Dr. Kivipelto and her colleagues suggest several possibilities for why coffee might reduce the risk of dementia later in life. First, earlier studies have linked coffee consumption with a decreased risk of type 2 diabetes, which in turn has been associated with a greater risk of dementia. In animal studies, caffeine has been shown to reduce the formation of amyloid plaques in the brain, one of the hallmarks of Alzheimer’s disease. Finally, coffee may have an antioxidant effect in the bloodstream, reducing vascular risk factors for dementia.

Dr. Kivipelto noted that previous studies have shown that coffee drinking may also be linked to a reduced risk of Parkinson’s disease.

Desperate Children Flee Zimbabwe, for Lives Just as Bleak

Joao Silva for The New York Times
Williad Fire, 16, crossed illegally into South Africa from Zimbabwe with eight friends after the deaths of his parents and an uncle.


MUSINA, South Africa — They bear the look of street urchins, their eyes on the prowl for useful scraps of garbage and their bodies covered in clothes no cleaner than a mechanic’s rags.

Musina has 57,000 residents, plus 15,000 foreigners.
Near midnight, these Zimbabwean children can be found sleeping outside almost anywhere in this border city. A 12-year-old girl named No Matter Hungwe, hunched beneath the reassuring exterior light of the post office, said it was hunger that had pushed her across the border alone.

Her father is dead, and she wanted to help her mother and younger brothers by earning what she could here in South Africa — within certain limits, anyway. “Some men — men with cars — want to sleep with me,” she said, considering the upside against the down. “They have offered me 100 rand,” about $10.

With their nation in a prolonged sequence of crises, more unaccompanied children and women than ever are joining the rush of desperate Zimbabweans illegally crossing the frontier at the Limpopo River, according to the police, local officials and aid workers.

What they are escaping is a broken country where half the people are going hungry, most schools and hospitals are closed or dysfunctional and a cholera epidemic has taken a toll in the thousands. Yet they are arriving in a place where they are unwelcome and are resented as rivals for jobs. Last year, Zimbabweans were part of the quarry in a spate of mob attacks against foreigners.

Icelandic government becomes first to be brought down by the credit crunch

The government of Iceland today became the first to be effectively brought down by the credit crunch.

After several nights of rioting over the financial crisis, Prime Minister Geir Haarde, surrendered to increasing pressure and called a general election for May.

Polio Fight Gets $635 Million from Gates, Rotary & Governments

The eradication of smallpox in the late 1970s was one of the great achievements in global public health, and was accomplished in about a decade. The world has been trying to eradicate polio for more than 20 years now, but we’re not there yet.

A reminder came earlier today when Microsoft founder and uberphilanthropist Bill Gates pledged $255 million toward the ongoing effort to wipe polio from the face of the Earth. He was joined by officials from Rotary International and the governments of Germany and the U.K. Collectively, the group pledged $635 million toward eradicating the disease.

Quote of the Day

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

Harold Whitman

Meetings Are a Matter of Precious Time

This article from Reid Hastie, Robert S. Hamada Professor of Behavioral Science at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Busines, hit on one of my fundamental organizing principles: I don't have a vague feeling that there is plenty of time (as Professor Hastie alludes to in this article). For some reason, I know at a visceral level that one moment you exist, and the next you don't. The "ride" is over before you know it...and you can't predict it. I know that I will probably (and thankfully) never run out of money, but for sure I am going to run out of time....and there is so much to do in this world.

In business, we like to convert time to money, and the reverse. But in practice, time and money are different. We can get more money, save it, move it between accounts and use it on demand. These operations don’t apply easily to time.

Time is the most perishable good in the world, and it is not replenishable. You can’t earn an extra hour to use on a busy day. Nonetheless, we usually have a vague feeling that there is plenty of time — somewhere in the future — so we waste it now and carelessly steal time from our families, friends or ourselves when we come up short at the end of a workday and need to stay an extra hour.

Probably most important, we are blind to lost time opportunities. When we choose where to invest our time, as opposed to where to invest money, we are more likely to neglect what else we could have done with it.

And, once meetings are over, we don’t effectively assign responsibility for a bad meeting or take personal responsibility as we should. Sure, someone called the meeting, but we all leave it unhappy and blaming everyone, including ourselves. Psychologists call this “diffusion of responsibility” and one consequence is that no one thinks it’s his or her job to fix it the next time.

Too Many Industries Suffering From “Detroititis”

Gary Hamel really hits the nail on the head in this blog posting...

Unfortunately, one can find Detroit-style thinking in industries other than autos.

Take the PC industry. Years ago, in an article written for the Harvard Business Review, I posed the following question: Why was the most expensive appliance in most homes—the personal computer—also the ugliest? PCs were clunky beige boxes that spewed cords and cables across your desktop like a disemboweled robot. A few years later Apple would introduce its first iMac, the candy-colored, all-in-one home computer that heralded the company’s creative renaissance.
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The same myopic thinking that led America’s car companies to surrender product leadership to Toyota, Honda and BMW, has led U.S. airlines to surrender service leadership to international carriers like Virgin Atlantic, British Airways, and Lufthansa. (My belief: There are only two reasons to fly internationally on a U.S. carrier—to retain your frequent flyer status or keep your boss happy by complying with corporate travel rules. In the last 20 years I’ve crossed the Atlantic more than 300 times—and only twice on a U.S. airline, thank God.)

Unlike the auto makers, the big U.S. airlines have been able to maintain a domestic oligopoly. They haven’t had to face foreign competitors within their home market—thanks to a legal prohibition on the foreign ownership of U.S. air carriers. This blatantly protectionist policy should make U.S. consumers hopping mad. Why should we be able to drive a Toyota from New York to LA, and not be able to cross the continent on Singapore Airlines, for example?

BANG the drum to go to school

Aviwe (10 years) and Fuzile (8years) started their own band! They call them selves “Thandabantu”….this Xhosa word means: “the one who loves people”. Their father died in a car accident a few years ago. Their mother, Cordelia, is injured from the accident and unable to walk properly. She can’t really work. She didn’t finish school. She tries to sell as many home baked cookies as possible to her community in township Khayelitsha to make an income for herself and her 2 sons.

Cordelia and her kids constructed their own instrument! It takes: 2 buckets, 4 sticks, a piece of leather, some wire and lots of bottle tops!

The boys started making some noise on the streets of Cape Town, got some money and soon were able to buy a real instrument! The keyboard (600 Rand), together with the drums and the boys’ voices are the current ingredients for the Thandabantu-band.

They now play their music to collect money to go to school. During this summer holiday they made 100-200 Rand a day. School is free, but lunch (3rand/child) and travel (5 rand/child) has to be paid every day.

Pound Takes a Pounding

From ControlledGreed.com...

The British pound reached an 8-year low Tuesday. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is "Seriously Alarmed" about the slide being "disorderly." Key part:
England has not defaulted since the Middle Ages. There is a real risk it may do so now.And no -- just so there is no misuderstanding -- it would not have been any better if Britain had joined the euro ten years ago. The bubble would have been just as bad, or worse, as Ireland and Spain can attest. We have our disaster. They have their disaster. When the dust has settled in five years we can make a proper judgement on the sterling-EMU issue. Not now.

Killer part that rings true in many places outside the UK:
The Baby Boomers have had their moment in power. The most spoilt generation in history has handled affairs with its characteristic hedonism. The results are coming in. The blithering idiots.

And Bloomberg quotes Jim Rogers as saying the "UK is finished" and that investors should dump the currency. Rogers never shies away from issuing declarations. But taken together with Evans-Pritchard, it leaves me wondering not just about the pound, but most currencies.

Carrying Several Passports? It’s Not Just for Spies

Dual passports are no longer the sole province of people who grew up in more than one country. Millions of American citizens potentially qualify for various reasons — ethnic heritage, religion, country of birth or where their spouse was born.

“The fact is people don’t think about it until it is pointed out to them,” said Jan Dvorak, president of Travisa, a passport services company in Washington. Some Americans, he said, “don’t realize that they actually have dual nationality.”

The Photographic Eye

How Our Eyes See vs. How Our Cameras See

Quote of the Day

“Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”
--Simone Weil
(via the Happiness Blog)

Win a Trip You Won’t Forget

I would be applying for this if I could...

A few years ago, soon after I returned disconsolate and shellshocked from a trip to Darfur, I found New Yorkers burning with moral outrage.

The spark wasn’t genocide, war or poverty, but rather homelessness — of a red-tailed hawk nicknamed Pale Male. Managers of a Fifth Avenue apartment building had dismantled his nest.

Fury! Television cameras! And public pressure that led to a solution for rebuilding the nest.

I wondered how some of that compassion for a hawk could be rechanneled to help human beings like those I had just seen dying in Darfur. The potential is vast: just imagine if we felt the same sympathy for the 25,000 children who will die today of poverty as we do for, say, a lost and terrified puppy on the street. But it’s very difficult to generate activism for distant people whom we can’t visualize.

So I concocted a contest to take a university student with me on a reporting trip to Africa. I figured that the student’s journey might help connect American students to truly desperate needs abroad.

We’ve held two of these student trips so far, and today I’m delighted to announce the third.

If you apply, you should know that within The Times, my colleagues say that first prize is one trip with Kristof. Second prize is two trips.

But they’re just jealous. The trip may not be comfortable, but if you don’t obsess about rats under the beds, bats in the outhouses or drunken soldiers at checkpoints, then the trip will be memorable and perhaps even life-changing.

If you win, you won’t be practicing tourism but journalism. You’ll blog for nytimes.com and file videos for The Times and for YouTube.

I’m doing this for two reasons. First, I want to engage young people about global issues that I’m passionate about. Second, it’s good journalism, for you’ll bring a tool to reporting from Africa that I no longer have: a fresh eye.
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One of the failures of the American education system is that it rarely exposes students to life around the world. As Bill Gates put it in his 2007 Harvard commencement address, “I left Harvard with no real awareness of the awful inequities in the world.”

Let’s hope that Barack Obama’s presidency makes public service more appealing. But if you want to save the world, you first must understand it.

So, embed yourself deep within a developing country for a summer or a year. I wish colleges would offer credit for such gritty experiences — and extra credit for getting intestinal worms.

I’ve posted some overseas volunteer possibilities, from helping at a maternity hospital in Somaliland to teaching English to brothel children in India, on my blog. Even if you don’t win my trip, you can still win your own.

Time for (Self) Shock Therapy

Friedman on the banking crisis...

I was walking by a TV the other day and CNN was on, airing a hearing of what seemed to be a banking committee in Congress debating whether to release more bailout money. CNN didn’t identify the lawmaker who was speaking. He had a bit of a Southern drawl. But I burst out laughing when he said something like: “I remember a time when banks lent money to people. Now it’s the other way around.”

Yes, kids, those were the days — when banks lent money to the people not the people to the banks!
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“Right now,” said David Smick, author of “The World Is Curved,” “the bankers are sitting on mountains of cash, including our bailout money, because they know their true balance sheets are a disaster — far worse than publicly stated.” The situation will likely worsen as delinquent consumer and auto loans are piled atop bad mortgages. “Obama needs to inject some truth serum into the banking discussion. No one trusts the banks, and even the bankers don’t trust each other.” Bringing clarity to bank balance sheets, said Smick, “is the first step to fixing America’s bank lending problem.”

Only after we bring full transparency to the bank balance sheets will we see private capital buying into banks again at scale. But have no illusions. There are still real balance sheet problems that have to be surmounted. This is not just a psychological crisis.

Gut Reaction: Overeating Can Impair Body Function

The holiday season is pretty much over. But is your body over the holiday season? For many people, indulging during these food-filled celebrations can set the stage for routine overeating.

The problem, some doctors and researchers say, is that overeating causes biological changes in the body that can lead to more food cravings and cause your stomach to send mixed signals about when it's actually full. As the years go by, those holiday pounds add up.
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A Vicious Cycle

Overeating "sets your body chemistry sort of into red alert," says Dr. Sasha Stiles, a family physician who specializes in obesity at Tufts Medical Center. "The kinds of hormone and metabolic processes that normally will try to metabolize food will go into overdrive to make sure they get rid of this huge food load," Stiles explains.

This means that much of what you eat will be stored as fat rather than converted into healthy byproducts.

Excess food can trigger an unfortunate cycle: The pancreas produces extra insulin to process the sugar load and remove it from the bloodstream. It doesn't stop producing insulin until the brain senses that blood sugar levels are safe. But by the time the brain stops insulin production, often too much sugar is removed. Low blood sugar can make you feel tired, dizzy, nauseous, even depressed — a condition often remedied by eating more sugar and more carbohydrates.

This feeling of low blood sugar sends many people after more carbohydrates, says Stiles, and they go for high-sugar foods to bring their blood sugar back up to normal and make them feel better.

Quote of the Day #2

If popular culture is to revive, it will have to take lessons from African-American church services, where intense, surging music remains the vehicle of spirituality and profound emotion.

--Camille Paglia

UnitedHealth Ponies Up $350 Million Over Out-of-Network Pay

UnitedHealth is shelling out $350 million to settle lawsuits that claimed the company shortchanged consumers and physicians when paying for medical services outside its preferred network.

Banking on Irish Nationalization

Ireland now has its own Northern Rock. The nationalization of Anglo Irish Bank marks a new phase in the country's financial crisis -- one in which questions over Ireland's own solvency will become increasingly urgent.
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The Irish government will be determined to do whatever it can to avoid nationalizing the remaining large banks. The Irish banking system's total assets are equivalent to two times the country's gross domestic product. Bringing all those liabilities onto the country's balance sheet would overwhelm the public finances, raising doubts over Ireland's creditworthiness. The cost of insuring Irish state debt rose to more than 250 basis points following the Anglo Irish news.

Quote of the Day

Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.
-- Jim Ryun

(via RevShark at realmoney.com)

Alash: Tuvan Throat Singing Re-Imagined

This is a very cool link for some Tuvan throat singing...

WNYC, January 14, 2009 - For years, the territory that makes up Tuva spent hundreds of years changing hands. The semi-autonomous republic is now technically part of Russia.

But Tuvans boast a musical identity all their own, featuring a vocal tradition that has put them on the world-music map: throat singing. The Alash Ensemble honors that heritage with a modern twist. Its influences include all the modern throat singers, but also American innovators such as Jimi Hendrix and Sun Ra.

Alash recently visited WNYC's Soundcheck for an in-studio performance. Between songs, Sean Quirk, the group's manager and translator, fielded questions from host John Schaefer.

A Simple Surgical Checklist Saves Lives

A big fan of checklists myself, one of my highest priorities is trying to get everyone in my organization to use such lists...


Score another victory for the humble checklist. Adopting a surgical safety checklist reduced deaths and complications by more than a third in a study published online by the New England Journal of Medicine this week.

The 19-item list, developed by the World Health Organization, is pretty straightforward stuff. At various points in the procedure, team members confirm that they’re doing the right thing on the right part of the right patient, that they’re prepared for certain high-risk situations that might arise, and that key issues regarding post-op care are clear. (See the checklist by clicking on the PDF icon.)

But straightforward can be a good thing — especially if it encourages clear, systematic communication and behavior.

Seeking Self-Esteem Through Surgery

To the rigors of teenage grooming — waxing, plucking, body training and skin care regimens that were once the province of adults — add cosmetic surgery, which is fast becoming a mainstream option among teenagers. But with this popularity, some experts are concerned that the underlying motivation for many of the young people seeking surgery — namely, self-esteem — is being disregarded in the drive to look, as Kristen puts it, “normal.”

The latest figures from the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery show that the number of cosmetic surgical procedures performed on youths 18 or younger more than tripled over a 10-year period, to 205,119 in 2007 from 59,890 in 1997. This includes even more controversial procedures: liposuctions rose to 9,295 from 2,504, and breast augmentations increased nearly sixfold, to 7,882 from 1,326. (The latter two procedures have been associated with the deaths of two 18-year-olds: Amy Fledderman of Pennsylvania, who died in 2001 of fat embolism syndrome after undergoing liposuction, and Stephanie Kuleba of Florida, who died last spring from complications because of anesthesia used during a breast augmentation and inverted nipple surgery.)

At this point, the recession is apparently having little effect on teenage cosmetic surgery.

Maggot Therapy

From the "Suture for a Living" blog, written by a plastic surgeon out of Arkansas

When I was a general surgery resident, we had a couple of patients come in with maggots in their wounds--both with venous stasis ulcers on their legs. As "icky" as it was to clean the maggots out of the wounds, it was down right impressive how clean the wounds were (and yes it was my job to do the cleaning). Those maggots sure had done a wonderful job of removing the necrotic tissue and leaving behind healthy granulation tissue. (photo credit)

Maggot therapy waxes and wanes in popularity throughout time. Ambroise Pare (1509-1590) is generally given credit for first noting the beneficial effects of maggots in suppurative wounds. Napoleon's famous military surgeon, Baron D. J. Larrey (1766-1842) noted larvae of the blue fly in the wounds of soldiers in Syria during the Egyptian expedition. He noted that the maggots only attacked putrefying substances rather than living tissues and that they promoted their cicatrization.
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Maggots may be used intentionally as biological debriding agents. They are an effective alternative to surgical debridement in patients who cannot go to the operating room for medical reasons.

Anti-Love Drug May Be Ticket to Bliss

In the new issue of Nature, the neuroscientist Larry Young offers a grand unified theory of love. After analyzing the brain chemistry of mammalian pair bonding — and, not incidentally, explaining humans’ peculiar erotic fascination with breasts — Dr. Young predicts that it won’t be long before an unscrupulous suitor could sneak a pharmaceutical love potion into your drink.

That’s the bad news. The not-so-bad news is that you may enjoy this potion if you took it knowingly with the right person. But the really good news, as I see it, is that we might reverse-engineer an anti-love potion, a vaccine preventing you from making an infatuated ass of yourself. Although this love vaccine isn’t mentioned in Dr. Young’s essay, when I raised the prospect he agreed it could also be in the offing.

Could any discovery be more welcome? This is what humans have sought ever since Odysseus ordered his crew to tie him to the mast while sailing past the Sirens. Long before scientists identified neuroreceptors, long before Britney Spears’ quickie Vegas wedding or any of Larry King’s seven marriages, it was clear that love was a dangerous disease.
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When a female prairie vole’s brain is artificially infused with oxytocin, a hormone that produces some of the same neural rewards as nicotine and cocaine, she’ll quickly become attached to the nearest male. A related hormone, vasopressin, creates urges for bonding and nesting when it is injected in male voles (or naturally activated by sex). After Dr. Young found that male voles with a genetically limited vasopressin response were less likely to find mates, Swedish researchers reported that men with a similar genetic tendency were less likely to get married. In his Nature essay, Dr. Young speculates that human love is set off by a “biochemical chain of events” that originally evolved in ancient brain circuits involving mother-child bonding, which is stimulated in mammals by the release of oxytocin during labor, delivery and nursing.

Earth Observed

23 amazing photos at the link.. including this one of fields in Sudan


The Earth Observatory is a website run by NASA's Earth Observing System Project Science Office (EOSPSO). Bringing together imagery from many different satellites and astronaut missions, the website publishes fantastic images with highly detailed descriptions, feature articles and more. Gathered here are some standout photographs from the collections in the Earth Observatory over the past several years. For more images and information, please visit the Earth Observatory site itself.

Where Sweatshops Are a Dream

I am in complete agreement with Kristof's point of view as outlined below...


Before Barack Obama and his team act on their talk about “labor standards,” I’d like to offer them a tour of the vast garbage dump here in Phnom Penh.

This is a Dante-like vision of hell. It’s a mountain of festering refuse, a half-hour hike across, emitting clouds of smoke from subterranean fires.

The miasma of toxic stink leaves you gasping, breezes batter you with filth, and even the rats look forlorn. Then the smoke parts and you come across a child ambling barefoot, searching for old plastic cups that recyclers will buy for five cents a pound. Many families actually live in shacks on this smoking garbage.

Mr. Obama and the Democrats who favor labor standards in trade agreements mean well, for they intend to fight back at oppressive sweatshops abroad. But while it shocks Americans to hear it, the central challenge in the poorest countries is not that sweatshops exploit too many people, but that they don’t exploit enough.

I’d love to get a job in a factory,” said Pim Srey Rath, a 19-year-old woman scavenging for plastic. “At least that work is in the shade. Here is where it’s hot.”

Another woman, Vath Sam Oeun, hopes her 10-year-old boy, scavenging beside her, grows up to get a factory job, partly because she has seen other children run over by garbage trucks. Her boy has never been to a doctor or a dentist, and last bathed when he was 2, so a sweatshop job by comparison would be far more pleasant and less dangerous.

I’m glad that many Americans are repulsed by the idea of importing products made by barely paid, barely legal workers in dangerous factories. Yet sweatshops are only a symptom of poverty, not a cause, and banning them closes off one route out of poverty. At a time of tremendous economic distress and protectionist pressures, there’s a special danger that tighter labor standards will be used as an excuse to curb trade.

At M.I.T., Large Lectures Are Going the Way of the Blackboard

Medical schools could benefit from such an approach as well...

The physics department has replaced the traditional large introductory lecture with smaller classes that emphasize hands-on, interactive, collaborative learning. Last fall, after years of experimentation and debate and resistance from students, who initially petitioned against it, the department made the change permanent. Already, attendance is up and the failure rate has dropped by more than 50 percent.

Personal Health New Thinking on How to Protect the Heart

The well-established risk factors for heart disease remain intact: high cholesterol, high blood pressure, smoking, diabetes, abdominal obesity and sedentary living. But behind them a relatively new factor has emerged that may be even more important as a cause of heart attacks than, say, high blood levels of artery-damaging cholesterol.

That factor is C-reactive protein, or CRP, a blood-borne marker of inflammation that, along with coagulation factors, is now increasingly recognized as the driving force behind clots that block blood flow to the heart. Yet patients are rarely tested for CRP, even if they already have heart problems.
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Among foods that help to reduce the inflammatory marker CRP are cold-water fish like salmon, tuna and mackerel; flax seed; walnuts; and canola oil and margarine based on canola oil. Fish oil capsules are also effective. Dr. Ozner recommends cooking with canola oil and using more expensive and aromatic olive oil for salads.

Other aspects of the Mediterranean diet — vegetables, fruits and red wine (or purple grape juice) — are helpful as well. Their antioxidant properties help prevent the formation of artery-damaging LDL cholesterol.

Other Steps

Several recent studies have linked periodontal disease to an increased risk of heart disease, most likely because gum disease causes low-grade chronic inflammation. So good dental hygiene, with regular periodontal cleanings, can help protect your heart as well as your teeth.

Reducing chronic stress is another important factor. The Interheart study, which examined the effects of stress in more than 27,000 people, found that stress more than doubled the risk of heart attacks.

Dr. Joel Okner, a cardiologist in Chicago, and Jeremy Clorfene, a cardiac psychologist, the authors of “The No Bull Book on Heart Disease” (Sterling, 2009), note that getting enough sleep improves the ability to manage stress.

Practicing the relaxation response once or twice a day by breathing deeply and rhythmically in a quiet place with eyes closed and muscles relaxed can help cool the hottest blood. Other techniques Dr. Ozner recommends include meditation, prayer, yoga, self-hypnosis, laughter, taking a midday nap, getting a dog or cat, taking up a hobby and exercising regularly.

Afghan Schoolgirls Undeterred by Attack

ANDAHAR, Afghanistan — One morning two months ago, Shamsia Husseini and her sister were walking through the muddy streets to the local girls school when a man pulled alongside them on a motorcycle and posed what seemed like an ordinary question.

“Are you going to school?”

Then the man pulled Shamsia’s burqa from her head and sprayed her face with burning acid. Scars, jagged and discolored, now spread across Shamsia’s eyelids and most of her left cheek. These days, her vision goes blurry, making it hard for her to read.

But if the acid attack against Shamsia and 14 others — students and teachers — was meant to terrorize the girls into staying home, it appears to have completely failed.

Love the Long Eyelashes. Who’s Your Doctor?

First it was frozen foreheads. Now it’s Betty Boop eyelashes.

'Atlas Shrugged': From Fiction to Fact in 52 Years

Some years ago when I worked at the libertarian Cato Institute, we used to label any new hire who had not yet read "Atlas Shrugged" a "virgin." Being conversant in Ayn Rand's classic novel about the economic carnage caused by big government run amok was practically a job requirement. If only "Atlas" were required reading for every member of Congress and political appointee in the Obama administration. I'm confident that we'd get out of the current financial mess a lot faster.

Many of us who know Rand's work have noticed that with each passing week, and with each successive bailout plan and economic-stimulus scheme out of Washington, our current politicians are committing the very acts of economic lunacy that "Atlas Shrugged" parodied in 1957, when this 1,000-page novel was first published and became an instant hit.

Rand, who had come to America from Soviet Russia with striking insights into totalitarianism and the destructiveness of socialism, was already a celebrity. The left, naturally, hated her. But as recently as 1991, a survey by the Library of Congress and the Book of the Month Club found that readers rated "Atlas" as the second-most influential book in their lives, behind only the Bible.

For the uninitiated, the moral of the story is simply this: Politicians invariably respond to crises -- that in most cases they themselves created -- by spawning new government programs, laws and regulations. These, in turn, generate more havoc and poverty, which inspires the politicians to create more programs . . . and the downward spiral repeats itself until the productive sectors of the economy collapse under the collective weight of taxes and other burdens imposed in the name of fairness, equality and do-goodism.

Inside the Savant Mind: Tips for Thinking from an Extraordinary Thinker

Daniel Tammet is the author of two books, Born on a Blue Day and Embracing the Wide Sky, which comes out this month. He’s also a linguist and holds the European record for reciting the first 22,514 decimal points of the mathematical constant Pi. Mind Matters editor Jonah Lehrer chats with Tammet about how his memory works, why the IQ test is overrated, and a possible explanation for extraordinary feats of creativity.

New Study: Autism Linked to Environment

California's sevenfold increase in autism cannot be explained by changes in doctors' diagnoses and most likely is due to environmental exposures, University of California scientists reported Thursday.

The scientists who authored the new study advocate a nationwide shift in autism research to focus on potential factors in the environment that babies and fetuses are exposed to, including pesticides, viruses and chemicals in household products.

Hack your brain

How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls and a radio

DO YOU EVER want to change the way you see the world? Wouldn't it be fun to hallucinate on your lunch break? Although we typically associate such phenomena with powerful drugs like LSD or mescaline, it's easy to fling open the doors of perception without them: All it takes is a basic understanding of how the mind works.

The first thing to know is that the mind isn't a mirror, or even a passive observer of reality. Much of what we think of as being out there actually comes from in here, and is a byproduct of how the brain processes sensation. In recent years scientists have come up with a number of simple tricks that expose the artifice of our senses, so that we end up perceiving what we know isn't real - tweaking the cortex to produce something uncannily like hallucinations. Perhaps we hear the voice of someone who is no longer alive, or feel as if our nose is suddenly 3 feet long.

A Tactic to Cut I.C.U. Trauma: Get Patients Up

For years, doctors thought they had done their jobs if patients came out of an intensive care unit alive.

Now, though, researchers say they are alarmed by what they are finding as they track patients for months or years after an I.C.U. stay. Patients, even young ones, can be weak for years. Some have difficulty thinking and concentrating or have post-traumatic stress disorder and terrible memories of nightmares they had while heavily sedated.

While patients may be suffering lingering effects from illnesses that landed them in the I.C.U., researchers are increasingly convinced that spending days, weeks or months on life support in the units can elicit unexpected, long-lasting effects.

Quote of the Day

If you suffer, thank God! It is a sure sign that you are alive.
-- Elbert Hubbbard

No crisis for the US dollar -- yet

From Jim Jubak at MSN Money...

The dollar is on the rise despite a crumbling economy and a teetering financial system, but a long-term decline for the currency looms. So what's an investor to do?

(via Inectious Greed)

We're Borrowing Like Mad. Can the U.S. Pay It Back?

From the U.s. Economics Editor of "The Economist"

In its battle against the financial crisis, the U.S. government has extended its full faith and credit to an ever-growing swath of the private sector: first homeowners, then banks, now car companies. Soon, President-elect Barack Obama will put the government credit card to work with a massive fiscal boost for the economy. Necessary as these steps are, they raise a worry of their own: Can the United States pay the money back?

The notion seems absurd: Banana republics default, not the world's biggest, richest economy, right? The United States has unparalleled wealth, a stable legal tradition, responsible macroeconomic policies and a top-notch, triple-A credit rating. U.S. Treasury bonds are routinely called "risk-free," and the United States has the unique privilege of borrowing in the currency that other countries like to hold as foreign-exchange reserves.

Yes, default is unlikely. But it is no longer unthinkable.

ORBIS US' photostream

Here are some flickr photos of orbis in action from professional photogapher, Raul Vasquez

Work on Stuff that Matters: First Principles

by Tim O'Reilly
I spent a lot of last year urging people to work on stuff that matters. This led to many questions about what that "stuff" might be. I've been a bit reluctant to answer those questions, because the list is different for everyone. I thought I'd do better to start the new year with some ideas about how to think about this for yourself.
First off, though, I want to make clear that "work on stuff that matters" does not mean focusing on non-profit work, "causes, or any other form of "do-goodism." Non-profit projects often do matter a great deal, and people with tech skills can make important contributions, but it's essential to get beyond that narrow box. I'm a strong believer in the social value of business done right. We need to build an economy in which the important things are paid for in self-sustaining ways rather than as charities to be funded out of the goodness of our hearts.
There are a number of half-unconscious litmus tests I use in my own life. I'm going to try to tease them out here, and hope that you can help me think this through in the comments.

20 Websites Every Apple Fan Must Bookmark

20 Websites Every Apple Fan Must Bookmark

The thing about goals

Read this wise post from Seth Godin...

Having goals is a pain in the neck.

Caramel Macchiato

From the coffesage blog--a nice recipe for the winter...

Caramel Macchiato
Use a 12 ounce mug and remember that Starbucks uses .75 oz of syrup per 4 oz of liquid and 1 shot espresso unless you’ve ordered a double shot for their Macchiato coffee drink. Please note that I have added the use of caramel syrup which in actuality Starbucks does not use it in the drink they make but it does add an extra something. Try it!
Ingredients you will use:
1. 3/4 cup steamed milk
2. 1 shot espresso
3. 1/4 ounce or 1 tsp. vanilla syrup (.25 oz per 4 oz liquid)
4. your favorite caramel sauce for drizzle. I recommend Ghirardelli Caramel Sauce because it is just fabulous!
5. 1/4 ounce or 1 tsp. caramel syrup such as Da Vinci Caramel Syrup
Directions:
In your coffee mug, add vanilla syrup, caramel syrup and steamed milk. Top with milk foam and add freshly brewed espresso through the foam. Drizzle with caramel sauce. Don’t skimp on the caramel. Cause “it’s soooo good!”

Creature Comforts

But she wasn’t dressed up. The woman, Ann Edie, was simply blind and out for an evening walk with Panda, her guide miniature horse.

There are no sidewalks in Edie’s neighborhood, so Panda led her along the street’s edge, maneuvering around drainage ditches, mailboxes and bags of raked leaves. At one point, Panda paused, waited for a car to pass, then veered into the road to avoid a group of children running toward them swinging glow sticks. She led Edie onto a lawn so she wouldn’t hit her head on the side mirror of a parked van, then to a traffic pole at a busy intersection, where she stopped and tapped her hoof. “Find the button,” Edie said. Panda raised her head inches from the pole so Edie could run her hand along Panda’s nose to find and press the “walk” signal button.

Edie isn’t the only blind person who uses a guide horse instead of a dog — there’s actually a Guide Horse Foundation that’s been around nearly a decade. The obvious question is, Why? In fact, Edie says, there are many reasons: miniature horses are mild-mannered, trainable and less threatening than large dogs. They’re naturally cautious and have exceptional vision, with eyes set far apart for nearly 360-degree range. Plus, they’re herd animals, so they instinctively synchronize their movements with others. But the biggest reason is age: miniature horses can live and work for more than 30 years. In that time, a blind person typically goes through five to seven guide dogs. That can be draining both emotionally and economically, because each one can cost up to $60,000 to breed, train and place in a home.
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What’s most striking about Edie and Panda is that after the initial shock of seeing a horse walk into a cafe, or ride in a car, watching them work together makes the idea of guide miniature horses seem utterly logical. Even normal. So normal, in fact, that people often find it hard to believe that the United States government is considering a proposal that would force Edie and many others like her to stop using their service animals. But that’s precisely what’s happening, because a growing number of people believe the world of service animals has gotten out of control: first it was guide dogs for the blind; now it’s monkeys for quadriplegia and agoraphobia, guide miniature horses, a goat for muscular dystrophy, a parrot for psychosis and any number of animals for anxiety, including cats, ferrets, pigs, at least one iguana and a duck. They’re all showing up in stores and in restaurants, which is perfectly legal because the Americans With Disabilities Act (A.D.A.) requires that service animals be allowed wherever their owners want to go.

How Many Albinos Are in Tanzania?

More than you might think.
Three men armed with machetes killed an 8-year-old albino boy in Burundi last week and are believed to have smuggled his limbs to Tanzania, where witch doctors use albino body parts for potions. At least 35 albinos were killed in Tanzania in 2008, prompting police officials to set up an emergency hot line and a program to distribute free cell phones to all albinos. How many albinos are there in Tanzania?

Burger King's body spray

You know you're in the throes of hard economic times when one of the most talked-about gift ideas of the holiday season is body spray from Burger King. You heard me right. There's a new burger in town, and it's not a burger at all. It's a fragrance called Flame by BK (pour hommespour hommes, presumably).

Maybe you heard the late-night talk-show hosts joking about it and assumed the product was an urban myth spread by some truant, meat-obsessed teenager. Or maybe you were so intrigued, you threw on your bathrobe, jumped in the car and hit the nearest BK drive-through in search of a midnight Whopper and some beefy love potion.

Either scenario would have left you dismayed. Flame, which costs $3.99 a spray bottle and, according to the company, has "the scent of seduction, with a hint of flame-broiled meat," is no joke. Nor, alas, is it available at Burger King. You have to buy it at a Ricky's drugstore in New York, which has an exclusive deal, or on Burger King's "Fire Meets Desire" website, which features its king mascot reclining by a fire and clothed in nothing but an animal fur. Make that, you had to buy it at those places. By Monday, it was sold out at both and going for $73 and up on EBay.

Gorillas In Their Midst

Is it possible to protect Rwanda’s mountain gorillas while also helping some of its poorest citizens?
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Across sub-Saharan Africa, women and children often hike miles to reach wells and families cope with a near-total absence of medical care. Even in remote areas, clinics and boreholes built by foreign groups with foreign money aim to relieve some of the most debilitating burdens of poverty. The improvements in Bisate are unusual because they are the result of work by the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund International (DFGFI), an organization originally devoted to saving the endangered mountain gorillas in the forest, not assisting depressed villagers.

With its temperate mountain climate and fertile soil, the Virunga forest fringe is one of the more densely populated areas of Rwanda, which is the most densely populated country on the continent. The large families here—it is common for women to have seven or more kids—aggravate pressure on limited land. And for most people, farming is the only way to survive.

Less than 15 years after ‘Rwanda’ became a synonym for hell, tourism has joined coffee and tea production as one of the country’s major industries, bringing in $42.3 million in 2007, including $7 million for gorilla permits.
However, the mountain gorillas living in the forest distinguish this area from countless other rural regions. Attracting tourists and money to Rwanda, they are more valued—by the government, by NGOs, by the entire world—than the peasants living nearby. Indeed, efforts to preserve these surprisingly delicate animals force farmers into competition against them.

If This Isn’t Slavery, What Is?

Anyone who thinks it is hyperbole to describe sex trafficking as slavery should look at the maimed face of a teenage girl, Long Pross.

Glance at Pross from her left, and she looks like a normal, fun-loving girl, with a pretty face and a joyous smile. Then move around, and you see where her brothel owner gouged out her right eye.

Yes, I know it’s hard to read this. But it’s infinitely more painful for Pross to recount the humiliations she suffered, yet she summoned the strength to do so — and to appear in a video posted online with this column — because she wants people to understand how brutal sex trafficking can be.

Pross was 13 and hadn’t even had her first period when a young woman kidnapped her and sold her to a brothel in Phnom Penh. The brothel owner, a woman as is typical, beat Pross and tortured her with electric current until finally the girl acquiesced.

She was kept locked deep inside the brothel, her hands tied behind her back at all times except when with customers.

Brothel owners can charge large sums for sex with a virgin, and like many girls, Pross was painfully stitched up so she could be resold as a virgin. In all, the brothel owner sold her virginity four times.

Pross paid savagely each time she let a potential customer slip away after looking her over.

“I was beaten every day, sometimes two or three times a day,” she said, add

For the Blind, Technology Does What a Guide Dog Can’t

A native of India, Mr. Raman went from relying on volunteers to read him textbooks at a top technical university there to leading a largely autonomous life in Silicon Valley, where he is a highly respected computer scientist and an engineer at Google.

Along the way, Mr. Raman built a series of tools to help him take advantage of objects or technologies that were not designed with blind users in mind. They ranged from a Rubik’s Cube covered in Braille to a software program that can take complex mathematical formulas and read them aloud, which became the subject of his Ph.D. dissertation at Cornell. He also built a version of Google’s search service tailored for blind users.

Mr. Raman, 43, is now working to modify the latest technological gadget that he says could make life easier for blind people: a touch-screen phone.

Scientists: True love can last a lifetime

Using brain scans, researchers at Stony Brook University in New York have discovered a small number of couples respond with as much passion after 20 years together as most people only do during the early throes of romance, Britain's Sunday Times newspaper reported.

Call America Free

Here is a site that will let you call back to the States free from anywhere in the world...
CallingAmerica.com