Marion Nestle » Healthy people are too expensive for society?

I love this quote:

... obese people and smokers cost less to treat. Of course they do. They die sooner. Healthy people are expensive ... Economists have an interesting way of looking at things

http://whattoeatbook.com/2008/02/05/healthy-people-are-too-expensive-for-society/

My daughter, Santa Lucia, and the SF Chronicle...

Ariel, my daughter, goes to the East Bay Waldorf School, and a few weeks ago we were asked at the last minute to create a crown for her that would hold eleven candles. So my wife Linda spend a good two hours on Thursday night cutting up coat hangers and putting something together with needle-nose pliers and a glue gun.

Ariel was going to be Santa Lucia, the saint of light in the darkness of winter. Waldorf celebrates holidays from many traditions, including those of Europe. In European villages a girl is chosen to represent Santa Lucia, and she is dressed in robes and a crown of candles.

Ariel came home saying there was a photographer there flashing picture after picture in her face, and she said she would be in the paper. Sure enough, the following Saturday, there she was. And it wasn't just a little picture below the fold, but it was a huge picture filling the whole top fold of the Home section, as well as a thumbnail on the front page. The phone was ringing off the hook that morning with friends asking us if we'd seen the paper. You can read the whole story here at SFGate.

Doesn't she look beautiful - beatific is more like it. She is an amazing little girl (well, not so little any more). And yes, that is a towel on her head. Even a goddess of light needs to protect her hair from the wax...

Fear and greed: the engine of global warming

Corporations and governments seem to act with no moral compass, like refusing to do anything about greenhouse gases even as the world roasts.

Why is this?

Public companies are whores to the Wall Street pimps - if you don't come in with cash tonight, you get beat up. So corporate leaders who are afraid of losing their jobs and the bags of money that come with it will act against what might be their own moral gauge of what is right in order to bring in the top dollar to the company's stockholders.

In the same way, elected officials are highly dependent on funding to win an election, and so they also become whores to those who have money - namely large corporations. An elected official is driven by greed for power or the fear of losing their position to go against their own moral gauge of what is right.

Then there is the engine behind the pressure to act unethically: Wall Street (or your equivalent in your country). These big greedy investment institutions are leading us pell mell to destruction.

But who is Wall Street serving? Where do they get all their money?

From you and I. We want immediate results or we dump our mutual funds. We are afraid of losing money, and we want to make more money. Fear and greed.

So at all levels, it is fear and greed which is driving this, starting with you and me. And what drives fear and greed? Well, I don't know about anyone else, but for me it is tied to deep beliefs in my own smallness, in feeling limited, contracted, vulnerable.

So how do I fight global warming? I try to fight these feelings I have about myself, and remind myself of my own greatness and goodness. In this way I can start making choices that are not based on fear and greed.

An ancient scripture from India says: dhanam atma jnanam: "Knowledge of the Self is charity". As I follow this thread of corrupt and unethical behavior down to its source, I can see the deep wisdom of this statement.

Now THAT is the way to learn math

Our daughter is going to a Waldorf School in the East Bay. We heard about Waldorf from a friend of ours who is a teacher, and the more we heard, the more we liked. Ariel is in second grade, and she and we are liking this school and the way it teaches children more and more.

It's based on a very rich philosophy called anthroposophy, which I have barely scratched the surface of understanding. An important principle is that you involve the entire being of the child when teaching them - physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. You don't just sit them at a desk and give them homework and tests. As some examples, they have a movement class every week, and their first exposure to times tables is by doing step dances in a circle, emphasizing the two-beat, the three-beat, the four-beat, etc.

The latest revelation for me was how she is learning her times tables visually, and is getting her first introduction into geometry. Take a look at the beautiful 10-pointed star below that Ariel drew



Note how the circle has the numbers 0 to 9 around it. The way she draws the star is she places her pen at '0', and then says "seven times one is seven" and draws a line to the 7. Then she says "seven times two is fourteen" and draws a line to the 4, and so on. In this way she draws a ten-pointed star, and then she spends time coloring it in to make it beautiful.

In the last week she has done this about six times at home, and this is without having any homework assigned. She just loves to do it.

I find myself really happy for her, and a little bit jealous - I am terrible at math, in part because I struggled with it at school (in particular my times and addition tables) and now I find myself freezing up when trying to do basic math operations. If I had learned math this way, I think I would have loved it...

The Future of Web Startups

Paul Graham has a great essay that captures a lot of the trends we're seeing with startups and where he sees it all going. Easier, cheaper, standardized, more of them, and who needs college?

http://www.paulgraham.com/webstartups.html

The Inevitable March of Recorded Music Towards Free: Tech Crunch

I have tried telling this to friends, and they think I'm kind of crazy. But I do believe it is inevitable. Maybe we'll also go back to the good ol' days where everyone sang each others' songs without having to pay license fees.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/10/04/the-inevitable-march-of-recorded-music-towards-free/

MSNBC: The quiet revolution (and my golden handcuffs): telecommuting

Sun's IWork (tele-work, flex office) program gets top billing in this MSNBC story.

I think of Sun's excellent mobile work program as one of a number of "golden handcuffs" Sun has on my wrists. That, and great pay and great benefits and great people to work with. It really is hard to beat.

Voluntary means we don't have to - consumer safety in the Bush era

My Dad wrote the following to the family list today. I checked, and he's not kidding, here's the article he probably read that got him going:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/02/business/02consumer.html

The quote from the Chinese is almost correct, here is it out of the article:

“Time and again, through the translators, they made clear they did not understand this concept,” said Nick Marchica, an engineer and former agency senior aide. “What they told us was, ‘As far as we are concerned, voluntary means we don’t have to.’ ”

---

We learn today, in the wake of all the poisoned dog food and harmful toys, that the Consumer Safety Bureau in the Dept of Commerce was cut in half as soon as Bush came in, and was put under a party hack with strict orders to go easy on the safety requirements. Their budget for
monitoring the safety of American consumer goods is now less than half of that for the bureau that monitors animal feeds.

Conservatives say that voluntary guidelines developed by industry are better than guidelines imposed by meddling bureaucrats, and this is the management line now at the Consumer Safety Bureau. Sounds good. But it took the Chinese importers of poisonous and adulterated and unsafe stuff to make it clear. Of course their stuff didn't get stopped at the border
by consumer safety inspectors, because there aren't any, most of the time (they now have to work from home, as their offices were abolished, and their numbers are down by 60 percent), and their testing equipment is whatever they had 10 years ago. It's OK, we can rely on the
manufacturers adhering to voluntary standards.

What did the Chinese say about this? One toy maker summed it up. "We don't understand what is the problem. Voluntary means, we don't have to."

Never mind, we don't have to run tests and require standards. We just wait until a bunch of people get sick and die, then we look into it. Cheaper that way.

John

P.S. I did start out as a Republican, you know. Stuff like this changed my mind.

Heathrow Hell

I remember seeing Simon Phipps links about Heathrow, but didn't really pay attention. I didn't have any idea how bad it could be.

When you exit in England, you simply go out, get your baggage (although that did take 45 minutes), catch the Heathrow Express, and you're good to go. On the way back in, you go through security and on to your plane.

Ah, but when you're transferring flights, it's an entirely different, and hellish, experience. There is no one international terminal, so you have to be shipped from terminal to termnal on a bus. Our bus got stuck behind a luggage cart that had lost its luggage. Their transfer stations are completely overwhelmed, and it takes an hour to get a boarding pass for your next leg of the flight. Worst of all, the UK doesn't trust any other country's security and you have to go through a security check even though you went through one at your original departing airport. And this security is completely overwhelmed and the line is (if you're lucky) 45 minutes to an hour long.

The worst part of this was that I got the sense that the staff there really didn't really care if this was an inconvenience, it's just the way it is. And at Virgin Atlantic, when they were continually screwing up my ticket, they kept intimating it was my own misunderstanding of the arcane rules of airport/airline bureaucracy that was causing the problems. Deal with it, passengers, it's not our problem, was the general feeling.

As a result of the delayed flight and eternal security line, I missed my connection. So, I get put on a BA flight. Back to Terminal 1, the terminal I started at. And guess what, I have to back through friggin' security because I have been "mixed" with unchecked passengers. And nobody seems to think that maybe, just maybe, there could be a better way. Deal with it, passengers.

I checked at the gate to make sure my luggage had followed me, and they assured me it had. When I get to SFO, no luggage. Since then I have been calling every day, and today they told me that it often takes a month for someone to get their baggage back. A MONTH!. I was this close to packing my laptop on that suitcase...

I can just see the folks at Heathrow standing around, hands in pockets, taking a break, not really caring, and my luggage just sitting there. Someone glances over at the bag. "Who's luggage is that?" someone asks. "Dunno." says someone else and shrugs. Oh well... Not my problem...

Heathrow is an old, massive, airport, that is completely overwhelmed. This I understand. But the general apathy of the folks working there, the complete disregard for passengers, is unforgivable. They should have a sign over the airport as you come in: "Deal with it."

I was complaining to one of the people helping me with my lost luggage about Heathrow, and she said she personally will not go into Heathrow as a passenger, at least until the build their new terminal. A flight attendant on the BA flight also confirmed that Heathrow is absolutely hellish and to be avoided.

So Heathrow is permanently on my black list. I hope some day the airlines realize they are losing customers because of Heathrow, and start making deals with alternate airports. I hope some day Heathrow realizes that passengers are actually what they are there for, and without passengers, you have no airport.

Personally, I am one passenger they have lost, and I'll also be telling anybody else I know to avoid Heathrow at all costs as a transfer destination. If I am transferring in Europe, I will go through any airport other than Heathrow.

Deal with it, Heathrow.

P.S. Reading the comments on Tim's blog about Heathrow, it sounds like Frankfurt and Amsterdam are great choices, and that Paris, Gatwick and Stansted are all pretty close to Heathrow in terms of pure yuck.

An old neighbor ends up in Arbil, Iraq

A neighbor of mine (well, he recently moved to Virginia) has ended up doing microfinance consulting with a bank in Arbil, Iraq. He's been sending us amazing missives about his life in the compound. They're in MS Word format, and I'm trying to convince him to turn it into a blog (maybe he doesn't have good enough Internet access for that).

Anyway, I thought I'd share his latest note.

---

Friday 1 PM

Hi everyone,

We work Sunday through Thursday so today is my day off and I slept in. It is approximately 112 degrees outside. I wanted to address the security issue. I’m getting some inquiries and people are wondering if I am in harm’s way.

Search the internet for a good map of Iraq and look at the top of the country. Kurdistan is sometimes confused with the "northern provinces" and the media continues to not distinguish between ethnic Kurdistan and the northern provinces. Mosul is violent and is up north, yes, but way east over near the Syrian border. Kirkuk is dangerous and there are lots of "incidence" down there and that is why we never entered the city. Even though the micro finance bank that I am consulting for operates there, no westerners in my parent organization enter the city. Everyone thinks that after the November election ( here ); Kirkuk will be ethnically cleansed and all the Arabs that Sadam moved in, will be kicked out…. or whatever. The Kurdish paramilitary is ready and they want the city back as well as the oil.

Anyway, Kurdistan is the three or four provinces that form a little icecap across the top of Iraq and border Turkey and Iran. The nasty genocide that occurred two days ago, for example, was outside of true Kurdistan but the area is obviously still populated by Kurds. The distinction is critical to understand, just because some bombs go off, and it is "up north" and some Kurds die, does not mean it is in Kurdistan. This may seem like trivia but I am depending on it. This city, Erbil, has a ten foot moat, or ditch, dug all the way around it to stop vehicles from entering cross terrain. The only way in is on the paved road, through multiple checkpoints guarded by the Kurd Army and the paramilitary. Voila ! No ethnic Arabs allowed. Period.

Nothing is perfect, and that is why I cannot leave the compound. It ( the compound ) is in a suburb of Erbil somewhere near the airport, and is occupied by a variation of religion that I am not sure of, I think there are Christians here or something. The suburb itself is surrounded by walls with watchtowers and guards. I live in a compound within the suburb that, as you already know, has blast walls, only one vehicle gate in and a different one out. The road to the gate has concrete diversions so an approaching car has to go really slow or it will crash. Everyone stops at the gate and the guards run a mirror under 360 degrees of the car, then the sniffer dog does it again. All supervised by Triple Canopy staff ( Google “Triple Canopy” and you can see the level of security that is provided to westerners ) No bombs allowed ! Worst case scenario is that somehow a person gets in past the gate and starts shooting up the place. They would last about one second. There are literally hundreds of armed people here including heavy duty westerners ( South African mercenaries ), not just the Kurds. Or, if someone drove close enough to the suburb, they could touch off some mortar rounds, but that would be so inaccurate that I don't even think of it.

Sorry for all the details, but information can cause relaxation, and that is what I am trying to convey. After all, there were drive by shootings almost every night on the commute path I took through north Oakland when I came back from the bank in Fremont. One of our friends was held up twice on the foot path between the BART station and his house in North Berkeley. So “safe” is a relative term.

It's noon and I am leaving the house to get lunch. Tonight I am hoping to get a security guy and go out of the compound for dinner. If not, then I will stay here, locked up like a caged rat. There is a big citadel about a mile away ( in the suburb ) and it old and famous. Maybe I can include that in my adventure if and when I can arrange an outing.

Best Regards to all

BoingBoing: Virgin America's virgin flight

More rave reviews for Virgin America's new planes. I think Sun has an office in New York, and I have family there. I'm sure I have to go :)

http://www.boingboing.net/2007/08/08/getting_high_with_ri.html

What to Eat » Raw Milk or Raw Deal?

We do raw milk at home, and we love it. We can definitely tell the difference - it feels good going down. But Marion Mestle makes some good points here worth considering.

http://whattoeatbook.com/blog/raw-milk-or-raw-deal/

Google Uses Crowdsourcing To Create Maps In India

As anyone who has lived in or visited an Indian city can attest to, mapping such city is not for the faint of heart. Back alleys, tiny streets, all wandering one into the other, most without real names or addresses. I wonder how accurate this really is.

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/08/google_uses_cro.html

Earth2Tech » Toyota’s Testing Plug-in Hybrid Car

Looks like Toyota is going to come out with a plug-in hybrid. Bully for them! Now why didn't they do that in the first place, is what I want to know.

http://earth2tech.com/2007/07/25/toyota-to-sell-a-plug-in-hybrid-car/

LiquidPiston - Massive Improvement of the Internal Combustion Engine

This looks pretty interesting - LiquidPiston claims its technology can reduce the standard internal combustion engine's NOx emissions by 70% and the CO2 emissions by 50% . Wow.

http://earth2tech.com/2007/07/23/liquidpiston-gets-cash-for-engine-tech/

It's actually a pretty good life

One can always find things to complain about, but this blog is one where I share some things I'm pretty happy about.

I live in a great town, in a great state, in a great country (yes, can you believe I'm saying that?). I just finished reading a wonderful biography of Abraham Lincoln, and the dedication he and the American people had -- that they were willing to fight and give their lives to save the only country whose government was a democracy -- was quite moving and inspiring:

that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth. -- Gettysburg Address.

As I read about the sacrifices made to preserve the union, I realized how valuable and precious a democracy for all people is; I am thankful for it, and I am all the more committed to preserving it.

I love California and the Bay Area because of the beautiful weather and because it is a place of innovation and creativity.

I love Berkeley because it's not a city, and it's not a suburb, but something comfortably in between. I also love it because people here generally are dedicated to a healthy lifestyle mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. You can't walk a block without bumping into a therapist, a health practitioner, a yoga studio, an organic grocery, restaurants with delicious fresh, organic food, a book store, and so on.

Sun Microsystems is a great company to work for, and one of the things I think they get right is being flexible about where you work. If I had to commute to Silicon Valley every day, I would be miserable. If it was the only way to make money, I'd do it, but I'd be miserable.

But as it is, I am able to work from home, or take a quick bike ride up to one of the many nice coffee houses up on Shattuck that have free wireless. I can drink a latte, listen to some good music, feel a bit connected rather than just sitting in my house, and get some good work done. If I need to run an errand, there is a post office, grocery store, book store, deli, and a great alternative pharmacy all nearby. I recently hurt my back and there is a yoga studio a block from my main coffee house. There is a wide choice of chiropractors and acupuncturists, and generally I can bike from one place to the other without feeling I'm in a war zone.

And because I work at home or a five minute ride from home, I get to see my wife and family, and they get to see me. I am a familiar face. I am woven into my children's life rather than someone who pops in late at night to kiss them goodnight when they're already in bed.

So, there's a lot to be grateful for. I didn't cover the half of it. But this is what is on my mind tonight.

TED Talks -- Hans Rosling: New insights on poverty and life around the world

Great talk, great statistics, passion for human happiness, and an incredible ending - do stick around until the end :)

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/140

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

TED has made their videos available, and this one is just wonderful! My daughter goes to a Waldorf school, and IMHO they get Everything Right here, including dance every day.

http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/66

Antidepressants are depressing me

I had a friend the other day who does not have any personality disorders, just a sucky childhood, and now and then he has bouts of depression. He said a number of friends were suggesting he get on medication.

I have another friend who has been diagnosed with mild bipolar symptoms. He is on an antidepressant. When I ask him how he's feeling, he usually says "I don't feel anything. I'm not happy, I'm not sad. I mostly feel a little disconnected."

True, he doesn't go into his binges of being excited about his latest project and flying into it with a passion, and then two weeks later falling into a depression. That's not a healthy way to live, and he needs help. But are antidepressants the solution? My concern is that the antidepressants are blocking his ability to feel anything, and this in turn prevents him from ever really healing himself. It's like living your life as a robot: safe, predictable, and ultimately pointless.

I'll be honest, I don't know very much about any of this. But sometimes you have to go with your intuition. Just as it doesn't feel right for all of us to be listening to music with little ear buds rather than getting together and singing and dancing as a community, it doesn't feel right for so many people to be on antidepressants. Now they're even putting kids on this stuff. Is this really the way we want to go?

I'm not saying that antidepressants aren't effective for the truly psychotic and troubled folks of the world (although there are some doctors committed to, and successfully treating, these folks without drugs). But that's a minority. These new drugs are being taken by everyone, and are being prescribed matter-of-factly whenever a patient tells their family doctor they sleep a lot and want to isolate and feel depressed.

I know there are different opinions and lots of facts supporting the effectiveness of antidepressants. To be honest, I'm not interested in that. I'm just saying, it doesn't feel right, it bothers me, and I believe there must be a better way...