Kerry gives farewell speech to Senate

Choking up twice during a farewell speech on the Senate floor, Sen. John Kerry delivered a dissenting opinion about Washington's so-called dysfunction days before taking over as the next secretary of state.

"On occasion, we have all heard a senator leave here and take their leave condemning the Senate for being broken, for having become an impossible setting in which to try to do the people's business," said Kerry, D-Mass. "I do not believe the Senate is broken, certainly not as an institution. There's nothing wrong with the Senate that can't be fixed by what's right about the Senate."

Kerry, a 29-year Senate veteran, admitted that when he first came to the Senate in 1985 everything seemed to work easier. These days, he said, part of the problem on Capitol Hill is a lack of "courage" from individual senators.

"If the Senate favors inaction over courage and gimmicks over common ground, the risk is not that we will fail to move forward," he said. "It is that we will fall behind, we will stay behind and we will surrender our promise."

But the senator, 69, said those problems are not insurmountable, avoiding casting the whole Senate as a body paralyzed by dysfunction like so many of other departing senators have done recently.

If anything, Kerry said he believes the spirit of the Senate is starting to turn around.

"There are new whispers of desire for progress, rumors of new coalitions and a sense of possibility, whether it is on energy or immigration," he said. "I am deeply impressed by a new generation of senators who seem to have come here determined not to give in to the cynicism but to get the people's business done."

Kerry called on his colleagues, many of whom were sitting at their desks on the Senate floor to watch his speech, to make the change within themselves in the bitter debates that are ahead for the Senate.

"Only senators, one by one in their own hearts, can change the approach to legislating," Kerry said. "The Senate cannot break unless we let it."

During his tenure in the Senate, Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, rose to chairman of the powerful Senate Foreign Relations Committee. His legislative and international affairs victories included the 2010 U.S.-Russia treaty, his early work on the Iran-Contra scandal and veteran's affairs.

He noted that during his time in the Senate, huge strides were made on turning a page on gay rights, a reflection of how the body can change and develop over time.

"In 1993, I testified before Storm Thurmond's armed services committee pushing to lift the ban on gays serving in the military," he said. "And I ran into a world of misperceptions. I thought I was on a 'Saturday Night Live' skit. Today, at last, that policy is gone forever and we are a country that honors the commitment of all willing to fight and die for our country. We've gone from a Senate that passed DOMA over my objections to one that just welcomed its first openly gay senator. "

After a farewell tour of Massachusetts Thursday, Kerry will be sworn in as the next secretary of state on Friday afternoon in a private, small ceremony at the State Department, replacing Hillary Clinton.

As he prepares for his diplomatic post, Kerry said that he's aware that his credibility and the country's credibility are determined by what happens in Washington.

"If we use the time to posture politically in Washington, we weaken our position across the world," he said. "If democracy deadlocks here, we raise doubts about the democracy everywhere."

The senator - who was the 2004 Democratic nominee for president - joked that this was not the original track that he'd envisioned for leaving the Senate.

"Eight years ago, I admit that I had a very different plan, slightly different, anyway, to leave the Senate - but 61 million Americans voted that they wanted me to stay here with you," Kerry said. "I learned that sometimes the greatest lesson in life comes not from victory but from dusting yourself off after a defeat and starting over when you get knocked down."

Kerry is the 10th-most-senior senator and the second-longest-serving senator in his seat.

Also Read

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/kerry-gives-senate-farewell-223142160--abc-news-politics.html

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Health insurance to burn smokers ? Bankrate, Inc.

If you're a smoker, this would be an excellent year to kick the habit.

One of the less contentious provisions of health care reform allows health insurance companies to jack the premiums on individual policyholders who smoke by up to 50 percent beginning next January.

Come Jan. 1, 2014, you can no longer be denied coverage because of your gender, weight, health or lifestyle under health care reform.

But if you don't give up smoking, your health insurance could get awfully expensive by this time next year. A 55-year-old smoker could be looking at a premium hike of $4,250 per year, while the smoker's penalty for a 60-year-old could approach $5,100, according to The Associated Press.

Unfair, you say? Consider this: According to a 2011 survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation, employees who smoke cost their employer's insurance plan more than $10,000 in additional expenses and more than $5,000 in extra premiums annually. Who's picking up that bill? You guessed it: nonsmoking co-workers.

Little wonder that a growing number of employers, especially in health care, are turning down job applicants who smoke and are imposing no-smoking policies inside and outside the office, despite laws in 29 states and the District of Columbia that prohibit discrimination against smokers.

In the big picture, smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke causes 443,000 premature deaths and costs the nation $193 billion in health bills and lost productivity every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Who picks up that bill? We all do, whether we smoke or not.

Younger smokers won't be hit as hard as older smokers by the coming insurance rate hikes?under rules proposed last fall by the Obama administration. And the federal law does permit states to limit or change the smoking penalty as they see fit.

On the bright side,?thanks to the broad expansion of preventive care services under the Affordable Care Act, it's pretty easy to find a smoking cessation program through your insurer or employer these days that won't cost you a dime out of pocket.

Follow me on Twitter: @omnisaurus

Subscribe to Bankrate news letters today!

Source: http://www.bankrate.com/financing/insurance/health-insurance-to-burn-smokers/

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Famous bridge in India is in danger of coming down ... because of spit

Engineers say that Kolkata?s landmark Howrah bridge is in danger because gutkha chewing tobacco spit is corroding its pillars. Now activists are trying to ban the acidic tobacco.

By Shaikh Azizur Rahman,?Contributor / January 20, 2013

Indians bathe on the banks of the River Ganges River beside the landmark, Howrah Bridge on a cold winter morning in Kolkata, India, last week.

Bikas Das/AP

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It was first reported in 2010 that the pillars of Kolkata?s landmark Howrah bridge were being used as spittoons by pedestrians who chewed gutkha?? a tobacco product popular with millions in India.

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Engineers who surveyed the cantilever structure then reported that the struts supporting the girders of the bridge had already lost half of their metal casing: The corrosion was apparently caused by acids in the gutkha.

Soon the Lions Club of Howrah launched a ?Save Howrah Bridge from Spit? campaign urging people not to spit on the bridge. ?

The campaign spread across the city of Kolkata, where reddish-brown gutkha stains are visible almost everywhere ? pavements, streets, office staircases, business houses, and residential complexes. Prominent citizens of Kolkata joined the campaign in an effort to rid the city of the ugly stains.

Gutkha is a commercially produced pre-packaged mixture of crushed betel nut, tobacco, lime, paraffin, and other ?secret? ingredients, many of which are carcinogenic and addictive.

Some brands of gutkha also contain lead, arsenic, chromium, nickel, and cadmium, which are as bad as nicotine. To make its shelf life longer, magnesium carbonate ? which is used in fire extinguishers and is a known carcinogen ? is also added to gutkha.

Activists reported about a year ago that one-third of men and one-fifth of women across India are addicted to chewing tobacco and gutkha was its most popular form.

Because of its candy-like flavor and dirt-cheap prices ? 4 to 6 cents per sachet ? gutkha has become increasingly popular among children, who chew and even eat it. An estimated 5 million of India?s children are addicted to gutkha, and every day another 5,000 try it for the first time, according to reports last year by the American Cancer Society.

Research indicates that tobacco kills 1 million Indians annually and that gutkha alone leads to 80,000 cases of oral cancer every year ? the highest incidence in the world. In recent years an anti-gutkha campaign has picked up steam across the country with several nongovernment organizations lobbying for a ban on gutkha.

In August 2011, India?s Food Safety and Standard Authority issued a regulation declaring that no foodstuff, including gutkha, could contain tobacco. Last year some states began following the order by banning gutkha.

With Andhra Pradesh and Odisha states having banned it earlier this month, the manufacture and sale of the product has now been prohibited in 17 of India?s 28 states and 3 of the 7 union territories (UTs), including New Delhi. However, reports in many local newspapers suggest that gutkha?is being smuggled from other regions and is still being sold in many states.

Kolkata-based anti-gutkha campaigner Sekharesh Ghoshal said that states and union territories should cooperate and ban the tobacco in the national interest.

?Sachets of gutkha display a warning that it?s dangerous for health. Yet gutkha users do not pay any attention to such health risks and keep on chewing it,? says Dr. Ghoshal.

?Unless gutkha is banned and actually made unavailable in the market, you cannot stop people from using it. A ban only in parts of the country is of no help.?

But in many states the gutkha companies are fighting the ban by taking the local government to court.

They argue that gutkha is a tobacco product that cannot be classified as a foodstuff, and therefore cannot be banned. Still, courts in most states have upheld the ban.

Bela Naskar, the mother of two child addicts in a slum in Kolkata, says she vehemently supports a ban on gutkha.

?My 10- and 13-year-old sons have been into gutkha for some years. They take several sachets of it every day. It?s bad for their health. But they don?t listen to my warnings.?

?We really need a ban on gutkha in our state,? Ms. Naskar says. ?Otherwise I shall not be able to rid my children from this dangerous addiction.??

Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/csmonitor/globalnews/~3/Fu90cJul_HI/Famous-bridge-in-India-is-in-danger-of-coming-down-because-of-spit

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Vegetarianism can reduce risk of heart disease by up to a third

Jan. 30, 2013 ? The risk of hospitalisation or death from heart disease is 32% lower in vegetarians than people who eat meat and fish, according to a new study from the University of Oxford.

Heart disease is the single largest cause of death in developed countries, and is responsible for 65,000 deaths each year in the UK alone. The new findings, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, suggest that a vegetarian diet could significantly reduce people's risk of heart disease.

'Most of the difference in risk is probably caused by effects on cholesterol and blood pressure, and shows the important role of diet in the prevention of heart disease,' explains Dr Francesca Crowe, lead author of the study at the Cancer Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford.

This is the largest study ever conducted in the UK comparing rates of heart disease between vegetarians and non-vegetarians.

The analysis looked at almost 45,000 volunteers from England and Scotland enrolled in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC)-Oxford study, of whom 34% were vegetarian. Such a significant representation of vegetarians is rare in studies of this type, and allowed researchers to make more precise estimates of the relative risks between the two groups.

The EPIC-Oxford cohort study was funded by Cancer Research UK and the Medical Research Council and carried out by the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at the University of Oxford.

Professor Tim Key, co-author of the study and deputy director of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit, University of Oxford, said: 'The results clearly show that the risk of heart disease in vegetarians is about a third lower than in comparable non-vegetarians.'

The Oxford researchers arrived at the figure of 32% risk reduction after accounting for factors such as age, smoking, alcohol intake, physical activity, educational level and socioeconomic background.

Participants were recruited to the study throughout the 1990s, and completed questionnaires regarding their health and lifestyle when they joined. These included detailed questions on diet and exercise as well as other factors affecting health such as smoking and alcohol consumption. Almost 20,000 participants also had their blood pressures recorded, and gave blood samples for cholesterol testing.

The volunteers were tracked until 2009, during which time researchers identified 1235 cases of heart disease. This comprised 169 deaths and 1066 hospital diagnoses, identified through linkage with hospital records and death certificates. Heart disease cases were validated using data from the Myocardial Ischaemia National Audit Project (MINAP).

The researchers found that vegetarians had lower blood pressures and cholesterol levels than non-vegetarians, which is thought to be the main reason behind their reduced risk of heart disease.

Vegetarians typically had lower body mass indices (BMI) and fewer cases of diabetes as a result of their diets, although these were not found to significantly affect the results. If the results are adjusted to exclude the effects of BMI, vegetarians remain 28% less likely to develop heart disease.

The findings reinforce the idea that diet is central to prevention of heart disease, and build on previous work looking at the influence of vegetarian diets, the researchers say.

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Journal Reference:

1. Francesca L Crowe, Paul N Appleby, Ruth C Travis, and Timothy J Key. Risk of hospitalization or death from ischemic heart disease among British vegetarians and nonvegetarians: results from the EPIC-Oxford cohort study. Am J Clin Nutr, January 30, 2013 DOI: 10.3945/ajcn.112.044073

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/living_well/~3/IJ0lcI6VkJY/130130121637.htm

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Gingrich: Republicans "clearly have to change" (cbsnews)

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The Insider's Guide to Social Media Consulting Success | Business ...

When I have been asked for a proposal to create a social media marketing strategy for a company, I have won the business 95 percent of the time. That may seem remarkable but I?ve found there is one simple secret to connecting with companies at this early stage of engagement.

Competing agencies typically try to impress by piecing together glossy, elaborate plans spanning from Facebook promotions to blasting out a Pinterest campaign.

I do no such thing. In fact, I put together no plan at all. I simply, and truthfully, tell the client that I don?t know what they need. And neither do they. We need to start with a foundational strategy (not an action plan) that is aligned with the company?s goals, and even more important, aligned with the company?s CULTURE.

This is the difference between creating a glimmering strategy that crashes and burns on take-off, and a realistic strategy that can actually be accomplished and change the company.

In every organization there are five common hurdles to social media success. A critical step in the strategy development process is to provide a painfully honest assessment of these factors and the company?s ability to execute and sustain a social media marketing initiative. That is where the consulting process should begin ? not picking out the colors for the Facebook page!

Assessing the social media ?engine?

Here are the five critical components I assess before even thinking about creating a social media plan:

Budget and resources ? Is the company willing to commit the proper financial and human resources to execute the right way, or are they just checking a box to create an image? Do they seem committed to adopting ?digital? as a business philosophy? How will they make this transformation?

Technology ? I look at this very broadly. Is this a tech-savvy company eager to embrace new platforms or are they stuck in the 1990s? Are they fast and flexible, or ponderous in their approach to development? Have they erected security firewalls that will jeopardize success? Is the IT department a fortress resisting change or an agent propelling progress?

ROI and measurement ? Does the company have a realistic view of the social media opportunity, or are they looking for immediate gratification? Are they willing to consider qualitative, as well as quantitative, measures of success? Do they even have measurement processes in place that we can build upon? Are they looking at this as a band-aid or a long-term strategy?

Legal ? Can the Legal Department adjust to the new demands of the social web? Are they willing to push accountability down through the organization or will they have to approve every tweet? Are they also willing to make the cultural adjustment necessary or will they ?review? an initiative into oblivion?

Corporate culture/leadership ? I mention this last, but it is not the least. In fact, it is most important of all. A corporate culture is very complex but is largely determined by the leadership of the organization. If the leadership does not understand, embrace, and become actively involved in the change, a social media initiative will never move past checking a box. There is no such thing as a grassroots cultural change in a company> The leader has to be actively on board. Is the company culture customer-centric? Conservative? Slow to change? Nimble?

Now what?

Once you do this analysis, what do you do with it?

Creating an actionable and sustainable social media initiative requires all five of these building blocks to be in place. Think of these elements as integral parts of an engine. If even one part is not working, the car may start quickly, limp along for awhile, but ultimately sputter and stop.

So the strategy must be created in the context of the political reality of the company. Perhaps the first step toward social media success is not starting a blog or Facebook page, but hosting a series of social media workshops to get everybody on the same page. Or maybe it?s one-on-one counseling with a leader, or creating an internal social media council.

Strategy doesn?t start with a Facebook page, it begins (and perhaps ends) with corporate culture. Agree? Do you see these landmines and opportunities at your companies too?

Mark Schaefer is a educator and marketing consultant specializing in social media workshops. He blogs at {grow} and is the author of several best-selling markting books including Return On Influence.

Source: http://www.business2community.com/social-media/the-insiders-guide-to-social-media-consulting-success-0382539

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The Book Club Catches 'The Andromeda Strain'

Copyright ? 2013 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only. See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required.

IRA FLATOW, HOST:

It's that time again, the SCIENCE FRIDAY Book Club. Regulars are gathered here. With me are Flora Lichtman, correspondent and managing editor of video for SCIENCE FRIDAY, Annette Heist, our senior producer. And this month, we had a page-turner, "The Andromeda Strain."

FLORA LICHTMAN, BYLINE: Yes.

FLATOW: It goes very quickly, that book, doesn't it? Poof.

LICHTMAN: It did. I was thinking of 300 and something-odd pages, but I, you know, in one sitting, was halfway through. I couldn't put it down.

ANNETTE HEIST, BYLINE: It was hard to put down, and it's by Michael Crichton, we should say, also known for "Jurassic Park" and for you younger-ish folks, "ER."

FLATOW: "ER."

LICHTMAN: Oh, yeah. I didn't know that about - I learned that via Wikipedia this morning.

FLATOW: She said you younger folks.

HEIST: Younger-ish.

(LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: Well, OK. Let's go - let's get right to the meat of it. Flora, what did you think of the book?

LICHTMAN: I am a sci-fi convert after the book.

FLATOW: Oh, so you don't usually read sci-fi.

LICHTMAN: No, I don't. I think I was either being snooty or because we cover the nonfiction, and so I'm thinking like, oh, you know, what does sci-fi, you know, bring to the table for me since I get to hear about science all the time on our wonderful program? And what I learned was that it's so much more exciting when you fictionalize it. I mean...

FLATOW: You don't have to worry about the accuracy.

LICHTMAN: Absolutely not.

FLATOW: Details, details.

LICHTMAN: It was like - I love fiction, and it was fiction, but with all my favorite characters. You know, we had the labs that I heard about in my daily life and the topics that we cover, but applied to this sort of fantastical world, which I enjoyed it.

HEIST: And while it is fiction, there's a lot of fact in here, and I liked that part of it. I felt like it could be true. I think that's what made it...

FLATOW: Yeah.

HEIST: ...so compelling for me. I was turning pages quickly.

FLATOW: Yeah. Well, it was written like that. It really was true. That was the...

LICHTMAN: Yes.

FLATOW: He didn't say - you know, start off with the preface or whatever. The preface was right into the book, and you thought...

HEIST: Here's what happened.

FLATOW: ...here's what happened. You thought he was starting right from the...

HEIST: And he has a references section in the back that looked like real scientific papers. I Googled a bunch of those. They - they're - they - the format is exactly right, but the papers aren't real, at least not the ones that I checked. I'm still not convinced. I might have to go through...

FLATOW: 1-800-989-8255 is our number. If you've read Michael Crichton's book, "The Andromeda Strain," you want to talk about it, it's our Book Club pick this week. 1-800-989-8255. You can tweet us @scifri.

And now I'll chime in. I really liked the stuff, the way he taught science. He taught simple every-day facts that, you know, in a matter of sentences, you learned about proteins, how proteins folded and enzymes. It was beautifully written.

HEIST: And that all life forms that we're familiar with have amino acids.

FLATOW: Right.

HEIST: I liked that part of the book too. And he was setting us up for what comes later when they finally analyze the Andromeda Strain and the data comes out of the mass spectrometer, and you're the scientist. You're looking at just the raw data, and you're, uh-oh, something's wrong here.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. This is the SCIENCE FRIDAY Book Club on SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

LICHTMAN: What about the ending? Can we talk about this, or is this a spoiler alert?

FLATOW: No. No. It's an old book.

(LAUGHTER)

LICHTMAN: Yeah. That's true enough. I was disappointed with the ending.

FLATOW: Yeah. I was too.

LICHTMAN: It fizzled out.

FLATOW: I thought it was a cop-out ending.

HEIST: Yeah. I - well, I sort of liked the ending. I'm going to be alone in this, I think, here. But, Ira, I sent you the review from The New York Times. This is from 1969, so can I just share the...

FLATOW: Sure.

HEIST: ...end of this review? You said you liked it.

FLATOW: Sure. I said it was right. Spot-on, as they say.

HEIST: Here's the writer, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, and these are his words: So curse you, Michael Crichton. You led me on with a beautiful dud - a chocolate eclair filled with shaving cream. You with your gibbering, squeaking computers, you stole a night's sleep from me with a fast shuffle. If you don't do better next time, I'll mutate you.

FLATOW: Which is what happened to the germ in the book.

HEIST: Yes.

FLATOW: It mutated.

LICHTMAN: The Andromeda Strain mutated.

FLATOW: The strain just mutated and that's it.

HEIST: That's it, the end.

FLATOW: All this setup, all the drama, all the other stuff, all the possibilities and, well, we'll just have it mutate and it'll - the danger will be over.

LICHTMAN: That's right. It didn't actually have to get solved.

FLATOW: We don't need - yeah, that's right. You don't need a hero. We set them up all for the book. We set up this huge research lab.

HEIST: Well, wait. There was a hero. Dr. Hall was a hero. He saved the lab from a nuclear explosion.

LICHTMAN: But from - by brawns, not brains.

FLATOW: Well, he saved it after they set it off to self-destruct. But that aside, there are a lot of - a lot of novels have bad endings.

HEIST: Yeah. I still liked it.

FLATOW: You still - I would still recommend people to read it.

HEIST: Yes. Me too. It was the book I was looking for after our - a couple of books that we had done where there was no real narrative to follow. This was good, I thought.

LICHTMAN: Yeah.

FLATOW: It was - it - and you could read this - you know, you don't want to put it - it is one of these things you don't want to put down, and it reads very quickly. And I skipped through parts of what I call some of the details about building a laboratory, which I didn't care to hear. I wanted to hear the plot, you know? No, look at that.

Well, what's cute about it, how some of the dated part of the books are cute to read. The computer printout, they're still, you know, pictures written with stars like they used to in the...

HEIST: Like the dot matrix...

FLATOW: The dot matrix.

HEIST: ...and I guess before the dot matrix printer.

FLATOW: Right.

LICHTMAN: Yeah. No. And there was this vision of the future that was kind of Jetsonian. So this lab is this futuristic kind of lab, but, you know, people are eating pills and only drinking vitamin juices. Of course there's vitamin water, but, you know, it absolutely follows this model of how people think the future is going to be.

HEIST: And some of it came true, right? He has the method of identifying the people who are allowed into the lab by putting your hand, letting your palm be read, like a biometric type of scanner to ID people.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. Let me get a quick call in from Terry(ph) in Brewster Town, Tennessee. Hi, Terry.

TERRY: Hello, Ira and you guests. Actually, there has been at least two copies, two printings of "The Andromeda Strain" where the foreword, Michael Crichton is explaining that the government contracted him to write that book about an actual incident.

FLATOW: Is that right? Yeah. I think that's the copy we have.

LICHTMAN: That's in this one, yeah. I love that because I read that at the end and thought oh, my God, did I miss something? Did this really happen? For a moment I really - I believed it. it's convincing.

FLATOW: Tell you what, what did you think of the book?

TERRY: I thought it was great when I first read it. It was - it is definitely a page turner and when you think about that technology that was available during World Ward II that we only found out about 20 to 60 years afterwards. I think, it could done - definitely do that/

FLATOW: All right. thanks for calling. 1-800-989-8255 - forget it.

(LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: We'll - rushing to get the credits. We want to hear from you if you've read the book, you know, "The Andromeda Strain" by Michael Crichton. You can phone us at 1-800-989-8255. You can tweet us, @SCIFRI - S-C-I-F-R-I. And when we come back, Richard Preston, author of "The Hot Zone" is all working on Crichton's unfinished book. So we'll talk about it after the break. Stay with us. I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

FLATOW: You're listening to SCIENCE FRIDAY. I'm Ira Flatow. We're talking this hour about "The Andromeda Strain," our SCIENCE FRIDAY Book Club pick this month. Here with me are Flora Lichtman, our correspondent and managing editor for video, senior producer Annette Heist. Joining us now to talk more about the book is Richard Preston. He is the author of "The Hot Zone." He also wrote "Micro," the book Michael Crichton was working on when he died and finished it up. It's an interesting story. It's now on paper back?

RICHARD PRESTON: Yes.

FLATOW: Richard, welcome to SCIENCE FRIDAY.

PRESTON: Hi.

FLATOW: How did you - how were you able to finish this book up for Michael?

LICHTMAN: Well, they brought me in when Michael passed away very suddenly. He was working on "Micro" at White Heat. And when I saw the manuscript, I was inspired. I thought, you know, somebody has got to finish this book. And I thought I had an idea where he was going with it. So I wrote up a little proposal and sent it to his widow, Sherri Crichton, and she liked it. So it went from there.

FLATOW: So let's get back to the book at hand, "The Andromeda Strain." What are your thoughts on that book?

PRESTON: Well, I think it's one of the best science fiction novels that's ever been written. It certainly turned me on when I was a 15-year-old, I read it for the first time. And I was so entranced by it that I faked illness to stay home from school in hope to finish it.

FLATOW: You can say you have "The Andromeda Strain."

PRESTON: No, I couldn't really make my blood clot up around my body.

(LAUGHTER)

PRESTON: But I had a really good fake cough.

FLATOW: Well, it didn't heat up the thermometer in the light bulb trick that did work that way. No.

What I discovered in actually trying to do a Michael Crichton novel is I discovered quite a lot about his research technique which I'm sure he used for "The Andromeda Strain." He was a veracious reader and he tended to read very highly technical scientific stuff, and you can see in "The Andromeda Strain" where he's been delving deeply into material that the public really didn't have any idea about. And for example, he obviously had read and knew a lot about the Army laboratories in Fort Detrick, Maryland, where the researchers, even back then in 1969, were working with space suits and dealing with extremely dangerous organisms. Back then, they had been working on biological weapons.

Right.

PRESTON: Really nasty stuff. Michael knew quite a lot about hits and he knew that the labs are divided into these levels, levels one through four. So for his fictional Andromeda Strain, he went one farther. He went to level five, of course. And..

(LAUGHTER)

PRESTON: And - but, you know, after hanging out in these labs and writing about them in a non-fiction way for "The Hot Zone," I could see exactly what he had learned. But what he did was he turned it into a - just a dynamic page turner, a real thriller. And it purports to be an after-action report. This is what the government does when there's a secret, classified action and they write up a classified report.

FLATOW: Right.

PRESTON: And he has himself as being the writer of it. So - and it's just filled with truly logical and factual material and all of these little details about how science works. In fact, I brought a little show-and-tell for you. I guess we have to tell, because we can't show. But.

(LAUGHTER)

PRESTON: Which was -this is a sample of Ebola virus here. Now, it's been completely sterilized.

FLATOW: Of course.

PRESTON: Here, I'll let you hold it.

(LAUGHTER)

PRESTON: No, no thanks? Anyway, what it is it's - let me describe it. It's a little small cylinder of transparent plastic, it's about the size of a peanut and it's honed down to sort of chiseled point. And right on the point, there is a black dot about the size of a poppy seed, and it's a sample of monkey liver. Now, as I said, it's been completely sterilized. The monkey liver was infected with Ebola Zaire virus originally, the hottest of the strains of Ebola - 90 percent fatality rate in humans.

Now, this little object that I'm describing is used to prepare a sample for an electron microscope which can magnify a virus particle, you know, 20,000 times or more till it looks like the size of a golf ball. And now, in "The Andromeda Strain," Crichton describes this object exactly. So you knew he had seen it but he gives it this wonderful thriller twist. Instead of the virus sample being this little black dot of tissue, he's got a glowing green which is cinematic.

LICHTMAN: It's amazing that you brought that, Richard, because I thought this was actually one of the most telling parts of the book, of how skilled Michael Crichton is at describing science. Because I was reading it enraptured with the process of preparing a sample for an electron-scanning microscope, that's incredible. I mean, that can be very dull very easily and he did make it so visual and the picture that I had in my mind really was pretty similar to now what I see it is. It's pretty cool.

FLATOW: He's very talented at that, you know, and all through the book, in just a few words, a few sentences, he can describe something that you might think I need to study biology or something for.

PRESTON: Yeah. And he has a wonderfully visual imagination, and that's what propels his language into these descriptions that you can just see in your mind's eye, you know, his description of the Wildfire Laboratory at Flatrock, Nevada where you go down underground and there are these different levels. The other thing that I thought was striking about "The Andromeda Strain," which actually adds to its realism, now, is the curiously anachronistic computer printouts that you see.

LICHTMAN: Yes.

(LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: I love it.

PRESTON: This is state of the art in 1969, right, when computers would spit out these reams of paper with these little X's all over them.

HEIST: He goes into some detail about how computers work, too, that we don't really need to know now. When you read it, it's sort of like, yeah, we know that more than one person could enter data.

FLATOW: But you know...

PRESTON: Right.

FLATOW: What's also fascinating as always is the story itself, the story is the thing, and the unique ideas about trying to decide - this was one of the most fascinating things to me - the plot, where this Andromeda strain could have originated. And he says, you know, you might think it could come from outer space, like we, you know, something foreign. This one actually came from the Earth.

I mean, this is fascinating, you know, that the Earth somewhere maybe thousands, millions of years ago, a strain of bacteria got kicked up into the atmosphere, lived up there for a while, stayed up there, mutated, and came back and attacked us again. And sure enough this week, we saw a research that sort of talks about this not as Andromeda strain, but as a possibility for evolution.

HEIST: Of bacteria being up in the cloud.

FLATOW: Yeah.

HEIST: Kicked up from Earth, right?

PRESTON: Yeah. And nowadays, of course, we're finding out that bacteria have this amazing ability to live in environments that we would have assumed are completely hostile to bacteria. Michael, I think, was tapped into the zeitgeist at the time, at least in advanced science circles, where already, scientists were beginning to talk about the possibility of new and emerging infectious diseases that could enter the human population and sweep through it.

In particular, there was Joshua Lederberg, a Nobel-winning bacteriologist, who I'm pretty sure Michael had read, and maybe even have known him personally. But Joshua, in about 1966, predicted that bacteria would evolve resistance to antibiotics and that he thought that a new virus would be likely to come along out of the natural ecosystems of the world. And he predicted that it would be a sexually transmitted virus and it would be highly lethal. That was a prediction of the HIV virus decades before it occurred.

FLATOW: What did strike me in reading the book, because I'm a great fan of "War of the Worlds," both of radio play, the movie everything that followed, is that there is a similarity here about what killed it, you know, is that something strange on Earth itself that it was not ready for, you know? It - we didn't have to worry about killing it, in "War of the Worlds." It was at the common cold or something that killed the aliens.

PRESTON: Yeah. Well, Michael Crichton had a - he faced a narrative problem here in "The Andromeda Strain," which I've heard filmmakers in Hollywood when they're doing a great virus movie - you know, a panic in the streets, virus movie - they call it the problem with the third act.

(LAUGHTER)

PRESTON: If you have this lethal thing that is sweeping through the human population and people are dropping like flies in the streets, how do you stop it? You know, you drop a nuclear bomb on it, what do you do? And I think Crichton neatly sidestepped that problem by - I don't want to give too much of a spoiler away, but let's just say that...

You could spoil it if you'd like. It's an old book.

Yeah, probably, that's true. It's been around for a while. The virus, let's just say that it has its own agenda.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm.

(LAUGHTER)

PRESTON: And that actually is - what has happened in real outbreaks where, for example, the Ebola virus in Washington, which turned out not to be that much of a threat, it just - it didn't go away because people fought it to a standstill. It went away because it wasn't able to reproduce really successfully in humans.

FLATOW: Mm-hmm.

HEIST: You said you read this book when you were 15. Did it have any influence on you wanting to be a writer?

PRESTON: No, because anybody who told me I was going to be writer when I was 15 I would have disbelieved it. But I think in retrospect, it certainly did because when I turned to non-fiction writing, the story of an Ebola outbreak, when I heard it, Army soldiers had been involved in it. And they were wearing spacesuits at the time, and people were white-knuckle scared. My immediate reaction was that sounds like "The Andromeda Strain."

FLATOW: Right.

PRESTON: And, in fact, I was - at that time, was interviewing Joshua Lederberg, the virus expert, the bacteriologist who - I was asking him about emerging diseases, and he told me about this outbreak of Ebola. And I said, wow, I didn't, you know, I never heard of that. That sounds like "The Andromeda Strain" by Michael Crichton. How can I learn more? And he said, well, I really don't know. I guess you'd have to call the Army.

FLATOW: Can you see hints of future novels to come in the way his mind is working from this book, what kind of subject material he would tackle later on?

PRESTON: Yes. I think Michael Crichton - one of the things that fascinated him was the distance scale in nature...

FLATOW: Yeah, Yeah.

PRESTON: ...and how organisms and - organisms run through an enormous range of sizes and that most living things are really a whole lot smaller than we are. Human beings are really actually on the very outer end of size of life. And so, you know, he had, you know, had thrillers about nanotechnology, really small things. And then "Micro," his last book, was about the insect world.

FLATOW: Right. 1-800-989-8255 is our number. Let's go to Ray in Washington. Hi, Ray.

RAY: Hey. How you doing?

FLATOW: Hey there.

RAY: I have to say that while agree with you about the ending, I didn't find the science compelling in the book. The best example that I can see is the ending, where all of the bugs mutate in the same way simultaneously. Evolution simply doesn't work that way. And I think that Crichton fundamentally is anti-science. He's a technophobe. And you can kind of see that in "The Andromeda Strain." But later when he does into full-blown climate change denialism(ph), you know, that you can really see that. And I'm wondering if any one else pickED up on that. I'll take my answer off the air.

FLATOW: OK. Ray, thanks for calling. Interesting point, Richard.

PRESTON: Well, I think that Michael Crichton had a very - not a very sanguine view of human ability to control or even understand nature. I think he was obsessed with technology. He lovede to write about it - it has great narrative potential. But you always - in his books, like in "Jurassic Park," you know, you find that when human beings try to manipulate and control nature, nature has a way of refusing to be controlled, and nature has its own goals, its own purposes, and we - sometimes it blows up in our faces.

FLATOW: Nature will find a way.

PRESTON: Nature will find a way as in "Jurassic Park."

(LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: I'm Ira Flatow. This is SCIENCE FRIDAY from NPR.

I've used that reference so many times over the years.

(LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: It was great. And is there anything else you like to add about the book? Or would you say that when - somebody at certain might like it more than anyone else or...

LICHTMAN: I've - I think this is good for all ages. But back to the caller's point about whether there's sort of an anti-science, I think that's an interesting question. One thing that I noticed - and I wonder if anyone else had this impression too - that the scientists aren't real heroes in this book.

And the underdog of this book is a doctor, a surgeon, who sort of gets, you know, cast aside by the scientist, who think that he is not useful at all, and then in the end, he's the one who saves everybody's life by climbing through, like a hatch in the ceiling and withstanding poison gas and darts and things like that. So I had sort of a sense that he may have a complicated relationship with the scientific community. But I wonder if you know more about that, Richard.

PRESTON: Well, I think he certainly did. I think he saw human beings as being very frail and weak, and he included scientists in that category. And in many of his books, the scientists can be - some of them can be exceedingly unpleasant people. They can even be evil protagonists. But, you know, the five scientists, who are the protagonist of "The Andromeda Strain," they all have their weakness and they are described in not very attractive terms. We don't really have, you know, a hardcore grade A hero in "The Andromeda Strain."

FLATOW: Mm-hmm. It's not like "Contagion," which has definite heroes.

PRESTON: Correct.

FLATOW: Yeah. Right.

PRESTON: That's exactly right. Yeah.

FLATOW: Let's go to Curtis(ph) in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Hi, Curtis.

CURTIS: Hi. How are you today?

FLATOW: Hi there.

CURTIS: Hey. I'm referring to a comment that you talked about earlier, about how you're disappointed with the ending "Andromeda Strain." And I'm not sure how familiar with Michael Crichton's works, but it's a recurring theme throughout his books. I mean, if you look at "Jurassic Park," they abandoned the island. They don't give the dinosaurs, the chemical that they're genetically programmed not to produce, and they're just going to let all the dinosaurs die off.

And the end of "Sphere," everybody uses the sphere to wish like the sphere never existed. History goes back to the way it was before the story started. If you look at "Congo," there are huge - a volcano erupts, covers up the mine. Lost once again. It's a recurring dream theme throughout all his works, and he takes history, you know, they're all (unintelligible). He creates his bubble that he inserts the story into. And at the end of the story, he closes the bubble and the world, as we know it, goes back to the way it us.

FLATOW: Good comment, Curtis.

LICHTMAN: Wow.

PRESTON: Awesome. Great comment.

FLATOW: Thank - we'll we have...

(LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: You must really - do you like Crichton - is there someone like him, another author?

CURTIS: I just like a lot of science fiction and I started reading all these stories, I'm like, well, that was just like this other story that I read. And I started looking up who wrote them, and they were all by Michael Crichton. This guy is cowered. He's unable to change the world as we know it.

(LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: Who do you like - who is your favorite science fiction writer?

CURTIS: Isaac Asimov. And but - and here is the deal. Isaac Asimov and Ray Bradbury stand side by side. Isaac Asimov has more pure science and futuristic, you know, insight into his stories. And Ray Bradbury just has that personal feel with the bit of horror and a bit of macabre in his stories that gives it the, you know, a real biting, page-turning effect, whereas, Isaac Asimov is more - I can see that happening in 10 years or five years, or already we've seen that happen type of thing.

FLATOW: Yeah. Thanks for that great insight. Have a good weekend.

CURTIS: You too. Thank you.

FLATOW: I want to thank you for joining us today. Thanks for taking time to be with us today. Richard Preston is author of "The Hot Zone." He's also - he wrote "Micro," the book that Michael Crichton was working on when he died. It's out there in paperback now?

PRESTON: It's out in paperback.

FLATOW: Out in paperback. Thank you for joining. Let's...

PRESTON: Thank you.

FLATOW: But before we say goodbye to our Book Club, what's our next book?

LICHTMAN: Next month's book is "Gorillas in the Mist," Dian Fossey. And we'll be talking about that on February 22nd. So get your copies, start reading and call in with great comments like our caller did, please. And we'll meet you back here.

FLATOW: Meet you back here in a month.

LICHTMAN: Yeah.

FLATOW: Flora Lichtman, correspondent and managing editor of video for SCIENCE FRIDAY. Annette Heist our senior producer.

LICHTMAN: Thanks, Ira.

FLATOW: And happy reading.

LICHTMAN: You too.

(LAUGHTER)

FLATOW: That's about all the time we have for today.

Copyright ? 2013 NPR. All rights reserved. No quotes from the materials contained herein may be used in any media without attribution to NPR. This transcript is provided for personal, noncommercial use only, pursuant to our Terms of Use. Any other use requires NPR's prior permission. Visit our permissions page for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR's programming is the audio.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2013/01/25/170267859/the-book-club-catches-the-andromeda-strain?ft=1&f=1007

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German business confidence up more than expected

BERLIN (AP) ? German business confidence has increased more than expected this month as hopes rise that Europe's largest economy will quickly put behind it a weak patch and benefit from an easing in the continent's financial turmoil, a closely watched survey showed Friday.

The Ifo institute's confidence index, a key indicator of where the German economy is headed, rose to 104.2 points in January from 102.4 in December.

The third consecutive increase lifted the index to its highest level since last June and was better than the reading of 103 points economists had predicted. Managers' view of their current situation improved somewhat and the outlook for the next half-year improved significantly.

In particular, Ifo said in a statement, "optimism is returning" in the important manufacturing sector. "The German economy made a promising start to the new year."

The German economy grew a modest 0.7 percent last year, and officials estimate it shrank by as much as 0.5 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the previous three-month period.

But the country's central bank, the Bundesbank, said earlier this week that it is already showing signs of picking up as improving export hopes combine with a healthy, stable labor market to brighten the picture.

"The contraction in the fourth quarter of 2012 seems to be short-lived," with fears of a eurozone breakup receding and prospects improving for the U.S. and China, said Carsten Brzeski, an economist at ING in Brussels.

Timo Klein, an economist at IHS Global Insight in Frankfurt, said that "the dampening impact from the troubled economies in southern Europe remains a restraining factor but will not prevent a strengthening tendency of the German economy."

The latest Ifo reading indicates that, after the fourth-quarter contraction, the economy already has rebounded in the current quarter, Klein said. First-quarter growth would prevent Germany following several other eurozone countries into recession.

Ifo's survey is based on responses from about 7,000 companies in various business sectors. Earlier this week, a separate survey of investor confidence showed a much sharper than expected rise.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/german-business-confidence-more-expected-101508878--finance.html

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FDA OKs Merck OTC version of overactive bladder drug

(Reuters) - Health regulators approved Merck & Co's nonprescription version of Oxytrol to treat overactive bladder in women ages 18 and older, the agency said on Friday.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said the over-the-counter version of Oxytrol would be available for women only and that the drug remained available to men by prescription.

Overactive bladder, which affects an estimated 33 million Americans, is a condition in which the bladder squeezes too often or without warning. Symptoms include leaking urine, feeling a sudden and urgent need to urinate, and frequent urination.

Oxytrol for Women is a patch that contains oxybutynin, a medicine that helps relax the bladder muscle, and is designed to be applied to the skin every four days, the FDA said.

Oxybutynin belongs to a class of drugs known as anticholinergics. Pfizer Inc's Detrol is the market leader in the class with annual sales of about $700 million.

Oxytrol will be the first drug in the class to be sold over the counter. Merck licensed exclusive rights to sell OTC Oxytrol from Actavis Inc, the generic drugmaker formerly known as Watson Pharmaceuticals.

Merck said it expected the OTC patch to be available in the fall.

The FDA decided to approve the OTC version of the Merck drug, based on the results of nine studies of women that demonstrated that consumers can understand the information on the label, properly determine whether the product is right for them, and use the drug appropriately, the agency said.

Last week, the FDA approved the popular wrinkle treatment Botox from Allergan Inc to treat overactive bladder in people who cannot tolerate drugs from the class to which Oxytrol belongs or are not helped by these medications.

Merck shares rose 3 cents to $43.03 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn and Jan Paschal)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/fda-oks-over-counter-version-merck-overactive-bladder-163613723--finance.html

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Dung beetles guided by Milky Way

24 January 2013 Last updated at 12:34 ET By Jonathan Amos Science correspondent, BBC News

They may be down in the dirt but it seems dung beetles also have their eyes on the stars.

Scientists have shown how the insects will use the Milky Way to orientate themselves as they roll their balls of muck along the ground.

Humans, birds and seals are all known to navigate by the stars. But this could be the first example of an insect doing so.

The study by Marie Dacke is reported in the journal Current Biology.

"The dung beetles are not necessarily rolling with the Milky Way or 90 degrees to it; they can go at any angle to this band of light in the sky. They use it as a reference," the Lund University, Sweden, researcher told BBC News.

Dung beetles like to run in straight lines. When they find a pile of droppings, they shape a small ball and start pushing it away to a safe distance where they can eat it, usually underground.

Getting a good bearing is important because unless the insect rolls a direct course, it risks turning back towards the dung pile where another beetle will almost certainly try to steal its prized ball.

Dr Dacke had previously shown that dung beetles were able to keep a straight line by taking cues from the Sun, the Moon, and even the pattern of polarised light formed around these light sources.

But it was the animals' capacity to maintain course even on clear Moonless nights that intrigued the researcher.

So the native South African took the insects (Scarabaeus satyrus) into the Johannesburg planetarium where she could control the type of star fields a beetle might see overhead.

Importantly, she put the beetles in a container with blackened walls to be sure the animals were not using information from landmarks on the horizon, which in the wild might be trees, for example.

The beetles performed best when confronted with a perfect starry sky projected on to the planetarium dome, but coped just as well when shown only the diffuse bar of light that is the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy.

Dr Dacke thinks it is the bar more than the points of light that is important.

"These beetles have compound eyes," she told the BBC. "It's known that crabs, which also have compound eyes, can see a few of the brightest stars in the sky. Maybe the beetles can do this as well, but we don't know that yet; it's something we're looking at. However, when we show them just the bright stars in the sky, they get lost. So it's not them that the beetles are using to orientate themselves."

And indeed, in the field, Dr Dacke has seen beetles run in to trouble when the Milky Way briefly lies flat on the horizon at particular times of the year.

The question is how many other animals might use similar night-time navigation.

It has been suggested some frogs and even spiders are using stars for orientation. The Lund researcher is sure there will be many more creatures out there doing it; scientists just need to go look.

"I think night-flying moths and night-flying locusts could benefit from using a star compass similar to the one that the dung beetles are using," she said.

But for the time being, Dr Dacke is concentrating on the dung beetle. She is investigating the strange dance the creature does on top of its ball of muck. The hypothesis is that this behaviour marks the moment the beetle takes its bearings.

Jonathan.Amos-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk and follow me on Twitter: @BBCAmos

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21150721#sa-ns_mchannel=rss&ns_source=PublicRSS20-sa

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Why You Should Put Off the Relationship Talk | Love & Sex | GalTime

When should you have the relationship talk? Maybe never.

So you're wondering what's going on between you and the person you're dating. You want to know what the?deal?is. Where things?stand. You think it's time to have the conversation.

Don't do it. In fact, delay that conversation as long as you possibly can, maybe indefinitely. Why? Because the first person who brings it up loses.

The need to "have the talk" may seem all mature and adult, but really, it's just you scratching an insecure itch. You need "to know." I counter with this: If you're having a fun, great, sexy time, why, oh, why would you drop those dreaded words, "Where is this going?" It's the relationship equivalent of walking into the middle of a great party, turning off the music, flipping on all the lights, and saying, "So, I just want to check. Is everyone having a good time?"

I did this a few years back. I regret it and would never do it now. I had been seeing the guy a few weeks. He was a bit of a tough read, and I got insecure. I thought I?d help things along or feel better by asking, ?So, what is the deal--I mean, are we seeing other people, or?? It was a moment of weakness. Big mistake. The whole tenuous, if promising, thing collapsed on itself a short while later. And while that wasn't the only reason, I sped it to its short and brutish end. Like driving into a wall at 60 mph.

I've also been on the other side, by the way, many times. I gently tried to back off this very conversation with partners because it felt like I was being asked to make a decision I wasn't ready to make. I felt pressured to say what I think he wanted to hear and, if that's your idea of honesty, well, it's not. I've often found myself marking time FROM THIS TALK, wondering who would be the one to bail out first. Why create this pressure when you're really trying to get to know someone? Keep it a little gray--a little mysterious. This is how you keep that intrigue alive.

RELATED?5 Reasons to Answer That Booty Call

Ask yourself this: Why do I need to ask? What do I really want to know? What do I hope to accomplish??And while I can?t purport to read your mind, I?ll assume you?re craving what most humans do: significance and security. You want to know what?s going on, not because you?re conducting an investigation, but because you want to assuage the nagging fear and be reassured that you are special. You already are--can't you tell??Nothing?is totally secure in love and life, and no one owes you a sense of security.

And if your reason is that you're afraid he'll meet someone else? He could meet someone else regardless. There's always that risk. What would happen if you held off on the grand summit meeting and just enjoyed the person without worrying about how to categorize or title or otherwise claim him? You get the best of both of you--and your own privacy, too.

"But I want us to be honest with each other!", you cry. You can and should be open and communicative, yes. But unless you're about to close on a house together or do something else that's legally binding (like marriage), there's nothing to be gained by this conversation. What you want is to have him (or her) keep showing up. Now's not the time to ask him to sign the paperwork so you can issue him an official badge. He doesn't need one.

RELATED?Should You Ask Him Out?

Also: Don't confuse honesty with security. You think that if you know more about what's going on under the hood you'll feel better, but that may not be the case.?Do you really want to know he likes you a lot but is getting over a crush from last summer, or that his ex-girlfriend has been calling again? Does he want to know you're sort of weaning off this other guy? No, no, and no. Not your biz, not his problem. It doesn't matter. What matters is that you keep choosing to spend time with and enjoy each other. It's the actions that matter, not the?definition?of those actions. You don't have to kick the tires every two seconds. Just?drive.

Oh--and screw your Facebook status. Honestly. If you're making relationship decisions so you can click a box, I fear for your future. Because checking a box has driven more than one person into relationships--and marriages--that shouldn't have happened. Labeling your life isn't the same as living it.

Case in point: A client of mine has kindled a connection with a man who lives states away, and a good chunk of the year overseas. She wants to know if he?s her boyfriend or if he could be, and worries that by not nailing it down that she?s succumbing to game playing. I tell her, in fact, she?s not a pawn in some game; she?s very much in control of her actions. And yes, it?is?a game?and the goal is to?keep the ball in play.?You do this by maintaining a rich and vital connection, staying in touch and letting that person know you?re very much interested. As soon as she tries to get him to submit to certain rules or titles, I warned her she?ll scare him away, and he?s already far away.

Let's get one thing straight: That discomfort you feel? That excitement? It exists due to the simple fact that things are NOT SET YET. Enjoy it. Don't suck the life out of it in an effort to make it shelf stable. If you're still with this guy 10 years from now, there will be a point, sooner than you think, when you'll wonder where the magic went. This nervousness and thrill is par for the course?and trust me, you?ll miss it when it?s gone.

?More from GalTime.com:

Terri Trespicio is a lifestyle and relationship expert, writer, and coach. Visit her at www.trespicio.com.?

Source: http://galtime.com/article/love-sex/64143/52883/why-you-should-put-relationship-talk

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There Are Some Battles Bezos Can't Win

Today's XKCD puts the success of Amazon.com into some perspective. Because I can't do any better than Randall Monroe's hilarious alt text: More »

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/KtlzhF1hjzw/there-are-some-battles-bezos-cant-win

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Apple revenue miss to challenge stocks rally

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Stocks opened lower on Thursday, a day after Apple Inc reported revenue that missed expectations, tanking the stock and weighing on technology shares.

As the most valuable U.S. company and a heavy weight in both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 <.ndx>, a decline in Apple shares has an outsized impact on the broader market. Apple dropped 10.5 percent to $459.84 in early trading.

The Dow Jones industrial average <.dji> was up 21.73 points, or 0.16 percent, at 13,801.06. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index <.spx> was down 2.16 points, or 0.14 percent, at 1,492.65. The Nasdaq Composite Index <.ixic> was down 24.98 points, or 0.79 percent, at 3,128.69.

(Reporting by Ryan Vlastelica; Editing by Bernadette Baum)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/stock-futures-signal-losses-eyes-apple-101831880--finance.html

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alponas: JHS AP Biology: Big Idea 1 | faytisu3faytisu3

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Source: http://faytisu3.blogspot.com/2013/01/alponas-jhs-ap-biology-big-idea-1.html

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Tournament of THG Couples: J. Lo & Casper Smart vs. Miley Cyrus & Liam Hemsworth!

Source:

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Wal-Mart tightens supplier policy after factory fire: WSJ

(Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc plans to cut ties immediately with suppliers who subcontract work to factories without the retailer's knowledge, changing its policy after a fire killed more than 100 garment workers in Bangladesh, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Wal-Mart is warning suppliers that it is adopting a "zero tolerance policy" for violations of its global sourcing standards and the company's new plan would begin taking effect from March 1, the Journal said.

The tougher code replaces Wal-Mart's prior "three strikes" approach to policing suppliers, which gave the suppliers three chances to address problems before being terminated. (http://link.reuters.com/wyh45t)

"Obviously our three-strike policy wasn't working as well as it could have," Rajan Kamalanathan, Wal-Mart's vice president of ethical sourcing, told the Journal in an interview. "Our message of zero tolerance is meant to get people's attention."

Wal-Mart could not be reached for comment by Reuters outside of regular U.S. business hours.

More than 100 workers were killed in a November 24 fire at the Tazreen garment factory in Bangladesh. Wal-Mart has said repeatedly that its Faded Glory clothing should not have been in production at the factory, a facility Bangladeshi authorities said was not safe for use.

(Reporting by Sakthi Prasad in Bangalore; Editing by Richard Pullin)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/wal-mart-tightens-supplier-policy-factory-fire-wsj-043011433--finance.html

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Daily Kos: Reincorporating Hunter-Gatherer Wisdom in our Society

Solving a problem usually starts with creating a general awareness of that problem, beyond both ignorance and denial. ?We need to have the courage and discipline to continually call out the aspects of the problem whenever and wherever the opportunity arises. ?Aspects including...

1. All forms of hierarchical ?us and them? thinking that create a ?pecking order?, where people higher up in that order control and are responsible for the people ?below? them. ?Particularly in this vein, the trivialization of young human beings as incompetent because they are ?just children?.

2. Most all forms of privilege that derive from the above, including race, gender, age, sexual orientation, economic status, talent, and formal education (political progressives being particularly guilty of the latter, leading towards enlightened despotism rather than true egalitarianism). ?Kind of a gray area perhaps when it comes to ?respecting your elders?, but the respect should be mutual.

3. Given the massive scale of our society, the top down control model that allows for very little real governance at the local or community level, in favor of decision making in far away capitals or by national or international business interests.

4. The perpetuation of Calvinistic principles of the martyrdom of ?living to work? rather than ?working to live?, that drives so many of us to sacrifice life balance in favor of economic gain, that contributes to the separation of adults from children and the economic stratification of society.

5. The materialism that underlies a consumerist ?shop ?til you drop? society that in many cases values possessions over human development.

6. A recognition that we live in a dysfunctional society if we generally feel our neighborhoods are unsafe for our young people to navigate without adult chaperones and we feel powerless to change that.

So once we move beyond denial of the problem, how to address it? ?How do we reintegrate the child-raising wisdom of our hunter-gatherer kin into our high technology civilization? ?Have we truly boxed ourselves into a corner where the complexity of our society forces us to be controlled by others who are more capable and ?expert? than us, and in turn forces us to control our children during our perception of their extended incompetence? ?Or can we use all our accumulated wisdom and know-how as functional beings in a complex world to come up with a contemporary reimagining of a more developmentally rich approach to raising our young people?

In finding a path forward in the overwhelming bigness and complexity of our society, I always start with anthropologist Margaret Mead?s great thought on how change happens...

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.

A thought so deliciously counter-intuitive and insurgent for all of us enmeshed in all these layers of 5000 years of ?civilization?!

So how does our small committed group start reimagining how to keep our very young children closer while letting them loose (or at least looser than most are now, perhaps ?holding close with open arms?) once they master the ability to walk and talk? ?There are probably any number of potential ideas on this depending on our circumstances, with each of us with different degrees of economic privilege and more or less enmeshed in the economic control of others.

Holding Little Ones Close

Certainly giving credence and visibility to the ?alternative? traditional parenting wisdom of hunter-gatherers toward infants and toddlers would be a start. ?In our culture we conventionally separate infants and toddlers from ourselves in their conveyances, sleep arrangements, and daily routines, as if they are precious but foreign objects that don?t quite belong in our world yet. ?Whereas in hunter-gatherer cultures their youngest are often strapped to a parent or other adult?s back during the day, viewing the world in front of them from the upright active point of view of an adult, rather than the passive cloistered point of view reclining in a stroller or confined in a playpen. ?And at night our culture?s conventional wisdom is to have young ones sleep in their own cribs rather than with their parents.

An interesting case in point in our culture is how the nature of much of our work has forced a separation between infants and toddlers and their parents and other potential caregiver family members. ?Unlike in hunter-gatherer societies, much of the work we do is done far from home, economic realities often compelling both parents with very young children to work outside the home. ?And with societal conventions also separating extended family members from parents, little ones are often sequestered during the day in day care. ?Not that day care providers cannot be as effective caregivers as parents and family members, but they generally provide care to a handful of little ones per caregiver (for economic reasons) so that care tends to be more cloistered and passive. ?Add to this that many little ones are transported some distance to day care in cars, where their special car seats, designed for maximum safety, don?t allow them to share the adult point of view (that the young person has travelling on mom or dad?s back), but instead constrains them passively in back seats with little or no view of the world passing by.

Cloistered and passive. ?Unlike hunter-gatherers our little ones lives are so constrained and restrained!

There are current trends in our high-technology society that could facilitate returning parenting infants and toddlers back to a ?contact sport?. ?With increasing connection of homes to the internet, many ?knowledge workers? and administrative staff can do all or at least some of their work from home. ?Combine with this an egalitarian trend in our society which includes men playing a more active and extensive role in parenting, allowing either mom or dad, if in such jobs, to each work a day or two a week from home.

When my partner Sally went back to work after her maternity leave, I, with my recently acquired computer programming education, was able to find work from home while being our infant child Eric?s primary daytime caregiver. ?Though Eric was mostly not on my back and cloistered in a playpen or baby swing while I sat at my computer, he was always in sight and we were constantly exchanging looks and I would comment on his play. ?I also would take several long breaks during the day where I slung him on my back and we walked the neighborhoods around our house, Eric able to see the avenues from his dad?s point of view. ?The fact that Eric emerged from his toddlerhood as a confident and assertive young child could be a coincidence or maybe not.

Of course there are a range of other jobs, particularly low-paying ones, that involve working at some sort of store or other establishment doing physical labor and/or serving customers. ?A century ago many of these were family businesses attached or close to home, with family members doing the work and able to be close to their very young children. ?Today much of this work is done at remote shopping malls and low-wage working parents, given limited financial resources, are challenged to find even adequate ?passive and cloistered daycare for their kids.

Fifty years ago when I was a child, most (at least middle-class) families had one parent, the mom, at home with the young children. ?Pay for work and the cost of living were such that one living-wage job could support a family. ?An ?innovation? of recent decades is that for many families with two parents, both need to do paid work outside the home to make ends meet, further separating parents from their young children.

Letting Older Children Loose

Again... hunter-gatherer societies differ from our own because they generally keep their infants and toddlers closer to parents and other caregiving adults while allowing children who have learned to walk and talk much more autonomy to lead their own lives in the real world.

While keeping infants and toddlers close can be challenging in high-technology society, letting them ?loose? after toddlerhood in our typical contemporary urban and suburban environs can be nigh on impossible. ?Crossing streets with speeding cars is dangerous. ?Unsupervised children can be victimized by predatory people, or when in need of help, not be able to find assistance or contact their parents or other concerned adults. ?Having constant adult supervision of children is pretty much a no-brainer, right? ?This is a reality of modern existence that we basically have to accept in exchange for all its pluses, right?

Right... but step back a bit and ponder what we have accepted as given and beyond our control. ?We live in a child-unfriendly society where many work venues are not appropriate for children at any time (except maybe a once-a-year take your child to work day) and other venues are only appropriate for children that are closely supervised by adults. ?Whereas in hunter-gatherer societies children often help their parents and other community adults with their work, in our industrial society ?child labor? is something progressive people have worked for over a century to eradicate, and with good reason. ?Work in the industrial age is often a nasty business, barely even suitable for adults, let alone children. ?One of the main reasons we started in the industrial age and continue today to try to cloister all our kids in schools every weekday, and make their attendance mandatory by force of law, is to try to keep them safe from the real world and all the danger and exploitation that we have come to accept or at least begrudge.

I have my perspective on this issue because I was a kid blessed to grow up in the child-friendly mid-sized university town of Ann Arbor in the 1960s with parents unorthodox enough to trust me by about age seven to head out on my bicycle about town on my own as long as I promised to come home when the streetlights came on. Thirty years later raising our own kids in the megalopolis of Los Angeles, there was no way I would let my seven-year-olds do anything remotely like that. ?It wasn?t until age 16 when they had learned to drive and had their drivers licenses that such independent excursions were even considered. ?Well Los Angeles is not Ann Arbor, but even in the latter locale today, society has ?advanced? enough that I would be surprised if any parents let their seven-year-olds loose on the streets.

The wisdom of hunter-gatherer societies is that as soon kids can walk and talk with reasonable proficiency and range, letting them participate freely in the real world of life and work allows them to start functioning like autonomous people... you know... like adults. ?They are not yet expected to be adults, but they are given the respect and autonomy to be treated as a lot more than irresponsible ?children? that need to be constantly supervised.

A Potential Public Venue for Child Autonomy

So given that we cannot transform the bulk of the venues of our society overnight to be more child-friendly and less dangerous, exploitive and predatory, there is at least one institution that could be transformed to offer young people a venue for autonomy and at least a small approximation of the real world.

Our schools!

But not as they generally are now! ?Instead as visionary educators from the early 20th century like Maria Montessori, Homer Lane,A.S. Neill,John Holt,Ivan Illich, andFrancisco Ferrer reimagined them, to fully facilitate human development. ?And as their current disciples, including Yaacov Hecht, Daniel Greenberg, Zoe Readhead, Sir Ken Robinson, Chris Mercogliano, and others struggle to manifest against a strong headwind of educational standardization driven by a vestigial industrial mindset promoted by the education-industrial complex and the huge business markets for textbooks, testing protocols and other supplies that those standardized schools represent.

Consistent with these great progressive thinkers on human development, we are imagining schools that are mini-worlds with as many aspects of the real world of a democratic high-technology society that can be incorporated. ?Milieus where kids can come and chart their own course, rather than having others define their course like almost all schools do today - learning about charting ones course rather than actually doing it.

The expectation that everyone is responsible for themselves and directs their own life is a key principle of liberty in our egalitarian society but something that is rarely applied to children and youth in our culture or most other ?civilized? societies.

The Summerhill School Example

Perhaps the flagship of such a reinvented learning venue for young people is the boarding school Summerhill in Leiston, Suffolk England. Admittedly it is not a public school, since the youth empowerment model it follows runs counter to British standards for publicly funded schools. ?But it represents a real learning community where young people and adults can come, lead their lives, pursue their interests and continue with their development. ?A place where there is no script for learning, no place you have to be at each hour of the day, but lots of interesting venues within its campus where you can. ?A place where the young people are not in mortal danger (like on the streets) but are in jeopardy of having to decide each day what they are doing, when, with whom, and where (at least within the campus of the school). ?A place where they are ?citizens? of the institution, with a vote on all important school decisions and as much opportunity as any other youth or adult in the school to participate in a significant way in running the school.

Matthew Appleton wrote a book,A Free Range Childhood, about his experience in the 1990s working on the Summerhill school staff. Appleton writes about the impact of these very different rules of engagement between adults and youth at the school, which I believe is consistent with the rules of engagement observed by scientists studying hunter-gatherer societies. ?He argues that these more egalitarian relationships between adults and youth have...

A deep effect on the quality of the relationship between adult and child. Artificial barriers are soon dropped, allowing for more honest, direct communication. Everyone is able to be more themselves and to be relaxed with each other. The adults do not strive to set examples for the children. We go about our business naturally, unhindered by stances of stiff dignity or condescending paternalism? Each of us defines our own boundaries in our own way and becomes involved in community life at our own level. The way that we live live together with the children is functional, defined by personal choices and needs, rather than abstract morality and conformity to unnatural norms.

Letting Our Kids Loose in Schools and other Venues

In attempting to reacquire the wisdom of the hunter-gatherers, it may not be appropriate in our complex and in many ways dangerous society to let our children loose in our ?real world? to live their lives and develop as they choose. ?For those of us with a certain degree of economic privilege, we can send our kids to alternative private schools, or we can liberate our children to ?unschool? and learn life and work skills side by side with their parents and other adults and young people we can facilitate bringing into their lives.

But for those of us without such means, or for whatever reason not able to let our kids experience the workday worlds of our lives while living their own, the developmentally reimagined public school (now more of a youth community center actually) seems a compelling alternative. ?In the cloistered environment of a school it seems totally natural and appropriate to me to create a rich environment of options and empowerment, then set them free as active rather than more passive participants in these mini-communities. ?Given our current child-unfriendly real world, what better remediation for kids to learn how to be actively functioning citizens able to navigate expertly in our high-technology democratic society, since as they say, ?practice makes perfect?.

Though I have not directly experienced and only read extensively about democratic-free schools in practice, as a parent I have withessed a version of this sort of youth-adult egalitarian environment directly as it is created at Unitarian-Universalist high school youth camps (see my piece?Camps, Cons & Compasses?). The few adults that are there are in a facilitative role in the background, contributing their thoughts and expertise when asked.

A Final Concern

Many of us with economic privilege have always understood and had the means to implement this wisdom of hunter-gatherer societies, that the sooner we can empower our children to play the key role in navigating their own lives the more quickly and the more completely they develop, and the more readily capable they are to assume important (particularly leadership) roles in the adult world. ?For people with the means, traditionally this has involved employing tutors or sending their kids to the elite private schools (the top ?tier? or our country?s de facto three-tiered school system) that can create such environments for self-direction within their privileged context.

Add to that in recent decades a very small but growing number of democratic-free schools, which like the Summerhill School in England, generally have been constituted as private rather than public schools, because they don?t teach a standardized curriculum, instead by design letting each of their students explore their own. ?Plus an even more recent trend among people with the network and means to ?unschool? their kids, and let them start functioning as real people directing and responsible for important elements of their real lives, rather than being instructed about life in conventional elementary and secondary schools.

But for kids from families without that economic privilege, their only option may be conventional public schools, with their standardized, regimented, mostly externally-directed instructional focus. ?Certainly they provide kids the opportunity to learn the basics of the four standard academic subjects - good information to know - but generally give them little or no opportunity to get behind the wheel of their own development. ?This lack of opportunity to decide on and drive each activity of their daily lives (as adults do) may in fact be handicapping many of these kids in their development, and contributing to the perpetuation of their second class status in society as adults.

A mostly passive semi-engagement of many of our young people in our conventional schools may in fact be contributing to a troubling trend anthropologist Elizabeth Kolbert has labeled ?adultesence?, a sort of dysfunctional extension of adolescence well into young adulthood. ?Kolbert writes about it in her piece for the New Yorker, ?Spoiled Rotten: Why do kids rule the roost??, and blames it mostly on permissive parenting...

Adultesence might be just the opposite: not evidence of progress but another sign of a generalized regression. Letting things slide is always the easiest thing to do, in parenting no less than in banking, public education, and environmental protection. A lack of discipline is apparent these days in just about every aspect of American society. Why this should be is a much larger question, one to ponder as we take out the garbage and tie our kids? shoes.

As a parent who was guilty at times of ?letting things slide?, particularly while we were still requiring our kids to attend conventional schools, I think their lack of full engagement in those schools contributed greatly to some ?generalized regression? on their parts. ?I felt the daily need to compensate for the fact that I was forcing them to spend their days at a school they would not choose to attend if given their own choice.

Finally we reconciled with the unorthodox educational approaches of homeschooling and unschooling, and let our kids choose not to go to school. ?For both of them, after a difficult year of deprogramming and testing the extent of their new freedom, they began to live and direct their own lives, and the pace of their development took a noticeable leap.

Again, a degree of economic privilege allowed us the option to take this unorthodox course, but for many of their peers caught in the same school malaise, but with less means, they did not have this option. ?They continued in conventional schools, some coming into their own, but others floundering while still others were hounded by their parents to do well academically, neither course contributing much to their internal development, as far as I could see.

Let?s give all our kids, not just the ones from families with means, this opportunity to follow the rediscovered wisdom of our hunter-gatherer kin! ?Given the increasing complexity of our society, aren?t we crippling our future if we don?t give all our young people access to the most effective environment to develop in? ?An environment of self-direction that is our natural human state of engagement with the world, somehow lost in all the trappings of our contemporary civilization.

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/01/23/1180694/-Reincorporating-Hunter-Gatherer-Wisdom-in-our-Society

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