Sharpen Mental Skills and Collect Memories

July 29, 2010

On vacation (or when you get home), play this game to sharpen your mental skills and help you collect memories for the future.

There are two parts to this post’s Take-a-Break: curiosity and memory.

Develop Curiosity

An illustration for this first part is a picture I took while flying over the alps from Italy to Munich in early November 2007. I was puzzled by the patches of white against the dark ground. It looks as though this is snow on a hiking trail, or perhaps on a ski run, but it is only the beginning of November. Yet if it is snow, why would there be only white in these lines but not in the deep valleys?

There isn’t much snow yet on the peaks, so why are there breaks in the white, as though there are a deep holes filled with snow? If there wasn’t much snow on the mountains as a whole, why did the “snow” create a pattern like this? There are other areas that are in the shadow more than these appear to be and I assume they would continue to have snow, so what makes these areas special?

My interest in the photo is a little like that of members of the Google Earth Community who examine Google Earth pictures to find anomalies that are interesting to them. Look at an enlarged picture if you think that would help — and tell me if you have the answer.

Of course, there are many who would look at this and only think of it as a beautiful mountain scene. If they noticed the white at all, they would ignore it or file it as an-unknown-thing-not-worth-pursuing. Yet doesn’t it puzzle you? Don’t you wonder what it means?

What I’d like to suggest is that whatever you look at this summer (and of course, for the rest of the year as well), you look with questioning eyes. This could include pictures in print and on TV. Then, when you see something that is a puzzle, try to find out what it is.

There are a zillion things that I don’t know the why of, but whenever I take the time to see what they might be, when I ask questions about “why” they are the way they appear — even if I don’t find the answer — the mere fact that I’ve tried enriches my life.

Pay attention to at least one thing that you haven’t known how it is made, why it looks the way it does, or its possible purpose. Then pursue the answer.

Memory Recall Suggestion

The second suggestion for this take-a-break is to test your recall memory. For example:

If you look out the window of a plane, take a moment (15 seconds will do) to capture with your mind as much as you can. Then close your eyes and see how much you remember and open them again to notice what you missed. You’ll have to do this quickly, of course, since the plane is going so fast.

This is an interesting way to sharpen my mind when it’s feeling a little sluggish. And I think it helps when I play a game called pelmanism on the Internet that you may also enjoy. This is a memory card game in which a pack of cards is spread out face down and players try to turn up pairs with the same symbol. I use the easiest form with 12 pairs of animals. It helps me to make up a story about them as I go along, usually based on the first animal that appears. Try it. Keep your brain cells engaged.

Risk and Motorcycle Helmets

April 8, 2010

Explore how the personal freedom to ride without a motorcycle helmet may create problems for others.

Yesterday I said that I was at the coughing and hacking stage, but thought I’d live. I hoped. Today I’m better, slightly, and more sure that I’ll live to write another blog.

I’d like to continue the topic of risk I started in the last blog because when I saw my doctor on Tuesday she said that one of her patients,who had taken Zicam Nasal Gel [which was withdrawn from the market] for a cold, not only lost the sense of smell, but taste as well. Not completely unable to taste food, but enough so that she has lost the weight she very much wanted to lose.

Not my kind of diet!

Therefore, I thought again about the matter of who should protect us from risk. Is it the government and regulatory bodies or personal decisions based on complete evidence available? And this made me think about motorcycle and bicycle helmets. It is a topic that has long fascinated me because I believe everyone should wear one — I once fell against a car when riding a bike and my helmet got a dent, but my head didn’t. Yet I wonder to what degree government should control our choices. Should we be allowed to kill ourselves?

Here is my reasoning: On the face of it, it would seem that government can become a nanny state when we are unwilling to protect ourselves. For example, there was the man who sued the manufacturer because there wasn’t a warning on the box in which his power saw was delivered that said “you shouldn’t sit on the end of the branch you intend to cut off as you’re working.” I believe it’s true, but don’t quote me on it. In any case, there are many such examples of law suits by people injured by their own stupidity — and then winning. McDonald’s hot coffee case is a prime example.

As for helmets, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, twenty states require all riders to have one. Twenty-seven restrict helmet requirements to some riders. Three states do not have a helmet law. According to that same organization:

Based on studies of the effects of states’ enactment, repeal, or weakening of universal helmet laws, use approached 100 percent when all motorcyclists were required to wear helmets, compared with about 50 percent when there was no helmet law or a law applying only to some riders.

So apparently requiring helmets does make a difference.

Wondering what are the Libertarian views on this subject, I came across one by the American Journal of Public Health titled “Paternalism & Its Discontents: Motorcycle Helmet Laws, Libertarian Values, and Public Health” by Marian Moser Jones, MPH and Ronald Bayer, PhD.

The history of motorcycle helmet legislation in the United States reflects the extent to which concerns about individual liberties have shaped the public health debate. Despite overwhelming epidemiological evidence that motorcycle helmet laws reduce fatalities and serious injuries, only 20 states currently require all riders to wear helmets. During the past 3 decades, federal government efforts to push states toward enactment of universal helmet laws have faltered, and motorcyclists’ advocacy groups have been successful at repealing state helmet laws. This history raises questions about the possibilities for articulating an ethics of public health that would call upon government to protect citizens from their own choices that result in needless morbidity and suffering.

I don’t want us to become a nanny state that can unintentionally cause people to assume someone else will keep them out of trouble and take care of them when they stumble into difficulties. On the other hand, consider this scenario: A man without insurance and without a helmet is severely injured in a motorcycle accident. We don’t allow him to lie on the ground while passersby take a collection to pay for a ride to a hospital. Rather, the ambulance comes and he is treated, even though the money will come out of my insurance payment, my taxes, and community services if he needs long-term care.

If you are asking me to take care of you, I believe I have a right to ask you to take care of yourself as well as you can.

ASK YOURSELF THIS QUESTION:

• Should I have to pay for the freedom of other people to feel the wind in their hair?

How Much Risk Should You Assume?

April 6, 2010

Consider the ramifications of rules that outlaw drugs or behavior because a few people are injured by them.

I am almost as miserable as yesterday and the basket next to the computer is filling with Kleenex. But here I am, back again with a goal of writing five blogs a week. If I recover, I may actually decide to do this as my “practice” because I notice I had eleven more subscribers since the day before, so maybe people really like to read this more often than I have been producing it.

However, now I have to find a fairly quick topic so I can get on with answering emails that piled up when I was at the conference in Washington, visiting my granddaughters, and on my back with this cold. All of which brings me to a side topic: the speed at which one answers emails.

Do you ever notice that some people will answer an email almost the instant they get it, as though they have been sitting at their computer waiting with baited breath for your specific message so they can send you a quick reply? Are you a fast responder or slower, like me? Let me know in the comments below.

In the past, when we communicated by snail mail, it was understood that it would take time for your letter to get through all the steps of postal delivery from your house or business to mine, then it would take time for me to carefully consider a response, time to get out a piece of paper and write a reply, find an envelope, take it to the mailbox on the way to work, and let it wind its way through the Postal Service and back to your house or business.

Slower? Yes. But it gave those of us who have a full schedule a cushion in which to consider a request. Now we are expected to blast off an email immediately. I realize that not everyone feels that way in the land of instant communication, but I find myself feeling guilty for not answering emails more quickly even when I have a good excuse. So today, again, I am using my Ironing Basket Approach, which I’ve explained several time in the blog, to clean up my inbox — after I get this blog finished — so I better get on with the main topic of the day.

The topic is easy because this cold is so much worse than anything I’ve had for many long years and I attribute my minor or non-existent colds to a Zicam nose gel. For those of you who don’t know what it is, or was, let me tell you that it was a product with zinc gluconate that you gently squirted into your nostril within the first 24 hours of feeling cold symptoms. It didn’t prevent colds, but it was, according to my doctor and reports I’ve read, the only product that was shown to decrease the severity and duration of colds. Always seemed to work for me.

Then last year, because of reports of some people who lost their sense of smell, either temporarily or permanently, following its use, the FDA put out a warning about it. So the company pulled it off the market. Today I’ve tried to get the complete statistics, without spending too much time, to see exactly what percentage of people were affected relative to the number who used it. I’m making guesses but it gives me some kind of context in which to ask you to consider some questions today.

There are several factors in deciding whether withdrawal from the market was a wise move, which is the crux of risk analysis. For example:

1. If 3,000,000 users benefited from the over-the-counter drug over ten years and 300 were affected (numbers I’m making up but based roughly on several reports), that would mean .1% had a negative reaction.
2. How severe were the problems with lack of smell? If it was a life-long problem, that is a significant negative effect.
3. If it was only a moderate loss of smell and quickly disappeared, the questions is whether it would be worth the prevention of a serious cold.
4. If the 3,000,000 potential cold sufferers (remember, that’s my made-up number of Zicam nasal gel sales over the time it was on the market) didn’t get a worse cold that could have turned into pneumonia, should that be part of the analysis when balanced against the negative loss of smell?

We seldom are given such a cost-benefit analysis when we read about products taken off the market. If there is such analysis, it doesn’t seem to be a prominent part of the analysis. In any case, we are highly critical about the FDA not stepping in to protect us — a job I want them to do thoroughly. On the other hand, it seems to me, we should insist on being told the number of people injured, but also the potential of harm by not using a product. For example, there is a lot of heated discussion about the “dangers” of vaccinations but not enough discussion of what can happen when children are not vaccinated against diseases that can be serious and life-threatening.

In doing a few minutes of research on this topic, I did find out something I will remember in the future. Apparently there are some oral Zicam cold remedy products, such as RapidMelts and Chewables that are not affected by the FDA’s recent warning. Next time I’ll try them.

I really don’t know where I stand on the matter of my Zicam nasal gel. I relied on it for many years. If I thought there was a higher risk, I may be willing to keep suffering like I am today. I know I’ll survive. Eventually. But I think people should be told the risk-benefit analysis and make up their own minds. I’m not sure I would risk losing my sense of smell, but I would like people to be given the chance to buy a product if they are willing to take the risk. I suppose what that means is that we’d have to protect companies against lawsuits when the risks are clearly stated and someone has a negative reaction.

The questions I have posed today are filtered through a foggy brain, so they may not be as clear as I would like, but they can give you an idea for considering the withdrawal of products that sometimes throw the baby out with the bath water — and our tendency to accept alternative products that are hyped far beyond their proven effectiveness.

ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS:

• What is the level of risk I would accept from a product sold over-the-counter in stores and pharmacies if the negative effect was life-threatening? .01%, .1%, 1%, 10%?
• What is the level of risk I would accept from a product sold over-the-counter in stores and pharmacies if the negative effect was not life-threatening but minor? .01%, .1%, 1%, 10%?
• Where would I draw the line if a percentage were likely to die from taking a drug that provided a cure for those it benefited?
• Earthquakes, hurricanes, fires and floods all have the potential to kill and maim; how seriously should we expect our government to protect us from them?
• If my answer to the above question is that government should do everything it can to protect us, how willing am I to pay more taxes so, for example, higher dikes can be built or buildings reinforced to the maximum extent?

To explore other questions and related material see Ask Yourself Questions and Change Your Life and Healing Relationships is an Inside Job.

Statistics That Boggle the Mind

April 2, 2010

Are you amazed by outrageous statistics, the complexity and vastness of the world and our experience in it?

When I go away and my husband stays here, he collects the Los Angeles Times so I can go through them on my return. That’s when I greatly appreciate the journalism style of giving informative titles and subtitles and then presenting the most important information at the beginning of an article. That allows me to go through nine days of several sections as quickly as I can to catch up on the news I missed.

Therefore, when I saw a short article from the “Late Briefing” page from March 23, I was excited to see the title “Airlines improve luggage handling.” Great, I thought, it’s about time! As I read the paragraph, I was thrilled to learn that:

Airlines mishandled 24% fewer bags last year as airports upgraded luggage-processing equipment and passengers either traveled lighter or carried their bags aboard to avoid fees.

The next paragraph was the kicker!

The number of checked bags that were late, misdirected, damaged or lost fell by 7.8 million to 25 million in 2009, SITA, the world’s largest provider of airline computer applications said in a statement.

Do you see what that means? 7,800,000 million bags ended up where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there that would not have be handled correctly if improvements hadn’t been made (or people hadn’t kept their bags with them on the plane). HOWEVER, that still means that O-N-L-Y 25,000,000 (all those zeros makes that 25 million in case you missed it) were late, misdirected, damaged or lost. Let’s hope these beautiful pieces of luggage from TrendyHandbags.com aren’t in that pile.

Incidentally, the paper did say that, “The single most important thing that passengers can do to avoid their bag being mishandled is to leave sufficient time between connecting flights.” And how often are passengers told there will be plenty of time between flights?

In any case, this is what I call a statistic that boggles the mind.

I had assumed that a 24% improvement would equal something like 25 thousand bags that had not been handled correctly. It’s a big world and some bags are likely to get lost in the shuffle. But I have a hard time picturing 25 million. It’s a little like trying to get my mind around a statement by CNN on Oct. 15, 2009, that in the third quarter last year 937,840 homes received a foreclosure letter. That sounds like an awfully lot of homes.

Guess that’s why I love these kinds of statistics. They give me a perspective on the vastness of life in all its complexity, which is why I like to read the TIME magazine section of “Numbers.” The March 15, 2010, issue pointed out that 1.26 microseconds is the “time that each day has been shortened as a result of Chile’s earthquake, which shifted the earth’s axis about 3 inches.”

According to the March 8 issue of TIME, there were 4.6 billion worldwide cell-phone users at the end of 2009, compared with 2 billion in 2002. Can you imagine how many cell phones that is, let alone how many people? What percentage of people have cellphones? You have to figure that out on the fly because if you go to Worldometers, World Statistics Updated in Real Time, the number of people on the earth was 6,835,736,195 when I first checked the page and when I went back there less than a minute later it was 6,835,736,507. How can you imagine those kinds of numbers? They are so huge, and growing by the second.

One person that does a good job of explaining big numbers and complex ideas is Bill Bryson in his wonderful book A Short History of Nearly Everything. Somehow he is able to reduce massive figures to understandable ideas with clever analogies. It is because of his explanation of our utterly vast universe that I am convinced of the extremely unlikely possibility of flying saucers, but that’s another story.

The Ask Yourself Questions Club questions I want you to ask yourself today deal with statistics that you can’t get your mind around without resorting to an analogy. For example, to imagine the effect of 25,000,000 pieces of luggage that didn’t end up where or when they should, I wondered what percentage of passengers that would affect. Or if you set the bags on a highway next to one another, how many miles would they cover? If you did that with 4.6 billion cell phones, how far would that be?

All of this talk of trying to understand statistics gave me the idea for the following topics to consider.

ASK YOURSELF THESE QUESTIONS

• What are the most outrageous statistic I have come across lately?
• How would I explain that statistic in such a way that it would be more understandable?
• Who does the best job of explaining statistics so I can understand them? [For me the answer is Bill Bryson in his book A Short History of Nearly Everything

Save Yourself, and Other Taxpayers, $59.57

April 1, 2010

Discover how you can save $59.57 by sending in the census form.

ENTER A CONTEST AND WIN A PICTURE

—NOT an April Fools Day Trick

ARRRGGUH! This is my second day of my provisional (in case I change my mind) practice of writing every day in the blog. I thought if I wrote more often that I could shorten the time it takes to write something I was willing to have people read.

Unfortunately, when I was putting the finishing touches on today’s blog — after about one hour, which is about twice as long as I would like it to take — when I couldn’t save it (the button for saving was blacked out). I’m sure it was an internal glitch (why should I take the blame?). So I closed it anyway, hoping it would save automatically but failing to copy it first to a blank page on the computer, and discovered my changes weren’t saved. Now I have to go back and do it again. As I said, ARRRGGUH! [or however one spells a scream]

Okay, calm down, Arlene, and begin again. [Don't you just hate it when you've done something creative and it gets lost? All those brilliant, or at least original, ideas are down the drain and you have to restart the creativity process all over again.]

Anyway, I don’t want to change to a topic I can write more quickly, like simply sharing a favorite quotation, because today’s topic won’t wait. In fact, it is particularly timely because it is THE time to save money, taxpayer money, that is. Assuming you’re one of those, and who isn’t, by reading this blog today you may be able to save yourself $59.57. [Or tell others about the blog and you can save even more.]

That’s the figure I got from the NewsHour last evening. I didn’t write down the exact figures, so I may be slightly off, but I’m close enough to confidently tell you that you’re taking money out of your pocket if you don’t send in your census form by today. Well, actually, you get a little longer, but not much.

The director of the 2010 Census, who was interviewed, said that it costs 43 cents for every census form that is mailed in. It costs $60 if a census worker has to come to your house and find you.

Most of all, it’s important to know that participating in the census is not optional. It’s a federal requirement. So if you don’t send in the form, the Census Bureau will likely send someone to knock on your day to get the information. In fact, you could face a $5,000 fine if you don’t complete the form! Talk about an incentive for participating in a once-a-decade program! [I believe Canada has a census every five years.]

According to the Detroit News, “Gov. Jennifer Granholm walked from the State Capitol lawn to the Lansing City Hall this morning [April 1] to mail in her U.S. Census form, saying it costs Michigan $10,000 for each state resident not counted.” That’s because federal funds are doled out based on population.

Every form not filled out and returned costs the state $1,000. In a decade, that adds up to $10,000 and “with 178,000 Michiganians not counted in 2000, it cost the state nearly $2 billion.” Wherever you live, the same problem can affect your state budget, which likely has a shortfull or has already drastically cut services.

What do you get IF you participate in the census? You will have more money for libraries, education, infrastructure, health care, and other services paid for by YOUR dollars. In other words, if you don’t participate, someone else will get the money that belongs to you.

Ask Yourself These Questions

• How much do I know about the census? Take a quick quiz on Census 2010: Everything You Thought You Knew and Need to Know
• If I filled in the census form, how long did it take me? [They said it would be ten minutes, but it can be done in much shorter time than that.]
• If I filled in the form, did I mail it in?
• If I didn’t fill in the form, am I willing to pay (out of my tax dollars) $59.57 (or more) to have someone come and find me?
• If I think it is important for people to participate in the census, am I willing to encourage others to do so — and in the process save us all money?

As I’m finishing up this blog (as I said, for the second time today), I just now thought of a question that might be fun:

• When the census finishes its counting, what will be the total number of people living in the United States?

I will give the person who comes closest to the final figure a framed photo from my travels. All you have to do is send in your guess before the data is officially announced.