The age of the Internet

A Look at Google’s First Phone

2008-10-17T06:55:00.000-07:00

By DAVID POGUE
Published: October 16, 2008

The Google phone is real, and it’s finally here. Stand clear of popping corks.
Actually, to be completely accurate, there isn’t anything called “the Google phone.” You can’t buy “the Google phone,” any more than you can buy “the Windows PC.” Google makes the software (called Android), and it’s up to the phone manufacturers to build cellphones around it.

What has its debut on Oct. 22, therefore, is a Google phone, the very first one: the T-Mobile G1 ($180 with two-year contract). Others will follow in the coming months.

The G1 is quite obviously intended to be an iPhone killer. Assessing its success, however, is tricky, because it’s the sum of three parts. Google wrote the software, HTC made the phone and T-Mobile provides the network. What you really need is separate reviews of each.

The software. The Android software looks, feels and works a lot like the iPhone’s. Not as consistent or as attractive, but smartly designed and, for version 1.0, surprisingly complete. In any case, it’s polished enough to give Windows Mobile an inferiority complex the size of Australia; let’s hope Microsoft has a good therapist.

The Home button opens a miniature computer desktop, with a background photo of your choice. A sliding on-screen “drawer” contains the icons of all of your programs; you can drag your favorites onto the desktop for easier access, or even into little folders. You can park playlists, single-purpose “widgets,” Web pages or address-book “cards” there, too, just as on a real computer (which this is).

The Home screen scrolls sideways to reveal more desktop area. You’ll need it once you start downloading programs from the online Android Market.

Like the iPhone store, this market is a gigantic development, rich with possibilities; as programmers everywhere create new programs, mostly free, this “phone” will turn into something vastly more flexible — and patch many of its feature holes.

Better yet, Google insists that its store will be completely open. Unlike Apple, it will not reject software submissions if they don’t serve the mother ship’s commercial interests. For example, Apple rejects programs that would let you make phone calls over the Internet, thereby avoiding using up cellular airtime. Google and T-Mobile swear they would permit such a thing.

One crucial improvement over the iPhone: a Menu button. It summons a panel of big buttons for functions related to what you’re doing. It’s the equivalent of right-clicking a computer mouse.

This panel offers commands like Hold, Mute and Speaker when you’re on a call; Archive and Delete when you’re working with e-mail; or Rotate and Share when you’ve taken a photo. If you can just remember to tap that Menu button, you’ll rarely flounder trying to find your way around.

Android comes with built-in programs like Contacts, Calendar, Calculator, Music, Google Maps, a YouTube module and chat and text-messaging programs. The Web browser uses the entire, glorious, 3.2-inch screen (480 by 320 pixels); unfortunately, it offers no Flash video. Worse, you have to do a lot of zooming in and out, and the onscreen + and - buttons are much fussier to use than pinching on the iPhone’s multitouch screen.

There are a bunch of minor glitches. For example, you have to deal with two different e-mail programs: one for Gmail accounts, one for other accounts. The Gmail program can view Microsoft Office attachments; the other one can’t. And when you’re using the non-Gmail mail program, hitting Reply puts the cursor in the To box (which is already filled in), rather than the body of the message.

You can’t get from one message to the next without returning to the Inbox list in between. There’s no Visual Voicemail (voice mail messages appear in a written list) or Microsoft Exchange compatibility, either.

Where Android really falls down is in the iPod department. There’s no companion program like iTunes to sync your photos, music and videos to the phone; you’re expected to drag these items to the phone manually after connecting via USB cable to your Mac or PC. More time-consuming fussiness.

Nor is there an online store for music, TV and movies. T-Mobile has worked out a deal with Amazon’s music store, which is a start, although you can download songs only when you’re in a Wi-Fi hot spot. Out of the box, Android can’t play videos at all, although a video-playing program is available from the Android Market.

Some of the goodies in Android will reward the iPhone holdouts: voice dialing, picture messaging, built-in audio recording and the ability to turn any song into a ring tone are all included — no charge.

Those who are Google haters won’t want an Android phone. A Gmail account is required and your calendar and address book don’t sync with anything but Google’s online calendar and address book services.

Skip to next paragraph The phone. The G1 has Wi-Fi, GPS (but no turn-by-turn directions) and a mediocre camera (for stills — no video recording). The dedicated Send, End and Back buttons, and the tiny trackball for scrolling, make the G1 more flexible than the iPhone, but also more complicated.

The big news is the physical keyboard. As on a Sidekick phone, the screen pops open with a spring-loaded click to reveal a tiny thumb keyboard underneath, much to the relief of people who can’t abide on-screen keyboards.

It’s not pure joy, though. The keys don’t click down much. Worse, you have to keep turning the phone 90 degrees from its customary vertical orientation every time you need to enter text. That gets old fast.

There’s also a removable battery. Good thing, too — when all the G1’s guns are blazing (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS and so on), the juice is gone in about 3.5 hours of continuous use.

Unfortunately, the keyboard and the removable battery make the phone a lot thicker, heavier and homelier than the iPhone. Nobody looks at G1 and says, “Ooooh, I gotta have that.”

And it’s bizarre that, even though the phone contains a tilt sensor like the iPhone’s, it’s not hooked up to the screen. Turning the phone 90 degrees to get a wider look at a photo or Web page doesn’t rotate the image. You have to do that manually, using a menu or by popping open the keyboard, which makes no sense.

Finally, there’s no headphone jack. (Hello?!) If you want to use headphones, you have to buy and carry a special adapter that connects to the USB jack.

The G1 has very little built-in storage for photos, music and programs. Instead, it requires a MicroSD card (it comes with a 1-gigabyte card). To match the storage of the base-model $200 iPhone, you need an 8-gig card (about $30); to equal the storage of the 16-gig iPhone, well, you’re out of luck.

The network. G1 plans start as low as $55 a month for unlimited Internet use and 300 minutes of calling.

But T-Mobile also has one of the weakest networks. You iPhoners complain about AT&T’s high-speed 3G Internet network? T-Mobile’s fledgling 3G network covers only 19 metropolitan areas so far, compared with AT&T’s 320. And outside of those areas, Web surfing on the G1 is excruciatingly slow — we’re talking minutes a page.

(Then again, the Android mantra — “open”— may yet be the G1’s savior. After 90 days, you can request a T-Mobile unlock code that lets you use it on any GSM network, like AT&T’s or the ones in Europe.)

So there’s your G1 report card: software, A-. Phone, B-. Network, C.

But get psyched. Although the ungainly T-Mobile G1 is the first Android phone, it won’t be the last; Android phones will soon come in all shapes and sizes, and on all kinds of networks.

With so many cooks, it’s unlikely that any of them will achieve the beauty, simplicity and design purity of the iPhone. And it’s certain that none of them will inspire the universe of accessories — car adapters, cases, speaker systems and so on — that makes the iPhone fun to own.

Even so, Android itself is very successful. Clearly, there’s a sizable audience for phones that have the touchy, easy-to-navigate fun of an iPhone, without such an extreme philosophy of feature minimalism. If that’s you, then you should welcome the Android era with open eyes and ears.

E-mail: pogue@nytimes.com

University top 200 in full

2008-10-16T09:13:00.000-07:00

Britain has 17 universities in the Times Higher Education-QS World University Rankings top 100, down from 19 last year.
Harvard tops the list for the fifth consecutive year. Second place goes to Yale, which was joint second with Cambridge and Oxford last year. The two British institutions came third and fourth respectively this year.
In total the UK has 29 universities in the top 200, one fewer than last year. Of these, 22 had slipped down the rankings. The highest ranking UK university is Cambridge at Number 3, and the lowest ranking is the University of Reading, at 194 just six from bottom place, which goes to the University of Athens.
Four British universities are in the top 10, the same as last year. Imperial College London fell from fifth to sixth place while University College London rose from ninth to seventh.
More than a third of the top 100 are based in the US. The rise of Asian institutions is reflected in the inclusion of nine of them within the top 50, including three based in Hong Kong.
Two new entrants this year are Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Seoul National University.
The list in full:
1- 100
1 HARVARD University United States
2 YALE University United States
3 University of CAMBRIDGE United Kingdom
4 University of OXFORD United Kingdom
5 CALIFORNIA Institute of Technology (Calt... United States
6 IMPERIAL College London United Kingdom
7 UCL (University College London) United Kingdom
8 University of CHICAGO United States
9 MASSACHUSETTS Institute of Technology (M... United States
10 COLUMBIA University United States
11 University of PENNSYLVANIA United States
12 PRINCETON University United States
13= DUKE University United States
13= JOHNS HOPKINS University United States
15 CORNELL University United States
16 AUSTRALIAN National University Australia
17 STANFORD University United States
18 University of MICHIGAN United States
19 University of TOKYO Japan
20 MCGILL University Canada
21 CARNEGIE MELLON University United States
22 KING'S College London United Kingdom
23 University of EDINBURGH United Kingdom
24 ETH Zurich (Swiss Federal Institute of T... Switzerland
25 KYOTO University Japan
26 University of HONG KONG Hong Kong
27 BROWN University United States
28 École Normale Supérieure, PARIS France
29 University of MANCHESTER United Kingdom
30= National University of SINGAPORE(NUS) Singapore
30= University of CALIFORNIA, Los Angeles (U... United States
32 University of BRISTOL United Kingdom
33 NORTHWESTERN University United States
34= ÉCOLE POLYTECHNIQUE France
34= University of BRITISH COLUMBIA Canada
36 University of California, BERKELEY United States
37 The University of SYDNEY Australia
38 The University of MELBOURNE Australia
39 HONG KONG University of Science & Techno... Hong Kong
40 NEW YORK University (NYU) United States
41 University of TORONTO Canada
42 The CHINESE University of Hong Kong Hong Kong
43 University of QUEENSLAND Australia
44 OSAKA University Japan
45 University of NEW SOUTH WALES Australia
46 BOSTON University United States
47 MONASH University Australia
48 University of COPENHAGEN Denmark
49 TRINITY College Dublin Ireland
50= Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de LAUSANNE... Switzerland
50= PEKING University China
50= SEOUL National University Korea, South
53 University of AMSTERDAM Netherlands
54 DARTMOUTH College United States
55 University of WISCONSIN-Madison United States
56 TSINGHUA University China
57 HEIDELBERG Universität Germany
58 University of CALIFORNIA, San Diego United States
59 University of WASHINGTON United States
60 WASHINGTON University in St. Louis United States
61 TOKYO Institute of Technology Japan
62 EMORY University United States
63 UPPSALA University Sweden
64 LEIDEN University Netherlands
65 The University of AUCKLAND New Zealand
66 LONDON School of Economics and Political... United Kingdom
67 UTRECHT University Netherlands
68 University of GENEVA Switzerland
69 University of WARWICK United Kingdom
70 University of TEXAS at Austin United States
71 University of ILLINOIS United States
72 Katholieke Universiteit LEUVEN Belgium
73 University of GLASGOW United Kingdom
74 University of ALBERTA Canada
75 University of BIRMINGHAM United Kingdom
76 University of SHEFFIELD United Kingdom
77 NANYANG Technological University Singapore
78= DELFT University of Technology Netherlands
78= RICE University United States
78= Technische Universität MÜNCHEN Germany
81= University of AARHUS Denmark
81= University of YORK United Kingdom
83= GEORGIA Institute of Technology United States
83= The University of WESTERN AUSTRALIA Australia
83= University of ST ANDREWS United Kingdom
86 University of NOTTINGHAM United Kingdom
87 University of MINNESOTA United States
88 LUND University Sweden
89 University of CALIFORNIA, Davis United States
90 CASE WESTERN RESERVE University United States
91= Université de Montréal Canada
91= University of HELSINKI Finland
93= Hebrew University of JERUSALEM Israel
93= Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Germany
95 KAIST - Korea Advanced Institute of Scie... Korea, South
96 University of VIRGINIA United States
97 University of PITTSBURGH United States
98 University of CALIFORNIA, Santa Barbara United States
99= PURDUE University United States
99= University of SOUTHAMPTON United Kingdom
101 - 200
101 VANDERBILT University United States
102= University of NORTH CAROLINA United States
102= University of SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA United States
104 University of LEEDS United Kingdom
105 PENNSYLVANIA STATE University United States
106= University of ADELAIDE Australia
106= University of ZURICH Switzerland
108 University College DUBLIN Ireland
109 TECHNION - Israel Institute of Technolog... Israel
110 GEORGETOWN University United States
111 MAASTRICHT University Netherlands
112 TOHOKU University Japan
113 FUDAN University China
114 TEL AVIV University Israel
115 University of VIENNA Austria
116 Université catholique de LOUVAIN (UCL) Belgium
117= MCMASTER University Canada
117= QUEEN'S University Canada
119 University of ROCHESTER United States
120 NAGOYA University Japan
121 OHIO STATE University United States
122= DURHAM University United Kingdom
122= University of MARYLAND United States
124= National TAIWAN University Taiwan
124= University of OTAGO New Zealand
126 ERASMUS University Rotterdam Netherlands
127 STONY BROOK University United States
128 EINDHOVEN University of Technology Netherlands
129 University of WATERLOO Canada
130 University of SUSSEX United Kingdom
131 University of BASEL Switzerland
132 University of CALIFORNIA, Irvine United States
133= CARDIFF University United Kingdom
133= Technical University of DENMARK Denmark
133= University of LIVERPOOL United Kingdom
136 University of GHENT Belgium
137= Freie Universität BERLIN Germany
137= TEXAS A&M University United States
139 HUMBOLDT-Universität zu Berlin Germany
140 Ecole normale supérieure de LYON France
141 University of Science and Technology of ... China
142 WAGENINGEN University Netherlands
143 NANJING University China
144= SHANGHAI JIAO TONG University China
144= University of GRONINGEN Netherlands
146 University of ARIZONA United States
147= CITY University of Hong Kong Hong Kong
147= Universität FREIBURG Germany
149 Université Pierre-et-Marie-Curie PARIS V... France
150 Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México ... Mexico
151 RUTGERS, The State University of New Jer... United States
152 University of BATH United Kingdom
153 University of ABERDEEN United Kingdom
154 Indian Institute of Technology Delhi (II... India
155= Eberhard Karls Universität TÜBINGEN Germany
155= VU University AMSTERDAM Netherlands
157 TUFTS University United States
158 KYUSHU University Japan
159 The University of WESTERN ONTARIO Canada
160 QUEEN MARY, University of London United Kingdom
161 University of LAUSANNE Switzerland
162= CHALMERS University of Technology Sweden
162= NEWCASTLE University, NEWCASTLE Upon Tyn... United Kingdom
164 SIMON FRASER University Canada
165 University of FLORIDA United States
166= CHULALONGKORN University Thailand
166= Universität GÖTTINGEN Germany
168 University of NOTRE DAME United States
169 Universität FRANKFURT am Main Germany
170= INDIANA University Bloomington United States
170= University of CALGARY Canada
170= University of LANCASTER United Kingdom
173 KTH, ROYAL Institute of Technology Sweden
174= HOKKAIDO University Japan
174= Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (I... India
174= RENSSELAER Polytechnic Institute United States
177= University of LEICESTER United Kingdom
177= University of OSLO Norway
179 University of CAPE TOWN South Africa
180= University of COLORADO at Boulder United States
180= WASEDA University Japan
182 MACQUARIE University Australia
183= Lomonosov MOSCOW STATE University Russia
183= Université Libre de BRUXELLES (ULB) Belgium
185 BRANDEIS University United States
186= University of BARCELONA Spain
186= University of CANTERBURY New Zealand
188= POHANG University of Science and Technol... Korea, South
188= Technische Universität BERLIN Germany
190 Universität STUTTGART Germany
191 University of MASSACHUSETTS, Amherst United States
192= University of BERN Switzerland
192= University of BOLOGNA Italy
194 University of READING United Kingdom
195 University of ANTWERP Belgium
196 University of SAO PAULO Brazil
197= DALHOUSIE University Canada
197= University of BUENOS AIRES Argentina
199 KOBE University Japan
200= University of ATHENS Greece

Source: QS Quacquarelli Symonds (http://www.topuniversities.com/)
Copyright © 2004-2008 QS Quacquarelli Symonds Ltd.

7 Things Your Computer Person Won’t Tell You

2008-10-15T00:40:00.000-07:00

Keep it clean. On a PC, run Disk Cleanup and Disk Defragmenter at least once a month. This will store files more efficiently so your system doesn’t slow down. After about four years, your computer is elderly. If you’re shelling out for a blazing-fast Internet connection, pony up for a new model.

Check the cables. “People are always shocked that a cable came loose,” says Geek Squad agent Derek Meister. Of course, everything that needs power is plugged into an outlet, right?
Got neighbors? If you do, protect your home wireless network with a password. “If a person knows what he’s doing, getting into a computer on a non-encrypted net-work is easy,” says Schildkraut.

You backed up your data, right? External hard drives with lots of memory now sell for under $200, and automated programs like Cobian Backup or Apple’s Time Machine make regular backups a no-brainer. Secure online backup services save your data offsite should anything happen to your home.

If you travel with your laptop, get a lock. A 2007 survey by the Computer Security Institute found that 50 percent of respondents had a laptop or other mobile device sto-len in the past year. A simple cable lock (starting at about $20) lets you physically secure your laptop anywhere you go.

Remember: If your company owns the computer, they own what’s on it, too—even your email in some cases. Act accordingly.

Please remember: We didn’t create the problem; we’re just trying to help you fix it.

Halloween Napkin Rings

2008-10-09T19:51:00.000-07:00

Frightfully Fun

All sorts of bits and pieces adaptable to crafting happily haunt Nancy Valentine's home in Paupack, Pennsylvania. "Oftentimes, I'll find each material that a particular project calls for among my odds and ends," she notes. Nancy scared up frightfully fun spider, ghost, witch and cat napkin rings in the same way. "Empty paper towel rolls form the base," she tells, "which I trimmed with extras like colorful felt."

Nancy's crafts are so simple to create, they'd make perfect Halloween party projects for youngsters. Just supply already-cut cardboard rings, felt and any other fun embellishments.

You Will Need:

Patterns below
Tracing paper
Pencil
Ruler
Scissors
Empty
Paper towel roll
Craft or utility knife
Scraps of black and white felt

Assorted two-hole buttons --- two 1-inch black for cat, one 3/8-inch black and one 9/16-inch black for spider, one 9/16-inch white for ghost and one 3/4-inch lilac for witch

3-inch length of jute string

3 yards each of black, orange, white and variegated yarn

Scraps of black six-strand embroidery floss

Black, red and yellow acrylic craft paints

Small paintbrush

Tacky craft glue or glue gun and glue stick.

What to Do

Rings: With pencil and ruler, divide an empty paper towel roll into 1-inch sections. Cut apart with craft or utility knife.Trim with scissors if needed.

Referring to the individual instructions that follow for colors, wrap each ring with yarn. To begin, glue one end of yarn to the inside of a ring. Wind the length around the ring so that each new wrap lies next to the previous wrap. When the ring is completely covered, cut off the excess yarn and glue the remaining end to the inside of the ring.

Nobel prize for literature goes to author of 'poetic adventure'

2008-10-09T18:04:00.000-07:00

French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio takes literary world's top honour

Alison
Flood
guardian.co.uk,
Thursday October 09 2008 15.32 BST

'Why not?' ... Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio. Photograph: AP

The Swedish Academy announced this lunchtime that French novelist Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio has won the Nobel prize for literature. Announcing the prize, Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Nobel judges, saluted him as an "author of new departures, poetic adventure and sensual ecstasy, explorer of a humanity beyond and below the reigning civilisation".

Le Clézio is the first French writer to take the 10m Swedish Krona (£815,000) prize since the French-Chinese author Gao Xingjian in 2000, although he was reluctant to identify himself strictly as a Frenchman. "I started in France, but my father was a British citizen, born in Mauritius. So I see myself as a mix, like many people currently in Europe."

"I am very touched and very emotional, it is a great honour for me," he said, adding that he had been busy writing when the call came through. "(I felt) some kind of incredulity, and then some kind of awe, and then some kind of joy and mirth," he told reporters at a press conference in Paris on Thursday afternoon. Asked if he deserved the prize, he replied "Why not?"

Born in 1940, Le Clézio first found fame aged 23 with his debut novel Le Procès-Verbal, which was awarded the Prix Renaudot for its depiction of a young man who ends up in a mental hospital. Compared to Sartre's Nausea and Camus's The Outsider, the book introduced one of Le Clézio's major preoccupations, that of the flight from the norm to extreme states of mind. It is still regarded as one of his best pieces of writing.

His real breakthrough as a novelist came with 1980's Désert, whose tale of a lost culture in the North African desert and a Europe seen through the eyes of immigrants won him a French Academy prize.

As well as living in France, the UK, Bangkok, Mexico City and Boston, between 1969 and 1973 Le Clézio lived with the Embera Indians in Panama. He has written of his time there in Haï and Voyage de l'autre côté, and has also translated some of the major works of the Indian tradition, such as Les prophéties du Chilam Balam. His Le rêve mexicain ou la pensée interrompue shows his fascination with Mexico's past. The theme of the natural world is a unifying one for his writing, which spans some 50 novels, essays and short stories - although much of it is unavailable in print in the UK today.

"There are two phases to Le Clézio's career," said Adrian Tahourdin, French editor of the Times Literary Supplement. "There's the early, more experimental work up until the early to mid 70s, and then he switched to much more lyrical, traditional narrative style, and started exploring other cultures more."

Tahourdin said Le Clézio was a "very worthy" winner, although he was surprised by the choice. "You can never second guess the sages of Stockholm, but he's a very good choice, he's a very good novelist," he said, adding that Le Clézio fitted the Nobel prize criteria of finding a body of work moving in an "ideal direction" rather well, writing as he does from the perspective of the downtrodden and dispossessed.

Le Clézio's most recent works include 2007's Ballaciner, an essay about the history of the art of film, and Ritournelle de la faim, which has just been published.

The choice of Le Clézio appears particularly pointed following the Academy's most senior judge Horace Engdahl's comments about American writing being insular and isolated. "It almost seems like a rebuff", said Tahourdin. "There's always a political subtext with Nobel prizes, and choosing Le Clézio is particularly interesting because although he has written about America, he has written about pre-Columbian America."

French president French President Nicolas Sarkozy was quick to hail the win as a sign of France's cultural influence. "A child in Mauritius and Nigeria, a teenager in Nice, a nomad of the American and African deserts, Jean-Marie Le Clézio is a citizen of the world, the son of all continents and cultures," Sarkozy said. "A great traveller, he embodies the influence of France, its culture and its values in a globalised world."

The odds on the French author winning had originally been 14/1, but Ladbrokes said that following a sustained gamble, they fell through 10/1, 8/1, 4/1 and 2/1 before Le Clézio closed as the odds-on 1/2 favourite. "It's the result we feared," said spokesman Nick Weinberg. "Punters were convinced that Le Clézio's time had come and they were spot on."

Le Clézio will receive the award at a ceremony in the Swedish capital in December. He has previously won the Prix Théophraste Renaudot (1963), Prix Larbaud (1972), Grand Prix Paul Morand de l'Académie française (1980), Grand Prix Jean Giono (1997), Prix Prince de Monaco (1998). The Nobel is his second Swedish award this year, after he won 2008's Stig Dagerman prize, which honors efforts to promote the freedom of expression.

7 Diet Misconceptions

2008-10-08T18:10:00.000-07:00

By jennifer8055, on 09/25/2008

Confused about how to lose weight? All the common diet myths are debunked here!

Weight loss can be difficult, no thanks to popular misconceptions that have the ring of truth but can actually work against you. Among the more common myths:

1. Desserts are forbidden.

The truth is, there's room in your diet for any kind of food, especially the ones you love most -- as long as you control your total caloric intake (and grams of carbohydrate, if you tally them). Denying yourself your favorite foods can lead to binge eating and, ultimately, discouragement.

2. You have to lose a lot of weight to make a difference.

The closer you can get to an ideal weight, the better, but small, sustained improvements at the beginning of a weight-loss program have the biggest impact on your health. Studies show that losing just 5 to 10 pounds can improve insulin resistance enough to allow some people with type 2 diabetes to quit medication or injections.

3. What you eat matters more than how much.

Both matter, but recent research finds that the number of calories in your food is more important than where they come from. Example: A bagel might seem healthier than a doughnut hole, but dense bagels have the calorie content of six slices of bread. As long as you're not eating too much fat in other foods, the doughnut hole wins.

4. If you work out, you can eat whatever you want.

That's robbing Peter to pay Paul. You can't lose weight if you reduce calories in one way but increase them in another.

5. Skipping meals makes you lose weight fast.

Actually, studies show that people who skip breakfast tend to be heavier than people who don't. And skipping meals tends to make you overeat later. If you have diabetes, it's important to keep up a steady intake of small portions of food throughout the day to keep your blood-sugar levels stable and reduce the risk of hypoglycemia.

6. Starches are fattening.

If you are insulin resistant, your body may find it easier to convert carbohydrate calories to fat than to burn it as energy, but the fact remains that starches (and other carbohydrates) are less dense in calories gram for gram than other types of food. The main issue is calories, so if you load starchy foods with fat -- sour cream and butter on a baked potato, for instance -- or eat them in large quantities, the caloric load can add up.

7. You should never eat fast food.Never say never.

Fast food can be worked into your meal plan if you choose well. Opt for grilled foods instead of fried, avoid or scrape away high-fat condiments like mayonnaise, and share those French fries to keep portion size down.

Staring At Boobs Good 4 U!

2008-10-08T02:27:00.001-07:00

have been saying for years that staring at women’s breasts is good for you. I’ve said it to anyone that’ll listen, especially women whose breasts I happen to be staring at!

Well, finally I have been vindicated, validated and proved to be a genius!

The New England Journal of Medicine and Weekly World News recently said that men staring at women's breasts prolong their lives by several years.

"Just 10 minutes of staring at the charms of a well-endowed female such as Baywatch actress Pamela Lee is equivalent to a 30-minute aerobics work-out," said (creepy) author Dr. Karen Weatherby, a gerontologist.

The team led by Weatherby was made up of (horny) researchers at three (sexy) hospitals in Frankfurt, Germany monitored the health of 200 male subjects for 5 years. Half of the subjects were asked to look at busty females daily, while the others were asked not to. For five years, the boob lovers presented a lower blood pressure, slower resting pulse rates and decreased risk of coronary artery disease.

"Sexual excitement gets the heart pumping and improves blood circulation. There's no question: Gazing at large breasts makes men healthier. Our study indicates that engaging in this activity a few minutes daily cuts the risk of stroke and heart attack in half." said Weatherby, who recommended that men aged over 40 should spend at least 10 minutes daily admiring breasts sized "D-cup" or larger.

Ya see!!! I told you so!!!!

Now let’s go stare at some boobies!!!!!

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/681281/Staring_At_Boobs_Good_4_U.html

McCain: ‘Who Is the Real Barack Obama?’

2008-10-08T02:21:00.001-07:00

By Michael Cooper

ALBUQUERQUE – Senator John McCain pressed his strategy of trying to sow doubts about Senator Barack Obama during the closing month of the campaign by asking a crowd at a rowdy rally here Monday: “Who is the real Barack Obama?’’

That question came in a sharply-worded speech in which Mr. McCain dismissed Mr. Obama as “a Chicago politician,’’ said that the Obama campaign had had to return “$33,000 in illegal foreign funds from Palestinian donors,’’ and sought to raise questions and doubts about Mr. Obama’s background. The speech came as the McCain campaign has opened a series of verbal assaults on Mr. Obama as it tries to turn the page on the financial crisis, which many analysts believe has rallied support to the Democrats. But even as Mr. McCain gave the sharper-edged speech, the stock market was plunging.

In the speech, Mr. McCain repeatedly tried to paint Mr. Obama as a largely unknown, risky choice. “I didn’t just show up out of nowhere,’’ Mr. McCain said to cheers, seeking to draw a contrast with Mr. Obama. He said that “even at this late hour in the campaign, there are essential things we don’t know about Senator Obama or the record that he brings to this campaign.’’

Mr. McCain decried what he called Mr. Obama’s “touchiness every time he is questioned about his record.’’

“For a guy who’s already authored two memoirs, he’s not exactly an open book,’’ Mr. McCain said. “It’s as if somehow the usual rules don’t apply, and where other candidates have to explain themselves and their records, Senator Obama seems to think he is above all that. Whatever the question, whatever the issue, there’s always a back story with Senator Obama. All people want to know is: What has this man ever actually accomplished in government? What does he plan for America? In short: Who is the real Barack Obama? But, my friends, you ask such questions and all you get in response is another angry barrage of angry insults.’’

Mr. McCain complained that “whenever I have questioned his policies or his record, he has called me a liar,’’ even as he accused Mr. Obama of lying about his record.

“Senator Obama has accused me of opposing regulation to avert this crisis,’’ he said. “I guess he believes if a lie is big enough and repeated often enough it will be believed. But the truth is I was the one who called at the time for tighter restrictions on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that could have helped prevent this crisis from happening in the first place.’’

Mr. McCain’s return to Washington during negotiations of the financial bail-out bill was criticized by some participants for complicating its passage by injecting presidential politics in the mix, and the bill’s initial demise was widely attributed to the failure of House Republicans to support it. But Mr. McCain faulted Mr. Obama and the Democrats for going slow on the bailout package.

“Today the Dow has fallen below 10,000,’’ he said. “And yet, members of his own party said they felt no pressure to vote for the bill. Why didn’t Senator Obama work to pass this bill from the start? Why did he let it fail and drag out this crisis for a full week before doing a thing to help pass it?’’

The crowd booed mentions of Mr. Obama repeatedly, and several men called out again and again that Mr. Obama was a “liar,’’ and yelled “send him home!”

The Obama campaign responded that Mr. McCain was “angry.”

“On a day when the markets are plunging and the credit crisis is putting millions of jobs at risk, the one truly angry candidate in this race kept up his strategy of ‘turning the page’ on the economy by unleashing another frustrated tirade against Barack Obama,’’ Tommy Vietor, an Obama campaign spokesman, said in a statement.

How Free Should a Free Market Be?

2008-10-08T02:16:00.000-07:00

By ALEX
BERENSON
Published: October 4, 2008

For nearly a generation, the United States has driven growth by deregulating markets, lowering tax rates and promoting trade. Across wide swaths of the economy — from airlines to banks to energy to telecommunications — Washington stood aside, believing less regulation would produce broad prosperity, even at the cost of greater income inequality.

Now, with Washington setting aside $700 billion to bail out financial companies, the economy weakening daily and the Democrats likely to enlarge their majorities in Congress, it may seem that the United States is shifting away from faith in markets and distrust of government.

In Europe, some political leaders, including conservatives like President Nicolas Sarkozy of France, have declared the death of laissez-faire economics. “A certain idea of globalization is drawing to a close with the end of a financial capitalism that imposed its logic on the whole economy,” Mr. Sarkozy said last month. “The idea that the markets are always right was a crazy idea.”

What about America? In one sense, the present crisis would seem likely to continue the retreat from the free-market ideas associated with Ronald Reagan and President Bush suggested by the passage of the Medicare drug benefit plan in 2003 and the failure of Mr. Bush’s proposal to privatize Social Security in 2005, the centerpiece of his vision of an “ownership society.” Then, in 2006, Democrats took Congress for the first time in 12 years.

Whoever becomes president in January, lawmakers will be under pressure to strengthen financial regulation and give more resources to agencies like the Food and Drug Administration, which have appeared overwhelmed in recent years. Some critics of the bailout legislation complain, for instance, that at the same time that it empowers the Treasury Department to buy hundreds of billions in troubled debt from financial firms, it fails to fortify oversight of the nation’s financial system.

But Americans are fundamentally suspicious of government in a way that Europeans are not, a cultural and political difference that stretches back centuries. Anyone expecting a major expansion of Washington’s powers after November — whether under a Barack Obama or John McCain administration — may be disappointed.

Americans are certainly weary of Mr. Bush, whose approval rating fell to 22 percent in the most recent poll by CBS News, the lowest rating for any president since Harry S. Truman in 1952. But this poll, and others, also show that whatever their anger at Mr. Bush and Wall Street, Americans are not necessarily ready to embrace liberal ideals such as stronger unions, significantly higher and more progressive taxes, and new trade barriers.

A deep, long-lasting recession could change that dynamic, just as the inflation and severe recessions of the 1970s fueled the last major ideological shift in American politics with the election in 1980 of Mr. Reagan, a fervent apostle of lower taxes, free markets and deregulation.

But for now, the United States economy is far stronger than it was in the 1970s. The credit crunch, swooning stock market and rising unemployment are frightening, but economists are still predicting a relatively mild recession. The unemployment rate, for example, has risen from 4.4 percent in March 2007 to 6.1 percent at the end of September, but it is far below the post-World War II peak of 10.8 percent in November 1982. And while the Standard & Poor’s 500 index of big stocks has fallen by nearly 30 percent since its peak in 2007, it had dropped nearly 50 percent between 2000 and 2002.

The relatively mild recessions of 1990 and 2001 did not shake Americans’ faith in free-market principles, said Robert D. Reischauer, president of the non-partisan Urban Institute. Mr. Reischauer directed the Congressional Budget Office between 1989 and 1994, when Democrats controlled Congress. Similarly, this recession will probably not produce a major shift, unless it turns out to be much longer and more severe than economists expect, Mr. Reischauer said.

“We’re basically a conservative country,” he said. “And one would expect that to be the case when one has as much stuff as we have to conserve.”

Doug Schoen, a Democratic strategist and pollster who worked for President Bill Clinton for six years, said that should Mr. Obama win next month, he should not mistake his election for a mandate for sharply higher taxes on the wealthy or major government expansion. “The polling I’ve done shows that people are anti-Republican, not pro-left, not pro-redistribution,” he said. “They’re ever more skeptical of Washington.”

For example, in the poll by CBS News released earlier this week, 44 percent of Americans said businesses now faced “too much” or “the right amount” of regulation, compared to 43 percent who said they faced too little. In a New York Times/CBS News Poll in September, 42 percent said Mr. Bush’s tax cuts, which overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy, should be made permanent, while 36 percent said they should be allowed to expire over the next several years.

Most strikingly, 34 percent described themselves as conservative, compared to only 20 percent as liberal. Those figures have hardly changed since September 2000, when 32 percent described themselves as conservative and 20 percent as liberal.

Newt Gingrich, the former Republican speaker of the House, said the financial crisis has benefited Mr. Obama and Democratic Congressional candidates. But Mr. Gingrich added that if Mr. Obama is elected and presses too hard for liberal policies, Democrats may be repudiated by voters in 2010, just as they were in 1994, two years after Mr. Clinton was elected president and offered proposals for national health insurance and higher energy taxes that failed in Congress.

“You have to convince a country that watched Katrina, that watched Baghdad, that watched Fannie and Freddie, now the answer’s going to be to pile more junk on top of the junk we already have,” Mr. Gingrich said of new government programs.

Some Democrats think that Americans are ready for at least a moderate turn to a more activist government.

Lawrence Summers, who was secretary of the Treasury under President Clinton, said that even before the financial crisis, Americans were concerned about income inequality and the cost of health care, and increasingly aware that those problems cannot be addressed by market solutions alone. Indeed, in a poll in August by the Pew Research Center, 63 percent of Americans said they favored government-guaranteed health insurance, even at the cost of higher taxes, while only 34 percent opposed it.

“There has been a substantial change in the intellectual climate,” he said. “It’s a change that antedates the financial crisis, and I think it will only be reinforced by the financial crisis.”

Jeffrey Garten, a professor at the Yale School of Management who was an undersecretary of commerce in the Clinton administration, said lawmakers are likely to impose stricter regulatory oversight on several industries — especially financial companies and markets. Having established itself, at great expense, as the financier of last resort, the government will no longer blithely accept banks’ assurances that they are safe, Mr. Garten said. Instead, Congress will give the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve new powers to oversee financial institutions, Mr. Garten said.

“The government’s going to be inside them,” he said. Mr. Garten also said he expected the F.D.A and Consumer Product Safety Commission to receive increased funding and stronger oversight powers. “The whole issue of food and product safety — it’s a total mess,” he said. “We are headed for an extensive regulatory re-think.”

David Ruder, the former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and now a professor emeritus at the Northwestern University School of Law, said he also thought that much stricter financial regulation was necessary, both in the United States and internationally. “The events, even as they’re unfolding today, are revealing the need for much closer cooperation among financial regulators,” he said.

But, in a sign of the opposition that Democrats will face as they try to strengthen regulation, Mr. Ruder said that he did not think regulatory reform would be easy to implement, even in the financial sector. Even after receiving massive government aid this year, banks may fight stronger government oversight next year, he said.

The banking and finance industries are major political donors and powerful lobbying forces in Washington. Lawmakers who voted for the bailout received substantially more in contributions over their careers from the finance, insurance and real estate industries than those who voted against it, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit group that tracks political contributions.

“I’m scared about the next year but I’m very optimistic we’ll come out of this in good shape,” he said. “We very well may come out of this horrible situation with a better version of American capitalism — it’ll be a little tamer; it’ll be a little more regulated.”

“But this country is built on an appetite for risk,” he added. “We don’t want to be France.”

Health And Beauty Photoshop Brushes Set

2008-09-16T20:49:00.000-07:00

Large preview (0.56 Mb)
Download the set (.abr, 3.1 Mb)
Motivation Behind the Design
As usual, here are some insights from the designer herself:

“It’s just another Photoshop brushes set, believe it or not. Some might say just that, and truly so. This may be just another Photoshop brushes set, but like anything else in our lives, it all depends on how you approach it and how you use it.

“As you will see, there are different shapes, subjects and topics covered in this set of 67 Photoshop brushes. The theme of this set is health and beauty. All of the brushes were created from scratch, and all of you, I hope, who do vector graphics from scratch will know and appreciate the work behind them. But what can we do? We all know what Smashing Magazine’s standards are and I wouldn’t dare to send Vitaly anything less than this.

My goal was not only to create a brush set that would help designers decorate or “fill in” their health and beauty-related artwork, but to create a collection of inspirational artwork; brushes that might be used as a starting point for times when the muse is not around and one just needs a bit of inspiration. What they are supposed to be is a little push, a starting point for those moments when there’s just a blank screen in front of you and a total lack of ideas. The idea was to enable designers to open the set in Photoshop, pick one of the brushes and start from there.

So, here it is. If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have to do some health and beauty-related design project (but not only that, of course), these will be really helpful. I hope I have achieved at least a little of what I aimed for with this set. It’s here for you to use, as always, with no restrictions at all. You can look for more on my site and I would be more than happy to hear from you. All of the sets are compatible with Photoshop 7.0 up to CS3, Mac and PC alike.

More of my work can be seen on my blog at graphics-illustrations.com.”

Lehman Files for Bankruptcy; Merrill Is Sold

2008-09-16T20:33:00.000-07:00

By ANDREW ROSS SORKIN
Published: September 14, 2008

This article was reported by Jenny Anderson, Eric Dash and Andrew Ross Sorkin and was written by Mr. Sorkin.

In one of the most dramatic days in Wall Street’s history, Merrill Lynch agreed to sell itself on Sunday to Bank of America for roughly $50 billion to avert a deepening financial crisis, while another prominent securities firm, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy protection and hurtled toward liquidation after it failed to find a buyer.

The humbling moves, which reshape the landscape of American finance, mark the latest chapter in a tumultuous year in which once-proud financial institutions have been brought to their knees as a result of hundreds of billions of dollars in losses because of bad mortgage finance and real estate investments.

But even as the fates of Lehman and Merrill hung in the balance, another crisis loomed as the insurance giant American International Group appeared to teeter. Staggered by losses stemming from the credit crisis, A.I.G. sought a $40 billion lifeline from the Federal Reserve, without which the company may have only days to survive.

The stunning series of events culminated a weekend of frantic around-the-clock negotiations, as Wall Street bankers huddled in meetings at the behest of Bush administration officials to try to avoid a downward spiral in the markets stemming from a crisis of confidence.

“My goodness. I’ve been in the business 35 years, and these are the most extraordinary events I’ve ever seen,” said Peter G. Peterson, co-founder of the private equity firm the Blackstone Group, who was head of Lehman in the 1970s and a secretary of commerce in the Nixon administration.

It remains to be seen whether the sale of Merrill, which was worth more than $100 billion during the last year, and the controlled demise of Lehman will be enough to finally turn the tide in the yearlong financial crisis that has crippled Wall Street and threatened the broader economy.

Early Monday morning, Lehman said it would file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in New York for its holding company in what would be the largest failure of an investment bank since the collapse of Drexel Burnham Lambert 18 years ago, the Associated Press reported.

Questions remain about how the market will react Monday, particularly to Lehman’s plan to wind down its trading operations, and whether other companies, like A.I.G. and Washington Mutual, the nation’s largest savings and loan, might falter.

Indeed, in a move that echoed Wall Street’s rescue of a big hedge fund a decade ago this week, 10 major banks agreed to create an emergency fund of $70 billion to $100 billion that financial institutions can use to protect themselves from the fallout of Lehman’s failure.

The Fed, meantime, broadened the terms of its emergency loan program for Wall Street banks, a move that could ultimately put taxpayers’ money at risk.

Though the government took control of the troubled mortgage finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac only a week ago, investors have become increasingly nervous about whether major financial institutions can recover from their losses.

How things play out could affect the broader economy, which has been weakening steadily as the financial crisis has deepened over the last year, with unemployment increasing as the nation’s growth rate has slowed.

What will happen to Merrill’s 60,000 employees or Lehman’s 25,000 employees remains unclear. Worried about the unfolding crisis and its potential impact on New York City’s economy, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg canceled a trip to California to meet with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Instead, aides said, Mr. Bloomberg spent much of the weekend working the phones, talking to federal officials and bank executives in an effort to gauge the severity of the crisis.

The weekend that humbled Lehman and Merrill Lynch and rewarded Bank of America, based in Charlotte, N.C., began at 6 p.m. Friday in the first of a series of emergency meetings at the Federal Reserve building in Lower Manhattan.

The meeting was called by Fed officials, with Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr. in attendance, and it included top bankers. The Treasury and Federal Reserve had already stepped in on several occasions to rescue the financial system, forcing a shotgun marriage between Bear Stearns and JPMorgan Chase this year and backstopping $29 billion worth of troubled assets — and then agreeing to bail out Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The bankers were told that the government would not bail out Lehman and that it was up to Wall Street to solve its problems. Lehman’s stock tumbled sharply last week as concerns about its financial condition grew and other firms started to pull back from doing business with it, threatening its viability.

Without government backing, Lehman began trying to find a buyer, focusing on Barclays, the big British bank, and Bank of America. At the same time, other Wall Street executives grew more concerned about their own precarious situation.

The fates of Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers would not seem to be linked; Merrill has the nation’s largest brokerage force and its name is known in towns across America, while Lehman’s main customers are big institutions. But during the credit boom both firms piled into risky real estate and ended up severely weakened, with inadequate capital and toxic assets.

Knowing that investors were worried about Merrill, John A. Thain, its chief executive and an alumnus of Goldman Sachs and the New York Stock Exchange, and Kenneth D. Lewis, Bank of America’s chief executive, began negotiations. One person briefed on the negotiations said Bank of America had approached Merrill earlier in the summer but Mr. Thain had rebuffed the offer. Now, prompted by the reality that a Lehman bankruptcy would ripple through Wall Street and further cripple Merrill Lynch, the two parties proceeded with discussions.

On Sunday morning, Mr. Thain and Mr. Lewis cemented the deal. It could not be determined if Mr. Thain would play a role in the new company, but two people briefed on the negotiations said they did not expect him to stay. Merrill’s “thundering herd” of 17,000 brokers will be combined with Bank of America’s smaller group of wealth advisers and called Merrill Lynch Wealth Management.

For Bank of America, which this year bought Countrywide Financial, the troubled mortgage lender, the purchase of Merrill puts it at the pinnacle of American finance, making it the biggest brokerage house and consumer banking franchise.

Bank of America eventually pulled out of its talks with Lehman after the government refused to take responsibility for losses on some of Lehman’s most troubled real-estate assets, something it agreed to do when JP Morgan Chase bought Bear Stearns to save it from a bankruptcy filing in March.

A leading proposal to rescue Lehman would have divided the bank into two entities, a “good bank” and a “bad bank.” Under that scenario, Barclays would have bought the parts of Lehman that have been performing well, while a group of 10 to 15 Wall Street companies would have agreed to absorb losses from the bank’s troubled assets, to two people briefed on the proposal said. Taxpayer money would not have been included in such a deal, they said.

Other Wall Street banks also balked at the deal, unhappy at facing potential losses while Bank of America or Barclays walked away with the potentially profitable part of Lehman at a cheap price.

For Lehman, the end essentially came Sunday morning when its last potential suitor, Barclays, pulled out from a deal, saying it could not obtain a shareholder vote to approve a transaction before Monday morning, something required under London Stock Exchange listing rules, one person close to the matter said. Other people involved in the talks said the Financial Services Authority, the British securities regulator, had discouraged Barclays from pursuing a deal. Peter Truell, a spokesman for Barclays, declined to comment. Lehman’s subsidiaries were expected to remain solvent while the firm liquidates its holdings, these people said. Herbert H. McDade III, Lehman’s president, was at the Federal Reserve Bank in New York late Sunday, discussing terms of Lehman’s fate with government officials.

Lehman’s filing is unlikely to resemble those of other companies that seek bankruptcy protection. Because of the harsher treatment that federal bankruptcy law applies to financial-services firms, Lehman cannot hope to reorganize and survive. It was not clear whether the government would appoint a trustee to supervise Lehman’s liquidation or how big the financial backstop would be.

Lehman has retained the law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges as its bankruptcy counsel.

The collapse of Lehman is a devastating end for Richard S. Fuld Jr., the chief executive, who has led the bank since it emerged from American Express as a public company in 1994. Mr. Fuld, who steered Lehman through near-death experiences in the past, spent the last several days in his 31st floor office in Lehman’s midtown headquarters on the phone from 6 a.m. until well past midnight trying to save the firm, a person close to the matter said.

A.I.G. will be the next test. Ratings agencies threatened to downgrade A.I.G.’s credit rating if it does not raise $40 billion by Monday morning, a step that would cripple the company. A.I.G. had hoped to shore itself up, in party by selling certain businesses, but potential bidders, including the private investment firms Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and TPG, withdrew at the last minute because the government refused to provide a financial guarantee for the purchase. A.I.G. rejected an offer by another investor, J. C. Flowers & Company.

The weekend’s events indicate that top officials at the Federal Reserve and the Treasury are taking a harder line on providing government support of troubled financial institutions.

While offering to help Wall Street organize a shotgun marriage for Lehman, both the Fed chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, and Mr. Paulson had warned that they would not put taxpayer money at risk simply to prevent a Lehman collapse.

The message marked a major change in strategy but it remained unclear until at least Friday what would happen. “They were faced after Bear Stearns with the problem of where to draw the line,” said Laurence H. Meyer, a former Fed governor who is now vice chairman of Macroeconomic Advisors, a forecasting firm. “It became clear that this piecemeal, patchwork, case-by-case approach might not get the job done.”

Both Mr. Paulson and Mr. Bernanke worried that they had already gone much further than they had ever wanted, first by underwriting the takeover of Bear Stearns in March and by the far bigger bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Outside the public eye, Fed officials had acquired much more information since March about the interconnections and cross-exposure to risk among Wall Street investment banks, hedge funds and traders in the vast market for credit-default swaps and other derivatives. In the end, both Wall Street and the Fed blinked.

Dancing All the Dances As Long As I Can

2008-09-10T00:11:00.000-07:00

Contributor: Robert Fulghum
Location: Seattle, WA
Country: United States of America
Series: Contemporary

As heard on NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday, October 28, 2007.

I believe in dancing.

I believe it is in my nature to dance by virtue of the beat of my heart, the pulse of my blood and the music in my mind. So I dance daily.

The seldom-used dining room of my house is now an often-used ballroom—an open space with a hardwood floor, stereo, and a disco ball. The CD-changer has six discs at the ready: waltz, swing, country, rock-and-roll, salsa, and tango.

Each morning when I walk through the house on the way to make coffee, I turn on the music, hit the “shuffle” button, and it’s Dance Time! I dance alone to whatever is playing. It’s a form of existential aerobics, a moving meditation.

Tango is a recent enthusiasm. It’s a complex and difficult dance, so I’m up to three lessons a week, three nights out dancing, and I’m off to Buenos Aires for three months of immersion in tango culture.

The first time I went tango dancing I was too intimidated to get out on the floor. I remembered another time I had stayed on the sidelines, when the dancing began after a village wedding on the Greek island of Crete. The fancy footwork confused me. “Don’t make a fool of yourself,” I thought. “Just watch.”

Reading my mind, an older woman dropped out of the dance, sat down beside me, and said, “If you join the dancing, you will feel foolish. If you do not, you will also feel foolish. So, why not dance?”

And, she said she had a secret for me. She whispered, “If you do not dance, we will know you are a fool. But if you dance, we will think well of you for trying.”

Recalling her wise words, I took up the challenge of tango.

A friend asked me if my tango-mania wasn’t a little ambitious. “Tango? At your age? You must be out of your mind!”

On the contrary: It’s a deeply pondered decision. My passion for tango disguises a fearfulness. I fear the shrinking of life that goes with aging. I fear the boredom that comes with not learning and not taking chances. I fear the dying that goes on inside you when you leave the game of life to wait in the final checkout line.

I seek the sharp, scary pleasure that comes from beginning something new—that calls on all my resources and challenges my mind, my body, and my spirit, all at once.

My goal now is to dance all the dances as long as I can, and then to sit down contented after the last elegant tango some sweet night and pass on because there wasn’t another dance left in me.

So, when people say, “Tango? At your age? Have lost your mind?” I answer, “No, and I don’t intend to.”

Robert Fulghum has written seven bestsellers including “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.” A native of Waco, Texas, he was a Unitarian minister for 22 years and taught painting and philosophy. Fulghum lives in Seattle and Crete.

Independently produced for NPR by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman with John Gregory and Viki Merrick. Photo by Miro Svolik.

10 Things Millionaires Won't Tell You

2008-09-08T20:38:00.000-07:00

1. "You may think I'm rich, but I don't."
A million dollars may sound like a fortune to most people, and folks with that much cash can't complain — they're richer than 90 percent of U.S. households and earn $366,000 a year, on average, putting them in the top 1 percent of taxpayers. But the club isn't so exclusive anymore. Some 10 million households have a net worth above $1 million, excluding home equity, almost double the number in 2002. Moreover, a recent survey by Fidelity found just 8 percent of millionaires think they're "very" or "extremely" wealthy, while 19 percent don't feel rich at all. "They're worried about health care, retirement and how they'll sustain their lifestyle," says Gail Graham, a wealth-management executive at Fidelity.
Indeed, many millionaires still don't have enough for exclusive luxuries, like membership at an elite golf club, which can top $300,000 a year. While $1 million was a tidy sum three decades ago, you'd need $3.6 million for the same purchasing power today. And half of all millionaires have a net worth of $2.5 million or less, according to research firm TNS. So what does it take to feel truly rich? The magic number is $23 million, according to Fidelity.

2. "I shop at Wal-Mart..."
They may not buy the 99-cent paper towels, but millionaires know what it is to be frugal. About 80 percent say they spend with a middle-class mind-set, according to a 2007 survey of high-net-worth individuals, published by American Express and the Harrison Group. That means buying luxury items on sale, hunting for bargains — even clipping coupons.
Don Crane, a small-business owner in Santa Rosa, Calif., certainly sees the value of everyday saving. "We can afford just about anything," he says, adding that his net worth is over $1 million. But he and his wife both grew up on farms in the Midwest — where nothing was wasted — and his wife clips coupons to this day. In fact, most millionaires come from middle-class households, and roughly 70 percent have been wealthy for less than 15 years, according to the AmEx/Harrison survey. That said, there are plenty of millionaires who never check a price tag. "I've always wanted to live above my means because it inspired me to work harder," says Robert Kiyosaki, author of the 1997 best seller Rich Dad, Poor Dad. An entrepreneur worth millions, Kiyosaki says he doesn't even know what his house would go for today.

3. "...but I didn't get rich by skimping on lattes."

So how do you join the millionaires' club? You could buy stocks or real estate, play the slots in Vegas — or take the most common path: running your own business. That's how half of all millionaires made their money, according to the AmEx/Harrison survey. About a third had a professional practice or worked in the corporate world; only 3 percent inherited their wealth.
Regardless of how they built their nest egg, virtually all millionaires "make judicious use of debt," says Russ Alan Prince, coauthor of "The Middle-Class Millionaire." They'll take out loans to build their business, avoid high-interest credit card debt and leverage their home equity to finance purchases if their cash flow doesn't cut it. Nor is their wealth tied up in their homes. Home equity represents just 11 percent of millionaires' total assets, according to TNS. "People who are serious about building wealth always want to have a mortgage," says Jim Bell, president of Bell Investment Advisors. His home is probably worth $1.5 million, he adds, but he owes $900,000 on it. "I'm in no hurry to pay it off," he says. "It's one of the few tax deductions I get."

4. "I have a concierge for everything."

That hot restaurant may be booked for months — at least when Joe Nobody calls to make reservations. But many top eateries set aside tables for celebrities and A-list clientele, and that's where the personal concierge comes in. Working for retainers that range anywhere from $25 an hour to six figures a year, these modern-day butlers have the inside track on chic restaurants, spa reservations, even an early tee time at the golf club. And good concierges will scour the planet for whatever their clients want — whether it's holy water blessed personally by the Pope, rare Mexican tequila or artisanal sausages found only in northern Spain. "For some people, the cost doesn't matter," says Yamileth Delgado, who runs Marquise Concierge and who once found those sausages for a client — 40 pounds of chorizo that went for $1,000.
Concierge services now extend to medical attention as well. At the high end: For roughly $2,000 to $4,000 a month, clients can get 24-hour access to a primary-care physician who makes house calls and can facilitate admission to a hospital "without long waits in the emergency room," as one New York City service puts it.

5. "You don't get rich by being nice."

John D. Rockefeller threatened rivals with bankruptcy if they didn't sell out to his company, Standard Oil. Bill Gates was ruthless in building Microsoft into the world's largest software firm (remember Netscape?). Indeed, many millionaires privately admit they're "bastards in business," says Prince. "They aren't nice guys." Of course, the wealthy don't exactly look in the mirror and see Gordon Gekko either. Most millionaires share the values of their moderate-income parents, says Lewis Schiff, a private wealth consultant and Prince's coauthor: "Spending time with family really matters to them." Just 12 percent say that what they want most to be remembered for is their legacy in business, according to the AmEx/Harrison study.
Millionaires are also seemingly undaunted by failure. Crane, for example, now runs a successful company that screens tenants for landlords. But his first business venture, a real estate partnership, went bankrupt, costing him $20,000 — more than his house was worth at the time. "It was the most depressing time in my life, but it was the best lesson I ever learned," he says.

6. "Taxes are for little people."

Most millionaires do pay taxes. In fact, the top 1 percent of earners paid nearly 40 percent of federal income taxes in 2005 — a whopping $368 billion — according to the Internal Revenue Service. That said, the wealthy tend to derive a higher portion of their income from dividends and capital gains, which are taxed at lower rates than wages (15 percent for long-term capital gains versus 25 percent for middle-class wages). Also, high-income earners pay Social Security tax only on their first $97,500 of income.
But the big savings come from owning a business and deducting everything related to it. Landlords can also depreciate their commercial properties and expenses like mortgage interest. And that's without doing any creative accounting. Then there are the tax shelters, trusts and other mechanisms the superrich use to shield their wealth. An estimated 2 million Americans have unreported accounts offshore, and income from foreign tax shelters costs the U.S. $20 billion to $40 billion a year, according to the IRS. Indeed, "an increasing number of people want to establish an offshore fund," says Vernon Jacobs, a certified public accountant in Kansas who specializes in legal foreign accounts.

7. "I was a B student."

Mom was right when she said good grades were the key to success — just not necessarily a big bank account. According to the book "The Millionaire Mind," the median college grade point average for millionaires is 2.9, and the average SAT score is 1190 — hardly Harvard material. In fact, 59 percent of millionaires attended a state college or university, according to AmEx/Harrison.
When asked to list the keys to their success, millionaires rank hard work first, followed by education, determination and "treating others with respect." They also say that what they absorbed in class was less important than learning how to study and stay disciplined, says Jim Taylor, vice chairman of the Harrison Group. Granted, 48 percent of millionaires hold an advanced degree, and elite colleges do open doors to careers on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley (not to mention social connections that grease the wheels). But for every Ph.D. millionaire, there are many more who squeaked through school. Kiyosaki, for one, says the only way he survived college calculus was by "sitting near" the smart kids in class — "we cheated like crazy," he says.

8. "Like my Ferrari? It's a rental."

Why spend $3,000 on a Versace bag that'll be out of style as soon as next season when you can rent it for $175 a month? For that matter, why blow $250,000 on a Ferrari when for $25,000 it can be yours for a few weekends a year? Clubs that offer "fractional ownership" of jets have been popular for some time, and now the concept has extended to other high-end luxuries like exotic cars and fine art. How hot is the trend? More than 50 percent of millionaires say they plan to rent luxury goods within the next 12 months, according to a survey by Prince & Associates. Handbags topped the list, followed by cars, jewelry, watches and art. Online companies like Bag Borrow or Steal, for example, cater to customers who always want new designer accessories and jewelry, for prices starting at $15 a week.
For Suzanne Garner, a millionaire software engineer in Santa Clara, Calif., owning a $100,000 car didn't make financial sense (she drives a Mazda Miata). Instead, Garner pays up to $30,000 in annual membership fees to Club Sportiva, a fractional-ownership car club in San Francisco that lets her take out Ferraris, Lamborghinis and other exotic vehicles on weekends. "I'm all about the car," she says. And so are other people, it seems. While stopped at a light in a Ferrari recently, Garner received a marriage proposal from a guy in a pickup truck. (She declined the offer.)

9. "Turns out money can buy happiness."

It may not be comforting to folks who aren't minting cash, but the rich really are different. "There's no group in America that's happier than the wealthy," says Taylor, of the Harrison Group. Roughly 70 percent of millionaires say that money"created" more happiness for them,he notes. Higher income also correlates with higher ratings in life satisfaction, according to a new study by economists at the Wharton School of Business. But it's not necessarily the Bentley or Manolo Blahniks that lead to bliss. "It's the freedom that money buys," says Betsey Stevenson, coauthor of the Wharton study.
Concomitantly, rates of depression are lower among the wealthy, according to the Wharton study, and the rich tend to have better health than the rest of the population, says James Smith, senior labor economist at the Rand Corporation. (In fact, health and happiness are as closely correlated as wealth and happiness, Smith says.) The wealthy even seem to smile and laugh more often, according to the Wharton study, to say nothing of getting treated with more respect and eating better food. "People experience their day very differently when they have a lot of money," Stevenson says.

10. "You worry about the Joneses — I worry about keeping up with the Trumps."

Wealth may go a long way toward creating happiness, but the middle-class rich still can't afford the life of the billionaire next door — the guy who writes charity checks for $100,000 and retreats to his own private island. "What makes people happy isn't how much they're making," says Glenn Firebaugh, a sociologist at Pennsylvania State University. "It's how much they're making relative to their peers."
Indeed, for all their riches, some 40 percent of millionaires fear that their standard of living will decline in retirement and that their money will run out before they die, according to Fidelity. Of course, it may not help if their lifestyle is so lavish that they're barely squeaking by on $400,000 a year. "You can always be happier with more money," says Stevenson. "There's no satiation point." But that's the trouble with keeping up with the Trumps. "Millionaires are always looking up," says Schiff, "and think it's better up there."
Copyrighted, SmartMoney.com. All Rights Reserved

After the Games, China looks High-Tech

2008-09-08T20:25:00.000-07:00

While debate continues over how much the Olympics changed China, a recent survey indicates that hosting the Beijing Games changed some views of China among the 4.7 billion people who watched the event on TV.
According to an online survey conducted by the Nielsen Co. of viewers in 16 countries after the closing ceremony, seven in ten said Beijing appeared more modern and high-tech than they had expected. Technology was one of the self-proclaimed pillars of Beijing’s Games, and organizers put it on display during the opening ceremony, which featured a giant digital scroll.
About half of those surveyed by Nielsen also came away with a very good or somewhat good impression of Beijing’s physical environment. Pollution levels in August reached some of their lowest levels in years, following a 71.3 billion yuan investment in environmental clean-up.
Inside China, the consensus is also that the Games changed how the world views the country. A post-Games survey of 500 urban Chinese by research house Synovate found that 60% felt the most important legacy was that “the rest of the world has learned about China.”
– Geoffrey A. Fowler
http://blogs.wsj.com/chinajournal/2008/09/05/after-the-games-china-looks-high-tech/trackback/

Let’s Talk About Sex

2008-09-08T00:44:00.000-07:00

Sarah Palin has a pregnant teenager. And, she’s not alone. According to a report published in 2007, there are more than 400,000 other American girls in the same predicament.
In fact, a 2001 Unicef report said that the United States teenage birthrate was higher than any other member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The U.S. tied Hungary for the most abortions. This was in spite of the fact that girls in the U.S. were not the most sexually active. Denmark held that title. But, its teenage birthrate was one-sixth of ours, and its teenage abortion rate was half of ours.
If there is a shame here, it’s a national shame — a failure of our puritanical society to accept and deal with the facts. Teenagers have sex. How often and how safely depends on how much knowledge and support they have. Crossing our fingers that they won’t cross the line is not an intelligent strategy.
To wit, our ridiculous experiment in abstinence-only education seems to be winding down with a study finding that it didn’t work. States are opting out of it. Parents don’t like it either. According to a 2004 survey sponsored by NPR, the Kaiser Family Foundation and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, 65 percent of parents of high school students said that federal money “should be used to fund more comprehensive sex education programs that include information on how to obtain and use condoms and other contraceptives.”
We need to take some bold steps beyond the borders of our moralizing and discomfort and create a sex education infrastructure that actually acknowledges reality and protects our children from unwanted pregnancies, or worse.
Britain is already taking these steps. London’s Daily Telegraph reported last month on a June study that found that “one in three secondary schools in England now has a sexual health clinic to give condoms, pregnancy tests and even morning-after pills to children as young as 11.”
Furthermore, a bipartisan group from the British Parliament is seeking to make sex education compulsory for “children as young as four years old.” In a letter to the paper, the group laid out its case: “International evidence suggests that high-quality sex and relationship education that puts sex in its proper context, that starts early enough to make a difference and that gives youngsters the confidence and ability to make well-informed decisions helps young people delay their first sexual experience and leads to lower teenage pregnancy levels.”
That may be extreme, but many Americans can’t even talk about sex without giggling, squirming or blushing. Let’s start there. Talk to your kids about sex tonight, with confidence and a straight face. “I’d prefer you waited to have sex. That said, whenever you choose to do it, make sure you use one of these condoms.” It works.

E-mail: chblow@nytimes.com.
By CHARLES M. BLOW
Published: September 6, 2008

Google takes on Microsoft with new browser

2008-09-02T21:03:00.000-07:00

Google opened up another front in its battle with Microsoft last night, with the surprise launch of a new web browser to add to its growing list of applications.
The search giant said Chrome had been created to better handle interactive applications and resource-hungry web pages such as video clips and online games. It is also less likely to crash, it claimed.
A test version of the browser will be available for download later today.
Analysts said Chrome, which was announced at the same time as new YouTube-like video communications services from Google, could take market share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer, as well as other browsers such as Opera and Firefox.
Details of Chrome were rushed out last night after someone at Google accidentally sent a comic book announcing the browser to a website that tracks the company.
In a blog posting late last night, Google said its engineers had decided to "completely rethink the browser" because the web has evolved from offering mainly simple text pages to rich, interactive applications.
"What we really needed was not just a browser, but also a modern platform for web pages and applications, and that's what we set out to build," said Sundar Pichai, VP product management, and Linus Upson, engineering director.
Early reaction from bloggers and industry analysts was broadly positive.
Roger Kay, president of Endpoint Technologies Associates, said Chrome would help attract computer users to Google's range of web-based applications.
"This gives Google another opportunity to protect its flank and to create a new branding position,'' said Kay.
"We like this move by Google and believe it can help to increase or at least maintain its leading search market share."
Needham & Co analyst Mark May said the move would allow Google to claim a significant slice of "online real estate".
"The market share gains by Firefox in a short period of time show to us that users are looking for better browser experiences," he said.
Open-source
Chrome is open-source, meaning developers can access and make changes to its underlying source code. Typically for a Google offering, it is available in test format as a beta.
Like other browsers it offers tabbing, letting the reader keep multiple web pages open. But with Chrome each tab runs as a separate process, so the applications should be more stable and secure.
"By keeping each tab in an isolated 'sandbox', we were able to prevent one tab from crashing another and provide improved protection from rogue sites," said Pichai and Upson.
According to recent figures, Internet Explorer has around 58% of the browser market, followed by Firefox with 19%. Google dominates the search market, with around 64.1% of all searches in August.
Video for business
Google also announced yesterday that it has added a video component to its Google Apps Premier Edition, a package of business software aimed at corporate users.
It will allow employees to share speeches, product training, sales meetings or other employee video messages without risking unauthorised disclosure outside the company.
"What YouTube did in the consumer world, Google video for business is going to do in the enterprise," said Matthew Glotzbach, product management director of Google's enterprise division, the unit responsible for Google Apps.
Google video for business is available from today for Premier Edition users, and will be available to Google Apps Education Edition customers from Monday for a free six-month trial.

Microsoft's 'Porn Mode' Browser

2008-09-01T19:47:00.000-07:00

Microsoft has released a new internet browser which allows people to surf the web without leaving a trace of the sites they have visited.

The 'InPrivate' feature, which has been nicknamed 'porn mode', hides the browsing history from other people who use the same computer.
It is part of the global software giant's second version of Internet Explorer 8, Beta 2, which offers new features to the world's most widely used web browser.
The new feature is thought to be a blow to internet rival Google which relies heavily on users' browsing histories to deliver targeted advertising.
Microsoft Corp say the new explorer enables users to browse the web in more secure, easier and faster ways.
John Curran, director Windows Client Group, Microsoft UK said: "Internet Explorer 8 helps every user spend less time searching and browsing, and takes them more directly to the information they need.
"With this version of Internet Explorer we are making sure people get to the online places they want to be faster and more easily."
Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 has new features such as a 'smart' address bar - which remembers and redirects users to website addresses they have visited before.
'InPrivate Browsing' ensures browsing history, temporary internet files and cookies are not retained on a users' PC by the browser.
Since the launch of Mozilla's Firefox four years ago, Microsoft has seen its market share decline.
Microsoft has been keen to re-capture more of the market Internet Explorer once totally dominated.
Mr Curran added: "Internet Explorer 8 is about providing users with more features that are more secure, rather than making Internet use all about security."

You can download the new version at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/beta/

Getting a Millionaire's Mindset

2008-08-31T20:57:00.000-07:00

Let's face it; we all don't make millions of dollars a year, and the odds are that most of us won't receive a large windfall inheritance either. However, that doesn't mean that we can't build sizeable wealth — it'll just take some time. If you're young, time is on your side and retiring a millionaire is achievable. Read on for some tips on how to increase your savings and work toward this goal. Stop Senseless Spending
Unfortunately, people have a habit of spending their hard-earned cash on goods and services that they don't need. Even relatively small expenses, such as indulging in a gourmet coffee from a premium coffee shop every morning, can really add up — and decrease the amount of money you can save. Larger expenses on luxury items also prevent many people from putting money into savings each month. That said, it's important to realize that it's usually not just one item or one habit that must be cut out in order to accumulate sizable wealth (although it may be). Usually, in order to become wealthy one must adopt a disciplined lifestyle and budget. This means that people who are looking to build their nest eggs need to make sacrifices somewhere — this may mean eating out less frequently, using public transportation to get to work and/or cutting back on extra, unnecessary expenses.
This doesn't mean that you shouldn't go out and have fun, but you should try to do things in moderation — and set a budget if you hope to save money. Fortunately, particularly if you start saving young, saving up a sizeable nest egg only requires a few minor (and relatively painless) adjustments to your spending habits.
Fund Retirement Plans ASAP
When individuals earn money, their first responsibility is to pay current expenses such as the rent or mortgage expenses, food and other necessities. Once these expenses have been covered, the next step should be to fund a retirement plan or some other tax-advantaged vehicle.
Unfortunately, retirement planning is an afterthought for many young people. Here's why it shouldn't be: funding a 401(k) and/or a IRA early on in life means you can contribute less money overall and actually end up with significantly more in the end than someone who put in much more money but started later.
How much difference will funding a vehicle such as a Roth IRA early on in life make?
If you're 23 years old and deposit $3,000 per year (that's only $250 each month!) in a Roth IRA earning an 8% average annual return, you will have saved $985,749 by the time you are 65 years old due to the power of compounding. If you make a few extra contributions, it's clear that a $1 million goal is well within reach. Also keep in mind that this is mostly interest — your $3,000 contributions only add up to $126,000.
Now, suppose that you wait an additional 10 years to start contributing. You have a better job and you know you've lost some time, so you contribute $5,000 per year. You get the same 8% return and you aim to retire at 65. When you reach age 65, you will have saved $724,753. That's still a sizeable fund, but you had to contribute $160,000 just to get there — and it's nowhere near the $985,749 you could've had for paying much less.
Improve Tax Awareness
Sometimes, individuals think that doing their own taxes will save them money. In some cases, they might be right. However, in other cases it may actually end up costing them money because they fail to take advantage of the many deductions available to them.
Try to become more educated as far as what types of items are deductible. You should also understand when it makes sense to move away from the standard deduction and start itemizing your return.
However, if you're not willing or able to become very well educated filing your own income tax, it may actually pay to hire some help, particularly if you are self employed, own a business or have other circumstances that complicate your tax return.
Renting Versus Buying
At some point in our lives, many of us rent a home or an apartment because we cannot afford to purchase a home, or because we aren't sure where we want to live for the longer term. And that's fine. However, renting is often not a good long-term investment because buying a home is a good way to build equity.
Unless you intend to move in a short period of time, it generally makes sense to consider putting a down payment on a home. (At least you would likely build up some equity over time and the foundation for a nest egg.)
Buying Expensive Cars
There's nothing wrong with purchasing a luxury vehicle. However, individuals who spend an inordinate amount of their incomes on a vehicle are doing themselves a disservice — especially since this asset depreciates in value so rapidly.
How rapidly does a car depreciate?
Obviously, this depends on the make, model, year and demand for the vehicle, but a general rule is that a new car loses 15-20% of its value per year. So, a two-year old car will be worth 80-85% of its purchase price; a three-year old car will be worth 80-85% of its two-year-old value.
In short, especially when you are young, consider buying something practical and dependable that has low monthly payments — or that you can pay for in cash. In the long run, this will mean you'll have more money to put toward your savings — an asset that will appreciate, rather than depreciate like your car.
Don't Sell Yourself Short
Some individuals are extremely loyal to their employers and will stay with them for years without seeing their incomes take a jump. This can be a mistake, as increasing your income is an excellent way to boost your rate of saving.
Always keep your eye out for other opportunities and try not to sell yourself short. Work hard and find an employer who will compensate you for your work ethic, skills and experience.
Bottom Line
You don't have to win the lottery to see seven figures in your bank account. For most people, the only way to achieve this is to save it. You don't have to live like a pauper to build an adequate nest egg and retire comfortably. If you start early, spend wisely and save diligently, your million-dollar dreams are well within reach.

by Glenn CurtisTuesday, August 26, 2008
http://www.yeeyan.com/articles/view/27205/13320

Leaving Work to Watch the Sunset

2008-08-31T01:27:00.000-07:00

I believe in mystery.
I believe in family.
I believe in being who I am.
I believe in the power of failure.
And I believe normal life is extraordinary.
This I Believe.

Every other week, we broadcast our series "This I Believe" and invite you to send in your own essay about personal conviction. Today's come from listener Laurie Granieri, a newspaper reporter from Milltown New Jersey. Here is our series' curator, independent producer Jay Allison.

Many people who write for our series talk of beliefs that challenge them to do more, not Laurie Granieri. Her belief challenges her sometimes just to stop. Here is Laurie Granieri with her essay for This I Believe.

I believe in leaving work at five o'clock.

In a nation that operates on a staunch Protestant work ethic, this belief could be considered radical. Working only 40 hours a week? I just don't know many people who punch out at five o'clock anymore. It seems downright quaint, like pocket watches and shoe-shines.

My father tried to teach me the importance of hard work, long hours and dedication to a career. But then there are the things he taught me unintentionally, like when he arrived home from work for the last time and crawled up the stairs.

My father, a self-employed sales trainer, was that sick, that tired. His body was wracked with liver cancer, and he suffered the effects of a diabetic ulcer. Still, he insisted on traveling to honor his commitment to give a seminar. He probably earned a lot of money that day, and he paid the price: He returned to the hospital soon after and was dead within three months, at age 58.

It's been 10 years since I saw my father come home that night, and since then, I've thought a lot about work. I've decided something: I will never crawl up the stairs. As much as I love my job as a newspaper reporter, I will never work myself into the ground, literally or figuratively.

The idea of leaving work at work didn't come easily to me. After all, I am my father's daughter. In college, I wasn't going to keg parties in a frat basement; I was the girl who lingered on the library steps each morning, waiting for the doors to open. I even dreamed about schoolwork.

My dad once told me he was unable to just gaze at a sunset; he had to be doing something as he looked at it — writing, reading, playing chess. You could say he was a success: He was a published author, an accomplished musician, fluent in German and American Sign Language. That's an impressive list, but here's the thing: I want to gaze at sunsets. I don't want to meet a deadline during them or be writing a column at the same time, or glance at them over the top of a book.

This raises the question: If I leave work at five o' clock to watch the sunset, what are the consequences? Do I risk not reaching the top of my profession? Maybe, because honestly, knocking off after eight hours probably won't earn me the corner office or the lucrative promotion.

But hey, leaving work at five o' clock means I eat dinner with my family. I get to hop on my bike and pedal through the streets of my hometown as the shadows lengthen and the traffic thins.

And I get to take in a lot of sunsets. That's got to be worth something.

Laurie Granieri with her essay for This I Believe. Granieri says that high stress levels have become almost the competetion among her friends and co-workers, a marker for success. And it's a mindset she is trying to avoid. We hope you'll have some spare time to consider our invitation to write for our series. You can go to npr. org to find out more. For "this i believe", I am Jay Allison.

Jay Allison is co-editor with Dan Gediman, John Gregory and Viki Merrick of the book, This I believe. The personal philosophies of remarkable men and women.Next monday on all things considered, an essay from Cellist Yo-Yo Ma.

Support for This I believe comes from Prudential Retirement.

How To Build Muscle: The Definitive Guide

2008-08-30T08:28:00.000-07:00

Internet & magazines are full of misinformation & myths on how to build muscle. Countless methods promise results some struggle to achieve.

If you don’t get results, you’re using ineffective methods. Which is a shame. Not getting results is the chief reason you end up quitting.

It’s easy to build muscle the natural way. But you have to know how. These 10 tips will help you - How to Build Muscle: The Definitive Guide.

1. Get Stronger. Strength training builds muscle. The stronger you are, the stronger you’ll look. Check out the Beginner Strength Training Program if you don’t know where to start. It takes 3 x 30 mins a week.

2. Use Free Weights. Free weights are your best tool to get stronger. Free weights are:

Efficient. Work more muscles, learn you to balance & control the bar.
Safe. Work your body through natural motions, not fixed ones.
Versatile. Plenty of exercises with one barbell. Great for home gyms.
Start with an empty barbell to avoid injuries. Add weight gradually. Read articles on exercise technique & get Starting Strength.

3. Train Your Legs. Don’t lose your time training abs, chest & biceps only. You need to train your whole body, especially the legs. If you could do only one exercise, it would be the Squat.

4. Eat. Food speeds up recovery & builds muscle. Eat at least your body-weight in lbs x 18 calories. Eat every 3 hours. Eat post workout.

Strength training burns calories. You’ll need to eat more to keep your current body-weight. Never starve yourself to death. Even if you want to build muscle while losing fat.

5. Eat Healthy. Limit junk food & alcohol consumption to once or twice a week. Eat healthy the rest of the time, you need:

Vitamins & Minerals. All kind of veggies & fruits.
Whole Grain Carbs. Brown rice, bread, pasta, oatmeal.
Healthy Fats. Fish oil, saturated fat, flax seeds, olive oil.
Fiber. Green veggies, flax seeds, whole grains.
Go for whole food. Use multi-vitamins & fish oil supplements if you want. It doesn’t need to be expensive, you can eat healthy while keeping it cheap.

6. Drink Water. Strength training causes water loss. Drink water to avoid dehydration & help muscle recovery. One gallon a day will do.

7. Get Protein. Proteins are the muscle building blocks. You need protein for recovery & to build muscle. Plenty of sources you can choose from:

Meat. Beef, pork, lamb, deer, buffalo, ?
Eggs. Eat the yolk, it’s full of vitamins.
Poultry. Chicken, turkey, duck, ?
Fish. Tuna, salmon, sardines, mackerel, ?
Dairy. Milk, cheese, cottage cheese, yogurt, ?
Whey. Not necessary but easy for post workout shakes.
Eat at least 1g protein/body-weight in lbs daily. Feel free to experiment with higher protein intakes.

8. Rest. Muscles grow after your workout, not during. Give your muscles time to recover & grow.

Don’t Train Daily. Keep one day rest between two workouts.
Sleep. 8 hours of sleep on average should be enough.

9. Plan Ahead. Career, business, family, friends, hobbies, etc. All will interfere with your goal to build muscle. Plan ahead:

Free Time. Train early in the morning or directly after work.
Prepare. Prepare your food for work, prepare your gym bag.
Shop. Go to the grocery store, get the food you need to build muscle.
Build a lifestyle that helps you achieving your goals. Build the exercise habit.

10. Persist. Don’t believe the hype. It takes time to build muscle. If you’re a beginner: at least 2 months to see serious change. Measure your muscle gains & keep a training log to keep yourself motivated.

The only thing that will prevent you achieving success is you. Persist.

http://www.bspcn.com/2007/09/28/how-to-build-muscle-the-definitive-guide/

red wine can extend life

2008-08-28T20:09:00.000-07:00

A natural substance found in red wine can extend life and counter the negative effects of an unhealthy high-fat diet, researchers at the Harvard Medical School and the US National Institute of Aging said.
Researchers have discovered that a compound in red wine called resveratrol caused lab mice to live longer. Not only that, the mice also experienced a reversal in genes associated with heart disease, diabetes and other weight-related maladies.
They carried the study out on mice fed on a diet so high in saturated fats that it was equivalent to eating a cream cake with every meal. Mice on the fatty diet became obese, suffered health disorders such as liver and heart disease and died significantly earlier than mice on normal diets.
But when a second group of mice on the high-fat diet were given resveratrol, a plant extract found in grapes, their health and longevity were almost indistinguishable from normal mice, although they still became obese.
Resveratrol has already been identified as the chemical behind the so-called French Paradox, the phenomenon in which French people have low rates of heart disease even though their diet is traditionally high in meat, cheese and bread.
The resveratrol, had already shown the same benefits on worms, fruit flies and yeast.
"What we really would like to be the final answer, and can't quite say yet, is that resveratrol will mimic the effects of calorie restriction," said Joseph Baur of the team of Harvard.
But the study on mice is the first to show that resveratrol has survival benefits in a mammal, Harvard Medical School said in a statement

Use strong passwords

2008-08-28T19:34:00.000-07:00

Risks
The best security in the world is useless if a malicious person has a legitimate user name and password. They can do everything you can do.
Some people’s passwords are just easy to guess, like “password”.
Others use plain words that can be guessed by a hacker’s program that tries every word in the dictionary.
If you use the same password for every site, a hacker only has to break it once to have access to everything.
Do use strong passwords
A good password:
Needn’t be a word at all. It can be a combination of letters, numbers and keyboard symbols.
Is at least seven characters long. Longer passwords are harder to guess or break.
Does not contain your user name, real name, or company name.
Contains a mix of upper and lower case letters, numbers and keyboard symbols (i.e. ` ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + - = { } [ ] \ : " ; ' < > ? , . /).
However, be aware that some of these punctuation marks may be difficult to enter on foreign keyboards if you are travelling.
Is changed regularly.
Don’t use weak passwords
Avoid weak passwords. This means:
Using no password at all.
Using a commonplace dictionary word.
Something that is easy to work out with a little background knowledge. For example: favourite football team, birthday, spouse's name etc.
The most common password is ‘Password’ so that’s an obvious one to avoid.
A password you haven’t changed in more than a couple of months.
Look after your passwords
Never disclose your passwords to anyone else.
Don't enter your password when others can see what you are typing.
Use different passwords for different services. In particular have a unique password for banking sites.
Change passwords regularly.
Don’t recycle passwords (e.g. password2, password3).
Don’t write passwords down. Instead, use memory tricks to remember them. For example, make a password out of the first letters of each word in a memorable phrase or substitute numbers for letters (for example: 5 for s, 3 for e).
Don’t send your password by email. No reputable firm will ask you to do this.
If you think that someone else knows your password, change it immediately.

http://www.getsafeonline.org/nqcontent.cfm?a_id=1127