How scary is fat?

I stopped dieting on plain, boring, unsatisfying food and started eating rich, delicious meals full of flavor and, yes... fat. I got skinny on fat and realized I would never have to diet again.

Suzanne Somers

A current estimate is that 50% of American have prediabetes or diabetes.  How did we go from 14% obesity to well over 30% between 1980 and 2000?  The frontline article at the link is below is worth a read.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/diet/themes/lowfat.html

For the first time ever, overweight people outnumber average people in America. Doesn't that make overweight the average then? Last month you were fat, now you're average - hey, let's get a pizza!

Jay Leno

Draw different implications

Conversation is a meeting of minds with different memories and habits. When minds meet, they don't just exchange facts: they transform them, reshape them, draw different implications from them, engage in new trains of thought. Conversation doesn't just reshuffle the cards: it creates new cards.

Theodore Zeldin

Why do US news outlets not publish many of the stories read in world papers.  Most of my news now comes from the Daily Mail, Telegraph, The Independent, and RT.  This story was in Vanguard, an African newspaper printed out of Lagos.  It describes itself as “…a family-oriented newspaper which also appeals to the upwardly Mobile Executive and Captains of Industry.”  Is this a scare piece or a real story?  Especially after the paper published by the discredited Andrew Wakefield.

Vaccine bombshell: Baby monkeys develop autism symptoms after obtaining doses of popular vaccines

Following a recent study conducted by scientists at the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania which revealed that many infant monkeys given standard doses of childhood vaccines as part of the new research,developed autism symptoms, question marks over the ultimate safety of vaccines have come to the fore.

The groundbreaking research findings presented at the International Meeting for Autism Research (IMFAR) in London, England, have revealed that young macaque monkeys given the typical CDC-recommended vaccination schedule from the 1990s, and in appropriate doses for the monkeys’ sizes and ages, tended to develop autism symptoms. Their unvaccinated counterparts, on the other hand, developed no such symptoms, which points to a strong connection between vaccines and autism spectrum disorders.

This development which deconstructs mainstream myth that vaccines are safe and pose no risk of autism, was brought on by after studies on the type of proper safety research on typical childhood vaccination schedules that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) should have conducted — but never has — for such regimens.

Vanguard

Hasn’t this been a major issue in the US? 

If you want a little background: The MMR vaccine controversy was a case of scientific misconduct which triggered a health scare. It followed the publication in 1998 of a paper in the medical journal The Lancet

Also: A look at the presentations reveals that rather than presenting “the truth,” one speaker after another is making unsupported, unscientific claims and then offering their own special therapy.

And from the CDC: http://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/Concerns/Index.html

“The full implications of this primate study await publication of the research in a scientific journal, but we can say that it demonstrates how the CDC evaded their responsibility to investigate vaccine safety questions. Vaccine safety oversight should be removed from the CDC and given to an independent agency.”

Theresa Wrangham

The next Nobel prize award goes to…

This is a major breakthrough in engineering, psychology, sociology, and human progress:

ß = (An)2 x d(S + 1) / √L x (Vo)2

www.outsider-trading.com

One must be careful not to look like a mixed grill

Sunburn is very becoming, but only when it is even - one must be careful not to look like a mixed grill.

Noel Coward

Is this State sanctioned child abuse.  Where is the CPS when you need them. 

This is story crazy.  Especially knowing that ninety percent of pediatric melanoma cases occur in girls aged 10-19.  What's the harm in sunburn? The risk for melanoma doubles if they have had five or more sunburns.  www.skincancer.org/

On Tuesday, sisters Violet, 11, and Zoe, 9, came home from school with severe sunburns -- they were outside for 5 hours for field day and were not allowed to apply sunscreen because of a school policy,their mom posted on her blog.

"Two of my three children experienced significant sunburns. Like, hurts-to-look-at burns," Jesse Michener from Washington wrote. It was raining that morning, so Michener didn't apply sunscreen on her kids. But even if she had, the kids would have needed another coat once the sun came out (the AAP recommends applying sunscreen with an SPF of at least 15 every two hours). The girls weren't allowed to put any sun block on though, and the reason cited was school policy.

Tacoma Public School district spokesman Dan Voelpel told Yahoo! Shine that, according to statewide law, teachers are not allowed to apply sunscreen to students and students can only apply it to themselves if they have a doctor's note.

Mom was particularly outraged because her daughter Zoe has a form of Albinism. She said the school's staff was aware of her condition, and they still didn't make an exception.

www.huffingtonpost.com

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea, when you have only one idea.

Unknown

Best Gift

http://www.ted.com/

Multitasking is the art of distracting yourself

Life is 10 percent what you make it, and 90 percent how you take it.

Irving Berlin

At the end of the day do feel like you’ve accomplished anything?  Not that you haven’t worked hard.  Do more with less and all that.  Juggling everything and keeping 10 balls in the air with grace and poise.  But, is there a sense that you’re really accomplishing something important.  Being really important.  Are you getting better?  Is you’re ladder leaning against the right wall?  Or is it a rat race where everything gets pushed forward an inch with little direction?

Multitasking is the art of distracting yourself from two things you’d rather not be doing by doing them simultaneously.  Multitasking is not what’s it’s made out to be.  In the self development, getting things done, execute, productive world, there is a push back from being the superhuman that can juggle 15 things at once.  Living in mayhem and confusion.  Focus is today’s approach. 

1. The best way to be more productive is to focus on your most important task. For example, if you have two projects to finish today and you could only finish one, which one is more important for you to complete. Would you A. call a client to get a sale, or B. e-mail everyone that you will be out of town for two weeks? That might be a simple choice, but the reason it is important is that getting your priority items done first frees your mind to accomplish everything else that you need to do for the day. Also, if all that you accomplished on any given day was your top priority, then at least you made some progress. The idea behind this comes from the Pareto principle, which states that only 20% of what we do have a real impact. The rest is useless work that can be outsourced or eliminated from your day. Use this in every aspect of your life and you will see tremendous growth in everything you do.

2. Now that you have figured out what is most important, the opportunity is to plan your day accordingly. Rate the importance of everything you do in a day from A to E. After you have completed everything ranked A you can then go to B, and so on. The idea is a continuation of the Pareto Principle mentioned above. Remember that anything marked E is probably something that you do not need to do. Knowing what you have to do will make it that much easier to get it done.

3. After you have determined the order of importance for what you are doing today, the key is to do each task until it is finished. Multitasking does not work. Instead it decreases people's efficiency and they end up spending longer amounts of time on everything they are working on for, the day. Work on one thing at time and have all the tools you need to complete it at your fingertips. Then when you are finished you can move onto the next project faster and more effectively.

From Brian Tracy’s Eat That Frog

Are you easily distracted? NYT has a test for distractions that is fun.  Check out  http://www.nytimes.com/ No, really check it out.

I talked with Paula last night about social networking.  I think that Twitter and Facebook are the anti-Zen of productivity (witness a recent post that included the Gaping Void image).  She has some interesting thoughts about the use and demographics of social networking.  Maybe we’ll see a comment or a post from Words at Work.

Well if you really like the sugar rush of connectivity, Check out Seesmic Desktop where you can manage your online profiles from one place.  I liked the image from Gaping Void.  Check out http://gapingvoid.com/

 

I prepared this post while waiting for a conference call to start, and printing a report.  I guess I have some work to do around focus.  One issue I had with prioritization and focus is that if you let focus on actions overwhelm relationships, you’re in trouble.

While we’re on productivity and focus.  Make sure that you watch one in three and ensure that health remains a major priority.  Scary. http://www.1in3people.com

Also see http://www.dagc.org/ for the statistics and trends on diabetes.

The extrapolation from the trends indicate that 1 in 3 will have hypertension and/or diabetes in their lifetime.  Make an effort to prioritize spirit, family, health, and work. And make sure that the ladder you are climbing is leaning against the right wall.

Start Now!

Beauty on the outside never gets into the soul, but beauty of the soul reflects itself on the face.

Fulton J. Sheen

A habit is defined as the intersection of knowledge, skill, and desire. You may know you need change, you may even know how to change, but, without desire, change may elude you.

Stephen R. Covey