S J Seymour

Everyone is unique, but we are all infinitely more alike than we are different.

My site is meant to introduce you to my novels,
my opinions, and some investment advice. Soon I may write about genetic genealogy.
Enjoy!

 

Food is my Addiction. Are you Addicted, too?

        Food addiction for me started after I got married in 1979. Perhaps the seeds of the addiction were planted earlier before I was married, but they were watered and then thrived mightily because of the marriage, after I mostly stopped being busily employed and moved from Canada, then England to Ohio and later on to California, Massachusetts and New Jersey. I became obsessed with eating well, cooking well, and consequently added weight. Food was always a close friend, confidant (who am I kidding?), and comfort. I had a classic case of Over-desire leading to Over-eating and then Overweight. So it was caused by marital tensions, but aided by genetic predisposition. Nothing is now preventing me from correcting it since I'm now in better control of my input, as long as my mind is on track, and as long as I focus and obey my greater desire to be slim.

        When I lost weight around the time of my divorce in 2015, I experienced better health and more physical flexibility. I was prouder of how I looked in pictures at my daughter's wedding, though not then at my previous lowest weight. Having more weight puts me at greater risk of knee pain, joint and hip pain, stomach pains, tension, perhaps higher blood pressure and poorer endurance. Unlike my own mother, I want to sit cross-legged as she didn't, to my knowledge. I'd like to always be able to readily reach my toes more easily for pedicures, look better in pictures, be referred to as slim, not fat or even medium build.

        When I eat fatty foods, which I happen to adore eating, I afterwards feel too heavy and lean into a depressive state which I know I can avoid by not eating the very fatty foods I love. It's a cycle that's very difficult to break. Concurrently, for me at least, eating less fats usually means eating less carbs and vice-versa. Overeating is like eating and then getting a bill that is higher than I want and wasn't expecting to have to pay. It shames me that I look more heavy than I would like. It shames me that I can overeat and that I'm not as slim as I want to be, so I'm not consistently referred to as slim by others.

        My addiction came from trying to make meals to please others and give them the food they wanted to eat. Food is a well-known way to get to the hearts of other people, and that's how I chose to get to the hearts of my own family, friends, and Paul's work acquaintances who often stayed at our house and critiqued my food. It's possible that preparing food took me away from spending time with them, but I'm not sure how it was avoidable. Paul and the girls didn't help me make meals, although he often helped clean the pots, and I don't know why they didn't. Perhaps I didn't tell them how they could help, or maybe I wasn't the best boss or parent. My own family of origin had shown me how eating food is part of a warm, loving family relationship. Most parenting manuals even recommend eating family dinners together if at all possible.

        Shopping for food and cooking nice meals was an important part of the way I raised my children and dealt with the challenges of my marriage. I'm only now learning about the toll that mild Asperger's has on any family. The financial toll it took involved overbuying food, so that we would always have enough at home. There was always the fear of not having enough food at home for Paul and the girls. Perhaps there was the fear it was not home? Our property wasn't fully paid for, after all, so I was paying for a lot of food, and Paul was refusing to pay off the mortgage. He had a heavy travel schedule for his work, and didn't ever put me and my needs first. They were always well down on his list. I mirrored that, and they also fell down on my list as well. Keeping well-groomed and wearing nice clothes were relatively easier to do and the way I wanted to live, but I became overweight, and couldn't seem to lose weight the way I wanted. I also didn't generally feel good enough. I wasn't a decorator, and I was raised in Canada so always felt an outsider to my immediate neighbors.

        As far as daily annoyances of overeating are concerned, there was always (in my marriage) the nuisance of having to throw away "good food" (expensive food) and of having cravings because of weighing too much, and to have to keep up with the food I constantly needed to eat to avoid scary stomach pangs and maintain a higher weight. It's normally difficult for me to make a priority of losing weight. I have to make ultrahealth a high priority in my life, and sacrifice secondarily at times to achieve it, for instance, by not eating as much as I would like. I'm learning how important this is through the OptaVia diet program. Making ultrahealth a definite goal is an important lesson to learn and acknowledge to validate my ongoing daily efforts at weight loss.

        I'm hoping now to feel a sense of freedom from the tyranny of food as I haven't in years. I would also like to have a more relaxed relationship to food. Food to me is either something to love or to avoid. I can't seem to relax and not eat around food, and should just keep it at a safe distance. It would be nice to focus and spend money on non-food related efforts, and save money from overbuying food. I want to stay healthier and have immediate physical improvements, feel proud and confident (although feeling confident has never been a strong suit of mine).

        My reasons for quitting overeating must be stronger than my reasons for doing the overeating. This is tough. Whenever I'm with my daughter Emily and Paul, I want to overeat like they do. In myself, I know I want to not be overweight and I want to be healthier all the time, even preferably have "Ultrahealth" and excellent numbers for weight, blood pressure, lipids, and I certainly don't want to go back to being the "old Shelley" who got angry all the time, as my other daughter Amy says I did. I want to be a better person, and I don't want to overspend on food. It's really hard for me to take control when I'm anywhere around food. I let it control me sometimes and I mustn't let it do that. Instead, must remember my weight loss goals, and work on them all the time. That means I have to keep those weight loss goals waaaaaaay up high in my priority list and that means I have to be assertive at times when I'm usually not at all assertive, and try to work on that as well.

        Stress is often a trigger for all kinds of addictions. Yes, but I have a host of other triggers as well: 1. Seeing a food I have and like, and knowing how great it will taste to relieve a little craving I have. 2. A long list of foods are known triggers for me, especially salty or sweet foods like salty nuts, chocolate, cheese curls, french fries, breads, wines and drinks, cheeses, nut butters, mayonnaise, butters, creams, nachos, potato chips, and more. 3. Knowing I have a food in the refrigerator or pantry that's definitely going to taste delicious, whether the reason for eating is caused by an ongoing hunger, loneliness, what-the-hell and damn the consequences sheer opportunism, I don't know. 4. Emotionally soothing eating, aka comfort eating (?), sometimes happens after any kind of tense exchange, instead of getting soothed without eating.  

        When my genes and environment make me want to eat, it's hard to put on the brakes, and something I will have to work hard to continue to make an effort to do. Guess it's like any addiction.

  1. From <https://www.wikihow.com/Overcome-an-Addiction

 

 

 

 

In La La Land, Los Angeles Springs To Life

Today I went to see La La Land following seven wins at the Golden Globes, for Best Motion Picture -- Musical or Comedy, Actor, Actress, Director, Screenplay, Score, original Song. I had

 wanted to know why they had won so many awards and dominated the 2017 evening in a year (2016) of stiff competition. So as well as curiosity being my motivation, I realized the Director, who at only 31 has already won for Whiplash, is the son of friends. Had to see what all the excitement at the Globes was about.

Anyway, I expected to see, if nothing else, lots of pictures of the city of Los Angeles, sunny days and balmy nights while we are freezing on the East Coast in January, as it was supposedly set there, and it certainly delivered.  La La Land is a sweet, sweet movie depicting the rocky romance of a young couple in the big city. It's also a lot more than that.

The reason why it won the attention and so many Globes might have been for the way it made me feel; like crying after the movie was done, for all those missed opportunities: Who we could have loved, where we could have lived, what our lives might have been like if we'd taken different paths at forks in the roads. 

wiki-commons-11

It was this constant insistence on making the situations of the two adorable stars pictured above, 'Mia' (Emma Stone) and 'Sebastian' (Ryan Gosling), real, immediate, and understandable, similar to what we have all been through: Feeling alone in the city, or at a party among a group, feeling as if life is getting ahead of us and others are doing so much better than we are as we struggle to catch up in so many ways. Who hasn't wanted to stop being in a traffic jam, and take the next off-ramp off the highway, less traveled and less popular just to explore new terrain?

Even so, it's kind of surprising La La Land left the megabudget Inferno and Rogue One in the dust as far as the Golden Globe awards are concerned, as it's not the sort of huge budgeted movie that usually takes away those awards. It did have major stars in Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling, and they really showed unexpected talents. They didn't appear, if appearances can be believed in part, to be faking all that singing, dancing, and piano playing (on Gosling's part), so that was interesting and had a genuineness, a reality close to home somehow, that's been lacking in the megabudget movies. 

The starry blue backdrops of the dancing sets reminded me of Life of Pi somehow, and showed inventiveness and creativity of imagination, as did all the musical set scenes. Then again, the musical score (that music, sometimes haunting) was very new and creative while reflecting influences of The Sound of Music and many old movies and musical traditions, and all that dancing to the music in vintage or classic LA real estate were rather timeless. 

In conclusion, why it won the awards was perhaps for the way it makes the audience feel, and showed that the old-fashioned romantic musical is an art form that can be revived. 

When I saw the thrillers Inferno, in contrast, I liked it a lot although it had lots of difficult, gory scenes, and Rogue One was unforgiving to follow as I hadn't seen all the previous Star Wars movies. But they were huge blockbusters and had impressive special effects. If you need a gentle escapist movie this could be it. The ending was a surprise and could have been written many ways and perhaps the urgent editing could have been tightened more in the middle, but it's a nice new/old style and worth seeing and encouraging.

Is Trump guilty of murder?

File:White House - Washington DC (7645096066).jpg




Why would a young girl go to court to accuse two billionaires that they had abused her if it weren't true? What good could come of it for her? Her lawsuit could potentially follow her around; her job coworkers and marriage prospects might be aware of the lawsuit, and she would undoubtedly go over the event and its aftermath in her mind her entire life. No, a girl doesn't ever, ever do that without excellent reasons to back up her accusations. It's only lately this formerly rarely acknowledged topic is seeing the light of day over and over again. And a lawsuit conference on this case against a Presidential candidate for rape and possibly murder, if accusations are discovered true, is scheduled on December 16, 2016.

So, there is a lawsuit that a woman has filed and it's against two very well-known American billionaires outlined here in U.S.1 Magazine, a free Princeton newspaper (Oct. 12, 2016). These billionaires are tarnishing the reputations of women helter-skelter and with impunity and they invite men in foreign countries to assume American women are as easy as they say they are. It's not true American women are unusually easy to seduce. Odd that I have to even assert such an obvious idea. It's actually true world-wide that women should not be thought easy by men; the entire notion is extremely dangerous for American women living abroad and puts them in peril thanks to the Donald. Remember the adage from India: "Don't tell your daughter not to go out. Tell your son to behave properly."

These billionaires should, however, pay dearly for her accusations as it truly, likely did happen. A girl doesn't want to get famous because of a rape case. Really? No, categorically untrue; doesn't happen. That's a totally unreasonable stance and accusation for anyone to make.

In the case against the Donald from a girl from Princeton, New Jersey, the official wording says, with my quips italicised, and it's graphic:

"On the fourth and final sexual encounter with Defendant trump, Defendant Trump tied the 13-year-old Plaintiff to a bed [Wow, that he would do such a despicable thing], exposed himself to Plaintiff, and then proceeded to forcibly rape Plaintiff [a campainer for U.S. President committed the crime of rape!!!]. During the course of this savage sexual attack [in the words of the lawsuit], Plaintiff loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop with no effect [Ouch!]. Defendant Trump responded to Plaintiff's pleas by violently striking Plaintiff in the face with his open hand [that had to hurt a lot, and it's probably not something he would do to his own daughters] and screaming that he WOULD DO WHATEVER HE WANTED" [words that oddly recall and echo the television bus tape]. 

In addition, in the suit the Plaintiff says Epstein (the other billionaire) and Drumpf (the Donald's genealogical ancestral family name) "told her afterwards that they could have her whole family killed and that she could be "disappeared" like a 12-year-old girl from another incident" (Wow! What's that about? So not only is Drumpf a rapist, he bragged to her of commiting murder!!!).

Of course, Drumpf denies the accusation (as if he's not going to do so). As Presidential Republican nominee, he would surely want this lawsuit to go away, probably like many of the other thousands he has. Leave it to him to say it's true, though, and I wouldn't put it past him after hearing the bus tape. Is he up for the Best Rapist and Best Murderer Cup in the U.S. as well? (Can almost hear him saying he murders really, really well, better than anyone, the best....) One thing I do know is that his Scottish relatives must be really, really ashamed of him. He must not be voted into office, any office.

Veterans Coalition for Common Sense--Hallelujah!

Today after the massacre last night in Orlando, Florida a new announcement of leaders interested in promoting responsibility around gun control with a new organization called Veterans Coalition for Common Sense. 

As the great Maya Angelou once said: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. 
Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

One of the leaders of the group will be Mark Kelly, the retired NASA astronaut/husband of former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (who was shot but not killed during a senseless attack on her life in a shopping mall). He is also co-founder of a group that advocates for tougher gun laws called Americans for Responsible Solutions, but this new group teams him with another leader, retired U.S. Army General David Petraeus, who has "long resisted calls to run for political office."

Many of my posts have been written with pleas urging American lawmakers to take more stringent control and action on gun violence. I have been trying hard to understand why Americans resist efforts to retire firearms in the twin interests of public and personal safety. 

Really, this new organization might be helping people save themselves, if Americans could only see it that way. A Veterans Health Administration report said that nearly 70% of suicides among male veterans were committed with a firearm between 2001 and 2011. 

Some people from my native Canada feel sorry that I live in America, where it is so very unsafe from guns, and where guns proliferate with the encouragement of the NRA. This is an especially nasty and vocal, yet effective, terroristic set of curious American carnival barkers in favor of pushing guns on everyone. 

I do applaud in my own place the actions of these individuals. Now if only the government as a unit would get behind them with actions, instead of relying on police. If anyone is going to stop gun violence, it has to begin at home. Destroy all guns you may have at home.

I wish all towns would specify how to do so. I found this video that shows how to take it apart. Then it just simply like that, gets tossed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZiMlClw6g0I

As far as I'm concerned, that and actively giving blood to survivors are appropriate actions you can personally take on behalf of the innocent Orlando shooting victims in the worst act of domestic terrorism since 2001.

THE MAN WHO KNEW INFINITY: a review

First a couple of official reviews, and then mine:

Google Reviews:

Dev Patel is maths genius Srinivasa Ramunujan and Jeremy Irons his Cambridge mentor in this well-intentioned movie.

Peter Bradshaw

·

The Guardian

This is the very definition of the kind of movie people complain that “they” don’t make anymore, a modestly budgeted, character-driven drama for adults that doesn’t insult the viewer’s intelligence.

Katie Rife

·

A.V. Club

Recently, I went to see a movie called The Man Who Knew Infinity at the Garden Theater in Princeton because an esteemed and respected Princeton University mathematics professor, Manjul Bhargava, held a Q&A (question & answer) session on making the movie following the showing, and I knew the topic would be very interesting. The movie followed the life of Srinivasa Ramanujan, and is currently being shown in selected theaters. 

It certainly deserves wide approval and is about a formerly mysterious mathematician from India who gained approval in England for his work, but had died an untimely death from an ailment. The movie has masterfully brought to life the work of Ramanjuan, played by Dev Patel; G.H. Hardy played by Jeremy Irons with great skill; and the mathematical world of the troubled period in World War II.

Somehow Bhargava and and Kenneth Ohno, mathematicians who were consulting directors of the movie, have unexpectedly produced an engaging movie that I really enjoyed. Before I went, I just wanted to know more about this mathematician and knew that Ramanujan had stirred up the establishment of Cambridge University back in World War II, and the movie really delivers. 

Sprinkled throughout, a little distracting romance is beneficially provided in the form of Ramanujan's long-suffering and beautiful wife back in India. She has to get along with his family and moves to live with her brother after her in-laws withhold his letters to her during his five year English period. This romance and marriage created a minor, nebulous psychological distinction between Ramanjuan and the unmarried G.H. Hardy.

The movie is supposedly set mostly in Madras, India and Cambridge, England although credits show it was filmed partly in my beloved Oxford. Anyway, it's well-worth seeing. Go see it!

Fruits Of The Soul: My Arivale Sleep Experiment

"Be at War with your vices, at peace with your neighbors, and let every new year find you a better person." - Benjamin Franklin 
Callery Pear trees in bloom on Witherspoon St. in Princeton, New Jersey, U.S.A. March, 2016

So true when it comes to personal habits. Somehow fighting your own demons, your shortcomings and vices, seem to be your hardest, most intractable and private challenges in life, ones that no one else but you can fight and win.

Since last August, I've been participating in a personalized gene sequencing project with Arivale, involving blood draws, and microbiome, saliva tests, physical activity and diet. Yes, I've been traveling across the United States to Seattle from New Jersey three times a year for the tests (although my health is fine) to participate as an Arivale Pioneer in Dr. Leroy Hood's 4Ps of medicine Arivale program: Predictive, Preventive, Personalized, and Participatory, and I can now recommend joining this excellent new program if possible. Some results from the program seem to distill down to everyday actionable habits that improve general health, longevity, and well-being.

These habits are concerned with the pillars of optimal health for longevity and long term wellness. Your genes support you when you do this, almost as if your ancestors are reminding you to do it, because that's what makes people healthy and strong in the long run: healthy food, sound sleep, lots of motion and exercise, not smoking, living at a healthy weight, keeping an active mind, avoiding stress by meditating or praying for spiritual and emotional health. Just common sense, really, and how common is that?

One of these pillars is sleep. It's very important not to be sleep-deprived, and so there is one excellent habit I've tried at the suggestion of my Arivale coach to improve my sleep. The main idea is to sleep the minimum while keeping efficient sleeping hours. This is a sleep experiment I've been doing lately, and it seems to work better than expected. Even being able to fall asleep on an empty stomach seems to happen, a useful skill. Maybe people with regular hours are already good at this, but my sleep hours tend to go haywire if I'm not vigilant.

Here's how this special experiment works. The idea is to avoid screens--all screens, televisions, phones, iPads, computers, etc.--between 10 and 11 p.m. at night, having low lights around the house, and then resting by reading anywhere but the bedroom for an hour. Then sleep in bed for seven hours and awaken with an alarm. This schedule has to be followed seven days a week to be effective and it really works. Lately, I've taken to snoozing for an extra ten minutes after six, and sometimes going to sleep half an hour earlier, and it seems to be working extremely well. I've been extending the "experiment" because it's so efficient. 

In addition, I've been cutting back on my food intake to maintain a healthy weight, eating a balanced diet, and increasing my exercise to improve muscle tone to achieve my personal goal of 10,000 steps a day on my FitBit synced with my Arivale coach (often after two hours of Jazzercise, Latin or belly dancing). The Chinese have long taken to exercising in the morning for better health, so daily exercise is not exactly a new idea. 

For the first time in years, surprisingly, I haven't caught the flu this spring despite not doing anything special to avoid germs, traveling, and spending a lot of time around other people in gyms every day (and after a good flu shot last fall). Touch wood. My health is good enough that I didn't need to see a doctor all last year, except for a yearly eye exam and my twice yearly dental appointments. In addition, I've been keeping my weight around my high school and college level, which helps me feel better by looking better. Do join Arivale if you are able. It's a fine program.

In conclusion, as I look around the world, for all of us, I hope for more of the healthy fruits of the soul: "love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control." (Galations 5:22)

Eminent Canadian Women Arise from Obscurity To Figure on Bank Note


Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau has just announced that:

"Today, on International Women's Day, the Bank of Canada is taking the first step by launching public consultations to select an iconic Canadian woman to be featured on this new bill" in the next series of bills expected in 2018.

The nominees can be any Canadian woman, either by birth or naturalization who has demonstrated leadership, achievement or distinction in any field, according to a release from the Bank of Canada, but they can't be fictional and must have died prior to April 15, 1991. 

Canadians are invited to make nominations until April 15, 2016 here.

So I had fun going through this timeline list of Canadian women and found a long list of names from widely disparate fields: Doctors and lawyers, scientists, politicians, activists, athletes, entertainers, publishers, writers, even flyers.

Here's a short list of perhaps the most famous, and only a few could be considered possibilities. There are many more to choose from since 1991 (and why stop that year?).

Laura Secord (1775-1868) had iconic Canadian chocolates named after her so she became famous. Looks like she overheard American troops plotting at attack against the British. On June 22, 1812 (not the middle of winter), she walked 30 kilometers to sound a warning to a British colonel.

Elizabeth Bruyere (1818-1876) was founder of Grey Sisters of Ottawa, founder of schools, orphanage, and hospitals in Montreal and Ottawa.

Sister authors Catherine Parr Traill (1802-1899) and Susanna Moodie (1803-1885) published Canadian Wild Flowers and many other books to earn money to live on.

Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942) was the author of Anne of Green Gables and many other novels.

Florence Nightingale Graham (1878-1966), better known as Elizabeth Arden, borrowed $6,000.00 and opened the first beauty salon on New York's Fifth Avenue (that's hard to verify) in 1909.

Mary Pickford (1892-1979) by 1915 was receiving 500 fan mail letters each week. She was reportedly the highest paid woman in the world at the time.

Emily Carr (1871-1945) published Klee Wyck which won the Governor General's Award in literature and has become celebrated as perhaps the most historically significant female Canadian artist.

Mary Elizabeth Kinnear (1898-1991) was appointed to the Senate of Canada in 1967 (although the first female senator was Cairine Wilson (1895-1962) appointed in 1930), and retired from the Senate in 1973 and was the first woman appointed to be King's Counsel, the first female lawyer in Canada to appear as counsel before the Supreme Court of Canada.

With such a plethora of women to choose from, perhaps the old oxymoron of "famous" + "Canadian women" will become outdated, as I do hope. 

The Importance of Daily Exercise for Children

Here's an anecdote that should interest all parents of young children!

Child.


The Mail Online is reporting on:

"...the 'daily mile' completed for the past three years by pupils at St Ninian's primary school in Stirling. Every day, the children walk or run a mile - it takes them about 15 minutes. The benefits have been seen in their improved concentration as well as fitness. None of the children at St Ninian's is overweight."


If only this option had been available to my children when they were young. It wasn't offered but I can wish it for other schools to adopt in the future...Obesity is a global epidemic and yet teachers could help parents do this simple task that would benefit so many children worldwide. 

Children have such a lot of energy and, like adults, are energized by exercise. Often exercise is taken in the form of competitive sports in schools, but these aren't suitable or attractive to all children. Yet most children would apparently benefit from some form of exercise, and simply walking or running should be a regular part of their schooldays. Recess is important for recharging children's batteries, but maybe giving them goals to achieve such as this would help take some of the chaos and discomfort from the process for teachers and students alike.

This really should be a part of primary schoolteacher's everyday school agendas. In fact, I think more dancing should be more regularly offered and available year-round as a part of physical education routines as well. I know this because I've used dance routines to lose almost half my weight in the past couple of years. Such great comfort can be derived from familiar dance routines, as these high school students have found in this popular video of a Canadian high school teacher and her students at her retirement.





Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3376753/ASK-DOCTOR-sweet-tooth-ruined-liver.html#ixzz3wKryUuDb

Gun Violence: A Peculiarly American Obsession

An article in Daily Beast called "Yes, They Want To Take Your Guns Away" has an intriguing title, and is a lengthy explanation of how Americans will not ever accept a government order to take away the guns of citizens.

My wish is that at some point Americans (and it's mostly a national problem) could be persuaded that guns are a national quandary to solve, and impediments by themselves to a higher quality or standard of living, just as auto pollution and hate speech, as exemplified by the KKK are, as the writer, James Kirchick explains.

In a nutshell, Kirchick doesn't want to live with any more guns in America. But, he despairs, "If federal agents came to round up firearms, many gun owners would be prepared to shoot back."

Well, my view to that obstacle is: Maybe or maybe not. Why should Americans fear themselves so much? Isn't it even worth a try to combat guns with peaceful programs and the approval of federal officials who've been all too weak about mandating stricter gun control? Where's the courage and the conviction of Americans that they deserve to live safer and more secure lives and that this will only, ONLY, happen without guns?

America has a long way to go when it comes to safety and security for the populace, however, and it should be clear, although it oddly isn't to some extremist Americans, that guns come with a cost. That cost is alienating those who would otherwise be friends of America. I wish the government would just do what Australia did to achieve a safer country for all, and ask citizens to turn in their arms.

The truth is many foreigners wouldn't want their children to go to anyone's house in their own country if they owned a single gun. There are too many accidents where a gun has killed the wrong person by accident. This is also true for them in America. Many foreigners prefer not to socialize with gun owners, and generally don't have to.

A harmful and incorrect new argument I've recently heard circulating in favor of owning guns is that foreigners in foreign countries own guns, so why shouldn't Americans have them?

But this is grossly untrue of foreign countries. Guns are illegal in most countries. Probably there are pockets of gun owners in foreign countries, most likely those specifically at war. The point is that America hasn't ever aspired to mirror the very worst, most unattractive qualities of other countries. Shouldn't it aim for peace at home? America has supposedly been a land that tries to be better than other countries and have a higher standard of living.

Some Americans would be surprised to know that some foreigners won't visit America with its glut of guns (currently approximately one for every citizen according to the article) and lack of affordable healthcare, both of which decrease its attractiveness. Yet Americans don't have to worry about these dual concerns in other countries when they travel away themselves.

America may be the land of the free and home of the brave, but it should also ideally be an open nation abundant with peace and trust for all.



Portland's Newest Landmark: P.N.C.A.

It is internationally well accepted that college students of both sexes can be the energetic forces of economic revitalization. Through education, ideally, students learn to harness their powers of creativity, become problem solvers, and gain enough confidence to reinvent the world.

Pacific Northwest College of Art, P.N.C.A., is superbly well-located in the beautiful Pearl District of Portland, one of the most unique and creative cities in the world. First of all, I would like to stress that I love P.N.C.A. and think it is the very best College of Art in the Pacific Northwest in state of Oregon.

View of Mount Hood

According to the website of the now former President Tom Manley, a leading force behind the expansion of the college, along with financial support from, among others, the ubiquitous Schnitzer real estate family, PNCA is the oldest full-time art school in the Pacific Northwest. It was also notably the first college of art and design in the region to launch graduate programs after receiving an endowment from the Ford lumber estate. 

This welcoming art college in Portland, Oregon, where students can major in Studio Arts, Media Arts, Design Arts, or Liberal Arts, has moved a few blocks towards the east side of the Pearl District started its first classes in a spectacular new building this term in February, 2015. It is an historic Federal Building gutted and refigured by award-winning architect Brad Cloepfil (CLOP'-fil) to work with modern technology, while preserving the desirable, original artistically carved marble and metal and stonework features in the impressive stone structure that has an awesome location and setting in prime Portland real estate.

 View from P.N.C.A.

The tall landmark main building of the College used to be the main Portland U.S. Post Office and the artists at P.N.C.A. can surely appreciate the effort that went into the beautiful building. In this era of obsolescence, it's heartening to find that an antique building can be revitalized with new life. It's a fine old building filled to the ceiling with marble walls and stairwells and a beautiful ceiling within the main front hallway.

P.N.C.A. has doubled the student body in the last seven years, tripled the faculty, preserved the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Craft, added seven new academic programs, and quadrupled the endowment. Each one of these is an achievement in an of itself. But these landmark changes serve to highlight this desirable college's growing and respected reputation in the northwest and the nation.

P.N.C.A. graduates are influential artists, entrepreneurs, entertainers, urban designers, and global citizens dedicated to exploring innovative ways of thinking, finding creative solutions and launching new businesses. PNCA has certainly made a difference to me.

Image result for interior of pnca

Interior Atrium of P.N.C.A.

Pacific Northwest College of Art (P.N.C.A.) currently offers Baccalaureate degree courses in Design Arts, Communcation Design, Illustration, Media Arts, Animated Arts, Studio Arts, Intermedia, Photography, Video & Sound, Painting, Printmaking, Sculpture, Liberal Arts, writing and others.

At the Graduate level, P.N.C.A. offers Master degrees (M.F.A.s) in Applied Craft & Design, Collaborative Design, Visual Studies, Critical Theory & Creative Research and has opportunities for Post-Baccalaureate Residencies.

The new main building of PNCA is called the Arlene and Harold Schnitzer Center for Art and Design and is located in a chic area at 511 Northwest Broadway, a short walk away from the bus and train stations. Here's

a video

by architect Brad Cloepfil of the firm Allied Works explaining that the college was not meant to be pristine (although it is at the current time) but a catalyst for creativity. The impressive first floor and marble staircases make this college a compelling winner of a college for students from everywhere. I believe the promise of the architect has been realized and the space is as beautiful as envisioned from all the reports I have heard.

Portland's Rose Garden

PNCA has certainly made an enormous difference to me and members of my family. Many gifted students and educators I've met there on my visits have impressed me with their vitality and creativity. Check out this college. Better yet, sign up for Continuing Education courses.

Near Bend in the Beautiful State of Oregon

TEN DISTINGUISHING FEATURES

Of a High Performing Doctor
and Medical Practice

1. Accessibility: same day appointments and walk-ins, evening and weekend hours.

2. Care is individualized to suit the needs of patients. Tests are completed and accomplished.

3. Patient feedback is important and acted upon.

4. Certain procedures and tests are done in house e.g. insulin initiation and stabilization, suturing.

5. Doctors stay connected with patients to assure that treatment plans respect patient preferences.

6. Patients are seen rapidly after hospital discharges; medications are sometimes prescribed or specialists referred. It's called closing the loop.

7. Staff members provide support that enables doctors to work harder, i.e. take care of more patients.

8. Staff work together without regard to hierarchy.

9. Compensation is balanced by concerns about patient care and experience, and improvements to practice-wide activities and resource utilization.

10. They rent modest offices and don't need to order expensive tests to generate more income.

This dream list should be in the offices of every practicing primary physician, and many specialists.

This information is taken from an article about primary care sites that Stanford University identified in a summary along with shared characteristic features. 

These points about patient care appear common sense, but at the same time, are idealistic and often ignored to some extent in America. In my own experience, patient feedback is rarely requested, nor are patients seen rapidly after hospital discharge or by request. Staff working together and cooperating is not just important but essential in this computer age. Doctors will have work hard to achieve all the points on this list.

Learning About Your Genealogy Can Help You Live Better Now

Genealogy is the most popular hobby in the world, or so I read last week. Why? If true, maybe it's because we all want to know where we came from, what chain of life we belong to, how we connect to the past, how to divine our future from the actions of our ancestors. Who knows? What I do know is that learning about ancestors is satisfying and fun. 

Finding Your Roots, now showing on PBS once a week here in the United States, must easily be the best ever produced about genealogy. Incredibly impressive efforts and extravagant expenses have gone into the creation of each segment. 

Tracing ancestors can be a fascinating hobby that can extend to the far reaches of the world. Getting names, dates, and locations where they lived can be extremely fascinating and unexpectedly time-consuming and expensive. 

The television show used the latest genetic technology to extend what could be found hounding paper evidence and graveyards for clues. Taking the time to make lengthy searches used to be the only method for finding our ancestors, but now we can each discover much more lengthy family histories, whatever our personal circumstances. In other words, even if we know nothing even about our parents, or beyond our grandparents, whatever we know, we can find out more than we could dream about our ethnic histories by sending spit (incredibly for only $99) to genealogy websites, my favorite of which is 23andMe as I written about herehere and here. Fascinating and geeky sites, such as my personal favorites, Promethease which I wrote about here, and Livewello, are coming online where (for as little as $5) dozens of pages of genealogy and health advice can appear in your email, protected for privacy. 

Improving current health and anticipating future health challenges can be a motivation for finding out more about ancestors. Some of these sites cross the line between health and genealogy to help us connect the dots between the recessive and dominant genes our ancestors had that we share with them. Being conscious and aware of health issues can help when visiting the doctor if the doctor has a better idea of the individual health risks we might have and it's on a personal printout that we can make and keep to ourselves. Our bodies are our own responsibilities and we should know everything we can about our own health before we have medical emergencies.

Being worried negatively (to the point of being paralyzed into inaction) about an identity being stolen is counterproductive and unrealistic. Being anonymously cloned for commercial purposes is impossible scientifically for humans. Such negativity is unhelpful because scientists aren't interested in putting together clones of any particular one of us any more than one particular peanut is interesting to a scientist when the overwhelming popular demand is for more peanut butter. And at this point we're all peanuts and probably will be forever. None of us knows if our particular skeleton will become the most important find of the century for a future archeologist. 

Scientists of many disciplines need to have aggregate collected information that will help all of us. Researchers have made new discoveries, based on saliva samples, donated by thousands of people around the world for the purpose of understanding historical migration and advancing medical research and the area is exploding from the possibilities created by combining information from the precious samples of thousands of people. 

Learning about your own personal history can be an entryway increasing understanding of the histories of people around the world, and that is the value of Finding Your Roots that is extremely helpful. Genealogy is helping motivate a better understanding of history because as always, if the commercial is served, the recreational will be improved as well.


Bachata Fever


Music therapists recommend creating a relaxation playlist because healing music helps fight stress, find comfort, and manage pain as does exercise. On a deep level, music can make us feel understood and provide us with a release that allows us to move on. Counterintuitively, sad music has been shown in a study to have numerous positive health benefits according to a recently popular study published in the Journal of Consumer Research. Music preferences can show how social we are, remind us of the people we would most like to be with, and are influenced by how we've been treated by other people, said the study author Chan Jean Lee, PhD of KAIST Business School in Seoul, South Korea. 

Bachata is urban Latin music for dancing, very sensual and loving, originally from the Dominican Republic, a bit slower than Merengue, and a cousin of Salsa, Mango, Cha-cha, and Tango. It's grown on me lately so I've decided to share with you, my precious reader, the names of a few of my favorite dance tunes.

Try playing this music while you read or when you're with friends as it makes excellent background music:

La Amo a Morir https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FynPQvVgro0

Bachata is danced with a partner, but not necessarily always. I've been enjoying learning it in a gym class (partnerless and in front of mirrors in rows) from a Uruguyan Zumba teacher who is passionate about Latin dance, and especially Bachata. Little wonder it's enormously popular. It's stretching credibility for this little Canadian girl (me) to learn this form of dance, but the music is beautiful when listened to over and over again. I'm trying to imagine myself sashaying around tropical cafes to this music. Okay, dreaming of that now that our New Jersey weather is chilling.

Here are a few more tunes. Just to give you fair warning: they will seep into your subconscious the more you listen to them, and can make them slow down (if you know how to do that):

If only more people around the world would listen to music and dance more for business and recreation instead of fighting useless, harmful political power struggles. Enjoy listening to this wonderful form of dance, and as hippies in the 60s used to say: make love not war.

Gardner's Theory of Multiple Intelligences

A theory of seven multiple intelligences described by Howard Gardner of Harvard University in his 1983 book Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.

Here are the seven summarized:

1) Visual-spatial architects and interior designers are aware of their environments and think in terms of physical space and learn well with images and imagery.
2) Bodily kinesthetic dancers and surgeons have a keen sense of body awareness and language, learn hands on, acting out, role playing. 
3) Musicians show sensitivity to rhythm and sound in their environments, might learn better with music in the background. 
4) Interpersonal students learn through interaction, have many friends, empathy for others, street smarts, and have been shown to learn well with time and attention from instructors and audio conferencing, group activities, seminars, and dialogues.
5) Intrapersonal students tend to shy away from others, are in tune with their inner feelings, have wisdom, intuition and motivation, a strong will, confidence, and opinions, are best taught through independent study, appreciate privacy, and are the most independent of learners. 
6) Verbal-linguistic students use words effectively, like playing word games, and using computers for word games, listen well to lectures and multimedia presentations.
7) Logical-mathematical thinkers think conceptually, abstractly, and see patterns, solve puzzles, ask cosmic questions, learn through investigations and mysteries, and need to learn and form concepts before they can deal with details.

Also suggested as alternative intelligences are: Naturalistic tendencies (sensitivity to nature), "Existential" or spiritual intelligence, and Moral intelligence (having to do with ethics of right and wrong).

Isn't it likely we are mixes of many of these? Gardner believes we're each a unique mixture of these intelligences. 

However many intelligences there are, schools should allow students to study in a way that works best, whether it's allowing stuents to research independent studies with minimal supervision, or enjoying a lecture, physical education class or coffee break with classmates, or a mix of both. I believe test results would probably improve substantially, even if students pick and choose how they learn, and teachers allow space for that to change for various tasks or over time. Teachers and students would feel less frustrated with each other, if only each could play to the strength of the other.

There is value and truth in the idea that intelligence isn't etched in stone, and shouldn't be believed from a single test if one bad day can make or break a test-taker. Being late, hungry, tired, or feeling ambushed by life's demands can hijack some hapless test-taker's attention, and thus ruin intelligence test results with disastrous long-term consequences.

Here is a quiz you can take to find out your area of intellectual strength.

Myself, I think I'm a mix of musical intrapersonal linguist. Choosing one I'd say intrapersonal, and that was how I tested. I've always liked personal instruction the most and group instruction least. If asking an instructor a question in a group setting isn't possible, I feel frustrated. Yet often, questions aren't permitted and my questions must go unanswered forever. Isn't it frustrating to be in a lecture auditorium and have the lecturer take questions that can't be generally heard and not repeat them? It's usually impossible to guess a question, and extremely frustrating for listeners. I also think it's necessary for someone in that position to repeat a question that not everyone in a room can hear. It's good manners not to waste anyone's time. Try the quiz.

Promethease and SNPedia: Sites Worthy of Honor, Respect, and Support

UPDATE: Promethease remains available online at Promethease.com, and has been involved in a purchase agreement with My Heritage. As I've remarked in earlier posts, my genes have been sequenced through various companies and the results have been analyzed through a very interesting organization and website called Promethease and the wiki site SNPedia, founded in 2006 by Greg Lennon. It would be a good idea to support their work. My results have been amazing and life-changing. 

The name Promethease itself could derive from legends surrounding Prometheus which typically have to do with honor and support.

PROMETHEUS Statue

Courtesy: Buchhandler

Promethease is a fascinating site and company where you can directly send your genome data from another site such as 23andMe or most other sources and receive reports on your gene SNPs (or "snips), the so-called snips of your genes that make you who you are, and that make you different from your family. It's useful for everyone: members of large families who will learn more about their individual genetic predispositions and traits, orphans who could learn more personal family names or disease risks, and anyone can learn more about family lineages going back hundreds of years. For each person, genetic results are different. Certainly the healthcare field of doctors can use it as a research resource, genealogists searching for quirky character traits, maybe police forces searching forensically for an individual's DNA data. The uses for genetic information is in its infancy. Genetic data can be another useful and time-saving device and it's limited only by imagination.

A connected compendium of SNP results is organized into a wiki called SNPedia, founded by Greg Lennon and Mike Cariaso, both also of

Promethease. Mike has made many informational videos explaining how to use the site. 

SNPedia is a resource that can be used by the medical field around the world. It's meant to be updated like Wikipedia by doctors and medical students and provide  a database useful for biomedical research and discovery.

SNPedia lists medical papers related to diseases connected to genes and SNPs, and much that is currently known about the current field of DNA interpretation.

Incoming Stanford and Harvard medical students will have their genes sequenced and will learn how to analyze genetic results to help patients in the future. That's how important this field is. As well as medics, anyone searching for medical information can broaden their understanding of disease and personality characteristics. Genealogists can find clues when paper trails have run their course and evolutionary biologists and anthropologists can use it as a resource. Many professionals now have another avenue to use for investigations, and have been finding that DNA can answer longstanding mysteries.

It's possible to look at a website about SNPs at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but that website, unlike Promethease, doesn't give you a definition of each one of your SNPs, tell you whether your particular allele is in "good" or "bad" repute, how your personal risk compares in percentage size to the world population of your ethnicity. The NIH gives chromosomal raw numbers but without interpretation such as that found on Promethease, all that data is useless. The search mechanism of Promethease makes use of NIH's ClinVar (Clinical Variants) information from the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which also aggregates and archives information, but doesn't yield popularly-useful interpretations. Promethease, in contrast, goes much further and describes what each SNP is and what diseases and traits it determines.

 At the related SNPedia site, it's possible to find papers to research for more information, and papers are continually updated into the site every day. For that reason, downloading your gene data into the site will yield updated information as the site forgets information after 45 days. The data is only searchable on Promethease when it's fresh, but can be kept in your files. Whether the service is free or not depends on whether you'd like to wait hours for the report or have it in a few minutes, and that cost is only five dollars, for results that were unavailable until now in any medium and will quickly become priceless to you. It's an easy to do and easy to understand. Recommend putting this on your to-do list. Everyone should try this at home.

Is the Act of Forgiveness Dying?

Last week I attended a conference for women in business where the keynote speaker said that for women in business it's wrong to apologize and say "I'm sorry." The speaker exhorted us to promote rather than apologize and ask permission and said instead of apologizing to say "excuse me" or "please go on" and that apologizing is now supposedly a sign of the weakness of women in a business setting. But I have to say here (in my one still and tiny voice) that "I disagree."

Her speech about gravitas and how to have it was given to a huge audience of influential women here in the Princeton area of New Jersey. The lady who said it (and who shall remain nameless to avoid trouble) gave a talk otherwise laudable and praiseworthy, and I recognize that I'm taking this single topic straight out of context (and apologize).

It's the height of arrogance not to apologize when circumstances warrant outpouring expressions of kindness. It makes the person who made a mistake own it (along with shame, guilt, fear) and makes him/her into a better and more trustworthy person, and the apology must be said with sincerity and forgiveness requested and granted or else it won't be believed. Showing empathy and compassion shows your human nature in its best light.

Forgiveness is possibly a genetically inherited character trait, a sign of strength, of empathy, and of compassion. It isn't the sign of a healthy relationship if the other person doesn't admit they are wrong, doesn't take responsibility or ever admit to being at fault. In fact being callous and remorseless has been called a sign of psychopathy.

Not all apologies are equal. We've all heard someone apologize in a sarcastic or insincere way, such as to an opponent in reference to winning a competitive game "I'm sorry to say I won that match." That isn't really meant as a deep apology, and perhaps this casual use of the phrase is inadvisable except in the most casual of settings. 

I do think there is a place even in business for a sincere apology. Apologizing shows respect for the feelings of others. Saying you've made a mistake should also in turn be respected. It does get easier to say the more you say it and you will feel better for saying it. In fact, they are the two (or three) sweetest words I can hear from someone with whom I've had a disagreement, and who I feel is truly at fault.

It's not that I'm a fine example of a businesswoman (far from it), but from an international point of view as I generally have I don't agree that apologizing is a sign of weakness. Apologizing and asking forgiveness is a method useful for reconciliation and continuing diplomacy engaged as a sign of true humility and repentance.

Sincerely, I hope that asking for forgiveness doesn't soon become a lost art because forgiveness helps us all move on with our lives. Apologies are meant to signal that water has passed under the bridge so why not strengthen that metaphorical bridge and not ignore it? Apologizing and asking forgiveness is a useful interpersonal diplomatic tool when the end goal is peace. Don't we all want that?

File:Richmond Bridge Panorama.jpg
wikimedia: Richmond Bridge Tasmania

Jane McGonigal's Extraordinary TED Talk

In Jane McGonigal's TED talk, she talks about how to add ten years to your life. 

 

After people have had trauma similar to Jane's severe head trauma, goals they often share are to:

 

1) do whatever makes them happy

2) feel closer to family and friends

3) understand themselves better

4) know who they really are now

5) have a clear sense of meaning and purpose in life

6) be better able to focus on goals and dreams.

 

When people are dying, the regrets most often expressed are the opposite and reinforce the above positive goals. They often wish they had:

 

1) not worked so hard

2) stayed in touch with friends

3) let themselves be happier (for example, by playing video games)

4) had the courage to express their true selves

5) lived lives true to their dreams instead of what was expected of them.

 

To review, those who lived on average ten years longer continually boosted four types of resilence:

 

1) physical - by never sitting still for more than an hour at a time

2) mental - by tackling tiny goals to boost willpower

3) emotional - by achieving the three-to-one positive emotion ratio

4) social - by reaching out to one other cared-for person every single day

McGonigal's a game designer and approves of games. Scientific literature proves that when we play a game we tackle challenges with greater creativity, determination, optimism, and we're more likely to reach out to others for help, be more courageous, ambitious, and committed to our goals.


Video games can help with survival and longevity with behaviors we can adopt for use in real life. Another reason to like online video games is that "groundbreaking clinical trials recently conducted at East Caroline University showed that online games can outperform pharmaceuticals for treating clinical anxiety and depression. Just 30 minutes of online game play a day was enough to create dramatic boosts in mood and long-term increases in happiness." 

 

Here's the entire transcript of the video and it's well-worth watching or reading.

 

23andMe Offers Personalized Medicine Today





The article called "I Had My DNA Picture Taken, With Varying Results" in the New York Times is useless. The 23andMe $99 home test kit was compared to other kinds of tests: blood tests and test kits that have to be ordered and received by a doctor that effectively remove information from the realm of the tested. Worse, it's unhelpful to see the New York Times publishing such drivel in its influential news outlet. In an article to review a $99 dollar home test from 23andMe, why didn't it compare apples to apples instead of to oranges? Why not compare an equally-priced $99 home test kit, for instance, one from Ancestry DNA? Instead, the New York Times indulged in shoddy journalism, and by that I'm suggesting the article was a lazy, inaccurate, and narrow summary of the facts and I'm worried it will be taken seriously by everyone (patients, doctors, the F.D.A.) when it should have been published somewhere else. The New York Times is just one newspaper, albeit an influential one, but it could have done a whole lot better at checking the facts than it did.

Why didn't the New York Times ask me and other hundreds of thousands who have benefited from 23andMe without any other reasonable alternative? Did it take the effort to check its references of 23andMe by reading threads of glowing testimonials for the company, of which I could add another?

The real story that was missed is the story behind genetic testing: about how lazy and sloppy the F.D.A. has been for millions of American doctors who are unable to tell patients their true genetic risks because of agreements with genetic testing companies to keep results secret, as for example this linked article points out, written by an expert for the benefit of other doctors. That deceit isn't in anyone's best interest, and is a murky truth that has already drowned in the miry swamp of everyday medicine. 23andMe is helping mitigate this widespread spiral down into ignorance.

The last lines of that unhelpful article sum up the current state of health advice for most patients: "Step on a weigh scale." Full stop. Certainly, a weigh scale (and self-journaling, I might add) go far in helping patients achieve better health. But we knew all that already. Why settle for little when so much more is possible? Huge fountains of personalized medicine facts are (were until recently) inexpensively available from the 23andMe reports, authorized by a CLIA lab (also used by LabCorp), through the generosity and intelligence of the founders.


23andMe reports help us understand how to be healthy our entire lives. The unique and essential information from 23andMe is life-changing. Whether or not the 23andMe results agree with other company reports is trivial. A positive diagnosis would be worth double- or triple-checking. A website says that primary care doctors can understand 23andMe reports in ten minutes. 23andMe is the premier personalized medicine site democratically allowing patients personal insights within the ever-shifting quicksands of science. It's definitely a step in the appropriate direction.

I'm healthy enough I wasn't going to pay for a full genomic sequencing without any medical reason. As it turns out, I inherited medical conditions from both parents that aren't probably strong enough for medical intervention and that I was unaware of, but might need medical care at some time in the future. And I'm literate enough to understand the reports, which opened up a new direction for my own personal medical research. Just one person, I remain grateful to thoroughness of the plethora of information and scientific articles about studies at 23andMe.




23andMe: A Company Worth Supporting


23andMe is a company worth supporting, and it's in trouble with the government for regulatory issues for all the wrong reasons. Individual patients are now able to take control of their medical outcomes and overall fitness to a greater extent than was possible in the past when this technology didn't exist. 

The disruption this company may be causing is:
1) misunderstood by doctors who write scripts for tests that may not be required out of caution because of their own ignorance and panic, not that doctors can be expected to keep up with all the advances in genomics.
2) misunderstood by all those, including government regulators, who haven't been tested or used the company or benefited from the information the company provides.
3) understood by those who have been tested and can begin to understand the impact of the technology to the future of medicine. 

It amazes me to hear that doctors supposedly advocate full mastectomies on the basis of the 23andMe saliva test when the company explicitly states that further tests should be made in the service of accuracy.

One example I can report concerns my former gastroenterologist. This gastroenterologist recommended an endoscopy which she could give me (and profit from) after I mentioned (verbally) that my 23andMe test results showed I had three times greater than average chance of having celiac disease. I know I have a chance only, and that results from 23andMe were not diagnoses, but I asked for the doctor's advice. The doctor looked at the statistics from 23andMe, admitted she’d not ever heard of the company before, and based her appeal for an endoscopy on the 23andMe score while I was with her in her office.

Endoscopy, for those unfamiliar, is an invasive test requiring the same preparation as for colonoscopy. The patient's digestive tract must be entirely emptied of food before the surgery. The patient can't drive away from the center outside of the hospital after the surgery because of having endured general anesthesia, and then a whopping charge arrives in the mail like a sonic boom after the fact if all goes as planned. Add to that the risk of fatal complications and a possibly expensive stay in the hospital. None of it is pleasant. Worse, it wasn’t necessary.

Trying to avoid this surgery, I asked for a second opinion from another gastroenterologist about my chances of having celiac disease, and this second one said that a simple non-fasting blood test should also rule it out, and indicated I could have an invasive endoscopy if necessary after the blood test. In fact, the blood test did rule out the endoscopy, if the blood test is to be believed. The biopsy gained in an endoscopy supposedly gives a more trusted result than a blood test, but I'm not going to have the procedure.

It's clear to me that most of my doctors in New Jersey haven't heard of 23andMe, and so far I haven’t had one who’s taken the test. The founder of 23andMe wanted to be disruptive, and she can be sure that the disruption has already started as this article claims. I don't think critics should comment on 23andMe without using the product being sold, unless they don't believe their weigh scales, home blood pressure kits, or blood test results from LabCorp. The 23andMe homepage says it uses Labcorp, one of the two nationwide competitors in America trusted for blood tests (the other is Quest). I also read LabCorp and 23andMe use Illumina for testing. 

Some people try hard to escape medical truths, and disparage the company without having facts on which to base their remarks.

Perhaps the company could distribute kits free to doctors as a service. And perhaps the company should change its name, but defintely keep the service. I love it. One of my doctors asked me, "Did you say 22 and me?"

Reasons for Violence Simplified


Homicide count in 2009

  • Brazil 43,909
  • US 15,241
  • UK 724
  • Denmark 47
  • Iceland 1
Source: Global Study on Homicide (UN)
An interesting article online at BBC News showed this chart. The article doesn't say why Brazil has more violence than other hot countries. Instead it looks into the reverse and questions why Iceland is a good place for everyone to live. 

Here are three of the possible reasons* listed:

1) nti-Gun Shooting Culture: Police are mostly unarmed. Iceland is in 15th place globally in gun ownership per capita, but crimes usually don't involve firearms. A lone gunman firing shots in his own apartment last week was the first time a special police task force responded with firearms.
2) revention: Iceland has a tradition of pre-empting crimes before they get worse. For example, in 1973 the government created a separate drug police and drug court and the country now has few illegal drugs. Now police and the government are working on organized crime. And speeding fines are heavy.
3) quality: Tension between rich and poor is almost non-existent, and education promotes an egalitarian culture.

I think Iceland's cold climate might also be a fourth important influencing factor. Police and these experts say that violence around the world thrives on opportunity and picks up whenever the weather heats.

If crime is caused by opportunity, it is evidently heavily influenced and prevented by supportive anti-crime laws and a culture that does not tolerate crime socially or legally. The co-operative anti-crime cultural mentality in Iceland might help explain why the country is safest in the world despite its high gun rate. Does violence, like its well-known opposite good manners, begin at home? Cultural norms are everything in the study of violence: here is an example of how the efforts of one person made it wrong to throw litter beside highways in America. 

* APE is my creation meant as a memory aid.