What's new
By:
Filters

TULT

Great article I just finished reading about Mr. Ken Feinberg.

https://www.esquire.com/features/kenneth-feinberg-interview-0114

An excerpt from the article:

But the worst of the meetings, the one that still haunts Feinberg in his waking hours if not in his dreams, was another young widow of another firefighter, with another three fatherless children. She was crying so hard from the beginning that Feinberg worried she was going to collapse. Between heaves, she told Feinberg about her perfect husband, the love she would never replace: the family cook, the constant gardener, the dream father, Mr. Mom. "My life is over," she told him. "I'll never be the same."

The next day, Feinberg got a call from a lawyer. He asked whether Feinberg had recently met with the firefighter's widow with the three children. Feinberg said that he had, just the day before. "Now, look, Mr. Feinberg, you've got a tough job," the lawyer said. "I don't envy the decisions you have to make. But I have to tell you: She doesn't know that Mr. Mom has two other kids by his girlfriend in Queens. And when you cut your check, there aren't three surviving children. There are five surviving children. I'm sure you'll do the right thing."
Click to expand...
 
Just caught up on some reading and finished this article from Time on teacher tenure:

https://time.com/3533556/the-war-on-teacher-tenure/

It’s really difficult to fire a bad teacher. A group of Silicon Valley investors wants to change that

This story original appeared in the Nov. 3, 2014, issue of TIME.

On a warm day in early June, a Los Angeles County trial-court judge, Rolf M. Treu, pink-cheeked beneath a trim white beard, dropped a bombshell on the American public-school system. Ruling in Vergara v. California, Treu struck down five decades-old California laws governing teacher tenure and other job protections on the grounds that they violate the state’s constitution.

In his 4,000-word decision, he bounded through an unusually short explanation of what was an unprecedented interpretation of the law. Step 1: Tenure and other job protections make it harder to fire teachers and therefore effectively work to keep bad ones in the classroom. Step 2: Bad teachers “substantially undermine” a child’s education. That, Treu wrote, not only “shocks the conscience” but also violates the students’ right to a “basic equality of educational opportunity” as enshrined in California’s constitution...
Click to expand...
 
prince_geoge.jpg


yesss.jpg
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzjB4Znqhd8#t=62
 
https://www.webmd.com/balance/news/20141215/feel-younger-than-your-age-it-may-help-you-live-longer

WebMD News from HealthDay
By Dennis Thompson

HealthDay Reporter

MONDAY, Dec. 15, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- Folks who feel "young at heart" may be more likely to live to a ripe old age, a new British study suggests.

Seniors who said they felt three or more years younger than their actual age experienced a lower death rate over the course of eight years than people who either felt their full age or a little older, researchers report online Dec. 15 in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine.


About 25 percent of people who felt older than their actual age died, compared with about 14 percent of people who felt younger than their true age and almost 19 percent who felt their age.

The effect held even after researchers accounted for things that might make a person feel older than they are, such as chronic health problems, difficulty with mobility or mental health issues like depression, said senior study author Andrew Steptoe, director of the Institute of Epidemiology and Health Care at University College London.

People who felt older still had a 41 percent greater risk of death than those who felt younger, even after researchers controlled for those factors. However, the study did not prove definitively that feeling younger lengthened a persons life span.

"None of these fully explained the relationship we saw, so we don't understand all the mechanisms involved," Steptoe said.

The researchers based their findings on data gathered during a long-term study on aging in Britain. As part of the study, all participants were asked, "How old do you feel you are?"

More than two-thirds of participants felt three or more years younger than their actual age, while about a quarter felt their age. About 5 percent felt more than a year older than their true age.

The average actual age of all participants was about 66, but their average self-perceived age was 57.

The findings show how powerful optimism can be when it comes to a person's overall health, said James Maddux, professor emeritus of psychology at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va.

"Optimism in many ways is a self-fulfilling prophecy," he said. "If you feel your life and your health is largely under your control, and you believe you are capable of doing things like managing stress, eating right and exercising, then you are more likely to do those things."

Maddux noted that self-perceived age had a strong effect on a person's risk of death from heart disease, but made no difference in a person's risk of death from cancer.

More than twice as many people who felt older than their true age died from heart-related illness, compared with those who felt young -- 10.2 percent, compared with 4.5 percent.

"We do know that anxiety and poor management of stress can put people at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, while the link between those emotions and cancer is much weaker," Maddux said. "It's not a surprise to me that they found this link for cardiovascular disease but not for cancer."

Steptoe said the results are so striking that doctors might want to consider asking seniors how old they feel as a part of their annual physical exams.

"Perhaps the beliefs and feelings that people have tell us something that our other measures of health and well-being do not capture," he said. "Asking someone how old they feel is a very easy thing to do, so if it tells us something important about health, we need to understand it better."

In addition, people who are naturally pessimistic might consider turning over a new leaf, Maddux said.

"Optimism pays off. Even though there probably is a large genetic component to whether you are optimistic or pessimistic, we also know from research that optimism can be learned," he said. "It's a trait that's worth picking up."
Click to expand...
 
How to Recognize an Improper Nose-blow...

https://www.wsj.com/articles/whats-the-best-way-to-blow-your-nose-1418663296

By TOM PERROTTA
Dec. 15, 2014 12:08 p.m. ET

When a cold strikes, nose blowing is often the easiest and fastest way to relieve symptoms. But people who blow with hurricane force can prolong their suffering. One expert, Neil Schachter, medical director of the Respiratory Care Department at New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital, explains how to recognize an improper nose blow.

The Nose Knows
A typical nose blow can generate 10 times as much pressure as sneezing or coughing, says Dr. Schachter, citing research conducted at the University of Virginia. The greater the pressure, the more likely it is that some mucus will shoot into the inflamed and narrowed drainage passageways of your sinuses and spread the infection.

There isn’t a simple answer to the question, “how hard is too hard?” However, Dr. Schachter says, if you don’t feel any pressure in your sinuses before you blow and then feel it afterward, you have blown too hard. And beware of a crackling sound in your ears. “That’s excess mucus being blown back into the middle ear,” he says.

Before blowing, especially when mucus is compacted in the nasal passages, Dr. Schachter recommends moistening the nasal passages with a saline spray or mist. This is especially important in the morning, since the nasal passages dry out during sleep. Simply squirt, give the mist a minute to settle and work, and then blow gently, one nostril at a time, Dr. Schachter says. He doesn’t see any added benefit in using a neti pot, a nasal-irrigation tool that floods the sinuses with water and, he says, can cause irritation....
Click to expand...

well I'm glad he says there's no benefit in using a neti pot, because that idea seems gross to me
 
https://www.theblaze.com/stories/20...eres-how-they-got-their-hands-on-the-vehicle/

How did an American plumber’s truck wind up in the hands of the Ansar al-Deen Front, an Islamist group fighting in Syria, with an anti-aircraft gun mounted in its bed?

Oberholtzer said he sold it to an AutoNation dealership in October 2013, and while he normally removes his company logo from old trucks, in this one case he didn’t.

After the Islamist group tweeted a photo of the truck, Oberholtzer said his company began getting inundated with phone calls, the Galveston County Daily News reported.
Click to expand...

B46qT1sIYAEfREj.jpg
 
Just rabbitholing around the interwebs and I came across this post from Mr. Mike Rowe. It resonated with me.

Posted 09-02-06 01:11 PM this may not get answered...a bit personal...what made you decide to not become a parent Mike...you seem like u would be a great Dad to me....guess I am so prejudice as love my kids to death and don't know what I would do without em..
Warmly,
Leeza
Posts: 21 | Registered: 08-20-06
mikerowe
Member Posted 09-03-06 02:35 PM Interesting conversation, and a tricky topic.
The question is certainly personal, and hard to answer without casting a subtle judgment on a certain lifestyle, and probably offending a few people. But what the heck? It's a foggy morning in San Francisco, and I'm feeling verbose, and I'm quite sure that a staggering number of Moms and Dads have no business being parents.
As institutions, I have no problem with marriage or parenthood, and I enjoy kids, when they're enjoyable. But the relative ease into which parenthood can be accomplished is breathtaking, especially when you consider the conspicuous lack of qualifications required. Every other undertaking in life demands some level of proven competence or maturity - from driving a car, to owning a gun, to casting a vote, to having a drink, to building a garage on your own property. Such things require licenses, permits, and permissions. But not raising kids. No. The most difficult task a human being can embark upon - the lifelong commitment of parenthood - requires no qualification whatsoever. And yet, the default question regarding having kids is always "Why not?," and not as bluechild suggests, the far more logical, "Why?"
Personally, I've never heard a really compelling, thoughtful argument for or against parenthood. All positions, when closely examined, reveal the clever workings of our true nature. Our minds are wired to justify and defend those decisions already made, or more often, our own pre-existing condition. This is normal, I think. People with families want to feel good about their decision to have kids. And people without kids don’t want to feel as though they missed out. No one likes regret. So, to preserve the illusion of our own wisdom and sanity, we build apologetics around our current situation, and define the road not taken in a way that justifies our current state. Thus, I find myself looking at my married friends, haggard and worn, surrounded by their screaming toddlers and their petulant teenagers, ungrateful and sullen, and I feel a great sense of personal relief. Likewise, my married friends probably see me as a sad and misguided vagabond who has confused freedom with happiness, and destined to wind up alone in a cold, indifferent world.
Whatever. Envy and Pity are often two sides of the same coin, depending on the kind of day you're having. And we all spend too much time looking for validation and assurances that we haven't botched up our one chance at happiness. In the end, we all just want to feel content with the life we have, so we gravitate toward those who share our choices, and look with curiosity upon those who do not. We validate, we affirm, we reassure, and we add another page to a made-up story that helps us live with the consequences of our decisions, and answer questions like “Mike, why no kids?”
Here’s my answer. My reasoning for not having kids is due to the fact that I’m selfish. And if I ever change my mind and decide to have a family, my reasoning will be the same.
Either way, it's a dirty job.
Mike
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Share this page

Top