Jonathan and Charlotte Exclusive Documentary
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Pressing times on streets of Egypt
Ruth Pollard, The Age, February 1, 2014
It doesn’t take long for a crowd to turn on you on the streets of Egypt these days.
A finger pointed, an accusation levelled, and you are literally running for your life.
For months now I have been hesitant to even pull my notebook from my bag when I am reporting from the street, such is the animosity against, and suspicion of, foreign journalists.
But I am lucky—I can usually move through a crowd, observe the mood, chat to a few people and leave quickly before drawing too much attention.
Not so photographers, whose cameras have become a magnet for angry crowds and security services who smash, grab and detain.
Two weeks ago I was a few blocks from Cairo’s Tahrir Square, interviewing stallholders and passers-by about the constitutional referendum due to begin the next day.
I had identified myself as an Australian newspaper journalist. As people began to speak, I took out my notebook.
A middle-aged man suddenly began paying close attention to my questions—little more than simple inquiries about what people thought of the constitution, was it better than the last one they had voted in a little over a year ago?
“You are from TV?” he asked. “No, a newspaper,” I replied, acutely alert to where the conversation was going.
“You are from Jazeera,” he shouted. “No,” I insisted. “A newspaper—look,” I said, gesturing around me: “I have no camera crew.”
“You are a spy,” he yelled, as people crowded around us and began repeating his accusations as if they were facts. And again: “You are from Jazeera.”
The mood darkened. There was no possibility of negotiation, no hope of discussion. It was time to run.
I dashed through the all-but-stationary traffic, turned down a side street to avoid police gathered on one corner in case they grabbed me, and in a few short minutes I came to a roundabout where the cars were moving, flagged a cab and went home.
It was an incident hardly worth mentioning. Unlike so many of my colleagues, I was not beaten by the crowd or detained by security forces.
It was just another day trying to report on the wave of revolution and crackdown, fledgling democracy and repression that Egyptians are riding.
And it was another reporting exercise cut short by an angry crowd, encouraged by an interim government, backed by a powerful security establishment and fuelled by the country’s media which are loudly feeding a tide of xenophobia that threatens to spill over at the slightest provocation. Like taking out a notebook, or interviewing the other side of politics.
The threat of arrest is ever-present. The detention of our journalist colleagues from al-Jazeera—Australian Peter Greste, dual Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, along with Egyptians Baher Mohamed, Abdullah al-Shami and Mohamed Bader—weighs heavily on our minds.
Greste, an award-winning journalist who grew up in Brisbane, was arrested with his colleagues at a Cairo hotel on December 29.
They are accused of broadcasting false news in the service of the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood.
The media have always had a difficult relationship with the powerful in Egypt. Repression was rife during president Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade rule and the Muslim Brotherhood-backed government of Mohamed Mursi sought to quash criticism of his short-lived, dysfunctional administration.
But the targeting of journalists from al-Jazeera English over the network’s alleged pro-Brotherhood stance—a charge denied by al-Jazeera executives—has spilt over to encompass all foreign media.
I will no longer answer “sahafia”—the feminine form of “journalist” in Arabic—when I am asked what I do. Not since a taxi driver took a journalist straight to a police station after he revealed his profession.
Soon after the incident downtown I travelled with a photographer to Fayoum, two hours from Cairo, to report on the second day of voting in the constitutional referendum.
Soldiers backed by local plain-clothes police armed with shotguns were in control of every polling booth. A judge oversaw the voting inside.
During the day our every move—interviewing voters, taking photos or seeking a judge’s permission to enter the room—was filmed by a soldier on his mobile phone.
Our driver was also filmed, his identity now inextricably linked to the foreign journalists he takes with extreme care from point A to point B.
Despite the lure of great pictures and interviews, we decided against getting out of the car in the local markets. The mood felt wrong, the threat of violence too great.
During an earlier visit to the site of a bomb blast in Cairo’s Nasr City, my colleague and I lasted just over seven minutes observing and photographing the wreckage before security police challenged our presence and it seemed the crowd could turn on us.
Only a month ago I worried that a quick visit to a protest or bomb blast site was not enough to do a decent reporting job. Now I wonder if I should go at all.
At least 12 journalists were detained and several were wounded as they tried to cover the third anniversary of the overthrow of Mubarak.
Almost every journalist and photographer I know has been detained, and those of us who haven’t have regularly run for cover, hiding in residential buildings, ducking into cafes, talking our way into the safety of a big hotel.
The threat of being detained, or a crowd turning on us, versus the need to cover the story, is a constant debate among those covering Egypt.
Every day we hope we have the right answer, because one wrong move can be devastating.
It doesn’t take long for a crowd to turn on you on the streets of Egypt these days.
A finger pointed, an accusation levelled, and you are literally running for your life.
For months now I have been hesitant to even pull my notebook from my bag when I am reporting from the street, such is the animosity against, and suspicion of, foreign journalists.
But I am lucky—I can usually move through a crowd, observe the mood, chat to a few people and leave quickly before drawing too much attention.
Not so photographers, whose cameras have become a magnet for angry crowds and security services who smash, grab and detain.
Two weeks ago I was a few blocks from Cairo’s Tahrir Square, interviewing stallholders and passers-by about the constitutional referendum due to begin the next day.
I had identified myself as an Australian newspaper journalist. As people began to speak, I took out my notebook.
A middle-aged man suddenly began paying close attention to my questions—little more than simple inquiries about what people thought of the constitution, was it better than the last one they had voted in a little over a year ago?
“You are from TV?” he asked. “No, a newspaper,” I replied, acutely alert to where the conversation was going.
“You are from Jazeera,” he shouted. “No,” I insisted. “A newspaper—look,” I said, gesturing around me: “I have no camera crew.”
“You are a spy,” he yelled, as people crowded around us and began repeating his accusations as if they were facts. And again: “You are from Jazeera.”
The mood darkened. There was no possibility of negotiation, no hope of discussion. It was time to run.
I dashed through the all-but-stationary traffic, turned down a side street to avoid police gathered on one corner in case they grabbed me, and in a few short minutes I came to a roundabout where the cars were moving, flagged a cab and went home.
It was an incident hardly worth mentioning. Unlike so many of my colleagues, I was not beaten by the crowd or detained by security forces.
It was just another day trying to report on the wave of revolution and crackdown, fledgling democracy and repression that Egyptians are riding.
And it was another reporting exercise cut short by an angry crowd, encouraged by an interim government, backed by a powerful security establishment and fuelled by the country’s media which are loudly feeding a tide of xenophobia that threatens to spill over at the slightest provocation. Like taking out a notebook, or interviewing the other side of politics.
The threat of arrest is ever-present. The detention of our journalist colleagues from al-Jazeera—Australian Peter Greste, dual Egyptian-Canadian Mohamed Fadel Fahmy, along with Egyptians Baher Mohamed, Abdullah al-Shami and Mohamed Bader—weighs heavily on our minds.
Greste, an award-winning journalist who grew up in Brisbane, was arrested with his colleagues at a Cairo hotel on December 29.
They are accused of broadcasting false news in the service of the blacklisted Muslim Brotherhood.
The media have always had a difficult relationship with the powerful in Egypt. Repression was rife during president Hosni Mubarak’s three-decade rule and the Muslim Brotherhood-backed government of Mohamed Mursi sought to quash criticism of his short-lived, dysfunctional administration.
But the targeting of journalists from al-Jazeera English over the network’s alleged pro-Brotherhood stance—a charge denied by al-Jazeera executives—has spilt over to encompass all foreign media.
I will no longer answer “sahafia”—the feminine form of “journalist” in Arabic—when I am asked what I do. Not since a taxi driver took a journalist straight to a police station after he revealed his profession.
Soon after the incident downtown I travelled with a photographer to Fayoum, two hours from Cairo, to report on the second day of voting in the constitutional referendum.
Soldiers backed by local plain-clothes police armed with shotguns were in control of every polling booth. A judge oversaw the voting inside.
During the day our every move—interviewing voters, taking photos or seeking a judge’s permission to enter the room—was filmed by a soldier on his mobile phone.
Our driver was also filmed, his identity now inextricably linked to the foreign journalists he takes with extreme care from point A to point B.
Despite the lure of great pictures and interviews, we decided against getting out of the car in the local markets. The mood felt wrong, the threat of violence too great.
During an earlier visit to the site of a bomb blast in Cairo’s Nasr City, my colleague and I lasted just over seven minutes observing and photographing the wreckage before security police challenged our presence and it seemed the crowd could turn on us.
Only a month ago I worried that a quick visit to a protest or bomb blast site was not enough to do a decent reporting job. Now I wonder if I should go at all.
At least 12 journalists were detained and several were wounded as they tried to cover the third anniversary of the overthrow of Mubarak.
Almost every journalist and photographer I know has been detained, and those of us who haven’t have regularly run for cover, hiding in residential buildings, ducking into cafes, talking our way into the safety of a big hotel.
The threat of being detained, or a crowd turning on us, versus the need to cover the story, is a constant debate among those covering Egypt.
Every day we hope we have the right answer, because one wrong move can be devastating.
Proof Of Vodka’s Grasp: Russian Men Still Dying Young
By Alice G. Walton, Forbes, Jan. 31, 2014
A quarter of Russian men die before the age of 55, according to a new study in The Lancet. If this sounds high, it is. In contrast, just 7% of men in the UK die before 55. The new large-scale study tracked Russian men over time, finding that much of the high death rate was due to alcohol and alcohol-related causes. And although the vodka-related mortality rate was always fairly high in Russia, some interesting patterns emerged—namely, that the death rate waxed and waned according to how government alcohol policies changed over the years.
The new study asked 151,000 living men about their alcohol use while they were still living. The men were followed for a decade, and researchers tracked how many died, and from what cause.
It turned out that the risk of death for 35-55 year old men consuming three or more half-liter bottles per week was 35%. This jumped to a whopping 64% for men between 55 and 74. The authors say that their “study strongly reinforces other evidence that vodka is a major cause of the high risk of premature death in Russian adults.”
For more moderate consumers between ages 35 and 55, the story was less grim. Men who drank less than a bottle per week had only a 16% chance of dying. Those who drank 1 to 2.9 bottles per week had a 20% risk of dying.
The causes of death? Most were due to alcohol poisoning, accidents, violence, suicide, and to another group of diseases, including throat cancer, liver cancer, tuberculosis, pneumonia, pancreatitis, liver disease, acute ischemic heart disease, and other unspecified medical conditions.
The big caveat is that just about all of the men were smokers; the authors say that in Russia heavy drinking and heavy smoking are almost inextricably linked, which makes the situation even more difficult to pull apart. But there’s also hope, the authors say.
What’s interesting is that alcohol-related deaths fluctuated with the times. After Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1985 alcohol restrictions, the authors point out, alcohol consumption—and deaths—fell by 25%. But after the fall of communism, both went way up. And after the alcohol policy reforms in 2006, consumption was reduced again by about a third.
“Russian death rates have fluctuated wildly over the past 30 years as alcohol restrictions and social stability varied under Presidents Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin, and the main thing driving these wild fluctuations in death was vodka,” said study author Sir Richard Peto. “This has been shown in retrospective studies, and now we’ve confirmed it in a big, reliable prospective study.”
And the study may have even underestimated the effect, according to the authors, since drinking habits likely shifted over time.
As study author David Zaridze told the BBC, much of the problem is due to the kind of drinking the men engage in. “They binge drink. That’s the main problem. It’s the pattern of drinking not the per-capita amount they are drinking… They sometimes say it’s because of the cold weather but this is just an excuse. This is the nation’s lifestyle that needs to change.”
Luckily, the trends suggest that change is possible, and it can happen relatively quickly. “The significant decline in Russian mortality rates following the introduction of moderate alcohol controls in 2006 demonstrates the reversibility of the health crisis from hazardous drinking,” said Zaridze. “People who drink spirits in hazardous ways greatly reduce their risk of premature death as soon as they stop.”
A quarter of Russian men die before the age of 55, according to a new study in The Lancet. If this sounds high, it is. In contrast, just 7% of men in the UK die before 55. The new large-scale study tracked Russian men over time, finding that much of the high death rate was due to alcohol and alcohol-related causes. And although the vodka-related mortality rate was always fairly high in Russia, some interesting patterns emerged—namely, that the death rate waxed and waned according to how government alcohol policies changed over the years.
The new study asked 151,000 living men about their alcohol use while they were still living. The men were followed for a decade, and researchers tracked how many died, and from what cause.
It turned out that the risk of death for 35-55 year old men consuming three or more half-liter bottles per week was 35%. This jumped to a whopping 64% for men between 55 and 74. The authors say that their “study strongly reinforces other evidence that vodka is a major cause of the high risk of premature death in Russian adults.”
For more moderate consumers between ages 35 and 55, the story was less grim. Men who drank less than a bottle per week had only a 16% chance of dying. Those who drank 1 to 2.9 bottles per week had a 20% risk of dying.
The causes of death? Most were due to alcohol poisoning, accidents, violence, suicide, and to another group of diseases, including throat cancer, liver cancer, tuberculosis, pneumonia, pancreatitis, liver disease, acute ischemic heart disease, and other unspecified medical conditions.
The big caveat is that just about all of the men were smokers; the authors say that in Russia heavy drinking and heavy smoking are almost inextricably linked, which makes the situation even more difficult to pull apart. But there’s also hope, the authors say.
What’s interesting is that alcohol-related deaths fluctuated with the times. After Mikhail Gorbachev’s 1985 alcohol restrictions, the authors point out, alcohol consumption—and deaths—fell by 25%. But after the fall of communism, both went way up. And after the alcohol policy reforms in 2006, consumption was reduced again by about a third.
“Russian death rates have fluctuated wildly over the past 30 years as alcohol restrictions and social stability varied under Presidents Gorbachev, Yeltsin, and Putin, and the main thing driving these wild fluctuations in death was vodka,” said study author Sir Richard Peto. “This has been shown in retrospective studies, and now we’ve confirmed it in a big, reliable prospective study.”
And the study may have even underestimated the effect, according to the authors, since drinking habits likely shifted over time.
As study author David Zaridze told the BBC, much of the problem is due to the kind of drinking the men engage in. “They binge drink. That’s the main problem. It’s the pattern of drinking not the per-capita amount they are drinking… They sometimes say it’s because of the cold weather but this is just an excuse. This is the nation’s lifestyle that needs to change.”
Luckily, the trends suggest that change is possible, and it can happen relatively quickly. “The significant decline in Russian mortality rates following the introduction of moderate alcohol controls in 2006 demonstrates the reversibility of the health crisis from hazardous drinking,” said Zaridze. “People who drink spirits in hazardous ways greatly reduce their risk of premature death as soon as they stop.”
Why the rich are freaking out
By Ben White, Politico, January 30, 2014
NEW YORK—The co-founder of one the nation’s oldest venture capital firms fears a possible genocide against the wealthy. Residents of Manhattan’s tony Upper East Side say the progressive mayor didn’t plow their streets as a form of frosty revenge. And the co-founder of Home Depot recently warned the Pope to pipe down about economic inequality.
The nation’s wealthiest, denizens of the loftiest slice of the 1 percent, appear to be having a collective meltdown.
Economists, advisers to the wealthy and the wealthy themselves describe a deep-seated anxiety that the national—and even global—mood is turning against the super-rich in ways that ultimately could prove dangerous and hard to control.
President Barack Obama and the Democrats have pivoted to income inequality ahead of the midterm elections. Pope Francis has strongly warned against the dangers of wealth concentration. And all of this follows the rise of the Occupy movement in 2011 and a bout of bank-bashing populism in the tea party.
The collective result, according to one member of the 1 percent, is a fear that the rich are in deep, deep trouble. Maybe not today but soon.
“You have a bunch of people who see conspiracies everywhere and believe that this inequality issue will quickly turn into serious class warfare,” said this person, who asked not to be identified by name so as not to anger any wealthy friends. “They don’t believe inequality is bad and believe the only way to deal with it is to allow entrepreneurs to have even fewer shackles.”
And so the rich are lashing out.
In the latest example, Thomas Perkins, co-founder of legendary Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal over the weekend comparing Nazi Germany’s persecution and mass murder of Jews to “the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich.’”
He went on to say he feared a progressive “Kristallnacht,” referring to the 1938 German pogrom in which nearly 100 Jews were killed and more than 30,000 arrested, a dark omen of the murder of 6 million that would follow.
People, to put it mildly, went nuts. Even Perkins’s old firm disavowed him and his comments and said he no longer has anything to do with the company. Perkins then went on Bloomberg television, ostensibly to apologize for the remark. But instead he doubled down on the analogy, saying “when you start to use hatred against a minority, it can get out of control.”
Perkins was not the first wealthy investor to invoke Nazi Germany as a warning over current attitudes toward the wealthy. In 2010, when Obama suggested raising the tax on “carried interest” earned by private equity executives, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman said, “It’s a war. It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”
Obama still hasn’t managed to persuade Congress to hike the 20 percent rate on carried interest even though most on Wall Street expect to lose the perk at some point. Schwarzman eventually apologized for his Hitler remark.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman this week wrote that even plutocrats who manage not to invoke Nazi Germany “nonetheless hold, and loudly express, political and economic views that combine paranoia and megalomania in equal measure.”
The phenomenon is not limited to the U.S. Bankers across the globe who gathered for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week complained publicly and privately that in their view vilification of the rich, particularly in the financial industry, has gone far enough.
“Life is hard enough, and I think this constant lecturing on ethics and on integrity by many stakeholders is probably the most frustrating part of the equation. Because I don’t think there are many people who are perfect,” Sergio Ermotti, chief executive of UBS AG, told The Wall Street Journal. “We are far from being perfect … but it’s not going to be very helpful to be constantly bashing banks.”
But perhaps nowhere is the collective freakout more pronounced than the financial capital of the world. Here in New York, even wealthy donors who tend to favor Democrats are deeply concerned about the current political discourse at the city level in which de Blasio wants to increase taxes on the rich, and the national level, in which Democrats have pledged to make the 2014 midterm elections about addressing economic inequality.
“I think this is going to be disastrous for the city,” one top executive at a large Wall Street bank said on the eve of de Blasio’s election. “The people who pay taxes could move out, the businesses could leave. What’s keeping us here?”
At one level, the reaction seems dramatically out of proportion to anything any politician is actually proposing. And recent comments from the super-wealthy can seem baffling—and infuriating—to the vast majority of Americans who occupy much less rarefied air and now have myriad social media forums to castigate what they view as deeply out-of-touch whining from the plutocrat class.
Nothing Obama proposed in his relatively mild State of the Union address would do much to impact the lives of the nation’s top earners. Raising the minimum wage wouldn’t do it. Nor would extending unemployment benefits or instituting universal pre-kindergarten.
Even the president’s toughest lines on the issue of inequality were hardly the kind of fire-and-brimstone condemnation that Franklin D. Roosevelt heaped on bankers’ heads in the 1930s.
“After four years of economic growth, corporate profits and stock prices have rarely been higher, and those at the top have never done better,” Obama said. “But average wages have barely budged. Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled.”
That was pretty much it.
Obama made no call to raise taxes further on the rich, who still enjoy rates dramatically lower than they were through most of the booming 1980s. He did not summon Occupy Wall Street protesters back to the barricades or threaten new actions to bust up big banks.
Meanwhile, de Blasio has no power to raise taxes unilaterally on the rich despite his fiery campaign rhetoric.
On a practical level, the wealthy are jumping at shadows.
“None of the issues currently on the table would have a large effect on the very rich,” said Justin Wolfers, economics professor at the University of Michigan. “If there is anything driving this rise in rhetoric, it’s that the president pivoted to talking about inequality, which some interpret as taking from the 1 percent and giving to the 99 percent.”
People who counsel the wealthy for a living say there is both an unease with growing income disparity and a fear of even greater persecution.
“I think that with Occupy Wall Street there was a sense of the heat getting turned up and a feeling of vilification and potential danger,” said Jamie Traeger-Muney, a psychologist whose Wealth Legacy Group focuses on counseling the affluent. “There is a worry among our clients that they are being judged and people are making assumptions about who they are based on their wealth.”
Much of the current anxiety is also driven by the precarious nature of the recovery from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The U.S. economy is showing signs of picking up speed with job creation and consumer confidence on the rise. But there is still an enormous sense of national pessimism about the future, as evidenced in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that showed 68 percent of Americans believe the country is stagnant or worse off since the president took office in 2009.
And the recent stock market swoon, the bad December jobs report and gyrations in emerging market currencies could convince some wealthy Americans that their pessimism is well-founded and that another economic downturn is not far off—and might carry even greater risks for the rich.
“People are very anxious about the decline in the stock market and feel that this may be just a hollow shell of a recovery, and we may see in the next few years that things really haven’t changed,” said Louis Hyman, a historian of capitalism at Cornell. “They are afraid the critics are right and that inequality really is a driver of all this, and are afraid of what that means for them.”
NEW YORK—The co-founder of one the nation’s oldest venture capital firms fears a possible genocide against the wealthy. Residents of Manhattan’s tony Upper East Side say the progressive mayor didn’t plow their streets as a form of frosty revenge. And the co-founder of Home Depot recently warned the Pope to pipe down about economic inequality.
The nation’s wealthiest, denizens of the loftiest slice of the 1 percent, appear to be having a collective meltdown.
Economists, advisers to the wealthy and the wealthy themselves describe a deep-seated anxiety that the national—and even global—mood is turning against the super-rich in ways that ultimately could prove dangerous and hard to control.
President Barack Obama and the Democrats have pivoted to income inequality ahead of the midterm elections. Pope Francis has strongly warned against the dangers of wealth concentration. And all of this follows the rise of the Occupy movement in 2011 and a bout of bank-bashing populism in the tea party.
The collective result, according to one member of the 1 percent, is a fear that the rich are in deep, deep trouble. Maybe not today but soon.
“You have a bunch of people who see conspiracies everywhere and believe that this inequality issue will quickly turn into serious class warfare,” said this person, who asked not to be identified by name so as not to anger any wealthy friends. “They don’t believe inequality is bad and believe the only way to deal with it is to allow entrepreneurs to have even fewer shackles.”
And so the rich are lashing out.
In the latest example, Thomas Perkins, co-founder of legendary Silicon Valley venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, wrote a letter to The Wall Street Journal over the weekend comparing Nazi Germany’s persecution and mass murder of Jews to “the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich.’”
He went on to say he feared a progressive “Kristallnacht,” referring to the 1938 German pogrom in which nearly 100 Jews were killed and more than 30,000 arrested, a dark omen of the murder of 6 million that would follow.
People, to put it mildly, went nuts. Even Perkins’s old firm disavowed him and his comments and said he no longer has anything to do with the company. Perkins then went on Bloomberg television, ostensibly to apologize for the remark. But instead he doubled down on the analogy, saying “when you start to use hatred against a minority, it can get out of control.”
Perkins was not the first wealthy investor to invoke Nazi Germany as a warning over current attitudes toward the wealthy. In 2010, when Obama suggested raising the tax on “carried interest” earned by private equity executives, Blackstone CEO Stephen Schwarzman said, “It’s a war. It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”
Obama still hasn’t managed to persuade Congress to hike the 20 percent rate on carried interest even though most on Wall Street expect to lose the perk at some point. Schwarzman eventually apologized for his Hitler remark.
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman this week wrote that even plutocrats who manage not to invoke Nazi Germany “nonetheless hold, and loudly express, political and economic views that combine paranoia and megalomania in equal measure.”
The phenomenon is not limited to the U.S. Bankers across the globe who gathered for the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week complained publicly and privately that in their view vilification of the rich, particularly in the financial industry, has gone far enough.
“Life is hard enough, and I think this constant lecturing on ethics and on integrity by many stakeholders is probably the most frustrating part of the equation. Because I don’t think there are many people who are perfect,” Sergio Ermotti, chief executive of UBS AG, told The Wall Street Journal. “We are far from being perfect … but it’s not going to be very helpful to be constantly bashing banks.”
But perhaps nowhere is the collective freakout more pronounced than the financial capital of the world. Here in New York, even wealthy donors who tend to favor Democrats are deeply concerned about the current political discourse at the city level in which de Blasio wants to increase taxes on the rich, and the national level, in which Democrats have pledged to make the 2014 midterm elections about addressing economic inequality.
“I think this is going to be disastrous for the city,” one top executive at a large Wall Street bank said on the eve of de Blasio’s election. “The people who pay taxes could move out, the businesses could leave. What’s keeping us here?”
At one level, the reaction seems dramatically out of proportion to anything any politician is actually proposing. And recent comments from the super-wealthy can seem baffling—and infuriating—to the vast majority of Americans who occupy much less rarefied air and now have myriad social media forums to castigate what they view as deeply out-of-touch whining from the plutocrat class.
Nothing Obama proposed in his relatively mild State of the Union address would do much to impact the lives of the nation’s top earners. Raising the minimum wage wouldn’t do it. Nor would extending unemployment benefits or instituting universal pre-kindergarten.
Even the president’s toughest lines on the issue of inequality were hardly the kind of fire-and-brimstone condemnation that Franklin D. Roosevelt heaped on bankers’ heads in the 1930s.
“After four years of economic growth, corporate profits and stock prices have rarely been higher, and those at the top have never done better,” Obama said. “But average wages have barely budged. Inequality has deepened. Upward mobility has stalled.”
That was pretty much it.
Obama made no call to raise taxes further on the rich, who still enjoy rates dramatically lower than they were through most of the booming 1980s. He did not summon Occupy Wall Street protesters back to the barricades or threaten new actions to bust up big banks.
Meanwhile, de Blasio has no power to raise taxes unilaterally on the rich despite his fiery campaign rhetoric.
On a practical level, the wealthy are jumping at shadows.
“None of the issues currently on the table would have a large effect on the very rich,” said Justin Wolfers, economics professor at the University of Michigan. “If there is anything driving this rise in rhetoric, it’s that the president pivoted to talking about inequality, which some interpret as taking from the 1 percent and giving to the 99 percent.”
People who counsel the wealthy for a living say there is both an unease with growing income disparity and a fear of even greater persecution.
“I think that with Occupy Wall Street there was a sense of the heat getting turned up and a feeling of vilification and potential danger,” said Jamie Traeger-Muney, a psychologist whose Wealth Legacy Group focuses on counseling the affluent. “There is a worry among our clients that they are being judged and people are making assumptions about who they are based on their wealth.”
Much of the current anxiety is also driven by the precarious nature of the recovery from the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression.
The U.S. economy is showing signs of picking up speed with job creation and consumer confidence on the rise. But there is still an enormous sense of national pessimism about the future, as evidenced in the latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll that showed 68 percent of Americans believe the country is stagnant or worse off since the president took office in 2009.
And the recent stock market swoon, the bad December jobs report and gyrations in emerging market currencies could convince some wealthy Americans that their pessimism is well-founded and that another economic downturn is not far off—and might carry even greater risks for the rich.
“People are very anxious about the decline in the stock market and feel that this may be just a hollow shell of a recovery, and we may see in the next few years that things really haven’t changed,” said Louis Hyman, a historian of capitalism at Cornell. “They are afraid the critics are right and that inequality really is a driver of all this, and are afraid of what that means for them.”
How much can an extra hour’s sleep change you
Michael Mosley, BBC News Magazine, 9 October 2013
It has been known for some time that the amount of sleep people get has, on average, declined over the years.
This has happened for a whole range of reasons, not least because we live in a culture where people are encouraged to think of sleep as a luxury—something you can easily cut back on. After all, that’s what caffeine is for—to jolt you back into life. But while the average amount of sleep we are getting has fallen, rates of obesity and diabetes have soared. Could the two be connected?
We wanted to see what the effect would be of increasing average sleep by just one hour. So we asked seven volunteers, who normally sleep anywhere between six and nine hours, to be studied at the University of Surrey’s Sleep Research Centre.
The volunteers were randomly allocated to two groups. One group was asked to sleep for six-and-a-half hours a night, the other got seven-and-a-half hours. After a week the researchers took blood tests and the volunteers were asked to switch sleep patterns. The group that had been sleeping six-and-a-half hours got an extra hour, the other group slept an hour less.
While we were waiting to see what effect this would have, I went to the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford to learn more about what actually happens when we sleep.
In the Sleep Centre, they fitted me up with a portable electro-encephalograph, a device that measures brain wave activity. Then, feeling slightly ridiculous, I went home and had my seven-and-a-half hours of sleep.
The following day I went to discuss what had happened inside my head during the night with Dr Katharina Wulff.
The first thing she pointed out was that I had very rapidly fallen into a state of deep sleep. Deep sleep sounds restful, but during it our brains are actually working hard. One of the main things the brain is doing is moving memories from short-term storage into long-term storage, allowing us more short-term memory space for the next day. If you don’t get adequate deep sleep then these memories will be lost.
You might think: “I’ll cut back during the week and then make up for it at the weekend.” Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that, because memories need to be consolidated within 24 hours of being formed.
Since deep sleep is so important for consolidating memories it is a good idea if you are revising or perhaps taking an exam to make sure that you’re getting a reasonable night’s sleep. In one study, people who failed to do so did 40% worse than their contemporaries.
Deep sleep only lasts for a few hours. My electrode results showed that during the night my brain went through multiple phases of another kind of activity, called REM sleep.
“This is the phase when you are usually paralysed—so you can’t move,” Wulff explained. But the eye muscles are not paralysed, and that’s why it’s called rapid eye movement sleep.”
During REM sleep an extraordinary thing happens. One of the stress-related chemicals in the brain, noradrenalin, is switched off. It’s the only time, day or night, this happens. It allows us to remain calm while our brains reprocess all the experiences of the day, helping us come to terms with particularly emotional events.
We get more REM sleep in the last half of the night. Which means that if you are woken unexpectedly, your brain may not have dealt with all your emotions—which could leave you stressed and anxious. Drinking alcohol late at night is not a good idea as it reduces your REM sleep while it’s being processed in your body.
Back at the University of Surrey our sleep volunteers had finished their second week of the experiment. What we wanted to see was the effect switching from six-and-a-half hours to seven-and-a-half hours, or vice versa, would have on our volunteers.
Computer tests revealed that most of them struggled with mental agility tasks when they had less sleep, but the most interesting results came from the blood tests that were run.
Dr Simon Archer and his team at Surrey University were particularly interested in looking at the genes that were switched on or off in our volunteers by changes in the amount that we had made them sleep.
“We found that overall there were around 500 genes that were affected,” Archer explained. “Some which were going up, and some which were going down.”
What they discovered is that when the volunteers cut back from seven-and-a-half to six-and-a-half hours’ sleep a night, genes that are associated with processes like inflammation, immune response and response to stress became more active. The team also saw increases in the activity of genes associated with diabetes and risk of cancer. The reverse happened when the volunteers added an hour of sleep.
So the clear message from this experiment was that if you are getting less than seven hours’ sleep a night and can alter your sleep habits, even just a little bit, it could make you healthier. “Have a lie-in, it will do you good”—that’s the kind of health message that doesn’t come along very often.
It has been known for some time that the amount of sleep people get has, on average, declined over the years.
This has happened for a whole range of reasons, not least because we live in a culture where people are encouraged to think of sleep as a luxury—something you can easily cut back on. After all, that’s what caffeine is for—to jolt you back into life. But while the average amount of sleep we are getting has fallen, rates of obesity and diabetes have soared. Could the two be connected?
We wanted to see what the effect would be of increasing average sleep by just one hour. So we asked seven volunteers, who normally sleep anywhere between six and nine hours, to be studied at the University of Surrey’s Sleep Research Centre.
The volunteers were randomly allocated to two groups. One group was asked to sleep for six-and-a-half hours a night, the other got seven-and-a-half hours. After a week the researchers took blood tests and the volunteers were asked to switch sleep patterns. The group that had been sleeping six-and-a-half hours got an extra hour, the other group slept an hour less.
While we were waiting to see what effect this would have, I went to the John Radcliffe hospital in Oxford to learn more about what actually happens when we sleep.
In the Sleep Centre, they fitted me up with a portable electro-encephalograph, a device that measures brain wave activity. Then, feeling slightly ridiculous, I went home and had my seven-and-a-half hours of sleep.
The following day I went to discuss what had happened inside my head during the night with Dr Katharina Wulff.
The first thing she pointed out was that I had very rapidly fallen into a state of deep sleep. Deep sleep sounds restful, but during it our brains are actually working hard. One of the main things the brain is doing is moving memories from short-term storage into long-term storage, allowing us more short-term memory space for the next day. If you don’t get adequate deep sleep then these memories will be lost.
You might think: “I’ll cut back during the week and then make up for it at the weekend.” Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that, because memories need to be consolidated within 24 hours of being formed.
Since deep sleep is so important for consolidating memories it is a good idea if you are revising or perhaps taking an exam to make sure that you’re getting a reasonable night’s sleep. In one study, people who failed to do so did 40% worse than their contemporaries.
Deep sleep only lasts for a few hours. My electrode results showed that during the night my brain went through multiple phases of another kind of activity, called REM sleep.
“This is the phase when you are usually paralysed—so you can’t move,” Wulff explained. But the eye muscles are not paralysed, and that’s why it’s called rapid eye movement sleep.”
During REM sleep an extraordinary thing happens. One of the stress-related chemicals in the brain, noradrenalin, is switched off. It’s the only time, day or night, this happens. It allows us to remain calm while our brains reprocess all the experiences of the day, helping us come to terms with particularly emotional events.
We get more REM sleep in the last half of the night. Which means that if you are woken unexpectedly, your brain may not have dealt with all your emotions—which could leave you stressed and anxious. Drinking alcohol late at night is not a good idea as it reduces your REM sleep while it’s being processed in your body.
Back at the University of Surrey our sleep volunteers had finished their second week of the experiment. What we wanted to see was the effect switching from six-and-a-half hours to seven-and-a-half hours, or vice versa, would have on our volunteers.
Computer tests revealed that most of them struggled with mental agility tasks when they had less sleep, but the most interesting results came from the blood tests that were run.
Dr Simon Archer and his team at Surrey University were particularly interested in looking at the genes that were switched on or off in our volunteers by changes in the amount that we had made them sleep.
“We found that overall there were around 500 genes that were affected,” Archer explained. “Some which were going up, and some which were going down.”
What they discovered is that when the volunteers cut back from seven-and-a-half to six-and-a-half hours’ sleep a night, genes that are associated with processes like inflammation, immune response and response to stress became more active. The team also saw increases in the activity of genes associated with diabetes and risk of cancer. The reverse happened when the volunteers added an hour of sleep.
So the clear message from this experiment was that if you are getting less than seven hours’ sleep a night and can alter your sleep habits, even just a little bit, it could make you healthier. “Have a lie-in, it will do you good”—that’s the kind of health message that doesn’t come along very often.
Broncos quarterback Peyton Manning’s conversion
Jim Denison, Denision Forum, Jan 28, 2014
As this year’s Super Bowl approaches, all eyes are on the weather. While some are watching conditions in the sky, this week we’re thinking about the players on the ground. Each day we’ll discover the Christian commitment of one of the Super Bowl athletes. Today we’ll hear from Peyton Manning, quarterback of the Denver Broncos.
This season, Manning scored more touchdowns and passed for more yards than any quarterback in history. He is famous for his charity work, very funny commercials, and numerous appearances on TV shows such as Saturday Night Live. What is not as well known is that he has been a committed Christian for more than two decades.
In his book Manning, co-authored with his father, Peyton tells the story of his conversion: “My faith has been number one since I was thirteen years old and heard from the pulpit on a Sunday morning in New Orleans a simple question: ‘If you died today, are you one hundred percent sure you’d go to heaven?’
“It was a big church, and I felt very small, but my heart was pounding. The minister invited those who would like that assurance through Jesus Christ to raise their hands, and I did. Then he invited us to come forward, to take a stand, and my heart really started pounding and from where we sat, it looked like a mile to the front. But I got up and did it, and I committed my life to Christ, and that faith has been most important to me ever since.”
Peyton says his four priorities, in order, are: faith, family, friends, and football. He testifies, “My faith doesn’t make me perfect, it makes me forgiven.” He describes his spiritual life: “I pray every night, sometimes long prayers about a lot of things and a lot of people, but I don’t talk about it or brag about it because that’s between God and me, and I’m no better than anyone else in God’s sight.”
He doesn’t pray to win games. Rather, “I pray to keep both teams injury free, and personally, that I use whatever talent I have to the best of my ability.” And he has made this character commitment: “Dad says it can take twenty years to make a reputation, and five minutes to ruin it. I want my reputation to be able to make it through whatever five-minute crises I run into. I’m a lot more comfortable knowing where my help is.”
The minister who led a 13-year-old boy to Christ had no idea the platform God would entrust to that young man. Dwight Moody noted, “There are many of us that are willing to do great things for the Lord, but few of us are willing to do little things.” Here’s the paradox: in God’s hands, little things done for his glory are great things for his Kingdom.
What will you do for Jesus today?
As this year’s Super Bowl approaches, all eyes are on the weather. While some are watching conditions in the sky, this week we’re thinking about the players on the ground. Each day we’ll discover the Christian commitment of one of the Super Bowl athletes. Today we’ll hear from Peyton Manning, quarterback of the Denver Broncos.
This season, Manning scored more touchdowns and passed for more yards than any quarterback in history. He is famous for his charity work, very funny commercials, and numerous appearances on TV shows such as Saturday Night Live. What is not as well known is that he has been a committed Christian for more than two decades.
In his book Manning, co-authored with his father, Peyton tells the story of his conversion: “My faith has been number one since I was thirteen years old and heard from the pulpit on a Sunday morning in New Orleans a simple question: ‘If you died today, are you one hundred percent sure you’d go to heaven?’
“It was a big church, and I felt very small, but my heart was pounding. The minister invited those who would like that assurance through Jesus Christ to raise their hands, and I did. Then he invited us to come forward, to take a stand, and my heart really started pounding and from where we sat, it looked like a mile to the front. But I got up and did it, and I committed my life to Christ, and that faith has been most important to me ever since.”
Peyton says his four priorities, in order, are: faith, family, friends, and football. He testifies, “My faith doesn’t make me perfect, it makes me forgiven.” He describes his spiritual life: “I pray every night, sometimes long prayers about a lot of things and a lot of people, but I don’t talk about it or brag about it because that’s between God and me, and I’m no better than anyone else in God’s sight.”
He doesn’t pray to win games. Rather, “I pray to keep both teams injury free, and personally, that I use whatever talent I have to the best of my ability.” And he has made this character commitment: “Dad says it can take twenty years to make a reputation, and five minutes to ruin it. I want my reputation to be able to make it through whatever five-minute crises I run into. I’m a lot more comfortable knowing where my help is.”
The minister who led a 13-year-old boy to Christ had no idea the platform God would entrust to that young man. Dwight Moody noted, “There are many of us that are willing to do great things for the Lord, but few of us are willing to do little things.” Here’s the paradox: in God’s hands, little things done for his glory are great things for his Kingdom.
What will you do for Jesus today?
Saturday, February 1, 2014
25 Things I Know Now That I’m 60
By Sally Stich, Grandparents.com, January 20, 2014
Before I turned 60, I had moments of dread unlike any big birthday before. But, as I discovered, turning 60 is a huge milestone—one to be embraced. It’s the beginning of a decade informed by wisdom, self-acceptance, love for family and friends, and best of all, great discounts that make me proud to be my age.
Here are 25 things I learned when I entered my seventh decade.
1. Patience, patience, patience. At this age, I understand that patience is the greatest virtue. That 16-year-old waitress who messed up my order could’ve been my daughter. That elderly gentleman driving 25 miles per hour reminds me of my dad. Now, I think twice before I snap, hoping that when I goof up or drive in two lanes, someone will grant me the same gift.
2. Toxic relationships aren’t worth it. The clock’s ticking, and I’m not wasting one more minute on people who bring me down, like the friend who is always complaining that I’m not supportive enough or the family member who always belittles me. Take my lead and say “Adios!” out loud or mentally wave good-bye.
3. Let the five pounds stay there. Long shirts or tunics your best friend? Good for you! I no longer obsess over those last five pounds—the hardest to lose—because it’s simply not worth the deprivation.
4. Senior discounts rock. Two bucks here, 30 percent off there—it adds up, and it seems almost naughty to get a senior discount when I feel so much younger than my age. Go to Gift Card Granny for a list of 196 discounts for seniors.
5. Being called “Ma’am” makes me feel old. Truthfully, when you call me “Ma’am” it makes me feel like I’m my mother-in-law, who is old. And don’t call me “young lady” either. It’s condescending. I don’t need any special title just because I’ve hit 60. I’m still 40 inside my head.
6. Forgetting something does not mean Alzheimer’s. Every time I forget a word or a name, I’m convinced I have Alzheimer’s. My friends are convinced they are getting Alzheimer’s, too. It seems to be the biggest worry among people over 60. (For the record, I don’t have Alzheimer’s because I researched the difference between normal memory loss and Alzheimer’s, and you can, too.) Forgetting things is a normal part of aging. It’s when we can’t remember how to do daily tasks or something that just happened, that we need to worry.
7. “Organ recitals” are very popular. I’m not talking about music, I’m talking about: “My back went out,” “My cholesterol’s too high,” “I’m having a colonoscopy tomorrow” or “My blood pressure is off the charts.” I personally don’t enjoy this kind of banter—it’s boring and aging—but I’ve learned that it comes with the territory. People like to talk about their ailments. The best thing you can do is sit politely (or excuse yourself for a glass of water) until the subject changes.
8. Sunscreen = good, sun = bad. I look at my skin and my hands and see brown spots (or age spots). These are the result of too much sun and not enough sunscreen in my youth. I’ve reversed the formula—less sun and lots of sunscreen. I’ve also discovered that a good foundation can hide those spots.
9. Facebook isn’t a waste of time. I suddenly delight in connecting with pals from my past, more so than ever before. Sure, I have wonderful friends in my adult life, but there’s something uplifting, energizing and meaningful about finding an old friend on Facebook, a friend who knew me when I was in my formative years. If you’re not on Facebook, you’re missing something.
10. Not planning for the inevitable is stupid. I’ve started thinking about things like end-of-life issues more seriously than ever before. Why? I have friends whose parents have recently died and left everything a mess. I vow to get everything in place so my kids don’t have to make tough decisions while weeping over my hospital bed.
11. Being an over-achiever doesn’t matter. Good grades in college, career success—the past doesn’t matter to me as much now. My mind is all about the present. Where once I did most activities to bump up my resumé, now I choose activities that keep my brain stimulated, which in turn makes me stimulating—and hopefully good company. At this age, I want to be current, not a dinosaur.
12. Romance still exists. As empty nesters, my husband and I split a whole cherry pie for dinner, if that’s what we want. We sleep in till 10 a.m., if there’s no compelling reason to get up. We are all about us as often as we can be. We’ve figured out that sharing the little things together keeps the spark alive.
13. Being proud of my kids isn’t boastful. I’ve lived long enough to see the fruits of my parental labor, and after years of hard work and financial sacrifice, I now sit back and see what kind of adults my children have become. I’m pleased with the results, and I think it’s okay to talk about that with friends and family.
14. Being fit is about strength, not toned abs. In a perfect world, I’d like a better butt and flat abs, but I’ll settle for feeling good and strong. “At this age, it’s about endurance, moderate strengthening, balance and stretching,” says Dr. Carly Stewart, medical expert at MoneyCrashers.com. “It’s about maintaining muscle mass so you don’t get physically weaker as you age.”
15. My hairstylist is my anti-aging consultant. When she suggested I go with a shorter ‘do because shorter styles are less aging than longer ones, I said, “Lop it off.” She was right. I get many more positive comments now.
16. Frizzy, dry hair looks bad. I now realize my dry, brittle frizzy hair (from years of processing) is the appearance equivalent of an unmade bed in an otherwise neat room. The eye only notices the messiest thing. Here again, I turn to my hairdresser for anti-aging help,
17. Invest in a good pair of tweezers. I hate to admit it, but I’ve noticed a few coarse hairs growing on my chinny chin chin—yuck! Really good, expensive tweezers can work wonders.
18. Laugh every day. An episode of The Big Bang Theory, a Dave Barry column, time with a silly friend—find little things that make you laugh every day. Besides being fun, laughter also has proven health benefits. It lowers blood pressure, reduces stress hormones, even suppresses pain. And it’s something I can do when other parts of my body fail me.
19. Problem-solving comes easier. Whether it’s because of changes in the brain that actually improve certain skills as we age, or the fact that you just don’t get to be 60 without knowing how best to get from A to B, wading through the details to figure out how to solve a problem is so much simpler than it was when we were younger.
20. Control isn’t the holy grail. Between my 20s and 50s, I believed I knew the answer to almost everything. I didn’t just suggest solutions; I inserted myself into the solution. By the time I got to my late 50s, I was exhausted, frustrated and disappointed that no one seemed to appreciate my “help.” At 60, a light bulb went on. Control does not equal happiness. The world operated just fine without my interference. The kids goof up and they can actually problem solve without me. My husband does the laundry his way and I now say, “Thank you,” rather than, “Thank you, but….”.
21. Turkeys don’t have it so good. Turkeys and I share the same neck—a fleshy, jiggly wattle. Sigh. I now invest in cool scarves and high necked shirts. And turning up the collar of a button-down shirt works wonders.
22. Forget presents; just give me your presence. When my friends ask what I want for my birthday, I tell them I want to do something together—lunch at a new restaurant, a trip to the museum, an afternoon movie, a walk. I don’t need more tchotchkes; I want time with my gal pals. It’s experiences that we remember.
23. Protecting my bones is worth it. I do strength training, get 10 minutes of vitamin D exposure several days a week (without sunscreen; it defeats the purpose), and I’ve added calcium to my diet in the form of milk, fat-free plain yogurt, fish and dark greens. I’ve also reduced my chances of falling and breaking a bone by removing small area rugs and getting up slowly to avoid dizziness. Every little bit helps.
24. It’s okay to pamper myself. After years of putting everyone else first…Need I say more?
25. Take every opportunity to express love and gratitude. I’ve reached this milestone, so why wait to tell others how I feel? My favorite phrases: “I love you” and “thank you.”
Before I turned 60, I had moments of dread unlike any big birthday before. But, as I discovered, turning 60 is a huge milestone—one to be embraced. It’s the beginning of a decade informed by wisdom, self-acceptance, love for family and friends, and best of all, great discounts that make me proud to be my age.
Here are 25 things I learned when I entered my seventh decade.
1. Patience, patience, patience. At this age, I understand that patience is the greatest virtue. That 16-year-old waitress who messed up my order could’ve been my daughter. That elderly gentleman driving 25 miles per hour reminds me of my dad. Now, I think twice before I snap, hoping that when I goof up or drive in two lanes, someone will grant me the same gift.
2. Toxic relationships aren’t worth it. The clock’s ticking, and I’m not wasting one more minute on people who bring me down, like the friend who is always complaining that I’m not supportive enough or the family member who always belittles me. Take my lead and say “Adios!” out loud or mentally wave good-bye.
3. Let the five pounds stay there. Long shirts or tunics your best friend? Good for you! I no longer obsess over those last five pounds—the hardest to lose—because it’s simply not worth the deprivation.
4. Senior discounts rock. Two bucks here, 30 percent off there—it adds up, and it seems almost naughty to get a senior discount when I feel so much younger than my age. Go to Gift Card Granny for a list of 196 discounts for seniors.
5. Being called “Ma’am” makes me feel old. Truthfully, when you call me “Ma’am” it makes me feel like I’m my mother-in-law, who is old. And don’t call me “young lady” either. It’s condescending. I don’t need any special title just because I’ve hit 60. I’m still 40 inside my head.
6. Forgetting something does not mean Alzheimer’s. Every time I forget a word or a name, I’m convinced I have Alzheimer’s. My friends are convinced they are getting Alzheimer’s, too. It seems to be the biggest worry among people over 60. (For the record, I don’t have Alzheimer’s because I researched the difference between normal memory loss and Alzheimer’s, and you can, too.) Forgetting things is a normal part of aging. It’s when we can’t remember how to do daily tasks or something that just happened, that we need to worry.
7. “Organ recitals” are very popular. I’m not talking about music, I’m talking about: “My back went out,” “My cholesterol’s too high,” “I’m having a colonoscopy tomorrow” or “My blood pressure is off the charts.” I personally don’t enjoy this kind of banter—it’s boring and aging—but I’ve learned that it comes with the territory. People like to talk about their ailments. The best thing you can do is sit politely (or excuse yourself for a glass of water) until the subject changes.
8. Sunscreen = good, sun = bad. I look at my skin and my hands and see brown spots (or age spots). These are the result of too much sun and not enough sunscreen in my youth. I’ve reversed the formula—less sun and lots of sunscreen. I’ve also discovered that a good foundation can hide those spots.
9. Facebook isn’t a waste of time. I suddenly delight in connecting with pals from my past, more so than ever before. Sure, I have wonderful friends in my adult life, but there’s something uplifting, energizing and meaningful about finding an old friend on Facebook, a friend who knew me when I was in my formative years. If you’re not on Facebook, you’re missing something.
10. Not planning for the inevitable is stupid. I’ve started thinking about things like end-of-life issues more seriously than ever before. Why? I have friends whose parents have recently died and left everything a mess. I vow to get everything in place so my kids don’t have to make tough decisions while weeping over my hospital bed.
11. Being an over-achiever doesn’t matter. Good grades in college, career success—the past doesn’t matter to me as much now. My mind is all about the present. Where once I did most activities to bump up my resumé, now I choose activities that keep my brain stimulated, which in turn makes me stimulating—and hopefully good company. At this age, I want to be current, not a dinosaur.
12. Romance still exists. As empty nesters, my husband and I split a whole cherry pie for dinner, if that’s what we want. We sleep in till 10 a.m., if there’s no compelling reason to get up. We are all about us as often as we can be. We’ve figured out that sharing the little things together keeps the spark alive.
13. Being proud of my kids isn’t boastful. I’ve lived long enough to see the fruits of my parental labor, and after years of hard work and financial sacrifice, I now sit back and see what kind of adults my children have become. I’m pleased with the results, and I think it’s okay to talk about that with friends and family.
14. Being fit is about strength, not toned abs. In a perfect world, I’d like a better butt and flat abs, but I’ll settle for feeling good and strong. “At this age, it’s about endurance, moderate strengthening, balance and stretching,” says Dr. Carly Stewart, medical expert at MoneyCrashers.com. “It’s about maintaining muscle mass so you don’t get physically weaker as you age.”
15. My hairstylist is my anti-aging consultant. When she suggested I go with a shorter ‘do because shorter styles are less aging than longer ones, I said, “Lop it off.” She was right. I get many more positive comments now.
16. Frizzy, dry hair looks bad. I now realize my dry, brittle frizzy hair (from years of processing) is the appearance equivalent of an unmade bed in an otherwise neat room. The eye only notices the messiest thing. Here again, I turn to my hairdresser for anti-aging help,
17. Invest in a good pair of tweezers. I hate to admit it, but I’ve noticed a few coarse hairs growing on my chinny chin chin—yuck! Really good, expensive tweezers can work wonders.
18. Laugh every day. An episode of The Big Bang Theory, a Dave Barry column, time with a silly friend—find little things that make you laugh every day. Besides being fun, laughter also has proven health benefits. It lowers blood pressure, reduces stress hormones, even suppresses pain. And it’s something I can do when other parts of my body fail me.
19. Problem-solving comes easier. Whether it’s because of changes in the brain that actually improve certain skills as we age, or the fact that you just don’t get to be 60 without knowing how best to get from A to B, wading through the details to figure out how to solve a problem is so much simpler than it was when we were younger.
20. Control isn’t the holy grail. Between my 20s and 50s, I believed I knew the answer to almost everything. I didn’t just suggest solutions; I inserted myself into the solution. By the time I got to my late 50s, I was exhausted, frustrated and disappointed that no one seemed to appreciate my “help.” At 60, a light bulb went on. Control does not equal happiness. The world operated just fine without my interference. The kids goof up and they can actually problem solve without me. My husband does the laundry his way and I now say, “Thank you,” rather than, “Thank you, but….”.
21. Turkeys don’t have it so good. Turkeys and I share the same neck—a fleshy, jiggly wattle. Sigh. I now invest in cool scarves and high necked shirts. And turning up the collar of a button-down shirt works wonders.
22. Forget presents; just give me your presence. When my friends ask what I want for my birthday, I tell them I want to do something together—lunch at a new restaurant, a trip to the museum, an afternoon movie, a walk. I don’t need more tchotchkes; I want time with my gal pals. It’s experiences that we remember.
23. Protecting my bones is worth it. I do strength training, get 10 minutes of vitamin D exposure several days a week (without sunscreen; it defeats the purpose), and I’ve added calcium to my diet in the form of milk, fat-free plain yogurt, fish and dark greens. I’ve also reduced my chances of falling and breaking a bone by removing small area rugs and getting up slowly to avoid dizziness. Every little bit helps.
24. It’s okay to pamper myself. After years of putting everyone else first…Need I say more?
25. Take every opportunity to express love and gratitude. I’ve reached this milestone, so why wait to tell others how I feel? My favorite phrases: “I love you” and “thank you.”
Of East and West
By Eric Metaxas, Breakpoint, January 29, 2014
If I asked you to describe the state of Christianity in Europe, you’d probably answer “not good.” And there’d be ample reason to do so. Most of us are familiar with the depressing statistics regarding church attendance in Western Europe and Scandinavia.
But there is more to Europe than Britain, France, and Sweden. And in Central and Eastern Europe, a different story is being written.
This story was the subject of a recent First Things article by Filip Mazurczak. In it, Mazurczak reveals to readers what is going on in former communist societies such as Hungary and Croatia. For instance, while the European Union omitted any mention of Europe’s Christian heritage in the preamble to its constitution, Hungary’s new constitution “ties Christianity to Hungarian nationhood.”
By way of additional contrast to the secularized E.U., the document “defines marriage as the union of a man and woman, [and] speaks of the rights of unborn Hungarians.”
An even more encouraging story is unfolding in Croatia. In December, two-thirds of the population there voted to amend the constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. For a nation aspiring for E.U. membership, this definitely went against the grain.
In fact, as Mazurczak pointed out, left to their own devices, Croatia’s elites would have caved to E.U. pressure on this issue. But they weren’t left to their own devices: fully one-fifth of Croatia’s adult population signed a petition demanding a referendum on the issue.
You shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the reaction to this and other examples of Eastern Europeans rediscovering their Christian heritage has been, frankly, hysterical. The Guardian newspaper called them “symptomatic of a Europe-wide slide back to the worst nightmares of the 20th century.”
It lumped the Croatian vote with “the French Roma expulsion, the Golden Dawn in Greece … Hungary’s far-right turn, [and] … the rise of antisemitism in Sweden [and] Islamophobia in Denmark” as “symptoms” of “the rotten heart of Europe.”
A similar paranoid intolerance was on display when American media outlets made a big deal out of cooperation between American Christians and their Russian counterparts on issues concerning the family.
What these commentators could not fathom was that anyone would disagree with them, either concerning the nature of marriage or the role of religion in public life. So, when they weren’t labeling it “moderate fascism” or part of a larger “conspiracy,” they blamed it on high levels of unemployment which, in turn, led to intolerance of minorities.
What they’re unwilling or incapable of considering is that the turn toward Christianity in Central and Eastern Europe is born of an acknowledgment that something vital is missing from people’s lives. People who were force-fed atheism have a hard-earned appreciation of how empty life can be when God is automatically excluded from the equation.
In Russia, “more monasteries and parishes are reopened, growing numbers of Russians profess belief in God, and more young Russians are choosing a religious vocation.” Vladimir Putin may be taking advantage of Russians’ hunger for God, but he didn’t create that hunger. Seventy-four years of state-sponsored atheism, and the wreck it left in its wake, did that all by itself.
Thus we are left with, in Mazurczak’s words, “a West that has largely abandoned its religious roots, and an East that is rediscovering its heritage.” Two completely different stories.
If I asked you to describe the state of Christianity in Europe, you’d probably answer “not good.” And there’d be ample reason to do so. Most of us are familiar with the depressing statistics regarding church attendance in Western Europe and Scandinavia.
But there is more to Europe than Britain, France, and Sweden. And in Central and Eastern Europe, a different story is being written.
This story was the subject of a recent First Things article by Filip Mazurczak. In it, Mazurczak reveals to readers what is going on in former communist societies such as Hungary and Croatia. For instance, while the European Union omitted any mention of Europe’s Christian heritage in the preamble to its constitution, Hungary’s new constitution “ties Christianity to Hungarian nationhood.”
By way of additional contrast to the secularized E.U., the document “defines marriage as the union of a man and woman, [and] speaks of the rights of unborn Hungarians.”
An even more encouraging story is unfolding in Croatia. In December, two-thirds of the population there voted to amend the constitution to define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. For a nation aspiring for E.U. membership, this definitely went against the grain.
In fact, as Mazurczak pointed out, left to their own devices, Croatia’s elites would have caved to E.U. pressure on this issue. But they weren’t left to their own devices: fully one-fifth of Croatia’s adult population signed a petition demanding a referendum on the issue.
You shouldn’t be surprised to learn that the reaction to this and other examples of Eastern Europeans rediscovering their Christian heritage has been, frankly, hysterical. The Guardian newspaper called them “symptomatic of a Europe-wide slide back to the worst nightmares of the 20th century.”
It lumped the Croatian vote with “the French Roma expulsion, the Golden Dawn in Greece … Hungary’s far-right turn, [and] … the rise of antisemitism in Sweden [and] Islamophobia in Denmark” as “symptoms” of “the rotten heart of Europe.”
A similar paranoid intolerance was on display when American media outlets made a big deal out of cooperation between American Christians and their Russian counterparts on issues concerning the family.
What these commentators could not fathom was that anyone would disagree with them, either concerning the nature of marriage or the role of religion in public life. So, when they weren’t labeling it “moderate fascism” or part of a larger “conspiracy,” they blamed it on high levels of unemployment which, in turn, led to intolerance of minorities.
What they’re unwilling or incapable of considering is that the turn toward Christianity in Central and Eastern Europe is born of an acknowledgment that something vital is missing from people’s lives. People who were force-fed atheism have a hard-earned appreciation of how empty life can be when God is automatically excluded from the equation.
In Russia, “more monasteries and parishes are reopened, growing numbers of Russians profess belief in God, and more young Russians are choosing a religious vocation.” Vladimir Putin may be taking advantage of Russians’ hunger for God, but he didn’t create that hunger. Seventy-four years of state-sponsored atheism, and the wreck it left in its wake, did that all by itself.
Thus we are left with, in Mazurczak’s words, “a West that has largely abandoned its religious roots, and an East that is rediscovering its heritage.” Two completely different stories.
Exercise to Age Well, Whatever Your Age
By Gretchen Reynolds, NY Times, Jan. 29, 2014
Offering hope and encouragement to the many adults who have somehow neglected to exercise for the past few decades, a new study suggests that becoming physically active in middle age, even if someone has been sedentary for years, substantially reduces the likelihood that he or she will become seriously ill or physically disabled in retirement.
The new study joins a growing body of research examining successful aging, a topic of considerable scientific interest, as the populations of the United States and Europe grow older, and so do many scientists. When the term is used in research, successful aging means more than simply remaining alive, although that, obviously, is the baseline requirement. Successful aging involves minimal debility past the age of 65 or so, with little or no serious chronic disease diagnoses, depression, cognitive decline or physical infirmities that would prevent someone from living independently.
Previous epidemiological studies have found that several, unsurprising factors contribute to successful aging. Not smoking is one, as is moderate alcohol consumption, and so, unfairly or not, is having money. People with greater economic resources tend to develop fewer health problems later in life than people who are not well-off.
But being physically active during adulthood is particularly important. In one large-scale study published last fall that looked at more than 12,000 Australian men aged between 65 and 83, those who engaged in about 30 minutes of exercise five or so times per week were much healthier and less likely to be dead 11 years after the start of the study than those who were sedentary, even when the researchers adjusted for smoking habits, education, body mass index and other variables.
Whether exercise habits need to have been established and maintained throughout adulthood, however, in order to affect aging has been less clear. If someone has slacked off on his or her exercise resolutions during young adulthood and early middle-age, in other words, is it too late to start exercising and still have a meaningful impact on health and longevity in later life?
To address that issue, researchers with the Physical Activity Research Group at University College London and other institutions turned recently to the large trove of data contained in the ongoing English Longitudinal Study of Aging, which has tracked the health habits of tens of thousands of British citizens for decades, checking in with participants multiple times and asking them how they currently eat, exercise, feel and generally live.
For the study, appearing in the February issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, scientists isolated responses from 3,454 healthy, disease-free British men and women aged between 55 and 73 who, upon joining the original study of aging, had provided clear details about their exercise habits, as well as their health, and who then had repeated that information after an additional eight years.
The researchers stratified the chosen respondents into those who were physically active or not at the study’s start, using the extremely generous definition of one hour per week of moderate or vigorous activity to qualify someone as active. Formal exercise was not required. An hour per week of “gardening, cleaning the car, walking at a moderate pace, or dancing” counted, said Mark Hamer, a researcher at University College London who led the study.
The scientists then re-sorted the respondents after the eight-year follow-up, marking them as having remained active, become active, remained inactive or become inactive as they moved into and through middle-age. They also quantified each respondent’s health throughout those years, based on diagnosed diabetes, heart disease, dementia or other serious conditions. And the scientists directly contacted their respondents, asking each to complete objective tests of memory and thinking, and a few to wear an activity monitor for a week, to determine whether self-reported levels of physical activity matched actual levels of physical activity. (They did.)
In the eight years between the study’s start and end, the data showed, those respondents who had been and remained physically active aged most successfully, with the lowest incidence of major chronic diseases, memory loss and physical disability. But those people who became active in middle-age after having been sedentary in prior years, about 9 percent of the total, aged almost as successfully. These late-in-life exercisers had about a seven-fold reduction in their risk of becoming ill or infirm after eight years compared with those who became or remained sedentary, even when the researchers took into account smoking, wealth and other factors.
Those results reaffirm both other science and common sense. A noteworthy 2009 study of more than 2,000 middle-aged men, for instance, found that those who started to exercise after the age of 50 were far less likely to die during the next 35 years than those who were and remained sedentary.
But in this study, the volunteers did not merely live longer; they lived better than those who were not active, making the message inarguable for those of us in mid-life. “Build activity into your daily life,” Dr. Hamer said. Or, in concrete terms, if you don’t already, dance, wash your car and, if your talents allow (mine don’t), combine the two.
Offering hope and encouragement to the many adults who have somehow neglected to exercise for the past few decades, a new study suggests that becoming physically active in middle age, even if someone has been sedentary for years, substantially reduces the likelihood that he or she will become seriously ill or physically disabled in retirement.
The new study joins a growing body of research examining successful aging, a topic of considerable scientific interest, as the populations of the United States and Europe grow older, and so do many scientists. When the term is used in research, successful aging means more than simply remaining alive, although that, obviously, is the baseline requirement. Successful aging involves minimal debility past the age of 65 or so, with little or no serious chronic disease diagnoses, depression, cognitive decline or physical infirmities that would prevent someone from living independently.
Previous epidemiological studies have found that several, unsurprising factors contribute to successful aging. Not smoking is one, as is moderate alcohol consumption, and so, unfairly or not, is having money. People with greater economic resources tend to develop fewer health problems later in life than people who are not well-off.
But being physically active during adulthood is particularly important. In one large-scale study published last fall that looked at more than 12,000 Australian men aged between 65 and 83, those who engaged in about 30 minutes of exercise five or so times per week were much healthier and less likely to be dead 11 years after the start of the study than those who were sedentary, even when the researchers adjusted for smoking habits, education, body mass index and other variables.
Whether exercise habits need to have been established and maintained throughout adulthood, however, in order to affect aging has been less clear. If someone has slacked off on his or her exercise resolutions during young adulthood and early middle-age, in other words, is it too late to start exercising and still have a meaningful impact on health and longevity in later life?
To address that issue, researchers with the Physical Activity Research Group at University College London and other institutions turned recently to the large trove of data contained in the ongoing English Longitudinal Study of Aging, which has tracked the health habits of tens of thousands of British citizens for decades, checking in with participants multiple times and asking them how they currently eat, exercise, feel and generally live.
For the study, appearing in the February issue of the British Journal of Sports Medicine, scientists isolated responses from 3,454 healthy, disease-free British men and women aged between 55 and 73 who, upon joining the original study of aging, had provided clear details about their exercise habits, as well as their health, and who then had repeated that information after an additional eight years.
The researchers stratified the chosen respondents into those who were physically active or not at the study’s start, using the extremely generous definition of one hour per week of moderate or vigorous activity to qualify someone as active. Formal exercise was not required. An hour per week of “gardening, cleaning the car, walking at a moderate pace, or dancing” counted, said Mark Hamer, a researcher at University College London who led the study.
The scientists then re-sorted the respondents after the eight-year follow-up, marking them as having remained active, become active, remained inactive or become inactive as they moved into and through middle-age. They also quantified each respondent’s health throughout those years, based on diagnosed diabetes, heart disease, dementia or other serious conditions. And the scientists directly contacted their respondents, asking each to complete objective tests of memory and thinking, and a few to wear an activity monitor for a week, to determine whether self-reported levels of physical activity matched actual levels of physical activity. (They did.)
In the eight years between the study’s start and end, the data showed, those respondents who had been and remained physically active aged most successfully, with the lowest incidence of major chronic diseases, memory loss and physical disability. But those people who became active in middle-age after having been sedentary in prior years, about 9 percent of the total, aged almost as successfully. These late-in-life exercisers had about a seven-fold reduction in their risk of becoming ill or infirm after eight years compared with those who became or remained sedentary, even when the researchers took into account smoking, wealth and other factors.
Those results reaffirm both other science and common sense. A noteworthy 2009 study of more than 2,000 middle-aged men, for instance, found that those who started to exercise after the age of 50 were far less likely to die during the next 35 years than those who were and remained sedentary.
But in this study, the volunteers did not merely live longer; they lived better than those who were not active, making the message inarguable for those of us in mid-life. “Build activity into your daily life,” Dr. Hamer said. Or, in concrete terms, if you don’t already, dance, wash your car and, if your talents allow (mine don’t), combine the two.
