Obama voted in the US senate against the Central American Free Trade Agreement, is a critic of the free trade agreement with China, and expresses strong reservations about trade deals in general.

He has even threatened to withdraw the US from the North American Free Trade Agreement – which created the largest trading bloc in the world – if the other members, Canada and Mexico, do not agree to renegotiate its terms.

This statement is reinforced by an article on Obama’s website; an article he wrote for the Chicago Tribune in 2005.

Globalization is not someone’s political agenda. It is a technological revolution that is fundamentally changing the world’s economy, producing winners and losers along the way. The question is not whether we can stop it, but how we respond to it. It’s not whether we should protect our workers from competition, but what we can do to fully enable them to compete against workers all over the world.

At first this stance seems like a case of Obama’s protectionism gone awry. But is it? Is DR-CAFTA really free trade? I’m sure Stiglitz would agree with Obama on this one. Is it more important to fight to provide fair trade agreements, or to just have free trade agreements in place?

Without fairer trade agreements, the benefits from trade will not be realized. NAFTA and CAFTA will increase poverty because they prematurely open markets to US agricultural goods which are subsidized, making local farmers unable to compete with imports, and the nations in question do not have the ability to bear the costs of switching resources with their available capital, nor deal with the consequences of even short-term unemployment. These agreements have been more geo-political than economic, and the essential problem with recent bilateral agreements, including CAFTA, is that they are not free-trade agreements. More generally, bilateral agreements fail to produce all the benefits expected, in part because of the inequality of the negotiating position of the parties involved.

In this case, I believe Obama is fighting for the just cause and not just the cause that is most beneficial for Americans.

(The final quote is adapted from the Opposition section of the DR-CAFTA entry on Wikipedia. It discusses the main points of Joseph Stiglitz’ opposition to the DR-CAFTA free trade agreement. The paragraph is flagged as requiring citation, but if you have read Stiglitz’ Globalization and its Discontents or Fair Trade for All you will know that it follows his views pretty closely.)

Given the pervasiveness of placebo success in medical trials, it always surprises me that the use of placebos by medical professionals is explicitly banned (even taking into account the fact that a person in a position of trust would be deceiving you). However, the above article links to an interesting paper written by Adam Kolber – a Bioethics and Law professor, and author of the Neuroethics and Law blog – on the possible ethical use of placebos by medical professionals. Here is its abstract:

Placebo treatments, like sugar pills and saline injections, are effective in treating pain and perhaps a host of other conditions. To use placebos most effectively, however, doctors must mislead patients into believing that they are receiving active medications. While placebo deception is surprisingly common, its legality has rarely been tested. In November 2006, the American Medical Association (AMA) adopted a new ethics provision categorically prohibiting doctors from using placebos deceptively. In so doing, the AMA shifted the legal landscape, making it almost certain that courts will decide that placebo deception violates informed consent requirements.

I argue that the AMA’s new policy is overbroad, insensitive to patient preferences, and likely to have unforeseen consequences. While deception is often exploitative, placebo deception can genuinely benefit patients. Absent stronger evidence to justify a ban than we currently have, deceptive placebos should be treated as scarce medical resources–used sparingly but not categorically prohibited.

One glaring problem with this – no matter how valid the conclusions – is that to use placebos safely and correctly we would need physicians who have the time (and inclination) to thoroughly peruse patient histories – something the overstretched NHS is severely lacking.

On a lighter note, it always amazes me that I learn something new and fascinating every time I read more about the use of placebos. This time my education came from the following paragraphs:

Furthermore, studies done in the 1970s showed that when heroin users inject water (sometimes done deliberately to alleviate cravings when drugs are in short supply), they can experience drug-like euphoria and have been observed to show opiate-like physiological signs such as pupil constriction.

This last point also demonstrates that placebo is not solely about expectancy, belief or ‘being fooled’, as the heroin users knew they were injecting themselves with water. Conditioned responses play a role.

Of course, as with most cases of classical conditioning, this response eventually becomes extinct as the initial stimulus (real heroin) is repeatedly withheld. Still fascinating, though!

(Bonus points if you know why I gave this post its title.)

You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realise that memory is what makes our lives. Life without memory is no life at all… Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action. Without it, we are nothing… (I can only wait for the final amnesia, the one that can erase and entire life.) – Luis Buñuel

The above quote is from The Lost Mariner, a chapter discussing one of Sacks’ patients, Jimmy G, who – due to Korsakoff’s syndrome – lost both his memories from the previous 35 years, and the ability to create new ones. It’s a touching and sad story where you feel that the only redeeming quality is the fact that this man cannot create new memories; at least then he doesn’t know that he has this problem.
________________________________

Six months ago my family-life was ticking along as normal; everything was fine. Then, during a routine operation, my grandmother passed away, leaving my grandfather – a very self-sufficient man approaching 90 – alone in their home of 30 years. While interim accommodation arrangements were being made, my grandfather was found unconscious after suffering a stroke and was admitted to hospital – not even two weeks after his wife’s funeral.

Three months in hospital saw him recover well, and he was eventually placed in a geriatric recovery ward in preparation for release. Whenever I visited him he would get angry at the sports results and moan about the “boring sods” with whom he was sharing a ward with and who refused to go outside for a walk around the hospital’s rather beautiful grounds. This was perfectly normal behaviour.

However I was fearing the worst, and it appears that these fears were well-founded. A month ago he started to develop severe dementia, leading me to make the obvious comparisons between him and Sacks’ patient, Jimmie G, whom I was reading about at the time.

The retrograde loss of memory – and losing the ability to create new memories – is a horrible thing to witness; nothing can really prepare you for it. At the same time it’s difficult to become truly sad at this fact: how can we, when the ‘patient’ themselves is oblivious to the fact – and is seemingly content – due to the fact that the condition itself causes them to lack the ability to comprehend what’s going on?

But a man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibilities, moral being – matter of which neuropsychology cannot speak. And it is here, beyond the realm of an impersonal psychology, that you may find ways to touch him, and change him… Neuropsychologicaly, there is little or nothing you can do; but in the realm of the Individual, there may be much you can do. – Alexander Luria in a letter to Sacks regarding Jimmie G.

These sort of medical conditions always raise interesting issues, but when combined with the general (and severe) decline of physical health in an older patient, some more interesting – and controversial – philosophical, moral, and political subjects are brought up. An important one of which is the topic of non-eugenics euthanasia.

Highly regulated, I believe that euthanasia would be a crucial addition to our public health system for a few exceptional and well-defined situations and circumstances. However, as this is unlikely to happen, I believe strongly that the topic of euthanasia is so important that it is at least worth serious consideration and debate – not just by medical professionals, but by both politicians and the public.

Of course, views on this vary wildly by culture, religion, and even within each individual (agreeing in some cases and not in others, even when the actual medical circumstances are the same), and for one moment please don’t think my family and I are planning any mercy killings – it just raised a debate between us and I wanted to spread the love and ignite your internal debating chamber.

In my family, many of us have made it clear that if we were in such an awful physical and psychological state that life were no longer enjoyable and was a chore, that we wouldn’t want to be kept alive. One member has even gone so far as to say (in all seriousness), that if this were the case they would be eternally grateful if we were to assist them in dying. Of course, current legislation makes entertaining this thought pointless.

And remember, résumés aren’t just for job-seekers: keeping mine up-to-date and editing it on a regular basis has helped me keep my personal and professional development goals on track.

A great starting point when looking to create/renew your résumé is LifeClever’s Give Your Résumé a Facelift; one of the best résumé design resources I’ve come across, giving simple but effective results.

Following on from that, if you’re looking for something a bit more special you could do worse than checking out these 36 Beautiful Résumé Ideas That Work. However, making your résumé stand-out as much as some of these do may not be advisable in some sectors, and I wouldn’t imagine that all 36 work. Instead, Michael Gowin shows a few of the best (see image, right).

Of course, design will always be secondary to content; write, re-write, and then triple-check your résumé. Here are some great articles giving some worthwhile advice (with some overlap, ordered by importance):

• 21 Ways to Improve Your Online Résumé – 11) Be sure any technical terms are understandable to non-technical personnel.
• The Five Most Common (And Most Avoidable) Résumé Errors – A great way to test the quality of a resume is to read just the first word in each sentence, and see what image those words build of you as an employee.
• Ten Easy Ways to Improve Your Résumé – Eliminate clutter from your resume.
• 25 Words That Can Hurt Your Résumé – Be extra-careful before putting these nice-sounding but empty words in your résumé.
• 10 Ways to Tweak Your Tech Résumé – Assume that any future employer will do a quick Web search on you.
• How to Write a Masterpiece of a Résumé – To write an effective resume, you have to learn how to write powerful but subtle advertising copy.

My tip? Stick to a constant grammatical voice. It’s my grammar Nazi showing, but there’s nothing worse than reading a sales document (what your résumé/CV really is) that intersperses the passive and active voice; choose one and stick to it, damn it! Personally I would choose the active, remove the word ‘I’, and start sentences with action verbs – very powerful.

Don’t forget to write that killer cover letter!

And is it just a new job you want, or a new career? Maybe the Princeton Review Career Quiz will shed some light on what you should really be doing?

(I originally meant to post this on LoneGunman.co.uk (an abstract is there instead), but decided against it as it didn’t seem to fit with the shorter, link-based posts I usually put there. Aren’t you lucky?)

This in itself is not that impressive. What makes this newsworthy, however, is Merrill’s past… as CIO and vice president of engineering at Google.

Google’s corporate information site says of Merrill (for now, at least):

Douglas Merrill joined Google late in 2003 as Senior Director of Information Systems. In this capacity he led multiple strategic efforts including Google’s 2004 IPO and its related regulatory activities. He holds direct line accountability for all internal engineering and support worldwide.

Previously, Douglas was senior vice president at Charles Schwab and Co., Inc, a multinational financial services company. At Schwab, he was responsible for such functions as information security, common infrastructure, and human resources strategy and operations. Prior to his tenure there, Douglas worked at Price Waterhouse as a senior manager, ultimately becoming a leader in security implementation practices. Before that, he was an information scientist at the RAND Corporation, where he studied topics such as computer simulation in education, team dynamics and organizational effectiveness.

Douglas holds a BA from the University of Tulsa in Social and Political Organization, and an MA and Ph.D. in Psychology from Princeton University.

I for one think this is great news. With the music industry in deep trouble and constantly being crushed by new technologies, they need new ideas… and fast. Litigation is only going to go so far in helping a struggling company to increase its profits.

As I’ve said before; “we can’t hold back technological advancement and especially the evolution of music and its distribution“. With that said, what the big labels need to do is not sue, but evolve. A ‘digital business model‘ is what is required to revive the industry and with this move it seems that EMI have realised this glaringly obvious fact.

This was my most recent introduction to Edward de Bono; the father of ‘thinking outside the box’, and the pioneer of ‘lateral thinking‘: a creative problem-solving technique that involves looking at a given situation from unexpected – and often unusual – angles.

I was first introduced to de Bono in university when his theory of ‘thinking hats‘ was introduced to us as a way to acquaint us with parallel thinking to expand the way we look at information systems. It was an interesting 10 minutes, but after that I had completely forgotten about these techniques ’til now, when I happened upon de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats when brainstorming for books to add to my 2008 reading list.

Reading more about de Bono I find that in another of his books – Simplicity – he argues that the subject of simplicity should be taught in schools as a defining characteristic of quality, something I wholeheartedly agree with. Look at the themes running through the design of most of the successful Web 2.0 (and 1.0) companies and you’ll see that simplicity and usability are at the forefront of every design decision. Look at the design of really great ‘real-world’ objects – simple, right?

Of course, simplicity isn’t everything, and it depends somewhat on your definition of the term. To me simplicity is about delivering more from less by focusing on what’s important to the end-user: a simple – yet effective – strategy which appears to be midway between ‘Getting Real‘ and Don Norman‘s idea of user-centered design.

So, Six Thinking Hats and The Design/Psychology of Everyday Things are on my to-read list (I’ve only read extensive excerpts of the latter) – if I hadn’t already read all of it, Getting Real would be too. I guess all that’s left to ask now is; what does Simplicity/Usability mean to you, and could Marmite bring peace to the Middle Yeast? It’s definitely food for though. (Puns – unfortunately – intended. Sorry.)

“Don’t think because I’m not saying much that I wouldn’t like to say a lot.”

Of course, Lawrence isn’t anyone I know; he’s a character played by Bill Nighy in Richard Curtis’ The Girl in the Café and – unlike the films Curtis usually pens – it isn’t so much a rom com as a rom pol – a word I would like to take credit for, meaning romantic-political-drama.

How I came to watch The Girl is almost as interesting as the film itself: randomly traversing the Interwebs one day I passed through LifeHack and onto Ingrid’s wonderful online home. Captivated by her quirky, funky e-cards and her beautiful photographs, I read on and duly added the site as one of my regular reads, soon succumbing and joining The Girl on Tour. I’ll let Ingrid explain:

I think this is a wonderful and important film that needs to be seen by as many people as possible. That’s why I decided to send my The Girl In The Cafe DVD on a tour. The Girl has been on tour for more than a year now, she has visited more than 60 people already, and is planning to visit people in 20 (and counting) different countries. If you want to participate all you have to do is send an email to be put on the list. And when the film gets to you, you watch it, write a review on your blog and send it to the next person on the list.

The mighty Bill Nighy has called this project “very cool” and “very admirable”.

So, what’s it about, and is it any good?

In short, the film charts the unlikely and troublesome relationship between Lawrence (a high-profile civil servant, played by Nighy) and Gina (the delectable Kelly Macdonald – Trainspotting and No Country for Old Men). In truth, however, it’s a story about standing up for your beliefs no matter what the consequences, governmental bureaucracy as an inherent problem within the G8, and the ongoing struggle of trying to solve one of the most important global problems of our time: extreme poverty.

Lawrence works for the Chancellor of the Exchequer as part of the British contingent working on solving the first of the eight Millennium Development Goals. As the film progresses we see Gina confront a number of high profile politicians over what she sees as their lack of action, and it is here where the film turns into not-so-much a political drama, as an advert for the admirable MAKEPOVERTYHISTORY campaign (or the ONE campaign, as it is better known in the U.S.).

I’m unsure about the numerous confrontation scenes and the over-simplification of such an important issue, but I suppose it is a film and as such it has to make economics and politics enjoyable! The message, of course, is much more important than any film can be: if you read at an average pace, 40 people have died of causes directly linked to extreme poverty since you started reading my post. That is what the film is about.

“Look, you wouldn’t care, perhaps, to meet again?”

Why am I doing this? I feel the proliferation of e-mail and instant messaging in my life has disconnected me from the close relationships I had with people who I once lived with and was close to. I hope that this romanticist approach to my communication can help me reconnect with, and mend, these relationships.

It may not be easy, but it’s going to be an interesting experiment nonetheless. I’m not just replacing e-mails with letters – I’m planning on sending letters to people who I haven’t spoken to in a while – if you want a letter, send me your address!

*In our paperless office it would be impossible for me to go an entire workday without sending an e-mail – I’m not going to even attempt it for ‘official’ work e-mails… and emergencies, if one should unfortunately arise.

And yes, this is just an excuse for me to post these pictures!

I’ve been experimenting in Photoshop recently (I’m disastrously unskilled at present) and this is my first attempt at a triptych, a diptych, and at selective colouring.

It’s true, though: I find that to relax there’s nothing better than half an hour of doing nothing with only an espresso (or Americana) and PBJ on toast for company.

Beerfest
The problem with Beerfest (and Broken Lizard in general) is, in my opinion, Super Troopers. If you start your comedy career creating a cult-classic, pretty much everything else you do is going to have to either live up to that or be better. The chances of that are obviously pretty slim, and with Beerfest they were way off. It could have been an enjoyable film – the premise sets the scene for a great no-brainer comedy and there’s enough of a storyline to keep you watching – if only for the next ‘joke’. However, I think Ty Burr from The Boston Globe said it best: “Making a comedy that celebrates binge drinking and cretinous behavior isn’t a crime against nature. Making one that’s as brutally unfunny as ‘Beerfest’ is.”

Knocked Up
Not your typical straight-laced comedy, Knocked Up definitely doesn’t fit into the ‘teen movie’ genre, even though it comes from the same team that wrote and produced Superbad and The 40-Year-Old Virgin. In my opinion it’s midway between both of these films; nowhere near as funny and witty as the former and (thankfully) not as base as the latter. It reminds me of Melinda and Melinda – but a more male-centric version.

Sunshine (2007)
One of the most impressive science fiction films I’ve had the pleasure to watch in a long time.
You can tell it comes from the pen of Alex Garland (The Beach) and was created under the direction of Danny Boyle (Trainspotting and 28 Days Later) – and they are both definitely good things. The problem with it, though? I think the ending was completely unnecessary.

The Simpsons Movie
Blasphemous, I know – but in my opinion The Simpsons definitely didn’t translate well to the big screen. I would have much preferred to have created a 90 minute playlist of my favourite episodes and watch them all consecutively. It’s not that it was bad; it was disappointing because I was expecting great things.

Juno
At first I couldn’t think of a single reason not to give this film five stars – it’s an incredibly beautiful and hip comedy/drama. With an amazing cast astonishing in their idiosyncratic youth; cinematography that’s as funky as hell; and with a flawless script to boot (the dialogue’s intelligent, quirky, and ever quotable), Juno was a pleasure to watch. However, I always reserve an entire star to be given on the basis of whether or not I think about the film days, weeks, or even months later. With Juno, I told people it was awesome, but a week or so later I stopped thinking about it: for that it gets half a star taken off. I’ll be watching it again though – it’s too human not too.

10 Items or Less
Everything I could say about this film has already been said perfectly on Metacritic. To save you a couple of clicks, here are a few choice critical quotes:
Ty Burr, Boston Globe: “10 Items or Less is nearly an acting class exercise.”
Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader: “An amiable demonstration of how two charismatic actors and a relaxed writer-director can squeeze an enjoyable movie out of practically nothing.”
Ruthe Stein, San Francisco Chronicle: “Proceeds at that pace to an ending that is as inevitable as it is poignant.”

Away From Her
As the feature debut of a 28-year-old, Away From Her is an incredible achievement. I could list a thousand adjectives describing this film: beautiful; haunting; unafraid; comforting; the list goes on. This film of love lost – and love found – is a poignant reminder of how fragile the human spirit is and the sacrifices we will all – at some point in our life – have to make. It shows that letting go is the hardest thing to do, but a necessary step, nonetheless.

Me and You and Everyone We Know
Damn, Miranda July is so cool! Billed as “a poetic and penetrating observation of how people struggle to connect with one another in an isolating and contemporary world“, Me and You has triggered something in me – it has made me realise how fragile relationships can be. I’m taking drastic steps because of this film – you’ll see… in a couple of days.

Thank You for Smoking
A textbook example of critical thinking, perfect retorts, negotiation, spin, and satirical dark comedy. Smoking is a hilarious look at the life of a tobacco lobbyist. I loved this.

La Science des Rêves (The Science of Sleep)
Distinctly Gondry, this is one of those films that changes dramatically depending on your current ‘real life’ circumstances (just like his previous feature, Eternal Sunshine). In that vein, I think I was at the perfect time of my life for The Science of Sleep when I saw it for the first time about a month ago (as I was when I saw Eternal Sunshine just over a year ago).
Gael García Bernal (Amores perros and The Motorcycle Diaries) does a great job portraying a young man whose dreams are greater, more fun, and happier than his less-than-perfect reality.
Finally – like Juno – it is ever quotable, and I leave you with a few of my favourites (in addition to this post’s title):
“In dreams, emotions are overwhelming.”
“Things will turn out the way you want, if you just stop doubting that I love you.”
“You have a serious problem of distorting reality. You could sleep with the entire planet and still feel rejected.”
“‘The Goat on the Cliff’, remember?”
“This girl is at once all the women that broke my heart. She is so beautiful and generous, and she’s asking me to leave… because she is dumping me. She’s dumping me because I am a cheap drug dealer, and I am a drug dealer because she wants to leave me. The police are going to get me now, this is all my fault.“