Mullen Family Blog

How We Pay Attention

2010-09-23T04:35:00.000-07:00

From NPR SciFri

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Teaching Doctors To Be Better Listeners

2010-09-23T04:33:00.001-07:00

John,

This is for you, I thought it'd be of interest... From NPR SciFri

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Haiti: Obama's Katrina

2010-01-26T05:24:00.000-08:00

Many post-quake deaths could have been prevented.

By SOUMITRA R. EACHEMPATI, DEAN LORICH AND DAVID HELFET
Four years ago the initial medical response to Hurricane Katrina was ill equipped, understaffed, poorly coordinated and delayed. Criticism of the paltry federal efforts was immediate and fierce.
Unfortunately, the response to the latest international disaster in Haiti has been no better, compounding the catastrophe.

On Tuesday, Jan. 12, a major earthquake overwhelmed a country one hour south of Miami whose inhabitants include American citizens and their relatives. Thanks to the Internet, pictures of the death and destruction were familiar to the world within hours, and the need for a massive influx of relief and specialized medical care was instantaneously apparent. While particular fatalities such as head injuries or massive blood loss are rarely treatable in mass casualty situations, delayed deaths from infection may be preventable.

On Wednesday, the day after the quake, we organized a relief team in cooperation with the U.S. State Department and Partners in Health (a Boston-based humanitarian organization) to provide emergency orthopedic and surgical care. We wanted to reach the local hospitals in Haiti immediately—but were only allowed by the U.S. military controlling the local airport to land in Port-au-Prince Saturday night. We were among the first groups there.
This delay proved tragic. Upon our arrival at the Haiti Community Hospital we found scores of patients with pus dripping out of open fractures and crush injuries. Some wounds were already infested with maggots. Approximately one-third of the victims were children. Most of the patients already had life-threatening infections, and all were dehydrated. Many had been waiting in the hospital compound for days without water, antibiotics or even pain medicine. The hospital smelled of infected, rotting limbs.

Our team spent the next 60 plus hours performing a variety of operations including orthopedic repairs to broken limbs and amputations. Sadly, a limb amputation in an underdeveloped country may be a death sentence.

We tallied over 100 operations between four surgeons and three orthopedic fellows (medical doctors getting additional specialty training), and evaluated perhaps 100 more patients for surgery. In contrast, a busy night in a New York City hospital might include four or five surgeries. Hindering the effort was an absence of ventilators, anesthetic machines, and oxygen tanks. There was no blood bank or laboratory, and a dearth of surgical instruments. Due to the lack of resources, we know many patients may still succumb to infection and other postoperative complications.

The U.S. response to the earthquake should be considered an embarrassment. Our operation received virtually no support from any branch of the U.S. government, including the State Department. As we ran out of various supplies we had no means to acquire more. There was no way to transfer patients we were poorly equipped to manage (such as a critically ill newborn with respiratory distress) to a facility where they would get better care. We were heartbroken having to tell patients suffering incredible pain we could not perform their surgery for at least a day.

Even after hearing gunshots outside the hospital, we had no protection for ourselves or our belongings—though we observed that a Jamaican medical team came with armed guards.
All these problems stemmed from ours being an isolated operation, a feature that may work in a humanitarian medical mission but not in a disaster situation. Later, as we were leaving Haiti, we were appalled to see warehouse-size quantities of unused medicines, food and other supplies at the airport, surrounded by hundreds of U.S. and international soldiers standing around aimlessly.

With an organized central command dedicated to medical relief, we could have done much better. A reconnaissance team, managed by government or U.N. officials in conjunction with medical and logistic specialists, could have immediately come to Haiti to evaluate local facilities. Preapproved groups of experienced civilian and military medical teams could have been consolidated in the U.S. from the Pensacola, Fla., military base or other locations, to avoid the airplane traffic clutter and delays that plagued landing of people and supplies into Port-au-Prince. Targeted teams with military support could then go to adequate facilities where they could be most effective.

After the disaster, certain roads should have been secured to allow the transfer of patients or supplies. A base hospital could have been established for patients requiring specialized services (such as a neonatal ICU and neurosurgery). A specialized, postoperative care center should have been established. In our case, however, we lacked the resources to ensure that patients were receiving basic wound care, antibiotics, nutrition or hydration.

The death toll from Katrina was under 2,000 people. Deaths in Haiti as of yesterday are at least 150,000. Untold numbers are dying of untreated, preventable infections. For all the outcry about Katrina, our nation has fared no better in this latest disaster.

Dr. Eachempati is a trauma surgeon and incoming president of the New York State Chapter of the American College of Surgeons. Drs. Lorich and Helfet are orthopedic surgeons. All practice at the Weill Cornell Medical Center in New York City

Dad's possible flight times for Tues

2009-12-15T05:24:00.000-08:00

4:50 at lax aa2453

On swimmingworld.tv!!!

2009-12-03T09:07:00.001-08:00

http://www.swimmingworld.tv/split-time/2009/12/2/split-time-which-wr-is-most-impressive.html#entry5974792

Climategate: Science Is Dying Science is on the credibility bubble.

2009-12-03T05:59:00.000-08:00

Climategate: Science Is Dying
Science is on the credibility bubble.
By DANIEL HENNINGER

Surely there must have been serious men and women in the hard sciences who at some point worried that their colleagues in the global warming movement were putting at risk the credibility of everyone in science. The nature of that risk has been twofold: First, that the claims of the climate scientists might buckle beneath the weight of their breathtaking complexity. Second, that the crudeness of modern politics, once in motion, would trample the traditions and culture of science to achieve its own policy goals. With the scandal at the East Anglia Climate Research Unit, both have happened at once.
I don't think most scientists appreciate what has hit them. This isn't only about the credibility of global warming. For years, global warming and its advocates have been the public face of hard science. Most people could not name three other subjects they would associate with the work of serious scientists. This was it. The public was told repeatedly that something called "the scientific community" had affirmed the science beneath this inquiry. A Nobel Prize was bestowed (on a politician).

Global warming enlisted the collective reputation of science. Because "science" said so, all the world was about to undertake a vast reordering of human behavior at almost unimaginable financial cost. Not every day does the work of scientists lead to galactic events simply called Kyoto or Copenhagen. At least not since the Manhattan Project.
What is happening at East Anglia is an epochal event. As the hard sciences—physics, biology, chemistry, electrical engineering—came to dominate intellectual life in the last century, some academics in the humanities devised the theory of postmodernism, which liberated them from their colleagues in the sciences. Postmodernism, a self-consciously "unprovable" theory, replaced formal structures with subjectivity. With the revelations of East Anglia, this slippery and variable intellectual world has crossed into the hard sciences.
The Climate Emails

This has harsh implications for the credibility of science generally. Hard science, alongside medicine, was one of the few things left accorded automatic stature and respect by most untrained lay persons. But the average person reading accounts of the East Anglia emails will conclude that hard science has become just another faction, as politicized and "messy" as, say, gender studies. The New England Journal of Medicine has turned into a weird weekly amalgam of straight medical-research and propaganda for the Obama redesign of U.S. medicine.
The East Anglians' mistreatment of scientists who challenged global warming's claims—plotting to shut them up and shut down their ability to publish—evokes the attempt to silence Galileo. The exchanges between Penn State's Michael Mann and East Anglia CRU director Phil Jones sound like Father Firenzuola, the Commissary-General of the Inquisition.
For three centuries Galileo has symbolized dissent in science. In our time, most scientists outside this circle have kept silent as their climatologist fellows, helped by the cardinals of the press, mocked and ostracized scientists who questioned this grand theory of global doom. Even a doubter as eminent as Princeton's Freeman Dyson was dismissed as an aging crank.
Beneath this dispute is a relatively new, very postmodern environmental idea known as "the precautionary principle." As defined by one official version: "When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically." The global-warming establishment says we know "enough" to impose new rules on the world's use of carbon fuels. The dissenters say this demotes science's traditional standards of evidence.

What would Galileo do?

The Environmental Protection Agency's dramatic Endangerment Finding in April that greenhouse gas emissions qualify as an air pollutant—with implications for a vast new regulatory regime—used what the agency called a precautionary approach. The EPA admitted "varying degrees of uncertainty across many of these scientific issues." Again, this puts hard science in the new position of saying, close enough is good enough. One hopes civil engineers never build bridges under this theory.
The Obama administration's new head of policy at EPA, Lisa Heinzerling, is an advocate of turning precaution into standard policy. In a law-review article titled "Law and Economics for a Warming World," Ms. Heinzerling wrote, "Policy formation based on prediction and calculation of expected harm is no longer relevant; the only coherent response to a situation of chaotically worsening outcomes is a precautionary policy. . . ."
If the new ethos is that "close-enough" science is now sufficient to achieve political goals, serious scientists should be under no illusion that politicians will press-gang them into service for future agendas. Everyone working in science, no matter their politics, has an stake in cleaning up the mess revealed by the East Anglia emails. Science is on the credibility bubble. If it pops, centuries of what we understand to be the role of science go with it.
Write to henninger@wsj.com

Putting the important tasks first!

2009-12-01T05:12:00.001-08:00

http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2009/11/30/putting-the-important-but-not-urgent-tasks-above-the-urgent-but-not-important-tasks/

Good short article about looking at projects in the big picture.

Naked Mole

2009-12-01T04:57:00.001-08:00

Would you like to look like this if you'd be resistant to cancers and strokes?

http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2009-11/hideous-rodent-strikes-again-time-clues-surviving-stroke

My blogs!

2009-11-30T07:56:00.001-08:00

I got a writing gig at and my first article was posted today: http://www.myhousecallmd.com/
I am also working on a swimming blog that averages about 45 visits a day found here: http://swimscience.blogspot.com/

I hope no one tells these people I got a C+ in english 106 at Purdue, haha

Football Players and Head Trauma

2009-11-25T05:05:00.001-08:00

http://www.medpagetoday.com/Neurology/HeadTrauma/17156

I don't know what to think about all the concussions in football. One side, it is a contact sport and injuries do happen, they are grown men and can make their own decisions. However, being pressured to put your life at risk and potentially obtaining Parkinson's like symptoms at the age of 50...maybe stricter regulations should be mandated.

Interesting radical view on thanksgiving

2009-11-24T15:08:00.000-08:00

I heard this on the radio last night. I may use some of the arguments in upcoming debate rounds :)

http://www.airp.uci.edu/blog/2009/11/1123-aia-reciprocity-by-confounding.html

New Mammogram Guidelines

2009-11-24T05:09:00.000-08:00

http://democrats.senate.gov/reform/patient-protection-affordable-care-act.pdf

New guidelines suggest holding off mammograms women are 50 years of age (pg. 17). Cost efficient or cruel?

Good skin Bacteria?

2009-11-24T05:05:00.001-08:00

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091122161742.htm

A nice article about exposure to certain bacteria is essential for healthy protection from pathogens and prevention of inflammation.

Technology is stranger than Fiction

2009-11-23T14:44:00.000-08:00

Best-selling writer Cory Doctorow on change and its discontents.

When Mary Shelley wrote "Frankenstein" in the early 1800s, the issue was not corpses brought back to life. The novel captured anxiety about then-emerging technologies such as the steam engine, as people began to ask whether we know what we're doing with what we invent. We've been asking ever since, with science fiction a handy way to track our comfort level with technology.
By this measure, we're still anxious but getting more optimistic that we'll be able to cope even with today's accelerated pace of change.
Consider the world of "Makers," the latest by best-selling writer Cory Doctorow. This novel is set in a not-too distant future, when the creative destruction of technological change has created an economy so efficient, with profit margins so thin, that traditional companies can hardly stay in business.
The inventor-heroes of "Makers" take technology to its conclusion: They figure out a way to use three-dimensional printers to produce copies of machines and most anything else at close to no cost. This sparks "New Work," with geeky investment bankers scouring the country to fund promising artisans who use the technology to build things cheaply. The heroes also run a series of entertainment rides across the country in abandoned Wal-Marts, until Disney unleashes its lawyers on them.
Mr. Doctorow, a Canadian living in London, has a keen eye for the pressures on contemporary business. In the novel, an M.B.A. brought in to work with the inventors explains, "The system makes it hard to sell anything above the marginal cost of goods, unless you have a really innovative idea, which can't stay innovative for long, so you need continuous invention and reinvention, too."
This theme captures current anxieties. Technology lets low-cost providers take market share away from established companies, as Detroit auto makers and Paris fashion house designers have seen. Even high-tech companies have a hard time building sustainable businesses now that good ideas are copied so quickly that they become commodities.
"Every industry that required a factory yesterday only needs a garage today," the fictional business manager explains. "Here's what I think the point of a good market is. In a good market, you invent something and you charge all the market will bear for it." Then someone figures out a way to do it more cheaply or accepts a lower profit margin, "until eventually you get down to a kind of firmament, a baseline that you can't go lower than, the cheapest you can produce a product and stay in business. That's why straight pins, machine screws, and a ream of paper all cost basically nothing, and make damned little profit for their manufacturers."
In the world of "Makers," and perhaps in our own world, "we're approaching a kind of pure and perfect state now, with competition and invention getting easier and easier—it's producing a kind of superabundance."
Mr. Doctorow paints a bleak picture of the process of getting there, even if many of us take a more benign view of increasingly efficient capitalism. "Makers" features widespread unemployment, with 20% of workers relocating to look for jobs. Even with scientific advances—obesity is solved, for example—life is brutal. There are squatter neighborhoods alongside abandoned strip malls.
Mr. Doctorow's science fiction also includes the too-true prospect of venture capital firms deciding that the next big thing in technology is financing litigation over copyright and other intellectual property. There are also amusing comments on business. One character describes trying to make change at large companies as being "like turning around a battleship by tapping it on the nose with a toothpick."
Mr. Doctorow practices what he preaches about new economics. He was the first, in 2003, to publish a novel released at the same time under a Creative Commons license in a free e-reader edition. "Makers" sells in hardback, but chapters are available for free downloads—a reminder that the convenience of the printed book is worth the $24.99 purchase price to some readers.
He plans to sell his next book, a collection of short stories, in various price ranges, which he thinks will maximize his revenues. There will be a free download or audiobook, an inexpensive paperback, a pricier hardback, plus one book for $10,000 that lets the buyer commission a short story.
In an online essay for the literary magazine Tin House, Mr. Doctorow wrote that "science fiction writers don't predict the future (except accidentally), but if they're very good, they may manage to predict the present."
In a time of great change, fiction can sometimes provide better understanding than facts alone. "As the pace of technological change accelerates, the job of the science fiction writer becomes not harder, but easier—and more necessary," he writes. "After all, the more confused we are by our contemporary technology, the more opportunities there are to tell stories that lessen that confusion."

Bing Eating a Psychiatric Disorder?

2009-11-23T04:51:00.000-08:00

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/la-he-binge23-2009nov23,0,2869829.story

There appears to be debate surrounding binge eating and the mentality behind this disorder. I do think it is a psychiatric disorder, because these people not only consume huge amounts of foods, but they act similarly to drug addicts by lying about the food they eat and only eating when no one is around. Other than the mass consumption, these people also think about food constantly, diminishing their productivity. Negatively if this pathology is sanctioned, it will increase the medication umbrella on health care and society.

What do you think?

Could the 6-year old Bubble Boy actually be carried in the balloon?

2009-10-20T04:45:00.001-07:00

http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2009-10/physics-balloon-boy

Pick 5 us cities you would move to before you read this article

2009-10-08T02:27:00.000-07:00

The Next Youth-Magnet Cities
By SUE SHELLENBARGER
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If you were a recent college graduate in a recovering economy launching a career, looking for a mate or both, where would you choose to live?
Predicting cities that will emerge as post-recession meccas for the young is easy to argue about, but impossible to forecast empirically. Whether you prefer hip, casual Austin, Texas, over the cosmopolitan allure of New York City is partly a matter of personal taste. Still, we asked six experts which 10 cities will emerge as the hottest, hippest destinations for highly mobile, educated workers in their 20s when the U.S. economy gets moving again. Our panelists—demographers, economists, geographers and authors on urban issues—picked their cities based on the criteria they deem most important, from economic diversity to lifestyle.
Big cities dominate our panelists' forecasts. Where trendy smaller cities might have captivated youth in the past, today's recession-scarred young people are more pragmatic, placing "greater emphasis on where high-quality, high-paying jobs are created," says Ross DeVol, director of regional economics for the nonprofit Milken Institute. Northeastern and West Coast cities are ascendant, eclipsing former Sunbelt favorites such as Atlanta.
Other cities once lauded as youth magnets fell off the radar. Naples, Fla., cited in an influential 2003 U.S. Census Bureau report on migration among young adults, was bypassed by panelists, a victim of the sagging Florida economy. The housing collapse sank another past favorite, former real-estate boom town Las Vegas. And Charlotte, N.C., a banking center, lost some of its luster to the financial crisis.
Quirky urban cultures haven't entirely lost their allure. Our panelists' No. 4 pick is a city with double-digit unemployment—Portland, Ore., a haven for artists, musicians and outdoor enthusiasts. The city has shown "staying power" among youth, says Rachel Franklin, a geographer at the University of Maryland and author of the Census Bureau report.
Where young adults settle is no small thing. People 18 to 29 are the most mobile age group, and their past migration patterns have defined the future of regions, from the long rural exodus of the 1900s to the Silicon Valley boom of the 1990s. Youth-magnet cities gain an enviable cultural allure and a labor-market edge.
The young are likely to be more restless than usual when the recovery comes. The recession has brought migration to a grinding halt: Fewer people moved across state lines in 2008 than at any time since 1950, when the population was smaller by half, says William Frey, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit Washington research organization.
Here's a look at our survey's top five cities:
First Place (Tie): Washington, D.C.
The 2008 election touched off a youthful pilgrimage to the capital that most panelists say won't end soon. "In the eyes of some young people, Barack Obama is America's coolest boss," says Richard Florida, author of "Who's Your City?" and a professor of business and creativity at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.
Government hiring is projected to grow fast, and jobs in lobbying, aerospace, defense contracting and professional services are also a draw. Mr. DeVol calls Washington the national leader in high-tech services, surpassing Silicon Valley. Washington's 4,000-plus nonprofits hold appeal for service-minded youth. And amid rising regulation of financial markets, says Barbara Lang, president of the DC Chamber of Commerce, "much of Wall Street is now moving to K Street."
David Gibson Jr., 25 years old, passed up finance jobs in Charlotte, New York and Atlanta to settle in Washington as a financial analyst for the Federal Reserve. Mr. Gibson, who has an M.B.A., figures the capital, with its many universities, can accommodate him for the long haul, enabling him to pursue a Ph.D. if he chooses. He loves the city's museums and live jazz and R&B venues, he says, and its power-center status is helping him "expand my network world-wide."
That combination of factors, says David Plane, a professor of geography and regional development at the University of Arizona, signals "sustained dynamism" for Washington.
The downside: Not all see the current federal hiring binge continuing. "Right now Washington is a magnet. It has become the new New York," says Steven Cochrane, managing director of Moody's Economy.com. But the ballooning federal deficit suggests that "by next year, the government is going to be looking seriously at making cuts."
First Place (Tie): Seattle
Former Ohio residents Lane Kuhlman, 26, and her husband, Matt Mansbach, 32, mulled several cities, including New York and Chicago, as potential destinations last summer, after Ms. Kuhlman received her master's degree specializing in interactive media.
In their eyes, none could match Seattle's combination of a diverse high-tech sector, cultural life, access to rugged natural terrain and a strong university presence. Ms. Kuhlman has since taken a post as a new-product researcher for Microsoft, and Mr. Mansbach is weighing attending one of the city's grad schools in his field, computer animation. Meanwhile, Ms. Kuhlman says, "we're only 15 minutes from a beautiful waterfall, and there are amazing places to hike."
Anchor to a region of corporate innovators, from Amazon.com to Starbucks, Seattle is "a high-tech and lifestyle mecca," Dr. Florida says. Mr. DeVol says the city's high-tech sector, with 226,300 workers, is just slightly smaller than Silicon Valley's. Joblessness, at 7.7%, remains relatively low. City officials see rapid growth in biotech; Seattle also has tens of thousands of jobs in music and interactive media. And it enjoys a reputation as home to a lot of brainy people.
The downside: It rains half the time.
Work & Family Mailbox
Sue Shellenbarger answers readers' questions.
How We Selected Our Top-Rated Cities
Naming the next wave of top cities for hip, highly mobile young adults is far from an exact science. It's more like a parlor game.
The Wall Street Journal sought out six of the nation's leading experts to rank the 10 U.S. cities they see as most likely to emerge as "youth magnet" cities after the recession—popular target destinations among young, college-educated, often single people setting out to start a career, find a mate or both.
The panelists, who were also asked to provide two or three reasons for their selections, were chosen based on their achievements in research, forecasting or authorship in the fields of geography, regional economics or demography.
The methodology used to compile a final list is closer to a straw poll than a scientific study.
Using criteria of their own choosing, experts provided ranked lists of picks. Composite rankings were then assigned to cities based on a point system: Each expert's No. 1 pick was given 10 points, second choices were given nine points and so on, with 10th-place picks receiving one point. Final rankings were determined by adding the total points each city received.
The panelists:
Steven Cochrane , managing director, Moody's Economy.com, head of the Web site's U.S. regional forecasting service and editor of its monthly Regional Financial Review.
Ross DeVol , director of regional economics, the Milken Institute, a Santa Monica, Calif., nonprofit, and researcher on technology and its impact on regional and national economies.
Richard Florida , author of "Who's Your City" and "The Rise of the Creative Class," and director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management.
Rachel Franklin , senior lecturer, public policy, at the University of Maryland; former deputy director of the Association of American Geographers, and author of a 2003 Census Bureau report on migration patterns among young, educated workers.
William Frey , demographer and senior fellow at the Metropolitan Policy Program of the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C., and a research professor in population studies at the University of Michigan.
David Plane , professor of geography and regional development, University of Arizona, Tucson; a senior editor of the Journal of Regional Science, and researcher on age-related factors in migration.
Third Place: New York
Reeling from the financial crisis, the nation's largest city may seem an unlikely pick. But one reason New York's unemployment rate is stuck at a daunting 10.3% is that hopeful job seekers continue to move there, city officials say. Clearly, "the city's mythic status as a place to test one's mettle against the best and the brightest" remains intact, Dr. Florida says.
New York hasn't lost as many financial-services jobs as predicted, says Deputy Mayor Robert Lieber; so far, fewer than half of the 293,000 job losses that were projected by the city from 2009 through mid-2010 have materialized. Residential growth in boroughs outside Manhattan, such as Brooklyn, is making the city marginally more affordable, and some panelists see housing prices falling more.
At Vermont's Middlebury College, New York surpasses nearby Boston as the destination of choice for the class of 2010, says Jaye Roseborough, career-services director. Allison Bailey, a 2009 grad, loves the city's "European lifestyle," she says. After studying in France, "I wanted to be in a 'walking city' like Paris." Working lots of overtime as a litigation assistant for a law firm, she can manage the $1,450 monthly rent for her Manhattan studio, she says. And she is happy to leave behind the long car commutes of her native Houston.
The downside: The city is still unaffordable for many, and the less-pricey suburbs can impose enervating commutes.
Fourth Place: Portland, Ore.
Los Angeles native Ryan O'Leary, 23, didn't expect when he graduated from college with a journalism degree last year to be working construction at this point, he says. But he decided about a month ago to give top priority to moving to the place he most wanted to live, and Portland was it—despite its daunting 11.2% unemployment rate.
Mr. O'Leary, who found an apartment downtown, calls his move "the best decision I've made in a long time." He loves the city's nightlife and neighborhoods, and the city's streetcars—one of which stops by his building—are a refreshing change from Los Angeles's car culture. He continues to job-hunt in his field, public relations, on his days off.
A symbol of "West Coast hipness," Ms. Franklin says, Portland has continued to draw migrants through the recession. An urban-growth boundary fosters a strong downtown culture while containing suburban sprawl, easing travel to nearby mountains and forests. Portland has expanded mass transit and boasts sizeable electronics and activewear companies, several wind- and solar-energy firms, and many green-building projects.
Its quirky culture appeals to musicians and artists: The city has more than its share of oddball events, including an adult soap-box derby and an urban Iditarod (wherein costumed revelers pull shopping carts). "Keep Portland Weird" is a popular bumper sticker. Although Austin claimed that motto first in the 1980s, "we live it pretty well here," says a city staffer.
The downside: While regional officials have laid plans to add 10,000 jobs in the next five years, Portland has done better at promoting its quality of life than fostering job growth. "As nice as it may be to live in Portland," says Economy.com's Dr. Cochrane, "you can only sleep on someone's couch for so long. At some point you have to get a job."
Fifth Place: Austin, Texas
After a year spent traveling and working overseas in 2007, New Jersey resident Olga Garcia, 26, and her boyfriend, Kevin Kurkjian, 27, debated places to settle. Then Kevin announced, "Olga, I've got it figured out: We're going to Austin." She agreed. Both had heard from friends that Austin offered housing and career opportunities and a welcoming, youthful culture. "I had never heard anything bad about Austin," says Ms. Garcia, a marketing consultant.
A state capital and the site of a big University of Texas campus, Austin has become a gathering place for tech- and arts-conscious young adults. Its SXSW media and arts conference, and its Austin City Limits music festival, draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. Both unemployment and the cost of living are relatively low. And with significant high-tech, videogame and renewable-energy sectors, Mr. DeVol calls Austin "a model for a thriving 21st-century knowledge-based community."
The downside: Some panelists have doubts about how strongly Austin will rebound after the recession.

Professor: Smaller Class Sizes Optimal For Kids

2009-10-03T17:00:00.000-07:00

This is a good story I heard on NPR. If we are serious about leveling the playing field and leaving "no child behind: we certainly could hire more teachers. Rising class sizes in elementary schools mean there are currently lots of unemployed elementary school teachers, many of whom were actively recruited not long ago.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113176988

Unintented consequences of Iraq

2009-10-02T06:25:00.000-07:00

Neocon Iraq Policy Has Been Costly
Regarding Bret Stephens's "The Neocons Make a Comeback" (Global View, Sept. 29): Nothing says more about the failure of the neoconservative-inspired foreign policy of George W. Bush than our current standoff with Iran.
By crippling the Sunni-dominated Iraqi dictatorship as a regional power, rather than pursuing the more limited goals of containing its political and military influence, the U.S. removed the one tried and true counterbalance to the Shiite-fascist Iranian dictatorship. Iran has benefited greatly by our having forcefully removed, at considerable cost, a natural enemy, Sunni Baathist Iraq, with which it fought a costly eight-year war in the 1980s.
Now that it is generally accepted throughout the world that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was based on erroneous intelligence information, key potential allies in our efforts to challenge Iran, such as China, have an excuse to be skeptical about the application of "crippling sanctions." Ironically, Israel is now at greater risk than at any time in its 61-year history.
To make matters worse, the diversion of precious military resources to Iraq has enabled a Taliban comeback in Afghanistan and in the Pakistan frontier at a time when the American public has little appetite for escalating the battle.
Scott Bernstein
Muttontown, N.Y.

Longer school days, years

2009-09-28T20:37:00.000-07:00

I like that 5th graders comment too but I have to say the article makes a very good point. Kids, esp "socioeconomically challenged" kids like I teach, def could use longer school yrs and days, but they also need more art, enrichment, etc to fill those days, not just more lectures or worksheets, so I hope they're willing to ponny up the dough to make it happen!

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/09/27/obama-proposes-longer-school-day-shorter-summer-vacation/?test=latestnews

RE: America being the best contry on Earth

2009-09-27T19:04:00.000-07:00

some very good points... it takes work, it is not our birth right

Shaq vs. Phelps video...

2009-09-17T05:59:00.001-07:00

I only watched the races, but I must admit Shaq is quite a unique athlete and personable guy. However, Phelps took it easy on him....disappointing.

Si vis pacem, para bellum

2009-09-15T12:31:00.000-07:00

Pseudohermaphradite runner Semenya

2009-09-11T20:07:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure if anyone else is following the controversy over a track star in South Africa. For a background story and decent breakdown read here: http://www.sportsscientists.com/2009/09/semenya-and-hermaphroditism.html.

Personally, I do not think Semenya should be able to compete as a woman. I like the article's point that stated in 1996 when gender screening was done, 8 females tested similar to Semenya. However, I feel that these woman should have been disqualified. Any changes in hormones from conception can greatly alter a person's life and even if these hormones have been discontinued, they still influenced and affected the person.

Google search as part of healthcare debate

2009-09-07T11:52:00.000-07:00

I <3 Google and find most things they do interesting. Well, apparently they have a political advertising director and their search ads seem to be beginning to play a role in the health care debate.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/healthcare/la-na-health-internet4-2009sep04,0,824292.story