Month: January 2010

California/General interest/Health/Lifestyle/seniors/Sports/USA/Women
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Adventure travel for the young — at heart

by Fran Johns

Not long ago I was fond of bragging, with more than a small amount of smug self- satisfaction, about completing Circus 101 class at the San Francisco Circus School shortly after I became eligible for Medicare. Although it was quickly evident that I can’t do upside down any more without tending to throw up, I was more flexible than the muscular hunks and quite good, if I do say so, on the top of the pyramids. I was always the top of the pyramid because nobody wanted to step on the little old lady. Moments of grandeur and glory, those were.

Well, tell that to Ilse Telesmanich, 90. She’ll be hiking in South Africa this summer. Or Tom Lackey, who is into wing-walking over the English Channel at 89. (“My family thinks I’m mad,” Mr. Lackey said in a telephone interview discussing the flight with New York Times writer Kirk Johnson — his 20th wing-walk. “I probably am.”)

Intensely active older men and women who have the means and see the twilight years as just another stage of exploration are pushing further and harder, tossing aside presumed limitations. And the global travel and leisure industry, long focused on youth, is racing to keep up.

“This is an emerging market phenomenon based on tens of millions of longer-lived men and women with more youth vitality than ever imagined,” said Ken Dychtwald, a psychologist and author who has written widely about aging and economics.

And the so-called experiential marketplace — sensation, education, adventure and culture, estimated at $56 billion and growing, according to a new study from George Washington University — is where much of that new old-money is headed.

At the Grand Circle Corporation, for example, a Boston-based company that specializes in older travelers, adventure tours have gone from 16 percent of passenger volume in 2001 to 50 percent for advance bookings this year, even as the average traveler’s age has risen to 68 from 62.

At Exploritas, a nonprofit educational travel group previously known as Elderhostel, the proportion of people over 75 choosing adventure-tour options is up 27 percent since 2004. The sharpest growth has been in the over-85 crowd, more than 70 percent.

At VBT, a bike touring company in Vermont that does rides in countries around the world, the number of bikers over 70 has doubled in the last 10 years.

“Unusual is way more popular now,” said Alan E. Lewis, chairman of Grand Circle, “and with this audience, that’s a major shift.”

It’s not all fun and high adventure — medical insurance with companies such as  InsureMyTrip.com is likely to quadruple, transporting medications can be problematical, and ordinary risk factors (though wiser elders often fare better than macho youngers) remain.

But it’s enough to make me renew my Exploritas membership, hit the par course more often and shut up about circus school.

Seeing Old Age as a Never-Ending Adventure – NYTimes.com.

California/General interest/Lifestyle/Money/USA
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New killer: high tech in the front seat

by Fran Johns

How many people will this latest gadget kill?

Some cool dude can decide between the Boeuf Bourguignonne or the Coq au Vin en route to the restaurant – what difference should running over a pedestrian or two make? Or rear-ending a smaller car with a new baby in the back seat? Maybe he’ll smack into another cool dude flipping through music albums and they can take each other off the map. But it seldom works that way; usually the dead include innocent people who were doing nothing stupid at all.

That, clearly, should be where the line is drawn: when our obsession with high tech and cool toys means we will be killing other folks. But high tech cool toys make a lot of money.

To the dismay of safety advocates already worried about driver distraction, automakers and high-tech companies have found a new place to put sophisticated Internet-connected computers: the front seat.

Technology giants like Intel and Google are turning their attention from the desktop to the dashboard, hoping to bring the power of the PC to the car. They see vast opportunity for profit in working with automakers to create the next generation of irresistible devices.

This week at the Consumer Electronics Show, the neon-drenched annual trade show here (New York City), these companies are demonstrating the breadth of their ambitions, like 10-inch screens above the gearshift showing high-definition videos, 3-D maps and Web pages.

The first wave of these “infotainment systems,” as the tech and car industries call them, will hit the market this year. While built-in navigation features were once costly options, the new systems are likely to be standard equipment in a wide range of cars before long. They prevent drivers from watching video and using some other functions while the car is moving, but they can still pull up content as varied as restaurant reviews and the covers of music albums with the tap of a finger.

It really is beside the point to blame Intel and Google. Drunk drivers kill people and nobody blames Old Crow. Or, as the NRA folks like to say, “Guns don’t kill, people do.” People, lacking the common sense to admit that hurtling around in a few tons of steel requires paying attention while you hurtle, are going to kill people with these new toys.

Safety advocates say the companies behind these technologies are tone-deaf to mounting research showing the risks of distracted driving — and to a growing national debate about the use of mobile devices in cars and how to avoid the thousands of wrecks and injuries this distraction causes each year.

“This is irresponsible at best and pernicious at worst,” Nicholas A. Ashford, a professor of technology and policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said of the new efforts to marry cars and computers. “Unfortunately and sadly, it is a continuation of the pursuit of profit over safety — for both drivers and pedestrians.”

One system on the way this fall from Audi lets drivers pull up information as they drive. Heading to Madison Square Garden for a basketball game? Pop down the touch pad, finger-scribble the word “Knicks” and get a Wikipedia entry on the arena, photos and reviews of nearby restaurants, and animations of the ways to get there.

A notice that pops up when the Audi system is turned on reads: “Please only use the online services when traffic conditions allow you to do so safely.”

Oh, sure. As if someone with the arrogance to believe he or she can drive a car while drinking a latte, negotiating a business deal and reserving tickets to the ballgame is going to notice a little thing like a kid on a wobbly bike just ahead.

The technology and car companies say that safety remains a priority. They note that they are building in or working on technology like voice commands and screens that can simultaneously show a map to the driver and a movie to a front-seat passenger, as in the new Jaguar XJ.

“We are trying to make that driving experience one that is very engaging,” said Jim Buczkowski, the director of global electrical and electronics systems engineering at Ford. “We also want to make sure it is safer and safer. It is part of what our DNA will be going forward.”

Ford’s new MyFord system lets the driver adjust temperature settings or call a friend while the car is in motion, while its built-in Web browser works only when the car is parked. Audi says it will similarly restrict access to complex and potentially distracting functions. But in general, drivers will bear much of the responsibility for limiting their use of these devices.

Drivers are proving every day that they would rather multi-task than pay attention to their driving. Lives are lost every hour to distracted drivers. More lives will be lost to people engaging in Mr. Buczkowski’s driving experience because driving without paying attention is not part of our DNA.

There is a family joke around our house about my husband, who doesn’t eat, drink or talk on cell phones while riding and has certainly never drunk anything or phoned anybody himself while driving, suggesting that “a car is something intended to get you from point A to point B.”

Maybe we should quit laughing.

Driven to Distraction – Despite Risks, Carmakers Integrate the Web With the Dash – Series – NYTimes.com.

California/General interest/Health/Politics & Causes/USA/Women
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Stupak vs. America – Health care bill has come down to this

by Fran Johns

It’s hard to figure what makes Bart Stupak tick, but my guess is: Ego. Power. Self- absorption. Conceit. For sure, it has nothing to do with concern for his fellow man, and less to do with concern for women. Representative Stupak is perfectly willing to sink a bill that would offer comfort, care and in many cases life itself to millions in his petty, petulant determination to control what we do with our bodies.

Here’s a report by New York Times reporter Jodi Kantor on the gentleman from Michigan:

Representative Bart Stupak often endures things others find unbearable. He crisscrosses a Congressional district so vast that some constituents live eight hours apart and so cold that the beer at his beloved football games sometimes freezes. Years ago, as a state trooper, he blew out his knee chasing a suspect, and he has since had so many operations that he now returns to work the same day, toting crutches and ice.

After his younger son committed suicide in 2000, using the congressman’s gun, Mr. Stupak soon resumed his predawn commute to Washington and his solid voting record with the National Rifle Association.

Now he is enduring more hatred than perhaps any other member of Congress, much of it from fellow Democrats. His name has become a slogan: “Stop Stupak!”

Scott Schloegel, his chief of staff, said wearily, “I can’t tell you how many New Yorkers have called me up and yelled at me about this Stupak guy.”

Well, sorry, I can’t work up any sympathy for Scott Schloegel or his boss.  I did not elect them to ordain (along with their friends the U.S. Congress of Catholic Bishops) what American women may or may not do, by writing regressive language into a bill that could start this country toward sanity in health policy. I, along with millions of others, elected Barack Obama in part because we want our ridiculous, dysfunctional health system fixed.

With final negotiations on a health care overhaul beginning this week, complaints about “the evil Stupak amendment,” as the congressman dryly called it over dinner here recently, are likely to grow even louder. The amendment prevents women who receive federal insurance subsidies from buying abortion coverage — but critics assert it could cause women who buy their own insurance difficulty in obtaining coverage.

Mr. Stupak insists that the final bill include his terms, which he says merely reflect current law. If he prevails, he will have won an audacious, counterintuitive victory, forcing a Democratic-controlled Congress to pass a measure that will be hailed as an anti-abortion triumph. If party members do not accept his terms — and many vow they will not — Mr. Stupak is prepared to block passage of the health care overhaul.

“It’s not the end of the world if it goes down,” he said over dinner. He did not sound downbeat about the prospect of being blamed for blocking the long-sought goal of President Obama and a chain of presidents and legislators before him. “Then you get the message,” he continued. “Fix the abortion language and bring the bill back.”

Stupak’s father reportedly began study for the priesthood before changing his mind and getting married. The 10 Stupak siblings went to Catholic schools and he often cites the strength of his Catholicism. I honor him for his faith, and respect that faith. I just do not respect its assertion, via the Congress of Bishops, that one faith should dictate health policy for the nation. Admittedly, they have support from many conservatives, religious and otherwise; but “Fix the abortion language and bring the bill back?” What is he smoking with his frozen beer? It will take another 19 years to bring the bill back, if it comes back at all.

“The National Right to Life Committee and the bishops saw this as a way to vastly increase restrictions on choice,” said Representative Diana DeGette, Democrat of Colorado, who is a chief deputy House whip and co-chairwoman, with Ms. Slaughter, of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus.

Mr. Stupak was “not given very much negotiating room” by those organizations, Ms. DeGette said. Now “he’s gotten himself into a corner where he says it’s my amendment or it’s nothing.”

(Mr. Stupak says he urged the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to toughen its stance on the legislation; representatives from the conference and the National Right to Life Committee did not return calls.)

It may not be the end of the world for Congressman Stupak if the bill fails to pass. But it will be exactly that for uncounted thousands who are already suffering and dying for lack of health insurance and decent care.

Congressman Wears Scorn as a Medal in Abortion Fight – NYTimes.com.

California/Health/Politics & Causes/USA/Women
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Bin Laden, Mutallab: fathers & sons

by Fran Johns

It cannot have been fun to grow up bin Laden. With a dad whose idea of family holiday was to have his sons dig ditches in the near-freezing desert and invite moms and the rest of the kids to lie in them, overnight camping trips could lose their joy pretty fast. We already knew a good bit about family life with this dad, thanks to a book published last fall by first wife Najwa bin Laden and fourth son Omar, Growing Up bin Laden. Their insights into Osama were summed up in a review by Thomas W. Lippman of the Washington Post several months ago:

Osama bin Laden is a monster, a priapic zealot who was as cruel and arrogant in family life as he has been in his bloodstained public career. Not only is he a mass murderer, he is committed to inflicting death on as many people as possible. He lives to kill, the pursuit of violent jihad overpowering even the most basic human feelings and paternal concerns. He was a tyrannical and selfish father who deprived his many children of education, food and the comforts of modern life. From his wives he insisted on absolute subservience, sexual and otherwise. His only friends are the sycophantic thugs of his al-Qaeda entourage. At home he forbade laughter, not that there was much to laugh about.

Omar bin Laden is still not laughing, and you can’t blame him. But in some sense he may be getting even, by letting the world know a little more about a man who seems to have few redeeming qualities unless you really hate the U.S. yourself. Omar may also be helping build bridges to other sons and daughters who still look for alternative ways to live in the world other than annihilate everyone who disagrees with you. Estimates are that Osama has fathered 20 or so children by his five wives, and Omar seems to be helping those who don’t choose to be suicide bombers get away.

Two weeks ago, Omar bin Laden revealed that many of the children who had been with their father in Afghanistan escaped to Iran following the 2001 U.S.-led invasion, and were still together in a walled compound under Iranian guard.

Confirmation came with the news that a daughter, Eman bin Laden, had taken refuge in the Saudi Embassy in Tehran. Saudi officials are negotiating with the Iranians to allow Eman to return to Saudi Arabia, where she was born, and Omar bin Laden on Tuesday said he, as well as his wife and mother, had applied for visas to go to Tehran and help speed Eman’s case.

Omar and his wife, Zaina Alsabah, later reported in an e-mail message that another bin Laden son, 16-year-old Bakr, had been allowed to leave on Dec. 25. It said “He arrived with great joy at the destination of his choice,” and was with relatives. The e-mail did not disclose where Bakr was, but said he was not in Saudi Arabia.

The children’s reasons for taking up residence elsewhere are made pretty clear in Growing Up bin Laden:

The mother and son write that the kids grew up in Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Afghanistan without laughter or toys, were routinely beaten, and lost their pets to painful death from poison gas experiments by their father’s fighters.

When they became young adults, their father asked them to volunteer for suicide missions. When Omar protested, bin Laden was quoted as replying: “You hold no more a place in my heart than any man or boy in the entire country. This is true for all my sons.”

It was then, Omar recounted, that he “finally knew exactly where I stood. My father hated his enemies more than he loved his sons.”

Omar recalled visiting his father’s training camps in Afghanistan and being sent to the front lines of the civil war that tore Afghanistan in the 1990s.

“I nearly lost my life so many times,” he said. “People may ask why I left my father. I left because I did not want anyone to choose my destiny. … And I believe I chose correctly, for I chose life. I chose peace.”

Interestingly enough, we have just seen those tables reversed by a father, Umar Mutallab, who sought to prevent his own warrior son from choosing destruction. Maybe somehow there will be enough peace-loving fathers and sons to give us hope.

Bin Laden a cruel father, book says.

California/General interest/Health/Holidays/Lifestyle
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Time flies when… or does it really?

by Fran Johns

In case you’re wondering what happened to 2009 — personally, I misplaced December, and have some real doubts about several weeks in March and August — maybe you were indeed having fun. Or having too much caffeine. According to an article seductively headlined “Where Did The Time Go? Do Not Ask The Brain” in the New York Times our perception of time can be linked to good times or bad, and the nature of events we peg time’s passage to affects whether it flew like the wind or dragged like a wet mattress. Science Times writer Benedict Carey assembles enough esoteric theories, along with the down-home speculations, to make a few moments vanish while reading.

That most alarming New Year’s morning question — “Uh-oh, what did I do last night?” — can seem benign compared with those that may come later, like “Uh, what exactly did I do with the last year?”

Or, “Hold on — did a decade just go by?”

It did. Somewhere between trigonometry and colonoscopy, someone must have hit the fast-forward button. Time may march, or ebb, or sift, or creep, but in early January it feels as if it has bolted like an angry dinner guest, leaving conversations unfinished, relationships still stuck, bad habits unbroken, goals unachieved.

I think for many people, we think about our goals, and if nothing much has happened with those then suddenly it seems like it was just yesterday that we set them,” said Gal Zauberman, an associate professor of marketing at the Wharton School of Business.

Studies of what makes time fly, or seem to, come up with opposite views: too many events that you’re pegging the past 30 days to might telescope them into 20 days. Or maybe your brain does have some control over your perception of time. You didn’t get that project finished on deadline? Well, the day just zoomed by.

In earlier work, researchers found a similar dynamic at work in people’s judgment of intervals that last only moments. Relatively infrequent stimuli, like flashes or tones, tend to increase the speed of the brain’s internal pacemaker.

On an obvious level, these kinds of findings offer an explanation for why other people’s children seem to grow up so much faster than one’s own. Involved parents are all too well aware of every hiccup, split lip and first step in their own children; whereas, seeing a cousin’s child once every few years, without intervening memories, telescopes the time.

On another level, the research suggests that the brain has more control over its own perception of passing time than people may know. For example, many people have the defeated sense that it was just yesterday that they made last year’s resolutions; the year snapped shut, and they didn’t start writing that novel or attend even one Pilates class. But it is precisely because they didn’t act on their plan that the time seemed to have flown away.

By contrast, the new research suggests, focusing instead on goals or challenges that were in fact engaged during the year — whether or not they were labeled as “resolutions” — gives the brain the opportunity to fill out the past year with memories, and perceived time.

My father, who spent his entire life in academia, used to speak of time as “the element that doesn’t exist.” Maybe he was right after all. Maybe that’s what happened to December.

Mind – Research on How the Brain Perceives Time – NYTimes.com.

California/General interest/Health/seniors/Sports/USA/Women
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Skip the cold meds – hit the gym

by Fran Johns

Just in case the cold weather and a few sniffles are luring you toward the couch in front of the TV, you may want to stop and read Wall Street Journal health writer Laura Landro’s article in today’s “Personal Journal” section first.

Regular workouts may help fight off colds and flu, reduce the risk of certain cancers and chronic diseases and slow the process of aging.

Who knew? Well, most of us knew, we just haven’t been convinced. But Landro’s piece is stuffed — no offense to couches or potatoes — with evidence from new research, including data on fitness v the common cold. The fit, it turns out, have fewer and less severe colds, of shorter duration than the afflictions of their less-fit fellow creatures.

No pill or nutritional supplement has the power of near-daily moderate activity in lowering the number of sick days people take,” says David Nieman, director of Appalachian State University’s Human Performance Lab in Kannapolis, N.C. Dr. Nieman has conducted several randomized controlled studies showing that people who walked briskly for 45 minutes, five days a week over 12 to 15 weeks had fewer and less severe upper respiratory tract infections, such as colds and flu. These subjects reduced their number of sick days 25% to 50% compared with sedentary control subjects, he says.

Medical experts say inactivity poses as great a health risk as smoking, contributing to heart disease, diabetes, hypertension, cancer, depression, arthritis and osteoporosis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says 36% of U.S. adults didn’t engage in any leisure-time physical activity in 2008.

Even lean men and women who are inactive are at higher risk of death and disease. So while reducing obesity is an important goal, “the better message would be to get everyone to walk 30 minutes a day” says Robert Sallis, co-director of sports medicine at Fontana Medical Center, a Southern California facility owned by managed-care giant Kaiser Permanente. “We need to refocus the national message on physical activity, which can have a bigger impact on health than losing weight.”

[INFORMED]

Researchers are also investigating whether exercise can influence aging in the body. In particular, they are looking at whether exercise lengthens telomeres, the strands of DNA at the tips of chromosomes. When telomeres get too short, cells no longer can divide and they become inactive, a process associated with aging, cancer and a higher risk of death.

A companion article goes further, suggesting that “spurring more exercise out of the half of Americans who are already active is just as important as coaxing the sedentary off the sofa.” The jury on this, however, is still out. For the time being, you could focus on warding off the January chest cold and stretching out the telomeres.

The Hidden Benefits of Exercise – WSJ.com.

California/General interest/teens/USA
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Texting while driving kills, at any age

by Fran Johns

I had an e-mail just now from a friend who read the story, below, of my granddaughter’s accident earlier today. “You missed the point,” he said. (Why can’t I get him to register, and say this on the T/S site?) “The point is that distracted drivers total cars, distracted drivers kill. No matter how old they are.”

It’s true.

As a pedestrian, which I usually am since who wants to drive in a city like San Francisco, I have had more brushes with death from distracted drivers than I like to think about. They are talking on their phones, eating hamburgers, applying make-up, texting friends, day-dreaming, just not paying any attention to the person stepping into the street with the green light and the right-of-way. And yes, they are not all teenagers.

As a driver, if another distracted driver is in your area you can’t often jump back onto the sidewalk and survive.

We all know this, that distracted drivers kill. The knowledge doesn’t stop us. As my granddaughter says, “Everybody does it.”

California/Lifestyle/seniors/teens/USA
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The perils of parenting… and iPods… and texting while driving…

by Fran Johns

My granddaughter’s birthday is today. She’s 19. A gifted art student, a remarkably grounded, neat kid. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that this afternoon she totaled her car.

The further good news is that she’s okay, and she didn’t hurt anyone else. But it was her fault. I understand the music was playing customarily loud; I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if she had been texting a friend.

The really bad news is that I don’t imagine either of the above behaviors will change.

In 2008, the latest year for which a lot of data has been collected and digested, some 3,500 teens between the ages of 15 and 19 died in car wrecks. About 10 times that many wound up in emergency rooms, but survived. The 15 to 24 age group accounts for 14% of the population, but it accounted for 30% of the costs of motor vehicle injuries ($19 billion) among males, and 28% ($7 billion) among females. Nobody knows how many of the young drivers causing those accidents were texting their friends at the time — cell phones tend to fly out the window, although many of them have survived to incriminate people who murdered other people during casual conversation. There’s a very popular YouTube video that ought to cure you; my granddaughter has seen it.

A few months ago I was driving my granddaughter to catch the BART train back to campus, fairly late one night, when I committed a minor traffic violation under the immediate gaze of a San Francisco policewoman. During the interminable length of time it took for the policewoman to sit in her car studying her computer I did a lot of beating on the steering wheel, ranting about how this would ruin our insurance, how I hadn’t had a ticket in decades, how furious I was with myself for a dumb move. Eventually the policewoman returned, congratulated me on my excellent driving record, and said, “I’m going to give you a break this time, Ms. Johns…” and my granddaughter and I exhaled.

For the next few minutes we talked about my driving record. I said at least some of it has to relate to the fact that I do not talk on the phone while driving and I do not text while driving, and I like soft music (actually, I don’t think I mentioned the music business.) Those, however, are not dots one is interested in connecting if one is 18 years old… or any age, probably, coming from a little-old-lady driver who just got off lucky.

My greatly beloved granddaughter said she often texts while driving. “Everybody does,” she said.

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