At first NewMexiKen thought Crocs were silly (not to say unattractive). Then I began to read about them and even check them out at REI. If I had any remaining doubts this article has ended them.
So, my question: Crocs only come in full sizes. My feet come in a half-size. Do I go bigger or smaller?
[Update: Looking around I checked Amazon.com for Crocs. Amazon sells them through Nordstrom. Amazon and Nordstrom, who knew?]
An interesting article from The New York Times on changes in human aging. It includes this:
New research from around the world has begun to reveal a picture of humans today that is so different from what it was in the past that scientists say they are startled. Over the past 100 years, says one researcher, Robert W. Fogel of the University of Chicago, humans in the industrialized world have undergone “a form of evolution that is unique not only to humankind, but unique among the 7,000 or so generations of humans who have ever inhabited the earth.”
The difference does not involve changes in genes, as far as is known, but changes in the human form. It shows up in several ways, from those that are well known and almost taken for granted, like greater heights and longer lives, to ones that are emerging only from comparisons of health records.
The biggest surprise emerging from the new studies is that many chronic ailments like heart disease, lung disease and arthritis are occurring an average of 10 to 25 years later than they used to. There is also less disability among older people today, according to a federal study that directly measures it. And that is not just because medical treatments like cataract surgery keep people functioning. Human bodies are simply not breaking down the way they did before.
A thorough life-expectancy calculator from Living To 100.
This will take a few minutes and probably not tell you anything you don’t know (or suspect), but maybe it will motivate you to do better, keeping in mind that living to 100 is one thing, living well and able while you live is quite another.
Seven years ago, biochemist Zheng Cui of Wake Forest University was conducting a routine experiment, injecting test mice with a strain of cancer cells so aggressive it caused a 100 percent death rate. Oddly, one of the mice wouldn’t die. Thinking he had made an error, Cui injected the mouse with a million times the lethal dose, but it still lived.
Cui was intrigued. He bred the mouse and found that 40 percent of its offspring share a remarkable resistance to many forms of cancer. When the animals’ immune systems identify a cancer cell, a genetic tweak allows their bodies to launch a massive attack of white blood cells that kills the budding tumor.
…Even more promising, Cui has sampled a group of human volunteers and found that 10 to 15 percent have similar super cancer-fighting white blood cells.
Read more from Discover.
(HealthDay News) — Your morning cup of java may be one of the healthiest beverages in your diet, as more studies show the health benefits of coffee.
Two cups a day of coffee may promote heart health, decrease the risk of type 2 diabetes, and reduce leg pain related to exercise in many people, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Researchers have also been investigating the possibility that coffee could protect against neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. The beverage is one of the richest sources of antioxidants in the American diet.
The USDA says the levels and benefits of antioxidants seem to be equal in both caffeinated and non-caffeinated coffees. However, watch your intake of cream and sugar, as well as mixed coffee drinks that may be high in calories and sugar.
A travel article from The New York Times just in time for lunch.
I’VE never met a taco I didn’t like. Weaned on Taco Bell and my Lebanese mother’s Old El Paso tacos, I’m not terrifically choosy. High-end, low-end, commercial, authentic — even a bad taco is better than no taco.
But things change. Deep, obsessive love begets connoisseurship, and a more refined understanding is sought. The plan? A trip along Highway 1, between Los Angeles and San Francisco — among the most beautiful stretches of road in the country, and possibly the hottest taco crawl outside of Mexico. My boyfriend, Taylor Umlauf, will take the wheel and help sample the goods — generous spirit that he is — with hours between to soak in the scenery. The hum and buzz of 380 miles of winding open road await — heady visions of rustic farm towns unfolding into sun-bleached fishing villages, the sun, the salt, the fresh California air. This will be our storied and scenic backdrop. But our raison d’être? Five days, 28 taquerias, 49 tacos.
And this, The Great Taco Hunt, “A guide to the Los Angeles taco scene,” just to demonstrate the greatness of the internets.
Addressed to men, I think most of these 18 tips would work for women, too. In any case, Jessica Simpson wouldn’t work for me.
In Belgium, the wheat beer is often flavored with orange peel and coriander. But in Bavaria, brewers developed a particular kind of ale yeast that imparts a most unusual flavor to the beer: clove, citrus, smoke and, you’ll taste for yourself, banana and bubblegum. As odd as it sounds, it’s tremendously refreshing and goes well with a wide variety of spicy foods. The beer is called hefeweizen; weizen for wheat and hefe for yeast. It is almost always unfiltered, which gives hefeweizen its characteristically cloudy, hazy appearance.
— From a review in The New York Times
They liked the Brooklyn Brewery Brooklyner Weisse the best (3 stars) and the Flying Dog In-Heat Wheat Hefeweizen, Samuel Adams Hefeweizen and Magic Hat Hocus Pocus next (2½ stars).
“Superman and the Bible are plainly cut from the same template: baby Superman and baby Moses are both rescued from certain death, sent off by their desperate parents in a rocket ship/wicker basket, and are then raised by an alien family but always remember the ways of their people and spend their lives fighting for justice.”
Freakonomics Blog, in a posting entitled “Does Obesity Kill?”
NewMexiKen has really liked my current physician. He’s exceptionally pleasant, very thorough, patient, responsive to questions, has a wonderful sense of humor and is seven months older than me — which is good, because he tends to not fall back on the “you are just getting older” diagnosis so much.
But I have been reading Daniel Yergin’s great history of the oil industy, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power. Yergin writes about an Armenian, Calouste Gulbenkian who — to a large extent — brokered the deal in 1928 that led to the allocation of middle eastern oil among Royal Dutch/Shell, Anglo-Persian (now BP), the French and New Jersey Standard (eventually Exxon). For his efforts, Gulbenkian took 5 percent.
Nearing 60, according to Yergin, Gulbenkian lived at the Ritz in Paris or the Ritz or Carlton in London “attended by a succession of mistresses, at least one of whom at all times, on the basis of ‘medical advice,’ had to be eighteen years or younger in order to rejuvenate his sexual vigor.”
Where does one find a doctor who will dispense that sort of “medical advice”?
NewMexiKen has been munching on Rainier cherries today. A few at a time. Anything that good (and expensive) has to be savored.
Anyway, the cherries reminded me of a story two years ago from Jill, one of two official daughters of NewMexiKen.
[Three-year-old] Mack and I picked out some lovely ripe cherries at the market today. We’re going to chop them up put them in homemade ice cream.
At lunch I diced some of them and gave them to [8-month-old] Aidan.
He grabbed a couple and stuffed them in his mouth. Immediately, his eyes shot to me with an expression that perfectly conveyed two thoughts:
“My God, but I do love you, woman.”
and
“Exactly what else have you been keeping from me?”
Why do young teens have sex? While a recent study suggested sexy media images might be to blame, a new study shows kids might also be motivated by relationship goals like intimacy and social status.
Teens want their relationships to bring them intimacy, social status, and sexual pleasure — and they have a strong expectation these goals will be fulfilled if they have sex, according to a report in the June 2006 issue of Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.
So, ah, um, they have sex for the same reasons everyone does, I guess.
Veronica, official daughter-in-law of NewMexiKen, is training for the Nike Women’s Marathon in San Francisco on October 22. She is running the race as a member of Team In Training, a division of The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
Click on the link to help Veronica raise money to support research and patient services. Your tax-deductible contribution will be helping cancer patients and their families.
In The New Yorker Steven Shapin tells us what we’re buying when we buy organic. A brief excerpt:
It all depends on what you think you’re buying when you buy organic. If the word conjures up the image of a small, family-owned, local operation, you may be disappointed. Like Whole Foods, Earthbound Farm is a very big business. Earthbound’s founders, Drew and Myra Goodman, Manhattanites who went to college in the Bay Area, and then started a two-and-a-half-acre raspberry-and-baby-greens farm near Carmel to produce food they “felt good about,” are now the nation’s largest grower of organic produce, with revenues for this year projected at more than $450 million. Their greens, including the arugula, are produced on giant farms in six different counties in California, two in Arizona, one in Colorado, and in three Mexican states. Earthbound grows more than seventy per cent of all the organic lettuce sold in America; big organic retailers like Whole Foods require big organic suppliers. (Earthbound actually dropped the “organic” specification when it started its mass-distribution program, in 1993—even though the stuff was organic—because its first client, Costco, thought it might put customers off.) By 2004, Earthbound was farming twenty-six thousand acres; its production plants in California and Arizona total four hundred thousand square feet, and its products are available in supermarkets in every state of the Union. The Carmel Valley farm stand is still there, largely for public-relations purposes, and is as much an icon of California’s entrepreneurial roots as the Hewlett-Packard garage in downtown Palo Alto.
NewMexiKen thinks almost anything Malcolm Gladwell writes is worth reading. Including this on a study of health in the U.S. and the U.K.
NewMexiKen first posted this two years ago today.
Click to enlarge.
From Forbes.com.
Forbes.com tells us about “the greatest invention in the history of mankind” (Dave Barry), and previews their picks for “coolest beers.”
A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within three hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke … totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed and getting to the patient within three hours which is tough.
Doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:
1. Ask the individual to SMILE.
2. Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.
3. Ask the person to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE coherently. (For example: It is sunny out today.)
If he or she has trouble with any of these tasks, call 9-1-1 immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.
After discovering that a group of non-medical volunteers could identify facial weakness, arm weakness and speech problems, researchers urged the general public to learn the three questions. They presented their conclusions at the American Stroke Association’s annual meeting last February [2003]. Widespread use of this test could result in prompt diagnosis and treatment of the stroke and prevent brain damage.
NewMexiKen did a little checking and these instructions appear valid. Thanks to Jill for sending it along.
Learn to recognize a stroke and act quickly:
Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body
Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding
Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes
Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination
Sudden, severe headache with no known cause
Call 9-1-1 immediately if you experience symptoms!
Time lost is brain lost!
NewMexiKen was going to blog about this yesterday but I was too tired. From a report in the Los Angeles Times:
Chronic fatigue syndrome, often dismissed as the imaginings of depressed and whiny people, is caused by genetic mutations that impair the central nervous system’s ability to adapt to stressful situations, according to a major new study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Small changes in many of the genes in the brain prevent the nervous system from rebounding from everyday stress and from less frequent, stronger pressures, eventually triggering a cascade of molecular responses that leave the patient severely debilitated, researchers reported Thursday in 14 separate papers in the journal Pharmacogenomics.
Another in a series of household hints based upon NewMexiKen’s personal experience.
NewMexiKen likes a hard-boiled egg time and again. The best approach I’ve found is to start the eggs in cold water, bring them to a boil, then cook at a lower heat for 14-15 minutes.
Bringing the eggs to a rapid boil, forgetting about them for an hour, and having all the water boil away does not appear to work as well.
All hints now consolidated on one page.
USATODAY.com has Zagat’s list of the top 100 hotel restaurants in the U.S. (Alas, none in New Mexico).
Zagat has the list in a file for your iPod.
“Still, coronary artery disease is the leading cause of death in women over 25, killing more than 250,000 a year in the United States. Before they reach their 60’s, women are less likely than men to develop heart problems, but once the disease does occur, women often fare worse than men.”
In Heart Disease, the Focus Shifts to Women
“But recent findings from Australia confirm that fish owners should nonetheless take care when cleaning an aquarium or otherwise interacting with finned friends or the water they swim in.”
From The Seattle Times, the menu for tonight’s dinner for Chinese President Hu Jintao at Bill Gates’ home:
First course
Smoked guinea fowl salad with hazelnuts, spring radishes and Granny Smith apples
Entree
Three choices:
• Fillet of beef with Walla Walla onions, local asparagus, celeriac purée and chervil glacé
• Alaskan halibut and spot prawns with spring vegetables, fingerling potatoes and a smoked-tomato-infused olive oil
• A vegetarian option
Wines
2002 Leonetti Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon or 2003 Chateau Ste. Michelle Chardonnay, Canoe Ridge Estate
Dessert
Rhubarb brown butter almond cake
A report from Arizona Daily Star:
Paramedics using the new “user-friendly” CPR developed at the University of Arizona are reporting a dramatic jump in the survival of cardiac-arrest victims.
For the first time since UA heart scientists launched an all-out effort to get the new CPR adopted worldwide, a formal study of paramedics using the technique has proved it saves significantly more lives — nearly triple the survival rate.
Unveiled three years ago in Tucson, the new CPR calls for hard and fast chest compressions as the first and only priority to revive any adult who has collapsed from cardiac arrest.
When done by untrained bystanders, only chest compressions — at least 100 a minute — are required, with no need for mouth-to-mouth breathing that often confuses and discourages people from trying CPR.
When done by trained professionals, such as paramedics and doctors, the technique calls for continuous chest compressions first, without interruption.