IN FRATERNAM MEAM: January 2008

IN FRATERNAM MEAM

Sunday, January 27, 2008

FOUR DIET MISTAKES

Diet sabotage doesn't come in the form of a chocolate layer cake. Some dangerous diet derailers are unexpected. Here are a few to look out for:

1. You're Not Eating Enough
Going long periods without food causes dips in blood sugar that can lead to cravings and binges. Plus, a diet only works in the long terms if you can stick to it -- and total deprivation is impossible to sustain.

2.You Want a Quick Fix
Fancy exercise machines or pills may be tempting, but think instead about walking and making healthier food choices. There is no easy way to drop pounds. Steer clear of anything that promises results with little or no effort.

3. You Let Friends and Family Tempt You With Bad Choices
Your loved ones may not realize how important this lifestyle change is to you. They also may worry that you won't partake in certain activities (such as eating out). Assure them that you will but that you'll make different choices. Even better, ask them to be your weight-loss buddies.

4. You're Skimping on Sleep
New studies show that not getting enough rest actually may cause you to gain weight. Although the specific reason is not known, researchers suspect that lack o sleep affects metabolism. Be discipline about getting in your eight hours.

(SOURCE: Abstracted from PARADE MAGAZINE The All-America GET FIT PROGRAM/Get support to loss wight at Parade.com0

posted by infraternam meam @ 11:30 AM 0 comments

Saturday, January 19, 2008

GLOBAL GOBBLERS

When it comes to turkey consumed per person, Israel leads the world; just over 34 pounds a year. "And we don't even have Thanksgiving!", says a consulate spokeswoman. Israel brought the birds over from the U.S. in the 195s. In a country where red meat is expensive and pork is not kosher, turkeys provide a lot of ways. Jerusalem food writer Barabara Sofer has seen turkey schnitzel and kebabs and even turkey carved up to look like lamb chops. An avian flu outbreak last year did not dissuade the turkey-eating public.

But the U.S. is not turkey slouch, raising 272 million gobblers a year. The bird is, after all, a native, domesticated from the feisty wild turkey that Ben Franklin thought should be the national bird. Nowadays, hens are often holiday dinner - they're harvested at about 15 pounds. Toms easily hit 40; they're the source of deli meats. True fact: Turkeys are now bred so big they must be artificially inseminated. Up for debate: turkey IQ. "About as smart as any bird", says Iowa State University veterinarian Darrell Trampel, Israel poultry geneticist Gaddi Zeitlin states, "It's a very stupid animal."

TOP TURKEY EATERS
Pounds per capita, 2005

1. ) Israel ...34.6
2 .)Slovakia ... 31.3
3.) U.S.A.....16.1
4.) France .... 13.7
5.) Hungary ..... 12.8
6.) Grenada .....12.1
7.) Dominica ....11.2
7.) Ireland ... 11.2
7.) Samoa... 11.2

(SOURCE: Abrstracted from NATGEOMAG/CULTURE)

posted by infraternam meam @ 9:19 PM 0 comments

Saturday, January 12, 2008

THE POLITICS OF ADOPTION

This year the map of international adoptions will be redrawn. The U.S. which adopts the most children from abroad, will be a full participant in the Hague Convention of Intercountry Adoption. The treaty regulates adoption among the 74 members and helps insure that agencies comply with Hague rules, which call for counseling for adoptive parents and ban child buying. That could be a problem for Guatemala, a mainstay of U.S. adoption for a decade. Although a Hague signatory, the country has been accused of child trafficking. Without reforms, adoptions could plummet. Tom DiFilipo of the Children's Services expects numbers to rise from other Hague participants - Colombia, for example.

Would-be parents are used to such changes. South Korea once topped the list, sending some 100,000 children to U.S. form the 50's to the 90's. When the Cold War ended, Russia and former Soviet-bloc countries like Romania - infamous for its orphanages - opened o adoption. U.S. numbers soared. Romania closed its doors in 2001. Russia with a dropping birthrate, now favors local families, as does China. For these and other reasons, U.S. numbers are sliding.

But one thing remains constant: Parents often embrace the culture of their new child. "I now know in my heart," says Ellen Rathfon, mother of two girls born in China, "we' a global community".

Orphan Visas issued by U.S., 19996 - 2006

20,705 Annual Totals

6,520 China

4,093 Guatemala

3,710 Russia

1,381 South Korea

711 Ethiopia

U.S. Adoptions of Immigrant Orphans, 2006

Guatemala 4,093

Mexico 76

Haiti 313

Colombia 349

Jamaica 56

Liberia 338

Nigeria 53

Poland 67

Ukraine 463

Ethiopia 711

Russia 3,710

Kazakhstan 580

Nepal 61

India 307

Thailand 57

China 6,520

Vietnam 162

South Korea 1,361

Philippines 252

(Source: Abstracted from NATGEOMAG by: Shelley Sperry on GEOGRAPHY)

posted by infraternam meam @ 9:46 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 09, 2008

WHY DO WE FORGET THINGS??

BEFORE I FORGET, LET ME ASK : Is your dinner-table talk as snappy as ours?

"Remember I asked you to remind me to call someone?" "Yes" "Who was it?" "I forgot"

And: "What did I go to the kitchen for?" "How do I know"? "You asked me to get it". "Get what?"

And: "I saw Whatsisname today." "Who?" "You know. Whatsisname." "Oh, Where?"

If this sounds familiar, and if you ever complain about your memory, join the crowd. There are millions of us out here, complaining more about remembering less. Memory specialists, ow whom I have interviewed a slew, say that forgetfulness is the top health concern of baby boomers. And they're not the only ones. "My memory is awful", says my dental hygienist, Eve, 36, as she tenderly macecrates my gums. "Does that mean I'm likelier to get demented?" I shake my head no. "Good", she says, "because I sure worry".

The Worried well therapists call them. They worry because they do not know that this type of memory loss is normal. Normal, friend. Universal. So universal that the phrase "it's on the tip of my tongue" is used in more than 40 languages.

With normal aging, what we lose is not memory in general but a particular kind. We have many kinds. One is procedural memory, which is how-to-walk, how-to-eat, how-to-a-shoe memory. It's what Sinatra never thought when he sang, Astaire never thought about when he swings a golf club. (If he did, it might ruin his stroke). It is memory we use unconsciously, and it is the strongest kind we have.

A second is semantic memory, which covers facts. What is a key? What are eyeglasses? What is a movie?

And a third is episodic memory, which covers experience. I've lost my keys. Where did I leave my glasses? Who was in that movie? This is the type that starts playing tag with us in the sweet fullness of time. Here's why.

That 3-pound miracle tucked into your skull has 100 billion neurons zapping around wildly, sending each other the electrical and chemical signals that made memories. With time, the signals weaken. Brains shrink by about half a percent a year, starting around age 30 -- though usually we don't notice any change for years. And here's the rub. Episodic memory relies heavily on the front areas of the brain, the frontal lobes -- the very areas that start shrinking first.

The loss isn't that big really. It feels, big because we perceive a huge difference between a brain buzzing along at full strength and one operating at, say, 95 %. But it's just a slowing down . The elusive name is probably nor gone -- it simply takes longer to pop up. which raises a question everyone always asks: Is everything that ever went into my brain still there? Answer: Nobody knows. (How would you find out?)

Many researchers do believe it's all there but in altered form. "The disc is full," we say, and, "NO room on my hard drive" -- but the computer analogy is not really accurate. As Dr. Barry Gordon, a neurologist at John Hopkins points out, computer memory is exact; brain memory is fluid. Whenever you make or receive a memory, its pattern of signals is altered. Sort of like writing over writing. Which is why, as time passes, our memories are apt to change and deceive us.

We accept other changes in our bodies. We consider it natural that we won't play tennis at 50 as we did at 20, but we cannot accept that our brains also may slow down. It's simply too threatening.

Scientists who understand the why of memory are not so easily threatened. I ask Dr. Richard E. Powers, chairman of the medical advisory board of the Alzheimer's Foundation, if he has memory problems. "A group of doctors my age were laughing about the changes we observe," he says. "At 25, we could read a scientific article once and absorb it. Now we have to read it several times. At 57, my ability to hold onto new information is not as good as it used to be -- but we retain the capacity to store and use the information. It's like flypaper that's been lying a long time on the counter. It's still got plenty of stick but not as much as it used to be."

We actually may be wired to forget. Consider: If everything stuck to that mental flypaper, we would be in big trouble. We'd be overwhelmed by trivia. The longer we live, the more memories we stuff into our brains, and the harder it may become to locate any particular one. So those that we need least, the episodic memories, get stored in the attic first. After all, how important is it (how does it help you survive in the world) to remember the name of that restaurant you are at last night? What is important to remember is what "eating" means and how to eat.

Think of our kind of memory loss a nature's priority filing system -- often irritating but practical and desirable in the great Darwinian scheme of survival. And normal -- a lovable word. It comes with the territory of healthy longevity. And when you consider the alternatives, as they say, it's the best deal in town.

Source: (PARADE MAG by Martha Weinman Lear who is the author of "Where Did I Leave My Glasses?" Grand Central Publishing/Wellness Central and "Heartsounds".)

posted by infraternam meam @ 8:36 PM 0 comments

Sunday, January 06, 2008

TRANSITION

FAMOUS IN LIFE, NOTED IN PASSING

In 2007 we said goodbye to the novelist who would be king, the motorcycle daredevil who would be Peter Pan -- and some folks who won't be missed.

NORMAN MAILER, 84

Whatever you thought of him, he never dodged a risk - writing novels about Jesus, Hitler and ancient Egypt, getting the killer Jack Henry Abbott out of prison, running for mayor of New York. Or a controversy: over race, war, feminism. His best book? His 1948 debut, "The Naked and the Dead?" One of his Pulitzer Prize winners -- "The Armies of the Night" (1968) or "The Executioner's Song" (1979)? Something else? None? We'll never stop arguing about him. He would have loved that.

YVONNE DE CARLO, 84
She played Moses' wife in "Ten Commandments" and debuted Sondheim's "I'm Still Here" on Broadway. But for boomers, primary address will always be 1313 Mockingbird Lane c/o "The Munsters".

KURT WALDHEIM, 88
A two term UN Secretary General, he ran (successfully) for president of Austria in 1985 - and critics found he'd misrepresented his service as a Nazi officer. A committee of historians concluded he'd know about war crimes but didn't participate. In a posthumously disclosed letter, he fessed up to "mistakes"; only Syria and Japan laid wreaths at his funeral.

LEONA HELMSLEY, 87
A staple of New York gossip columns, the real - estate and hotel mogul never lived down her billing as "the Queen of Mean" -- for her 1989 conviction for tax evasion, which got her 16 months. In her will she left $12 million to her white Maltese. The dogs' name? Trouble.

MARCEL MARCEAU, 84
The greatest of classical mimes (Chalk-white face, top hat with red flower. Hunts invisible net. Struggles against invisible wind. Performs "Youth, Maturity, Old Age and Death"; folds into embryo, gets up, strides stage, crumples, folds.) The rest is really silence.

BROOKE ASTOR, 105
A sparkling socialite who danced at parties well into her 90s, she dispensed nearly $200 million from a foundation left by her third husband, Vincent Astor, to cultural and social organizations. Her last years, spent in seclusion with dementia, were tainted by a scandal targeting her only child, Anthony Marshall, over her care and finances. He's been charged with fraud.

ANNA NICOLE SMITH, 39
For a while there, it was a fabulous life; Playboy model, widow of a billionaire, reality-TV star, mother of two. It all ended in a fog of pills and dueling paternity claims in a Florida hotel. Maybe Vickie Lynn Hogan shouldn't have left Mexia, Texas.

WALTER SCHIRRA, JR., 84
Of NASA's original seven astronauts, only Schirra flew in all three of the first programs; Mercury, Gemini and Apollo. On the 1962 Mercury mission he told the world " I'm having a ball up here drifting". Two decades later he said ,"It's mostly lousy out there. It's a hostile environment, and it's trying to kill you".

IRA LEVIN, 78
Unprolific? Maybe. But his seven novels include "Rosemary's Baby (1967), "The Stepford Wives" (1972)and
"The Boys from Brazil" (1976), all best sellers, all hit films, all tapping into deep personal fears, and cultural anxieties. And his 1978 play "Deathtrap" was a Broadway smash.

HENRY HYDE, 83
As a six-term congressman and House Judiciary Committee chairman from 1995 to 2001, the Illinois Republican led fights to ban federal funding for abortions. He forced through the vote to impeach Bill Clinton. But supported Clinton in trying to ban assault weapons; would the base support him today?

LIZ CLAIBORNE, 78
She called them "Liz Ladies" -- often the first female executives in their companies, with no time to shop. Claiborne was one herself; a mother who toiled in other designers' back rooms until launching her own line in 1976. Within 10 years, she had the first Fortune 500 company founded by a woman.

MERV GRIFFIN, 82
No contestant ever took home as much money from a game show as he did. The ex nightclub crooner, talk show host and hotelier, Griffin created "Wheel of Fortune" and "Jeopardy!" Congratulations! You've won more than a billion dollars.

PAUL TIBBETS JR., 92
After dropping the first atom bomb, on Hiroshima in 1945, he returned a hero. But according to his granddaughter, he chose to be cremated so no one could deface his headstone."I viewed my mission as one to save lives," he said. Many World War II vets agreed.

BEVERLY SILLS, 78
The Brooklyn- born coloratura soprano could have been, you know, a diva. But her warmth, humor and acting ability made her a star that a wide public could embrace -- in part, through her ebullient TV appearances with Johnny Carson, Carol Burnett and the Muppetts. Long a fixture at the New York City Opera, she finally made her Met debut in 1975. After retiring, she became a powerful arts administrator, fund-raiser and cultural ambassador.

EVEL KNIEVEL, 69
The no-wires Peter Pan made first motorcycle jump over rattlesnakes and mountain lion; then came rows of buses, the fountains at Caesars' Palace and Idaho's Snake River Canyon. (Lucky he had a parachute) The self styled "last gladiator in the new Rome" retired in 1980, still denied permission for the Grand Canyon.

IKE TURNER, 76
What's love got to do with it? Not much, when most people think about Tina's ex. But Ike was a world-class musician; instrumentalist, bandleader, promoter, songwriter, talent scout and blues-rock innovator who paved the way for Elvis and Chuck Berry, to name a few. And yes; he was a world class jerk , too.

MADELEINE L'ENGLE,88
She was in her 40s when her 1963 children's sci-fi novel "A Wrinkel in Time", enabled her to quit running her general store in Connecticut. Rejected by 26 publishers, it won the Newberry Medal and hasn't stopped selling since. Nor have fundamentalist stopped protesting its Jungian-Einsteinian Christianity and its tendency to involve young readers in fantasy - for her, the job description.

MICHAEL DEAVER, 69
If Ronald Reagan was the Great Communicator, Deaver was the Great Lighting director. As presidential adviser, he mastermind those stunning photo ops; remember Reagan standing on a cliff overlooking the English Channel during the 40th anniversary of D-Day? Deaver even orchestrated Reagan's funeral over the Pacific Ocean just as the ceremony ended.

LUCIANO PAVAROTTI, 71
The Italian tenor lived larger in every sense, and his showmanship matched the rare beauty of his voice. Though it was said he couldn't read music, he stormed the opera stage, then barreled far beyond it. The King of the High Cs became a pop star with his Three Tenors gig; he sang with Bono, Sting and even the Spice Girls for charity. No one did more to popularize opera -- while selling 50 million of his own albums worldwide.

TAMMY FAYE BAKKER MESSNER, 65
Those eyelashes were her trademark when she and televangelist husband Jim Bakker hosted the "PTL Club" in the 70s and 80s. They shed mascara when the Bakkers tearfully revealed he'd had sex with a young (perhaps unwilling) church secretary. And she wore them still, on "Larry King Live", the day before she died of cancer.

JANE WYMAN, 90
Wyman made 80 films and 350 television shows in her long career, and won a 1948 Oscar for playing the deaf girl who's raped in "Johnny Belinda". The movie that made her the toast of Hollywood came out the same year she split from her husband, and actor named Ronald Reagan. Coincidence?

ARTHUR M SCHLESINGER., 89
The first president that Schlesinger wrote a book about was Andrew Jackson; the last was George W. Bush. The bow-tied historian didn't get to every heavyweight of the intervening 175 years, but almost; Kennedy (John, for whom he was an aide, and Robert), FDR (Three Volumes) -- 20 books in all, with a 1-in-10 Pulitzer Prize percentage. His 1973 book on Nixon, "The Imperial Presidency", gave us an enduring term -- and an enduring case of the willies.

ART BUCHWALD, 81
His Pulitzer Prize winning columns found humor in odd places; East Germany, foster care and, of course, American politics. But he saved his most surprising laugh lines for last; writing about his own death -- or rather, about hos he hadn't died, despite his doctor's predictions. "Instead of going upstairs", he wrote after walking out of his hospice, "I am going to Martha's vineyard."

DEBORAH KERR, 86
She waltzed with Yul Bryner ("The King and I"), donned a nun's habit ("Black Narcissus") and stood up Cary Grant ("An Affair to Remember"). The ladylike Kerr erotiziced her image in "From Here to Eternity", tangling in the waves with Burt Lancaster. She got six Oscar nominations; she never won, but she had great taste in costars.

KURT VONNEGUT, 84
Call his novel satire, sci-fi or fantasy -- generations of hip young readers ate them up. As a POW of the Nazis, he witnessed the American firebombing of Dresden; two decades later, it inspired "Slaughter House Five". He tried metafiction ("This is a very bad book you're writing," he wrote in "Breakfast of Champions"), graphic art and political polemics -- all with notable success.

E. HOWARD HUNT JR., 88
CIA agent, spy novelist, Watergate felon, Selig of the dark side -- Hunt wore more hats than just his snappy fedor. He helped plan the 1954 coup in Guatemala and the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion as well as the 1972 break-in at the DNC headquarters. On tape in 2007he dished deathbed dirt about JFK's assassination' you don't want to know.

PORTER WAGONER, 80
Yes, he made Dolly a star. But a pompadoured, Nudie-suited singer had a warm, down-home delivery and a string hits; "A Satisfied Mind" (1955) and "The Green, Green Grass of Home" (1965). On recent CDs, his voice sounds time worn and enriched.

JOEY BISHOP, 89
Bishop didn't drink or raise hell much, and he was often overshadowed by the wilder members of the Rat Pack; Frank, Dean, Sammy, Peter Lawford. But he wrote most of the lines they spoke for their legendary "Summit Meeting" shows at the Sands in Las Vegas, though he like to to ad-lib his own stuff. "Marilyn", he once called out when Monroe, in white ermine, arrived in the middle of the comedy act, "I told you to wait in the truck".

RUTH BELL GRAHAM, 87
She was the quintessential preacher's wife -- to the quintessential preacher, Billy Graham -- but she wasn't demure. His most outspoken adviser, she told him not to run for president or pursue a TV career. The sign above her bedroom door read: NOBODY KNOWS THE TROUBLE I'VE BEEN.

SOL LeWITT, 78
LeWitt's modular cube sculptures helped launch Minimalism, and his lucid writing revealed a ready wit. One piece began: "The editor ... is in favor of avoiding the 'notion that the artist is a kind of ape that has to be explained that has to be explained by the civilized critic.' This should be good news to both artists and apes."

MAX ROACH, 83
A pair of bad breaks gave the 17 year old Roach his: World War II took drummers off the scene, and Duke Ellington's regular timekeeper fell ill. Roach was soon an indispensable part of the bebop revolution, along with Parker, Gillespespie, Bud Powell, Monk and the young Miles Davis. And he kept experimenting; with waltz time, all percussion ensembles and all Roach solo performances.

DAVID HALBERSTAM, 73
The Pulitzer Prize journalist covered Vietnam JFK tried to get The New York Times to pull him out -- and wrote 20 books; on the auto industry, baseball, firefighters and, in "The Powers That Be" (1979) the media itself. "The Best and the Brightest" (1972), on Vietnam-era decision making, still gives a chill; his final book, on the Korean War, came a few months after his death.

JACK VALENTI. 62
LBJ's devoted aide remained a booster even in his posthumous memoir. His second career was president of the Motion Picture Association of America The bawdy Johnson might have been proud that his guy created the rating system that ends with X.

MICHAELANGELO ANTONIONI, 94
Even in the 60's, his enigmatic films caused controversy. "Lavventura" - a slow-paced study in alienation - was booed at Cannes, then embraced by critics. In his first English film "Blowup" (1966), a London photographer believes a picture he shot contains the clue to a murder. But it's the final tennis scene that will blow your mind.

BORIS YELTSIN, 76
The beefy, sybaritic Siberian left a mixed legacy -- the communist boss who finally smashed the Party, yet left an unstable Russia, prey for oligarchs, quagmired in Chechnya. But he allowed the press and business to operate freely, and in 1991, he climbed on top of a tank to stare down communists threatening a coup of President Mikhail Gorbachev -- perhaps single handedly saving the country's fledgling reformation. In 1999, he became the first Russian to relinquish power voluntarily. Vladimir Putin, Yeltsin's hard line, hand picked successor, says he'll do the same. We'll see.

(Source: ABSTRACTED FROM NEWSWEEK for Dec. 31,2007 to Jan. 7, 2008)

posted by infraternam meam @ 9:33 PM 0 comments

Wednesday, January 02, 2008

TEN THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT KNOW ABOUT THE NOBEL PRIZE

With Al Gore being named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, it's fitting to take a deeper look at the world's most famous awards for peaceful human achievement. That they were founded by Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, is well known. That Jerry Lewis was once nominated for the honor for his muscular dystrophy fundraising is not. (The madcap comic lost out to Amnesty International). Here are 10 other Nobel Prize ironies and oddities:

1. When Alfred Nobel's brother Ludwig died in 1888, French newspapers reported that Alfred had died (One headline reads: "The merchant of death is dead.") some historian believe that newspapers' mistake gave Alfred a sneak peek at his legacy and inspired his desire to be remembered for something other than explosives. Hence the Nobel Prize was born.

2. T he year 1912 was momentous for French scientist Alexis Carrel. He won the Nobel for medicine and he began an experiment in which he took tissue from the heart of a chicken embryo and kept it alive for decades to test how long a warm-blooded cells could be sustained in the laboratory. The news media oversimplified the project, annually marking the birthday of the "chicken heart." The Nobel Laureat died in 1944, and the chicken tissue was euthanized two years later, having lived for 34 years

3. The 1926 Nobel Prize in medicine went to Danish researcher Johannes Fibiger for discovering a cause for cancer. Problem was, Fibiger wrongly concluded that roundworms had caused the tumors in his lab rats. Within a decade of Fibeger's triumph, other research cast serious doubt on his findings, and the embarrassment led Nobel officials to shy away from honoring cancer research for years to come. Fibiger did not live long enough to suffer the same chagrin. He died in 1928 -- of cancer.

4. Mohandas Gandhi never won the Nobel Peace Prize. James Joyce never won the literature prize. Both died before Nobel officials recognized their genius. Until 1974, a person could win the prize posthumously only if he or she died between the Feb. 1 deadline for nominations and the award announcement in October. That's how UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold won the Peace Prize in 1961, a month after dying in a plane crash. But in 1974, the rules became stricter. Only those who died between the announcement in October and the ceremony in December could be posthumous recipients.

5. University of Chicago graduate Edwin Hubble never won the Nobel Prize for physics despite transforming our view view of the universe and providing the first evidence to support the Big Bang theory. Swedish engineer Gustaf Dalen, on the other hand, won the 1912 physics prize for improving gas flow to light house beacons.

6. Portuguese neurologist Egas Moniz received the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1949 for pioneering the lobotomy. When Moniz developed this treatment to cut nerve connections in the frontal lobe of the brain, there was no other effective treatment for schizophrenia. But lobotomy soon was considered dehumanizing and subject to abuse and drug therapies became far more effective. Today, some forms of "psychosurgery" are performed, but they are quite rare.

7. The most controversial honor in Nobel history? Perhaps the Peace Prize of 1973. Two members of the selection committee resigned to protest the choice of U.S. secretary of State Henry Kissinger and North Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho for crafting a Vietnam War Peace deal. Tho rejected the prize, saying his nation was not yet at peace. Kissinger accepted, but in later years has been much criticized for his role in the secret war in Cambodia and the overthrow of a democratically elected government in Chile. Humorist-songwriter Tom Lehrer once said that "political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobe Prize."

8. An eccentric California optometrist named Robert Graham announced in 1980 that he was forming the Repository for Germinal Choice, which was quickly nicknamed the Nobel Prize Sperm Bank. Graham said he had commitments from three Nobelists, but the publicity chased away two of them, leaving only physicist William Shockley, who advocated paying people whose IQs where less than 100 to be sterilized. No children were born from laureate sperm, and the center closed in 1999.

9. Toni Morrison, the author who was the first African-American woman to win a Nobel Prize, has expressed regrets that her books aren't credited to Chloe Anthony Wofford. That was her name before shoe started going by "Toni" at Howard University and adopted the name Morrison from her husband, whom she later divorced.

10.When University of Chicago Professor Robert Lucas won the Nobel Prize in economics he gave half of his $1 million prize money to his ex-wife. A clause in their divorce settlement in the lat '80s required him to split the cash if he won before the end of October 1995. Lucas prize came three weeks before he would have been free of the obligation.

SOURCE: History Lesson by Mark Jacob/CHICTRIBUNE foreign/national news editor.mjacob@tribune.com "The Noble Prize: A History of Genuis, Controversy and Prestige" by Burton Feldman, nobelprize.org,pbs.org,improbable.com.Tribune News Services.)

posted by infraternam meam @ 1:14 PM 0 comments

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

BRAIN-ER-CISE

QUIZ YOURSELF

How old are you?

Does your chronological age fit with how old your body feels?

RealAge, a consumer-health media company, developed a patented RealAge test to measure how fast your body is aging, based on health and lifestyle.

To find out if you are older or younger than your actual age from a health standpoint, take this test:

How would you rate your physical health compared to others of your chronological age?

Excellent -2
Very good -1
Good 0
Fair +1
Poor +2

Have you ever used tobacco (cigarettes, cigars,chew tobacco) on a regular basis for 3 or more months?

Yes, I currently smoke +2
Yes, but I have quit 0
No -2

How often do you floss?

Never +2
1 time per week +1
2-3 times per week 0
4-6 times per week -1
7 or more times per week -2

How often do you use a mobile phone while driving?

I don't own a mobile phone 0
I never use a mobile phone while driving -2
Very infrequently 0
1-2 times each day I drive +1
3-5 times each day I drive +1
More than 5 times each day I drive +2
I don't drive 0

Which best describes your current marital status? (If you consider yourself in a lifelong cohabitating relationship even though you are not legally married, please choose "married".)

Never married 0
Happily married -1
Unhappily married 0
Separated +1
Divorced +2
Widow/Widower +2

In the last 12 months, have you experienced some events that caused you a great deal of stress, such as death of a family member, illness, divorce, unemployment, etc?

Yes +2
No -1

How many servings of whole grain do you eat per day?

None +2
1-2 servings +1
3-5 servings -1
6 or more servings -2

Do you eat multiple servings from each food group one most days?

Yes, always -2
Yes, on most days -1
No, hardly ever +1

On average, how many days per week do you do light to moderate aerobic, strength building or flexibility exercise?

1-2 days 0
3-4 days -1
5-6 days -2
7 days -2

Do you have diabetes?

Yes, type I diabetes +3
Yes, type 2 diabetes +3
No 0

YOUR SCORE
Add up your positive and negative points separately.

More positive points than negative means your RealAge is likely older than your birthday age.

An equal amount of positive and negative points means your RealAge is approximately the same as your birthday age.

More negative points than positive points means your RealAge is likely younger than your birthday age.

(Source: RealAge/Redeye)

posted by infraternam meam @ 3:49 PM 0 comments

About Me

Name: infraternam meam
Home: Chicago, United States
About Me: I am now at the prime of my life and have been married for the past 25 years. Sickly at times, but wants to see the elixir vita, so that I will be able to see my grandchildren from my two boys.
See my complete profile