New inhalers can cause confusion. I just started using inhalers last summer, so I'm not sure I ever had a CFC inhaler. But my last two definitely have an HFC propellant, and I noticed they had a softer spray. I also hadn't realized inhalers need cleaning -

HFA inhalers need to be washed with warm water and air dried once a week. The medication is stickier and will clog the hole, reducing the amount of medication the spray delivers.

This morning I washed my old inhaler that I thought was near-dead and just keeping "in case". Um, no, it's fine. Cool.

Skip the paper bag if you think you're hyperventilating and focus on slow, calm breaths. The paper bag won't hurt you if you really are hyperventilating - but if it's asthma or a heart attack, reducing oxygen is the last thing you need.

Building muscles has a utilitarian purpose??? They're not just decorative??? Who knew??? Yeah, I'm heavy on the sarcasm there. Truth is, size is not the point - strength is. It's from a special section on the human body.

WikiHow chose to highlight "How to Enjoy Your Job" on a Monday. Discuss.

• 17:19 So, okay, figured out how to do a trade run. Nifty. Only it's to an island that WON'T BUY the gems we wanted to sell. Oops.
• 19:09 Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything. - Floyd Dell

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• 19:08 Just finished a quick after-breakfast pillage ... FIVE HOURS LATER? Ow.
• 19:08 Good QOTD today: Idealism is what precedes experience; cynicism is what follows. - David T. Wolf. (Not always, but often)
• 19:09 I shall never be ashamed of citing a bad author if the line is good. - Seneca.

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Whenever I conduct workshops with any group, I ask people how free they feel and to rate themselves on a scale of 0 to 100. The responses are usually about the same whether I am talking to people in a correctional facility or at a workplace. I have learned firsthand that some people feel free while behind bars (and use their time in a positive way), yet others feel “locked up” while living in society.
[...]
[W]ouldn’t it be great if we didn’t define ourselves by our work? It should be just as valid to define ourselves by our leisure.
- Alison Link, quoted in The New York Times

I thought those were worth thinking about.

Saving money by simplifying...

Sometimes figuring out what really matters takes time.

"I want to think M&Ms are better than money, because you can eat them."

Thoughts on the Desiderata.

• 22:05 They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse. - Emily Dickinson #
• 10:40 Psychology Today on caffeine - besides increasing heart rate it blocks the "sleepy" neurotransmitter adenosine. tinyurl.com/3zskn4 #
• 12:42 "Don’t be rude to the wait staff" & other useful things to know tinyurl.com/69ha2k #

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It's interesting how what we often worry about isn't borne out by statistics. Some ways to check this...

[Let's Pretend the top 5 question is the top 1 :]

Poll #1171188 Assessing Risk
Open to: All, results viewable to: None

What's more common in the United States?

What's the more frequent cause of death in the United States?

What are the top five causes of accidental death in America after motor-vehicle accidents?

Of the top two causes of nonaccidental death in America, which kills more women?

What are the next three causes of nonaccidental death in the United States?

Which kills more Americans?

Which kills more Americans?

This is adapted from this article from the psychologytoday feed. Yes, answers are in the linked article. (Thanks dianthus for pointing it out :)

From the "10 faves" list that Jonathan Clements (of the Getting Going WSJ column) picked for his last day comes this translation of Investor to English. A few excerpts:

"I'm happy to earn the market's return"	But only when stocks are going up.
"I have a very high risk tolerance"	I won't panic and sell until I've lost a truckload of money.
"I'm a conservative investor"	I have only half my portfolio in tech.
"I'm well diversified"	I own three stocks.
"The fund's got a great record"	I'm an expert at predicting past performance.
"I own last year's top-performing fund"	The problem is, I bought it this year.
"I've made a ton of money in the stock market"	It's a shame most of my portfolio is in bonds.
"I picked a stock that doubled last year"	Don't ask what else I picked.
"I've done really well in recent years"	I couldn't calculate my rate of return if my life depended on it.
"I never open my statements"	I've lost so much money, I can't bear to look.

Other gems: Money & Happiness; How Houses Eat Money, or much money do you really make when your house doubles in value; Twenty Tips for No-Nonsense Investing; and Sales School: What Your Insurance Agent Is Learning From the 'Annuity Gladiator'.


I also like his final column, where he asks "why do all this saving & investing?" His answer, characteristically, involves a list:

1. If you have money, you don't have to worry about it. This isn't guaranteed. [...] This feeling of financial serenity isn't, however, only for the wealthy. If you live beneath your means and invest prudently, you can achieve a sense of financial control long before you achieve full financial independence. [...]
   
   
2. Money can give you the freedom to pursue your passions. Ideally, you want to spend your days engaged in activities that you find absorbing and satisfying, that you feel you're good at -- and where you feel you're doing good.
   
   [...Y]ou don't need to be financially independent to have a sense of purpose. If you're young, you can pick a career that is close to your heart. If you're in your 40s and you have been saving for 15 or 20 years, maybe you can afford to swap into a new job that is less lucrative but more fulfilling.
   
   
3. Money can buy you time with friends and family. [...W]hile money makes all this easier, it clearly isn't a necessity. Disgruntled with your lot in life? My advice: Forget spending more money at the mall -- and instead spend more time with friends. Your bank account may still be skimpy, but your life will be far, far richer.

Note he's not talking about Bill Gates rich or dot-com rich. He's talking about having some extra squirreled away so that you can cope with unexpected expenses or job changes or moves. Regularly living below your means is like a UPS that'll keep your computer up a few hours. No, it's not as long-term as a building full of generators, but it'll let you go through short power outages without a problem ... and give you time to save & shut down during a big outage.

You may remember that last May, Joss Whedon wrote about the "honor killing" of Du'a Khalil, on April 7, 2007.

A group of people have put together an anthology of "responses" to Du'a Khalil's death and Whedon's essay called Nothing But Red, with proceeds going to Equality Now. (Yes, EN is the charity supported by Can't Stop the Serenity.)

At the moment I think I'd be more likely to give EN the cash than buy the book, but I also think creating the book is a Good Thing overall and probably wasn't easy.

Couple links: I know they're talking about the UK here, but throwing away 1/3 of food uneaten seems high...?

And: How stupid lies get into history textbooks.

...and approaches it from a "it's not sexy!" standpoint. Because of course sexiness is more important than anyone's sleep.

At least the article does give a comeback on the sexiness point: "In addition to life-threatening health problems and psychological symptoms, people with untreated sleep apnea often suffer from impotence and other disorders."

I do understand a spouse complaining that the noise of the cpap or the breeze from the vent keeps them awake. It's sleep quality vs sleep quality at that point. And the noise from my cpap sometimes bugs me.

Marlene Zuk, a professor of biology at the University of California at Riverside, writing in the NY Times blog Well (emphasis added):

Bacteria don’t “develop” resistance, as if it were a muscle nurtured by going to a microbial gym. Instead, they had it all along, or more accurately a small proportion of them did. [...] Antibiotics mainly kill bacteria by targeting components in the cell wall, a structure that surrounds bacteria but which our own cells lack. Antibiotics are highly selective — unlike soap and water, which get rid of bacteria indiscriminately, through mechanical means.

When you take an antibiotic, a few of the bacterial cells in your body already happen to have genes that enable them to be resistant to it, just by random chance. You have many millions of bacteria, so it’s not too surprising that they vary, the way a big city will tend to have at least a few people with unusual eye color, exceptionally small feet or any other characteristic. If you don’t take the whole course of antibiotics, say the 5 or 7 or 14 days your doctor recommends — or sometimes even if you do — enough of the resistant bacteria may remain to establish a new infection.

And they multiply incredibly quickly, leaving their equally resistant progeny in much greater numbers. The resistant bacteria will spread the way bacteria do, but now they will outnumber the vulnerable ones in the population. Then, when the same antibiotic is used again, it can’t gain a toehold because a far greater proportion of the newly-produced bacteria are unaffected by its use. The bacteria have evolved. Not taking a full course of antibiotics, or taking them when they can do no good, as with viral infections like colds or flu, hastens the selection of the resistant germs.

In contrast, although soap and water don’t completely annihilate the bacteria either, they aren’t selective. The bacteria that remain are genetically similar to the ones that went swirling down the drain, and so their offspring are equally vulnerable to the next scrubbing. [...] So using soap or bleach-based cleansers is good, but inappropriate application of antibiotics will be worse than ineffective because it drives evolution.

Antibiotics can be lifesavers, but ... ow. There's this post on how antibiotics are often over-prescribed for ear infections.

A recession may be looming, but a group of investors thinks Americans are ready to pony up $35 for a movie ticket.

Village Roadshow Ltd., Act III, Lambert Entertainment and the Retirement Systems of Alabama pension fund have partnered to bring the luxury cinema circuit Village Roadshow Gold Class Cinemas to the U.S.

The partners will spend $200 million to build 50 theaters nationwide over the next five years, with the first two venues set to open in South Barrington, a suburb of Chicago, and the Seattle suburb of Redmond in October.

Each complex will sport theaters featuring 40 reclining armchair seats with footrests, digital projection and the capability to screen 2-D and 3-D movies, as well as a lounge and bar serving cocktails and appetizers, a concierge service and valet parking.
- Variety, emphasis added

This is just ... strange. $35 for a movie? In jeans-and-coffee Redmond? I know it's one of the more affluent suburbs, and selling sushi and booze instead of pop & candy will be a draw, but ... $35 for a movie ticket and the opportunity to buy overpriced booze?

I guess I could see renting a theater with just 40 seats for party, but even so ... I really don't expect this a Redmond location to hit the black, I just don't.

The Stranger's book column talks Norwescon this week. (For non-locals, The Stranger is the free weekly that originated Savage Love.)

Seattle has had a prominent book festival for over three decades, and for the last quarter century it's also hosted a world-famous, prestigious awards ceremony. If you consider yourself a reader and you didn't know about this festival already, it's probably due to your narrow tastes: it's devoted to science fiction and fantasy.

I like his description of the Philip K. Dick awards:

[A]n annual ceremony dedicated to celebrating a "distinguished original science-fiction paperback published for the first time during the award year in the USA." Unlike most book awards, the PKD Awards almost always single out an excellent book.

I'm not sure how having Norwescon on Easter Weekend is "sacrilegious" (or what's all that odd about a Joss Whedon sing-a-long or Hobbit Country Dancing) but hey, there *IS* a full moon tonight... ;)

...from Get Rich Slowly... if TV were a person (cartoon).

Nothing can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.
- Sidney J. Harris


Poll #1157065 HarrisQuote
Open to: All, results viewable to: All

Is your reaction to this quote...

I've mentioned to friends that I use stretching to help prevent low back pain and other various aches. So recent articles on how " stretching doesn't prevent pain or injury" have caught my eye.

And I'm pretty sure that the study the articles mention isn't about what I'm doing.

See, I'm not stretching to prevent soreness. I'm stretching to reduce muscle tightness, which will increase my pain-free range of motion.

Example A: Low back pain while walking. I've learned that for me, there's a particular low back pain that shows up when my quads are too tight. Stopping and sitting on a bench will stop the symptoms while I'm sitting, but only while I'm sitting. Stretching my quads will allow me to continue walking without pain.

Example B: A pain all down the right side of my leg while driving or walking. If stop and do a particular stretch I learned in yoga, then I can continue without pain.

Needless to say, I've been working on figuring out when I have muscle soreness vs muscle tightness. Tightness, stretching can help. Soreness, not so much.

(Thanks dianthus for reminding me to post about this.)

• 11:13 How NOT to multitask? I don't remember how to do that anymore... tinyurl.com/32l82u #
• 13:46 Economist John Kenneth Galbraith coined the term “conventional wisdom” in his 1958 book “The Affluent Society,” about things everyone knows. #
• 13:47 He also wrote, “The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events.” #

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According to The Sun, "Officials at the Church of England have written a saucy good sex guide for their parishioners."

The Church website takes just a bit of a different slant on the book and related pre-marital course, saying that "Growing Together identifies key areas which couples need to consider to make sure their marriage stands the test of time. They include children, money, commitment, sex, conflict, faith and families."

;)

Relationship Tragically Enters Going-To-Bathroom-With-Door-Open Stage (The Onion)

Are You An Unclutterer? (At Zen Habits, featuring Erin Doland from Unclutter.)

Links requested by divaprime during breakfast Monday:

• Jonathan Coulton - check out Re: Your Brains and IKEA.
  
• Two Lumps - we mentioned the squeezing under the door strips and the cats gambling sequence, but you could just order the Year One book, which not only comes with artist and writer commentary but might encourage takhisis / her partner / the publisher / whoever to do a Year Two book. (I want a Year Two book, didja guess? :)
  
• Harry & The Potters website. To get a quick listen, they have a few songs posted on their myspace, including Song for Death Eaters.
  
• Maine Coon Cats! Including Callan of "Callan's Song" fame!
  
• The free game I play is Puzzle Pirates! Sign up through this link and we both get gold :)

Finally, a quote:

"The reason why worry kills more people than work is that more people worry than work."
- Robert Frost

Peggy over at A Silly Poor Gospel has re-interpreted the Christ story as ... the tale of the field service tech. She calls it Geek Squad Jesus.

No, really. As she put it:

I think something broken got fixed. I see Jesus the redeemer, as Jesus the repairman, tech support if you will. See, there was this system called ‘time and space’ and running on this system was a program called ‘humanity.’ And it got all buggy. And the code called ‘the law’ just wasn’t working. So the system designer had to crack it all open. Get inside, wipe some stuff, patch other stuff, write some whole new stuff. ( Read more... )

I'm not a Quaker myself, but I definitely respect the tradition.

From The Economist by way of The Wealth Report blog:

IN 1904 Willie Vanderbilt hit a thrilling 92.3 mph (147.7 kph) in his new German motorcar, smashing the land-speed record. His older brother's sprawling North Carolina manse, Biltmore, could accommodate up to 500 pounds of meat in its electrical refrigerators. In miserable contrast, the below-average Gilded Age American had to make do with a pair of shoes and a melting block of ice. If he could somehow save enough for an icebox, a day's wage would not have bought a pound of meat to put in it.[...]

[C]onsumption numbers, [like income], conceal as much as they illuminate. They can record only that we have spent, but not the value—the pleasure or health—gained in the spending. A stable trend in nominal consumption inequality can mask a narrowing of real or “utility-adjusted” consumption inequality. Indeed, according to happiness researchers, inequality in self-reported “life satisfaction” has been shrinking in wealthy market democracies, America included, suggesting that the quality of lives across the income scale are becoming more similar, not less.

You can see this levelling at work in markets for transport and appliances. You no longer need be a Vanderbilt to own a refrigerator or a car. ( Read more... )

Note the distinction. The argument isn't that the Sub-Zero is the same as the IKEA. The argument is that the distinctions between the two are less relevant than the distinction between having any refrigerator and having NO refrigeration.

[W]hen the prices of food, clothing and basic modern conveniences drop relative to the price of luxury goods, real consumption inequality drops. But the point is not that in America the relatively poor suffer no painful indignities, which would be absurd. It is that, over time, the everyday experience of consumption among the less fortunate has become in many ways more similar to that of their wealthier compatriots. [...]

This compression is the predictable consequence of innovations in production and distribution that have improved the quality of goods at the lower range of prices faster than at the top. [...]

This increasing equality in real consumption mirrors a dramatic narrowing of other inequalities between rich and poor, such as the inequalities in height, life expectancy and leisure.

What surprises me is that their caption headed "Save money. Live better" is applied to how the poor spend less than the rich but live better than they used to anyway. I expected "Save money. Live better" to be a suggestion that those who want to increase their financial situation could spend less than than they actually can "afford", save the difference, and use the savings to take the next step they need to, whatever that is.* But maybe that didn't occur to the author...

---

*Examples: emergency fund, pay down debt, invest it for retirement, save for a down payment on a house, save for a replacement car, et cetera.