Take 20 Minutes to Learn About New Treatments for Cancer, Alzheimers, Obesity and More

This New Field of Medicine May Save Your Life

Angiogenesis-based medicine, Dr. William Li’s new approach to studying and controlling cancers, Alzheimers, obesity and other afflictions associated with the abnormal growth of cells, by controlling the growth of the capillaries that feed them, holds much promise for reversing the effects of, or curing many diseases. Perhaps most importantly, it offers people not yet suffering from these afflictions concrete steps they can take to minimize the risk of ever getting them. I heartily recommend you look at the video associated with the link below. Take the first step to learn about a new field of study that may save your life or the life of someone dear to you. Here is a link to his 20 minute speech at the TED conference: http://www.ted.com/talks/william_li.html Here is a link to the 501 (c )(3) non-profit The Angiogenesis Foundation that sponsors his work: http://www.angio.org/ Cheers, Pete

Dangerous Party Scatomas Limit Policy Debate

Dangerous Party Scatomas Limit Policy Debate

A scatoma is a “blind spot,” literally a place in our field of vision each of us is unable to see. Spots on our retinas cause scatomas, and in some, these can grow and affect vision dangerously.

Other kinds of blind spots exist because of how we learn, how we perceive. Today, just as literal blind spots can be dangerous, these perceptive blind spots and the ways in which they affect public policy have become dangerous.

Whether we are Democrats or Republicans, Libertarians or espouse some other part affiliation, each of us would like to believe that we see the world around us clearly, accurately. After all, the primary function of the human brain is to find patterns of understanding that allow us to create order from our sensual input. In childhood, our brains learn to sort out stimuli we don’t need and reinforce stimuli that help us survive, thrive, and just as importantly, remain sane.

The brain accomplishes much of this learning process by generalization. A few experiences create the pattern the brain expects from similar situations in the future. These patterns become our personal paradigm, our way of understanding the world around us, and we become vested in these patterns. Bias is the word for our natural desire to hold on to our own paradigm, and reject alternatives. Biases are good and necessary in that they keep us sane, but biases that keep us from growing, or being able to change or see the world clearly can be terribly limiting, even dangerous.

As an example of how firmly implanted in our brains biases can become, consider this picture called the Checker Pattern Illusion. The amazing thing about this picture is that the squares labeled A and B are identical! You can test this with Adobe Photoshop if you must (I did). Bias in the way our brains perceive patterns literally won’t let us see that A and B are the same.

Today, our nation’s public policy debate exposes many issues in which party biases keep our county’s leaders from seeing clearly, and unlike the Checker Pattern Illusion, which we all share, these party biases are often polar opposites, dangerous to our county’s health.

For example, Republicans candidates must seem to be so completely committed to less government spending and an anti-abortion stance that many oppose funding family planning and the availability of contraceptives. Paradoxically, the facts support family planning and the general availability of contraceptives as the only public policies proven to reduce the incidence of abortion. Clearly, the long-term societal savings on funding to support family planning and the availability of contraceptives make these policies a good investment.

Democrats, on the other hand, must appear to support the poor and unemployed with ever-lengthening funding for unemployment payments and a burgeoning welfare system that literally pays some women to have more and more babies out of wedlock. There is no investment in this. There are only immediate and long-term costs to society.

Republicans approach the issue of additional taxation with closed minds. Democrats espouse taxing the “rich” in ways that are meaningless to overall revenues but appeal to constituents susceptible to “class-warfare” rhetoric.

All this posturing along rigid, biased party lines obscures the big picture, and prevents adopting a holistic approach to our country’s problems. The big picture is not less government spending or more government spending. The big picture is whether our government invests our money in ways that add value to society.

The vast majority of American homeowners went into debt equal to many years of income when they acquired their homes. This was not bad because their net worth remained the same. They invested in an asset (hopefully) equal in value to the amount they spent. Many college students at the undergraduate and graduate levels take on great debt to fund their educations, often in periods when they have little income. The asset they acquire by doing this is less tangible than a house, but this investment in themselves comes with a measurable future return. It is obvious to all that these investments are appropriate reasons to acquire debt, but it isn’t so obvious to a national accounting policy that treats all income and outgo as equal.

As a nation, should we not put our unemployed and welfare recipients to work, rather than just pay them to not work, turning at least some part of the largesse they receive into an investment, and perhaps teaching skills that may ultimately get them off the dole in the process? Should we not fund family planning and the general availability of contraceptives, and other similar expenditures when a positive return is so clearly measureable? Should not all governmental expenditures be put under a microscope to determine whether they can yield a return to society? This common-sense approach seems lost in the tug-a-war of biased party positions.

An example of an issue that cries for a holistic approach is education. There is general agreement that something is wrong with our school systems. People frequently use the word “broken” to describe them. Yet the vast majority of teachers in classrooms all across America are wonderful. I know some, and have met many. I have a degree of confidence that teachers are not “THE PROBLEM.” I believe any school system that has a ratio of more than .3 administrators to each teacher has a structural problem, but I am aware that over-burdensome state and federal regulation creates a huge portion of that issue.

Could it be that what we blame on our school systems is just a reflection of greater societal change? A more holistic viewpoint might notice that the last fifty years have seen the “liberation” of women in our society, a huge percentage of women entering the workforce, and an increase in divorce rates producing far more single parent households. Some of this change was long overdue, and offers substantial benefits to society. However, that change also comes with costs. I posit that these costs are exposed as problems in school systems which have become dumping grounds for kids by parents who, for a myriad of reasons, don’t have the time, ability or inclination to take personal responsibility for their children’s’ education.

Yet, in today’s “budget crisis,” neither party is evaluating education as an investment. Funding for education is being slashed as though doing so will not diminish America. Districts are cutting teachers, the number of days schools are open and the number of hours in each school day to reduce expenditures. Do these cuts add a direct cost to the lives of parents, students and to society? Of course they do.

A more holistic viewpoint might consider more than schools’ budgets and suggest longer school days and longer school years as a possible solution. Longer school days and years offer the opportunity for the more learning and supervised sports. By contrast, shorter school days and years create more “latch-key” kids, the delinquents of tomorrow, with a huge cost to society. A holistic examination might conclude that, like those college students who go into debt to invest in their futures, funding for more time in school is a worthwhile investment with a measurable immediate and future return.  

The time is long past for ‘We the People’ to demand that our leaders and elected officials put aside party biases, dispense with party rhetoric, tear off blinders, and look holistically at the ways they invest our money. Those who have used the public trough to buy votes and appease constituencies need to be run out of office and replaced with men and women of character, who will respect the public trust and evaluate every one of our dollars as a societal investment, not merely expenditure.

Cheers,

Pete

Let's Get It RIGHT This Thanksgiving America

Let’s Get It RIGHT This Thanksgiving America

It is Thanksgiving 2011. What do you have to be thankful for on this most American holiday? I’ll bet few people will answer that question with anything having to do with money. Material wealth creates choices, can make for comfortable misery, but does not bring happiness. We all eat food one forkful at a time and receive the same 86,400 seconds of life each day. After we meet our basic needs for sustenance and shelter, what enriches those seconds becomes paramount.

I am thankful for the things that enrich and have enriched my life. First, above all, these are my family, my wife and my three wonderful children. We scrap and fuss from time to time, but these scraps are mostly because love binds us together with commitments and obligations that also enrich and reward.

I am thankful for my parents. My parents, loving, educated Americans, instilled in me the peculiarly American values of egalitarianism, fairness, tolerance, and equality before the law. They taught me the importance of learning, that learning would expand my understanding and allow me to see more, experience more in each moment of my life.

I am thankful for my country, this messy democratic, capitalist state our founding fathers tore from mother England and molded into a shining example for the rest of the world. America is rich in natural resources, but her greatest strength is in her people and her values. Americans are like a family, bound together by obligations and commitments. We fuss and scrap to find the right balance between personal freedom and government intrusion. We don’t always get the balance right the first time, but we have faith in our processes and institutions to get it RIGHT eventually.

By RIGHT I don’t necessarily mean my own conservative, gun-toting, military-supporting, pro-business, pro-energy-independence, anti-socialist, pro-small-government form of RIGHT (and I fall on those sides of most issues). I mean the RIGHT that is the consensus of all Americans, the RIGHT that results from millions of free people making free individual choices, whether or not this ethic and process results in my way. I have sworn to uphold and defend this ethic, this process. This America is the country for which I am thankful.

The economic juggernaut that is China demonstrates clearly that a totalitarian, planned economy can be ruthlessly efficient. In the end, however, a people, responsible for themselves, free to pursue their individual interests, produces a richer, more efficient society. For this too, I am thankful.

Did I mention God yet? Thanks for all existence is something too grand, too special to reserve for one day a year. My sainted grandmother taught me not to expect any favoritism from God. She beat into my skull the adage, “The good Lord helps those who help themselves.” So I wake up every day, not just this day, looking for the inspiration and opportunities His magnificence presents. They are there all around us, in nature, in family, in people, in our country, reflecting His light.

I wish a Happy Thanksgiving for you and yours. Cheers, Pete

Arthur Ashe, Muhammed Ali, Elvis Presley and Free Booze

Arthur Ashe, Muhammed Ali, Elvis Presley and Free Booze

It was 1966. A group of West Point cadets was taking a PE class, volleying tennis balls on the courts in the south east corner of The Plain, opposite the old stone library. A skinny, black second lieutenant moved among them offering words of encouragement and correcting form and technique.

“You know who that guy is?” one of the cadets asked another.

“The skinniest guy in the Office of Physical Education after Joe Palone?” the second said.

“That’s Arthur Ashe,” said the first cadet.

“Arthur Ashe? Who is Arthur Ashe?”

The first cadet looked at the second as though he had just crawled from the primordial ooze with an IQ to match. “He was the NCAA Tennis Champion last year.”

“Yeah? He sure is skinny. So what’s he doing here?”

“Ya think maybe the tennis coach would like to have his help coaching the tennis team?”

I played the part of the uninformed Neanderthal in this conversation. I always felt a special connection to Arthur Ashe after that PE class. It was the pinnacle of my less than illustrious tennis career that, at one shining moment, I had my forehand complimented by one of the best ever.

I later learned that Second Lieutenant Arthur Ashe had graduated from UCLA on an ROTC scholarship and, as a result, owed the army three years of service. The connection I felt (feel) to Arthur Ashe was deepened by the fact that he served, and the manner of his service. Arthur Ashe served without complaint, without fanfare, as was his style. It had to kill his soul to miss major tournaments, some as close as fifty miles from West Point in NYC, because he couldn’t arrange leave. However, no one I know ever heard a peep from him.

Veterans Day, 11-11-11, is tomorrow and this got me to thinking about those who served, those who haven’t, and how that changes perceptions.

Not long after I began my connection to Arthur Ashe, Muhammed Ali (aka Cassius Marcellus Clay) ran afoul of the draft. I was a huge Cassius Clay fan. I watched on TV when he won the gold medal in the light heavyweight division in the 1960 Olympics. I was a young boy boxing in Golden Gloves and wanted to be just like Cassius Clay.

Sometime later in his professional career, he came under the influence of the militant Nation of Islam and changed his name to Muhammed Ali. That was okay with me. I didn’t care what he wanted his name to be or how he worshipped, I was still a fan.

Then the draft board called his name. He reported to the induction station with the stated intent to serve. At one point he was addressed scornfully by an official there as Cassius Clay, instead of Muhammed Ali. He backed out, saying he had been “disrespected,” and claiming his religious Muslim beliefs forbade him from combat. He was stripped of his heavyweight championship and went through years of hell before being reinstated and winning a Supreme Court case upholding his position. All of this was of little importance to me. The fact that he had refused to serve broke my connection to one of my biggest heroes.

Elvis Presley was another of my heroes. My mom had to talk me out of renting a powder blue tuxedo for my senior prom, because I wanted to look just like Elvis. I sang “Blue Suede Shoes” and other Elvis songs in the shower (Okay, I admit it …, I still do). I also wore my hair a long, combed back over both ears like Elvis’. More interesting was my army-colonel father’s reaction to Elvis.

When Elvis was every teenage girl’s dreamboat, wiggling his hips on the Ed Sullivan Show, my father had the utmost distain for Elvis. Then the army drafted Elvis. Elvis served in a cavalry unit in Germany. There he met the then fourteen-year-old Priscilla, kept his nose clean and rose to the rank of sergeant. After Elvis returned to his rock and roll life, two things were obvious. Suddenly, to my dad, Elvis was okay, one of those who had served and deserved respect for doing so in an exemplary fashion. Elvis for his part embraced a bigger, older audience. He sang a rich mix of gospel and classic tunes in among his new rock and roll hits. He had grown from being a teen heartthrob to “The King.”

“Where does the “free booze” come in?” you ask. In the 1960’s Cadets from West Point visited two kinds of bars in NYC, the inexpensive, blue-collar workingman’s bars where we would go to drink, talk and visit with friends; and the expensive, upscale bars on First and Second Avenue, where young women would go to see and be seen, to do and be undone. In the former we would wear our uniforms and often be rewarded with free drinks for doing so.

There was a war on. Partly out of reaction against the growing anti-war movement, partly because they had served in WWII and Korea and sympathized with what we were soon to face, and partly because they realized how broke most of us were, the vets who frequented these bars coughed up for a lot free booze over the years. They seemed happy to provide it, and we were happy to accept it. Today, it’s a tradition I like to continue when I see a young marine, soldier, sailor or airman in uniform.

Unfortunately, this brotherhood of those who served is shrinking dramatically. I recently read that the percentage of all Americans who served in WWII over four years was 11.2%. That doesn’t count the women who took over men’s jobs in the USA. It is also worth noting that in the demographic of men ages twenty to thirty five nearly half served. By comparison, only 4.3% of the population served in Vietnam over twelve years, and only .45% of the population has served in the Global War on Terror in the last ten years.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the “peace dividend” of the late twentieth century stripped 350,000 soldiers, sailors and airmen from the ranks of America’s armed forces, and these were never replaced. This reduced force cycles to and from Afghanistan and Iraq, such that many of our servicemen now have four, five or more deployments. Imagine all the families whose mommy or daddy has been away from home in harm’s way that many times. We who are not now serving are all beneficiaries of this service to our nation, to our safety.

Today we find ourselves at another juncture where the national inclination may be to try to seize another “peace dividend.” Before we make the mistake of again reducing the size or budgets of our armed forces, we should take a moment on this Veterans Day to remember the lesson of 9-11, to be vigilant, not complacent.

This is not a new bridge to cross. Rudyard Kipling exposed a similar sentiment and time in the United Kingdom when writing the poem “Tommy” about a British Soldier, Tommy Adkins, who served in 1815:

“For it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' "Chuck him out, the brute!" But it's "Saviour of 'is country" when the guns begin to shoot.”

The American Phoenix - Rising From the Ashes

This UK article in The Telegraph, based in part on the book The American Phoenix by Charles Dumas and Diana Choyleva from Lombard Street Research, paints the first picture of good news on the American jobs/business front in quite a while. It remains to be seen if the predictions will come to pass, but it is worth reading. Click here for the link.


Cheers,
Pete