Windows 8 is launched at Eunice High School in Bloemfontein

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>Introducing Eunice High School</b></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Eunice <span style="font-size: small;">wa</span>s the first school in South Africa to be selected for the Microsoft Innovative Schools programme several years back. After that their principal, Paul Cassar, was the first South African educator to be featured on Vice <span style="font-size: small;">P</span>resident of Microsoft - Antony Salicito’s blog ‘<i>Daily Edventures</i> – <i>Antony Salicito’s 365-day look at global heroes</i>'. (Take a read by clicking on the image below). So it is not surprising that Eunice would take the initiative of launc<span style="font-size: small;">hing Windows 8 in the innovative way you'll read about in this post!</span> </span></span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://dailyedventures.com/index.php/2012/01/05/twentieth-century-problem-meet-twenty-first-century-learning-skills-south-africa/" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="190" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUOnyLmlqoM8_e4FvToeGCB6KC1G3KmQXDauFyL1wowzzxdpM2M7MD7TKaAOCny8EBvoM-UdkbzlCdaPNVWRigos5x3vhdRNnbj8jb1Usc6sOC6qOIaZrxdFMHKHk3cRHVpnc2x2ME78o/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="400" /></a></div><br /><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Windows 8 launch at Eunice High School</b></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Windows 8 was launched on Friday 26 October at Eunice High School in front of 700 eager Grade 8-11 girls, with Anthony Salcito, VP for Microsoft Education, skyping in to talk to the group. Eunice is a government school in Bloemfontein and is part of the Microsoft Global Innovative Schools programme. The event kicked off with a demo of Windows 8, highlighting exciting new functionality and ways that Windows 8 can help teachers and learners. The girls had to get involved in the demo by helping to create a decorated photo taken of the assembly using our webcam and the app “Fresh Paint”. We emailed this off to Anthony to welcome him to South Africa and Eunice School.</span></span><br /><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="width: 400px;"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" width="200"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwJAROYqkvj4SbHHov1mFAR86yywycBOEGGfBS-FIz_VjrW1m0tVMf-TOmzxuCxXsLQzQxkhZ8U3TsCMY0oRGPWdTU9rI-pIb4z7HUKtFDnH6YuKxjmUFBtj3UhAt0GdXFZ7wsdOildLo/s1600-h/image%25255B9%25255D.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9W1IQewRd9Rm_rjbUvC1-9r0a0x3n0pK1gOFKjps4AieiIrjVsmSZzsvxpCex5kMM8KKjn_znTrU9RGA23XyB0Ja5xQUsiE03-NYEapoLWcLWdaIIH2e3YahS3zX38c_u1TT1JsPUL4I/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="244" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Welcome note from the learners</span><b><br /></b></span></td></tr></tbody></table></td> <td valign="top" width="200"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMTnBQnHZ8miU3doLdHE6Mohyo4W3xchRsNz0nhj0z90buOKEc282HUiga3sbao6QiJpg8AYfM1x30JCmrIo4ZC4CsVS3VQS_H5rqhQo3UrK_3k5A4j97htZzQyBxHJm-BGpGs-mg1cY4/s1600-h/image%25255B6%25255D.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggffSHwAZwIV-Z-fx2ROl72zlI-ptvASdJkZmyrn-8fKEZv5hf7rSc_1Zi3P-RIXlaQAioANKRN-POAZTRRU5vgo8LGqMjOs1-XtNZHz_awM3H9vo1y3nI7CYQ4RGA2oXqufFtdMEpVg4/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="244" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Anthony Salcito on Skype</td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b> Anthony shares his thoughts</b></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">Anthony undertook an immense commitment <span style="font-size: small;"><b>to </b></span>spend 24 hours skyping into classrooms and assemblies around the world as part of the Windows 8 launch in the education space. Following the demo we connected to Skype and Anthony shared his thoughts on how technology can support education and more interactive teaching and learning approaches. He fielded around 10 questions from girls and teachers who were eager to hear his comments and ideas on how Microsoft is supporting developing countries, what makes Windows 8 special, how Microsoft works with students and ways that technology can bring learning to life.</span></span><br /><br /><table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="width: 400px;"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" width="200"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjKtgxol3YntBi6kt86g3OUfUc3NBlyPoRnydmALBqrU0E0Mxxc-DjMNZLXptzvueTw_-j7g-S2NMNp_-W2i6dbLTsHkSeD6zLJItcrJC5dVhgYf-BLfzLv4UYr06ixNSEuUGdWHq22ds/s1600-h/image%25255B12%25255D.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="181" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiBTKVhWfllCjHAWAHRmUGCUsCBAKWO6NddroDBOJr0XYeGBD0_5KuOqEGBG9ta5KGD0uts2B1WmR3pWb2WGpKL1aMaocGM1YEDbLMEn50fVTckdBvY_nBWxr6Kc0Zv-JeGblSecLqACKY/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="244" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Mr</span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"> Cassar (principal) and Ms Singh (teacher) asking questions</span></span></span></span></td></tr></tbody></table><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjKtgxol3YntBi6kt86g3OUfUc3NBlyPoRnydmALBqrU0E0Mxxc-DjMNZLXptzvueTw_-j7g-S2NMNp_-W2i6dbLTsHkSeD6zLJItcrJC5dVhgYf-BLfzLv4UYr06ixNSEuUGdWHq22ds/s1600-h/image%25255B12%25255D.png"><br /></a></td> <td valign="top" width="200"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDmXkn8GUaKogUyhnRWBzCaBWWm_X53beC_DOT4-S5HXNm9AGAWLaNm6beE8cxvwGwswGuB-2SnQZstsD_i6asJ2cmDIls-LwVkU-p-JGxmt0L6htpRT4bh5Ac1JWJPg-5DH3vwsD_I2I/s1600-h/image%25255B16%25255D.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="185" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8EPdEi0dw0loA1XYMTcCG6FK9594K1oWvdqpWWy32dsoSC6kpEJjymrCS0CaBa-sw8_r_QkO-o8iUyxRbebMZlu86fIm7FXPYidYcZEnMy2attReVlm4forksY7Me4LeqiwU8hjVhLM4/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; display: inline; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="254" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Skyping with Anthony Salcito</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" style="width: 400px;"> <tbody><tr> <td valign="top" width="200"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhws30xBwqkbZepdAHHuL9W-aZDpKv2izui4U2JS3KGb5Shefu-MPGDhsVh-O5VNTwRLnhedoSHrZpQheE_u7zKVd727-w2ZPrh3XNWeJfns6glKTeIY_-_l2cUQ0Atu3COiCpFpDKQDb0/s1600-h/image%25255B19%25255D.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="182" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiKZU6Nmpx3QgvetUBwtdfNh5THAwebb2VdlngzfCIps8N7_vdmly7yAy3rD8gPoJy0if2NHET51sb7d5AU1d7V1hp-ddiAd5I0v5h_vN_KaQESj8pURz8EcyHk7whI0yDuXOpcALRdzig/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="244" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Angela from Microsoft chatting to the girls</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table></td> <td valign="top" width="200"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmlzy5S-LWoZS9PWI7DRyCsdVOeKRx5kWOH9_I4AjfGJD0zkxTEoigyUNb0KSL6LDwBzIuklc2L9UM9pNp6-MNuFYYB2OQjlJWt4NHRhZDLOivxQu20UWSpdKJKqnlJaxRdCpRMXl5mDQ/s1600-h/image%25255B22%25255D.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="184" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgBS5h07uUtY_NN919DcVPf__wpN5PnlNAldkeVuquHxy1-CsfObDL-LCz1vYJWYI7FUDACxQSGp1H1-z9wu6CYaitAYPty2Zv-hv11l8wg_TYuopcclBGuR13aRefRqbMHVlPAClXrZ6c/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="244" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">Thank you for the great chat Anthony!</span></span></td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table><b> </b><span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: large;"><b>The Skype chat trended on Twitter</b></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">The event was a great success and the school felt enormously proud to be part of a Microsoft global launch. The <i>#microsofteducation</i> hashtag trended in South Africa with all the girls<span style="font-size: x-small;">'</span> tweets on Anthony’s talk and Windows 8! </span></span><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">A more <span style="font-size: small;">comprehensive </span>list of the tweets can be seen at this URL: <a href="http://storify.com/fibeal/record-of-tweets-anthony-salcito-vice-president-of#publicize">Eunice tweets about Anthony Salcito and Windows 8.</a></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">We look forward to seeing the new ways that the teachers and leaners incorporate Windows 8 into their activities.</span></span> </span></span><br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFy94wIy4b1pJnmhhTujA_zPIVtpgWkNQKet1HPIH6KIc-YTv7E1JLmtcYPkBRmWm3johPHwgdIfmRwhlNqx1OwTTITe_152Xi1UYGzanv2vyXk5Ix-AF3bd5VQY2oAhfxAcLQ4k4vVy4/s1600-h/image%25255B25%25255D.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img alt="image" border="0" height="314" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjixvHFGwetCyr4eyeDd7Ivjpzs9_knA8KSBuxTiFjjkC_wW4aFvc0QdCs_M7_-zlLAqHDOAYNszOgtw59SYh-w6NlmKLym_aF_-yoarklqB42hof_CEvJ7NC3Pod3LOaSAq3sUes8JUo0/?imgmax=800" style="background-image: none; border-color: -moz-use-text-color; border-style: none; border-width: 0px; display: inline; margin: 0px; padding-left: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-top: 0px;" title="image" width="320" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br /><a href="http://storify.com/fibeal/record-of-tweets-anthony-salcito-vice-president-of#publicize"></a></span></span></div>

Microsoft Windows 8 is launched at Eunice High School in Bloemfontein

Introducing Eunice High School Eunice wa s the first school in South Africa to be selected for the Microsoft Innovative Schools programme se...

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Four Myths About Doctor-Assisted Suicide - NYTimes.com

<base href="data:"><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; color: black; text-align: left; "><div id="opinionator" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: 13px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; "><div align="left"><h3 class="entry-title" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); margin: 0px 0px 12px; padding: 0px; font-size: 16px; ">Four Myths About Doctor-Assisted Suicide</h3><address class="byline author vcard" style="font-weight: bold; font-size: 0.829em; margin-bottom: 12px; display: block; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; ">By <a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/ezekiel-j-emanuel/" class="url fn" title="See all posts by EZEKIEL J. EMANUEL" style="color: rgb(0, 0, 102); text-decoration: none; text-transform: uppercase; ">EZEKIEL J. EMANUEL</a></address><div class="entry-content"><div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: medium; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.375em; ">Philadelphia</div><div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: medium; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.375em; ">IN a little more than a week, voters in Massachusetts will decide whether to allow doctors to "prescribe medication, at the request of a terminally ill patient meeting certain conditions, to end that person's life." A similar bill is being debated in New Jersey. Unfortunately, like so many health care questions, the debate about physician-assisted suicide is confused, characterized by four major falsehoods.</div><div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: medium; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.375em; "><strong>PAIN</strong> The fundamental claim behind arguments for physician-assisted suicide is that most patients who desire it are experiencing excruciating physical pain. The 1996 decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit supporting a constitutional right to physician-assisted suicide in Washington State summarized the conventional wisdom: "Americans are living longer, and when they finally succumb to illness, lingering longer, either in great pain or in astuporous, semi-comatose condition that results from the infusion of vast amounts of painkilling medications."</div><div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: medium; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.375em; ">But this view is false. A multitude of studies based on interviews of patients with cancer, AIDS, Lou Gehrig's disease and other conditions have demonstrated that patients who desire euthanasia (in which a doctor administers a lethal drug) or physician-assisted suicide (in which the patient himself takes the lethal drug prescribed by the physician) tend not to be motivated by pain. Only 22 percent of patients who died between 1998 and 2009 by assisted suicide in Oregon- one of three states, along with Washington and Montana, where it is legal - were in pain or afraid of being in pain, according to their doctors. Among the seven patients who received euthanasia in Australia in the brief time it was legal in the '90s, three reported no pain, and the pain of the other four was adequately controlled by medications.</div><div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: medium; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.375em; ">Patients themselves say that the primary motive is not to escape physical pain but psychological distress; the main drivers are depression, hopelessness and fear of loss of autonomy and control. Dutch researchers, for a report published in 2005, followed 138 terminally ill cancer patients and found that depressed patients were four times more likely to request euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide. Nearly half of those who requested euthanasia were depressed.</div><div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: medium; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.375em; ">In this light, physician-assisted suicide looks less like a good death in the face of unremitting pain and more like plain old suicide. Typically, our response to suicidal feelings associated with depression and hopelessness is not to give people the means to end their lives but to offer them counseling and caring.</div><div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: medium; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.375em; "><strong>ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY</strong> A second misconception about assisted suicide is that it is the inevitable result of a high-tech medical culture that can sustain life even when people have become debilitated, incontinent, incoherent and bound to a machine. It is the "inevitable consequence of changes in the causes of death, advances in medical science, and the development of new technologies," as the appeals court put it.</div><div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: medium; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.375em; ">But the ancient Greeks and Romans advocated euthanasia. In modern times, debate about legalizing euthanasia and assisted suicide was revived with intensity in England in the late 19th century, after a famous debate at the Birmingham Speculative Club. The first such bill introduced in the United States was in 1905, before the discovery of antibiotics and dialysis, much less respirators and feeding tubes. If interest in legalizing euthanasia is tied to any trend in history, it is the rise of individualistic strains of thought that glorify personal choice, not the advances of high-tech medicine.</div><div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: medium; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.375em; "><strong>MASS APPEAL</strong> A third misconception about assisted suicide is that it will improve the end of life for everyone. After all, death afflicts everyone, and legalized assisted suicide would allow any individual to avoid an excruciatingly painful death. But the fact is that, even in places where physician-assisted suicide is legal, very few people take advantage of it. In Oregon, between 1998 and 2011, 596 patients used physician-assisted suicide - about 0.2 percent of dying patients in the state. In the Netherlands, where euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide have been permitted for more than three decades, fewer than 3 percent of people die by these means. And even if we add all the dying patients who even vaguely express an interest in assisted suicide, it amounts to much less than 10 percent. For the vast majority of dying patients, it will have no impact on improving the ends of their lives.</div><div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: medium; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.375em; ">Whom does legalizing assisted suicide really benefit? Well-off, well-educated people, typically suffering from cancer, who are used to controlling everything in their lives - the top 0.2 percent. And who are the people most likely to be abused if assisted suicide is legalized? The poor, poorly educated, dying patients who pose a burden to their relatives.</div><div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: medium; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.375em; "><strong>A GOOD DEATH</strong>The last misconception about assisted suicide is that it is a quick, painless and guaranteed way to die. But nothing in medicine - not even simple blood draws - is without complications. It turns out that many things can go wrong during an assisted suicide. Patients vomit up the pills they take. They don't take enough pills. They wake up instead of dying. Patients in the Dutch study vomited up their medications in 7 percent of cases; in 15 percent of cases, patients either did not die or took a very long time to die - hours, even days; in 18 percent, doctors had to intervene to administer a lethal medication themselves, converting a physician-assisted suicide into euthanasia. (In the states where assisted suicide is legal, and under the proposed Massachusetts law, this intervention would be illegal.)</div><div style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-size: medium; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0.7em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; line-height: 1.375em; ">Instead of attempting to legalize physician-assisted suicide, we should focus our energies on what really matters: improving care for the dying - ensuring that all patients can openly talk with their physicians and families about their wishes and have access to high-quality palliative or hospice care before they suffer needless medical procedures. The appeal of physician-assisted suicide is based on a fantasy. The real goal should be a good death for all dying patients.</div></div></div></div></div><a href="http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/four-myths-about-doctor-assisted-suicide/?hp&pagewanted=print">http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/27/four-myths-about-doctor-assisted-suicide/?hp&pagewanted=print</a><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; color: black; text-align: left; "><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div>

Four Myths About Doctor-Assisted Suicide - NYTimes.com

Four Myths About Doctor-Assisted Suicide By  EZEKIEL J. EMANUEL Philadelphia IN a little more than a week, voters in Massachusetts will deci...

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Women Who Quit Smoking Do Live Longer - MedPage Today

<base href="data:"><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; color: black; text-align: left; "><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Life expectancy was dramatically improved among participants in Great Britain's Million Women Study who quit smoking compared with continuous smokers, confirming the previously uncertain benefits of smoking cessation in women, researchers said.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Although women who stopped smoking around age 50 remained at significantly higher risk of all-cause mortality compared with never-smokers (relative risk 1.56, 95% CI 1.49 to 1.64), it was much lower than the tripled risk of death seen in current smokers, according to Kirstin Pirie, MSc, of the University of Oxford in England, and colleagues.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">"Even cessation at about 50 years of age avoids at least two-thirds of the continuing smoker's excess mortality in later middle age," the researchers wrote online in <em style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">The Lancet</em>.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Deaths from lung cancer were reduced markedly in quitters as well, irrespective of participants' age when they stopped smoking, Pirie and colleagues reported.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><em style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">The Lancet</em> published the report the day before the 100th anniversary of the birth of Richard Doll, MD, who led many of the early studies proving the dangers of smoking. Pirie and most of her co-authors work in the Richard Doll Building at the University of Oxford.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><strong style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Changing Times, New Research</strong></p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Although Doll's research clearly documented the early mortality suffered by smokers, it was conducted at a time when most longtime smokers were men. Smoking among young women did not peak until the 1960s. Thus, the mortality risks faced by women smokers have appeared to be lower in the available data.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">That is now set to change with the Million Women Study results, according to Sandra Adams, MD, of the University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">"We knew this about men," she told <em style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">MedPage Today</em>. "We knew that, as people age and they continue to smoke, they have a lot of smoking-related diseases, and the earlier that they stop the better. But what this demonstrates is that the smoking-related deaths have been markedly underestimated in women."</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">In an accompanying editorial in <em style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">The Lancet</em>, Rachel R. Huxley, PhD, of the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, and Mark Woodward, MD, of the University of Sydney in Australia, also applauded the study.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">"Aside from its impressive sample size, the Million Women Study is distinct from previous large cohorts -- and superior for assessment among women of the full eventual hazards of prolonged smoking and the full benefits of long-term cessation -- because the participants were among the first generation of women in the U.K. in which smoking was widespread in early adult life, and although many continued smoking, many stopped before age 30 or 40 years," they wrote.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">They also noted estimates that some eight million tobacco-caused deaths will occur annually by 2030.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">"Such estimates rely on hazard ratios from previous large cohort studies. Although most of the projected deaths are male, these new results suggest that the projected burden of smoking-related disease in women might need to be revised upwards," Huxley and Woodward suggested.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><strong style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">More Than a Million Women</strong></p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">The Million Women Study was actually larger than that, with a total of more than 1.3 million originally enrolled from 1996 to 2001. The present analysis excluded about 100,000 with previous disease. Included were about 620,000 never-smokers at recruitment, 329,000 who had quit at some point in the past, and 232,000 who reported current smoking.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Participants completed questionnaires on current and past smoking at recruitment and again 3 years and 8 years later. Some 23% of current smokers at enrollment said they had since quit in the second survey. At the 8-year follow-up, a total of 44% of the original group of current smokers indicated they had quit.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Data on subsequent mortality, including causes recorded on death certificates, were taken from Great Britain's comprehensive registry.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">The median birth year in the cohort was 1943 (interquartile range 1938 to 1946), putting the participants squarely in the female demographic that had the highest smoking rates. Mean age at enrollment was 55.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">During follow-up, some 66,000 participants died (6% of the total).</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Pirie and colleagues found that 12-year mortality rates among those reporting current smoking at the 3-year follow-up were roughly triple those of never-smokers, "largely irrespective of age," they reported (rate ratio 2.97, 95% CI 2.88 to 3.07).</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Light smokers (fewer than 10 cigarettes per day) were at substantially increased risk of death relative to never-smokers (12-year mortality RR 1.98, 95% CI 1.91 to 2.04).</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">The results also confirmed that, of the 30 most common causes of death in the U.K., 23 were significantly greater in current smokers. The rate ratio for chronic lung diseases was a whopping 35.3 (95% CI 29.2 to 42.5), and for lung cancer it was 21.4 (95% CI 19.7 to 23.2).</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Other causes of death more common in smokers than nonsmokers were as varied as pancreatic cancer, motor neuron disease, and accidental or intentional injuries.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; "><strong style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Dramatic Mortality Numbers</strong></p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">But perhaps the most dramatic findings were on mortality risks in former smokers. Pirie and colleagues stratified the results according to the age at which ex-smokers reported having quit (younger than 25, 25 to 34, 35 to 44, and 45 to 54).</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">For participants who stopped smoking by their mid-30s, the risk of all-cause mortality was hardly different from that of never-smokers (RR 1.05, 95% CI 1.00 to 1.11). Those quitting at 35 to 44 were at 20% greater risk of death than never-smokers, and those quitting at 45 to 54 were at 56% increased risk.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Lung cancer risk was significantly increased in ex-smokers regardless of the age at quitting -- with relative risks of 1.56 in those stopping before age 25 to 5.91 in participants quitting at 45 to 54, all with minuscule <em style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">P</em> values -- but still vastly lower than the relative risk of greater than 20 in those still smoking.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">"Stopping well before age 40 years would avoid well over 90% of the excess hazard in continuing smokers," Pirie and colleagues wrote.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">But, they stressed, "this does not ... mean that it is safe to smoke until age 40 years and then stop."</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">The 20% excess mortality risk in early quitters is still substantial, they argued, "causing one in six of the deaths among these ex-smokers."</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">They also noted that their results reflected adjustments for age, socioeconomic status, drinking habits, physical activity levels, oral contraceptive use, menopausal status, and use of menopausal hormone therapy, all as reported by participants. Except as reflected in these variables, however, exposures to disease-causing agents other than tobacco smoke were not tracked.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">In their commentary, Huxley and Woodward said the results point up "the need for effective sex-specific and culturally specific tobacco control policies that encourage adults who already smoke to quit and discourage children and young adults from starting to smoke."</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">Adams agreed, telling <em style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">MedPage Today</em> that, with the dangers of cigarette smoking now thoroughly proven in women as well as men, the major research need now is to identify such policies and interventions.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">But she added that cigarette smoking is not the only tobacco-related hazard, and that it would be helpful to have better data on health effects of other tobacco products.</p><p style="border: 0px; outline: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: transparent; margin: 0px 0px 15px; padding: 0px; font-size: 14px; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: arial; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 20px; orphans: 2; text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-position: initial initial; background-repeat: initial initial; ">These include hookah (also known as shisha), smokeless tobacco, and so-called electronic cigarettes that deliver nicotine vapor along with a variety of flavorings and other chemicals, some of which are known to be hazardous in other settings.</p></div><a href="http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/Smoking/35605">http://www.medpagetoday.com/PrimaryCare/Smoking/35605</a><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; color: black; text-align: left; "><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div>

Women Who Quit Smoking Do Live Longer - MedPage Today

Life expectancy was dramatically improved among participants in Great Britain's Million Women Study who quit smoking compared with conti...

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When Our Outlet Fails Us

You unwrap the new video game.<br /><br />You turn on the sporting event.<br /><br />You go see the movie.<br /><br />You tinker around in the garage. <br /><br />We do these things because they relieve us from reality. On a day where work, home, family, or friends disappoints us, we have that optional list of things that keep us from thinking about reality for a while.<br /><br />Some people call it their "outlet."<br /><br />But what happens when the thing that causes us to jettison out of reality abruptly crashes to the ground? Or - even worse, slowly sinks into oblivion. What happens then?<br /><br />I am asking myself that question tonight, on a night where my outlet - sports - failed me. Michigan couldn't score a touchdown in a 23-9 loss to Nebraska, and the Detroit Tigers couldn't score a run in a 2-0 loss to the San Francisco Giants. My night ended with a bad taste in my mouth, when it could have just ended on a good, relaxing note simply by ignoring both games.<br /><br />Instead, I listened to the Tigers game on the radio (I refuse to listen to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver on principle), and had the Michigan game on mute on my TV. After a very nice day sleeping in, grocery shopping, exercising, and cleaning, I wanted to end it by cheering on my sports teams.<br /><br />Instead, my sports teams decided not to show up. At least, that's how it felt.<br /><br />So what am I to do? What are any of us to do? Michigan lost control of the Legends division with the loss. The Tigers are on the brink of being swept in the <i>World Series</i>. After following the teams passionately for the past few months, it feels like ignoring them would be to go cold turkey on them.<br /><br />You get to the part of the video game that you can't figure out.<br /><br />Your team keeps losing.<br /><br />Your movie was lousy.<br /><br />Your tinkering is just breaking things instead of fixing them.<br /><br />These are the things that are supposed to relax us, and instead they infuriate us! We may even get more stressed over our hobbies than we do over our regular lives! Why do we do this?<br /><br />I'll tell you why: because the payoff is just that sweet.<br /><br />You do these things hoping that we can see everything just like we have in our heads:<br /><br />You win the video game.<br /><br />Your team wins the championship.<br /><br />You have seen the best movie of all time.<br /><br />You created the greatest machine ever made.<br /><br />We keep going back because we hope that, someday, those "outlets" will reap the finest rewards.<br /><br />We will go to another Michigan game.<br /><br />We will turn on the television or radio tonight to see what happens in Game 4.<br /><br />And next season, we'll be back again. They can crush our souls, take our money, and stomp on our hopes and dreams, but we'll always come back. We'll come back more passionate than ever. We'll call into radio shows, check out the websites, buy the merchandise, and drive our friends and family crazy. We may take a vacation from our outlet to clear our heads, but we'll return. We know that someday, we will be lifted into a feeling of euphoria - a feeling that no one can take away from us.<br /><br />And we will celebrate in triumph knowing that we were there all along - through the thick <b>and</b> the thin.

When Our Outlet Fails Us

You unwrap the new video game. You turn on the sporting event. You go see the movie. You tinker around in the garage. We do these things bec...

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Babe of the Week: Animal Costumes

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on"><br />And now for something completely different! Instead of hot babes this week, IWS honors some cute, fun and hilarious pet costumes for Halloween.<br /><br />First up is Fire Truck Corgi …<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIGwiFfSyiaVVJeNt3Jev2n4o5OmBEYsjLB0F0GjMb2LS8q5mcrHQT0X9xZk7KkF4otBduqPrDQBRLpSzTYOpgl68WEgv3UYFuyDXvhbE434NUdwJAYo86HTSYSpupdnnwRk4qMTom5GM/s1600/Corgi+Fire+Truck+Halloween.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="243" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIGwiFfSyiaVVJeNt3Jev2n4o5OmBEYsjLB0F0GjMb2LS8q5mcrHQT0X9xZk7KkF4otBduqPrDQBRLpSzTYOpgl68WEgv3UYFuyDXvhbE434NUdwJAYo86HTSYSpupdnnwRk4qMTom5GM/s320/Corgi+Fire+Truck+Halloween.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />Here’s Pumpkin Cat…<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9e4dlcy7EQGEnRWJCoKBQh2ae6S8sxQVVQR3c_fE5R42Sb5pfe-UveQVIYrcENnYPUwIA4hLwaJ20ib2kbS-VZtbtpqfdUf8bOD7UTsc0DnYP2J4_obWBDHzEPJHfR4pHZQiMa7F-AgI/s1600/pumpkin+cat+costume.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9e4dlcy7EQGEnRWJCoKBQh2ae6S8sxQVVQR3c_fE5R42Sb5pfe-UveQVIYrcENnYPUwIA4hLwaJ20ib2kbS-VZtbtpqfdUf8bOD7UTsc0DnYP2J4_obWBDHzEPJHfR4pHZQiMa7F-AgI/s320/pumpkin+cat+costume.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />How ‘bout a nice hot Baked Pug Potato…<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnT1-le788GICrrC9OSJ5N9VC5UdBSgyTGYofyOCPPERTigtnYXezbgdJrTMTQfPLcHndiD85edkfQls8QEs-V_j3TVzUxHFQ9mtQqfGAQ5ok8JL54McTjxoXnEUIQmoniExHGejezCaQ/s1600/Pug+Baked+Potato+Halloween+Costume.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnT1-le788GICrrC9OSJ5N9VC5UdBSgyTGYofyOCPPERTigtnYXezbgdJrTMTQfPLcHndiD85edkfQls8QEs-V_j3TVzUxHFQ9mtQqfGAQ5ok8JL54McTjxoXnEUIQmoniExHGejezCaQ/s320/Pug+Baked+Potato+Halloween+Costume.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><br />Awww little kitty is a lobster in a pot on the stove …<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrwDrVS-6-0UnPlnQqt41348X67UccdxmqwMmjkdbKQ5T0R07v2Q0vf-xEZWxMyAhDsmYKQH-9m9INnBv4XJPTW1ntyZwye5f7v8uoyuV318rqn_BG1Wa0l-mTkiDEstJIX-zFRxwCu2k/s1600/Lobster+Cat+Costume.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrwDrVS-6-0UnPlnQqt41348X67UccdxmqwMmjkdbKQ5T0R07v2Q0vf-xEZWxMyAhDsmYKQH-9m9INnBv4XJPTW1ntyZwye5f7v8uoyuV318rqn_BG1Wa0l-mTkiDEstJIX-zFRxwCu2k/s320/Lobster+Cat+Costume.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />BatDog!!<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRCWaU-wTdQ7P_bqgd2d2aO43PqcoavaUKMXn-ccqrWr2tSuj02HtxdX1Riy0pzefUvvM9-lHUldXLfYryP7koTJABN5YIKFZDXJJd6HULLrTPcRBPbTBrJrZdkuxN07gWzV_fH4LNhts/s1600/Dog+Batman+Costume+Halloween.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRCWaU-wTdQ7P_bqgd2d2aO43PqcoavaUKMXn-ccqrWr2tSuj02HtxdX1Riy0pzefUvvM9-lHUldXLfYryP7koTJABN5YIKFZDXJJd6HULLrTPcRBPbTBrJrZdkuxN07gWzV_fH4LNhts/s320/Dog+Batman+Costume+Halloween.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />And of course, Elvis Cat has left the building …<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixh6IZT06f8KfZSPk37lynWdKKi3-AutLSyUWADhenyqjg5sdsB49l73zyPDVnCndT_C8x4ZiapxcFQVhynrgTYfm6XkSL9arN9bF8nujWr7Y3nuEgRO2KXWm9jbpXbHGlNasGwOMoP8Q/s1600/Elvis+Cat+Costume+Halloween.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixh6IZT06f8KfZSPk37lynWdKKi3-AutLSyUWADhenyqjg5sdsB49l73zyPDVnCndT_C8x4ZiapxcFQVhynrgTYfm6XkSL9arN9bF8nujWr7Y3nuEgRO2KXWm9jbpXbHGlNasGwOMoP8Q/s320/Elvis+Cat+Costume+Halloween.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><br /><br />So there you go kids! Some of the cutest Halloween costumes you’ll see anywhere! Don’t forget to join us on I’m With Stupid today for <a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/im-with-stupid/2012/10/28/open-line-sunday" target="_blank">Open Line Sunday</a> and call in and talk to us!<br /><br /></div>

Babe of the Week: Animal Costumes

And now for something completely different! Instead of hot babes this week, IWS honors some cute, fun and hilarious pet costumes for Hallowe...

Read more »

Today's archidose #628, Part 2

When I snapped some photos of the <a href="http://www.fdrfourfreedomspark.org/">FDR Four Freedoms Park</a> on Roosevelt Island during its <a href="http://cfa.aiany.org/index.php?section=calendar&evtid=4867">Archtober Open House</a> (posted as <a href="http://archidose.blogspot.com/2012/10/todays-archidose-628.html">Today's archidose #628</a>) there were some large tents occupying the lawn for opening festivities. On my second visit a week later the tents were gone, so below are photos of the lawn, moving from the north to the south (note the optical illusion that happens with the tapered plan of the lawn, visible in the second-to-last photo).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/archidose/8128771901/" title="FDR Four Freedoms Park by archidose, on Flickr"><img alt="FDR Four Freedoms Park" height="480" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8186/8128771901_433511c888_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/archidose/8128773067/" title="FDR Four Freedoms Park by archidose, on Flickr"><img alt="FDR Four Freedoms Park" height="480" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8185/8128773067_124e4eb8e6_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/archidose/8128773847/" title="FDR Four Freedoms Park by archidose, on Flickr"><img alt="FDR Four Freedoms Park" height="480" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8335/8128773847_4de7cccc2f_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/archidose/8128774611/" title="FDR Four Freedoms Park by archidose, on Flickr"><img alt="FDR Four Freedoms Park" height="480" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8050/8128774611_befdd94362_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/archidose/8128775387/" title="FDR Four Freedoms Park by archidose, on Flickr"><img alt="FDR Four Freedoms Park" height="480" src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8050/8128775387_f2b004004c_z.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br />To contribute your Flickr images for consideration, just:<br /><blockquote>:: Join and add photos to the <a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/archi-dose/">archidose pool</a>, and/or<br />:: Tag your photos <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/archidose/">archidose</a></span></blockquote>

Today's archidose #628, Part 2

When I snapped some photos of the FDR Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island during its Archtober Open House (posted as Today's archid...

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Hot tub is open!

<span style="font-size: large;">The hot tub is open for business!  </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">Finally!  </span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">The Hot Tub company sent up two guys to replace some parts yesterday.  They drove 2 hours from Cork.  I thought they would be in and out in an hour but they were at it all day.  I think they had to practically rebuild the Hot Tub operator.  They left at 5pm and the hot tub began to heat.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;">This morning, I got a text from Ciaran who is in Belfast to check if it was warm.  I dipped my foot in and it was so nice that I promptly hopped in and sent him a text of the steam rising!</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span> <span style="font-size: large;">It was -1 degree celcus last night, so today is perfect weather for hot tubbing in the garden.</span><br /><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">Here's my twin sister and I enjoying cocktails in the hot tub!</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIXAqxctshtguVL9ZDbJAjqxzypQiUZjvvuiskb2tQSjeSUZrukAZS3XPmyyO-FyCUN9beEEButVJgE_PTsk4Ov0g33NYIUJhB5N8Gyp2yINTle1Mum7S-QWfFi77XH5Hty68rb0xmqqlc/s1600/IMG_2274%5B1%5D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIXAqxctshtguVL9ZDbJAjqxzypQiUZjvvuiskb2tQSjeSUZrukAZS3XPmyyO-FyCUN9beEEButVJgE_PTsk4Ov0g33NYIUJhB5N8Gyp2yINTle1Mum7S-QWfFi77XH5Hty68rb0xmqqlc/s320/IMG_2274%5B1%5D.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUV5jj_4o_FaMdrBpXnNro1CgRwmIE6XWiYn80idqyKO7DZoGXNCTksSt0yjFm3JMta1-E7nFKEy3UU44t-Z54UJv46MJ-nTczttiBfniKz6Xna8AgTQISN7PoDr740F9NNPtR0PGVjSNA/s1600/IMG_2276%5B1%5D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUV5jj_4o_FaMdrBpXnNro1CgRwmIE6XWiYn80idqyKO7DZoGXNCTksSt0yjFm3JMta1-E7nFKEy3UU44t-Z54UJv46MJ-nTczttiBfniKz6Xna8AgTQISN7PoDr740F9NNPtR0PGVjSNA/s320/IMG_2276%5B1%5D.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: large;">The view from the hot tub - what a beautiful sky!</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLoLHqX37W7DCaZd64U1nV6HSWJh3tPtTl5dmNJlbiSZudrrE0XJUvvdcpXulZfwLG8u7QVV7ZnDrnfBDAC87aoGZgPfo6RruwLTzrcNc5DBOroV2AUfP_kX7-3mcI78M272Tg8d8JfeuK/s1600/IMG_2275%5B1%5D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLoLHqX37W7DCaZd64U1nV6HSWJh3tPtTl5dmNJlbiSZudrrE0XJUvvdcpXulZfwLG8u7QVV7ZnDrnfBDAC87aoGZgPfo6RruwLTzrcNc5DBOroV2AUfP_kX7-3mcI78M272Tg8d8JfeuK/s320/IMG_2275%5B1%5D.JPG" width="239" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLtboiraOxSFIrI4mvOTQ_bGXu5tQSwGmRh_Qia8wLZB3FccISmDpBHa9FVZRVuJRqED216YbbqG8E0bUVgiwj-GfjQfWsonWj_rn3yf9TN1bjtSjazLS61I_1_pcAtifdcMxBQ6bdCBKt/s1600/IMG_2278%5B1%5D.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLtboiraOxSFIrI4mvOTQ_bGXu5tQSwGmRh_Qia8wLZB3FccISmDpBHa9FVZRVuJRqED216YbbqG8E0bUVgiwj-GfjQfWsonWj_rn3yf9TN1bjtSjazLS61I_1_pcAtifdcMxBQ6bdCBKt/s320/IMG_2278%5B1%5D.JPG" width="239" /></a></div><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span><span style="font-size: large;"><br /></span>

Hot tub is open!

The hot tub is open for business!   Finally!   The Hot Tub company sent up two guys to replace some parts yesterday.  They drove 2 hours fro...

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Life, Interrupted: Changed by Cancer - NYTimes.com

On Monday evening I stood on a stage in front of a thousand people and talked about what I've learned since my diagnosis with cancer two years ago at the age of 22.<br /><br><br /><br>I was speaking at the Angel Ball, the yearly red-carpet event for the Gabrielle's Angel Foundation, which in this past week alone raised nearly $4 million for blood cancer research. I had never spoken in front of so many people before. It was one of the proudest moments in a tough journey over the past two years. And I was able to meet world-class doctors and researchers, other cancer survivors and even some celebrities.<br /><br><br /><br>On the drive over, though, my nerves were shot. All I could think about was whether I had spent enough time memorizing my speech, and whether I'd chosen the right dress. Lurking in the back of my mind was a laundry list of "to do's" and checklists thrown like scraps on a mounting pile of anxiety.<br /><br><br /><br>But there was something different about this stress. It took me a minute to put my finger on it, but there it was: For the first time since my diagnosis I was stressed about something that didn't have to do with cancer.<br /><br><br /><br>I bristle when the word "gift" is used in the same sentence as "cancer." There is no upside to having a life-threatening illness. It can ruin lives, friendships, families and dreams, and trying to focus too much on finding a silver lining can trivialize real suffering. I would never have voluntarily chosen to go down this path. But like any other struggle, cancer has changed me. I wish I could learn about overcoming struggle by training for a marathon or applying for a new job, like many of my peers are doing in their early 20s. But life is unpredictable, and we don't always get to choose our battles.<br /><br><br /><br>Cancer robs you of your ability to look at the big picture — or at least obscures it. The news that I had cancer ripped away the expectations I had of myself to be a certain type of person with a certain type of life. I used to think that looking at the "big picture" meant figuring out 1-year, 5-year and 10-year plans. Back in 2010, I had just graduated from Princeton with highest honors, and I felt pressure to get on the fast track to success — whatever that meant. Like a lot of my peers, I was in the thick of the culture of anxiety surrounding achievement. I signed a two-year contract at a fancy corporate job even though I knew I much preferred Birkenstocks to high heels, creative writing to spreadsheets. This path wasn't right for me, but even though I felt miserable I continued going to work each morning because I was focused on the idea that having a practical, long-term plan was part of seeing the big picture.<br /><br><br /><br>I like to think that I eventually would have found my way to a career that both inspired me and paid the bills. But before I was able to figure out what that was, the cancer showed up. My life was interrupted. My doctors told me I would need intensive chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant. From the looks on their faces, I could see that there wasn't going to be any quick fix for my disease.<br /><br><br /><br>I had spent a lifetime focusing on the big picture, but cancer forced me to look at the small picture. I had no choice. I quickly learned that trying to predict the results of a bone marrow biopsy or a round of chemotherapy was a torturous and futile exercise. So, for the first time in my life, I began to focus on the present.<br /><br><br /><br>In the midst of doctor's appointments and long hospitalizations I tried to organize my days around small acts of happiness by asking myself: What will make me feel better right now? How do I handle the worry I'm feeling right in this moment? Gone were the vague worries about a future career. Sometimes the answer to those questions was writing in my journal, visiting with friends and family, or eating peanut butter cups and watching bad romantic comedies. On other days, it meant having a good cry under my comforter. Little did I know, I was building muscles along the way — not lats and biceps, but invisible muscles that now kick in to carry me through stressful situations.<br /><br><br /><br>And so there I was, sitting in the limousine, a few minutes before I was to give my speech. I was nervous — that wasn't going away. But I also felt a sense of calm. After two years of nonstop chemotherapy and a bone marrow transplant, I realized that as a cancer patient, I had experienced my share of real stress and pressure, and I had learned how to confront it and cope with it.<br /><br><br /><br>I still can't see the big picture — the long view remains obscured. I can't change that. But I'm noticing that I am changed. And I learned on Monday night that giving a speech in front of a big crowd — something that would have been difficult to imagine before my cancer diagnosis — was now well within reach.<br /><br><br /><br><a href="http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/life-interrupted-changed-by-cancer/?src=recg">http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/10/25/life-interrupted-changed-by-cancer/?src=recg</a>

Life, Interrupted: Changed by Cancer - NYTimes.com

On Monday evening I stood on a stage in front of a thousand people and talked about what I've learned since my diagnosis with cancer two...

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Matt Said...Jay Said 2.1

<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">Matt exfoliates….Jay sweeps up the dead skin because it's gross.  You listen.<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEDZusQ0sR8uVWxdMoVt2TTgfVI-NyhlrO6Dkpio0_lzxLI1ccEeMWiz5Mmr7O-kMu2Bpt8kbBy-4MwHwrmWdwOp3sOY7dzRggbCHM8E0_5mFkXuYhKGCVGLry43yLcckknui-bmiaUGM/s1600/Schmoop's+Busch.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiEDZusQ0sR8uVWxdMoVt2TTgfVI-NyhlrO6Dkpio0_lzxLI1ccEeMWiz5Mmr7O-kMu2Bpt8kbBy-4MwHwrmWdwOp3sOY7dzRggbCHM8E0_5mFkXuYhKGCVGLry43yLcckknui-bmiaUGM/s400/Schmoop's+Busch.JPG" width="215" /></a>Jay:  No kiddin’ around tonight.  How’s Schmoop?<br />Matt:  Easy fella.  She’s only been in the hospital for four days, you don’t expect to know anything after a mere 96 hours do you?<br />Jay: Well, let me think………Yes!!<br />Matt:  Eh…We don’t know squat other than her bill is probably about 15 Grand by now and they haven’t even done anything.<br />Jay:  Ouch…That’s a serious affliction to overcome.  She may never recover.<br />Matt:  IKR?<br /><br />Jay:  So how’d the surgery go?<br />Matt:  Well…It didn’t work.  The procedure they used couldn’t open the plugged bile duct.<br />Jay:  That’s sucks.  I hate to see a person, let alone a bile duct, unable to be free.<br />Matt:  I guess they are trying a different procedure today.  It’s gonna be straight through the stomach.<br />Jay:  Well, that’s better than a rear assault<br />Matt:  Oh trust me, she would never go for that.<br />Jay:  Even if it made her better?<br />Matt:  Nooooo.  I have been trying to breach her rear for years and she refuses to open that levee.<br /><br />Jay:  Sad.  Soooooo?  Can she call in on Sunday’s show from the hospital?<br />Matt:  Ha.  This is what the ultimate bullshit is.  If it goes well today, she may be released in order to come home Sunday prior to the big surgery that they think they may want to do.<br />Jay:  Screw that.  We need her to call into Sunday’s show from the hospital.  Fucking outrageous!!<br />Matt:  IKR?  Oy Vey.<br />Jay:  This medical crew sounds like the same screwed up staff at Blog Talk Radio.<br />Matt:  I know.<br /><br />Jay:  By the way…What should we talk about on Sunday’s show?<br />Matt:  I had a great idea.  We could do a Halloween Spooktacular!!<br />Jay:  Not bad, but shouldn't that be our Wednesday show?  This Wednesday<b><i> is </i></b>Halloween.<br />Matt:  Oh it is, isn't it?<br />Jay:  Being the numbers guy that you are, I find it amusing that calendars confuse you.<br />Matt:  Is today Thursday or Friday?<br />Jay:  Yes.<br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF4jbCejOjyikxWDvHIfVGCTM4tPFjVb4dEFd-z-2iJSLKYE8wlPzpkn_jKbYsla4nAmZvU1LUJ2xcuSeXGYBveUnsciOENcoxJ15MbRdQPlI9yMw0A3poT6dJ0XzHmY3UzW0rbqD76l0/s1600/Hot+Phone+Call.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhF4jbCejOjyikxWDvHIfVGCTM4tPFjVb4dEFd-z-2iJSLKYE8wlPzpkn_jKbYsla4nAmZvU1LUJ2xcuSeXGYBveUnsciOENcoxJ15MbRdQPlI9yMw0A3poT6dJ0XzHmY3UzW0rbqD76l0/s320/Hot+Phone+Call.jpg" width="262" /></a></div><br />Jay:  How ’bout this…We are in limbo with Schmoop, so we could just wing it and beg people to call in?<br />Matt:  They really should.  We <b><i>are</i></b> the Number One BTR Comedy show every week and deserve callers.<br />Jay:  IKR?  They could call in…wish Schmoop well…talk about Halloween, and tell us how sexy we are.<br />Matt:  I like it, and it requires little thought or preparation on our part, which I love!!<br />Jay:  Ha…Genius!!  Another Number One Show in the making!!<br /><br />Matt:  Gonna be huge, IF…Our diverse and worldwide audience decides to call-in and chime in.<br />Jay:  For once, this show is not on our shoulders…it’s on theirs.<br />Matt:  Damn right.  Talk to you on Sunday.<br />Jay;  Okay…Give Schmoop a grope for me.<br />Matt:  Will Do.<br /><br />And if you'd like to catch the next IWS Radio Show LIVE this Sunday at NOON ET, you can click right <i><span style="color: blue;"><a href="http://www.blogtalkradio.com/im-with-stupid/2012/10/28/open-line-sunday" target="_blank">HERE</a>.</span></i></div>

Matt Said...Jay Said 2.1

Matt exfoliates….Jay sweeps up the dead skin because it's gross.  You listen. Jay:  No kiddin’ around tonight.  How’s Schmoop? Matt:  Ea...

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Fair Trade

<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LkEcwLNLcbw/UIrs_mF8K7I/AAAAAAAACOw/73h_9USpVwQ/s1600/mail%2Bcall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LkEcwLNLcbw/UIrs_mF8K7I/AAAAAAAACOw/73h_9USpVwQ/s320/mail%2Bcall.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8DCW7-_LSbI/UIrtAdcX60I/AAAAAAAACO8/g5folSkfZ9M/s1600/fair%2Btrade%2Bperk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8DCW7-_LSbI/UIrtAdcX60I/AAAAAAAACO8/g5folSkfZ9M/s320/fair%2Btrade%2Bperk.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">After coming home from work today I was very surprised to see this mail haul! I am member of Klout where I get to test and keep products. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Being Fair Trade month I received this box full of wonderful organic snacks and drinks. I love coffee and chocolate. It works great together. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">Since I had coffee already today I tore off the candy wrapper as soon as I saw the Noir chocolate bar. I was hesitant at first to try it. Then I thought hey why not! </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">So I did just that and I was shocked on how yummy it was! I loved how it didn't melt and most of all I loved the chocolate taste because it was sweet and not too bitter. I can't wait to try everything else! </div>

Fair Trade

After coming home from work today I was very surprised to see this mail haul! I am member of Klout where I get to test and keep products.  B...

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Assistant Librarian Technical Services/Circulation - E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, Madison

<strong>Assistant Librarian Technical Services/Circulation</strong>  - <span style="color: #48286d;"><strong>E.C. Scranton Memorial Library</strong></span> in Madison, CT, part of the 25 library LION Consortium, seeks an individual with strong technical and computer skills to join our Technical Services and Circulation Department (part-time, 25-30 hours/week). Duties include assisting the Head of Technical Services/Circulation with maintaining and troubleshooting the Library’s Integrated Library System, public and staff networks, running statistical reports, copy cataloging, processing of library materials, working at the Circulation and Information Desks, and assisting Library members with computer questions and other electronic devices such as tablets and e-readers. Qualified applicants must possess an Associate’s or Bachelor’s Degree, Internet and computer networking and software experience, excellent customer service skills, a strong attention to detail and the ability to handle multiple tasks in a busy library setting. Public library experience and a working knowledge of the Millennium iii integrated library system a plus. Salary is $19.90 per hour and includes paid vacation, sick time and retirement benefits. No healthcare benefits are associated with this position. Schedule includes evenings and rotating Saturday and Sunday hours. Please send resume to: Beth Crowley, Library Director, E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, P.O. Box 631, Madison, CT 06443 or email to <a _fcksavedurl="mailto:scrantonlibrary@madisonct.org" href="mailto:scrantonlibrary@madisonct.org">scrantonlibrary@madisonct.org</a>. Closing date: <span style="color: red;">November 16th, 2012</span>.

Assistant Librarian Technical Services/Circulation - E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, Madison

Assistant Librarian Technical Services/Circulation   - E.C. Scranton Memorial Library in Madison, CT, part of the 25 library LION Consortiu...

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Adult Services Librarian/Adult Programmer - E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, Madison

<strong>Adult Services Librarian/Adult Programmer</strong> - <span style="color: #48286d;"><strong>E.C. Scranton Memorial Library</strong></span>, located in the beautiful coastal town of Madison, CT, seeks a dynamic, forward-thinking librarian to join our Adult Services Department (full-time, 35 hours/week). Duties include collection development, assisting Library members with reference and reader’s advisory questions, and providing instruction in the use of online databases, downloadable e-book and audiobook collections, and electronic devices such as tablets and e-readers. This position is also responsible for planning, publicizing and implementing library programs for adults as well as collaborating with the Children and Teen Services Librarians to provide multi-age, library-wide programs. Qualified candidates must have an MLS from an ALA-accredited institution, familiarity with current trends in library services and programs for adults, excellent customer service skills, knowledge of print and electronic resources, experience with Internet and computer software, strong written and verbal communication skills, and the ability to work across library divisions. Public library experience and a working knowledge of the Millennium iii integrated library system along with basic public relations and marketing experience a plus. Recent graduates are encouraged to apply. Salary is $48,230 with generous health, vacation, and retirement benefits. Schedule includes evenings and rotating Saturday and Sunday hours. Please send resume to: Beth Crowley, Library Director, E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, P.O. Box 631, Madison, CT 06443 or email to <a _fcksavedurl="mailto:scrantonlibrary@madisonct.org" href="mailto:scrantonlibrary@madisonct.org">scrantonlibrary@madisonct.org</a>. Closing date: <span style="color: red;">November 16th, 2012</span>.

Adult Services Librarian/Adult Programmer - E.C. Scranton Memorial Library, Madison

Adult Services Librarian/Adult Programmer - E.C. Scranton Memorial Library , located in the beautiful coastal town of Madison, CT, seeks a...

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Current Health News | HealthDay

The HealthDay news service, a division of ScoutNews, LLC, provides daily health news for both consumers and medical professionals. <br /><br><br /><br><a href="http://consumer.healthday.com/">http://consumer.healthday.com/</a><br /><br><br /><br><a href="http://www.physiciansbriefing.com">http://www.physiciansbriefing.com</a>

Current Health News | HealthDay

The HealthDay news service, a division of ScoutNews, LLC, provides daily health news for both consumers and medical professionals. http://co...

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My Multiday Massage-a-Thon - NYTimes.com

<base href="data:"><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; color: black; text-align: left; "><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">About a month ago, editors from this magazine, which employs me, and from which I am therefore loath to turn down assignments even when they are horrifying, assigned me to get a series of massages and other body treatments here in the coastal town where I live, Wilmington, southeastern N.C., Port City of Progress and Pleasure. There was a semi-legitimate journalistic impulse behind it, but it was also billed as an act of mercy. I'd been traveling and writing a lot for them, spending a lot of time in middle seats on international flights, and my body had reached new levels of vileness. The yellowish gray-green circles under my eyes had a micropebbled texture, and my skin gave off a sebaceousy sheen of coffee-packet coffee. My calves had developed a vague thrombotic throb. It was the kind of premature aging where you think, I'll come back from this but not all the way.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">When you feel like that, you don't leap to be naked in rooms with an assortment of strangers while they rub their hands all over your bare flesh — there's probably a fetish group for becoming as physically disgusting as you can and then procuring massages, but that's not my damage. Also, there's something about massage in general that makes me less, not more, relaxed. The boredom of it, the entrapment. Like you, probably, I know a couple of people who go around parties rubbing other people's backs, and I cringe at their approaching hands. One of these shoulder-pirates laughed at me for it once, after I flinched, telling me I needed to "learn to receive love," and I thought, That's probably true, I'd bet I do. Faux-wise passive-aggressive hippie maxims always seem true and wounding in the moment.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Still, everyone, including my mother, who was visiting, said: "Your job! To get paid to get massages!" So I tried to embrace that. It seemed churlish not to. Even my body deserved to be touched, to be kneaded and ministered to. I drove around town checking out different places — only a couple looked sketchy; I think Wilmy has a pretty light scene when it comes to massage of the highway-billboard variety. I made a few appointments and then canceled them. Massage and I were just teasing each other.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Then one morning, inevitably, I woke up with a headache. Not a migraine, but a kind of necky, achy number. I rang up Miller-Motte College, a technical school on Market Street with a locally recognized department in Massage Therapy.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">The next morning, a brown-haired young woman who looked to be in her very early 20s — and turned out to be 19 — introduced herself as Victoria and said that she would be my therapist. The room she led me to was spare, with a kind of maroon-gray-olive palette, hotel-conference-room colors. Victoria opened the blinds on the door window — it was one of the things the therapists had to do, so that their teachers could look in.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">The erotic element of nonerotic massage is somehow comical. Even to mention it seems louche, but to glide past it is bizarre. My spouse, for instance, would say it's creepy that I noticed it, but if I were blind to it, that would mean I was a sexually dead person, and she wouldn't love me, and would be seen to be keeping me around purely in a "Weekend at Bernie's" kind of way. When you think about it, there's no other situation in life in which a man or woman touches you the way a massage artist touches you except in bed, or on the way there. It doesn't matter if your person is attractive to you or not, and it can be the opposite sex from the one you're attracted to if you're attracted to only one. It's just the simple act of someone rubbing her hands all over you, and not with the precise, deliberate motions of a medical procedure, but with, you hope, a certain tenderness and warmth. Even the traditional phrases — "I'm going to step out; you undress <em>to your comfort level</em>" — imply a problem, that a wrong move could make things uncomfortable. Nothing wrong with all this, of course — it probably adds to the health benefits — I merely mark the static.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><strong>I can't say that</strong> the first massage penetrated very far. I had thousands of hours of Quasimodo-like keyboard-hunching stored in my torso, so it would have taken a genius to break through in an hour. Thankfully, Wilmington is full of massage places — there's one in every strip mall practically — and I'd soon booked some tables. My take had shifted. The first massage was nice, and now I remembered that I could get unlimited free massages anywhere, which suddenly seemed exciting and like something I'd been cryptically but deeply deserving for a long time. I shaved, I took a shower, I took a couple of walks, I didn't want to be quite as gross for the next one — motivation was creeping in. It's like what they say: If you leave the house, you'll want to go out more.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">I got facials, something I never thought I'd do. It was like impersonating someone. For the people doing the facials, it must have been like having a grime-encrusted hillbilly come out of the forest and ask for a Brazilian. I did a couples thing with my wife at Paradise Body Works and Day Spa, where a woman named Rose worked on me. Rosita Messier is her full name. One lotion she put on me had a certain evocative smell I couldn't place ("Pumpkin," Rose said — they'd gotten in new scents for the holidays). Later, at the slightly more upscale Sambuca Modern Apothecary, I got a blissful two-hour biodynamic facial/massage from Tracy Meyer, learning about Dr. Hauschka's skin-care products, said to be pure in ways that others aren't. That procedure left me almost unable to rise from the table. I wanted to lie there like a glowworm in the feeling of cellular wellness. Tracy had good stories about her years traveling the world doing massages on cruise ships and a European ferry. More than a few of the people in the bodywork world, I noticed, had done significant international travel before choosing the profession. Massage can be one of those jobs you fall into when other things don't work out. But that's true for so many of us — we fall into our lines of work like coins dropping into slots, bouncing down off various failures and false-starts. And just as many of the women seemed sincerely passionate about their art. I was moved by them, and by the strip-mall salons and parlors where they do their healing work.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">My face looked markedly better when I got home. Blood was getting to more of the cells. I had extrication performed on a few bad pores. I had that gleaming countenance you see on people who've just come back from the spa. This is why they do it, I thought. No wonder there are more and more metrosexual men. Why wouldn't you want to look slightly less ghastly? I bless their rage against the dark, saluting them as they pass by into a future of prolonged sexual plausibility, while I remain hobbled by my father's midcentury notion of manhood, that any male who spent more than five seconds considering his physical appearance might as well be living in Liberace's guesthouse.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">That night, I went with my mother to the Asian Relaxation Center, better known among locals as the Asian Foot Soak Sanctuary, in the same strip mall as Fuzzy Peach fro-yo shop. You walk through a vestibule into a dark room, with black leather chairs, like beauty-shop chairs but as comfortable as those coin-massagers in airports. My petite mother sat in the chair next to mine. We got our feet soaked and I hope desanitized in tubs of fragrant red fluid, she by a powerfully built man in his 40s, and I by a woman, equally strong-looking. They started on our heads, which I loved, but which my mother could have left off the ticket, because it messed up her hair. But when they moved to our feet . . . there's something about the feet and the ears, I noticed across the various sessions. This woman was practicing Chinese reflexology on me. She got her fingers up into the bones of my feet and started playing Rubik's Cube. I yelped when she popped my toes. It's easy to hurt the feet — which seems strange, when you consider all the abuse and weight-bearing they're heir to. I've read a theory that possibly they evolved so many nerves because they're prone to infection as well, and the more you can feel them, the less liable you are to slash them open and die of some disease. My mother at one point announced into the silence, "This foot massage is incredible!" It was. But the remarkable thing happened later that night, in the shower, when I bent down to wash my feet and found that I could feel them in a way I hadn't done in 10 years. They felt almost strange, as if they belonged to another body, the way a limb feels when it has fallen asleep, only not numb in this case but newly sensitive, and softer. The woman was a magician. But quiet. I hadn't even been able to extract her name. She'd been in the country only three months. She spoke very little English and mainly just smiled and nodded to questions, so I gave it up as awkward.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">One woman I visited was unlike the others, a multimodality healer from New Mexico named Susan Chavez. She had silver bangs and was seemingly in her early 50s, though she professed to be many billions of years old. When she answered the phone the first time, she told me that she was outside gathering kale, and I pictured her in a field or forest, but as it turned out, when I showed up to her charmingly cluttered one-story house in a tucked-away neighborhood, she was growing kale in pots out front. She put me on a table in her side treatment room and used different psychometric devices on me, tuning forks and Tibetan singing bowls, also a vibrating eye mask. She told me I had a giant glass ball around my head, which needed cracking, and after she cracked it, she performed a Lakota Sioux raindrop treatment on my back.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Susan's was the most complex of the treatments I received. She was full-on spiritual, whereas I, like Esqueleto in "Nacho Libre," believe in science. So I was torn between my uncontrollable skepticism toward her techniques and the fact that some of them seemed to work — the singing bowls really did seem to be vibrating certain zones of my body in an obscurely powerful way. I don't know. I'm still working through stuff I got into with Susan. I felt newly open to massage after meeting with her, but also vulnerable to it. After all, even if there's something inherently funny about massage, down to the very word, <em>massage</em>, there's also something unavoidably intense about paying that much attention to your body, not as an abstract concept but as the physical dying fact of it, lying in all its animality like a study by Lucian Freud. At certain moments I missed my old mode, which was to proceed as if I had no body at all.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">But the treatment that left the deepest impression on me was one that in the moment left almost no impression at all, the craniosacral with Mindy Totten, at the Oasis Center. You may know what craniosacral is already — I'd never heard of it. In fact I thought that "sacral" referred to sacred, and that it was more mystical than it is, but really it refers to sacrum, the triangular bone at the bottom of the spine. That said, it's still somewhat mystical. There's little hard science yet to show that people who practice this treatment are actually helping to regulate and balance the flow of craniosacral fluid through your body, or to indicate what such a balancing would achieve. But people subscribe to the method like you wouldn't believe.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Mindy said, "We generally work in silence." For an hour I lay in a room while she barely touched me. At times I actually didn't know if she was touching me. Her hand would hover above my leg, or lie under it, in perfect stillness.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin: 0px 0px 1em; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); ">Some profoundly emotional memories rose to the surface, the kind that can follow a troubling dream. I was thinking of people who died with whom I was not sure I had perfect transparency while they lived. It felt at the time as if the natural magnetism of Mindy's palms was conjuring these thoughts. Whether something <em>was</em> being effected through the laying on of hands, perhaps through some unknown mechanism of the physical world, I can't say. It seemed to matter less and less. Maybe that's what massage is to a lot of people, those who don't have chronic pain or migraines — it's enforced meditation for those of us too distracted to meditate. You're paying someone to meditate you. It's not anything they're doing, necessarily. It's that they open a little window. They give you an excuse to lie there in silence and pay a deeper attention to the fact that you exist. The true value of shamanism may be a concealed one, that it holds us in place and says <em>this</em>.</p><p itemprop="articleBody" style="color: black; font-size: 1.2em; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; line-height: 24px; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; orphans: 2; text-align: -webkit-auto; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); position: static; z-index: auto; ">Also, in the end I did look better. My mother before she left to go home commented on my skin, which had gone from looking like two cigarette holes in a white blanket to something more alive-seeming. I can't say my immersion in the world of massage gave me calm — my anxiety proved impenetrable to all modalities, none of them touched the core, none of them breached the sarcophagus. But I am alive, and ready for fresh insults. I can feel my feet, albeit less and less each day.</p></div><a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/my-multiday-massage-a-thon.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0">http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/my-multiday-massage-a-thon.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0</a><div style="font-family: Helvetica; font-size: 14px; color: black; text-align: left; "><br class="webkit-block-placeholder"></div>

My Multiday Massage-a-Thon - NYTimes.com

About a month ago, editors from this magazine, which employs me, and from which I am therefore loath to turn down assignments even when they...

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