Suicide
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2526079.stm
Something interesting (and somewhat shocking) I discovered about China:
- Suicide is now the biggest single killer among young Chinese people
- Every year more than a quarter ofa million people in China are taking their own lives
- Unlike almost everywhere else in the world, more women than men commit suicide
- Suicide now accounts for a third of all deaths among women in the countryside
- There are more than two million attempted suicides a year in China, more than a quarter of a million of them successful.
- In a study that is going to be published in the Lancet, researchers found that there was a significantly lower rate of mental illness among those commiting suicide in China than in the West (90-95% of Westerners commiting suicide versus only two-thirds of those in China)
Why?
But the biggest single reason why so many suicide attempts in China are successful is their method. Nearly two-thirds of them are by consuming pesticides and powerful rat poisons which are extremely easy to buy in China.
And:
In China, there is also a lack of social and religious taboos against taking one’s own life. “In some particular villages it almost becomes normalised. If a young woman is having trouble, this is one way she’ll express her displeasure,” Dr Phillips said.
How Inflation Brought Down a Government
Inflation Nation
Steve H. Hanke is a professor of Applied Economics at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.
On Sunday, voters in Montenegro turned out in record numbers and gave a collective “thumbs down” to their republic’s loose union with Serbia. Although the final curtain has not yet been drawn on this Balkan drama, when it is, what remains of the former Yugoslavia will disappear, and, after 88 years, Montenegro will once again be independent.
Montenegro’s drive for independence is as much a story about money as it is about Balkan politics. Unfortunately, the money side of the story has tumbled down what George Orwell called a “memory hole.”
So what’s the story? From 1971 through 1991, Yugoslavia’s annualized inflation rate was 76%. Only Zaire and Brazil topped that dreadful performance. But things got worse — much worse. In early 1991, the federal government of Prime Minister Ante Markovic discovered that, late in 1990, the Serbian parliament, which was controlled by Slobodan Milosevic, had secretly ordered the Serbian National Bank (a regional central bank) to issue $1.4 billion in credits to Slobo’s friends. That illegal plunder equaled more than half of all the new money the National Bank of Yugoslavia had planned to create in 1991. Besides lining the pockets of a good many Serbian communists, it sabotaged the Markovic government’s teetering plans for economic reform. It also fanned the flames of nationalism in Yugoslavia and hardened the resolve of the leaders in Croatia and Slovenia to break away from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
Without the Croats and Slovenes to fleece, Milosevic turned on his “own” people. Starting in 1992 and lasting 24 months, what was left of Yugoslavia endured the second-highest and second-longest hyperinflation in world history, peaking in January 1994 when prices increased by 313,000,000% in one month. In all, there were 14 maxi-devaluations during the hyperinflation, with each of the final three exceeding 99.9%, completely wiping out the dinar’s value in November ’93, December ’93 and January ’94.
Only Hungary, in 1946, recorded a higher rate, and only the Soviet Union suffered hyperinflation longer, for 26 months in the early 1920s. Even Weimar Germany’s much-recounted hyperinflation of 1922-23 was far less virulent than the repeated decimation of the Yugoslav dinar. For a sense of its impact on the local population, imagine the value of your bank accounts in dollars and then move the decimal point 22 places to the left. Then try to buy something.
Yugoslavia’s monetary orgy finally came to an end when the Topcider mint ran out of capacity. The hyperinflation was transforming 500-billion-dinar bills into small change before the ink had dried. But Milosevic’s monetary mischief was nothing new. The old Serbian kings were notorious coin-clippers. As long ago as the early 14th century, King Milutin minted imitation Venetian silver coins at Novo Brdo and Prizren, located in what is now Kosovo. These fakes contained only seven-eighths as much silver as the real things. Venice banned the fakes, and, in his “Divine Comedy,” Dante denounced “the King of Rascia” as a counterfeiter.
In 1999, President Milo Djukanovic (now prime minister) decided he wanted Montenegro independent and out from under Serbia’s political yoke. I counseled that he play the currency card. Over the decades, the Yugoslav dinar had been completely discredited. For most Yugoslavs, the mighty deutsche mark was the unofficial coin of the realm. That was the reality. In addition, I repeated the great Austrian economist Ludwig von Mises’s argument that sound money “was devised as an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments. Ideologically it belongs in the same class with political constitutions and bills of rights.”
Mr. Djukanovic knew that the deutsche mark was his trump card, one that would pave the way for reestablishing Montenegro’s sovereignty. On Nov. 2, 1999, he boldly announced that Montenegro was dumping the Yugoslav dinar and officially adopting the deutsche mark as its national currency (the DM was subsequently replaced by the euro in January 2002). There were no International Monetary Fund bureaucrats to contend with (at the time, Yugoslavia had no formal relations with the IMF and Montenegro was part of the rump Yugoslavia). Civil servants from Washington had not yet located Podgorica, and the NGO invasions weren’t even a glimmer in any planner’s eye. Furthermore, the so-called experts in Brussels hadn’t yet issued their bizarre 2000 edict on the euro, which stated that “it should be made clear that any unilateral adoption of the single currency by means of ‘euroisation’ would run counter to the underlying economic reasoning of [the European Monetary Union].” Mr. Djukanovic had room to maneuver and coolly play his card. By doing so, the die was cast for Sunday’s election.
This appeared in the Wall Street Journal, May 24, 2006
Who Does this Sound Like?
Leadership Change at Harvard
Consider this description of a great, visionary leader:
[He] is a voracious reader of science and history who questions subordinates relentlessly about their projects, she says. “If he respects you, he’ll argue with you. If not, he ignores you,” she says. “If he says, ‘That’s stupid,’ it means he cares” about a project, she adds.
When I read that passage in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal, I thought, “Yes, that captures the Larry Summers I know perfectly.”
It wasn’t written about Larry, however. It was written about Bill Gates. Apparently, the personality attributes that work well for an entrepreneur and CEO don’t work nearly as well for a university president.
Thus Far…
For those of you who don’t know, I’ve been back at Harvard for about a week already. Uneventful flight … well, except for me ordering “spicy tomato juice” as opposed to just normal tomato juice and finding out subsequently that margarita mix actually packs a kick. It wasn’t that it was too spicy, it was just — there was a kick, is the only way I can describe it (not a pleasant one I might add) . . .
On the first day I come back, I see my postdoc (Benjamin tenOever.. so Ben, since I know you search Google for your name CONSTANTLY… here’s another “sighting”) and he cand I exchange a few pleasantries before he fills me in on what’s been going on while I’ve been gone.
New vendor for our primers? Ok
Haven’t been able to sequence that protein? Cool
You think we should clean out our refrigerator boxes? You’re still a neat-freak I see, but that’s fine.
You’re thinking about putting me onto a project where I do your experiments on human cell lines to see if I can back up your mouse cell line data? Sounds tricky, but I’m up for it.
…
[topics continue for a while]
…
[topics finally finish]
So, I”m about to get to work, and then he throws in casually at the end:
“Oh, and by the way, I’m getting married.”
=-O
I ask him for the story and he “casually” talks about how he didn’t do anything too special and just while they were talking about what they wanted to get for dinner she asked, “So… what do you want?”
And Ben, the sly sly devil he is, responds: “How about we… get married?”
And busts out the ring (which is pretty nice.. as he is only a postdoc, I’m positive he must have laundered money somewhere to pay for it) and to which his fiancee starts running around screaming and being happy (and I’m sure Ben just wanted her to get it over with so he could ACTUALLY get on with dinner).
So I nod…
Of course, then Sze (who is the grad student who works closest with Ben and who works in the room that I use most often) chimes in to tell the real story. And I find out that Ben, who pretends to not be a sap but actually is, went up to Vermont or something like that to buy a ring, and calls up his soon-to-be-father-in-law to ask for permission to marry her and apparently was too excited after buying the ring to plan anything and so he just popped the question.
Awwwwww 
In lighter news, Buck has delivered on his promise of DS9 DVDs… and hence, I will watch them… and there will be much joy
Lightning and Cell Phones Don’t Mix
Mobile phone users warned of lightning strike risk
Fri Jun 23, 2006 5:11 AM IST
LONDON (Reuters) – People should not use mobile phones outdoors during thunderstorms because of the risk of being struck by lightning, doctors said on Friday.
They reported the case of a 15-year-old girl who was using her phone in a park when she was hit during a storm. Although she was revived, she suffered persistent health problems and was using a wheelchair a year after the accident.
“This rare phenomenon is a public health issue, and education is necessary to highlight the risk of using mobile phones outdoors during stormy weather to prevent future fatal consequences from lighting strike injuries,” said Swinda Esprit, a doctor at Northwick Park Hospital in England.
Esprit and other doctors at the hospital added in a letter to the British Medical Journal that usually when someone is struck by lightning, the high resistance of the skin conducts the flash over the body in what is known as a flashover.
But if a metal object, such as a phone, is in contact with the skin it disrupts the flashover and increases the odds of internal injuries and death.
The doctors added that three fatal cases of lightning striking people while using mobile phones have been reported in newspapers in China, South Korea and Malaysia.
“The Australian Lightning Protection Standard recommends that metallic objects, including cordless or mobile phones, should not be used (or carried) outdoors during a thunderstorm,” Esprit added.
Make a Wish
BOISE, Idaho (AP) – Most days, 6-year-old Aubrey Matthews spends her energy fighting a brain tumor growing behind her eyes. But the first-grader managed to foil crimes and chase an arch-nemesis through Boise on Friday, serving the city as the superhero “Star” with assistance from the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Idaho, The Idaho Statesman reported.
When she donned her blue and metallic superhero costume, Star took on the super-powers of X-ray vision, superhuman strength, speed and blowing power – and a mission: To capture the villain who had stolen a golden star from the Idaho Historical Museum.
After Star was alerted by authorities, she hopped on a Life Flight helicopter to reach the crime scene, where she found a clue linking the crime to a kjnown evildoer.
The chase was on, with plenty of opportunities for Star to use her superpowers along the way.
Before catching the bad guy, she rescued people from a “smoke”-filled building, saved a citizen from drowning in ParkCenter Pond, and vindicated ferrets at Zoo Boise who had been framed for stealing the golden star.
It was a busy day for Aubrey, a little girl with an incredible imagination whose biggest foe is the inoperable optic glioma tumor growing in the center of her brain. The tumor was diagnosed when Aubrey was 6 months old.
“I try to enjoy every day with her,” said her mother, Elisa Matthews. “Life is just precious, and you can’t blow it away. You have to take it for what it is, no matter what it is.”
The tumor is inoperable because of its location and the way it grew into her optic nerve and against her hypothalamus, said her father, Dave Matthews.
Aubrey began chemotherapy when she was 15 months old. The tumor was stabilized for three and a half years but started to grow again last summer. A second round of chemotherapy began in August and was completed in January, her father said.
So far the news is good – the tumor has shrunk some, and Aubrey isn’t as ill as doctors expected her to be after the chemotherapy. She has not lost her hair and her white blood cell count is stable, representing a small victory over the toxic chemotherapy drugs.
Most kids making a wish through the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Idaho wish to go someplace, to meet someone or to have something special.
Aubrey’s request – to “be” something – is the rarest kind of wish, said executive director Marcia Karakas. It’s the first time in at least 10 years that a “be” wish has been received in the Idaho office, which serves the state’s lower 35 counties.
Windermere Real Estate’s 150 employees took part in scripted superhero scenes, and the caper was filmed by Area 02, a local production company, for a special premiere this fall.
“I’m overwhelmed with all the time that people have put into this,” Dave Matthews said. “The whole day is centered around her, and it’s just awesome. This is truly a dream come true for her.”
Aubrey came up with other superhero characters to help her fight crime – Lion Lady, Frog Lady, Dog Man, House Lifter, Sky Girl, Martian Manhunter and Tree Girl – all played by volunteers. She also helped design the costumes.
“I think she’s brought out the child in all of us,” said Jessie Gillingham, volunteer coordinator for the foundation.
By noon on Friday, Star had rescued a hostage from the villain’s grip and tied the miscreant to the replica Liberty Bell in front of the Statehouse, cheered by hundreds of fans.
“I’d like to thank you for your extreme bravery,” Mayor David Bieter said when the bad guy was in custody. He swore Aubrey in as an honorary police officer and proclaimed June 15 as Make-A-Wish Day and Star Day.
“You have shown extraordinary crime-fighting skills,” Boise Police Mike Masterson said before presenting her with an Aubrey-sized police uniform.
For the little girl whose strength helps her fight cancer, it was all in a day’s work.
Citizenship
| You Passed the US Citizenship Test |
 Congratulations – you got 8 out of 10 correct! |
Andrew Robinson on Playing Elim Garak in DS9
Decided to indulge in a little nerdy fandomness and started looking at some DS9 stuff online and I found this gem from Andrew Robinson about his experiences playing one of my favorite characters of all time, Elim Garak, the “plain, simple tailor” — and I happen to concur:
Q: I’ve enjoyed your work ever since I saw you for the first time in “Dirty Harry,” and your portrayal of Garak on DS9 was one of the many reasons it was such an enjoyably complex and thought-provoking show. But for some reason DS9 is not the “popular” Trek, which I think is unfortunate. What’s your take on this?
vivvyviv
AR: It’s not the most popular because it’s the most morally ambiguous. Whenever you have characters who are gray rather than black and white … Although they are more interesting, they are more difficult for people to get a handle on. I loved DS9 because they were gray, because the characters were not easily definable, but that’s not for everybody.
Nope, if it doesn’t have Paris Hilton, the people don’t want to watch it…
Win the War on Terror?
A better question to ask (and something I don’t see asked enough) is — what constitutes winning? A better way to cast the question of whether or not the US is winning its war on terror is to ask what constitutes winning say — a war on drugs, or a war on crime? Clearly not the absolute elimination of it (although some foolishly optimistic people might disagree with that claim) as these issues will always exist (not to mention, its also ridiculously difficult to define “drug problem” and “crime”). In that sense, these “wars” aren’t really wars in the slightest. A war on Iraq can be won — we did. A war against Nazi Germany can be won — we did. But a “war for the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people” … how do you WIN that?
I do believe that if the United States was run as a corporation, then things would have been run much differently — not because a corporation intrinsically has different people or whatever (I’m not making a pro-free market appeal here), but because a corporation DEFINES its goals clearly and then makes plans to achieve those goals and determines means to evaluate whether or not goals have been reached.
It sounds like commonsense — and it is — and sadly, its not what the government runs on. Bush can rightfully say that they have killed tons of terrorists and terrorist sympathizers. He can rightfully say that he dismantled the Taliban (for the most part) and has put a major dent in Al Qaeda’s operations and has mobilized much of the world against terrorists — they even killed Zarqawi recently, which is a major “victory” in a sense.
But his detractors can of course also rightfully point out how Americans don’t feel safer — how many American and Iraqi lives have been lost, how our actions have mobilized sentiment amongst many Muslims against the United States, how to this day Afghanistan and Iraq are still replete with terrorists. They can very rightfully say how Bush’s focus on Iraq probably led to the nuclear stalemates the United States is currently facing in North Korea and in Iran. In that sense, those are all “defeats”.
The fundamental problem with most government operations and non-profit organizations (except for the ones that are actually successful), and especially with this lousy war, is a complete lack of understanding as to what a “victory” is. A conspiracy theorist could even argue (as I’ve heard and definitely argued in debate rounds before) that this is just a ploy to perpetually be in war — b/c one can never achieve victory, and thus one is always supporting the military-industrial complex and is always empowering the government’s national security machinery. That’s not my point, though. We can “win” a war on terror if we know what that war is, what it means to win, and if we had planned how to go about doing it.
I personally was in favor of the War in Iraq, but not in how it was conducted. I still believe, however, that expansive United States military operations for anti-terror purposes and for humanitarian missions are in the best interest of Americans and the world, but I believe that until some basic commonsense is applied to thinking about these operations — nobody benefits, and everybody loses.
Sam’s Story
, Batman: Hush, and Batman: The Long Halloween and also a former consultant for Smallville), Joss Whedon (writer of Buffy, Astonishing X-Men, Firefly, the new Wonder Woman movie), Geoff Johns (who writes like every comic for DC), and Jim Lee (like the best comic artist EVER).
The main story was written by Sam before he died about a short adventure that Robin and Superboy go on. I have to be honest — the story is not particularly good (although it has many humorous and touching moments), although its a great deal better than any story I could come up with. The story that really got to me was the story in the back, the one Jeph Loeb wrote on his own (with art by his friend Tim Sale) called “Sam’s Tale”
Its told from the perspective of Jonathan Kent, Clark (aka Superman if you really don’t know)’s adopted father, where he tells the story of Clark’s childhood friend Sam, “He had a gift. He could make Clark laugh.”
“One time, Sam made Clark laugh so hard, milk came out of my son’s nose. I’m not sure Martha [Jonathan's wife] found it as amusing as the boys did, but she loved seeing Clark happy.”
One day Sam comes to school in crutches and casually blames it on a soccer injury . . . “I imagine that at that moment, Clark wished he never had X-ray vision.”
“The school year was almost finished when Sam dropped by to see Clark.”
“CLARK: What did you do to your hair?”
“SAM: It’s my Lex Luthor look. C’mon, I’m dead sexy.”
They go out to the farm and talk (which is offest with a very heart-rendering sunset background by Tim Sale).
“CLARK: What can I do to help…?”
“SAM: What you always do. Be my pal. Laugh at my stupid jokes. Clark, I’ve got the best friends, the best doctors, the best outlook. Don’t worry.”
“Three days later, Miss Landers came in from a staff meeting. Clark saw that her eyes were red and swollen. She had the impossible task of telling a group of children that one of their own had died.”
I have no way of knowing how much the story was real or just based on reality … but Sale’s art just had this quality to it that I can’t describe which really emphasized the emotions of everyone involved in the story. I don’t know if Mr. Loeb saw himself more as Jonathan trying to make sense of the world or trying to comfort a “Clark” in his life or maybe he saw himself more as Clark, unsure of what to do or how Sam had such courage, but for anyone interested in the story, I hope you go out and get it — all profits go towards establishing a scholarship fund in Sam’s name.
“Sam’s Story” ends with a note which…
“Your destiny does not lie in a hospital bed.
Far greater achevements are to come
Own your destiny
Best friends, best doctors, best outlook
no worries”
dated: 2/17/2005, Sam Loeb: 4/13/1988 – 6/17/2005