Minor Thoughts from me to you

It turns out that I don't read too much. In reading, I'm strengthening my brain and preparing it for old age. So say researchers in the July 31 edition of Neurology. Mental Abilities: Good Readers Better Able to Retain Brain Skills - New York Times

It is not surprising that when doctors examined people who had worked at a lead smelter for years, they found no lack of neurological problems associated with lead

But not every worker was affected equally, a new study says, especially when it came to those who were good readers. While those workers had the same sorts of motor skill losses as their colleagues, they had retained much more of their thinking skills.

People who are good readers, generally a sign of better education, have been found in earlier studies to have better health. The presumption has been that this is because they can take better care of themselves or afford better food, housing and medical care.

But writing in the July 31 issue of Neurology, researchers said that in this case some smelter employees were protected not as a direct result of their reading but an indirect one. The years of reading, the study said, may have helped their brains develop more of what doctors call cognitive reserve.

After all of the reading I've done, my cognitive reserve must be through the roof. Not that I plan to stop building my reserve anytime soon. After all, who knows how much I'll need later?

Growing up, I always heard that I should have an "attitude of gratitude". That phrase sounded annoyingly pat back then and still does now. That doesn't make it any less true. Here are two examples of people with a great attitude of gratitude.

First, Chef Mojo from Daily Pundit wrote about experiencing life with new hearing aids. Daily Pundit » The Hum and Roar of the World.

At some point when I was a child, it became apparent that I was a bit different from the other kids. Namely, I couldn't hear the things they heard.

This was somewhat expected, my mother being hearing impaired. I stepped into this life with the genetic code that dialed me down a notch or so when it came to sound. A childhood of constant ear infections only increased the damage.

...

The audiologist took the results of my test and input them into a program on her Dell laptop and dialed up the brands and models of aids that would apply to me. ... The thing was an inch long and little over a quarter inch thick, with a very thin tube encasing a wire that attached to a transmitter in the form of flexible silicone earbud. No more ear molds.

... The Lady gave me a little look and said, Hey sweetie. And she started reading from a poster in the office.

I almost started crying.

I'd never heard her before. Not like this. Not this way. Not to the point of being almost normal. Her voice was pure sparkling clarity and oh so sweet.

I turned to the audiologist who said, the humming is the light fixtures overhead. I looked up and it occurred to me that the world was opening up in waves around me within this tiny office. I could hear the secretary a room away on the phone and the printer printing and a phone ringing behind me, and I knew right were it was.

How often are you thankful for just the simple ability to hear, and to hear well?

Secondly, how about waking up from a coma after 19 years, to find that your entire world has changed? BBC NEWS | Europe | Pole wakes up from 19-year coma.

Railway worker Jan Grzebski, 65, fell into a coma after he was hit by a train in 1988. ... Doctors gave him only two or three years to live after the accident. ... When Mr Grzebski had his accident Poland was still ruled by its last communist leader, Wojciech Jaruzelski. ... The following year's elections ushered in eastern Europe's first post-communist government. Poland joined the Nato alliance in 1999 and the European Union in 2004.

"Now I see people on the streets with mobile phones and there are so many goods in the shops it makes my head spin," he told Polish television. "When I went into a coma there was only tea and vinegar in the shops, meat was rationed and huge petrol queues were everywhere," Mr Grzebski said. "What amazes me today is all these people who walk around with their mobile phones and never stop moaning," said Mr Grzebski. "I've got nothing to complain about."

Every so often, I try to stop and remember what life used to be like. I try to talk to people who remember what life was like in the 50's, 60's, 70's, and 80's. Really, we don't have it so bad today.

So, as you go through your day, try to have an attitude of gratitude -- no matter what happens.

If you really want an iPhone, but you don't want a two-year AT&T; contract, there's good news. You can use it with AT&T;'s prepaid plans.

The Unofficial Apple Weblog has instructions on how to activate the phone with a prepaid plan. They also have screenshots of the monthly plans that are available.

Assuming that $20 of the plan covers the unlimited data usage (web browsing, e-mail, etc), you'll be paying about $0.15 a minute for your talk time. That's with the cheapest plan. For the most expensive plan, you'll be paying about $0.10 a minute for your talk time. The most expensive plan also includes unlimited nights and weekends for and unlimited mobile-to-mobile calls.

In comparison to the $0.19 a minute I'm paying for our current Sprint contract, that's not a bad deal. Maybe there's an iPhone in my future after all!

UPDATE: It's apparently possible to use the iPhone without an AT&T; contract, as long as you activate it first, then cancel the contract within three days. Yeah, it's a pain. But better than nothing. I'm still hoping Apple releases an iPod like the iPhone before Christmas.

Alzheimer's is one of the diseases that scares me the most. I absolutely hate the idea of losing my memory and being completely unable to function -- or even remember who my family and friends are. That's why I was thrilled to read about an upcoming Alzheimer's vaccine.

A revolutionary drug that stops Alzheimer's disease in its tracks could be available within a few years.

It could prevent people from reaching the devastating final stages of the illness, in which sufferers lose the ability to walk, talk and even swallow, and end up totally dependent on others.

The jab, which is now being tested on patients, could be in widespread use in as little as six years.

Existing drugs can delay the progress of the symptoms, but their effect wears off relatively quickly, allowing the disease to take its devastating course. In contrast, the new vaccine may be able to hold the disease at bay indefinitely.

Early tests showed the vaccine is highly effective at breaking up the sticky protein that clogs the brain in Alzheimer's, destroying vital connections between brain cells.

When the jab was given to mice suffering from a disease similar to Alzheimer's, 80 per cent of the patches of amyloid protein were broken up.

If this pans out, it would be absolutely fantastic news.

Geisinger Health System is trying an innovative approach to lowering healthcare costs: offering a warranty for certain surgeries.

Under the typical system, missing an antibiotic or giving poor instructions when a patient is released from the hospital results in a perverse reward: the chance to bill the patient again if more treatment is necessary. As a result, doctors and hospitals have little incentive to ensure they consistently provide the treatments that medical research has shown to produce the best results.

Taking a cue from the makers of television sets, washing machines and consumer products, Geisinger essentially guarantees its workmanship, charging a flat fee that includes 90 days of follow-up treatment.

Even if a patient suffers complications or has to come back to the hospital, Geisinger promises not to send the insurer another bill.

Since Geisinger began its experiment in February 2006, focusing on elective heart bypass surgery, it says patients have been less likely to return to intensive care, have spent fewer days in the hospital and are more likely to return directly to their own homes instead of a nursing home.

Unfortunately, the healthcare system isn't usually an innovator:

But hospitals have been slow to focus their attention on standardizing the way they deliver care, said Dr. Arnold Milstein, the medical director for the Pacific Business Group on Health, a California organization of large companies that provide medical benefits to their workers. Geisinger "is one of the few systems in the country that is just beginning to understand the lessons of global manufacturing," Dr. Milstein said.

Geisinger is improving care by identifying the best practices possible in cardiac surgery and then making sure that those practices are followed in every surgery. It's a simple idea, but one that doctors have been resistent to implement in the past.

Controlling costs are a large reason for the experiment:

Heart surgery and follow-up care, which runs about $30,000, are among the biggest-ticket medical offerings that Geisinger provides. But Geisinger executives say outside insurers and employers have indicated that Geisinger would need to include from 5 to 10 other procedures under its plan before they would have enough of their employees affected to make it worth their while to sign up.

Under the experiment, the hospital charges a flat fee for the surgery, plus half the amount it has calculated as the historical cost of related care for the next 90 days. So instead of billing for any additional hospital stays "” which typically run $12,000 to $15,000 "” Geisinger absorbs that extra cost.

This is the kind of healthcare reform that I get excited about. George Halvorson's idea is quite lame compared to this.

After home sales started falling last year, I saw a lot of doom and gloom commentary from "experts" afraid that we would enter a 10-year housing slump. Thanksfully, home sales in Madison (and Dane County) are on the rise again. Home prices still haven't completely rebounded, but I'm glad to see that they're starting to sell again -- at any price. As a new homeowner, don't want to see the market start stagnating!

The local residential real estate market is showing signs of recovery, a local real estate official says.

The 604 sales reported in April in Dane County were 11.4 percent below the 682 last April, according to statistics released Thursday by the Realtors Association of South Central Wisconsin.

But that is not as bad as the 20.1 percent decline for the first four months of this year compared to the same period of last year -- 1,802 to 2,006.

And RASCW Executive Director John Deininger said sales this year have improved more than they typically do as the weather warms -- by 8.0 percent from January to February, 47.0 percent from February to March, and 23.6 percent from March to April.

I read this today and I found it so thought-provoking that I wanted to pass it along

It wasn't a big deal in one way. Just a small conversation that had turned a bit ugly. It wasn't a dramatic life-altering moment. It was in the privacy of my home with one of my family members. But maybe that's the point. Perhaps it's very important because that's where I live everyday. You see, you and I don't live in a series of big, dramatic moments. We don't careen from big decision to big decision. We all live in an endless series of little moments. The character of a life isn't set in ten big moments. The character of a life is set in 10,000 little moments of everyday life. It's the themes of struggles that emerge from those little moments that reveal what's really going on in our hearts.

So, I knew I couldn't back away from this little moment. I knew I had to own my sin. The minute I thought this, an inner struggle began. "I wasn't the only one at fault. If he hadn't said what he said, I wouldn't have become angry. I was actually pretty patient for much of the conversation." These were some of the arguments I was giving myself.

What's actually true is that when I come to the Lord after I've blown it, I've only one argument to make. It's not the argument of the difficulty of the environment that I am in. It's not the argument of the difficult people that I'm near. It's not the argument of good intentions that were thwarted in some way. No, I only have one argument. It's right there in the first verse of Psalm 51, as David confesses his sin with Bathsheba. I come to the Lord with only one appeal; his mercy. I've no other defense. I've no other standing. I've no other hope. I can't escape the reality of my biggest problem; me! So I appeal to the one thing in my life that's sure and will never fail. I appeal to the one thing that guaranteed not only my acceptance with God, but the hope of new beginnings and fresh starts. I appeal on the basis of the greatest gift I ever have or ever will be given. I leave the courtroom of my own defense, I come out of hiding and I admit who I am. But I'm not afraid, because I've been personally and eternally blessed. Because of what Jesus has done, God looks on me with mercy. It's my only appeal, it's the source of my hope, it's my life. Mercy, mercy me!

George Lucas is releasing the original theatrical version of the original Star Wars trilogy. This is the best news I've heard all day:

Even though George Lucas adamantly declared 2004's digitally restored Star Wars Trilogy DVDs the definitive versions of his movies, fans have held out hope for DVDs of the originals.

Their wishes will be granted Sept. 12 when Fox releases new two-disc DVDs ($30 each) of Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi that include the films as they first appeared in theaters, along with the new, restored versions (now available in the four-disc $70 Star Wars Trilogy).

The individual DVDs will be taken off the market on Dec. 31, a strategy that Disney uses on many of its classic releases.

That gives me a little over three months to buy all three movies. And I'll do it too. I don't like the changes George made in the original movies. It ruins my childhood memories. Seriously. When I first saw the updated version of the movies and saw Greedo shoot at Han first, I thought I was going insane. I had such clear memories of Han shooting first and, yet, that wasn't what I saw on film. So, I've been stuck with watching pirated copies of the Laserdisc edition. (Yes, I'm that pitiful.) So, a mere $90 to regain my childhood? Cheap at twice the price.

(Hat tip to Hit & Run.)