New Year’s Resolutions 2008 Check in

Well, it is at about the 1/2 year point in 2008 (ok a little late) and I thought I would check in and blog about my new year’s resolutions that I posted about back in January. I know everyone makes resolutions (well most of us do) and then forget about them when we can’t hold on past the 2 week mark. Yet it is a marketing boom for companies that want to capitalize on people’s need to feel like they have solved a problem by buying something. Millions of Gym memberships are sold and then forgotten in January. I hope I didn’t fall into a buy something trap this year, and I hope you didn’t either.

My goals were no different than anyone else’s this year. This was my actual list:

1. Loose 20 lbs. It’s a necessity. (result: well I lost 5 lbs. Not much really and I am struggling with getting it to go any further but Kashi go lean products seem to help keep me feeling full longer and therefore less likely to snack)

2. Save 5K more in savings again. (Result: surprisingly I completed this already despite having a 2K car repair bill earlier this year. I did have referral a bonus from referring a friend that got hired at work which helped a lot, but the rest has been in cutting back. The things I have cut costs on are: Car insurance, driving, clothes, eating out for lunch and dinner, vacations and random household stuff that I probably didn;t need anyway. Crate and Barrel has been filling my house with stuff for years) My new goal here is to make it a total of 7K saved for the year now that I have reached 5.

3. To keep things going along well with Steve. (Result: This is going well. No problems at all except that we both work a lot and it is difficult to find time together some weeks, but otherwise all ok)

4. To keep up the HPV  Cervical Pre-Cancer Dysplasia health related follow ups. (Result: I have been back for more followups but no change. Still CIN-1 cells they are very determined to do harm no matter what. No talk of more surgery but I suppose it is still a possibility again)

5. To take some kind of web or HTML class. (Result: I did this early in the year, using my company education credit but I have to say that as much as it felt like I learned a lot at the time, I really don’t remember much because it was so fast)

6. To be better at time management. (Result: I have been better with this too. Getting up earlier and being more on task. Hence less blogging. I also use an app called rescue time that helps me see where my time is being spent. The thing is when I am more involved in creating what happens at work I am happier. When I have no say in anything it becomes boring and without much motivation. I think everyone enjoys being more of a stakeholder in their company and work situation than not.)

7. To learn to cook some things. (Result: I haven’t really learned to cook anything specifically but Steve and I try and cook together once in a while)

8. To get back into being more career goal oriented again. (Result: I guess but there aren’t any new positions to move to in the company and the economy sux so I will be here for a while appreciating my current job and taking more classes. No climbing the ladder this year)

TIME Magazine Article – The Social Contract in America

I was reading my parent’s TIME Magazine this week (that I usually swipe to read on the train) and they had polled Americans on the state of the economy and their take on how they plan to personally ”get by” in the coming years. You can read the survey results and the article about this concept of a social contract online at TIME.com.

I had never heard of this concept of a “social contract” that business and government have with America. I work in a recruitment related field so if it existed, I thought I would know about it. As a human being I was aware of it as a colloquial dream we have perpetuated by the stories told by our parents and grandparents.

My family history doesn’t go back that far here in America. My great grandparents arrived from Poland and the Ukraine pre-WW1 and went to work in the gritty factories of Chicago because it was a better living and opportunity than they had back in Europe. (poor peasant potato farmers I usually say) and the economic opportunity has kept us here in Chicago ever since.

My grandparents generation went on to slightly boring but consistent blue collar jobs with pensions and my parent’s generation went on to white collar jobs after getting college educations. Some of them got a pension and health insurance and others did not. My generation doesn’t even get a shot at a pension. Companies have found that they can hire good people without it and they tell us that a 401K is really the same thing. (for reference I am 33)

So, we have these 401Ks that seem to never make money fast enough to accrue enough funds to equal what a pension would. They plummet in value every 10 years or so in recessions, and someone changes the funds available without asking or telling us. Most of us have health insurance through our jobs. We pay handsomely for it, between $100 and $300 per month per person.  And then when something happens that requires medical care, the insurance only covers 1/2 the costs. It is totally possible to go bankrupt with health insurance coverage these days because most coverage is crap compared to what my family had back in the 1980′s.

TIME says that there is an “implied” social contract in America where you give a company (or number of companies) your time and energy and they give you “a basic level of economic security provided you work hard and took responsibility for your family”. (direct quote from TIME July 28, 2008 p 42) And I think things have changed. This contract implied or not doesn’t really exist anymore. I see businesses every day making decisions to give workers less and people have to get more creative trying to survive.

I think the social contract is more like this now.

1. A company promises to pay you as little as they can for your time. This sounds pessimistic but I have seen the proof on paper that you are paid what they can get you for with your experience rather than what you are worth or how much “the job” pays. You have to wait years to work your way up the ladder to make a good wage and then marketers and your neighbors taunt you daily to buy everything in sight to keep up with the Joneses. 56% of the people who made over 100K a year said even they can’t expect to afford health care, college or a secure retirement anymore.  And 100K a year is a lot of clams. (I don’t make anywhere near that. ) I do realize that these businesses have to keep costs low in order to compete with India and China, but somehow I’d rather see the cuts come from other areas that don’t erode the culture in America and impede our ability to raise families. 

2. Marketers will prey on you from every direction. A lot more people could make it through hard times if they had savings but the national savings rate is negative now. All the “stuff” and services you “must” have seems to replace the financial security your grandparents achieved. Just say no didn’t work for reducing drug use in the 80′s and I think that the disposable consumer culture will probably continue here too.

3. Health Issues will cost you. Most young people don’t need much care because you haven’t gotten to the age where things start falling apart yet and we don’t have any concept of how much it costs to survive a serious health issue like cancer or bypass surgery. Both my parents had heart surgery in the late 1990′s and they were 50 & 60K each. We paid about 10K each of those costs and the insurance paid the rest. I just heard someone at my dad’s workplace had bypass surgery last month and it cost $100K. I know they have really poor health insurance there, and I can guess that the guy might have had to pay 50K out of pocket. Even dental issues are expensive. I need have needed a crown for about 5 years and because there is no pain or damage being done since the root canal and filling, I am holding off on the $1,000.00 price tag since dental insurance is only going to pay 1/2 and I would rather save the $ for a real emergency like fixing the 7 year old car I have or paying for the radiator heat to be fixed in my condo.

4. Retirement is going to be difficult. Very difficult. Some people wonder if social security will be around in 2040 when I turn 65. I personally, think it will be. It may not be nearly enough though. Most of us will have some 401K savings but as the Frontline Retirement special found, most people make crucial mistakes with managing their 401K and end up loosing a lot of money and getting little out at the end. (and then have to go back to work) Some tips include, never take a lump sum benefit, due to the tax penalty, never just let it ride and not watch the performance and watch for trading and management fees eating up your money. It also helps not to own a McMansion when you retire and live within your means before retirement. Saving money (like 10% of after tax income) on the side and investing it in some low risk but higher than inflation yields is also a smart way to prepare. And well let’s hope medicare still exists in 2040 also, and that doctors and hospitals still accept it as payment.

5. Creativity & Leverage are the new working hard. Money makes more money, it’s all who you know and being clever with side jobs or side businesses usually helps. Yes, saving a large percentage of your income by living simple and investing it can help you have the “power of compounding interest” as they say. Keeping in touch with people and maintaining your network helps with job opportunities and side opportunities to make some income. Starting weekend jobs or part time businesses online or otherwise helps too. I find people living simply and leveraging clever ways to work in more than one place are the ones that will have what they need later on. Getting into an industry that is doing well in the economy also helps but that may take pro-active skill re-training. Paying off your mortgage early and not moving also helps. You loose thousands of dollars on the services and fees associated with that transaction every time you move, and  we all know you pay 3x the value of your loan in interest if you really pay your mortgage over 30 years. After that you are seriously in the hole.

The only contract I think we really have now is that everything will change by the time the 30 somethings reach retirement age. The only thing we have to rely on is ourselves. In general business is struggling because the US has passed it’s peak and we will be in a pack of “also rans” soon. Companies in the US will not see the skyrocketing growth that they saw post-war in the last 60 years with China, India and Eastern Europe emerging as super-economic powers. This coupled with dwindling natural, energy and food resources will make the next 50 years a post US dominant era that will be much harder and more global.

I actually believe if the US was more competitive with skills and education we would do well in a world economy but I haven’t yet seen the expertise or drive to innovate. All I see every day is the drive to reduce expenses and cut resources in business and make short term gains with little or no thought about long term survival. I feel like the country is being run by the lowest common denominator MBAs right now and the next 10 years for us commoners are going to be difficult as a result, as we all lack the jobs/growth that they sucked/poached out in the short term and ran off with the profits.

So, enough about all that negativity.

How do you plan on coping with the changing game living and working in the US in the next 50 years?

How to keep learning new skills as we get older

I used to think that it was weird to not be learning all the time. You spend 9 years in grammar school, 4 years in high school and if you are lucky, 4 years in college. All total,  that is 17 of your first 21 years in school with daily lessons, lectures, homework, required reading, tests, quizzes, projects, essays and exams. Then you have to make the jump to the working world whether it is in business or other areas and you still have to learn, but it is everything not included in your schooling. How your company works, how people work, what is required there and all their multitude of processes and products.

At that point you usually meet someone much older than yourself that has no idea what is happening in technology. And not just high technology, they don’t get basics that most people use just to function daily like email, pivot tables or search engine optimization. What you don’t know is that they are the future you. They don’t want to change because they say they have just done things this way all these years and it has always worked with paper files, binders, phone messages and post it noes. You look at them and their outdated clothes and rows of beanie babies around their cubicle like they have 3 heads. How can they work this way? How do they get anything done? How can a company value someone antiquated like this over me who has all this knowledge and ability (yet with 0 experience). 

Then time marches on. You become acclimated with the business environment and get promoted or jump to a better job a few times. You balance social, personal and work life stuff and think wow it’s a lot to manage and are always tired. Then some of you have kids and are even more tired. Then you wake up one day and realize that you have become that antiquated person you ran into years ago because they hired some younger workers that are all gung ho about getting ahead and talk about things you don’t understand. Now all college grads come to work knowing how to build databases and web sites even if they got a degree in English? How can they know so much so fast? 

You wonder how 10 years flew by and you haven’t really added anything new to your skill set because you work 50 hours a week, have a relationship on weekends and laundry/dishes/cat/cleaning/reading/few social things weeknights. (you don’t even watch TV for god’s sake) How can you go to school at the same time? If you have kids, how can you exist on less than the 4 hours of sleep you get now just so you can spend time learning? And when will you ever get around to painting the garage? How is this possible when some mornings you come to work 1/2 asleep with 2 different shoes on?

Are companies going to only hire new youngsters for all the positions because they make less money and have more tech skills? How much does experience matter?  Why did it piss me off for weeks when the new wordpress.com backend system was launched, and nothing made any sense anymore? I didn’t have time to spend looking for hours for where everything had been moved to and was just mad that it wasn’t where it was before and it took forever to post. And there was no communication from those adsense loving wordpress people about where everything had been moved to. They thought this was self explanitory? (Not!)

I think I started to recognize some of these changes happening to me in the past few months. I never planned on stopping learning and the things I chose to learn about in my spare (and fleeting) time were never really panned out useful things. So, back to the drawing board. I feel like I need a lot more technical skill to remain ahead of the curve in my job and be able to keep finding great work over the decades to come. And I want to do that along with have a family and marriage and the whole kit and kaboodle. I don’t think this is a women’s issue anymore either really. Men face the same questions as they get off the fashion bus and start looking, sounding and working more and more like their fathers.

Another thing I realized the other day is that I may try and shop at more contemporary stores, but I basically dress exactly like my mom. And she is 67 and I am 32. I used to hate how my mom dressed, and now I am her?  Is this just the arrival of the long plateau of middle age? Are the middle ages of me going to be anticlimactic and uneventful? Or how can you bridge multiple generations, technologies and social groups all at the same time while still getting 8 hours of sleep at night? 

I don’t know how this is all going to work. I suppose many people don’t write about it on blogs, or maybe even recognize the change until they can’t find bleached jeans and high tops at Kohl’s anymore. But it bothers me because I don’t want to stop learning and get left behind. Especially when the economy keeps changing so much every year and the jobs go with it. How do you not get outsourced when literally everything can be outsourced today? How do you keep going to school when most universities require full time attendance of a degree program and not piece mail courses as you need them? How do you find time to do homework when you have bills to pay and garbage to take out and emails from your boss? Even reading was hard to get back into after years of not focusing like that for an extended period of time.

Here is what I have been doing about it and working on over the past years and what I would like to continue to work on:

1. About 2 years ago I started reading books again. I read TIME every week, but that is pretty short. I found it hard at first to just read for an hour at a time because I had gotten so multitask happy with the internet and channel flipping.

2. I also decided it was time to start pushing back sometimes at work and saying No. You literally can’t do that when you start out, and sooner or later you have to set limits and not do everything for everyone else when you have a limited time to do it. The whole idea of urgency and priority come into play and they shouldn’t be anyone else’s priority or urgency but yours. People will negotiate and try and get as much from you as possible but it’s not in your best interest if it’s not really in your job description.

3. The last year was one where I decided it was time to have a self hosted blog. Everyone and their sister had one but me, and it wasn’t supposed to be impossible or anything. So, I bought a url and went to town for about 2 days straight truing to figure out how this wordpress thing worked, researching themes, plugins and all the possibilities and building it. It was a great learning experience although it has nothing to do with my work.

4. This year I had a client that insisted on a different data process than what we usually provided and I had to learn Pivot tables. I still don’t know them to the extent I need to probably, but it helps immensley. I still have more of the high end Excel stuff to learn.

5. I also had to learn Access. I guess 2 days in a class can’t really teach you everything though so I should either retake the class or take another one because my skills there still don’t match what I need them to.

6. I also wonder about math and statistics. I should really go back, take the prerequisites and then statistics. This is what I get for not taking it initially because I didn’t want to work in business. Sheesh. This is by far one of the hardest things to do because, I am not fantastic at math, it has been about 14 years since I have taken a math class and it means driving back to the community college I attended a million years ago. It also entails weekly classes and weekly homework. This could be 10 hours a week or more. Where am I going to find 10 hours a week? Where do people who have kids find that time?  Is sleep allowed?

7. I also think it is time I got better at this friends/networking thing at work and outside it. I have never been that great at the social stuff, but I am meeting more and more people who weren’t necessarily either, but because there are some ground rules in business and no need to act like Jr High kids anymore, they are pretty good at it now. This helps get things done faster when they need to be, and it makes work and life generally more fun. It also helps not to work with assholes.

8. What I would also like to do more of is learn about web pages and building them, coding and sleuthing out issues with them. This comes up with work and would be an asset.

9. Long term I have to get into databases and SQL. I have no choice. It will mean more classes and more time than I know I can find and afford, and that isn’t even the expensive part like tuition.

But what is the alternative? To be outsourced in a few years? To be relegated back to the minimum wage jobs that we had back in college but would be even more difficult to get since they would rather hire energetic young people now, with better tech skills?  The way I see it, the only way to survive is to go onwards and upwards. I have to keep learning things whether I have time for it or not.

Ack Recession!

I have lived through 2 recessions that I can remember already and I really don’t need a third. The thing is that our economy used to run in 30 year cycles according to our history books. Now we seemed to be on a 10 year cycle early 90′s recession and 2001 recession pointed to this. And this time we were only growing the economy for about 5 years! (2002-2007) So, the Fed didn’t improve the economy by lowering interest rates back in 2001-2003 they just sped up the cycle.  And what they are doing now may be speeding up the cycle even faster. What will life be like if we have alternating boom bust years every other year? This is getting a little crazy.

How do you plan for your retirement or family or future with a yo-yo economy?

How can you buy property not knowing if you will have a job in a year? Or be able to get a job in the US reliably in 10 years when they have all gone overseas to lower rent districts? Sure some people will, but what about the average masses? Even those with college degrees keep having to change direction into the flavor of the month job wise with these companies and not everything is a living wage.

I just don’t know where our economy is going considering we have opened the door ourselves on developing nations and are being hit hard by how it has stolen the majority of our growth and industry. We are left as a nation of 300 million luxury consumers that on average owe $128,000.00 each to the bank (per economist’s state of 2008) and will take everything out on credit to have the latest new stuff. When we can’t borrow anymore or pay the bills (like now) the economy will crash and people don’t have any savings to stay afloat. I call that false growth in the first place, but the markets don’t seem to distinguish between what they can falsley get you to buy into for a while before it crashes and real growth, nor do they seem to care.

Doesn’t it feel like 1929 to you sometimes?

Of course these are generalizations and you may not fit the bill at all here but it’s the generalizations that run the economy right now. And I think it’s sad. Our nation’s executives and business leaders have sold out to the lowest bidder and given our jobs away with no loyalty to the country which made all their wealth possible. All the while expecting us to mortgage ourselves to the hilt to keep buying their goods. Something has to change with corporate accountability in order for this to settle without a complete melt down disaster.  And stop blaming the American consumer. It’s not their fault. If they weren’t set up to fail by huge greedy businesses none of this would have happened.

Tax time – What is an S corporation?

We all know the basics of becoming a company. There are sole proprietorships, partnerships and corporations. So what is an S corporation? And why do some people say this is a good way to save money on Taxes? I don’t really know a lot about accounting or finance laws but this is something I read about that is supposed to provide payroll tax savings. So they say that a one-person sole proprietorship without any other employees can’t take the qualified production activities income deduction because the deduction is limited to fifty percent of the firm’s wages. But as S corporations, these businesses would become eligible to take the qualified production activities income deduction, which equals 6% of profit in 2007, 2008, and 2009. With an S corporation, the owner-operator has to categorize some reasonable percentage of the profits as wages.  I suppose this is interesting if tax law really turns you on…

Google Earth adds a weather layer to maps

This is interesting. Google has partnered with weather.com and Naval Research Labs Meteorology labs to provide weather information on Google Earth maps. (maybe on gas pumps too?) I think this is very logical and makes perfect sense. I am suprised though with all the $ Google has that they didn’t launch some sattelites and provide weather on their own. This new way of doing business with partnerships is not the traditional way for Google. They like to own the technology for themselves and not outsource. So, I am curious if these other sources will be reliable enough and timley enough for google’s demands. It can’t be an easy job providing anything for Google, they are pretty perfect all the time and expect you to be too.

I wonder what Tom Skilling thinks of the new weather on Google earth?

Going Back to School?

My media planner is going to get his MBA now so we have been chatting about how it is going. It’s hard because he has to balance his full time job, wife and daughter with getting this MBA degree. Somehow he makes it all work. I always thought I would go back for some kind of additional degree, but every time I enroll in something it’s like a tug of war between work life and the demands of school so I just do one class and then stop. I can’t get that groove back that I ahd with studying and reding a lot. Although I am much faster a writing my ideas out. Blogging has certainly helped with that. Some people are even trying this online education thing, in an attempt to save some time not actually commuting to where the classes are and working at their own pace. I am not sure that would work for me, I get a lot out of the professor’s discussions and the classmates. An automated thing online would not be as engaging and I would be less likley to finish it. But that is just me.

Building Rockets and Jets from parts

If you are one of those people who watch the UK rocketry association with interest as the TopGear guys launch a mini from a ski jump or blast a car named robin into space ala space shuttle you may be able to get into rockets too as a hobby. There are a lot of rules and regulations as well as saftey concerns for getting into this kind of hobby involving rockets and jet pack type technology, but for geeks its a lot of fun. Even better if this is part of your business (if you work for aviation companies like Boeing, Lockheed or Northrop Grumman) there is a site online with all the supplis and parts you can possibly need. See how you can quickly search Jet-Tek’s stock. It’s fast, but not as fast as the jets themselves.

What are Vampire Electronics? Do I own any?

Vampire Electronics?

Ok, the topic of saving electricity either for the purpose of saving money or saving the environment or both is getting more popular. I just read in TIME magazine about this new term called Vampire Electronics. They are electronics you have in your home that still suck down electricity and energy while they are not in use. Things that are in this category according to the blurb were coffee makers and cell phone chargers. I would also think that computers in sleep mode (better than being on though) DVD players, external hard drives, radios and your kitchen appliances would fit in this category too since they all have led lights, clocks or some kind of process running in the bakground at all times. Some of these things are necesities (you can’t unplug the fridge when you leave to go to work) but others are not. Unplugging the toaster, coffee maker, cell phone charger and dvd player when not in use can add up to $2-$5 bucks savings in a month by my best guess. If you have many of them (and a lot of electronics in general) you may save a lot more if you just shut down completley and unplug them.

FTC and Advertising Tracking

Ok, so the federal trade commission wants to regulate how advertisers track people on the web? Do they realize that that data is never linked back to an individual person? Or that no personal information is ever collected? That the cookies expire after so many days?

This is a necessary debate that should happen so consumers understand better what is happening on their computers and around them all the time, but it should not outlaw such a practice.

This 3rd party tracking data is the only thing that makes the internet more viable as a place to advertise than offline. (are the TV networks and newspapers behind this push?) And the growth of our American economy depends on these cookies right now. (and google’s especially)

To my knowledge the cookies track this type of information:

1. whether or not you go back to a site after you have been displayed an ad for it

2. whether or not you convert from a visitor to a buyer while you are on the site

3. whether or not you come back to the site at a later date and buy something then

4. which ads you were displayed over the time the cookie has been there

5. which ad you came to the site from clicking on

6. sometimes there is geo location information generated from your IP address, but a lot of ISPs don’t assign you a static IP and then that isn’t relevant anymore.

7. the time and date of the ads you have seen and of your visits to the site

8. What type of browser you are using and what operating system but this is hardly personal information

And that is about it. No personal info, no credit card or social security info either.

The big flap about behavioral advertising is that they target the ads based on some data they have about you or your computer. Sites may serve you ads relevant to your location, your past site visits or of you have a profile on that site, the profile information you have submitted. Then they follow you around on the site showing you the ads targeted for that group. I know that only certain sites use this and it is not the majority. The click through rates are even lower than normal because you show someone the same ad 10 times, but the conversion rates after they click are higher than normal because of the fit between the ad and the person’s need if it was targeted correctly.

So all in all, I just wanted to say that this information is crucial in keeping businesses in business by knowing what works and does not work in advertising so they don’t spend a lot of money on stuff that doesn’t work. This was the huge problem in offline advertising for years even before it fragmented. It’s not about spying or sharing any information about you as a person. It’s simply about business data and using it to refine their business to be a better company and web site. And if you turn off the cookie feature on your browser you don’t have to participate at all. It’s not as evil as people think it would be when you get into the real meat of the matter.

Ecoli recall for Totino’s & Jeno’s frozen pizzas with pepperoni

Ecoli bacteria keep popping up in our processed foods and processed meat. Like in the latest ecoli recall for the Totino’s & Jeno’s frozen pizzas with pepperoni topping. It’s gross really. It’s just like in the movie Fast Food Nation. See it if you can. It’s sad and kind of gross at times but I would bet money that this is the same thing happening with these processed meat products. It’s not fertilizer this time is it?

We all eat a lot of processed foods now. The companies that manufacture them know we have a million things to do and are huge procrastinators and very lazy Americans. When is the last time you have seen someone make a pizza from scratch? like with flour and tomatoes? Or someone bake a pie from scratch, like with raw fruit? In the 1940′s everyone did that. It was the only option for getting something to eat. Super markets were filled with ingredients. Now they are filled with manufactured and processed foods that have already been cooked for us.

Sometimes we like technology and the progress it brings but we may have pushed too far because it is hurting people and their health now. Since women work outside the home in about 75% of households now no one really can afford to cook anything from scratch. We all watch cooking shows as food porn, not because anyone actually completes those recipes themselves.

It’s sad in a way. We don’t always know what we are getting ourselves into when we accept progress. Now we have to be more careful than ever.

Solar Decathalon 07 Results

You didn’t know there was a solar decathalon did you? Well thanks to the NY Times, I just read about it. More of these contests seem to be funding research into new emerging technologies and making the leap into the next frontier before risk averse companies get into the act. Plus a competition doesn’t have to be profitable or sell anything. So it does make sense to a point.

The event was one where universities (at least they all seem like universities) competed in a contest (judged by 10 categories hence the decathalon name) to build a 800 sq foot self sustaning off the electricity grid home. I bet you’re thinking you’d like one. I would too, but we’re a ways away from that. The top 10 designs were invited to bring their homes to Washington DC and assemble them there for all to see and for the judges to see also. Then they of course got judged and ranked and all that. But the cool thing was that the public could go see these homes and weigh in on whether or not they would buy one entirely or just parts of the home or process for their own existing home. While no polls were taken that I can find, I think the public was very accepting of the technology and if it was more affordable people would be lining up at 5 am at home depot to buy solar cells.

Anyway, the designs were innovative using the earth to heat them and the sun to power them and I would like to see more consumer products available for our homes now so that we can do a lot better with the energy use without building a new one from scratch.

How to prevent cancer? Be thin.

I have been more interested in how people can cut their risk of cancer latley since I found out that despite my family history of no cancer I am just as much a possible target as anyone else. Today the BBC email I get reported on a new study that had 10 points to follow for reducing your risk of all types of cancers. I found that it was much more specific that a lot of other lists I have seen naming foods specifically that you have to avoid. This makes these points easier to follow. Here is the list:

RECOMMENDATIONS INCLUDE:

 

Limit red meat

 

Limit alcohol

 

Avoid bacon, ham, and other processed meats

 

No sugary drinks

 

No weight gain after 21

 

Exercise every day

 

Breastfeed children

 

Do not take dietary supplements to cut cancer

Oprah Winfrey’s School for Girls Has an Abuse Scandal?

What is going on here? Despite being a project that was set up and funded entirely to help, teach and be a safe place for these girls to learn and grow up, there have been reports of physical, emotional and sexual abuse by some of the staff and teachers at Oprah Winfrey’s School for Girls in Africa. This is dissapointing that there are some people who still think those behaviors are acceptable in this world, and it is even more sad that no one was there that knew better and had the power to stop it.  I hate when high powered people get all the acclaim for a project and then they walk away as soon as the cameras are off and they let someone else run it and don’t have any involvement day to day. I think that this proves that any project you put your name on you have to be personally involved with to manage. It’s impossible to guarantee that things will go according to your standards otherwise. This is just more reason for building a school to help kids here in Chicago next time. Staff and Teachers here would be more visible by the public and in the media and it could ensure greater transparency in the education process and deter this kind of thing from happening. Because apparently screening processes were not able to weed out staff and teachers that have done this kind of abhorrent behavior before. All these girls wanted was a safe place to learn and to get their lives on a better track to succeed. Now they have even more to deal with. It is just so sad.

Safe Christmas Gifts for Kids

With all the toys from China coming over with lead these days, parents and relatives are looking for safe alternatives this Christmas instead of the usual dolls, action figures, cars and other plastic toys that are popular. This Christmas the gifts under the tree are going to look a little different. They will be a mix of college savings bonds, computer software, board games (scrabble and others if not plastic) , clothing, books and anything else not plastic that parents can think of. One  good idea is learning related materials, books, games and software are good because they are fun and functional. If you are researching some new ones and want a free educational software trial this one may be of interest to you if you have kids between the age of 2 and 10. (yes kids use the computer at age 2, they may think its a toy but they use it) CD Earth’s Fun with Learning Volume 1 is an educational software CD packed with 70 learning activities for kids ages 2-10. The CD has 70 engaging, educational activities and games. They cover topics including math, reading, typing, science, computer literacy, geography, art & music. Each activity has several levels that automatically adjust to a child’s growing abilities to help them get ahead. It sounds better than guessing about what has lead and what doesn’t and getting the kids to play educational games is always a good thing.