Drink coffee, live longer?

There may be a god after all if this study is accurate.

Men who drank 2 to 3 cups a day had a 10 percent chance of outliving those who drank no coffee, while women had a 13 percent advantage, according to research published yesterday in the New England Journal of Medicine.

The study by researchers at the National Cancer Institute is the largest to compare coffee drinkers with those who avoid it to determine whether the beverage can delay the risk of dying from ailments such as heart disease, diabetes or respiratory illness, said Neal Freedman, the lead study author. It’s unclear why coffee may be beneficial and more research is needed to study that question, he said.

The results “offer a little bit of reassurance to coffee drinkers who like drinking coffee that it won’t affect health,” said Freedman, an investigator at the NCI’s Division of Cancer Epidemiology and Genetics in Rockville, Maryland, in a May 14 telephone interview. “It doesn’t seem to increase one’s risk of dying.”

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Virtually Speaking: GP and Jay Ackroyd tonight 9pm EST

Tonight at 9pm EST Virtually Speaking's Jay Ackroyd and I will chat for an hour. The conversation will be available live (see information below) and for later listening at the Virtually Speaking site.

In addition, Virtually Speaking programs are available as iTunes broadcasts (which is how I often listen).

Tune in if you can. There's a call-in number at the site. From the announcement:

Virtually Speaking Thursday May 17 – 6pm PT / 9pm ET
Gaius Publius with Jay Ackroyd

Gaius Publius is a Contributing Editor to AmericaBlog. He and Jay Ackroyd expect to talk about "Hugging the Monster" (climate catastrophe), the developing Grand Bargain on "entitlements" and the importance of non-violence in the Occupy movement.

Listen Live & Later on BlogTalkRadio

Please tune in (or download) if these subjects interest you. Thanks!

GP

To follow or to send links: @Gaius_Publius
Jay Ackroyd's Twitter feed: @jayackroyd Read the rest of this post...

So I'm off for cataract surgery...

Click photo for larger version.
(Photo via Shutterstock)

So in another chapter in the ongoing tale of my eyes, I'm going for cataract surgery today.  Today is the left eye, in a few weeks we're doing the right eye.

It's not entirely clear why I've got cataracts at this young an age, but I do.  We suspect it's the steroids I've been using for my asthma.  It's particularly odd since the more advanced cataract is in my "good" eye, i.e., the eye I did "not" have a retinal detachment in a few years back (the retinal surgery put me at an increased risk for a cataract in that eye, but not the other).  Though the "bad" eye has one too.

Interestingly, it was my cute French doctor, Julien, who spotted the nascent cataracts three years ago - no one believed him, and no one else spotted them for a good long time thereafter.  I noticed a change in color perception in that eye, a sudden decrease in my prescription, and a sudden sensitivity to light.  In retrospect those are classic cataract symptoms, but I went for loads of tests before anyone figured out it was a cataract.

Cataracts are funny things.  At first, they simply made my prescription worse (in addition to making colors a bit less vibrant).  I'm already pretty nearsighted - I think my glasses prescription was at about a -10 and -11 before the cataracts (which is pretty bad).  Now they're something on the order of -11 and -14.  But in addition to the cataracts progressively making your prescription worse (which can be corrected with expensive new glasses or less expensive new contacts), eventually they start to blur your vision all together - and in a way that can't be corrected by new glasses or contacts.  That's the stage I'm in now.

My left eye has been blurry for about a year - it's beyond the point of simply getting a new prescription - and the right eye was doing fine until just recently when it too started to go blurry.  At this point, I use my right eye exclusively when working on the computer, the left image is just a blur, but oddly permits me to read up close pretty well (meaning, if I'm trying to read the fine print on a bottle).

Now, when you get cataracts the doctors are loathe to tell you WHEN you need surgery.  It's not entirely clear why.  It's almost as if they're afraid to give you advice.  They say "you'll know when you need surgery."  Not really.  Now, why not get it done immediately?  Because it still is surgery, and there still are risks.  Of infection.  Of even a retinal detachment that could leave you blind.  It is common surgery, it does tend to go well, but it's not without risk.  Especially when you're as myopic as I am, and when you have a previous history of retinal detachments, which I do.  Then your risk of a detachment during the five years following the surgery is not insignificant.  Now, that doesn't mean you'll go blind if your retina detaches.  Mine detached while I was in Paris 3 years ago, and after emergency surgery my vision is really no worse for the wear.  My sister, however, had a detachment and she lost the vision in a quarter to a third of her one eye.  Others have detachments and lose their vision in that eye permanently.  So the risk of a detachment shouldn't be taken lightly, and it's definitely on my mind.

But at the point where you can't use your left eye for work, and your right eye is starting to go, it's time to get things fixed.  And as my eyes have never tolerated contact lenses well, I can only wear them for a few hours at a time, out socially, not for close up reading or computer work, I'll be getting both eyes done (the usual option is to get one eye done and then wear a contact lens in the second eye until it too needs surgery).  There's usually a surgical delay of 1-4 weeks between eyes.

What is a cataract?  The lens in your eye gets cloudy and has to be removed and replaced with a new clear artificial lens.  It's out-patient surgery, takes about half an hour.  While you may have good vision in a few days, you might not have optimal vision (to really determine how well the surgery worked) until 6 months or so after.  Though usually about a month after the doctor takes a final prescription for glasses etc.

Which raises the issue of "will you need glasses after cataract surgery?"  The goal is "no."  But it depends.  Most of my bad prescription is in my lens that will be replaced.  So in principle the new lens will fix by bad prescription.  But.  It depends on where exactly implanted lens settles after six months of healing.  It could move a bit, and any slight movement could affect my prescription for better or worse.

Then there's astigmatism, a problem related to the cornea of your eye.  It too affects your prescription, and changing the lens won't affect your astigmatism since the problem isn't in the lens.  Well, that's not entirely true either.  I found out that the surgery to take out your old lens and implant the new one can change your astigmatism for the better or for the worse.  It depends on the specific details of your astigmatism, and how the doctor does the surgery.  In my case, the surgery should, by simple dumb luck, cancel out perhaps 80% of my existing astigmatism.  So, we hope that I won't need glasses for distance vision after I get both eyes fixed.  (They do have what are called toric lens implants that can fix astigmatism, but insurance won't pay for them.  In my case it doesn't matter since the surgery should fix much of my astigmatism anyway.)

Reading is another matter.  The kind of lenses I'm getting are fixed-focus lenses, meaning, the lenses are optimally focused at a fixed distance - kind of like the old cheap cameras that had an optimal distance of maybe 12-15 feet.  Too close, they were blurry.  Same thing goes for the lens implant.  I'll need reading glasses after.  A thought I loathe.  I really think our generation is the first to spend so much time on the computer AND on our phones and other mobile devices.  I check my iPhone 100 times a day for mail and more.  It's going to be a pain to constantly look for reading glasses - and, as a guy, without a purse, where do you put such glasses when you go out in the summer?  I'm probably going to buy some cool bifocal sunglasses I saw online.

There is another option, multifocal lens implants, that let you see distance and close up.  Thing is, a lot of people have been seeing glare and halos using these lens - a LOT.  And apparently, the glare and halos are horribly annoying, to the point where people are regretting getting these lenses.  I'm told that some doctors think the numbers of patients seeing these halos and glare are much higher than people realize - I was basically warned off of getting them.  Keep in mind, once this thing is in your eye, that's it - it ain't coming out, can't be fixed, etc., so if they get it wrong... (I believe they could do another surgery to try to fix it, but you're entailing some serious risks doing that. It's not "easy" like the initial surgery.)

And the final option is mono-vision.  Basically you get one lens for distance vision in one eye, and the second eye gets a lens for near vision, so you can read with that eye.  Your brain in principle fuses the two together, and this way you won't need glasses even to read.  I've tried monovision the past few years with my contacts (intentionally) and my glasses (unintentionally).  I hate it.  I feel like there's veil over my left eye.  My mom has monovision lenses implanted in her eyes and doesn't mind the monivision.  At the hospital they told me that women tend to adjust to the monovision well, men not so well.

I've worn glasses for 42 years now.  I'm dying to lose them if I can.  I think I'm willing to opt for reading glasses - which everyone pretty much needs eventually - in order to ditch the glasses for distance after this much time (even though I did get some awfully trend burgundy Danish eyeglasses when I was in France the other summer - figures that the age I finally get the nerve to get cool glasses, I'll no longer need them (will probably turn them into reading glasses or something).  And the other cool thing is I can now get those coolio and cheapo Warby Parker glasses that up until now wouldn't make lenses for people as nearsighted as I.  With the new prescription, if there is a new prescription, I can at least get those.  So all is not lost, barring other complications.

So, in a few hours I'm off to the hospital in Chicago where my specialist works (I'm going to a specialist because of my past retina issues) and should have the surgery on my left eye around 730pm central time tonight.  If all goes well, they'll do my right eye in a few weeks.  I have no idea if I'll be blogging at all tomorrow - I've already warned the boys that I may not even be able to see my computer (but I think I may poke the left lens out of my glasses and try anyway).

I'm curious to hear from any of you who have had cataract surgery.  How did it go?  If you had glasses before were you able to get rid of them?  Any problems with insurance?  Did you have insurance?  Fortunately, mine seems to cover 90% of the surgery, even though I'm "away" from my usual network in DC.  Weigh in in the comments, particularly if you've had the surgery (but not exclusively).

Hopefully I'll be reporting in tomorrow.  Fingers crossed.  JOHN Read the rest of this post...

TED refuses to publish talk on "income inequality" over politics

UPDATE: TED has reportedly now published the talk online.

I really like the TED talks and think that for the most part, they're interesting and worth the investment of time. That they provide their talks online for free is also just amazing. That said, their refusal to publish a talk about one of the most critical problems that the US faces today is disappointing. It doesn't matter whether we're in an election year or not, income inequality is a serious problem and it's getting worse each year.

I can understand that TED wants to remain neutral and non-partisan but honestly, look at the discussions there and it's obvious that modern Republicans would find it to be political and a bunch of junk. The GOP doesn't believe in the environment just as they don't believe that income inequality is a problem.

Read the entire article because they discuss some of the other subjects that are somehow acceptable to TED. What Next, refusing climate change discussions because Republicans don't believe it's real? More on this failure by TED at the National Journal.

TED organizers invited a multimillionaire Seattle venture capitalist named Nick Hanauer – the first nonfamily investor in Amazon.com – to give a speech on March 1 at their TED University conference. Inequality was the topic – specifically, Hanauer’s contention that the middle class, and not wealthy innovators like himself, are America’s true “job creators.”

“We’ve had it backward for the last 30 years,” he said. “Rich businesspeople like me don’t create jobs. Rather they are a consequence of an ecosystemic feedback loop animated by middle-class consumers, and when they thrive, businesses grow and hire, and owners profit. That’s why taxing the rich to pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle class and the rich.”

You can’t find that speech online. TED officials told Hanauer initially they were eager to distribute it. “I want to put this talk out into the world!” one of them wrote him in an e-mail in late April. But early this month they changed course, telling Hanauer that his remarks were too “political” and too controversial for posting.

Also check out the PowerPoint slides that were too hot for TED as well as the talk itself. TED should be ashamed of themselves. If they are afraid to publish the truth, they're seriously in trouble. Read the rest of this post...

Schumer and Casey launch "Ex-PATRIOT Act" for taxes

While they're not completely wrong with criticizing the former Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin for giving up his US citizenship, they're also missing a few big problems. For starters, many expats like myself would be much more supportive if Senator Schumer and Casey did the exact same thing for corporations. Corporations continue to live by their own rules. Heck, if "corporations are people" as some say, let's start acting that way on all counts and not just when it benefits the corporations.

As it stands today, any American who rescinds their US citizenship still has to pay taxes for ten years plus an exit tax. For corporations the tax change happens immediately. Why is that fair? Remember when Halliburton decided to pack their bags and move to Dubai? I don't recall the same eagerness by Congress to create any special laws to punish them or any other US company that shifted their headquarters overseas.

While we're at it, what about all of the US corporations who shift their money to offshore locations to avoid taxes. Why not tack on something to the Ex-PATRIOT Act to punish them as well? If Schumer and Casey don't, it's only because they're a little too happy picking on individuals rather than corporations who pay out big dollars for campaigns.

Why bother with a new tax law that impacts a small number individuals each year when a tax law that could impact thousands of corporations would have a much stronger impact? This double standard on individuals versus corporations can only make sense in Congress. Corporations keeping money offshore and changing countries for tax reasons is much more costly than individuals moving away. I don't agree with Saverin's extreme move but Schumer and Casey are also being unreasonable if they're only going after Saverin.

The other big point that Schumer and Casey miss is that yes, being a US expat is a lot more of a hassle than being an expat for other First World citizens. Even if an individuals is under the annual income level for paying US taxes, they still need to both report income as well as report extensive and very private details on their banks. It doesn't matter if you are rich or poor, you're lumped into one group in terms of documentation.

If you are a multi-millionaire or billionaire, you have a team managing your accounts and it's easy enough. For regular individuals with normal middle class incomes and savings, it's a heavy and expensive process. Even for US residents - rich or poor - living in the US, the reporting on foreign accounts has become a painful exercise. I have plenty of normal, middle class friends living in the US who grew up elsewhere who now have to report on the details of what they have in their birth country or risk painful fines.

Again, Schumer and Casey have a very valid point that Saverin didn't mind taking advantage of the stable environment of the US to build his soon-to-be billions, but now that he's cashing in he's moving to a country that does not have capital gains taxes. That said, the two senators are kidding themselves if they think the system is working well today.

Stop picking on regular individuals and at least be fair to both individuals and corporations. There's no reason why corporations should continue to get the free rides as they are receiving today. When Congress does this, it only makes it even more obvious how bought off they are by corporations. Read the rest of this post...

Donna Summer has died

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Mitt Romney criticized Obama over Rev. Wright just three months ago

Mitt Romney gratuitously brought up Rev. Wright a few months ago.

Here's the transcript of Romney speaking:“I think again that the president takes his philosophical leanings in this regard, not from those who are ardent believers in various faiths but instead from those who would like America to be more secular. And I’m not sure which is worse, him listening to Reverend Wright or him saying that we must be a less Christian nation.”

So, to reiterate the golden rule: Don't discuss Mitt Romney's religious influences in the Mormon temple, but do discuss Barack Obama's religious influences in a Christian church.

So Christian wackos are fair game. Mormon, less so.

You see, Christian faith is full of wacky crazy with all sorts of wacky beliefs, but Mormon temples aren't.  So please don't mention Romney's Mormonism and his influences, but feel free to take a whack at President Obama's Christianity and his influences.

It's interesting that Romney has a double standard on Mormonism versus Christianity when he claims they're the same thing.

A lot of our friends in the mainstream media have given Romney a pass on the Mormon issue.  They say it's religious bigotry to discuss Mitt Romney's religious influences in Mormonism (though I doubt they'd say the same if his religion were Scientology).  Yet Mitt Romney goes after Barack Obama's religious influences not three months ago, and no one hears a word about it from the media.

And spare us the "Romney was going after the man (Wright) and not the faith (Christinaity)" argument.  So, you mean, it would be okay for us to go after individual Mormon preachers and what they have to say about Mormon teachings, like Jesus having slept with his mother, Jesus being the brother of Satan, about the special underwear Mormons wear, about the way Mormons try to secretly steal the souls of the dead - all of that is okay so long as we link it back to a particular Mormon who made the comments?  So, for example, it would be okay to declare open season on Joseph Smith?

Really?

Romney is trying to have it both ways.

There's a part of me that thinks that Mitt Romney is playing cute with this issue.  It's entirely possible that Romney is bringing up Rev. Wright in order to remind folks about the wacky preacher AND when there's a backlash against Romney for bring up Wright, Romney will simply say, you're right, religion SHOULD be off limits, and voila, Romney takes his Mormonism off the table.

Whatever the justification, Mitt Romney has made one thing perfectly clear: He thinks his Mormonism is relevant to this campaign.

UPDATE: CNN's Roland Martin, who I've disagreed with on some things in the past, agrees that Romney has just put his own faith on the table:

Martin was on CNN this morning along with The Blaze‘s Will Cain, who also had questions about the latest anti-Obama ad that emphasized his middle name: “what are you trying to reinforce there?” Martin interjected that this was precisely “why this is so stupid.” “You can try all day to drudge up Jeremiah Wright,” he warned conservatives, “but you’re now putting Mormonism on the table… you’re not putting on the table how African Americans were treated by the Mormon religion.” Cain agreed that “I don’t think it’s smart to use Rev. Wright as a salacious bullet point again,” but argued that the President’s vision for America in its entirety was a legitimate ground of debate for the election.

Romney just put Mormons' longstanding racism on the table.

Martin is referring to the Mormon's longstanding racism against African-Americans, that only receded in the 1970s after a nationwide boycott. Though there are reports that racism in Mormonism is alive and well even today. This from a recent Washington Post article:

Until 1978, the LDS church banned men of African descent from its priesthood, a position open to nearly all Mormon males and the gateway to sacramental and leadership roles. The church had also barred black men and women from temple ceremonies that promised access in the afterlife to the highest heaven.

As he explored joining the church in 1988, Perkins said he asked Mormons near his Los Angeles home about the racial doctrines. They gently explained that blacks were the cursed descendants of Cain, the biblical murderer, he recalls.

The LDS church has neither formally apologized for the priesthood ban nor publicly repudiated many of the theories used to justify it for more than 125 years.

[A]nother Mormon scripture, The Pearl of Great Price, says, “blackness came upon” Cain’s descendants, who were “despised among all people.”

Pressed by Russert, Romney refused to say his church was wrong to restrict blacks from full participation.

Even under intense pressure from black Mormons, the church has refused to formally repudiate past interpretations of doctrine or scripture that tie spiritual worthiness to race.

It's time to ask Mitt Romney if he was ever told by a religious mentor that blacks were the despised descendants of Cain, and just as importantly, what did Romney say, if anything, in response? Read the rest of this post...

Rupert Murdoch News Corp employees alleged to have hid evidence during investigation

Oh my, another blow for Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. Does this sound like a law abiding organization? As Fox News would surely say, if they have nothing to hide, why were they hiding boxes of information?

Last July when London prosecutors claim Rebekah Brooks was attempting to hide seven boxes of relevant evidence from a police probe, the former top lieutenant of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. was dealing with the crisis point of the phone-hacking scandal under investigation.

According to the Crown Prosecution Service, Brooks allegedly conspired with Cheryl Carter, her personal assistant, to remove the boxes from the premises of News International, the News Corp. U.K. unit she headed, between Wednesday July 6 and Saturday July 9.

News International and the London Metropolitan Police Service, which has been collecting evidence related to phone- hacking and other illegal activities at Murdoch-owned newspapers in the U.K., declined to comment on the contents of the boxes or to explain how they know about their removal.

Read the rest of this post...

Gingrich-billionaire Sheldon Adelson now backing Scott Walker in Wisconsin

We know that Sheldon Adelson likes "dabbling" in electoral politics — if dabbling means making sledge-hammer-like purchases of right-wing politicians.

His latest buy is union-hating Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, now under siege in a recall election. From the AFSCME website (my emphasis everywhere):

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, facing a recall next month for taking away the collective bargaining rights of nearly 200,000 Wisconsin public service employees, has a new billionaire to fund his drive to stay in power: Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.

Adelson, the same billionaire who almost single-handedly financed the failed campaign of GOP Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich, is now “one of the embattled Wisconsin governor’s biggest donors,” according to John Nichols, writing in The Nation.

Adelson, an anti-union casino owner whose right-wing ideology makes him a perfect fit to fund Walker’s campaign, isn’t Walker’s only out-of-state backer. Nichols reports that 74 percent of all Walker’s donations “came from residents of other states[.]

How much has Adelson sent? From the Journal-Sentinel:

Walker received two $250,000 donations in the latest period. One came from Las Vegas Sands president Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire casino mogul who, along with his wife, put $17.5 million into Winning the Future, a super PAC supporting Gingrich.

The super-giving period may be over — see here for that quirk in the law governing recalls — so Adelson may have made his last deposit. But never mind, he's invested and he knows what he's buying.

For more on Sheldon Adelson, check this out. It's one of the best pieces of fun/scary journalism I've ever read. The author is Rick Perlstein, and he outdoes himself (not an easy task). The piece is called, "Why GOP Mega-Donor Sheldon Adelson Is Mad, Bad and a Danger to the Republic".

Perlstein has an embedded video that's not to miss. You can check it out for that alone, just to get the flavor of the man.

I'm not sure why this comes to mind.



Probably just something I ate.

GP

To follow or send links: @Gaius_Publius
  Read the rest of this post...

OH Sen. Portman on Bain's job chopping: it's OK, it's capitalism

Says the career politician who makes a lot more each year than most Americans or even his home state, has a solid government pension and government health care which is likely better than what most Ohioans have, if they have a plan. He's a fraud, but also unfortunately, quite typical for the far right wing Cincinnati crowd. It's just a little too easy for a loudmouth like Portman, who has never had to work in the private sector, to be so dismissive of the harshness of Romney-style capitalism. Bloomberg:

Still, Portman, 56, defended Romney’s business record, dismissing an advertising offensive by President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign that highlights job losses at a steel mill that was taken over in 1993 by Bain Capital LLC, the Boston- based private-equity firm Romney co-founded and led. The mill, GST Steel, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2001.

“You know, that is capitalism,” Portman said. “There are not different kinds of capitalism; there’s the free market, and he can show where his efforts, net, created 100,000-plus jobs -- that’s pretty good,” Portman said of Romney.

Portman said the trading loss disclosed May 10 by JPMorgan shouldn’t be a reason to “rush headlong” into implementing measures under the Dodd-Frank Act aimed at strengthening financial regulation.

It's high time we start removing the perks of Congress and make them similar to what normal people have to live with every day. Until the pampered crowd there wakes up to their privileged status that far exceeds the norm, they need to have it all cut back. Forget about the pension plans and health insurance and let them navigate that swampland like everyone else. Read the rest of this post...

EU eyes binding shareholder votes

The idea of non-binding votes has been around for a while and to date, the end result has been a failure. When a vote is meaningless, a vote is meaningless. If anything the meaningless vote only frustrates shareholders. Binding votes needs a lot more serious attention in Europe as well as in the US. FT via CNBC on what is being called the "shareholder spring" by one commissioner:

Shareholders in Europe’s listed companies will be given a binding vote on pay while those who invest in banks will gain powers to set a cap on bonus levels, under plans being drawn up by senior EU officials.

The initiative from Michel Barnier, the EU’s top financial services regulator, would hand bank investors the voting power to curb “morally indefensible” pay and limit the gap between the lowest and highest paid. Banks would also be forced to disclose their top 20-30 earners.

The French commissioner outlined his plans in an interview with the Financial Times in which he laid out his response to pay rebellions that have rattled executives at Barclays, Citigroup and AstraZeneca.

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