Posted 9:02 PM by Blah blah

I talked to my friend in Paris today. Have a funny story for you, coming up!

Risk for Diabetes Increasing in Children (Health)

CDC: One Third of Kids Born in 2000 at Risk for Diabetes Unless Habits Change (Fox News):

"One in three U.S. children born in 2000 will become diabetic unless many more people start eating less and exercising more, a scientist with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns.

The odds are worse for black and Hispanic children: nearly half of them are likely to develop the disease, said Dr. K.M. Venkat Narayan, a diabetes epidemiologist at the CDC....

Diabetes, a disease caused largely by obesity and lack of exercise, has been an increasing worry for decades. From the mid-1960s to the mid-'90s, the number of cases tripled.

The number of diagnosed cases rose by nearly half in just the past 10 years, hitting 11 million in 2000, and is expected to rise an additional 165 percent by 2050, to 29 million, an earlier CDC study by Narayan and others found.

'These estimates I am giving you now are probably quite conservative,' Narayan said...Doctors had known for some time that Type 2 diabetes — what used to be called adult-onset diabetes because it typically showed up in middle-aged people — is on the rise, and that patients are getting younger....

Overall, he said, 39 percent of the girls who now are healthy 2- to 3-year-olds and 33 percent of the boys are likely to develop diabetes, he said.

For Hispanic children, the odds are closer to one in two: 53 percent of the girls and 45 percent of the boys. The numbers are about 49 percent and 40 percent for black girls and boys, and 31 percent and 27 percent for white girls and boys....

Type 2 diabetes can be prevented or delayed by losing weight, exercising and following a sensible diet.

A study two years ago found that walking 30 minutes a day most days of the week and losing a little weight helped the people most likely to get it cut their risk 58 percent."

Posted 10:47 AM by Blah blah

Harrison "Loves" Calista. Calista: Age Doesn't Matter. (Celebrity Gossip)

Awww...! Calista looks like a sweetie. Who wouldn't fall in love with her?

Harrison Ford Admits His Love for Flockhart (Reuters):

"Harrison Ford has admitted it. He loves Calista Flockhart. 'I'm in love,' the famously taciturn Indiana Jones star told the latest issue of People magazine.

'Romantic love is one of the most exciting and fulfilling kinds of love and I think there is potential for it at any stage of your life. I was not surprised that I was able to fall in love, and I wasn't surprised that I did. But I'm very grateful,' Ford, 60, said of his 'commingled' life with former Ally McBeal star Flockhart.

Ford and Flockhart have been the subject of tabloid gossip since they hooked up at the January 2002 Golden Globe awards but until now their relationship has elicited mostly terse 'no comments' from Ford."

Flockhart OK With Age Gap With Ford (AP):

"The Ally McBeal star was positively mushy about the 60-year-old actor...'I like the way he looks first thing in the morning...It's not handsome. It's more cute. He looks like a little boy. You know how when you wake up in the morning and you're kind of puffy and rumpled and you look kind of vulnerable? That's what he looks like.'

The 38-year-old actress says the age gap between her and the Indiana Jones star has never bothered her. The two met at the Golden Globe Awards in January 2002; Flockhart and her 2-year-old son, Liam, moved into Ford's Los Angeles home earlier this year.

'It doesn't faze me,' she said. 'Sometimes I even say, "Wow, I keep forgetting that he's (22) years older than me." It doesn't factor into our relationship at all.' "
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I need to start trolling the elementary schools. :p

By the way, some of you have said you'd like to see my baby and boyhood pics. Would you? I must get a scanner. Some say they are cute.

Posted 9:44 AM by Blah blah

Licorice Root: Possible SARS Drug. Is SARS Dying Down? (Health)

Drug hope for Sars victims (BBC):

"Researchers in Germany have identified an existing anti-viral drug which might be used to treat Sars - the respiratory disease that has killed nearly 800 people worldwide....scientists from the Frankfurt Medical School say tests show a drug called Glycyrrhizin is effective against the virus suspected of causing Sars.

There are indications that the Sars epidemic, which has infected more than 8,000 people around the world, could be over without the need for drugs.

The World Health Organization says the Sars epidemic may be nearing its end, with a decline in the number of new cases appearing each day.

China - the country hardest hit by the virus - reported no new cases or deaths from Sars on Friday, the 19th consecutive day that the nation has recorded fewer than 10 new cases.

On Thursday, David Heymann, the WHO's chief infectious disease expert, said China's anti-Sars measures were now 'excellent.' "

Sars epidemic 'tailing off' (BBC):

"The Sars epidemic which has infected more than 8,000 people around the world may be nearing its end, according to the head of the World Health Organization."
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Fascinating: "Glycyrrhizin is extracted from licorice root. It is used to sweeten and flavor many foods and pharmaceutical preparations....The plant has been used for thousands of years for sweetening, flavoring, and for treatment of a variety of health problems." Also: It "is reported to have benefits in the treatment of chronic hepatitis B. Some studies suggest that glycyrrhizin may have anti-HIV properties and may enhance the production of natural killer cells and interferon."

Posted 11:26 PM by Blah blah

Christine and Oriented.com (Personal, Business)

Christine asked me this week if we could meet up. We haven't seen each other since last year at Eric's house, so I was happy to catch up. We just had a good talk in downtown Sunnyvale tonight.

She gave me a progress report on the company she started, Oriented.com. It's her baby, and she's been experiencing both joy and stress in raising it. Despite the recent stress of moving here from Taipei, of working on Oriented day and night, and of establishing a life here, Christine is happy. (As she wrote, "I wasn't meant for the Corporate World.")

She is thrilled to live in the Bay Area. She loves the tons of smart, talented people here, the gorgeous weather, the beautiful scenery. She's been invited to way too many social events for which she doesn't have time.

I'm happy for her too. This is her passion, and despite difficulties, Christine is firmly on her mission to help serve the English-speaking community who do business in China. That's the main purpose of Oriented: to serve English-speaking people in China who need business connections, jobs, housing, friends, restaurants---you name it. To hook them up. Of course, Oriented will also serve Chinese businesses by hooking them up with expatriates and foreigners.

For professionals to mingle, Oriented also holds regular Happy Hour parties monthly in Beijing, Boston, Hong Kong, New York, San Francisco, Shanghai, Sydney, Taipei, and Tokyo. Christine just started the Boston and Hong Kong Happy Hours.

See all of her Happy Hour photos worldwide!

Here in the Bay Area, Oriented alternates parties between San Francisco and Palo Alto. (Pics from the last San Francisco party.) I'm definitely going to the next one in Palo Alto!

Also, she's adding more features and modules to the Oriented site soon. Stay tuned! Here's Christine at the San Francisco party May 29th. Click for full-size:

Posted 10:52 AM by Blah blah

Compliment

A girl just gave me this super nice compliment:

"You write so well that if someone cannot read your blog, understand, and find the subtle humor in it---they are retarded and should die."

Posted 9:41 AM by Blah blah

Why Hillary Fascinates Bill Clinton (Relationships)

Great column by Tina Brown, The bookworm and the Viking (Salon.com). Hillary's newly published autobiography, Living History, broke records by selling 200,000 copies Monday. She was paid an $8 million advance for it. Tina Brown used to be the editor of Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Talk magazines. She's the chair of Miramax's Talk Media division.

"Sometimes in a relationship the first formative insecurities fuse into an indelible imprint and become the DNA of a marriage. Hillary may be a power blonde now but she will always be secretly thrilled that anyone as gorgeous as Bill chose her....Bill had already been a Rhodes scholar and would rise to the presidency, but he will never stop being in awe that an alpha woman like Hillary chose him. When she got up to speak at a dinner hosted by the former U.N. ambassador Richard Holbrooke two years ago in New York the president watched her with mesmerized, possessive pride. Their marriage has been an ongoing drama of mutual conquest.

In the book Hillary admits that planning her campaign with Bill for the New York Senate race salved the marriage wounds after Monica Lewinsky. Politics has always revived the erotic charge. It's not her fault that Clinton remains a Hot Springs recidivist. Over breakfast his wife may be the most stimulating sparring partner in the world as she cuts up his grapefruit and argues about healthcare (as she told Talk magazine in 1999). But some nights the saxophone wails and Bill's psyche heads to the trashiest trailer park it can find.

Sexual snobs from the Kennedy era always marveled at the 42nd president's terrible taste in women -- big-haired Gennifer Flowers, skanky Paula Jones, pillowy Monica Lewinsky. But terrible taste is the point. Has Clinton ever been linked to a woman who could remotely threaten Hillary? Washington was full of attractive, Harvard-educated, safely married policy babes who would have been far less embarrassing -- but to Hillary far more dangerous -- diversions. Blue dress or no blue dress, the irony is that if Bill had been arguing deep into the night with Monica about NAFTA, Hillary might have divorced him a long time ago."

Posted 8:51 AM by Blah blah

Interview with Lisa Ling (Television)

Watch Jon Stewart interview Lisa Ling on his Daily Show!

If you've seen The View, that show with Barbara Walters and three other yakking women, you know Lisa left the show (see her interviewed by Matt Lauer) to go host National Geographic Ultimate Explorer on MSNBC.

Wow, she sounds way more intelligent talking to Jon Stewart than she does sitting next to Star Jones on The View, as Jon noticed. How often do you hear celebrities saying the word "globalization"?

Speaking of celebrities who show intelligence on TV, I need to commend Carson Daly and his NBC talk show. Whenever I've flipped by it, I've been struck by how much his talks feel like late-night heart-to-heart talks we had in college. He doesn't go for the cheap, quick laugh, like Letterman. He really probes his guests.

When I was hosting my political talk show, I tried to make it substantial but still light-hearted. Go Lisa!

Posted 7:56 AM by Blah blah

When Quality TV Shows Die: TV Economics Must Change! (Television)

Sigh. The cutthroat and unstable TV business. My blog has lasted longer than most TV shows introduced last year, a chilling thought if you wish to work in entertainment.

Executive producer David E. Kelley not only cut six of the major cast of his ABC legal drama The Practice last month, he also cut several key actors from his show Boston Public (Fox). Why do I feel the same chill of a Silicon Valley startup when I read this? When ABC executive Susan Lyne helped ruin the show by moving it from Sunday to Monday nights in favor of their new show Dragnet, I thought: "Hello? Why not just negotiate salary cuts for the high-priced main actors instead? Why give Kelley and cast the runaround?" By the way, Dragnet ain't doing well in the ratings either.

To see how volatile and unpredictable it is to seek long-term employment with a TV show, see this shockingly long list of cancelled TV series from 2002-2003 which aren't returning for next year. They include some top quality shows! Matt Groening's cartoon Futurama (Fox), narcotics cartel drama Kingpin (NBC), prison drama Oz (HBO), Sabrina the Teenage Witch (WB), and Whose Line Is It Anyway? (ABC) are shows I'm especially sad to see go. Whose Line is one of the funniest shows I've EVER seen. I wanted to but never had a chance to check out Kingpin or Oz. The sexy James Cameron thriller Dark Angel was also canned last year.

Also, creator Aaron Sorkin and director Thomas Schlamme are leaving The West Wing after this season, for reasons unclear.

The Russell Wong drama Black Sash is dead too. Based on reviews, it probably deserved to die. (I promoted it heavily when it came out at the end of March.)

What the hell is wrong when so much top-notch writing and acting gets shafted? What does that say to people who try their best to raise the bar of quality entertainment in America? It's not that the top actors and producers don't make money. But the art and their rewards are so rarely sustained.

I barely watch any TV myself, but I avidly follow the business. I wish they'd change the economics of the TV business. Most of the affluent, 18-49 viewers they target are too busy to drop everything to watch a show at a fixed time each week. Tivo lets people skip the commercials. People are pirating episodes and downloading them on the Net with BitTorrent.

C'mon folks! The way we deliver and schedule our TV shows needs to change. Cable TV needs to let people CHOOSE what program they want, whenever they want. The Internet should give us streaming video of our shows on demand, for a price.

More and more, media companies are releasing entire seasons of TV shows on DVD. That's how I watched my favorite show of all, Fox's 24. The Simpsons, Alias, Futurama, Dark Angel, and Sex and the City are shows I've almost never watched, but whose DVDs I'd gladly buy.

Maybe entertainment companies should plan some shows purely for the DVD market.

Maybe they should follow Britain's lead, where several shows are designed with a fixed run of episodes in mind, mainly written by one or two people. No need to think about renewing the show. No need to worry about it losing creative focus. Hilarious British shows like Mr. Bean, Fawlty Towers, and Coupling (soon to be remade in the U.S.) all had limited, fixed runs.

I don't know what must change, but someone needs to figure out a way to preserve quality TV that doesn't depend on the whims of showing it Sunday vs. Monday nights.

Cast dismissed: 6 fired at 'Practice' (Chicago Sun-Times):
____________________
Dylan McDermott, Kelli Williams and Lara Flynn Boyle are among the six major cast members pink-slipped from David E. Kelley's "The Practice" in response to ABC reducing by roughly half the license fee it pays for the declining legal drama, renewed last week for an eighth season.

Spared in the cost-cutting cast-slashing were Steve Harris, Camryn Manheim and Michael Badalucco, as well as Jessica Capshaw, who joined the increasingly bombastic show last season.

Gone because of what Kelley called "economic and creative realities" are McDermott, Williams, Boyle, Lisa Gay Hamilton, Marla Sokoloff and recent addition Chyler Leigh, their options for fall not picked up by Kelley's production company and 20th Century Fox Television.

Ironically, the purge came six days after ABC flew McDermott and several other soon-to-be-axed cast members to New York to strut across the stage at Radio City Music Hall as part of the network's big fall schedule announcement gala for advertisers. ABC Entertainment president Susan Lyne proclaimed how great it was to return "The Practice" to the lineup for the 2003-04 season in its old 9 p.m. Sunday slot.

What Lyne left out of her enthusiastic endorsement was that her move of "The Practice" to Mondays this past season hastened a steep ratings dropoff that enabled the network to negotiate a huge drop from the reported $6.5 million per show it had been paying, a cutback that practically ensured a drastic pruning of the show's budget and cast.

Posted 2:12 PM by Blah blah

We're All Africans: Oldest Human Fossils in History Found (Science)

Here's one against the creationists. (Read my five part Creationism vs. Evolution Debate last year from RBJ.)

Oldest Human Fossils Found: Ancient Skulls Provide Crucial Details of Evolution (NPR):
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After six years of analysis, fossil hunters in Africa have confirmed the discovery of the oldest fossilized remains of modern humans yet found -- portions of skulls belonging to people who lived 160,000 years ago. Paleontologists say the discovery adds detail to a crucial period in human evolution, and confirms the hypothesis that modern humans evolved in Africa....

A team led by University of California, Berkeley paleontologist Tim White found the fossils in desert sands near the Ethiopian village of Herto.

"These are the oldest fossils that we can confidently place in our own species, Homo sapiens," says White.

The bones were uncovered in 1997, but it took six years to clean the pieces, glue them together and analyze their features. Because the fossils were in volcanic sediment, they could be reliably dated based on radioisotopes in the soil. White's team puts their age at 160,000 years. That beats the previous record for a human fossil by tens of thousands of years.

Two of the skulls from Herto belonged to adult males, and one to a child of six or seven. Each of the adult skulls was remarkably big.

"We compared this with skulls of 6,000 modern humans, and still after that comparison not one was as big and robust as the Herto male," says White. "These were very, very large robust people."

And yet they were also like modern-day humans in almost every feature. The face is flat with prominent cheekbones, but without the protruding brow ridge of pre-human ancestors or Neanderthals. And the braincase is rounded, like a soccer ball, rather than the football shape of earlier human ancestors.

There are other fossils of early humans almost as old. But they're only fragments, and the dating is unreliable -- a common problem in paleontology. But these skulls are almost complete, says Harvard paleontologist Daniel Lieberman, and that provides what paleontologists crave: certainty.

"What's really exciting about these fossils is that they are the best early modern humans we have ever found and the best dated -- this is just like nailing the coffin shut," says Lieberman. "We've got a good date now."

The fossils also confirm what genetic research has recently proposed: that modern humans evolved in Africa. There's little question that pre-human ancestors first appeared in Africa. Or that about 2 million years ago, they left Africa to populate parts of Asia, the Middle East and Europe. But some say primitive humans evolved into modern humans in many places around the world. Others, such as paleontologist Chris Stringer from the Museum of Natural History in London, say modern humans clearly evolved in in Africa.

"What this discovery in Ethiopia shows is that the shared features of modern humans -- our high-rounded brain case, small brow ridges -- originated in Africa," says Stringer.

Those first real humans, he says, most likely left Africa in a second wave that eventually replaced the remnants of the first, pre-human diaspora.

According to Berkeley's Tim White, the evidence also lays to rest any notion that Neanderthals were direct human ancestors. Rather, he says, they were a branch of pre-human evolution that remained isolated in Europe.

The study appears in the current issue of the journal Nature.
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Fossil Skulls Offer First Glimpse of Early Human Faces (NY Times).

Posted 8:41 PM by Blah blah

Ernie (Humor)

From Ernie: The Best of Little.Yellow.Different.

All of the famed "Ernie's mom" stories.
All of his posts about being a contestant on the Weakest Link.
Other random gems.

Just talked to Christine tonight. We'll be meeting on Thursday! Long time no see.

Posted 1:02 PM by Blah blah

How to Keep Your Job (Information Technology)

By Carlos: "How To Survive Deflation in the IT Industry."

For IT people, he links a PowerPoint presentation by Dave Thomas of The Pragmatic Programmers, called

How to Keep Your Job.

His main point: "your skill set should be managed the same way you manage your financial portfolio. That is, to diversify and manage risk."

Posted 11:50 AM by Blah blah

Photos from Shark Lab (aka Bimini Biological Field Station) (Photos)

Have you been following Eric's coverage of his adventures with the Shark Lab research group in the Bahamas?

These are gorgeous, gorgeous shots you're taking, Eric!

Some of my favorite pix from the first two weeks:

WEEK 1:

- Baby lemon shark.
- Alan gets a funky new hairstyle.
- More juvenile lemon sharks. I think they ATE Nemo already, folks!
- Happy Birthday, Cheryl!
- Shark closeups. Gulp. I hope they don't like Asian food (i.e. me).
- Eric's new punk aboriginal haircut. Hahaha!
- Coral head near Turtle Rock. Beautiful.
- 20-year-old underwater plane wreck. It looks like the wheel is sticking out of the plane's roof!
- Eric's self-portrait, underwater.
- Marta showing her "private."
- Filleting fish.
- Teabag the dog, taking a nap. Awww.
- Ruth starts a soapy water fight.
- Cross-dressers' dinner party. Eric dresses in a cow suit.

WEEK 2:

- Marie made this life-sized "husband" for Marta. Hahahaha!
- Grant harrasses Marta with her husband's "member."
- Alan, posing with his PIT tag reader in "bullet time."
- A stingray.
- Some hot girls from Shark Lab.
- Lesley licks Lilian. This is like The Real World meets Voyage of the Mimi.
- Steve throwing out a float.
- Hot boys from Shark Lab.

- Grant jumps off the pier naked.
- Marta and Lilian steal his clothing and flee from naked boy.
- Steve jumps off naked.
- Grant spreading legs, naked. What happened to "Eric, naked"?
- Grant, Alan, and Steve all share Jackie's towel.
- Bryan asks, "is there room for me in there?" (the towel)
- More of 3 naked guys sharing a towel.
- What Teabag the dog thinks of their whole stunt.

Who cares about the science? I can't wait for week three!

Posted 12:08 AM by Blah blah

True Friends (Thoughtful)

"Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to the appellation."
- George Washington

So true. How many true friends do I have? Never enough.

Posted 9:40 PM by Blah blah

Cheers and Breasts

Sandy did a really wonderful and brave thing yesterday. I'm not saying what it was. But she deserves three big cheers! Go Sandy! (By the way, she just moved her blog to Hotpock.org.)

Look at this new hot pic of Mira. Just remember, above her chest, my friend is a devout Protestant intellectual. Below her chest, well...Elen, maybe I SHOULD become a breast man.

Posted 8:53 PM by Blah blah

Point Reyes National Seashore (Photos, Travel)

A whole group of us went to the Pt. Reyes National Seashore yesterday. We hiked for ten exhausting miles at the Tomales Pt. Trailhead. The weather was foggy, gray, and freezing.

Met a lot of cool new people though! Absolutely famished, we had dinner at Lanna Thai, a delicious place in San Anselmo. (It's next to San Rafael, the headquarters of Lucasfilm, George Lucas's production company.) My new friend Thy drove me there in her cute car. She's the Asian girl with the pigtails.




See us pretend to look happy in the freezing cold. In a couple of weeks, I plan for all of us to go rollerblading with my friend Patrick.