The Lifelong Learner         by Stanley Kubasek | About Me |

For us, men, drinking small amounts of alcoholic beverages each day is good for our health. :-) But if you're a women, things get a little murky, I'm finding out about this while reading the WSJ.

Overall, science shows that for both men and women, drinking a small amount of alcohol each day is better for you than never drinking at all, and it likely lowers your risk of heart attack, diabetes and mental decline. But for women, moderate alcohol consumption also carries risks you may not know about.

Even small amounts of alcohol consumption are linked with higher risk for breast cancer. Women who drive after drinking are at higher risk than men of dying in a car accident, even at similar blood-alcohol concentrations. And women are at higher risk than men for serious health problems related to alcohol abuse, including liver, brain and heart damage.

Women achieve higher concentrations of alcohol in the blood and become more impaired than men after drinking equivalent amounts of alcohol, even when taking into account differences in height and weight. This is likely due to the fact that a woman's stomach empties more slowly than a man's, giving the body more time to absorb the same amount of alcohol, many doctors say.

Reference
The Case Against Ladies' Night: Drinking Has Hidden Health Risks for Women, WSJ (need subscription)

US is growing. That's a fact. It is a nation of 300 million! It's made up of many nations blended together. I think that the most amazing thing about the US: the ability to mix many nations and races, and still have a safe environment. I came across a great article on Yahoo: what US is composed of, and what it will look like in the future. A good read -- link below.

I extracted some interesting parts from the article:

• The US population moves past 300 million - expected to happen in the next few days
  
• There will be 400 million Americans in 2043
• 2050, non-Hispanic whites will have dwindled from 69 percent to a bare majority of 50.1 percent
• Hispanic will have doubled to 24 percent
• Asians also will have doubled to 8 percent of the population
• African-Americans will have edged up to 14 percent
• Americans are expected to continue to gravitate west and south
• the West and South have been growing two to three times as fast as the Northeast and Midwest
• A person born in 1967, when the population turned 200 million, could be expected to live 70.5 years.
• Life expectancy for those born today is 77.8 years
• As the US moves toward 400 million people, Americans can be expected to marry later in life, and more of them will live alone.
• Between 1970 and 2005, the median age of first marriage moved from 23 to 27 for men and from 21 to 26 for women.
• the percentage of single-person households grew from 17 percent to 26 percent

Reference
The next 100 million and the face of America, Yahoo News

What does abortion have to do with crime?

If you've read Freakonomics, which I'm currently enjoying listening to, you would know. It's fascinating to hear. And you would not think it is true. But it is, and the authors have reasonable evidence to support it. Okay already, what is it?

Abortion reduces crime. In a big way, actually. What? You might be wondering. Actually, it does. Why? Because woman that usually have an abortion decide that they cannot raise the child, or are in a difficult situation (on drugs, etc). A lot of those times, if it weren't for abortion, they would raise a kid that would be more likely to commit a crime.

This theory has been tested in several states in America. They did not know why crime was falling in America in the 1990s. Almost everywhere in US. They thought it was because of the booming economy, which doesn't have too much to do with it. It turns out that because legalized abortion was put in place in the 1970s, in 1990s when they would become adults, the crime started falling. Want more support for this theory? In those states that had enacted legalized abortion two years earlier, crime started falling earlier. That's no coincidence.

Isn't that fascinating?

I recommend reading/listening to Freakonomics to find our this and other stories like that. It's a very good book and a quick listen.

Some good information how to have a better blog.

1. Question, Guy Kawasaki: What can a blogger do to ascend the Technorati 100—or simply write a better blog, for that matter?

   Answer, David Sifry, the founder and CEO of Technorati: There are no hard and fast rules, but I can provide a few guidelines that seem to have worked well for the preponderance of the blogs on the Top 100:

   • Post often and post at regular intervals. Ideally at least once a day, or even more often.

   • Figure out what kind of blogger you are. Are you a blogger who loves to collect links? Are you an essayist who loves to argue points of articulate new ideas? Are you a storyteller? Are you more comfortable with video, audio, photos, or text, or all three? Try stuff out and see what you feel most comfortable doing, and then try to stick to it.

   • Link prolifically. Give your readers the benefit of you preparing all of the source materials for them. Also, if you are rebutting or commenting on someone else’s idea or point, it is a sign of respect to link to them. The hyperlink is becoming a new form of social gesture used between people. Tools like Technorati also help you to find out who has linked to you, so when I see a blogger who has linked to me recently, I’m more inclined to discuss his or her ideas and link back to them, driving traffic and conversation.

   • Be honest. There are very few people who can get away with building up personas, and you probably aren’t one of them.

   • Write about what you know. It makes for much more engaging and interesting reading. I love blogs like English Cut, because he knows so much about the world of Saville Row and he writes about it.

   • Be Passionate. Nobody likes boring writing about boring subjects. First find your passion, then express it on your blog!

   • Practice, practice, practice. Your writing or podcasting or videoblogging—whatever will get better as you do it more. Keep it up.

   • Get a Technorati watchlist for your blog and for your name. Know when people are talking about you and be able to respond—either in comments on their blog, or even better, on your own blog, with a link to the other blog.

   • Get a full-text RSS and Atom feed. Make it easy for people to subscribe to your blog. I’d recommend a service like Feedburner to manage those feeds for you and get you stats.

   • Use tagging. Tags are an easy way to create open categories, and they help to make it easier to find your blog. You can get a tutorial with tools here.

   • Claim your blog and put in blog tags. This puts you into the world’s largest blog directory, Blogfinder, which already has over two million entries. And it means that if you write authoritatively about a certain topic, you’ll show up pretty high on the list for that topic. Which means you’ll get more traffic and new readers and links.

Reference
Ten Questions with David Sifry, Guy Kawasaki

I've stumbled upon some good practical advice on how to cancel any service.

I've worked for a telecommunications company that I would prefer to go unnamed, and I'd like to offer some tips to anyone trying to disconnect a service they no longer want. The biggest tip is to call well outside of normal business hours -- in my company, customer service was open 24/7, but the retention department closed in the evening. If you call, say, before bed, or during the middle of the night, you'll just be talking to a regular CS rep who has no incentive whatsoever to keep you as a customer. It can turn a twenty minute phone call into a two minute phone call.

Second, if you get a rude rep, hang up and call right back. Some reps, especially in commission driven departments like sales and retention, are especially pushy, where as if you call back you might get someone who is right at the end of his shift and just wants to get you off of his phone.

Third, there is one reason for disconnection that will work for almost every service--moving. Tell them you're moving out of the service area, or moving in with someone who already has the same service, and they should be required to cancel everything for you.

Also, it would be helpful to remember that the representatives in retention are paid to retain you as customers--threatening to record the call, asking for their name or ID, or asking for a supervisor will not do anything. All calls are recorded and the representatives have responses they are required to give for every customer question or complaint. The rep who actually gets in trouble will be the one who disconnects you immediately without trying to retain you, not the one who spends twenty minutes using every tactic in the book the company wrote for him.

Reference
How to cancel a service

Is Chinese Empire coming? Here's what a prominent demographer had to say about it when asked about it by Guy Kawasaki. It's an interesting interview. (I agree with the answer, btw.)

Guy Kawasaki: The British Empire, the American Empire... is the day of the Chinese empire coming?

Joseph Chamie, Demographer: It's possible that the Chinese Empire is coming some time in the future, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Although China is growing economically at a very fast clip, it has a good way to go before it's close to being anything like today's American Empire, let alone the former British Empire.
Moreover, internally China faces many demographic, social, and political challenges ahead. For example, the ageing of its population means that considerable state resources will soon need to be diverted to pay for the needs of the elderly, i.e., social security, health care, etc.

Also, rapid urbanization and economic growth is leading to the stratification of the population, especially in concentrated urban areas with few wealthy at the top and many poor at the bottom. These challenges may very well negatively impact the country's future economic growth and overall stability. Nevertheless, given its population size and increasing economic might, it's clear that China's influence globally will likely increase during the 21st century.

Reference
Ten Questions with Joseph Chamie, Demographer, Guy Kawasaki

An interesting question and an interesting answer.

Guy Kawasaki: What will the demographics of the US look like in 2050?

Dr. Joseph Chamie (Demographer): Later this year, sometime in mid-October, the US population is expected to hit the 300 million mark. The growth of the America's population is expected to continue throughout the 21st century. By 2050 it is projected to grow to about 420 million; and by the century's end, the projected US population is approaching close to 600 million.
The age structure of the population is also expected to become older. For example, the proportion of the US population sixty-five years or older is expected to rise from 12 percent today to 21 percent by mid-century. Furthermore, Americans are expected to be living longer in the future, with many reaching 100 years or more. Also, today there are about five people in the working ages for every person sixty-five years or older; by mid-century this number will likely be cut in half.

The population will also be more urbanized, with large movements to outlying suburbs and smaller cities, and significant regional shifts to states in the South and West. Over the next twenty five years, for example, the five fastest growing states are expected to be Nevada, Arizona, Florida, Texas and Utah. In contrast, states in the Northeast and Midwest regions, such as North Dakota, West Virginia, Iowa, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania, are projected to experience negative or close to zero population growth over the next quarter century.

America's population will also likely continue to experience major shifts in its ethnic composition. According to the 2000 census, for example, the top five countries are no longer of European origin as was the case in the past; they are now Mexico, China, Philippines, India and Vietnam. In addition, greater proportions of Americans will have their ethnic origins from countries south of the U.S. border, especially from Mexico, which now represents close one-third of the foreign born residing in the US.

During the coming decades, America's population is expected to remain around four to five percent of the world total. However, its demographic standing among developed countries as a whole will increase from one-quarter today to close one-third by 2050.

All in all, America's population is expected to undergo major demographic changes during the 21st century. Given America's dominant social, economic and political role in the world, these demographic changes will no doubt have significant and far-reaching consequences and repercussions for the country itself as well as for other nations.

Reference
Addendum to Ten Questions with Dr. Joseph Chamie, Guy Kawasaki blog

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Ten Questions with Joseph Chamie, Demographer, Guy Kawasaki blog