I called the quackdoctor

This morning while putting together soup and dessert for Sunday lunch, I had the radio tuned to CKNW. Good choice for a Saturday morning if it's between 10:00 and 11:00 because you get to listen to Wise Quacks - the funniest medical information and phone-in show I've ever heard.

Drs. Dave Hepburn and Rob Sealey are masters of turning serious medical issues into yuck-yucks. But while we're laughing, we're learning stuff as well.

For an example of their humor, here is part of the 2009 Lifestyle Inventory quiz found on the Wise Quacks site:

With the year 2009 upon us, it behooves us to take inventory of just how healthy our lifestyle is. How do you score?

* Realizing that donating blood actually decreases your chance of a heart attack, you donate blood every three months +50 pts
... While playing hockey -35 pts
... For the Leafs -99 pts

* Your LDL cholesterol is low and your HDL cholesterol is high +50 pts.

* Your blood pressure is low and your hemoglobin is high +60 pts.

* Your prescription medicine is unexpectedly low and your roommate is high -75 pts.

...and on it goes.

Today the topic was body stones. We've all probably heard about gallstones and kidney stones, but I had no idea there were prostate stones, saliva, tonsil and cochlear (ear) stones as well. Apparently wherever an organ is a channel for fluids, stones can develop.

Wise Quacks broadcasts on the Corus radio network across Canada. Times and stations are listed on the Wise Quacks website too. If it broadcasts in your area, give it a listen. Visiting a doctor was never this much fun before!

is the internet messing with your head?

Do you think and read differently since you've entered the era of internet grazing? Nicholas Carr (The Atlantic Monthly) is wondering what's happening to his brain:

Over the past few years I’ve had an uncomfortable sense that someone, or something, has been tinkering with my brain, remapping the neural circuitry, reprogramming the memory. My mind isn’t going—so far as I can tell—but it’s changing. I’m not thinking the way I used to think. I can feel it most strongly when I’m reading. Immersing myself in a book or a lengthy article used to be easy. My mind would get caught up in the narrative or the turns of the argument, and I’d spend hours strolling through long stretches of prose. That’s rarely the case anymore. Now my concentration often starts to drift after two or three pages. I get fidgety, lose the thread, begin looking for something else to do. I feel as if I’m always dragging my wayward brain back to the text. The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle.

As the media theorist Marshall McLuhan pointed out in the 1960s, media are not just passive channels of information. They supply the stuff of thought, but they also shape the process of thought.

A pathologist who has long been on the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, Friedman elaborated on his comment in a telephone conversation with me. His thinking, he said, has taken on a “staccato” quality, reflecting the way he quickly scans short passages of text from many sources online. “I can’t read War and Peace anymore,” he admitted. “I’ve lost the ability to do that. Even a blog post of more than three or four paragraphs is too much to absorb. I skim it.”

But a recently published study of online research habits, conducted by scholars from University College London, suggests that we may well be in the midst of a sea change in the way we read and think.

Read the rest of "Is Google Making Us Stupid?"

And regarding an item about Kindle and the end of books and that I blogged about a bit ago, a writer on Slate begs to differ.

We'll do more and more reading on screens, but they won't replace paper—never mind what your friend with a Kindle tells you. Rather, paper seems to be the new Prozac. A balm for the distracted mind. It's contained, offline, tactile. William Powers writes about this elegantly in his essay "Hamlet's BlackBerry: Why Paper Is Eternal." He describes the white stuff as "a still point, an anchor for the consciousness."

Read the rest of "Lazy Eyes - How We Read Online"

What about you? Can you still wade through dense writing on paper? Do you have the patience? Or do books actually calm you down?

Personally, if books really do have a Prozac-like effect, that may be just the reason I need to resist getting a laptop. Now when I'm away from the computer, I'm away. For the foreseeable I should probably resign myself to keeping it like that - to preserve brain normalcy if nothing else.

pod school

This Christmas I finally joined the i-poders (got a very slim and streamlined ipod touch!). Besides loving the portable music, I wanted to own this toy to be able to download messages and teaching. Here are some sites I've found from which you can download sermons, talks, interviews etc.

The podcast page at Oneplace.com is an index of Christian ministry podcasts, including such popular programs as Focus on the Family and Desiring God Radio (John Piper).

Ravi Zacharias's mp3s (Let My People Think) are listed here.

Joyce Meyer's teaching podcasts can be found on this page:

If you enjoy some of the literary stuff on the CBC, their radio broadcasts "Between the Covers," "Writers and Company" and a slew of others are available as podcasts. You can subscribe to them here.

Happy listening (and learning)!

book review: Simplify Your Time by Marcia Ramsland

Title: Simplify Your Time
Author: Marcia Ramsland
Publisher: Thomas Nelson, 2006
Genre: Self-help
ISBN: 0849914582

Think about a time management topic, from how to overcome habitual lateness to how to make a five-year plan, and you’ll probably find something about it in Simplify Your Time. This motivational self-help book by Marcia Ramsland, a 23-year organizing pro, could well become one’s time management textbook, stuffed as it is with wisdom and practical suggestions.

Ramsland has written and organized the book for readers who are busy. It is made up of thirty short chapters (one per day for a month). These are divided into four weeks, each one dealing with a different aspect of time management: “Week 1 - Time-saving habits” (includes overcoming habitual lateness, clutter management, how to change a habit), “Week 2 - Time-saving tools” (includes how to control your calendar, choose a daily planner, make a personal project list), “Week 3 - Time-saving skills (includes discovering your weekly rhythm, tips on multi-tasking and delegating), and “Week 4 - Time-saving strategies” (includes how to make a five-year plan, set goals in every department of life, establish a network of family and friends). She rounds out the book with a list time management resources found in print and on the web.

Ramsland’s writing style is direct, yet always warm and encouraging. She entices the reader into each chapter with quotes by time efficiency experts like John Maxwell and vignettes from her interactions with clients. Bulleted lists, charts and font variety add visual interest and clarity. In addition she has sprinkled 101 “Time-Saving Tips” in easy-to-spot text boxes throughout the chapters. These are not a regurgitation of what she’s already said but in addition to it, augmenting in a concise way what she is explaining in the text. Each chapter ends with three practical things one can do to put her ideas into action.

I found the book not only encouraging but inspirational. Pointed bits of wisdom like “Two-minute pickups are tasks that are too short to write on a to-do list but that slow the pace of your life when they are ignored too long,” and “Remember the most important time you spend in a day is the time you spend planning tomorrow,” have already impacted my daily routines.

Warnings like “The reality is that if you don’t plan for your future, other people (boss, coworkers, spouse, children) will plan your life for you, or your daily routine will swallow up any chance you have to change your lifestyle,” have prodded me into thinking long-range.

I like the way the book progresses from talking about small specific things like how to change a bad habit to discussing big general things like implementing long-range planning strategies. This movement from specific to general helped me understand how the cumulative effect of many small changes can make a big impact on the future.

Trouble is, the book is so full of good ideas I couldn’t absorb them all in one read. It’s a book I will want to re-read – and more than once.

If, like me, you’ve resolved to make better use of your time this year, Marcia Ramsland’s Simplify Your Time may be just the book for you too.

get 'the max from your mac'™

I'm loving my new Mac as much as ever! Now almost two months into owning it, this beautiful addition to my collection of apples (yes, I do actually collect apples - from stove-top timers to ornaments and now a computer - see, it was meant to be!) is beginning to feel like a real friend.

I especially appreciated it yesterday. We had some carpet layers in to do an installation. This meant we had to empty the rooms of furniture - my office being one of them. How simple it was to disassemble my Mac, cart it upstairs, plug it in and get to work again in my daughter's old bedroom -- not like E., who now uses my old dinosaur and spent at least 30 minutes first labeling cords and plug-ins so he'll be able to put his Windows puzzle together again (mind, it's ancient; I'm sure the new Windows machines are much simpler).

I've been meaning to talk about the Mac class I took in June. This was free instruction that came from the Mac store (ours is Simply Computing in Langley) along with the purchase of a new computer.

Keith Richardson, the founder of a company called MacSeniors was our teacher. It was an eye-opening day, clueing me in to not only many handy keystrokes which I wasn't aware of, but to the variety things that the Mac allows you to do and make.

Especially interesting was the afternoon when Mr. Richardson talked about the iLife suite of applications (iTunes, iMovie, iDVD etc.). It was necessarily more of a demonstration than teaching session, but when I saw the DVDs that he had made (he made one as a Christmas gift for each of his grandkids), my mouth watered. I've decided that as soon as life settles down, I'm going to learn how to make a DVD!

Fortunately, we have Mr. Richardson around as a handy resource. He is also active in MacWest, a club that meets regularly (in Surrey) to discuss user's questions and explore things one can do with Macs. Members of the public are welcome (the next meeting is tomorrow, July 11th).

But you can access his wealth of knowledge too. On his blog are posted dozens of helpful links. If you're new to a Mac or if you're a longtime Mac user but have learned just enough to get by doing the things you do day to day - give it a look. After all, don't you too want to 'Achieve the MAX from your Mac'?