Song of the day

I thought I'd already used this as a song of the day... but can't find it on the blog, so here it is: Leona Lewis singing "Happy."

(Video link)

As for me? Happy today! Passed my Oregon state EMT-Basic exam. Woo hoo!

I gotta find my place, wanna hear my sound...

Quote of the day (of the year?)

The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.

-- JK Rowling

Amen.

New, deadly fungal strain in Oregon

Fungal infections are one thing when they're between your toes or on your jockstrap. When they're in your lungs or bloodstream, they can be deadly. A new, highly virulent strain has shown up in Oregon and killed about 25% of those infected (which luckily hasn't been a lot of people as of yet). It's expected to migrate into California next.

More from MSNBC.

Derivatives and financial reform

Gail Collins explains derivatives:

Try to think of derivatives as being like the Tribbles in that classic “Star Trek” episode. For all of history, there was no such thing. Then somebody found the first ones, which looked cute and made soothing noises. We liked them fine, until the population grew to be worth about $600 trillion. When they got into the financial engine, all hell broke loose.

And President Obama is making a strong push in New York today for passing financial reform legislation:

“Some on Wall Street forgot that behind every dollar traded or leveraged, there is a family looking to buy a house, pay for an education, open a business, or save for retirement,” he says in the excerpts released by the White House. “What happens here has real consequences across our country.”

The president’s address at Cooper Union in Lower Manhattan will circle back to another speech he gave at the same location in March 2008 warning of financial manipulation, market bubbles and the concentration of economic power. He repeats some of the same lines he gave two years ago and casts himself as a prescient forecaster before the collapse later that year.

“I take no satisfaction in noting that my comments have largely been borne out by the events that followed,” he says in the excerpts. “But I repeat what I said then because it is essential that we learn the lessons of this crisis, so we don’t doom ourselves to repeat it. And make no mistake — that is exactly what will happen if we allow this moment to pass — an outcome that is unacceptable to me and to the American people.”

Factoid of the day

The U.S. gives Israel about $2.8 billion a year in aid.

There are roughly 310 million people in the U.S. and about 7.5 million in Israel.

So that's about $9 out of each American's pocket each year and about $375 showing up for each person in Israel.

ON A RELATED NOTE: Apparently the mood in Israel is gloomy according to the New York Times.

Avoiding temptation

If you're in a situation where you have to weigh the temptation of instant gratification vs. the deferred benefits of an alternative, it may help to think about the future: a planned vacation, a special event coming up, or... just about anything that's our on your horizon.

More from Jonah Lehrer.

More on the recent cyber attack on Google

Actually, not just on Google... Google was just the most candid about what happened.

New details on the sophistication of the attack and what was stolen:

But a person with direct knowledge of the investigation now says that the losses included one of Google’s crown jewels, a password system that controls access by millions of users worldwide to almost all of the company’s Web services, including e-mail and business applications....

In Google’s case, the intruders seemed to have precise intelligence about the names of the Gaia software developers, and they first tried to access their work computers and then used a set of sophisticated techniques to gain access to the repositories where the source code for the program was stored.

They then transferred the stolen software to computers owned by Rackspace, a Texas company that offers Web-hosting services, which had no knowledge of the transaction. It is not known where the software was sent from there. The intruders had access to an internal Google corporate directory known as Moma, which holds information about the work activities of each Google employee, and they may have used it to find specific employees.

Exercise and weight loss

I was skeptical when I read the first paragraph of this article, but it ended up being fairly informative. Apparently exercise heightens women's appetites but not those of most men. And while exercise alone is not always a great way of losing weight, it's highly important for keeping it off.

It's all about inertia. Your body generally wants to stay at the weight it's used to. Working out the body helps to reset that baseline.

Read the full New York Times Magazine article here.

Shopping

Jonah Lehrer recently wrote a great piece about Costco ("where you go broke saving money") and the emotional tug-of-war going on inside our brains as we shop for what we do and don't need... and retailers' strategies for manipulating that process.

In a related article, the New York Times reveals how much info may be embedded in a coupon you pull off the Internet:

A new breed of coupon, printed from the Internet or sent to mobile phones, is packed with information about the customer who uses it. While the coupons look standard, their bar codes can be loaded with a startling amount of data, including identification about the customer, Internet address, Facebook page information and even the search terms the customer used to find the coupon in the first place.

And all that information follows that customer into the mall. For example, if a man walks into a Filene’s Basement to buy a suit for his wedding and shows a coupon he retrieved online, the company’s marketing agency can figure out whether he used the search terms “Hugo Boss suit” or “discount wedding clothes” to research his purchase (just don’t tell his fiancée).

Caveat emptor...

Quote of the day

Some people confuse acceptance with apathy, but there's all the difference in the world. Apathy fails to distinguish between what can and what cannot be helped; acceptance makes that distinction. Apathy paralyzes the will-to-action; acceptance frees it by relieving it of impossible burdens.

-- Arthur Gordon

It's about time: SEC sues Goldman Sachs for fraud

The SEC has charged Goldman Sachs with putting together a mortgage investment stuffed with securities that were likely to default. They made billions of dollars by selling their customers a rigged product and then betting against the mortgage market with their own money. More here.

Tax day memorandum: corporations escaping taxes despite huge profits

So you hate paying your taxes? Apparently so do a lot of American corporations, and they're pretty successful at avoiding them. Forbes posted an article earlier this month, here's an excerpt about General Electric:

As you work on your taxes this month, here's something to raise your hackles: Some of the world's biggest, most profitable corporations enjoy a far lower tax rate than you do--that is, if they pay taxes at all.

The most egregious example is General Electric. Last year the conglomerate generated $10.3 billion in pretax income, but ended up owing nothing to Uncle Sam. In fact, it recorded a tax benefit of $1.1 billion.

How did this happen? It's complicated. GE's tax return is the largest the IRS deals with each year--some 24,000 pages if printed out. Its annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission weighs in at more than 700 pages.

Inside you'll find that GE in effect consists of two divisions: General Electric Capital and everything else. The everything else--maker of engines, power plants, TV shows and the like--would have paid a 22% tax rate if it was a standalone company.

It's GE Capital that keeps the overall tax bill so low. Over the last two years, GE Capital has displayed an uncanny ability to lose lots of money in the U.S. (posting a $6.5 billion loss in 2009), and make lots of money overseas (a $4.3 billion gain). Not only do the U.S. losses balance out the overseas gains, but GE can defer taxes on that overseas income indefinitely. The timing of big deductions for depreciation in GE Capital's equipment leasing business also provides a tax benefit, as will loan losses left over from the credit crunch.

Obama issues executive order on hospital visitation rights

Very good:

President Obama on Thursday ordered his health secretary to issue new rules aimed at granting hospital visitation rights to same-sex partners, and making it easier for gays and lesbians to make medical decisions on behalf of their partners.

The White House announced the rule changes in a memorandum released Thursday night. In it, the president said the new rules will affect any hospital that participates in Medicare or Medicaid, the government programs to cover the elderly and the poor.

“Every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindness and caring of a loved one at their sides,” Mr. Obama said in the memorandum, adding that the rules could also help widows and widowers who rely on friends and members of religious orders who care for each other. But he say gays and lesbians are “uniquely affected” because they are often barred from visiting partners with whom they have spent decades.

The full story here from the New York Times.

Emotional memories persist, even for amnesiacs

New research has found that while people with amnesia or Alzheimer's disease may not be able to remember any of the details of an experience, the emotional flavor does persist:

[University of Iowa graduate student Justin] Feinstein says, "Your brain is no longer able to catch onto those experiences, so your day-to-day experiences, like what you had for breakfast this morning, what you did last Saturday night, those are gone. They're vanished."

But Feinstein suspected that the good feelings and bad feelings triggered by meaningful events might linger, captured by a different part of the brain.

So, to stir up some strong emotion, he threw a mini-film fest in his clinic. He showed several people who have damage to the hippocampus a string of short movie clips from tear-jerker classics.

One was the scene in Forrest Gump where he is crying all alone at the grave of his dead wife, Jenny.

It worked. Everyone who watched the film clips was visibly moved — some to tears. Yet a half-hour later, when quizzed about the movies, they didn't remember a thing — not even one woman who had sobbed during the films.

"We test her memory, her memory's gone," Feinstein says. "What happens to her emotions? Well, it turns out she's still sad."

...

Now here's the good news: When Feinstein and his colleagues repeated the experiment, this time showing the same people clips from funny or uplifting movies, like When Harry Met Sally or a Bill Cosby special, it put everybody in a great mood.

And that good feeling outlasted their memories, too. Remember that, Feinstein says, next time you spend time with a friend or family member with Alzheimer's.

I started volunteering with a hospice again last week, and this story really drove home for me that these visits can really make a difference for people.

The full story from NPR.

Quote for the day

Via my friend Piper:

Your journey has molded you for your greater good, and it was exactly what it needed to be. Don't think that you've lost time. There is no short-cutting to life. It took each and every situation you have encountered to bring you to the now. And now is right on time.

-- Asha Tyson

Rest in peace, Dixie Carter

Dixie Carter passed away today at the age of 70. Here's one of my favorite scenes from Designing Women (a show that takes me back to my early days out of college and out of the closet):

(Video link)

Quote of the day

"I never considered myself a maverick."

-- John McCain, April 3, 2010

I think this quote also qualifies as the flip-flop of the century, as pointed out by PolitiFact (which graded it a "Pants on Fire" lie) and The Young Turks:

(Video link)

Who knew... Century Gothic saves you money

Considering the high cost of printer ink and toner, finding a way for individuals and organizations to reduce their expenditures on those items by 30% would be quite a coup.

Turns out that you already have just such a solution sitting on your desktop... or more specifically, on your computer. Century Gothic requires 30% less ink than Arial. Wow.

More from NPR.

Tree of the day

Outside my office in Beaverton, Oregon.

Free speech: a means to an end?

Stanley Fish reports on a recent legal conference that focused on the recent Supreme Court Decision which removed restrictions on the ability of corporations to spend money in elections. One argument that was made against the ruling is that speech as a right is a means to an end: ensuring a strong and enduring democracy. Worth a read.