Stop the [Fruit] Madness

It's Tu B'shvat. One of the customs is eating fruits from the Land of Israel. Of course in the Diaspora, there weren't any fruits at this time of the year, so we had dried fruit. But why on earth are we eating dried fruit here when plenty of fresh fruit is available in any neighborhood supermarket? Not to mention that most of the dried fruit is imported from Turkey. This year, shops went over the top and also offered candied fruit to the hordes of tradition-hungry buyers. And to top the outrage, people are making cakes out of dried and candied fruit!

How about a nice natural fruit salad or shake?

C2H Index

No wonder you don't know what it means, I just made it up. It means Contribution to Humankind Index. There are lots of indices that rank states and people: GDP/capita, credit rating, academic papers and Nobel prize winners, sport achievements and many, many more. So one more can do no harm. All we need to do is associate a weight to any actions states take and calculate a weighted average. Starting an unjust war to conquer a neighbor state would give a state -100 points or some other negative number that takes into account the number of injured, dead and ruined facilities. Polluting rivers, seas, deforestation, violating human rights etc., would also give some negative number. Scientific achievements and humanitarian aid would give a positive number. You got the idea. The criteria need to be set by the UN (in endless debates, what else?) and the results continuously publicized. A true mirror to our world that will ultimately improve it.

Love-Hate

How come people's most irritating features become their signature behavior that with time we actually miss? The only answer I could find is that the behavior sneaks into our routine and we get used to it. David Ben Gurion kept eating Paula's 'kuch-much' after she died to remember her. 

Don't we hate our routine (but sometimes also miss it)? Don't we always wish we could change it and do what we want? Turns out that what we want is just a different routine. Most people can't afford to change their routine completely (except for the courageous or those who won the lottery), but introduce one or two enjoyable activities in your daily routine and watch for Pareto to take effect. 

So easy to advise others...

Old vs. New

We have a gramophone, an analog stereo system (amplifier, radio, double cassette player/recorder), big old loudspeakers, old TV (not even flat screen), old VCR, no DVD. If we want to listen to a CD, we connect a discman to this old stereo system.

NEW: I think we should replace this entire anachronistic 'package' with a new, functional home cinema system. After all, music and movies now mostly come from the net, so all you need is a comm cable and USB connector (for disk-on-keys).

OLD: I am not a gadget person. I don't like learning new buttons.

NEW: I am not a nostalgic type of person. Things that happened in the past are all in a big nebulous timeframe, whether they happened 2, 5 or 10 years ago.

OLD: I have an ancient cell phone which I'll carry until it dies. I won't buy myself a new, technical item while the old one functions well.

NEW: For my own home, I prefer functional, new designs over intricate antique furniture.

OLD: I won't buy any new item just to feel renewal, only if I need it. Don't understand why people need more than a small number of any type of item in their possession. Imelda Marcos's shoe collection comes to mind.

NEW: I am an early adopter of the newest versions of software applications I use.

CONFUSED.

My Pendulum Theory

This is my last theory for 2009. Actually, it's not really mine, as during the research for this post I found another blog that explains this social pendulum from a different angle. My example is on a much larger social scale, specifically related to what happened 20 years ago, in 1989: the revolutions of 1989. Back in 1989, I followed the revolutions on TV. Actions that were unimaginable before, were really happening. The masses courageously took action.

Many documentaries were broadcast to mark the anniversary and I watched one describing the fall of the Berlin Wall.  One little story in this documentary made a big impression on me. It was about an East German lady in her fifties, working for the local ice cream factory. Apparently, there was a constant ice cream shortage in East Germany and the entire quantity this factory produced was always sold in an instant. When western goods started to be sold in eastern shops, people stopped buying eastern products, among them ice cream. After the eastern ice cream could not be sold, the shopkeeper asked the factory to take its products back. This lady came and tried to convince clients to buy her factory's ice cream by explaining that otherwise the factory will be closed down and the workers will become unemployed. The clients couldn't care less. One client even replied that he was fed up with this ice cream for 40 years while it was the only one available and now he was taking his revenge. This woman disposed the refrigerator and its contents. A few month later the factory closed down and she was unemployed.

Lately, people are nostalgically reviving former East German products, including Trabant cars. A new word, "ostalgie", has been coined for the phenomenon.

These days people are buying agricultural products from local farms, for helping them stay in business and for saving transportation carbon dioxide, and non-profits help the unemployed, although volunteering and civil society are much weaker in the east than the west.

Initial large pendulum swings are human and understandable, but after 20 years, the pendulum motion has slowed down, swings are more moderate.

Logic

We left the apartment in the morning and locked the door with 2 locks, as usual. Forgot Tom was home and that the upper lock can only be opened from the outside. When he realized he was locked inside the apartment, he called. "I feel so frustrated having the keys and not being able to open the door. If  I could only stand on the other side of the door, I could open it".

I hope he applies more logic to his IDF work, otherwise this country is in real danger.

For the logically challenged: if he already stands on the other side of the door, he is outside, no need to open the door.

Happy ending: He called his friend, who happened to be in the neighborhood walking his dog, threw the key from the balcony and the friend came up and released him.

Additions to this post after Tom's comments:
Disclosure: Of course I understood what he meant at the time, he wished he could have got out without his backpack, stand on the other side of the door, open it and then take his stuff. I think it's still funny and we both shared a laugh on this little episode.

Full disclosure: Every mom would like to have a son like Tom, but only I, the luckiest mom on Earth, has the privilege of having him. And I thank God every day for it. I do.(Now I embarrassed him).

What's Wrong with Healthcare?

There are millions of people who don't have access to potable water, not to mention healthcare. In the US, healthcare is so expensive that middle-class unemployed cannot afford it. The democrats are working on improving the system, with no results so far. In communist countries healthcare is free, albeit usually not of the best quality. I was told that in ancient China, people paid their doctor only when healthy, but not when ill, so it was in the doctor's best interest to keep them healthy. What an incredibly clever idea!

Since the mandatory healthcare tax was introduced here, we get less for more, but everybody is insured and gets medical care through one of four existing sick funds. The insurance includes a finite number of consultations, lab tests, hospitalization, rehab and a 'basket' of medicine. Naturally, not every possible treatment is included and many hold different gold and platinum insurance plans or private policies to augment the basic coverage.

For historical reasons, dental care is not included in the basic package of any of the sick fund offerings. My private dentist schedules periodical check-ups and hygienist appointments and that seems to work out just fine. The less you use the sick fund service, the more it makes. So why should they tell you about screening tests you are entitled to according to your age group, gender and other criteria? To compensate for the lack of preventive medicine, one should take ownership over test requests and stats. Thanks to my employer, I attend a yearly medical check-up, but the results are not accessible by my GP, I have to bring them to him on paper and make him enter them into his computer, so that he can see the broader picture.

In recent years, since a wealth of medical information is available on the web, the doctor is no longer the only source of information and many look up their symptoms, lab test results and disease information. They read about treatment options and ask their doctor intelligent questions. According to our friend Andrei (the husband of a doctor and father of a med student), doctors will soon be replaced by software that given your symptoms will diagnose your problem. According to a radio program I recently listened to, personalized DNA-based healthcare is around the corner. Everything seems to go in the right direction, so what's wrong then?

My medical pet peeve is personal medical records. You should own them and not the private physicians or organizations that treat you for a certain condition. How? On a smart card or disk-on-key. The different service providers will add their data and the accumulated records will be analyzed by an ever upgraded software application that will provide you with stats and trends, recommend screening tests, remind you to take your prescribed drugs, renew prescriptions, make appointments, suggest further reading and keep you on top of the latest findings, procedures and rights. It shouldn't even cost you since many service providers will be happy to advertise their services based on your location. If you carry it with you at all times it can also be used in emergency situations by ambulance and trauma center personnel. The infrastructure is there, the funding is there, and I don't believe I'm the first or only one on the planet to think about this. So why doesn't it work that way? It takes a few champions to lobby for the initiative with the legislators and fight their way through red tape.

Anybody to take up that [surgical] glove?