If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Photo by Fractal Ken
We have been all around the topic of health this week. What have we missed? Was there anything new to give you a different insight? Does anything suggest a follow-on topic? Let me know.
Musing about Health and Medicine [/caption] Today’s post is a few of my observations about medicine: Medicine defines health as the absence of symptoms Medicine for all its...
Send a coffee to CommentLuv Image via Wikipedia Small gifts are big. Eleanor with her blog Give a Brick is a great example of how helping people is not just...
Health Insurance is Too Expensive Reviewing Health Insurance Premiums My 90 day performance review is coming up in a few weeks and I'll qualify for some benefits, including health insurance....
Weekly Roundup Welcome to the Sunday roundup. I hope everybody has had a good weekend so far and that you are all staying healthy and fit. Check...
What is more nostalgic than an old fashioned country doctor. This video tells about the Country Doctor Museum where they have all the history you want.
An old fashioned Doctor's bag.
Finally some of us remember the corner drug store where we got our presecriptions filled and so much more. They were also a fixture in our social life with the soda fountain.
Saturday Thumbs Up - Health [/caption] This week's theme will be health. It's timely with Congress and the President scrambling to 'reform' healthcare. Why Congress should be telling us what...
Patriotic Nostalgia - The St. Louis Arch [/caption] This weeks nostalgia is a visit to the St. Louis Arch which was completed in 1966. The architect was Eero Saarinen, probably the preeminent...
Today’s post is a few of my observations about medicine:
Medicine defines health as the absence of symptoms
Medicine for all its technical achievement falls short in making or keeping people healthy. It relies on brute force either through surgery or dangerous drugs to simulate a healthy state.
Achieving good health requires finding advisors outside the medical industry (Nutrition, fitness, counseling are examples).
Health has more attributes and dimensions than can be measured by medical parameters. Such things as attitude, social support and purpose greatly affect the overall health of an individual and are difficult to quantify.
I would like to know if anyone shares these thoughts with me. Have you found resources that help you be more healthy? Do you have ideas for improving health care?
Comedy Tonight [/caption] What is comedy? Let’s try to get our arms around comedy. From Britannica Online Encyclopedia: The classic conception of comedy, which began with Aristotle...
Plan, Do, Check, Adjust [/caption] This next week I will be examining my efforts to become relevant and make money on the web. It all started with a blog....
Medical Expenses A Common Cause Of Bankruptcy The following guest post was submitted by Kevin, web content writer for Resqdebt.com. For more helpful tips on how to save money and stay out...
Health is a term we use all the time. It’s a component of phrases that we read about daily. Examples are health care, health insurance, health coverage, health club. It works, in that we understand what those things are but it doesn’t work in the sense that we actually understand what health means in these phrases, or in general.
Mostly we define health by what it is not. Health is not being ill. It is also not being infirm. It is when we try to say what health is that we get into trouble. One approach is to use averages. We assume that if the average man who is 5’ 8” weighs 150 pounds, then 150 pounds is a healthy weight. We do the same thing for blood pressure, temperature and many other measurements that we use to determine the health of an individual. Some of these are more or less effective – like temperature. Others not – like weight (and the even worse BMI or Body Weight Index). There are so many additional factors relating to the best weight for an individual that average is virtually useless, not to mention that when everybody is fat, the average is not going to represent a healthy weight.
Add to this the fact that Doctors are not trained in nutrition, exercise or any of the characteristics of a person identified as healthy. You don’t go to a Doctor to be healthy. You go because something is wrong and you want it fixed. But if you want to be healthy, you go somewhere else. Nowadays, the medical industry is attempting to co-opt the health agenda. The word is health maintenance and it is built on the same old average model discussed earlier. Weight, blood pressure and cholesterol measurement are key definitions of health status these days. They aren’t causes of illness but they do correlate and the medical profession is all over them with medications to ‘make them normal’ if your body won’t accommodate.
I don’t think we have a good handle on health and I don’t know how we should change things to do a better job. I am suspicious of the medical industry for advising me about health. The current health maintenance focus leaves me cold; as does the use of drugs with serious side-effects to correct any deviations from average. I don’t have a solution. I seek information from independent sources and try to use natural substances to treat issues. I do trust Doctors to treat illness and get my checkups but I hold back from accepting the drugs they recommend when my scores are bad.
I don’t think we really have health care. We are still basically identifying illness and treating them with brute force method. There needs to be a serious rethinking of the medical industry to fix this. Maybe Doctors don’t need to change. Maybe it doesn’t make sense for them to be good at treating illness and creating health at the same time. But if Doctors don’t change we need something else. What it should be, I haven’t figured out. Maybe you have some ideas.
Funny in Savannah Last summer I confessed that I can’t tell jokes. Exploration of humor to research a blog post persuaded me that this was just one more...
What's in my garden? [/caption] Not much blooming in the garden just now. The camellias are finished and most everything else is dormant. We had some serious cold (close...
The Dangers of Rapid Weight Loss Although losing weight is important, it is important to make sure that you are not losing weight too rapidly. There are many dangers that can...
What Does "Eating Healthy" Really Mean? With hundreds of different diet plans, exercise plans, fad diets and weight loss short cuts out there, it can be extremely difficult for people to...
There is a lot on Digg this week about the Health Care Reform Agenda in Congress. That’s got nothing to do with understanding, maintaining and managing your health. That’s all about government. What we want to focus on this week is understanding what we mean when we say health and how decisions that we make every day can affect that health, either positively or negatively.
Change you can believe in Image by David Reece via Flickr I gave a speech last week. Last week I gave a short presentation to a business group. This group's...
Musing about Health and Medicine [/caption] Today’s post is a few of my observations about medicine: Medicine defines health as the absence of symptoms Medicine for all its...
Mental Health: Understanding One Self I believe part of overall health is how you take care of your own mental health. That includes trying to understand yourself and with that...
We are doing a bit of transition here with the funnies. Today it is transitioning from our focus on comedy last week to the focus on health this week. It’s called Laughter Yoga. Here is the founder of Laughter Yoga, Dr. Kataria explaining.
Fun with Nuvi My wife got a personal navigation device for Christmas. She is not very open to new technology so I didn’t have much confidence that she...
Comedy Tonight [/caption] What is comedy? Let’s try to get our arms around comedy. From Britannica Online Encyclopedia: The classic conception of comedy, which began with Aristotle...
Weekly Roundup: July 20th Edition How is your Sunday going? Are you looking to play a little golf or go fishing? Perhaps if your like my sister, you'll spend the...
Father's Day Edition of Weekly Roundup I can't stay and write for long. My wife brought my dad out (from all the way across the country) as a surprise on Friday....
This week’s theme will be health. It’s timely with Congress and the President scrambling to ‘reform’ healthcare. Why Congress should be telling us what healthcare we should have escapes me. But underlying all this activity is the reality that we have many different perspectives on health. What is the definition of health? What do we mean by GOOD health? As RCB looks at health from different angles, weigh in with your thoughts.
Health vs Healthcare [/caption] Health is a term we use all the time. It’s a component of phrases that we read about daily. Examples are health care, health...
Flibbertigibbet and other tongue pleasing words Image via Wikipedia Long Words I love long words. They feel so wonderful after your tongue completes the complex and intricate maneuvers that get each...
ZULTYS HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS (ZHS) ZULTYS HEALTH CARE SYSTEMS (ZHS) A white paper by Pierre Kerbage VP of Sales: North America & Canada Pierre@Zultys.com (408) 328-5423 www.zultys.com Features &...
This week was supposed to be light and frothy, chance to catch up from two heavy weeks. It’s not that easy. Comedy is harder than it looks and funny is personal. What makes good comedy for you? Where do you find it?
Comedy Tonight [/caption] What is comedy? Let’s try to get our arms around comedy. From Britannica Online Encyclopedia: The classic conception of comedy, which began with Aristotle...
Are you a changer or a changee? When we hear people talking about change, it is always about an external force. We always think that change is something we can’t control; something...
how can I get revenge to my ex-wife? she changed after a week of our marriage...... she became an other person.... she did all bad things to me.... so after many chances I...
Smoker Obama signs anti-smoking bill The President today signs anti-smoking legislation. No more candy flavoured cigarettes with promises of low tar and nicotine (What's the point when it's proven smokers...
As we continue to explore comedy this week, take a look at some fantastic comic scenes from old movies.
First Judy Holliday playing gin rummy with Broderick Crawford. This is in Born Yesterday from 1950. She is a master of timing. This movie is comic in the societal improvement kind of way. We feel superior to the lowbrow chorus girl until she turns the tables on us.
Then the Marx Brothers, in Cocoanuts. How can you pick just one scene. At least this one has them all. I don’t know how to characterize the comedy. There is some social comment but mostly it is all slapstick and wordplay.
Then Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby – a wonderful, nostaligic romp.
Love, the REST of the story [/caption] I read a thoughtful post on love recently. The author considered love an emotion and talked about the power of an emotion and and...
Personal Branding For a pre-baby boomer (we don’t even rate a name) like me there are lots of new concepts to learn these days. One of these...
Pertuity Direct in the New Year In my inbox today.... Dear Friends of Pertuity Direct, As we wrap up 2008, we thought it would be a good time to check in...
Hoopnotica The hula hoop burst onto the scene in the 1950’s and it’s been a national pastime since. Most of us remember playing with them as...
I am not funny. Any amusement I provide others is purely by accident. I can’t tell a joke, relate an amusing event or embellish a speech or presentation with any levity. If you can do any of these things, please move on to some other post because you don’t need my assistance. For all others, I share some resources and a tip or two that may help.
Stand up Comedy
It never crossed my mind to become a stand-up comic – until this week. It isn’t that I somehow decided that I want to make a living from stand up comedy. What I did decide is that just because I can’t do stand up comedy now is no reason why I can’t learn to do stand up comedy.
I continue to forget that human beings have this wonderful ability to learn. I tell myself repeatedly that I am just not good at x or y or z. This lets me off the hook. I don’t have to be responsible for that limitation – because it is not my nature. I let myself be limited. I don’t have to accept that limitation. I can learn to do new things. So that is why I was thinking about becoming a stand up comic. Where would I go to learn how to do stand up comedy?
Well, one place is this website providing training and encouragement for stand-up comics and stand-up comic wannabes. It is hard work to become good as a stand-up comic. But the comments show that there are lessons to learn and that by serious effort and discipline you can improve. I may not want to be a stand-up comic but I can clearly learn some good communication tools from comics and maybe even how to make people laugh.
Telling a Joke
You won’t be surprised to learn that until this week, I never lifted a finger to improve my joke-telling ability either. I was happy to tell people that I lack the ability to tell a joke and smile while they suffer through my heavy and dull presentations. Joke-telling is another of those skills that I dismissed as innate and therefore beyond my ability to learn. It also saved me the effort of learning how to tell a joke and practicing to improve my skill. There are a few principles to guide you in learning how to tell a joke and a number of places easily available on the web to provide them. Check them out here and here.
Funny writing
Nobody ever asked me to write something funny, certainly not at work. Maybe I was asked at school but if so, I don’t remember. So if I were going to write a humorous essay or story, it would be for my own pleasure. “Who teaches students to write humor?” I wondered. Then I found Connie Weiss who teaches humorous writing.
My point here is really not about comedy or humor. It’s about our willingness to self-limit our potential rather than accepting the opportunity to learn and grow. I will no longer excuse myself by saying that I can’t tell a joke. I will accept that joke telling is something that has not been important enough for me to learn. And then tell myself that it is about time for me to change.
Get a Life Reading around the web to get a flavor of the ideas being discussed, I found this post on Copyblogger. James Chartrand tells bloggers to get...
Failure and Creativity Image by Getty Images via Daylife "Creativity is about freedom. In order for people to be free to create, they need to feel free to...
RadioShack lays off 400 employees by email. Add another company to the list of places you dont ever want to work, along with Northwest Airlines. In Forth Worth, 400 employees received an...
Related Posts 
Musing about Health and Medicine [/caption] Today’s post is a few of my observations about medicine: Medicine defines health as the absence of symptoms Medicine for all its... 
Send a coffee to CommentLuv Image via Wikipedia Small gifts are big. Eleanor with her blog Give a Brick is a great example of how helping people is not just... 
Other Websites You Might Enjoy 
Health Insurance is Too Expensive Reviewing Health Insurance Premiums My 90 day performance review is coming up in a few weeks and I'll qualify for some benefits, including health insurance.... 
Weekly Roundup Welcome to the Sunday roundup. I hope everybody has had a good weekend so far and that you are all staying healthy and fit. Check... 
Ralph on 
Heather on 