Google: This One Is A Brilliant Move
Google appointed Dr. Larry Brilliant to head its corporate philantrophic program, Google.org.
Google has pledged 1% of its annual profits and 1% of its stock with a current value of 1$ billion to Google.org. Dr. Brilliant according to the WSJ has had extensive non-profit public health and private-sector tecnology experience. His background includes working to eradicate small pox in India and serving as a physician to members of the Grateful Dead.
Google.org has defined several initial directions: The Acumen Fund which invests in market-based solutions to global poverty, TechnoServe which supports entrepreneurship, Water Research in Western Kenya, Planet Read an organization that works to improve literacy in India, and the Google Grants program that provides free advertising to non-profits.
Dr. Brilliant says he is going to provide a focus on conquering public health issues as a necessary part of conquering poverty. The WSJ quotes Dr. Brilliant as saying that the Google motto, "Don’t be evil" is what brought him to the Google job, "Its very hard to find another company that starts out on a conscious path to do good and not do evil," he said.
I guess his favorite Grateful Dead song was probably not, Friend of the Devil.
Technorati Tags: Google, Google.org, non-profits, public health, Grateful Dead,
M&Ms and Books Supersize
Today’s New York Times reported two size increases …M&Ms and paperback books. Because as we Baby Boomers age we struggle with the small print size of paperback books, several publishers are issuing some books in a new Baby Boomer friendly print size. M&Ms are apparently now available in a supersize called Mega M&Ms. They are 55% larger and a Mars senior marketing manager is quoted as saying that M&Ms have historically been about sharing and that the larger size is "in tune with that."
Well, as a small print challenged Boomer I am all for the larger paperbacks…but as a Boomer who has been watching those M&Ms dive into the chocolate and promise to "melt in your mouth not in your hands" forever, I don’t recall ANYTHING about sharing. A quick trip to the M&M website did not produce any evidence of a "sharing" strategy. The NYT article challenged the sharing strategy more directly by saying that in fact M&Ms are the perfect food for stealth eaters…the package can be hidden while the size of the candy itself allows them to be eaten without anyone noticing. I guess especially easy to do if you are hiding from Baby Boomers without their reading glasses. Maybe the new supersized 55% larger Mega M&Ms are really are "all about" the new supersized 55% larger us….60% of Americans are overweight and 20% are obese.
And as far as sharing M&Ms…well as we all know, they DO melt in our hot little hands and we really like to take them from our own package or bowl, not someone else’s hands.
Not Sure What The Heavy Traffic at This Site Means
My mother is elderly….she would not be happy if I mentioned her exact age but it is impressive. Equally impressive is the number of times (and the number of illnesses) she has bounced back from like a human Energizer Bunny.
She has Multiple Sclerosis, and she might very well be the oldest person alive with MS. MS has not been the direct cause of any of her life threatening illnesses…MS robbed her of probably her most precious possessions, her mobility and independence. She was 81 before the fall that fractured her hip necessitated giving up her car keys and her house keys.
Each time she has become seriously ill she begins a review of her wishes with the same introduction, "Marianne, please don’t be sentimental" and then proceeds to list how she would like her earthly departure to be handled. The first item on the list is always a reminder about her living will. Through the years, as she has survived most of her friends and family, the list of funeral wishes gets shorter and shorter. The last crisis was in January and at that time she crossed the funeral itself off the list.
My usual response is to get very sentimental and to make my own list: Have I told her how much I really admire her strength and downright bravery? How much I will miss her? And most recently I have added , how much it has meant to me that she has, at her age, helped me, at my age, survive the past year and a half of warfare that my ex-husband has waged and how much I hope that she will be around to be re-paid. I resolve to write what I have begun to call a living eulogy. But as I mentioned, she is the Energizer Bunny and before my resolve turns into a second paragraph, she gets well.
Earlier tonight, I Googled the term "living eulogy" and the expected suspects appeared: how to write an eulogy ebooks, grief counseling, funeral homes and the most intriguing link of all? www.deathclock.com. But wait, there’s more…at first try a message appeared that said traffic was too heavy and directed me to another "mirror" site. Well, it must be all the rage to count down the seconds to ones death. Yes, that is what is available on DeathClock. I tried again later and was able to determine that I will die on February 3, 2032. The site begins a countdown to the expected date in seconds…I am not sure what we are supposed to do with that information other than to start counting along.
Fat Cat
We have two cats, we were supposed to have one. Last summer we adopted a 13 month old part Maine Coon Cat named Michelle whose name was immediately changed by my sons to Tiger. They insisted she looked like a Tiger. She was meant to be a kind of starter pet….the kids really wanted a dog but being unconvinced by their promises to take care of a dog, I agreed to start with a lower maintenance cat. Not that I had ever had a cat before, or had ever met a cat that I especially liked, or in fact didn’t love dogs…it just seemed that at this time and place, a cat sounded like it made sense for us.
Well, Tiger apparently felt otherwise. She departed out the front door after she had been with us for about two weeks. We searched, put up "Lost Cat" signs but no Tiger. My younger son was heartbroken so we adopted a 9 week old kitten who was promptly named Tiger, Jr and called TJ. About a month later, our next door neighbor called and said that she thought our cat was living in her back yard and in fact she was. Her extended visit next door remains as mysterious as her departure but that is why we now have two cats. Two cats who seem to despise each other.
TJ, the kitten, grew up this past year….and then started to blow up. He kept getting fatter and fatter until the only way to describe him was FAT. Sweet, lovable, adorable, but a chow hound. Well…I wish that was where the story ended…but although we were concerned with his ever increasing girth as well as his newly lethargic lifestyle it was more in the context of discussing the fact that he was fat versus the harm in his being so fat. But then he started making these strange choking sounds every once in a while…we took him to the vet. The verdict…a very fat cat with a heart condition. TJ is now officially on a diet…prescription weight loss food and vets orders to lose 7 pounds. 7 pounds, you ask? Yes, it is a whole lot of weight. And TJ does not like his diet. He sits by his bowl and cries. We all feel bad for him. But, we adore our cats (who would have guessed) and we don’t want to lose him. So, we pat his head and tell him it is for his own good. Poor TJ.
Good Thing There Isn’t a Tux Challenge
August 5, NYC…MeMe Roth hosts the Wedding Gown Challenge. Wear your dress from the BIG DAY to demonstrate that you have stayed fit and healthy and NOT BIG for all those years despite all those children in defiance of the obesity trend.
OK, so what if the dress fits but not the glass slippers? Can we still come to the ball if we’re divorced?
Well, here are some interesting facts from the recent report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services–Marital Status and Health: United State, 1999-2002: Although being married is better for your overall health, "Obesity is the one health condition that does not follow the pattern.
Overall, married, middle-age men had the highest obesity rate, followed
closely by divorced men. Among women, those cohabiting had the lowest
rate, followed closely by never-married and married women, " writes in Focus on Social Issues.
Sounds like its a good thing that there isn’t a Wedding Tux Challenge…the BIG turnout wouldn’t happen.
And headaches? "Women who had never been married were the least likely to suffer from headaches." Ok, it did go on to say "followed by married women" but I couldn’t resist.
Headlines that Push Instead of Grab
The headline, Finding
Time to Exercise is the kind of headline that makes me not want to
read the article that follows. It makes me want to pretend I didn’t see it. I already know that I should exercise
more and I know why I should exercise more (Is there anyone out there
who doesn’t?)…but since this article was part of a series
of other things that we should find time for that I thought sounded more
interesting than exercise, I took note. I may not be obsessed with exercise but
I admit I am a little obsessed with completion…the
exercise article was part of the series so for me, it was all or nothing.
So, I read the article on exercise; after all, it was short and I did have a
little extra time. As it turned out, after all the usual shoulds and even President
Bush finds the time the bottom line was to lower the bar really low….start with 10 minutes per
day and you can count going up and down steps. Sounds like a winning plan to me!
As I read the other “Finding Times†I noticed that they really were not
about finding time but rather about
making better use of time. For instance the article on finding time to read
suggested essentially having something to read with you at all times so that no
idle moment goes unread. I concur
wholeheartedly with that one…I just thought that behavior on my part was more about ADD than time management.
I did notice that the Finding Time to Exercise article was the
#3 most emailed article in the WSJ today…I guess it did grab attention after all. Or, they just emailed it away.
Now, the #5 most emailed article did grab my attention, Why
Don’t Kids Do Chores Anymore. My kids tell me that this is an absolute fact, phrased like this: “Mom, none of our
friends have to do chores.†I suggest then
that perhaps we not look at them as chores but as opportunities to learn skills
that their friends do not possess.
Divorce and Your Health
Todays Wall Street Journal reported a new study to be released at the upcoming Coalition for Marriage Conference showing that being divorced for long periods of time is related to increased liklihood of heart or lung disease, cancer, high blood pressure, diabetes, stroke and also to loss of mobility later in life. Also noteworthy: Don’t mistake re-marriage for a solution to the health problems of divorce. Researchers found that those in "low quality" remarriages are no better off health wise than those who remain divorced. In other words, take care with your choice of a new marriage partner.
-
Subscribe to RPB
-
Marianne's Space
-
Marianne's Profiles
-
Facebook
Myspace
Twitter
delicious
Technorati
Reddit
StumbleUpon
Flickr