Talking heads

Hello. My name is MALA and I’m a Sunday morning news show junkie. I’ll pour over my Sunday Post, letting my cafe latte grow cold as the pundits drone on and on picking apart one topic after another.

Sometimes they resort to name-calling and flinging accusations. I love that!

Now with the Presidential election soon approaching, other news shows are adopting a debate component into their program. Like the Clinton-Dole debates on 60 Minutes.

In truth, I have never watched their debates. Couldn’t tell you if they’re any good – but considering the ratings, I’m leaning towards NOT! – but you never know. I’ll make an effort to catch the next one and review it.

That said – the airwaves will soon be saturated with debates. Democratic candidates will debate one another leading up to the Primary elections. Followed by the 4 or 5 scheduled Presidential debates.

How many of you watch these? How relevant are these debates in helping you make a decision? What would make the debates better? And how many of you are news show junkies like me?

Attention all units

Police in northern England are scouring the 270-mile Pennine Way for a naked hiker.

Reuters reports:

“Imagine if your wife was stuck up on her own in the Dales, having her sandwiches and a bit of a nap when suddenly this man comes bumbling around the corner,” acting chief inspector Tadeusz Nowakowski, who is leading the hunt, said.

The mystery rambler could face charges of outraging public decency.

TV and Violence

Another interesting aspect of Dr. Richard Restak’s lecture was the correlation between hours spent watching television and the propensity of aggressive (violent) behavior.

He spoke of a study that followed 777 families in upstate New York over a period of 25 years. Here’s the breakdown according to daily viewing patterns:

about 3 hours – 18% prone to violent behavior

5 or more hours – 25% prone to violent behavior

less than 1 hour- 5.7% prone to violent behavior

And although violence wasn’t necessarily being watched, well over half the programs on tv depict some kind of violence (often with graphic images).

And after the terrorist attacks on September 11th, another study was released focusing on the effects of the media coverage. There was a direct correlation in patients diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and the amount of time spent watching the coverage of the airplanes slamming into the World Trade Towers followed by their collapse.

Just something to think about.

How much time do you spend watching tv? And what do you watch?

An orange a day will keep the doctor away

Loading up on Vitamin C may prevent damage caused by second-hand smoke.

That’s good news for me… after last night’s smoky bars.

Which brings me to smoking. DC is a smoker’s mecca – considering smoking is banned in California and New York and Delaware andMassachusetts.

On my travels I’ve noticed fewer airports with smoking rooms (LAX still has one) and less people smoking period.

But you’d never know this nationwide trend by walking the streets of DC. Everyone smokes…. walking on sidewalks, in cabs, in restaurants, in front of monuments, in between softball innings. Most of the people I know are smokers, have recently quit, or are ex-smokers. I know one person who quit smoking for more than five years, moved to DC, and picked up the habit again.

Looks like I’ll be stocking up on that Vitamin C.

Starlight, star bright

Mars is getting ready for its close-up at 5:51 a.m. EDT on Wednesday, August 27th. Our red neighbor will be less than 34.65 million miles away or closer to Earth than in almost 60,000 years.

Mark your calendars – you won’t want to miss this!

The things I worry about

So at the end of the workday, as I was preparing to leave the office for a night of carousing, the phone rang. It was a New York Times reporter looking for someone to interview. It was 5:15 p.m. He desperately needed to speak with someone that night (he was on a tight deadline).

An hour later, after acting as intermediary between the reporter and my CEO, I left the office. I didn’t confirm the interview (I was already running late), but both parties had home phone numbers, cell phone numbers and email addresses.

After my second scotch, an image popped into my mind. That image being of my CEO tapping furiously into his blackberry, trying to open the forwarded message I’d sent him with the reporter’s cell phone number.

Of course none of the people I was out with was familiar with the blackberry – they used an assortment of “other” PDA’s like Palm, Clio, Ipaq – not blackberry. So I was distracted from my conversations the rest of the evening. Even from the Atlanta Mister Big I met.

I woke up in a panic at 5:00 a.m. Unable to fall back asleep, I kept replaying these horrific scenes involving my Director, the CEO and lots of yelling. I arrive to work early to find that everything went off smoothly. While I was cursing my ineptitude at the bar, the CEO was giving a great 45 minute interview to the Times.

WHY do I do this to myself?

The road to genius

Richard Restak, a neurologist in private practice in D.C. and a member of the clinical faculty at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, claims that anyone can achieve prodigylike performance. Every super performer has three things in common: intense practice, solitary contemplation and deliberate concentration.

“Anyone can be a prodigy if they devote the time to it. The superior performer is a genius because of the ability to enhance a skill by focusing on perfecting a facet for 4 – 6 hours a day.”

An interesting concept. You too can become a pro-golfer, Olympic gymnast, Nobel prize winning physicist, NBA superstar, Chess Grandmaster.

Restak asserts that if you practice long and hard enough it is inevitable that you will excel. How long is enough? On the average, 6 hours a day for 10 years.

So – suddenly you can afford 6 hours per day to practice something intensely for 10 years. In 2013, what will you excel at?

Luxury item?

For all you readers out there, how do you get your hands on books? Do you borrow from the library? Borrow from friends? Or do you purchase them at your local book store?

Hillary doesn’t believe many Americans purchase books to own.

And it may be true. But I shop for books the way Carrie shops for shoes. Granted, I haven’t dropped $40,000 on my hardcover, leatherbound and autographed tomes…. more like $15,000+ over a decade.

But am I really the exception and not the rule?

Do most people think twice before grabbing the paperback for $15.95? Do people really put their name on library wait lists to get their hands on Allende, Brown, Cunningham. DeLillo, Ellison, Fforde, Garcia Marquez, Holmes, Ionesco, Jackson, Kingsolver, Lewis, Minot, Neruda, Orwell, Parkhurst, Quindlen, Rice, Steinbeck, Tolstoy, Updike, Vidal, Wolfe, Young, or Zola?