7 Color Lagoon

Yahoo Health cites Health Day about a study indicating that drinking moderately daily cuts heart attack risks for men.

(HealthDay News) — Having a drink or two each day appears to be better for the heart than having a drink just now and then, at least for middle-aged men, a Danish study finds.

Men who drank moderately each day had a 41 percent lower risk of heart disease than abstainers, while the risk was only 7 percent lower for those who drank on no more than one day a week, the researchers found. The team found no such benefit to daily drinking for women, however.

“This is one more study suggesting that a modest to moderate amount of alcohol in the world of heart disease is reasonably healthy,” said Dr. Richard A. Stein, clinical professor of medicine at Albert Einstein Medical Center i

In Mandarin this charming and strong film is He ni zai yi qi and was directed by Kaige Chen. It was released in 2002. We just saw it on our new DVD player after I bought a DVD at the local Blockbuster in Chetumal, Mexico. It promised it was in Ingles with subtitulos en Español (titled El Violinista in Latin America). Someone didn’t know the difference between Chinese and English. It was in Chinese with Spanish subtitles.

That has importance only to introduce some of the strengths of the film and film-maker. It is a wonderfully visual film for another story of a child prodigy(ies) and competitions. This one is not Fame. The photography moves the story as the story moves the pictures.

The characters are strongly drawn and forcefully acted. The plot is not really complex (at least until the twists at the end) but it moves you along. The dialog is well-done and sparse which was appreciated given my slow reading level in Spanish. But the sparseness is real and appropriate.

The story is of a 13 year old violinist of prodigious talent who travels from the Chinese hinterlands to Beijing for a music competition which would catapult him into a different class and change his future. He travels with his father who is a simple, working man trying hard to find the means to advance his son and must travel another road to understand the differences that such advancement will mean to their relationship.

The boy has the adventures of a boy that somehow are the more moving when he changes everyone with whom he comes into contact. There is a young woman he admires/befriends and her dysfunctional love affair, two music professors of widely different styles, the violin he carries and its’ story and, most of all, the shifting of relationships and classes, the unfolding of secrets and a few lessons in love.

Did I make it sound appealing? I hope so. This is a fine, well-seen and well-crafted film that is happy, sad, loving and charming without ever being sappy or clichèd.

See it. Preferably in your native language. 116 minutes. Written by Kaige Chen and Xiao Lu Xue

The Baptist Hospital of Miami (Baptist Health Systems of South Florida) newsletter reported recently that Clenbuterol, a asthma medication, might help heart failure patients maintain strength.

Body builders sometimes turn, illicitly, to the asthma medication clenbuterol to build up their muscles. Now, researchers say the medication might also help heart failure patients stay strong without the need for a heart transplant.

The first U.S. study of the medication found it was safe in a small number of study participants with heart failure.

MedicineNet.com reported on a study of the danger of NSAIDS painkillers for people with heart failure, especially older people.

MONDAY, May 22 (HealthDay News) — Common painkillers called nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) are associated with a 30 percent increased risk in older patients of first hospital admission for heart failure , a U.K. study reports.

I published today an article on Blogcritics titled “Immigrant Foods Threaten America”. It was to be light and satirical but became too political and cynical. In the end I was not too pleased with it although it remains fun — just as pizza is usually fun. It is also included in Eric Olsen’s compendium, “Blogcritics on Immigration”.

A growing cataract has been making computer work, photography and even reading more tiring and difficult. This may be one of fewer articles on Blogcritics so I would have wished it better.

I also added a comment later from Newsweek today which presented a column by Dr. Dean Ornish on how America needs to export healthy foods. He goes on to write of a study that showed that most immigrants are healthier when they come to America that after they have lived here in spite of their lack of medical resources and affluence in the “old country”. It does not say much for the American diet.

Waxing nostalgic I found some of my old architectural shots on the net (these were lost to me when out New York house was sold).

The site is by the the architect and his firm, Optimus Architecure. David Souers and his wife are former clients who I hated to have to stop working for. David is now based in Rhinebeck, New York.

Having lost the originals it was great to see work that I was proud of and that would have grown better if I had skipped the heart attack and wasn’t disabled. I would like to share some with stories, slowly.

More later about this shot from Poets’ Walk on the Hudson River in Barrytown, New York. It is a magical place and David Souer makes it more so with deceptively simple shelters, paths and wonderful views.

More on Poets’ Walk by Scenic Hudson Foundation later.

A discovery in the Kalahari desert in South Africa unearthed pieces of a 3-6 mile wide asteroid that hit the Earth. It is an interesting article.

The BBC reports on the new“> scientific measurements of happiness. They are beginning a six-part series on TV there called, “The Happiness Formula”.

The series promises to help you find out how happy you are. Nifty plan.

Scientists have felt that the word “happiness” has been too vague and too surrounded by the mythos of cartoon or movie views of “happy people” dancing with pleasure. Now, however, “… Neuroscientists are measuring pleasure. They suggest that happiness is more than a vague concept or mood; it is real.”

There is another epiphany, folks. Happiness is real. Pleasure is real. Do not worry that you were missing something when you didn’t hear bells and the earth didn’t shake. You might have been happy anyway.

Now here is the scientific, complex measurement process of which they speak.

“Social scientists measure happiness simply by asking people how happy they are.

It is argued that what a person says about their own happiness tends to tally with what friends or even strangers might say about them if asked the same question.”

This is the scientific breakthrough the world has waited for. The mad scientist asks, “How happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10?”

“About 5″, you say, thinking of great sex, a good movie and a surly waitress at lunch.

“Aha”, says he/she, “You are a moderately happy person.”

It is scientific and high-tech.

The leading American psychologist Professor Ed Diener from the University of Illinois, told The Happiness Formula that the science of happiness is based on one straightforward idea:

“It may sound silly but we ask people ‘How happy are you 1-7, 1-10?

“And the interesting thing is that produces real answers that are valid, they’re not perfect but they’re valid and they predict all sorts of real things in their lives.”

One type of measurement even tries to record people’s levels of happiness throughout the day wherever they are.

Ecological momentary assessment uses hand held computers.

The person being quizzed is beeped and then taken through a questionnaire.

They have made amazing new discoveries:

Happy people live longer than depressed people.

Happy people have close friends, they say. (But maybe people with close friends are happier people.)

“Standard of living has increased dramatically and happiness has increased not at all, and in some cases has diminished slightly,” said Professor Daniel Kahneman of the University of Princeton.

“There is a lot of evidence that being richer… isn’t making us happier”. I think that someone may have made this discovery somewhat earlier.

©Beringer-Dratch. Visit the photoblog.

Happily, they also note some ways to be happier. We were waiting for this part, weren’t we?

“Look for meaning in your life.” Somehow I don’t believe that religion is the only way to do this.

Develop deep relationships with family and friends.

It is even suggested that friendship can ward off germs. Our brains control many of the mechanisms in our bodies which are responsible for disease.

Marriage (I assume a successful one) adds 7 years to your life.

Another element is “… having goals embedded in your long term values that you’re working for, but also that you find enjoyable.” I would call that doing what you like and liking what you are doing.

“The first episode of The Happiness Formula was shown on BBC Two at 1900 BST on Wednesday.”

Another happy place to visit is The World Database of Happiness.

The is an e-zine for those looking for A Daily Dose of Happiness. Google, alone, promises 70,400,000 more citations on the subject of happiness. Be happy. Don’t worry.

Going over to the site of the American Psychological Association putting “happiness” into their search box revealed 107 documents. They are right on it. One article, “Review of Research Challenges Assumption that Success Makes People Happy: Happiness May Lead to Success via Positive Emotions” is indicative and positive.

Personal and professional success may lead to happiness but may also engender success. Happy individuals are predisposed to seek out and undertake new goals in life and this reinforces positive emotions, say researchers who examined the connections between desirable characteristics, life successes and well-being of over 275,000 people…

Get happy, get successful. It is a good outlook.

Just as an aside, the cardiologists’ test (the New York Scale” for the severity of “angina” (chest pain) is based on asking you how bad it hurts on a scale of 1-10. So we see that happiness and pain share some common elements like measurement on these scientific scales.

Don’t worry. Be happy.

This article was just posted on Blogcritics.org. It is a silly piece about a sillier “scientific” study.

The photo in the article is of a fruteria worker who might make $US 8 or 10 a day. He is not rich but doesn’t look too sad. Just to support that old hypothesis that money doesn’t make you happy.

On the other hand my cousin recently sent me an aphorism I did like: “Happiness can’t buy you money”.

This is not to do with the voyages of Admiral Zheng He decades before Columbus.

It is a wonderful astro-photograph of the Large Magellanic Cloud © Wei-Hao Wang, astrophotographer. He works with the University of Hawaii Institute for Astronomy.

I was re-reading my own recent article, “Will Blogging Make You Blind? (see my post of 6 April and the link to Blogcritics.) I am not sure if it is the culprit for some vision problems but, still, I have not been writing enough and posting enough and I miss it. I do like sharing these especially successful astro photos.

The source for the photo was, as is often the case, The Astronomical Picture of the Day from NASA.