Dreamland

By Sam Quinones

Kindle edition

P10 4%- "Later, I met other parents whose children were still alive, but who had shape-shifted into lying, thieving slaves to an unseen molecule. These parents feared each night the call that their child was dead in a McDonald’s bathroom"

I love this metaphor of being a slave to the "unseen molecule" and that this opiate molecule becomes a character in the story.

Pg 16 5% "The secretary put the letter in an envelope and sent it off to the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, which, in due course, in its edition of January 10, 1980, published Dr. Jick’s paragraph on page 123 alongside myriad letters from researchers and physicians from around the country. It bore the title “Addiction Rare in Patients Treated with Narcotics.” With that, Hershel Jick filed the paragraph away and gave the letter scant thought for years thereafter. He published dozens of articles—including more than twenty in the NEJM alone. Jane Porter left the hospital and Dr. Jick lost track of her."

Little.did Dr Jick no it at the time, but this "paragraph" would be converted into a bonifide study but drug companies as they brought out more and more super-addictive and highly lucrative opiod based products to foist on an unsuspecting public.

Pg 25 8%
About the only new folks who came to Portsmouth then were merchants of the poor economy. Portsmouth got its first check-cashing places and its first rent-to-owns. Pawnshops and scrap metal yards opened. And David Procter expanded his practice.

The merchants of the poor economy yes. Read all about it in Gary Rivlin's Broke USA. There is big money in the poor.

Pg 25 8% "A new attitude was taking hold in American medicine at the time. The patient, it held, was always right, particularly when it came to pain. The doctor was to believe a patient who said he was in pain. David Procter embodied this new attitude, and then some. He had a folksy style, with a little of the evangelist in him."

I remember this change happening and thinking that it was overkill. They told us "pain is what the pt says it is." Then threatned us with legal action if we did not comply. The people pushing the hardest for this change were...you guessed it, the very same drug companies that made the drugs.

P35 9% "Valium became the pharmaceutical industry’s first hundred-million-dollar drug, and then its first billion-dollar drug. By the midseventies Valium was found indeed to be addictive and a street trade grew up around it."

Arthur Sackler and his new concept of drug advertisements and salesmen had struck gold and later in another decade he would do it again.

Pg 31 10% "But Arthur Sackler is important to this story because he founded modern pharmaceutical advertising and, in the words of John Kallir, showed the industry “that amazing things can be achieved with direct selling and intensive direct advertising.” Years later, Purdue would put those strategies to use marketing its new opiate painkiller OxyContin."

Pg 53 16% "In London in 1874, Dr. Alder Wright was attempting to find a nonaddictive form of morphine when he synthesized a drug that he called diacetylmorphine—a terrific painkiller. In 1898, a Bayer Laboratory chemist in Germany, Heinrich Dreser, reproduced Wright’s diacetylmorphine and called it heroin—for heroisch, German for “heroic,” the word that Bayer workers used to describe how it made them feel when Dreser tested it on them."

The ARC was shut down in the 1970s, when the U.S. Senate’s Church Committee, investigating the Central Intelligence Agency, found that the ARC had done experiments with LSD on inmates at the behest of the CIA. With that, an era ended. The Farm was transformed into the prison and hospital that it is today.

Pg 82 24% "Worldwide morphine consumption began to climb, rising thirtyfold between 1980 and 2011. But a strange thing happened. Use didn’t rise in the developing world, which might reasonably be viewed as the region in most acute pain. Instead, the wealthiest countries, with 20 percent of the world’s population, came to consume almost all—more than 90 percent—of the world’s morphine"

Pg84 25% "In 1984, Purdue Frederick produced one solution. It released MS Contin, a timed-release morphine pill—the product of that conversation Robert Twycross had with the Napp Pharmaceuticals reps in England years before. MS Contin was intended for cancer and postoperative patients."

Pg 91 27% "Initially, the market they sold to was older addicts like him—the heroin underworld that had survived since the 1970s, when the drug was last popular. But as it happened, illicit use of another drug—a pharmaceutical called OxyContin—was creating a vast new market for heroin among middle- and upper-class white people. Folks with money. When he heard about OxyContin, he began to follow it, knowing that if he did, he would soon have a market."

Pg 94 27% "An idea advanced that pain counteracted opiates’ euphoric effect and thus reduced the risk of addiction. In a statement on its website, the American Pain Society claimed that risk of addiction was low when opiates are used to treat patients in pain."
Wrong!!!

Pg 95 28% "We need to train doctors and nurses to treat pain as a vital sign.” The American Pain Society trademarked the slogan “Pain: The Fifth Vital Sign” and used it to promote the idea that doctors should attend to pain as routinely as to the other vital signs."

This was the beginning of the end. I remember when this change started happening and I remember thinking hmm this could be problematic.

In 1998, the Veterans Health Administration made pain a “fifth vital sign”—another gauge of a patient’s baseline health, along with pulse, blood pressure, body temperature, and respiration. The Joint Commission for Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO)—which accredits sixteen thousand health care organizations in the United States—did the same."

I was a nurse at the VA at this time and got a ring side seat.for start of the debacle. And JACHO? They are always quick to jump on any bandwagon that rolls by.

The California legislature required hospitals and nursing homes to screen for pain along with the other vital signs. The state’s Board of Pharmacy was by then assuring members that “studies show [opiates have] an extremely low potential for abuse” when used correctly."

Studies show? So far we have one speculative paragraph by Dr Jick and the biased Pourtenoy study from Sloan. Studies show huh? I hear that phrase alot at work when introducing some new misconception to my workplace. Ive learned over the years to get on the hip waders when I hear that term becuase that usually means the shit is about to get deep.

"In Tulsa, Oklahoma, two pediatric nurses—Donna Wong and her colleague, Connie Baker—sought a way of assessing pain in children who had trouble describing what they felt."

Patients are asked to quantify their pain according to a scale—numbered from 0 to 10, 10 being worst. These scales were highly subjective, but they were about the only pain-measurement tools medicine had to offer."

Subjective? Ya think?

Crucial implements in the revolution were Press Ganey surveys. Designed by a physician and a statistician, the surveys gauged patient satisfaction with their doctors. The surveys were a reasonable idea. They became widely used at U.S. hospitals in the 1990s as patient rights grew paramount and the JCAHO began aggressively measuring how hospitals treated patient pain."

Welcome to "Burger King" medicine. Have it your way at all costs even to the detriment of your own health...who was saying something about do no harm? Hmm

Through all this, patients were getting used to demanding drugs for treatment. They did not, however, have to accept the idea that they might, say, eat better and exercise more, and that this might help them lose weight and feel better."

Oh no. We never take responsibility for our own issues thats what i pay (or in most cases dont pay) you for.

[Im starting.to remember why i stopped using this awful program to take notes. It sucks

“The fifth vital sign” was a “concept, not a guide for pain assessment,” one report read. Along with the pain number scale, a doctor ought to ask numerous questions about a patient’s pain history, the pain’s location, severity, impact on daily life, as well as the patient’s family history, substance abuse, psychological issues, and so on. In fact, pain was really not a vital sign, after all, for unlike the four real vital signs it cannot be measured objectively and with exactitude."

Isnt that a lovely suit the Emperor is wearing.

“The way you’re reimbursed in a day, if you actually take the time to treat somebody’s pain, you’d be out of business,” one longtime family doc told me. “By the model you’re stuck in, you can’t do it. The hospital will get rid of you. If you’re by yourself, you can’t pay for your secretary.”

This is the elephant that no one wants to address. You want me to do all this good new stuff that studies show will help but i dont have time to. Like this doc above, if I actually did everything i was supposed to do i would be out of a job. They wouldnt pay the kind of overtime it would.rwquire to actually do what the plan requires.

These drugs were advertised mostly to primary care physicians, who had little pain-management training and were making their money by churning patients through their offices at a thirteen-minute clip. Not much time for nuance. Not much time for listening, or for open-ended questions that might elicit long and complicated answers."

Truer words have never been spoken. They tell you :heres what you do its easy" .but the plan has no basis in reality. The ones writing the plans have no clue what it actually takes to get this done in this bottom feeder mentality of health care today. Just talk to the pt they say. Get to know them. Then they tell you  "oh by the way you are short a nuse again and theres no secretary and the pca is sitting. So good luck."

Years after his Pain paper, suggesting that pain patients treated with opiates might not be at risk of addiction, Portenoy said it was based on “weak, weak, weak data” and called it “a little paper [that] turned into an important paper.”

So much for that study.

By the 1990s, it would have alarmed Dr. Hershel Jick, out in Boston, to know that his letter to the editor of the New England Journal of Medicine, which he had long forgotten, had become a foundation for a revolution in U.S. medical practice. This was wildly beyond anything Herschel Jick intended when he penned it."

Wait a minute theres nothing to Jick either?
Hmm

That “less than 1 percent” statistic stuck. But a crucial point was lost: Jick’s database consisted of hospitalized patients from years when opiates were strictly controlled in hospitals and given in tiny doses to those suffering the most acute pain, all overseen by doctors. These were not chronic-pain patients going home with bottles of pain pills. It was a bizarre misinterpretation, for Jick’s letter really supported a contrary claim: that when used in hospitals for acute pain, and then when mightily controlled, opiates rarely produce addiction. Nevertheless, its message was transformed into that broad headline: “Addiction Rare in Patients Treated with Narcotics"

See how they run

A lot went into making it so. Porter and Jick appeared in that bible of scholarly and journalistic rectitude, the New England Journal of Medicine"

Ohh is that sarcasm

in 2010 did the NEJM put all its archives online; before that, the archives only went back to 1993. To actually look up Porter and Jick, to discover that it was a one-paragraph letter to the editor, and not a scientific study"

Yep one paragraph of musings

Everyone knew of opiates’ painkilling benefits. But how addictive were they? That was the question. Most doctors figured history and experience showed that the answer was: very. Porter and Jick, as it was cited, suggested otherwise. So did Dr. Portenoy: Depending on the patient, he believed, these drugs might be used to great advantage."

Use of opiates, meanwhile, changed medical thinking. Usually, a patient demanding ever-higher doses of a drug would be proof that the drug wasn’t working. But in opiate pain treatment, it was taken as proof that the doctor hadn’t yet prescribed enough. Indeed, some doctors came to believe that a pain patient demanding higher doses was likely to be exhibiting signs of “pseudoaddiction,” looking for a dose large enough to kill the pain—the cure for which was more opiates"

I gotta feva more cowbell

where OxyContin had already tenderized the terrain, sold not to tapped-out old junkies but to younger kids, many from the suburbs, most of whom had money and all of whom were white. Their transition from Oxy to heroin, he saw, was a natural and easy one. Oxy addicts began by sucking on and dissolving the pills’ timed-release coating. They were left with 40 or 80 mg of pure oxycodone. At first, addicts crushed the pills and snorted the powder. As their tolerance built, they used more. To get a bigger bang from the pill, they liquefied it and injected it. But their tolerance never stopped climbing. OxyContin sold on the street for a dollar a milligram and addicts very quickly were using well over 100 mg a day. As they reached their financial limits, many switched to heroin, since they were already shooting up Oxy and had lost any fear of the needle."

Pain Killer, Barry Meier

Books
American Night: The Literary Left in the Era of the Cold War.
By Alan Wald

David Courtwright Dark Paradise,  history of opiate addiction in America.

William Burroughs Junky

Once Upon a Time in Russia: The Rise of the OligarchsA True Story of Ambition, Wealth, Betrayal, and Murder

By Ben Mezrich

When Russia fell the assests of the state.wound up in the hands of 9 men. This  book tells the story of how.that came about.

In the opening of the book we see Putin caling the oligarchs .together, to Stalin's old house, to warn them, "you can keep your millions, but stay out of my way. He was serving notice to these "Yeltsin Era Oligarchs", watch your ass! Many of these men would not  heed the warning and would.not survive in the Putin Era.

FROM WIKIPEDIA:

"The most influential and exposed oligarchs from the Yeltsin era include Boris Berezovsky,Alexander Smolensky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky,Alex Konanykhin, Mikhail Fridman, Anatoly Chubais, Vladimir Gusinsky, Vitaly Malkin andVladimir Potanin.^[5]

Potanin, Malkin and Fridman are the only ones of the list to have retained their influence in the Putin era (1999- ). The others "have been purged by the Kremlin", according to The Guardian."

9 The first "Oligarch" we meet is Boris Abromovich Berezovsky, oil king.

11 Growimg up as a, "less desirable ethnicity," with a gift for mathematics, the best life young Boris could have ever hoped for was,"a.simple quiet life of books and laboratories."

11 "And then--Perestroika...first Gorbachev...then Yeltsin...then an infant form of capitalism that was just now reaching it's chaotc teenage years.

14 As a math wiz, Young Boris undestood.the power of inflation and how it works in the favor.of the debtor. He utilized this principle to "arbitrage" his was to 60 million dollar bank account.

15 People in Russia just after fall took to calling it the "Wild East."

32 A brief look here at our second Oligarch,  Vladimi Gusinsly, owner of Russia's NTV network and insider banker.

33 At first, the auctioning of Russiian resources was meant to be egalitarian, available to everone. A program setup by Anatoly Chubais, was to work like a Russian stock market with vouchers going.to the common man and everyone benefitting from the sale. What began as a "noble idea," quickly fell victim to the  forces of the same "massive inflation" that propeled Berezovsky to the top. One by one Russia resouces ie,"timber, copper, automobiles, textiles," and finally media, "wound up in the hands of a small group of like-minded businessmen," the oligarchs.

This is hardly a new concept in this world. The same thing happened here in the US after our Revolution. The departing soldiers were payed in script called continentals (remember the phrase not worth a continental, yes it comes.from this). Later, the fledgling US government determined to pay full value to redeem these notes and the "insiders" with the means to pay for them went on a buying spree. The soldier got some (very little) money for what he assumed was worthless paper, and those on the inside, with the means to purchase, became fabulously wealthy. Capitalism and Communism are just two faces of Oligarchy.

 

Adios America The Lefts Plan To Tur Our Countr Into a Third World Hellhole

By Anne Coulter

Oh she's at it again. The Viscous Vixen of Verbal Vituperation has written another (and don't laugh out loud when I say this) "book."

She does make a few good points that I actually agree with. But as per her usual, quickly surrenders the high ground with her endlessly ignorat hate.speech.

I have to say this time it isn't all the lefts fault, with some.finger pointing at the right as well.

The point is good Anne. We must.close the border and deal with our immigrants. 

The Dorito Effect: The Surprising New Truth About Food And Flavor

By Mark Schatzker

This book is a follow-up to Tomatoland by .
Todays food is being bred for looks and ease of growth and abundance. The thing being bred out is taste.  This book chronicles the evolution of that process.

We open up with the invention of the Dorito. The ongoing metaphor of.the book is that the Dorito was just a poor-selling tortilla chip until the "Flavoring" was added. This is what is happening to the rest of the foods that are more bland than ever until the "Flavoring" is added.

19 Chapter Two: What happened to the chickens.

22 The beginning of the end of chickens was at A&P's Chicken Of Tommorrow contests. 

23 This event,"would go on to doom the flavor of chicken and dumplings for decades to come"

26 "they are all broilers now. Words like 'Fryer' and 'roaster' still appear in cookbooks, but they dont exist anymore. We eat gigantic babies."

28 Not just poultry suffers, fruits and vegetables are steadily loosing there nutritional value as well and our paid "watchdogs" who should care, dont. Read,"As The Food Quality Drops, The USDA Just Shrugs," an article by Cheryl Long in Organic Gardening.

29 After several studies the results were in, "the reason that things like broccoli, wheat and corn had changed [was] just like chickens, they had been selected to grow.faster and bigger, and that was diluting the nutrients."

So there you have our bigger andbetter-looking.food is not all it purports to be.

31 Monsanto soent 10 million dollars trying to fix bland tomatoes. There aswer to bland genetically engineered tomatoes? What else more genetic engineering. To a man with a hammer everything looks like a nail. Instead of.going back to the real tomato they further "frakenchised" it with the same poor results. What did Einstein say about stupidity.?

64 "Modern milk is like modern cjickecken and modern tomatoes--bland and watety."

The author says theyput butter Flavoring in margerine to make it taste more like butter.  Now the put it in butter too, to make butter taste more. Like butter.

69 In MRI scanning, the same.pleasure centers light up for.food addicts as heroin addicts when shown pictures of their particular pleasure. This is no surprise to me. Also, studies show the craving has alot.more to do with addiction than the actual substance that is craved. 

76  Although we crave and are physically rewarded by our salt, sugar, fat (read the book Salt, Sugar Fat for the full story on these three), and now umami (the savory taste), the author says its the flavor that causes the craving that causes us to eat. "We crave flavors."

81 So congratulations to us, for we figured out how to get as fat as we want. We now haventhe technology to stay wrapped in fat for the rest of our very shortened lifetimes.

82 According to our author,"We're done for. The rise in obesity is a predictable result in the rise of manufactured deliciousness."

Remember,  only 31% of the population does not have the problem. 

82 The future looks bleak, time to buy stock in "Lipitor and sweatpants."

120 Olecanthol in olive oil operates on the ssame.pathways as ibuprofen in the body and may be responsible for some.of the health benefits of the Mediterranean diet.

130 the fake frankenfood is everywhere in the supermarket. All diversein tastes and flavors but beneath the surface, it's all the same. Dannon strawberry yogurt has no strawnerries in it.

132 Today, we pop multivitamins even though years of research suggests they do nothing to augment health.

137 "This was get-up-out-of-your-chair and start dancing fried chicken." Chef Robert Irvine says good foo should make to wanna dance. I guess he was right.

140 The Buckeye chicken actually tastes like chicken. Who knew?

144 Good, naturally flavored, fills ypu up better, and therefore, you eat less.

Check this out in USA Today

http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2015/06/22/general-mills-artificial-ingredients-cereal/29101165/

General Mills to Nix Artificial Flavoring from its cereals

 (Ha no way) whars the catch?

152 Humans love eating the plants that give off defense mechanisms when they are consumed. Animals get the message and.leavethem alone but we actually love the taste of their defensive juices. We love toxic pesticides, "nicotine, cocaine, heroin and THC -'even caffiene- all evolved to interfere with neuronal.signaling in herbivors." We get a kick out of being intoxicated, a word the author reminds us, has the word toxic in.it. 

Read this paper

Explaining Human Recrearional Use Of Pesticides published in Frontiers in Psychiatry.

158 So the problem is that the foods that are actually good for us are be oming vlander and less tasty, while.the food that are not good.for us are just the opposite. And then if.you make "diet.food" that tastes real.good people.just o ereat.that in a.process known as the "snackwell effect."

162 We still wait.in vain for.someone to figure out, in an economical way, how to deliver natures flavor and nutrition. "For everone else, pass the Doritos

171 "It's simple to eat healthy," says Michael Pollan, "just.eat foods your grandmother would recognize."

174 I oder to no have the ranco a GMOtomatoa would cause, Tomato expert Harry Klee will breed the changes into the tomato that make it tastier.

176 Klees experiments proved that "yoeld does not have to come at the expense of flavor. So far, no one.cares. Tastleless sells.

197 Remember "big food" only cares about te bottom line. If these companies see there is money to be had in flavor,  then.flavor we shall have.

198 Whose fault is it for this ttal lack of interest in flavor? The author blames "the horde of shopping cart pushers that thinks anything that costs more than 99c a pound os a rip off."

206 the Apoendix gives useful hints on how to eat better. Eating a wide variety of things in a good way to proper nutrition. Also avoid food that flavor was added by a PhD. 

This is a good ook for learning how to eat better and therefore less.

Books:

Neurogastronmy by Gordon Shepard. This book is about the science of food enjoyment.

Move: Putting America's Infrastructure Back in the Lead

By Rosadeth Moss Kanter

So now we live in a world of yesterdays and has-beens and crumbling infrastructure. The drive that made us the envy of the world in the post-war era, has left us. We once knocked out the big projects like the US highway system and now we cant even keep our potholes filled.

I first realized that we has lost.the race, or at least passed the torch, while watching an engineering show. This show portrayed massive building projects all over the world. It showed the biggest and bestest technology and none of them were in America. Thats when I first started to realize that we were no longer us in the lead.

This book tells how we can start to reverse this trend. Instead of waiting for our incapacitated and.feeble Federal government to act, we are going.to have to fix it ourselves. Entrepreneurs all over America are beginning to find ways to improve our situation qhile.making a buck too.  Certainly nothing wrong with that.

5 It's just a matter of priorities claims Kanter saying that "America has the expertise and innovation" and even the money needed to fix the problem, but we lack the combined will. Countries that out-perform us in these  areas "allocate public money for public works at the national level." 

9 "The average American commuter wastes a total of 38 hours in traffic per year." This is a consequence of our choices. There was a time, in America, when we had a choice between mass transportation and solo. We would have to decide if it would be buses and trains or trucks and cars. We went with cars and we atill suffer the consequences of that decision today. The author goes on to detail our shame here.

11 Then we take a look around the world, we whiz through the ' Chunnel'...ride a high-speed.train in China," and even enjoy a high-speed internet connection in the sticks in Turkey.

13 Chicago street swallows minivan in 2011.

Well spend money when it comes.to."defense" or war. Thats how we got the US highways and the Apollo program. 

23 Michael Ward CEO of CSX gets a nod for making his compnay greener and more responsive to the environmemt.

24 Yes the Tappan-Zee Bridge. Thats a big infrastructure project and right in my backyard. 

Chapter 2 On the Rails

Other countries have trains that move along aafely at speeds of 150-200 miles an hour. We're unsafe at.35 mph on our trains. Everyday.theres a new horror story on the news of yet another train accident in America. I would not feel.safe on trains of planes right now. Although statistically driving is much more damgerous, I'll drive.

The Japanese bullet trains are faster and safer than ours and as we learned from David Sedaris, cleaner too. In one of his books i read he marvels at the fact that when the little Japanese forls.gets smudges all over the train window, the mother cleans the window before she gets off the train.

47 The Chicago rail hub is deemed "The Slowest Six Miles in America." It is the most inefficient and ineffective mass of steel ever contrived and cloggs the through traffic in its bowels.

58 I did not realize Amtrak was a government-owned corporation. It comes from passage of the 1970 Rail Passenger Service Act which created the National Railroad Passanger Corporation, aka Amtrak.

61 Federal reimbursement for rail has gone down since 1976 at  4.95%. Its now 1.02%. This while the others sectors, ie highways and aviation, havenremained stable or gained. This shows where the priority lies.

69 We either invest in railroads or that freight the carry is going to move to the already congested highways causing, as the author says,"crioling delays for commuters and 2o million tons of CO2 emissions from trucks."

Rail infrastructure is cumbling and outdated due to lack of inteest and funding.  Im remembering Arlo..  Good monnin' American how are ya.

Choter 3 Airlines

74 The Airline industry "1.3 trillion in economic actvity [and [ supports 10.2 million jobs.

75 The ASCE says if we don't start uograding now 350,000 of those jobs will dissapear.

110 Stewart International Airport in Newburgh ny was privtley owedfrom 2001-2007. Then it was sold back to theport authority as a bad investment.

124 HOT (High Occupancy Toll) lanes are "dynamically priced" and can vary from 25 cents to five dollars depending on traffic congestion and time of day. Either pay up or sit in traffic. Wow I've heard of a two-tiered internet, but a two-teired Highway? Big data will help government and the pseudo-government (corporations) to suck every last penny out of us with much greater effeciency. This "dynamic pricing" gambit is popping up all over now on the internet with prices being set individually depending on how much they think they can get you to pay.

128 Digital billboards, which have proven to be more distracting then the regular ones ("80% of accidents are caused by driver distraction") are coming to a highway near you. They will be able to "communicate with the vehicle t display a message custom designed for the driver".  So now those crazy ads that follow us around the internet, will follow us around the highway too.

Imagne a dystopian future where advertising, now ubiquitous, follows us everywhere we go.

Hey how about if were willing to look at ads, you give us a break on the HOT pricing?

133 "In mid-2014, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty and Apple CEO Tim Crook stood together in silicon valley to announce a partnership to combine data analysis, cloud, and mobile technology with smartphones and tablets." How bout dynamic advertising on your dashboard screen? I think George Carlin said it best when he said bend over a little further so we can shove this big advettising poll a little further up your arse.

150 Dynamic pricing coming.to a parking meter near.you. apparently parking apps,which are intended to help you.find parking faster by.announcing empty spots, will alos adjust.price to the need. Just like the HOT lanes, those who can afford.it, and want to pay up, will move.to the head of.the line.

162 Smart street lights with cameras led.to a "24% lower rate of fatal red-light running crashes. However, it has also lead to an increase in rear-nd collisions caus by drivers locking up the breaks at the red light. Such is human behavior, and that cannot be digitized, not yet at least.

The time is rapidly.approaching when you could be sitting in the park and.order anything and have.it delivered to you. Moblile phone technology and drones will enable this.

175 Well Mr. Putnam we may not be"Bowling Alone" much longer. Cities are now trying to change.things u ppo by reversing the trend so prevalent since the 50's. They seek to place te needs of people over cars and improve the "public space." Theses.cities.will becme.more people centric as the last great migration plays out.

Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a New Utopia

by Anthony M. Townsend

Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World

by Doug Saunders

Arrival City: The Final Migration and Our Next World

by Doug Saunders 

Aerotropolis: The Way We'll Live Next by Kasarda, John D., Lindsay, Greg 1st (first...

Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community

by Robert D. Putnam

The Internet of Things: How Smart TVs, Smart Cars, Smart Homes, and Smart Cities...

by Michael Miller

Wrestling with Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York's Master Builder and Transformed...

by Anthony Flint

181 The main thing that must improve and expand as the city of tommorrow comes.into focus--public transportation. Sudies show that physical mobility actally leads to social mobility and upward mobility.

The "smart bus stop" of.the future will include a.kipsk amd.connectivity with you.cell phone.to tell you which bus to take and exactly.when it will arrive at.your stop.

190 When unban improvement projects fail to connect the grass roots milage varies and hilarity ensues. For example, MARTA, which stands for Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority was translated by the urban users of.said system as "Moving African Americans Rapidly Through Atlanta."

254 The discussion here is how to finance the big projects, like the Miami Port Tunmel, without raising taxes. One scheme,.proposed by John Delancy (D-MD ), would allow the corporations who hide their money off shore to avoid taxes to "repatriate" that money as long as they buy bonds bonds with it. That would be a nice reward for the unethical corps.

256 "The American dilemma is politics, not money.

From.Wikipedia:

Garrett Augustus Morgan, Sr. (March 4, 1877 – July 27, 1963) was an African-American inventor and community leader.^[1] His most notable inventions included a respiratory hood to protect against smoke and a semaphore, a type of traffic signal which used hands controlled by a person in a booth to direct traffic

Many innovations are.coming quickly to American transoortation. With the right guidance and decision making we could maybe catch up the rest of the "civilized" world yet.

Books:

Change Masters

Rosabeth Moss Kanter

Confidence: How winning streaks and Loosing Streaks Begin and End

World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy

Natural Born Heroes: How a Daring Band of Misflits Mastered the Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance

Christopher Macdougal

I love that way.this book out with the dissapearence of General Heinrich Kreipe in Crete on April 24, 1944. Its a very complelling beginning that makes the reader want to dive right in. Macdougals earlief work, Born To Run, was just fabulous and gave me alot. I can't wait to see what this book has to offer me as well.

12 General Keitel says if It werent.for the "unbelievably strong resistance of the Greeks," They would have invaded Russia two critical months earlier and changed the outcome of the war.

13 The real secret to endurance is finding away to burn fat ("one fifth of your nody"), instead of carbs. Cant wait till he tells us. I could run to China with all my fat.

Fascia, the body's connectibe tissue, is more efficient, and more resilient than b ulk muscle.

14 One must master the art of "natural movement."

18 Churchill wanted to turn ordinaey people into clandestine fighters in the mold of "Lawrence of Arabi."

23 The author tells the story of a Pennsylvania Pincipal, who out maneuvered a machete weilding maniac. The principal,   Norina Bentzel, "when sshe crossed her arms and retreated, she instinctively seized on exactly the posture recommend in pankration, the ancient Greek art of no-rules fighting." 

First, become master of the amygdala. This organ calculates you chances of succes in what you are about to attempt nased on previous experience. If it thinks you can you usally can; if not you shut down.

26 According to Darwinian theory, a hero sacrificing himself for his fellow man,  "would leve no offspeing to inherit his noble nature." 

"So, if natural selection eliminates natural heroism, why does it still exist?"

31 "Heroism isn't some mysterious inner virtue, the hreeks believed, it's a collection of skills that every man and woman can master so that in a pinch, they can beome a protector" (hero).

33 FOM Hitlers Amerika Bombers

36 The German airborne commamdos jumping into Vrete were issured "tabletss of Pervitin, an early version of crystal meth."

Max Schmeling, the man who knockeed out Joe Louis, would ne amomg the troops "liberating" Crete.

47 FOM The Battle of Crete tactics and strategy.

48 The Vretan, nicknamed Beowulf, began to climb the stteep mountain "and isntead of struggling, [he] seemed to.fall upward, bouncing from rock to rock for hours with n odd effortless looking elasticity" (fascia!).

58 It's "Parkour! Also called free - running.

FOM Parkour terninology and style. Rewaatch brod city parkour episode for the terminology.

65 The secret "dirty tricks" commando squad the Churchill envisioned woulf be code-named "The Firm."

68 Recruited from Shanghai were two Brits known as "the Twins". The men were Fairbairn and Sykes and they were experts at street fighting, including "how tostab a man to death with a sheet of newspaper. The two were not strong but tjey were "really wobbly," thats what made them deadly.

68 "When it comes to raw strength, muscle is only a minority partner. The real powerhoue iss our 'fascia profunda'."

70 The "stromg-men" of the 1950's were rigjt on track with the indian war.clubs and themedicine ball; it's all about elastic recoil energy.

The fibrous elastoc tissue  courses throughout your body, and when used correctly, leets you martial the strength of severall muscle groups on tandem. The author describes it ass a DNA looking fiber that twists from your heals to your shoulders.

72 The fascia actually is loaded with neurons thht constantly communicate. The amygdala is one the recipients of this communication.

The actions are locked in to facilktate doing the motion again. And whatever posture you assumed to pull it off now becomes locked in.

81 Want to win a wild west gunfight? Just point and shoot. Let.the fascia aim.

FOM Wing Chun

91 learn to be instinctibe in the "trapping zone."

92 FOM pankration techniques

93 Pankration means "total power and knowledge"  Pankration wentndorth with Alexander and is believed to be the basis for most martial arts. "Natural movement and.elsaticity can make anyone" a formidable adversary.

Pg 98 FOM the gallilee skull. The first neaderthal.found outside Europe.

108 The Hellenist mytjology of Kronos swallowing babies and Zeus triumphant sounds similat to tje Sumerian creation myth with Tiamot. FOM about these similarities.

115 In Greece there is the concept of Xenia and all it denotes in serving.your fellow man like "the Hero of Flight 90."

119 This Pendlebury, like Schlieman before him, believed the myths of Greece, or really tje Minoans, was actually based in reality. What a great concept.

121 Schleiman passed the torch to Evans who passed it on to Pendlebury. "All thistime a written road map had been right there." This concept when carried over to strange being descending from the heavens gives new meaning to the old "made up" stories. What if these people, in  pictures and writing were justndescribing what they were actually seeing. Intriguing. 

123 After Minoo's son was killed after winning all events in the Athenian games, King Minos demended retribution. "Minos forced Athens to send fourteen of its finest young men and women every year to be sacrificed to the Minotaur." I guess we know where the "Hunger Games" concept came from. In the basement of the actual palace of Minos were piles of bones of children, thought by Evans to be the bones of these victims.

124 Theseus, with the help of Adiadne Mino's daughter, slew the beast andnreturned to Athens. It was then, our author claims, "when the Minotaur died, pankration was born."

155 The hardest part about parkour isnt strength, its confidence. 

161 The Greeks learned early to forage. What other think of as weeds the Greeks know as useful nutrition, like watercress "the most nutritionally dense of all vegetables."

The weeds that we discard are actually the real food that, with the help of "big food" companies has been deemed to have no value. And the crap we are enticed to eat has actually very little real food. How did we come to this state?

176 "Tara" is the strogholg of ancient Irish kings

200 This section talks about the eruption of Martinique in the presidency of Teddy Roosevelt. The note that the natives saw it coming and got the hell,out and the newcomes died in droves waiting to be told.what to do. He says the specialization of tasks in the industrial . revolution caused us to loose our inmate sense of survival.

210 Healthclubs and gyms are the biggest wastes of time and money. "Fitness clubs are the only business the depends on customers not showing up."

213 After the success of pumping iron and the invention of the Nautilus and anabolic steroids, the age of the "super-male" was born. The image of the buff pumped up super-athlete was plastered on the pages of magazines an unattainable physique for the rest of us males to aspire to. This is not physical fitness. In fact, its the opposite.

220 "Being fit isn't about being able to lift a steel bar or finish an Iron Man...It's about rediscovering our biological nature and releasing the wild human animal inside"

222 "Simple and brief interactions with nature can,produ e marked increases in cognitive control." Being in nature can actually make you smarter.

227 "We'd be helpless if we couldn't do three things; hunt gather and share. Period.  That's it."

233 "Most people see exercis as punishment for being fat." Nstead we need to flip the script. We need to get back to our natural state where exercise is seen as rewarding play. This concept can be seen today in this new tradition of the "mudder" runs, where there are no loosers, the goal is comraderie and just finishing. Exercise is a reard of living not a punishment. Get out there and move. Be oa a doer and not a.don'ter. "Get off the your fat lazy American ass.'

265 Now get this... In order to start using.fat as fuel, instead of sugar, you need to just do two things; "cut out sugar and lower your heart rate." Once again I had this all wrong. I thought you had to burn all of your sugar store first when exercising and then you wold start burning fat. Wrong! You can burn you fat and.leave the sugar stores in place. And besides, when you burn off all of your sugar stores, your body wants to replace them; this is where the false hunger comes from.

273 In spite of what the "Fluid Insustrial Comlex" tells you, you can rely on your body"s own thirst mechanism to tell you when its time.to drink. Oo much hydration is bad for you and it can actually kill you. See Dr. Timothy Noakes book "

Waterlogged: The Serious Problem of Overhydration in Endurance Sports

for the full rin down on this new "death by marketng" phenomenon.

Your body is actally smarter than those paid salesmen at Gatoraide. This highly-tuned thirst mechanism has developed over millions of years, and is the reason why we can chase down antelopes by running all day after them.

277 "Insulin evolved to handle complex carbohydrates created by nature." It does not work well with the simple.sugars created by man. "Simple.carbs are absorbed too fast, your cells get their fill and the rest is turned

This is a must read book for anyone who seeks to know what fitness really means. Anyone can,be skinny or pumped up, but only a few acheive real fitness. This book will help you get there.

Watch Shirley Darlington in Movement of three

https://youtu.be/alxyVjbqQks

Books:

Pendlebury The Archeology of Crete

The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands

By Dr Eric Topol

Ebook

Dr Topol's first book The Creative Destruction of Medicine was great. A survery of the convergence of the smart phone and medicine, it spoke of revolution. His latest provided updats and even more astounding information from the front lines of the information age, and how it relates to medicine.

25 "Later AMA revisions and documents on ethical affairs in the 1980s included two statements that give considerable authority to physicians based on their judgment. On informed consent, the AMA contended that physicians should be entitled “to treat without consents when the physician believes the consent would be ‘medically contraindicated,’”and maintained that “disclosure need not be made when risk disclosure poses such a serious psychological threat of detriment to the patient as to be ‘medically." I remember this being invoked only once in 30 years of nursing.

27 "The term doctor’s orders has to go. It conveys the problem. Going forward, the doctor should never order anything. Any medications, lab test, scan , procedure, or operation needs to be fully discussed, making the decision to act a shared one." Careful Doc the othernwill shun you if they catch you being nice to nurses.

30 "This highly frustrating end-of-the-hospital-stay experience reeks of disrespect for the patient, and is yet another flagrant example of not-so-benevolent paternalism." Yes, i agree. All of.the indignities we suffered at the hands of medicine discharge day was always the worst. And I agree itt showed a complete lack of respect.

31 "That usually doesn’t matter in the courtroom, however, so physicians seeking to avoid lawsuits often follow the guidelines to the letter. 45 Paradoxically, it has been pointed out that “patients can face grave risks when doctors stick to the rules too much.” Lawsuit driven medicine is counterproductive and often harmful to patients.

32 "Do you know your LDL?”Doctors around the country were evaluated by “quality metrics”as to whether their patients had reached target LDL levels. But in 2013, the new guidelines eliminated these target numbers. The panel of experts pointed out that there was no scientific basis for the target numbers in the first place." Federal Governmemt, ie. Medicare, driven medicine is counterproductive and.ofter harmful to the patient. The new paradigm will be pt driven medicine.

"Statins, particularly potent ones, induce diabetes in at least 1 of 200 individuals treated. That reduces the overall benefit of statins by 25 percent, right off the bat." 

33 "Of note, the cost of treating patients with a lipid abnormality that shows up in a lab test, but without any evidence of heart disease, increased from $ 9.9 billion in 2000 to $ 38 billion in 2010.  This is the highest growth rate (14.4 percent) of expenditures for any of the top ten medical conditions, and the only one driven not by the incidence of a disease or actual symptoms, but only by a single lab value." Lucrative yes.

"This embodies the “tyranny of experts”and what has been referred to as “eminence-based”rather than “evidence-based”medicine." Ha! I want to work with this Doc.

34 There are many times unecessary care is given baes on false premise. The PSA cause alot of  grief for alot of pts. Also not needed are well visits. Studies show the more tou stay away from the Dr, the better your results will be. 

40 "More recently, Nate Silver, in The Signal and the Noise, asserted that the industrial revolution of 1775 was sparked by the printing press." The author stresses the importance of the printing press and thenrevolution that it created. He equates that the importance of the digital revolution

Books

Patient, Heal Thyself Robert Veach

Emperor of All Maladies, Siddhartha Mukherjee

Elizabeth Eisenstein classic two-volume book The Printing Press as an Agent of Change.

Marshall McLuhan, The Gutenberg Galaxy