Ernie Els comes from six shots back to win British Open in dramatic fashion

Ernie Els comes from six shots back to win British Open in dramatic fashion - It didn't seem likely at the start of the day. Six shots back of Adam Scott when he teed off on Sunday afternoon, Ernie Els' chances of taking home his fourth major championship were slim. The way Scott was playing coming into the final round, hitting picture-perfect approach shots and rolling in key putts, Els knew the only way he was walking away with the Claret Jug was with a brilliant round ... and a little bit of help from the Aussie.

He got both, as Els picked up four birdies on the back nine, including a must-make, 15-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole that cut the deficit to one, and Scott completely unraveled over the last four holes to hand the South African his second Claret Jug. (Side note: The win means Els now has major wins in three difference decades.)

 

Ernie Els / Getty Images

"I feel for him," Els said of Scott after the round. "I'm numb. Later on it will set in that I won this golf tournament, but right now I really feel for my buddy. He's such a great guy. He's so close to being such a great superstar. I know that's not the way he wanted to lose a tournament. I feel very fortunate, but I feel very bad for Adam today."

Els looked to be in a state of complete shock after his round, sharing a hug with his caddie as he tried to make sense of the situation. The thing is everyone, including Els, is still trying to come to grips with what has to be one of the worst collapses in major championship history.

Els won the tournament, sure, but heading to the 18th, it appeared as if he'd likely come up just short again on golf's biggest stage, after he missed a makeable birdie putt on the 16th, and another on the 17th.

At the time you got the feeling that the near-misses were a sign that this wouldn't be his week. But Els pressed on, pulling driver on one of the toughest driving holes on the course and hitting his best tee shot of the tournament, watching as his ball came to rest in the center of the fairway, well within wedge range.

Els took dead aim with his approach and hit it to 15 feet for a makeable birdie opportunity. Now let's set the scene here: Over the last year, Els has missed some excruciating putts, including a couple critical misses in a playoff at the Zurich Classic, and a 3-footer at the Transitions Championship that cost him a playoff spot.

After years of being one of the best clutch putters in the world, it seemed like every time Els had a biggie to do something special, the ball never went in. This time around, however, was different. Els struck the putt and watched as it disappeared into the hole for birdie.

With the exception of David Duval, who won at Royal Lytham back in 2001, nobody had more success at this course coming into the week. Els finished T-2 (1996) and T-3 (2001) the last two times Royal Lytham hosted the British Open, which led people to believe he could be a factor.

Els didn't disappoint, hanging around the lead all week before making a back-nine charge on Sunday that ended with an incredibly clutch birdie putt on the final hole of the tournament.

''It was my time for some reason," Els said after his round. It certainly was. ( Devil Ball Golf )

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Only 25 percent of American teens have summer jobs, the lowest percentage on record. Why? Are they lazy?

Only 25 percent of American teens have summer jobs, the lowest percentage on record. Why? Are they lazy? - My teenage summer jobs were typical: lousy and formative. One summer, I scooped ice cream by a dock for $5 an hour plus tips. The next, I bagged groceries, with an August promotion to check-out and the privilege of moistening the leafy vegetables with a spray bottle. These jobs were monotonous and ill-paid but also instructive for my obnoxious, eye-rolling, teenage self. Codes need to be memorized. Uniforms need to be worn. Bosses need to be heeded. I learned those lessons, and I remember them today.

But fewer and fewer American teenagers are having such early working experiences. From the 1950s through the 1990s, between 45 and 60 percent of teenagers had summer jobs, with the numbers ebbing and flowing with the business cycle. Today, just one in four American teens has a summer job. Indeed, over the past decade, summer employment among people ages 16 to 19 has plummeted to the lowest level since the government started keeping tabs after World War II. Why? And what are today's teens doing instead?

One piece of good news is that they are not merely sitting at home or goofing off with their friends. According to a 2010 analysis by the Economic Policy Institute, the proportion of "idle" teens has actually fallen over the same time period. Nor does the recession explain the drop either. The youth unemployment rate has climbed precipitously, but young Americans started opting out of the labor market long before the economy soured in 2007.

The Wall Street Journal editorial board fingered one possible answer this weekend: recent hikes to the minimum wage. "One of the first acts of the gone-but-not-forgotten Nancy Pelosi ascendancy was to raise the minimum wage in stages to $7.25 an hour in 2009 from $5.15 in 2007," the conservative-leaning board says. "Even liberals ought to understand that raising the cost of hiring the young and unskilled while employers are slashing payrolls is loopy economics."

But it is also loopy to think that the minimum wage hikes explain what is going on with America's teens. For one, businesses can pay workers under the age of 20 less than the minimum wage as long as they work for fewer than 90 days. More importantly, the phenomenon of teens electing not to join the labor force started long before the minimum-wage hikes, and previous minimum-wage hikes did not squeeze the young out of the labor market. Surely the minimum wage increase has some effect. But it is hardly a complete explanation.

So what is going on? There are two main answers. First, more teenagers are staying in school or choosing to do prep programs over the summer, at their own behest or by order of their helicopter parents. Second, young workers vying for menial jobs have faced increased competition from older workers and immigrants.

Indeed, a lot more teenagers are enrolling in summer school, and it goes a long way to explaining their dwindling participation in the workforce. In the summer of 1985, about 17 percent of teenagers attended some kind of summer school. Now, more than half do. On top of that, thousands more kids are taking other test-prep, advanced, and remedial classes. Community-service and internship programs have also become more popular, though there are no official statistics to show just how many kids are signing up for them.

The shift seems sociological as much as it is economic. "A number of factors suggest that teenagers are facing greater academic demands and pressures than in the past, which, together with the desire to achieve, may incline them toward placing greater emphasis on academics than on working," economist Teresa Morisi of the Bureau of Labor Statistics explains. Families are wealthier. College admissions are more competitive. Secondary education has become so expensive that few kids feel it is worth it to save up for it over the summer. Add it all up, and more kids study and fewer kids work during the hot summer months.

Second, teenagers have faced increased competition for those poorly paid summertime jobs in the retail, service, and construction sectors. There are more immigrants, both undocumented and documented, to compete against for low-paying gigs. A model done by the nonpartisan Center for Immigration Studies found that a 10 percentage-point increase "in the immigrant share of a state's work force from 1994 to 2007 reduced the labor force participation rate of U.S.-born teenagers by 7.9 percentage points." Studies by economists at the Federal Reserve and the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University have also found significant employment effects.

Teenagers face competition from their grandparents, too. In the late 1990s, the oldest baby boomers started to reach retirement age, but many remained in or rejoined the workforce, often accepting less-taxing, lower-paying, part-time positions—exactly the type of jobs once favored by teenagers. Just as the proportion of teens working has fallen, the proportion of workers older than 55 has climbed.

So while fewer kids are scooping ice cream and bagging groceries for the summer, more are spending their weeks off on schoolwork or unpaid labor. Youth employment might be down, but we hardly need to be wringing our hands about the laziness of the next generation. Still, there is one extremely worrisome trend in the data: the youth unemployment number—the proportion of kids who want jobs but cannot get them. The recession inflated the rate of youth unemployment to levels unseen since modern record-taking started in the 1940s. It currently stands at 24.2 percent, and more than 40 percent for black teens. A substantial body of economic literature shows that bouts of unemployment prove particularly corrosive for young workers, leading to reduced earnings and further joblessness down the road. So forget the kids who don't want to work. Worry about the kids who do. ( salte.com )

READ MORE - Only 25 percent of American teens have summer jobs, the lowest percentage on record. Why? Are they lazy?

Why Your Dentist Costs So Much

Why Your Dentist Costs So Much - Back in April I wrote about a person near and dear to me — yes, my husband — who needed two new crowns for $3,442. I published his experience in a post, Is Your Dentist Ripping You Off? Dentists howled in protest at the provocative headline, though most agreed with the content of the story.

Patients howled too, about the high cost of dental work, and the feeling that they’ve encountered dentists who don’t have their best interests at heart. Here’s a typical letter: “My wife saw a dentist who quoted her $750. Then halfway through the job, when she was numb and had a big hole in her mouth, he told her he misquoted the price and it was going to be $1,500. She could not exactly argue.” Another reader wrote of going to two different dentists and getting two completely different opinions about what his mouth needs and when it needs it. Who do you trust?

I heard from people who work in dental labs that charge the dentists $125 for a high-end crown, so why the tenfold markup? One dentist in Grand Rapids, Michigan, offered to do my husband’s work for him for $1,395, or 40% of what he was quoted by his guy. All we would have to do was get him from Pennsylvania to Grand Rapids. (We passed.) Another dentist criticized my “gummy smile.” Others wrote of the hours of pro bono work they do and how that’s never noticed.

Two dentists, Dr. M. in upstate New York and Dr. W. near Indianapolis, agreed to be interviewed. They spoke to me at length about why fees are what they are. Here’s what I learned about why dental work is so expensive.

Dental care is not a commodity.

It’s not laundry detergent or breakfast cereal or wireless minutes. Dentistry is a professional service that’s both art and a science. Yes, there are excellent dentists and not-so-great dentists. Often, you get what you pay for. Yet even great dentists have bad days. “I consider myself an awesome dentist,” Dr. W. told me. “And I’ve had failures.”

Overhead costs are huge.

Anywhere from 60% to 80% of what a patient pays goes toward the expense of running a modern dental practice. Dentists pay for rent or mortgage payments on their office space, payroll for hygienists, office managers and receptionists, health insurance, taxes, supplies, business insurance and technology — just to name a few. “A lot of people would be surprised to know how tight the profit margins are,” Dr. W. says. And many dentists are still paying student loans from dental school.

Labs differ in the quality of the products they produce.

We all want our dentists to be using high-quality labs for things like crowns and dentures. Should we have to ask about the labs? No. We should trust our dentists to select a good one. “In my view, you always want to use a good lab,” Dr. M. said, “because if the crown breaks, I’m the one stuck redoing the thing for another hour and a half for free. It’s important to make sure I’m putting good stuff in people’s mouths, because the last thing anyone wants to deal with is a redo. It doesn’t make me look good, the patients get angry, insurance doesn’t cover it, and it’s a waste of time. You want to do a good job.” Dr. M. has invested in a $100,000 machine that lets him make the crowns himself and cement them in one visit. He says patients love it and it allows him to control the process and do a better job. His fee, however, is higher than many in the area.

Insurance isn’t really insurance.

Dental insurance, the dentists told me, is nothing like health insurance or auto insurance. It’s a maintenance plan that will cover cleanings and x-rays, maybe half the cost of a crown. It will not protect you if you need a lot of work done. The maximum annual benefits, $1,000 to $1,500, haven’t changed in the 50 years since dental insurance became available. “It’s a minor cost assistance, and there’s a widening divide between patients’ expectations of their dental insurance coverage and the actual coverage that’s provided,” says Dr. W.

Dental insurance drives docs nuts and they wish they didn’t have to use it.

“The number one most complicated aspect of running a dental office, bar none, is dealing with dental insurance. You wouldn’t believe how long it takes to get through to a rep, make sure the patient does have benefits, calculate a copay,” says Dr. M. And the largest insurance plans in the country discount most dentists’ fees by 10% to 20%. If you’re paying out of pocket, ask for a discount. (You might discover the dentist is giving you one already.)

Dentists wish patients would value their teeth more.

Teeth are a crucial part of health and appearance. Untreated gum disease, for instance, is linked to heart disease. (Would you choose a cardiologist based on price?) “With time, you will come to realize that shopping price is a minor concern when it comes to your health,” says Dr. W. “Any minor cost differences amortized out over a lifetime will become insignificant. You will get the best results and have the most long-term satisfaction getting care from someone you trust.”

So if you’re convinced dentists are worth their fees, how do you find a good one? The dentists had some suggestions:

• Ask if he or she uses specialists. Who does your root canals? If the person on the phone says, “We do everything here, that would scare me,” Dr. M. says. Especially orthodontia.
• Ask your primary care physician which dentist she uses. Ask your lawyer. Ask your boss. In other words, ask professional people whom they trust with their mouths.
• Ask a dental specialist, like an endodontist. One specialist wrote to tell me, “The best way to find a good dentist is to find a specialist who sees everyone’s patients on a referral basis. He or she will know who is good and who isn’t. Trust me, as a specialist, I know who is doing what, because I see their work every day.”
• If a dentist doesn’t take insurance, because he or she doesn’t need to, that will be a pretty good dentist. Those pros can book you for longer, and they don’t have to work under the constraints of insurance companies. Be prepared to pay higher fees.
• Look and look some more. Interview dentists, if they’ll let you. Take the view that your teeth are a lifetime investment. ( yahoo.com )
  

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How to Manage a Career and a Baby

How to Manage a Career and a Baby - Thirty-five-year-old Ananya Kotian is an accomplished copywriter thriving in the lucrative advertising business, and an even more successful mother to her two young daughters. Interestingly, her life wasn't as rosy a few years ago when, newly shouldered with an additional responsibility of motherhood besides marriage, she had to give up her high-flying career to change nappies and sing lullabies. A decisive introspection, forthright communication with her family and a methodical negotiation at her workplace was all it took for her to find her feet back.

This is where organisations like Fleximoms, a service helpline that guides anxious-to-be-working mothers towards professional flexibility and optimum utilisation of skills, come into the picture. Anita V, co-founder of the ini tiative, says, "Today, companies are looking at different talent pools and women encompass a major section of that. It is often difficult for women to reorient themselves professionally after stepping into the threshold of motherhood."

You’re the best judge

Deliberating on your goals and negotiating with yourself about what you want to give up and what you want to keep is the first step in decisionmaking. Be clear on what you want out of life and weigh the pros and cons in detail. Twenty years on, you shouldn't wake up one fine day and lament, "Damn my career! I wish I'd had the time to fuss over my daughter's dolls..."


Start with an ideal, end with a deal

Once you are sure of what you can deliver qualitatively, it's time to make up your mind on how much time and energy you wish to devote to your workplace. It doesn't hurt to negotiate with the HR department on certain terms and conditions that you put forward. Make sure your demands are compatible with the company's objectives.


Don’t mix business and pleasure

No. They are not supposed to be getting on like a house on fire. You bring some pending files home or bawl about the woes of parenting to your superiors, and you have just landed yourself in a new complication. Really, your kid wouldn't like to see you furiously typing away at your computer while she is fuming over a face-off with her best friend.


Prioritise

You have to choose what's dearer to you - attending that dance programme your kid's been raving about or the crucial meeting your boss has scheduled. Don't try to be a perfectionist, you’ll end up muddling both.


Be organised

Nothing is more important that starting your day with a meticulous plan. A disorganised to-do list will wreak havoc in both worlds. Have your appointments in place and deadlines sorted out in a way that an unanticipated event would not upset in your schedule.


Childcare facilities

Many organisations are opening up to the idea of setting up crèches in offices for working mothers. Avail yourself of such conveniences. Don't be shy to take help from family or find a babysitter. The keywords for this search are dependability, experience and time. Do not feel guilty about letting another person take care of your little one. ( idiva.com )

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Make the Most of Your Weekend

Make the Most of Your Weekend - Do you feel like weekends come and go in the blink of an eye? Before you know it is Friday evening, Sunday night and there- it’s Monday morning already! Do you tell yourself the weekend is gone and you haven’t done anything 'productive'? Don’t fret! We give you tips on how to make the most of your weekends so that you have a great week ahead.

Chores and errands

Make a list of all the bills to be paid, groceries to be shopped for and other errands like managing accounts and do them one by one. Pay your bills online and step out on Saturday afternoon to shop for essentials because most supermarkets and shops are the least crowded during that time. This will leave you with time for family in the evening.


Plan the week ahead

Put down your to-do list for the week in your diary. Make memos for meetings and other appointments in your phone. Once you know what your week looks like, everything else can be scheduled around it. And you won’t be tearing your hair apart while trying to juggle work-to-be-done.


Clean up

Clean out nooks and corners in your house that have been ignored during the week. Dust cobwebs, dust shelves and the ceiling. Use this time to de-clutter your living space. Clean out your wardrobe, re-stack your CDs or stash away the magazines. This will make the place look spacious and neat in no time.


Family time

Weekends but obviously means family time. With you, your kids and spouse having different schedules, you barely get time to catch up with each other through the week. So, make the most of your weekend to spend some time with them. Plan a dinner outing, play games or take a walk in the park together.


Me time

Lastly, take some time out for yourself. Go for a walk, go to a café and read by yourself or book yourself a spa appointment. Spending some quality time with yourself will help you de-clutter your mind and relax you. Go ahead, pamper yourself you totally deserve it!

There you go - with these tips you will surely tick-off everything on your to-do list and gear up for a great week ahead. ( idiva.com )

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Ten Ways to Find Customers with Mobile Marketing

Ten Ways to Find Customers with Mobile Marketing - Smart business owners find customers by placing their marketing messages where the most eyeballs are focused. And nowhere are there more eyeballs than on the screens of mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets.

More than two thirds of the world’s population has a mobile subscription, and mobile users are highly active. Facebook recently reported statistics indicating that over half of its 500 million subscribers access Facebook from a mobile device and exhibit twice the activity level of non-mobile users. The time for mobile marketing is now.

Finding customers with mobile marketing involves either pulling people toward your messages or pushing your messages out. Here are 10 mobile-marketing channels that'll help your efforts:

Text-messaging (SMS)

Pull customers to your SMS messages by asking people to opt-in to your text-messaging list. Use a text-messaging provider such as eztexting.com or motomessage.com to access a short phone number known as a common short code and an opt-in keyword. Then, use the text-messaging service to push periodic text messages out to the people who opt in.

Multi-media messaging (MMS)

MMS messages are like SMS messages, but they can contain pictures, sound and a lot more text. Pull customers in with the same opt-in process as SMS, and then push out multi-media content via your MMS service provider.

Mobile email

Pull customers to your email list with signup links on your website or ask people to text in their email addresses to join. When you push your emails out to mobile users, ask for mobile-friendly actions such as clicking phone numbers instead of links or using the mobile device to show an email coupon at the point of sale.

Mobile search

People searching online with mobile devices are often looking for a nearby product or service. Pull customers to your business by including mobile-friendly maps and directions on your site. Push your location out to new potential customers by asking your customers to check in on their favorite social media service when they visit your physical location so their friends see where they are.

Mobile Internet

Pull mobile visitors to your site by advertising your site's address or by including a mobile barcode -- also known as a Quick Response or QR code -- in your advertising that points to your site. Push messages through your site by formatting content and navigation to be mobile friendly.

Mobile apps

Pull customers to your mobile apps by listing your apps in the app stores and by offering app downloads from your own mobile site. Then, push your marketing messages through the downloaded apps.

Mobile content

Pull customers to content such as videos, images and downloads by providing links and mobile barcodes that activate the content. Push that content by posting to mobile-friendly sites such as YouTube or your own mobile site.

Mobile advertising

Pull customers to your advertising by placing ads on external mobile sites such as mobile versions of newspapers, blogs and other content sites. Push your advertising out by including ads in your e-mails, text messages, mobile content and branded apps.

Voice

Pull customers in by advertising your phone number. Push your messages out by answering the phone or by using Interactive Voice Response systems to answer calls and deliver voice messages automatically.

Capabilities and enablers

Mobile devices come with built-in capabilities and enablers such as cameras, WiFi, and GPS. Pull customers in by asking customers to use their capabilities. For example, taking a picture of a product and e-mailing it to you for a discount. Push your messages out in reply to people who use their capabilities by using one of the aforementioned nine channels.

Have you attempted a mobile marketing campaign? Let us know how it worked for you in the comments section. ( entrepreneur.com )

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Popular Cannes film reflects "Arab Spring" spirit

Popular Cannes film reflects "Arab Spring" spirit – A film about a woman taking a stand against men in a North African village won cheers in Cannes Saturday, with some viewers moved by its expression of the spirit of the "Arab Spring" uprisings.

A small handful of critics also booed during the packed screening of "The Source," directed by Radu Mihaileanu, later telling journalists they found its depiction of Arab life over simplistic.

But the overwhelming majority of critics in the audience praised its resonance with real-life events, saying they would not be surprised to see it scoop a big prize at the annual film festival.

The Source was the last of 20 films shown in the festival's main competition ahead of the closing ceremony Sunday where the awards will be announced including the Palme d'Or for best picture.

Also premiered Saturday was "Once Upon a Time in Anatolia," a slow-paced, subtle examination of cruelty and betrayal by Nuri Bilge Ceylan.

The Source opens by declaring itself a fairytale in which Leila, the beautiful and feisty wife of teacher Sami, declares a "love strike," or ban on all sex, until the men in her village agree to carry the water from a spring high in the mountains.

In a time of economic hardship and unemployment, men sit and sip tea all day while women lug heavy loads up steep paths.

Leila decides to take a stand when her friend falls and loses her baby.

Men and women fall out, with violent consequences. Women bicker about the value of tradition over change while conservative clerics try to exploit the village's divisions.

"NEED FOR MORE REVOLUTIONS"

Mihaileanu, a Romanian-born French director, told a news conference in Cannes that the film was partly a reflection of the recent uprisings in Tunisia and across the Arab world.

"There has been tremendous hope since last December. There is hope for freedom and a strong desire to get rid of those in power and there is the idea of people deciding their own destiny," he said.

He added that revolution on the streets of Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Bahrain had yet to be matched by a change in people's homes.

"There is a second revolution which is essential, which is the revolution in the home, and the place of women in the family. Women should be made equals at home as well."

The director, who is Jewish, said the idea for the film came from a true story in Turkey.

Leila leads the battle in the village, confronting the village imam and quoting from the Koran in defense of her case.

She is defended by one of the film's most colorful characters -- Mother Rifle, whose words are "like bullets," played by Algerian actress Biyouna.

Turkish entry One Upon a Time in Anatolia follows a group of police officers and a doctor as they look for the corpse of a murder victim buried in the countryside.

Light on plot, it has nonetheless won over critics with its craftsmanship. ( Reuters )

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How to square budget cuts, need for aging research

How to square budget cuts, need for aging research – A disease standoff may be brewing: How can Alzheimer's research receive more scarce dollars without cutting from areas like heart disease or cancer?

In one of the stark realities of the budget crisis, scientists' chances of winning research dollars from the National Institutes of Health for any condition have dipped to a new low.

"We are clearly not able to support a lot of great science that we would like to support," NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told senators last week. This year, for every six grant applications that NIH receives, "five of them are going to go begging."

That's down from nearly 1 in 3 grants funded a decade ago, and 1 in 5 last year. And it comes before the looming fight over how much more to cut in overall government spending for next year, and where to make those cuts.

Already, a new report says one of the biggest losers is aging research, despite a rapidly graying population that promises a worsening epidemic of dementia, among other illnesses.

"Nobody wants to say Alzheimer's is worse than diabetes or heart disease or cancer," says Dr. Sam Gandy, a prominent neuroscientist at New York's Mount Sinai School of Medicine.

Graphic shows projected number - Graphic shows projected number of people age 65 and over in the U.S. with Alzheimer’s disease; includes percent increase of the disease between 2000-2008 compared to other diseases

But "part of the problem now with all the pressure to cut the budget ... is that for Alzheimer's to get more, something else has to lose," adds Gandy. His own lab is scrambling for funds to study a potential dementia drug after losing out on an NIH aging grant.

The NIH pays for much of the nation's leading biomedical research. Republicans and Democrats alike have long been staunch supporters. But the agency's nearly $31 billion budget offers an example of the hard choices facing lawmakers, especially if they're to meet House calls for a drastic scale-back of overall government spending.

Consider aging issues.

The NIH spends about $469 million on Alzheimer's research, says a new report from the Alzheimer's Foundation of America that criticizes overall aging research as "a minuscule and declining investment."

About 5.4 million Americans now have Alzheimer's disease, and studies suggest health and nursing home expenditures for it cost more than $170 billion a year, much of it paid by Medicare and Medicaid.

NIH's Collins told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that there's a "very frightening cost curve." In 2050, when more than 13 million Americans are projected to have Alzheimer's, the bill is expected to reach a staggering $1 trillion. But he said that cost could be halved merely by finding a way to delay people getting Alzheimer's by five years.

Monday, Republican presidential contender Newt Gingrich jumped into the debate, saying that over the next four decades Alzheimer's could cost the government a total of $20 trillion. He suggested selling U.S. bonds to raise money for research rather than have the disease compete each year for a share of the federal budget.

"We are grotesquely underfunded," Gingrich said of health research dollars.

The Alzheimer's Foundation report goes beyond dementia, finding that the National Institute on Aging receives 3.6 cents for every dollar Congress sends to the NIH. Cancer and heart disease get nearly three to four times as much. Despite the tough economic times, the foundation has joined with other groups lobbying for an extra $300 million for the aging institute's overall work next year, to boost its budget to $1.4 billion.

Competition for today's dollars is fierce, with applications up 60 percent at the aging division alone since 2003. Aging chief Dr. Richard Hodes says last year, his institute couldn't pay for about half of what were ranked as the most outstanding applications for research projects. Still, he hopes to fund more scientists this year by limiting the number who get especially large grants.

What's the squeeze? Congress doubled the NIH's budget in the early 2000s, an investment that helped speed the genetic revolution and thus a host of new projects that scientists are clamoring to try. But in more recent years, economists say NIH's budget hasn't kept pace with medical inflation, and this year Congress cut overall NIH funding by 1 percent, less than expected after a protracted battle.

The Obama administration has sought nearly $32 billion for next year, and prospects for avoiding a cut instead are far from clear. Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who chairs the subcommittee that oversees the issue, warns that under some early-circulating House plans to curb health spending, "severe reductions to NIH research would be unavoidable. That doesn't make sense."

Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., pushed Collins to make the case that investments in medical research really can pay off.

Collins' response: Four decades of NIH-led research revealed how arteries get clogged and spurred development of cholesterol-fighting statin drugs, helping lead to a 60 percent drop in heart-disease deaths. Averaged out, that research cost about $3.70 per person per year, "the cost of a latte, and not even a grande latte," Collins told lawmakers. ( Associated Press )

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Osama bin Laden didn’t win, but he was ‘enormously successful’

Osama bin Laden didn’t win, but he was ‘enormously successful’ - What he wanted to do was bankrupt U.S - Did Osama bin Laden win? No. Did he succeed? Well, America is still standing, and he isn’t. So why, when I called Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism expert who specializes in al-Qaeda, did he tell me that “bin Laden has been enormously successful”? There’s no caliphate. There’s no sweeping sharia law. Didn’t we win this one in a clean knockout?

Apparently not. Bin Laden, according to Gartenstein-Ross, had a strategy that we never bothered to understand, and thus that we never bothered to defend against. What he really wanted to do — and, more to the point, what he thought he could do — was bankrupt the United States of America. After all, he’d done the bankrupt-a-superpower thing before. And though it didn’t quite work out this time, it worked a lot better than most of us, in this exultant moment, are willing to admit.

Bin Laden’s transition from scion of a wealthy family to terrorist mastermind came in the 1980s, when the Soviet Union was trying to conquer Afghanistan. Bin Laden was part of the resistance, and the resistance was successful — not only in repelling the Soviet invasion, but in contributing to the Communist super-state’s collapse a few years later. “We, alongside the mujaheddin, bled Russia for 10 years, until it went bankrupt,” he later explained.

The campaign taught bin Laden a lot. For one thing, superpowers fall because their economies crumble, not because they’re beaten on the battlefield. For another, superpowers are so allergic to losing that they’ll bankrupt themselves trying to conquer a mass of rocks and sand. This was bin Laden’s plan for the United States, too.

“He has compared the United States to the Soviet Union on numerous occasions — and these comparisons have been explicitly economic,” Gartenstein-Ross argued in a Foreign Policy article. “For example, in October 2004 bin Laden said that just as the Arab fighters and Afghan mujaheddin had destroyed Russia economically, al Qaeda was now doing the same to the United States, ‘continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy.’ ”

For bin Laden, in other words, success was not to be measured in body counts. It was to be measured in deficits, in borrowing costs, in investments we weren’t able to make in our country’s continued economic strength. And by those measures, bin Laden landed a lot of blows.

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the price tag on the Iraq War alone will surpass $3 trillion. Afghanistan likely amounts to another trillion or two. Add in the build-up in homeland security spending since 9/11 and you’re looking at another trillion. And don’t forget the indirect costs of all this turmoil: The Federal Reserve, worried about a fear-induced recession, slashed interest rates after the attack on the World Trade Center, and then kept them low to combat skyrocketing oil prices, a byproduct of the war in Iraq. That decade of loose monetary policy may well have contributed to the credit bubble that crashed the economy in 2007 and 2008.

Then there’s the post-9/11 slowdown in the economy, the time wasted in airports, the foregone returns on investments we didn’t make, the rise in oil prices as a result of the Iraq War, the cost of rebuilding Ground Zero, health care for the first responders and much, much more.

But it isn’t quite right to say bin Laden cost us all that money. We decided to spend more than a trillion dollars on homeland security measures to prevent another attack. We decided to invade Iraq as part of a grand, post-9/11 strategy of Middle Eastern transformation. We decided to pass hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts and add an unpaid-for prescription drug benefit in Medicare while we were involved in two wars. And now, partially though not entirely because of these actions, we are deep in debt. Bin Laden didn’t — couldn’t — bankrupt us. He could only provoke us into bankrupting ourselves. And he came pretty close.

It’s a smart play against a superpower. We didn’t need to respond to 9/11 by trying to reshape the entire Middle East, but we’re a superpower, and we think on that scale. We didn’t need to respond to failed attempts to smuggle bombs onto airplanes through shoes and shampoo bottles by screening all footwear and banning large shampoo bottles, but we’re a superpower, and our tolerance for risk is extremely low.

In the end, bin Laden was just another bag of meat and bones, hiding in a walled compound in Pakistan, so deeply afraid of death that he tried to use his wife as a shield when the special forces came for him. But he understood the psychology of the superpower well enough to use our capabilities against us. He may not have won, but he did succeed, at least partially.

But then, we can learn from our mistakes. He can’t. ( washingtonpost.com )

READ MORE - Osama bin Laden didn’t win, but he was ‘enormously successful’

Dollar at low, world stocks weaker

Dollar at low, world stocks weaker – The dollar sank to a 16-month low against a basket of currencies on Thursday as investors bet U.S. monetary policy would continue to be loose, while a report that Chinese inflation will rise dragged on equities.

World stocks were flat to lower despite a burst of corporate activity that would usually lift investors' spirits.

Glencore, the world's largest commodities trading company, plans to raise up to $12.1 billion in a London and Hong Kong stock market floatation that is London's biggest ever. Shares in Japan's Isuzu Motors jumped on a report that Volkswagen was considering buying all or part of it.

Man looks at closing price displayed along - A man looks at the closing price of Japan's Nikkei share average (top C) displayed along with major indices outside a brokerage in Tokyo April 12, 2011. REUTERS

But European shares, as measured by the FTSEurofirst 300

were down a half a percent, partly out of concern that Chinese inflation is returning.

Hong Kong's Phoenix TV, citing an unnamed source, said China's annual rate of inflation in March was likely to be 5.3-5.4 percent, a 32-month high and just above an estimate in a Reuters poll.

Investors are particularly concerned about Chinese inflation in case government attempts to restrain it prompt a so-called hard landing for the economy.

"Inflation in emerging economies has become a serious issue, as the impact from high commodity prices is stronger for those countries," said Arnaud Scarpaci, fund manager at Paris-based Agilis Gestion.

Earlier, Nikkei benchmark closed up 0.1 percent, held back by continued worries about the impact of its earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters.

The Reuters Tankan survey of 400 large firms found on Thursday that power shortages caused by the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant had hit nearly 60 percent of local companies, disrupting production and supply chains.

WEAK DOLLAR

Wednesday's U.S. retail sales data and the Federal Reserve's Beige Book report did nothing to change the view the U.S. central bank would stick with its $600 billion asset buying program until June.

The European Central Bank, for example, has already raised interest rates and is expected to do so again, widening the premium for holding euros rather than dollars. Other economies are already much further on in raising rates.

The dollar index, which measures its strength against major currencies, fell around 0.4 percent, bringing its losses this year to around 5.5 percent.

The dollar fell as low as 83.20 yen, moving away from its 6-1/2 month high around 85.55 set last week. The euro was up 0.4 percent at $1.4496.

German government bond futures opened higher, holding onto modest gains made late in the previous session when U.S. debt prices rose on news of President Barak Obama's deficit-tackling plans.

"The (Obama) plan made the right sort of noises and the equities didn't really move overnight so we're hanging on to last night's gains at the moment," a trader said. ( Reuters )

READ MORE - Dollar at low, world stocks weaker

How to Save a Trillion Dollars

How to Save a Trillion Dollars - In the scheme of things, saving the 38 billion bucks that Congress seems poised to agree upon is not a big deal. A big deal is saving a trillion bucks. And we could do that by preventing disease instead of treating it.

For the first time in history, lifestyle diseases like diabetes, heart disease, some cancers and others kill more people than communicable ones. Treating these diseases — and futile attempts to “cure” them — costs a fortune, more than one-seventh of our GDP.

But they’re preventable, and you prevent them the same way you cause them: lifestyle. A sane diet, along with exercise, meditation and intangibles like love prevent and even reverse disease. A sane diet alone would save us hundreds of billions of dollars and maybe more.

How to Save a Trillion Dollars

This isn’t just me talking. In a recent issue of the magazine Circulation, the American Heart Association editorial board stated flatly that costs in the U.S. from cardiovascular disease — the leading cause of death here and in much of the rest of the world — will triple by 2030, to more than $800 billion annually. Throw in about $276 billion of what they call “real indirect costs,” like productivity, and you have over a trillion. Enough over, in fact, to make $38 billion in budget cuts seem like a rounding error.

Similarly, Type 2 diabetes is projected to cost us $500 billion a year come 2020, when half of all Americans will have diabetes or pre-diabetes. Need I remind you that Type 2 diabetes is virtually entirely preventable? Ten billion dollars invested now might save a couple of hundred billion annually 10 years from now. And: hypertension, many cancers, diverticulitis and more are treated by a health care (better termed “disease care”) system that costs us about $2.3 trillion annually now — before costs double and triple.

It’s worth noting that the Federal budget will absorb its usual 60 percent of that cost. We can save some of that money, though, if an alliance of insurers, government, individuals — maybe even Big Food, if it’s pushed hard enough — moves us towards better eating.

The many numbers all point in the same direction. Look at heart disease: The INTERHEART study of 30,000 men and women in 52 countries showed that at least 90 percent of heart disease is lifestyle related; a European study of more than 23,000 Germans showed that people with healthier lifestyles had an 81 percent lower risk.

And those estimates might be on the low side. Dean Ornish, the San Francisco-based doctor who probably knows more about diet and heart disease than anyone, says, “My colleagues and I have found that more intensive diets than those studies used can reverse the progression of even severe coronary heart disease.”

In his latest book, “The Spectrum,” Ornish recommends that people at risk eat stricter diets (more plants, higher fiber, lower saturated fats and so on) than those who are generally healthy, but it’s not all or nothing — the more you change your diet and lifestyle, the healthier you are. “What matters most,” he says, “is your overall way of eating and living. If you indulge yourself one day, eat healthier the next.” I’ve been preaching similarly for years. But the trillion-dollar question is, “How do we get people to eat that way?”

I don’t have an easy answer; no one does. But it for sure will take an investment: it’s a situation in which you must spend money to make or save money. (Yes, taxes will go up, but whose taxes?) Some number of billions of dollars — something in the rounding error area — should be spent on research to figure out exactly how to turn this ship around. (The NIH, which pegs obesity-related costs at about $150 billion, just announced a new billion-dollar investment. Good, but not enough.)

Corny as it is to say so, if we can put a man on the moon we can create an environment in which an apple is a better and more accessible choice than a Pop-Tart. Some other billions of dollars must go to public health. Again: we built sewage systems; we built water supplies; we showed that we could get people to eat anything we marketed. Now all we have to do is build a food distribution system that favors real food, and market that.

Experts without vested interests in the status quo come to much the same conclusion: Only a massive public health effort can save both our health and our budget.

Can we afford it? Sure. Dr. David Ludwig, a Harvard-affiliated pediatrician and the author of “Ending the Food Fight,” says, “The magnitude of the deficit is small when you consider costs of nutrition-related disease; the $4 trillion that the Republicans want cut over a decade is about the same as the projected costs of diabetes over that same period.”

In last week’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, Ludwig made a number of concrete suggestions, like restructuring subsidies, regulating the marketing of food to children and adequately funding school lunch programs.

His most novel ideas use existing and future technologies to help the food industry retain profits while producing less junky products: devising a method of preserving polyunsaturated fats, for example (dangerous trans-fats are widely used simply because they are stable) or making bread with real whole grains instead of refined ones. (His research demonstrates that people who eat ultra-processed grains rather than whole grains for breakfast go on to consume 600 to 700 calories more than other people each day.) “I’m not arguing that the food industry should be philanthropic,” he says. “Its purpose is to make money. But the goal of the government should be to encourage industry to make money by producing more rather than less healthful foods.”

The best way to combat diet-related diseases is to change what we eat. And if our thinking is along the lines of diet improved = deficit reduced, so much the better. If a better diet were to result only in a 10 percent decrease in heart disease (way lower than Ludwig believes possible), that’s $100 billion project savings per year by 2030.

This isn’t just fiscal responsibility, but social responsibility as well. And the alternative is not only fiscal catastrophe but millions of premature deaths. ( nytimes.com )

READ MORE - How to Save a Trillion Dollars

Ten Signs It's Time To Quit Your Job

Ten Signs It's Time To Quit Your Job - Chances are if you are lucky enough to have a job, the thought of quitting sounds ridiculous. With the unemployment rate at an all time high, most people are thanking their lucky stars to be employed.

But even in a bad economy some jobs are just not worth it. Are there any telltale signs you should be looking for when trying to decide if you throw in the towel? Here are ten signs to look for to determine if it's time to find a new job:

You Aren't Learning Anything New

Yes, you want to know how to do most of your job. But there are also things you want to be learning; otherwise you are not growing professionally. If you have stopped learning at work, it's time to find a job where you will learn new skills and grow professionally.

You Never Have a Day When You Wake Up Excited To Go To Work

If you wake up every morning Monday through Friday and never feel excited to go to work, that is a problem. It means you aren't enjoying your job and it is diminishing your quality of life. If you wake up every day and dread going to work, it's time to consider quitting your job.

You Spend More Time Surfing the Web Than Doing Your Job

When you are at work, you are supposed to be productive. Otherwise, it's a waste of your time and the company's money. If you are bored and surfing the web most of your work day, you may want to think about looking into job options where you'll get more stimulation and responsibilities.

You Don't Like Most of Your Coworkers

There are always one or two coworkers in the office that most people can't stand. But if you don't like most of your coworkers, chances are your days aren't very enjoyable because you have to work with them day in and day out. If you can't stand most of your coworkers, it's time to think about finding a company whose employees you mesh with better.

You Aren't Making Enough Money to Pay Your Bills

If you are working your butt off and not getting paid enough to pay your bills, you might be overqualified and underpaid for your position. Go find a job that pays what you deserve.

You Spend Time Looking For Other Jobs

If you are spending time looking for other jobs while you are on the clock, it's obvious you want to leave your job. So keep looking for new jobs and as soon as you find a good one, take it and run.

You Haven't Gotten a Raise in the Last Two Years

If you work hard and benefit the company you work for, you deserve to be rewarded for that. If your boss hasn't given you a raise in the last two years, ask for one. If he or she says no, get out now.

Your Boss Sucks

Sometimes bosses suck. But if your boss sucks all the time and takes advantage of your time, it's time to find a new job.

The Company Isn't Doing Well

This sign varies from company to company. You must keep in mind that we are in a recession and if sales are down but the company isn't in jeopardy, this sign may not apply to you. However, if business is down to the point where it looks like the company is going to go under, start looking for a new job NOW!

You are Stressed All the Time

You are supposed to enjoy life, not be stressed out all the time. If you spend most of your days stressed about everything that going on at work, you are not at the right job.

Know any other signs that you should quit your job that weren't listed above? Share them with us in the comments section! ( usnews.com )

READ MORE - Ten Signs It's Time To Quit Your Job