11/24/2019

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Recommended Reading

America’s largest milk producer files for bankruptcy 

Excerpt:

“The 94-year-old company has struggled in recent years because Americans are drinking less cows milk. 2019 has been particularly brutal: the company’s sales tumbled 7% in the first half of the year, and profit fell 14%. Dean Foods (DF) stock has lost 80% this year.”

Microsoft Japan switched to four day work – sales skyrocketed 40%

Excerpts

  • “The experiment involved giving employees five consecutive Fridays off with pay, limiting meetings to 30 minutes or fewer, and encouraging online messaging as opposed to face-to-face chats.”
  • “Rise in sales per employees in August 2019: +39.9%”
  • “…being overworked to death — by stroke, heart attack, etc. — is common enough that the Japanese have a word for it: karoshi. There’s also a word for workers who commit suicide due to work-related stress: karojisatsu.”

When The Evidence Says No But Doctors Say Yes

Excerpts:

  • “In a 2013 study, a dozen doctors from around the country examined all 363 articles published in The New England Journal of Medicine over a decade — 2001 through 2010 — that tested a current clinical practice, from the use of antibiotics to treat people with persistent Lyme disease symptoms (didn’t help) to the use of specialized sponges for preventing infections in patients having colorectal surgery (caused more infections). Their results, published in the Mayo Clinic Proceedings, found 146 studies that proved or strongly suggested that a current standard practice either had no benefit at all or was inferior to the practice it replaced; 138 articles supported the efficacy of an existing practice, and the remaining 79 were deemed inconclusive.”
  • In a 2012, research was conducted to determine how stent implantation stacked up against other methods of cardiovascular treatment. The conclusion of this research was that putting stents into stable patients seem to provide absolutely no protection from heart attacks.
  • “A meta-analysis of sleep-aid drugs in older adults found that for every 13 people who took a sedative, like Ambien, one had improved sleep — about 25 minutes per night on average — while one in six experienced a negative side effect, with the most serious being increased risk for car accidents.”

Notes:

  • I’ve already posted this one, but the information it contains is so incredible and important that a repost seemed worth it.
  • If there was one article I could have every doctor on the planet read, it would be this one.

 

Documentary Recommendation: Fantastic Fungi

This film is packed with great information and fascinating anecdotes. It also has some very emotional moments. Even if you don’t think you’re interested in fungi, I’m pretty sure it will blow you away.

 

Song Recommendation: “Saturn” by Sleeping at Last

This is one of the most beautiful and moving songs/music videos I have ever seen. It takes about a minute to really get going, but it’s worth the wait. If you watch it, make it full screen and use headphones if you can.

 

On of my favorite poems: The Learn’d Astronomer, by Walt Whitman 

When I heard the learn’d astronomer,

When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me,

When I was shown the charts and diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them,

When I sitting heard the astronomer where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,

How soon unaccountable I became tired and sick,

Till rising and gliding out I wander’d off by myself,

In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,

Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

 

Quote

“Those who do not weep do not see.”

– Victor Hugo

 

Drone Photo

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