Jim Johnson's List: Tips

• About 1 in 5 consumers are likely to receive credit scores that differ substantially from those used by lenders, according to a government study released Tuesday.

  The study, by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, analyzed scores from 200,000 credit files from each of the three nationwide consumer reporting agencies: TransUnion, Equifax Inc. and Experian.
• "When consumers buy a credit score, they should be aware that a lender may be using a very different score in making a credit decision."
• most consumers can trust credit scores they receive

1 more annotation...

• It's called high volume nasal saline irrigation, and it's sold in squeeze bottles at drugstores or big box stores. A patient or a parent holds the rinse bottle up to one nostril and gently squeezes the saline liquid, which will fill that nostril, go around the septum and come out the other side of the nose -- flushing out mucus and bacteria along the way.

  "I think they're fantastic," said Farrel Buchinsky, a pediatric otolaryngologist at Allegheny General Hospital and a professor at Drexel University College of Medicine. "While they might sound gross, from the perspective of getting rid of secretions, bacteria and thick mucus, nothing could be better."

• Traditionally, those sinus infections are treated with antibiotics and even endoscopic sinus surgery. But Dr. Buchinsky believes that a sinus rinse can be just as effective.

  "I would advocate for using high volume nasal irrigation in lieu of antibiotics," he said. "It sometimes works as well as endoscopic sinus surgery."

  High-volume nasal irrigation -- as much as 200 milliliters in each nostril -- works by first thinning the secretions with saline and then physically flushing them out. Sometimes bacteria can get stuck in the nasal passages, where they "settle down and form a colony of slime," said Dr. Buchinsky.

  The bottles come with saline packets, which are mixed with lukewarm water before each use. Nasal rinsing "won't necessarily remove every last bacteria but certainly can move the bulk of it out."

  Studies from the University of Wisconsin have found nasal rinsing to be effective in decreasing symptoms from colds and sinus problems.

• a simple technique to help
• It works for all kinds of crises: medical, legal, financial, romantic, even existential. She calls it the Ring Theory.
• Draw a circle. This is the center ring. In it, put the name of the person at the center of the current trauma.
• Now draw a larger circle around the first one. In that ring put the name of the person next closest to the trauma.
• Repeat the process as many times as you need to. In each larger ring put the next closest people. Parents and children before more distant relatives. Intimate friends in smaller rings, less intimate friends in larger ones. When you are done you have a Kvetching Order.

• Here are the rules. The person in the center ring can say anything she wants to anyone, anywhere. She can kvetch and complain and whine and moan and curse the heavens and say, "Life is unfair" and "Why me?" That's the one payoff for being in the center ring.

  Everyone else can say those things too, but only to people in larger rings.

  When you are talking to a person in a ring smaller than yours, someone closer to the center of the crisis, the goal is to help. Listening is often more helpful than talking. But if you're going to open your mouth, ask yourself if what you are about to say is likely to provide comfort and support.
• If it isn't, don't say it.
• Don't, for example, give advice. People who are suffering from trauma don't need advice. They need comfort and support.
• Comfort IN, dump OUT.
• Complaining to someone in a smaller ring than yours doesn't do either of you any good.
• you can say whatever you want if you just wait until you're talking to someone in a larger ring than yours.

9 more annotations...

• A new study from Johns Hopkins University updates 2006 research that found excess levels of arsenic in U.S. chicken. In 2009 the Center for Food Safety petitioned the FDA to stop the use of arsenic in chicken feed. The Center’s lawyer Paige Tomaselli tells host Steve Curwood that the FDA has not responded to the petition, so now the Center has filed a lawsuit.
• It’s administered to chickens, turkeys and swine as an antimicrobial,
• It started in the 1940s
• it’s used to treat parasites in food animals, but it's also used to increase the weight of animals so that they have more feed efficiency, and to change the color of the chicken flesh to make it more appealing for human beings
• In 2010, the industry estimated that 88 percent of the roughly nine billion chickens in the United States raised for meat were administered arsenic-based feed additives.
• The proportion of turkey and pork is much smaller than chicken. It’s mostly fed to chickens
• Inorganic arsenic can cause cancer, heart disease, decreased intellectual function and many other problems. Now the amount of arsenic residue in the chickens is not going to directly cause cancer - what it does is it increases the overall arsenic burden that humans suffer from drinking water, eating rice and all the other exposure so we have to arsenic
• At one time, they thought that organic arsenic was not as dangerous as inorganic arsenic. But recent studies that shown that organic arsenic, the kind that feed additives are made out of, converts to inorganic arsenic both in the gut of a chicken and in the gut of a human, and so now we're finding that these arsenic-based feed additives are actually exposing humans to inorganic arsenic, which is a known carcinogen.
• I think that there's a lot of industry pressure from the pharmaceutical companies on FDA not to completely ban certain feed additives. Part of the problem is that FDA not only has to deal with the pharmaceutical companies, but they’re also dealing with the factory farming industry
• If you purchase organic chicken, you're not going to be exposed to additional arsenics. So my advice is to choose organic or to choose arsenic-free or antibiotic-free chicken at this point.

8 more annotations...

• Youtube hosts a lot of professionally-made television.
• Just search for tv shows full episodes. Or search for a particular show, such as mad men full episodes.
• Hulu: The free version of this extensive service
• As a rule, free Hulu only provides five full episodes per series; but they're usually five recent episodes.
• Your favorite TV network: Go to the Comedy Central site and you'll find a smattering of full episodes. News/opinion channels like Fox News and MSNBC offer everything from the previous day's show. Broadcast networks like ABC and NBC stream selections of new episodes.

3 more annotations...