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3/28/2012
A marathon runner who will soon turn 101
Indian-born runner Fauja Singh, who became the oldest person to complete a marathon when he crossed the finish line at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon last year, plans to compete in the London Marathon on April 22. If he finishes, it will be his 11th, 42-kilometer race.
Singh started running when he was 81 as a way to fight depression after his son and daughter-in-law were killed in a car crash.
“His mental attitude is what inspires me to this day,” said Harmander Singh, who coaches the runner and is not related to the centenarian. “He was so mentally focused. If I said, ‘We’re going to do 10 kilometers today,’ he said, ‘Why not 20?’”
Fauja Singh was inspired after seeing the New York City Marathon on television and decided he wanted to be a part of it. He finished his first marathon at the age of 89. Since then, he has broken eight world records for his age group.
In India, Singh was a farmer for most of his life. He is illiterate and speaks only Punjabi. But that hasn’t limited his international exposure, or prevented him from being an inspiration to others.
On a recent trip back to India, Singh told the Times of India he wants to inspire young people and motivate them to “leap big in life.” But he said time is running out. “I am ready to go to any length to help youths before I die,” he told the newspaper.
Singh’s coach said as long as his trainee, a vegetarian, is moving, he’ll stay healthy.
“You can’t stop the guy running. Because the day he stops running will be the day his body will start deteriorating,” said Harmander Singh. “He said he would like to die running.”
Fauja Singh, with his long white beard, has become, in a sense, a man of steel. His trainer said recent blood tests showed the runner is as fit as a 40-year-old. And when London University tested his bone density, they found his left leg had the density of a 35-year-old, while his right leg had the bone density of a 25-year-old.
Singh’s trainer said youth and health are a state of mind.
“All people who reach a certain age, you will find what they have in common is they have a positive attitude in life,” he said. “They do not believe they are old. We do, but they don’t.”
- Interesting facts about his life
Fauja Singh was born in India on April 1, 1911.
Not much is known about his early life.
He cannot read or write.
He lived with his wife in his village in Jalandhar, and after her death he moved to London in 1992 to live with his son.
In London, he started running by challenging other old-agers to race him. Gradually he moved on to longer distances.
At 89 years, he took up running seriously and ended up in international marathon events.
Singh ran his first race, the London Marathon, in 2000.
According to his coach, he used to run up to 20 kilometres easily and wanted to run a marathon, thinking it to be just 26 kilometres and not 26 miles (42 kilometres). It was after he realised this that he began training seriously.
Singh shot to fame when, at the age of 89, he completed the gruelling 26.2 mile distance in 6 hours and 54 minutes. This knocked 58 minutes off the previous world best for anyone in the 90-plus age bracket.
Singh is 172 cm tall and weighs 52 kg. He attributes his physical fitness and longevity to abstaining from smoking and alcohol and to following a simple vegetarian diet.
3/27/2012
3/23/2012
Cuban dissident blogger
Yoanis Sanchez walks inside her home in HavanaSix questions and 4 answers
How about matching them?
How about matching them?
1. Reporter: How do you do your work without economic resources?
2. Reporter: How is the country preparing for Pope Benedict’s visit after several members of the Ladies in White (an opposition movement consisting of wives and female relatives of jailed dissidents) were detained?
3. Reporter: Reports say the Cuban minimum-wage is very low and you have said it’s expensive to have internet access. How do you do it? Do you receive any funding? What are the medium costs for the average Cuban to get internet access in a hotel and browse for few minutes each week?
4. Reporter: U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-Florida) will hold an event this Wednesday in Washington to show how the Internet and social networks operate in Cuba. Many believe it is difficult for Cubans to freely access unmonitored web pages. What can you tell us about that?
5. Reporter: What inspired you to start your blog 5 years ago?
6. Reporter: You're a well known Cuban citizen. How many European politicians have supported you?
Here's the interview without the questions.
As Pope Benedict prepares to visit Cuba next week, dissident blogger Yoanis Sanchez, who writes the "Generation Y" blog, says the trip is a good time to showcase the real situation in the island nation.
Even though Yoani Sánchez believes the visit will not have a major political impact, she says it will be a good opportunity because of the increased international attention that comes with a visit by the Pope.
In an exclusive interview, the Cuban blogger said Internet access is still a major problem on the island and explains how she manages to update her blog Generation Y and tweets current events, which has made her famous in the social media world.
Question number ___________________
Sánchez: For the ‘backyard’ Catholics, the ones on the island, it will be a good moment for them as they meet their pastor, a kind of jubilee for the community as the 400th anniversary of “Our Lady of Charity” approaches. But politically and socially it will not transcend beyond what happened during Pope John Paul’s (II) visit in 1998, which only had an impact on the public awareness. I think Benedict’s trip is more spiritual-focused.”
However, the island will experience days of international scrutiny, where many journalists, pilgrims and people from outside will come for the event. It’s a good opportunity to show them the real Cuba; to report what is actually happening. We will become a showcase, where activists, bloggers and Twitter users have the responsibility to show the real side of the country and not the official one.
Question number_____________________
Sánchez: From my experience, having access to information and technology are fundamental for a free country. A person who holds a flash memory and has access to at least a minute of internet can change his or her life. That makes that citizen more empowered, more aware of his rights, perhaps more likely to speak up because he doesn’t like what is happening. I think in order to help Cubans it is necessary to empower them technologically, so that they can become 21-century internet users. Because without it, we will not become more democratic; we will not be free.
Question number ____________________
Sánchez: I started an online blog five years ago called “Generación Y” (Generation Y) and one of the biggest problems I encounter every week is free internet access to update texts and pictures. It’s my little virtual space. The Cuban government does not allow average citizens to obtain a household internet connection and interact online. That is a privilege destined for foreign residents in our national territory, and for politically reliable people.
In my case, if I want to connect from a hotel the prices are astronomical, a click here and there have to be done fast because every minute that passes harms me economically. I do that once a week or every ten days.
I write several articles from my house and when I manage to get connected, I scheduled the posts to give the impression my blog is alive, although I'm not connected at that moment.
But other Cubans get online access in the early morning hours through accounts they buy in the black market, but that has many risks.
Question number ____________________
Sánchez: In my case, I try to take advantage of the all the time I'm not online to arrange texts and photos correctly, so when I finally get access to look around the web, I do it as quickly as possible.
Fortunately, many tourists who visit Cuba know our situation, mine and that of other bloggers. After spending a week or two in this country, they usually give us prepaid phone cards to use in a hotel. Our technological poverty doesn’t allow us to sustain those costs.
But thanks to the solidarity of many people in the world, we are able to have internet access. And also people who read our posts in other parts of the world, recharge our phones, which allow us to tweet. This is quite an interesting period on how Cubans have access to social networks.
3/16/2012
No joke: Italy lawyers strike for better pay
(Reuters) - This is not a lawyers joke. Italian lawyers have gone on strike - again - and they say that in their struggle for better working conditions and pay they are looking for inspiration to none other than Mahatma Gandhi, the little lawyer who liberated India.
"Lawyers are going through difficult times," said Maurizio De Tilla, president of the United Lawyers Organisation, as he led a protest of about 2,000 lawyers outside one of Rome's main court buildings.
"Out of 230,000 of us, more than 100,000 are in difficulty; we have insecure jobs and we are underpaid," he said, wearing a gold-tasseled, black-and-purple robe and a fluffy white cravat.
Around him, hundreds of other lawyers held up pastel-colored balloons bearing the words "The Constitution" on them.
While the idea of lawyers striking for job security and better pay might raise chuckles elsewhere, Italy's lawyers say they are deadly serious.
At the protest that at times resembled a children's garden party on a warm late winter day, lawyers stood their ground against what they call "savage" plans by Mario Monti's government to increase competition in their profession.
Lawyers' guilds say the reforms will only increase legal costs, undermine the protection of the weak, reduce expertise and unleash an uncontrolled market in fees.
"The reforms worsen the situation rather than improving it and that is absurd," said De Tilla, as a pink balloon floated behind his head.
The lawyers oppose the abolition of minimum fees, which the government says will reduce costs for citizens.
They also oppose plans to extend a fast-track conciliation procedure for minor civil cases -- similar to small claims court in the United States -- which would not require the use of lawyers.
De Tilla says most lawyers are idealists, not the stereotypical money grabbers or ambulance chasers.
"Gandhi was a lawyer. We want to imitate his way of protesting - silent, well-mannered, civilized but determined - and we shall not stop until lawyers are given back the role and the profile that they have always had," he said, in tones similar to a summing up speech at a trial.
There were some tense moments later when the lawyers tried to march up the steps of the justice palace and had to be held back by police.
Lawyers are among the most powerful of Italy's lobbies due both to their political influence and their sheer numbers - there are some 230,000 lawyers for 60 million people, compared to 54,000 in France which has a slightly bigger population.
They are by far the biggest profession represented in Italy's parliament and critics say they are only trying to protect what many, including consumer groups, see as entrenched and outdated privileges.
But lawyers believe the deregulation measures will undermine professional standards by cutting the length of probation periods for graduates and allowing businessmen to hold a majority interest in legal practices - raising a conflict of interest and undermining the lawyers' independence.
Italy's consumer groups have condemned strikes by lawyers, who already held a two-day nationwide stoppage last month, during which some of them taped up their mouths.
The consumer lobbies say competition will be good for ordinary Italians and that lawyers have been at least partly to blame for Italy's notoriously snail-paced justice system.
The average time taken to resolve a civil case in Italy is nearly seven-and-a-half years and the average to settle criminal cases through a long appeal process is nearly five years.
There is a backlog of nine million cases, 5.5 million of them civil and the rest criminal. The guilty often escape justice simply because time runs out due to the statute of limitations.
Justice Minister Paola Severino said recently that Italy was the fourth most litigious country in Europe, with 2.8 million new cases brought in 2011
3/12/2012
Genes and Investing
Economists work on the assumption that people act rationally. If only life were that simple! Investors certainly don’t always act as they should. Among other mistakes, they trade too much, do not diversify their portfolios enough and are reluctant to discard underperforming stocks. They may have been born to behave that way.
A recent study* into investment behaviour by Stephan Siegel of Arizona State University’s WP Carey School of Business, and Henrik Cronqvist of Claremont McKenna College, illuminates the role that genes play in determining investment decisions.
The authors examine the investment behaviour of 15,208 pairs of Swedish twins, using data from the country’s twin registry and its tax authority, which until 2007 kept records on every financial transaction. Controlling for various factors, they find that identical twins, who share all their genes, were more similar in their investing behaviour than fraternal twins, who share about half their genes.
The authors calculate that genetic factors account for between a quarter and half of the variations in irrational investment behaviour between individuals. These factors are at work across more dimensions than just investing.
Twins who showed a bias towards buying familiar shares rather than unknown ones, for example, also showed a preference for living closer to their place of birth and for marrying a spouse from the same region.
If genes explain up to a half of the variations in investment behaviour, what governs the rest? The authors also calculated the impact of shared environmental influences on the twins as well as the effect of experiences unique to one half of a twin pair. Common childhood experiences like schooling were found to have almost no influence on investment behaviour. But individual experiences explain half of the variations between twin pairs—as much as, and often more than, genes.
However, the study called "Why Do Individuals Exhibit Investment Biases?”, February 2012, has its limitations since it looks at data from only one country during a limited period of time.
adapted from The Economist
A recent study* into investment behaviour by Stephan Siegel of Arizona State University’s WP Carey School of Business, and Henrik Cronqvist of Claremont McKenna College, illuminates the role that genes play in determining investment decisions.
The authors examine the investment behaviour of 15,208 pairs of Swedish twins, using data from the country’s twin registry and its tax authority, which until 2007 kept records on every financial transaction. Controlling for various factors, they find that identical twins, who share all their genes, were more similar in their investing behaviour than fraternal twins, who share about half their genes.
The authors calculate that genetic factors account for between a quarter and half of the variations in irrational investment behaviour between individuals. These factors are at work across more dimensions than just investing.
Twins who showed a bias towards buying familiar shares rather than unknown ones, for example, also showed a preference for living closer to their place of birth and for marrying a spouse from the same region.
If genes explain up to a half of the variations in investment behaviour, what governs the rest? The authors also calculated the impact of shared environmental influences on the twins as well as the effect of experiences unique to one half of a twin pair. Common childhood experiences like schooling were found to have almost no influence on investment behaviour. But individual experiences explain half of the variations between twin pairs—as much as, and often more than, genes.
However, the study called "Why Do Individuals Exhibit Investment Biases?”, February 2012, has its limitations since it looks at data from only one country during a limited period of time.
adapted from The Economist
3/05/2012
Retail Fraud
TIMES may be tough, but women still need little black dresses to wear to parties. So some buy a fancy gown, dance the night away in it and then return it to the store, pretending that it does not fit. This is an example of a growing problem. Retailers call it “de-shopping”.Return fraud is becoming more widespread. It cost American retailers $14.4 billion in 2011, according to the National Retail Federation, up from $9.4 billion in 2009.
Online stores are particularly vulnerable. Few people will risk buying something to wear without trying it on first, so cyber-retailers need to have generous returns policies. But other scams are gaining popularity, too. Electrical retailers say that some sports fans now “borrow” large high-definition televisions to watch big matches.
De-shoppers are becoming more organized, says Tamira King of Cranfield School of Management in Britain. They have worked out that returning items in a group, for example, is more successful, as managers worry about an ugly scene in their shops.
Most do not see their behavior as fraudulent, says Ms King. If retailers are gullible enough to take goods back, they think, then more fool them. Few will cross the line to shoplifting, which they (correctly) regard as criminal.
Stores can protect themselves. Many returns policies far exceed the minimum legal requirements, so there is room to be more strict. In 2009 Marks & Spencer, a British retailer famed for its no-questions-asked refund policy, reduced the window for returns from 90 to 35 days. It now has returns desks away from the shop floor. This makes sho
uters and screamers less likely to succeed. Many shops now also insist on identification checks, so that recidivists can be more easily tracked.A delicate balance is needed. Having the best customer services can help a retailer stand out from its competitors. And irritating genuine customers is bad for business. So some shops also reward good behavior. One occasional shopper at Lord & Taylor, a fancy New York department store, was surprised to be presented with a VIP card, usually reserved for more extravagant customers. It was, the store said, because in 20 years she had not returned a single item.
adapted from The Economist
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