Archive for January 8th, 2023
Annual Report & Plan
This downloadable PDF asks 7 questions to help you examine last year and decide your focus for the coming year. The first three:
1. Imagine you took over your life today. If you wanted to be more successful, what would you stop? What would you start? What’s getting in the way?
If I took over my life from scratch today, what would I immediately stop doing?
What would I start doing?
2. You’ll never reach the top of the mountain unless you enjoy the climb.
Hint: What gave you energy? What drained you? What gave you meaning? What seemed void?What do I want to spend MORE time on next year?
What do I want to spend LESS time on next year?
3. The most successful people don’t wait around for things to happen to them, they make things happen by going positive and go first.
Hint: Stop waiting for someone to make the first move. It doesn’t matter if it is an apology or asking someone out on a date. Stop waiting for life to give you what you deserve and go out and make it happen.Where am I waiting for another person to make the first move?
What can I do to go positive and go first? . . .
I can’t resist pointing out some similarities to this post.
The first question seems related to the mission statement (Habit 2), along with an analysis of driving forces and restraining forces (Habit 6).
The second question also relates to the mission statement.
The third question resonates with being proactive (Habit 1)
It strikes me that this report/planning document would work well as a complement to Covey’s method.
Covid death rates are higher among Republicans than Democrats, mounting evidence shows
The New Hampshire motto “Live free or die” has new resonance. Aria Bendix reports for NBC News:
Covid deaths are unevenly distributed among Republicans and Democrats.
Average excess death rates in Florida and Ohio were 76% higher among Republicans than Democrats from March 2020 to December 2021, according to a working paper released last month by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Excess deaths refers to deaths above what would be anticipated based on historical trends.
A study in June published in Health Affairs similarly found that counties with a Republican majority had a greater share of Covid deaths through October 2021, relative to majority-Democratic counties.
But experts are still puzzling over why these differences exist. Are lower vaccination rates among Republicans responsible? Or did mask use and social distancing guidelines prevent more deaths in counties run by Democrats?
The Yale researchers behind the new working paper say vaccine hesitancy among Republicans may be the biggest culprit.
“In counties where a large share of the population is getting vaccinated, we see a much smaller gap between Republicans and Democrats,” said Jacob Wallace, an author of that study and an assistant professor of health policy at the Yale School of Public Health.
Indeed, his paper found that the partisan gap in the deaths widened from April to December 2021, after all adults became eligible for Covid vaccines. Excess death rates in Florida and Ohio were 153% higher among Republicans than Democrats during that time, the paper showed.
“We really don’t see a big divide until after vaccines became widely available in our two states,” Wallace said.
But the June study suggested that Covid vaccine uptake explained just 10% of the partisan gap in the deaths. Those researchers suggested that compliance with other public health measures such as mask use and social distancing was a significant factor.
“Vaccination does play a role in the difference that we’ve observed in excess mortality between red and blue places, but it is not the whole story,” said Neil Jay Sehgal, an author of that study and an assistant professor of health policy and management at the University of Maryland School of Public Health.
“When you have less transmission, you have fewer cases and you have less mortality. And you have less transmission in general by instituting protective policies like mask requirements when we had them, or capacity limits in businesses,” he added.
Role of vaccine hesitancy
Both papers come with limitations. The study from Sehgal’s team looked at counties, not individuals, which makes it difficult to determine whether other demographic factors — such as education level, proximity to health care services or the share of older residents — played a role in the trend.
The new Yale paper, by contrast, linked political affiliation to excess Covid deaths at the individual level, but it still used county-level vaccination rates. The research was also limited to two states.
“It may very well be that in Ohio and Florida, because of the nature of Ohioans and Floridians, vaccine uptake may have played a greater role than the country at large,” Sehgal said.
Wallace, however, said it’s common knowledge that attitudes toward vaccines “are not Ohio- and Florida-specific issues.”
Joe Gerald, an associate professor of public health policy and management at the University of Arizona, who was not involved in either study, agreed that Ohio and Florida are good places to study this issue, because . . .
Tempeh Greens
I’m thinking about what I’ll cook today. Because I use a lot of ingredients, I often will list them in a text document so I can more easily mull them over, revise the list, and print it for reference while I cook. I did that today, beginning with the thought “I should cook the Brussels sprouts” followed by “oh, and the red kale,” and then “tarragon” and “celery! that was good.”
The holy trinity of Cajun cooking is onion, green bell pepper, and celery. The onion here is white or yellow storage onion, though I will always prefer red — and I prefer spring onions or scallions because they are so much more nutritious (due to the leaves, I imagine).
French cooking has its own holy trinity, the mirepoix: onions, carrots, and celery. Spanish cooking’s holy trinity is the sofrito: garlic, onion, and tomatoes (and often smoked paprika). For the Cantonese, the trinity is scallions, garlic, and ginger, and Indian cooking often uses onions, garlic, and ginger.
My own trinity seems to be garlic, ginger, and turmeric, each of those fresh, not the powdered, processed versions. Another trinity that I often use as a complement to that is (thick) scallions, mushrooms, and chiles — usually jalapeños, but sometimes red Fresno or Thai chiles. If I have them, I’ll use spring onions or BBQ onions in preference to scallions.
Here are my thoughts on today’s dish, with the two trinities in italics:
extra-virgin olive oil
diced tempeh (today, chickpea and rye)
BBQ onions
mushrooms
jalapeños
dried tomatoes
garlic
ginger
turmeric
Sauté the above until mushrooms loosen up. Then add:
celery
brussels sprouts
red kale
Sauté some more. Then add:
pulp of 1 lemon
a little veggie broth (don’t want a soup, just enough for simmering)
dried marjoram
dried thyme
Spanish smoked paprika
2 dried chipotles, stem cut off
a good amount of ground black pepper
tamari
Simmer for 10 minutes. Add
tarragon
Simmer 10 minutes more.
Serve with a sauce — one of these, or perhaps this, or something else.
Good thought
Daniel Swensen:
If you suffered in life and want other people to suffer as you did because “you turned out fine,” you did not in fact turn out fine.
Later On 