New Year’s Eve

At midnight tonight, the horses on this farm will age a year. That is the custom — every horse has the same birthday, Jan. 1. Like all things calendrical, this is a human convention. When it comes to equine conventions, I know enough to notice some of the simpler forms of precedence: who goes first through a gate, who gets to the grain feeder ahead of the others. But I can report that the horses make no fuss about their common birthday or the coming of the new year. Tonight, like any other, they will be standing, dozing on their feet, ears tipping back and forth at the slightest of sounds.
There is something deeply gratifying about joining the horses in their pasture a few minutes before the clock strikes 12 on New Year’s Eve. What makes the night exceptional, in their eyes and mine, is my presence among them, not the lapsing of an old year.
It’s worth standing out in the snow just to savor the anticlimax of midnight, just to acknowledge that out of the tens of millions of species on this planet, only one bothers to celebrate not the passing of time, but the way it has chosen to mark the passing of time. I remember the resolutions I made when I was younger. I find myself thinking that one way to describe nature is a realm where resolutions have no meaning.
It’s not that time isn’t passing or that the night doesn’t show it. The stars are wheeling around Polaris, and the sugar maples that frame the pasture are laying down another cellular increment in their annual rings. The geese stir in the poultry yard. A hemlock sheds its snow. No two nights are ever the same.
I always wonder what it would be like to belong to a species — just for a while — that isn’t so busy indexing its life, that lives wholly within the single long strand of its being. I will never have even an idea of what that’s like.
I know because when I stand among the horses tonight, I will feel a change once midnight has come. Some need will have vanished, and I will walk back to the house — lights burning, smoke coming from the wood stove — as if something had been accomplished, some episode closed.

Protect your family without breaking the bank

I firmly believe the role of insurance is to protect wealth, not to create it. A term policy is pure insurance, while whole life and universal policies are a mixture of insurance and investments. For reasons I'll explain below, I think the optimum solution is to buy a low-cost term insurance policy and invest the rest yourself, outside of any insurance wrapper. But the optimum solution may not work for everyone.
Insurance products are so complex that you might need a Ph.D. to actually understand some of them. Here are the basics of the three life policies you mentioned.
Term life insurance: Typically provides a fixed amount of insurance for a specified number of years. Because it doesn't carry an investment component and has a fixed expiration date, it's very inexpensive.
Whole life insurance: Combines life insurance with a savings plan that builds up cash value.
Universal life insurance: Also combines life insurance with investing. This is typically more flexible than whole life, as the policy holder often has choices in how the savings component is invested.
Many financial planners will refer to term insurance as temporary insurance, and whole and universal as permanent insurance. Buying permanent insurance may bring more of a sense of security for your family. But let's examine the economics first.
When you buy a permanent policy, you pay for two things: The premiums that go toward the "death benefit," which is the payment made to your beneficiaries when you die, as well as payments into an investment account. The investment account builds a "cash value" for the policy which you can borrow against or withdraw, less fees, if you cancel.
If you buy whole life insurance, look at the portfolio of the insurance company you are buying the policy from. You can do this by perusing its financial statements, and I'll bet you'll see that it's mostly in bonds. Therefore, you should expect the return from the investment portion of your insurance to be similar to that of a bond portfolio, minus commissions and fees.
Buying a universal life policy often gives you options on how your money is invested, but those options usually have one thing in common - extremely high costs. Not to mention that the premiums for the death benefit of these vehicles increase as you age, until you could eventually find yourself paying ten times the amount you first started paying.
It is also important to ask how you would get out of the policy if you wished to, and how much that would cost you. Both permanent policies usually charge "surrender fees" if you try to cancel the plan. I'm always suspicious of any product that is easy to get into and hard to get out of.
So what is the optimum solution? Because the investing portion of the premium in both whole and universal life is so expensive, I tell clients that they would likely be far better off if they buy an inexpensive term life policy, and invest the savings on their own.
This solution gives you the protection you need for your family, and allows you to build the investing component for a fraction of the cost charged by an insurance company and financial planner.
I've often heard other planners argue for permanent insurance by saying that you can borrow against it, that it's more tax-efficient, and that it's a great estate planning vehicle. But I'm still convinced that in the vast majority of cases, there are far more efficient vehicles to address those needs.
I do believe that permanent insurance can be a forced savings vehicle for those clients who would have a hard time saving otherwise. If I get a client to buy term and they end up spending the savings rather than investing it, I have done them a disservice. An expensive investment is better than none at all.
But it's important to know the motivations of anyone trying to sell you something. The truth is that financial planners make far more from selling whole and universal life insurance than we do from selling inexpensive term insurance.
If you are a disciplined saver, I strongly recommend buying term and investing the rest. If you need a forced savings vehicle and you can't find that vehicle elsewhere, then you may want to consider a permanent policy. But either way, make sure you understand what it is you're buying and how much it's costing you.

The Risks and Rewards of Skipping Meals

People often miss meals because they get busy or are trying to lose weight. But how you skip meals, and the amount you eat at your next meal, can affect your overall health.
The scientific data on skipping meals has been confusing. In some studies, fasting has resulted in measurable metabolic benefits for obese people, and in animal studies, intermittent feeding and fasting reduces the incidence of diabetes and improves certain indicators of cardiovascular health. Even so, several observational studies and short-term experiments have suggested an association between meal skipping and poor health.
In recent months, two new studies may help explain how skipping meals affects health.
The most recent study, published this month in the medical journal Metabolism, looked at what happens when people skip meals but end up eating just as much as they would in a normal day when they finally do sit down to a meal. The study, conducted by diabetes researchers at the National Institute on Aging, involved healthy, normal-weight men and women in their 40s. For two months, the study subjects ate three meals a day. For another eight-week period, they skipped two meals but ate the same number of calories in one evening meal, consumed between 4 p.m. and 8 p.m.
The researchers found that skipping meals during the day and eating one large meal in the evening resulted in potentially risky metabolic changes. The meal skippers had elevated fasting glucose levels and a delayed insulin response — conditions that, if they persisted long term, could lead to diabetes.
The study was notable because it followed another study earlier this year that found that skipping meals every other day could actually improve a patient’s health. In that study, published in March in Free Radical Biology & Medicine, overweight adults with mild asthma ate normal meals one day. This was followed by a day of severely restricted eating, when they ate less than 20 percent of their normal caloric intake, or about 400 or 500 calories a day — the equivalent of about one meal. Nine out of 10 study participants were able to stick to the eating plan.
After following the alternate-day dieting pattern for two months, the dieters lost an average of 8 percent of their body weight, and their asthma-related symptoms also improved. They had lower cholesterol and triglycerides, “striking” reductions in markers of oxidative stress and increased levels of the antioxidant uric acid. Markers of inflammation were also significantly lower.
The conclusion, say the authors of the more recent meal-skipping study, is that skipping meals as part of a controlled eating plan that results in lower calorie intake can result in better health. However, skipping meals during the day and then overeating at the evening meal results in harmful metabolic changes in the body.

The Money Is No Good

"If you once forfeit the confidence of your fellow citizens, you can never regain their respect and esteem। It is true that you may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all of the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time." - Abraham Lincoln

Monopoly money is what it most closely resembles. Never have portraits been rendered so unprofessionally as on the new, larger portrait bills.Who did the engraving - a child with a sharp stick? And there is no sense of symmetry.

Why would I bother to concern myself with our currency's artistic value? Because, in the final analysis, that's all it's worth. All States coin and currency (and virtually all in the world) is fiat money. Unlike the commodity money on which our nation was built, fiat money consists of worthless coins with little or no precious metal in them (if melted down, they would not be worth their face value), and of paper currency that cannot be redeemed for gold or silver and is, in fact, backed by absolutely nothing. Fiat money is money by government decree. That it is worth anything is only because the government says it is worth something. We could just as easily be using monopoly money and arcade tokens.

Talking to Kids About Santa…and Everything Else

Raising a child means having a lot of difficult conversations. And this time of year, one of the toughest involves Santa Claus.
For families that celebrate Christmas, Santa represents the magic and innocence of childhood. Talking about whether he is real can result in sadness, a sense of loss and questions for both parents and child.
A mother I know recently recommended a book to help with the inevitable tough talks every parent faces. “How to Say It to Your Kids,'’ by Paul Coleman, is like having a family therapist when you need him. Dr. Coleman, known on the Oprah circuit for his advice on marriage and family, tackles 100 tough topics and offers the right words for parents to consider when talking to their kids. A book can’t possibly give you all the answers, but it does offer guidance and reassurance about your own instincts.
The problem with the Santa conversation is that it crosses into so many difficult areas. It raises fears about growing up, leads to worry (will Christmas be ever be the same?) and leaves children confused about why a parent lied to them. Dr. Coleman notes that children have varying reactions to the conversation, ranging from feeling proud that they figured it out to feeling confused and betrayed.
Dr. Coleman says it’s fine to reinforce Santa when a child obviously wants to believe. He also notes that when a child finds out the truth, it’s important that parents don’t immediately change their holiday traditions. He told the story of a father who involved his oldest child in the gift buying. But the child wasn’t enthusiastic, and the father finally realized that his son still wanted to pretend but couldn’t if he accompanied his father on shopping trips.
Dr. Coleman deals with far more than Santa in his book. Topics include death, dawdling, chores and perseverance and, of course, issues involving sex and growing up. But for now, I needed him for the Santa talk. When my daughter raised the issue with me this Christmas, I told her the truth. Santa is real as long as you believe in him.

The Sweater Only a Mom (and Analyst) Could Love

I LOVE giving gifts, but let’s not pretend: I prefer to receive them. Unfortunately, I’m one of those people who is never satisfied and mostly disappointed. It could be because I am an ungrateful jerk with a childish temperament who places too much emphasis on what is essentially a symbolic ritual. Or it could be the media’s fault.
As I see it, I am the victim of years of conditioning from movies and commercials. They prepared me for the gaudily wrapped package with its golden bow, the moment of intense expectation charged with mystery climaxing as the tissue crinkles and the prize is revealed. You are overwhelmed, and there are hugs and kisses and sometimes tears.
But the reality is that getting a gift is like being set up on a blind date. Like it or not, your friend or family member is sending you a message telling you in a coded way what they think you want, what you deserve and, on some level, who they think you are.
I’m not talking about business gifts. They are formal and often unexpected. A bottle of wine, a certificate for a massage, and those wonderful electronic trinkets: they are part of a different language. Everyone gets the same thing.
Family is where it breaks down. And my family is big on gifts. Everyone refuses to stop exchanging them, even though we have all declared them a waste of time and money.

Scientists Weigh Stem Cells’ Role as Cancer Cause

Within the next few months, researchers at three medical centers expect to start the first test in patients of one of the most promising — and contentious — ideas about the cause and treatment of cancer.
The idea is to take aim at what some scientists say are cancerous stem cells — aberrant cells that maintain and propagate malignant tumors.
Although many scientists have assumed that cancer cells are immortal — that they divide and grow indefinitely — most can only divide a certain number of times before dying. The stem-cell hypothesis says that cancers themselves may not die because they are fed by cancerous stem cells, a small and particularly dangerous kind of cell that can renew by dividing even as it spews out more cells that form the bulk of a tumor. Worse, stem cells may be impervious to most standard cancer therapies.
Not everyone accepts the hypothesis of cancerous stem cells. Skeptics say proponents are so in love with the idea that they dismiss or ignore evidence against it. Dr. Scott E. Kern, for instance, a leading pancreatic cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins University, said the hypothesis was more akin to religion than to science.
At stake in the debate is the direction of cancer research. If proponents of the stem-cell hypothesis are correct, it will usher in an era of hope for curing once-incurable cancers.
If the critics are right, the stem-cell enthusiasts are heading down a blind alley that will serve as just another cautionary tale in the history of medical research.
In the meantime, though, proponents are looking for ways to kill the stem cells, and say that certain new drugs may be the solution.
“Within the next year, we will see medical centers targeting stem cells in almost every cancer,” said Dr. Max S. Wicha, director of the University of Michigan Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of the sites for the preliminary study that begins in the next few months (the other participating institutions are Baylor College of Medicine in Houston and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston).
“We are so excited about this,” Dr. Wicha said. “It has become a major thrust of our cancer center.”
At the National Cancer Institute, administrators seem excited, too.
“If this is real, it could have almost immediate impact,” said Dr. R. Allan Mufson, chief of the institute’s Cancer Immunology and Hematology Branch.
The cancer institute is financing the research, he said, and has authorized Dr. Mufson to put out a request for proposals, soliciting investigators to apply for cancer institute money to study cancer stem cells and ways to bring the research to cancer patients. The institute has agreed to contribute $5.4 million.
“Given the current fiscal situation, which is terrible, it’s a surprising amount,” Dr. Mufson said. “We actually asked for less,” he added, but the cancer institute’s executive committee asked that the amount be increased.
Proponents of the hypothesis like to use the analogy of a lawn dotted with dandelions: Mowing the lawn makes it look like the weeds are gone, but the roots are intact and the dandelions come back.
So it is with cancer, they say. Chemotherapy and radiation often destroy most of a tumor, but if they do not kill the stem cells, which are the cancer’s roots, it can grow back.
Cancerous stem cells are not the same as embryonic stem cells, the cells present early in development that can turn into any cell of the body. Cancerous stem cells are different. They can turn into tumor cells, and they are characterized by distinctive molecular markers.
The stem-cell hypothesis answered a longstanding question: does each cell in a tumor have the same ability to keep a cancer going? By one test the answer was no. When researchers transplanted tumor cells into a mouse that had no immune system, they found that not all of the cells could form tumors.
To take the work to the next step, researchers needed a good way to isolate the cancer-forming cells. Until recently, “the whole thing languished,” said Dr. John E. Dick, director of the stem cell biology program at the University of Toronto, because scientists did not have the molecular tools to investigate.
But when those tools emerged in the early 1990s, Dr. Dick found stem cells in acute myelogenous leukemia, a blood cancer. He reported that such cells made up just 1 percent of the leukemia cells and that those were the only ones that could form tumors in mice.
Yet Dr. Dick’s research, Dr. Wicha said, “was pretty much ignored.” Cancer researchers, he said, were not persuaded — and even if they had accepted the research — doubted that the results would hold for solid tumors, like those of the breast, colon, prostate or brain.
That changed in 1994, when Dr. Wicha and a colleague, Dr. Michael Clarke, who is now at Stanford, reported finding cancerous stem cells in breast cancer patients.
“The paper hit me like a bombshell,” said Robert Weinberg, a professor of biology at M.I.T. and a leader in cancer research. “To my mind, that is conceptually the most important paper in cancer over the past decade.”
Dr. Weinberg and others began pursuing the stem-cell hypothesis, and researchers now say they have found cancerous stem cells in cancers of the colon, head and neck, lung, prostate, brain, and pancreas.
Symposiums were held. Leading journals published paper after paper.
But difficult questions persisted. One problem, critics say, is that the math does not add up. The hypothesis only makes sense if a tiny fraction of cells in a tumor are stem cells, said Dr. Bert Vogelstein, a colon cancer researcher at Johns Hopkins who said he had not made up his mind on the validity of the hypothesis.
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But some studies suggest that stem cells make up 10 percent or even 40 percent or 50 percent of tumor cells, at least by the molecular-marker criterion. If a treatment shrinks a tumor by 99 percent, as is often the case, and 10 percent of the tumor was stem cells, then the stem cells too must have been susceptible, Dr. Vogelstein says.
Critics also question the research on mice. The same cells that can give rise to a tumor if transplanted into one part of a mouse may not form a tumor elsewhere.
“A lot of things affect transplants,” Dr. Kern, the Johns Hopkins researcher, said, explaining that transplanting tumors into mice did not necessarily reveal whether there were stem cells.
Other doubts have been raised by Dr. Kornelia Polyak, a researcher at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. Dr. Polyak asked whether breast cancer cells remain true to type, that is, whether stem cells remain stem cells and whether others remain non-stem cells? The answer, she has found, is “not necessarily.”
Cancer cells instead appear to be moving targets, changing from stem cells to non-stem cells and back again. The discovery was unexpected because it had been thought that cell development went one way — from stem cell to tumor cell — and there was no going back.
“You want to kill all the cells in a tumor,” Dr. Polyak said. “Everyone assumes that currently-used drugs are not targeting stem cell populations, but that has not been proven.”
“To say you just have to kill the cancer stem cell is oversimplified,” she added. “It’s giving false hope.”
The criticisms make sense, Dr. Weinberg said. But he said he remained swayed by the stem cell hypothesis.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions, mind you,” he said. “Most believe cancer stem cells exist, but that doesn’t mean they exist. We believe it on the basis of rather fragmentary evidence, which I happen to believe in the aggregate is rather convincing.”
Dr. Wicha said he was convinced that the hypothesis was correct, and said it explained better than any other hypothesis what doctors and patients already know.
“Not only are some of the approaches we are using not getting us anywhere, but even the way we approve drugs is a bad model,” he said. Anti-cancer drugs, he noted, are approved if they shrink tumors even if they do not prolong life. It is the medical equivalent, he said, of mowing a dandelion field.
He said the moment of truth would come soon, with studies like the one planned for women with breast cancer.
The drug to be tested was developed by Merck to treat Alzheimer’s disease. It did not work on Alzheimer’s but it kills breast cancer stem cells in laboratory studies, Dr. Wicha says.
The study will start with a safety test on 30 women who have advanced breast cancer. Hopes are that it will be expanded to find out if the drug can prolong lives.
“Patient survival,” Dr. Wicha said, “is the ultimate endpoint.”

Big Fund to Prop Up Securities Is Scrapped

Some of the country’s biggest banks have pulled the plug on a plan backed by the Treasury Department to rescue troubled investment vehicles that were leveled by the subprime mortgage crisis.
The decision came Friday after it became clear that neither the banks nor the structured investment vehicles were willing to create a giant fund to bail out the SIVs.
The reversal is a setback for Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., who had urged the banks to create the so-called super SIV to keep the crisis in housing-related debt from worsening.
A separate proposal by the Bush administration to modify home loans for troubled borrowers has also met with skepticism.
“It is somewhat politically embarrassing for the administration,” said Bert Ely, a banking industry consultant. “The mortgage modification program is much more significant and will get much more media attention if it doesn’t get the results that have been promised. That discussion will put the SIV plan into ancient history.”
At the Treasury’s behest, Bank of America, Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase hammered out the SIV plan this fall in hopes of avoiding a sharp sell-off in securities owned by these vehicles. Such a fire sale might rock the already jittery credit markets.
Originally it was thought that the giant fund, called a Master Liquidity Enhancement Conduit, or M-LEC, might raise as much as $80 billion to buy assets from the SIVs. But it quickly became clear that the fund would be scaled back or scrapped. Many of the 30 or so troubled SIVs moved to solve their problems themselves, sharply reducing their holdings of asset-backed securities. Many banks, meantime, were reluctant to commit financing to the super SIV.
As recently as Tuesday, leading banks and BlackRock, which was to manage the super SIV, said they were committed to the rescue fund. During the past two days, however, bank representatives and senior Treasury Department officials began to discuss whether to abandon the plan. Mr. Paulson was briefed before they made the final decision Friday afternoon.
Still, major banks left open the possibility that the super SIV could re-emerge if necessary. “The consortium will continue to monitor market conditions and remain committed to work collaboratively on any appropriate solutions, including activation of the M-LEC, if needed,” the group said in a statement.

Ustad Amjad Ali Khan composes carols on Sarod

Uniquely combining Christmas carols and hymns with the Indian classical strains of the Sarod, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan has composed the yuletide jingles on the traditional musical instrument.
Aptly titled "Breaking Barriers" as it combines western lyrics with Indian classical music the album has nine compositions.
Christmas hymns and carols, which usually are recorded on a piano, for the first time have been composed on Sarod by the maestro.
"I wanted to perform these beautiful Christmas renditions since 1995 but could not do so due to other commitments. My sons then shared this idea of mine sometime back and it happened this time," Khan told us.
The album, timed to coincide with the Christmas celebrations, is aimed at spreading the message of peace, compassion, brotherhood and one faith, he said.
"This album is my interpretation of the popular Christmas hymns and carols. All the compositions have been played by me and I have improvised them within the same notes," said the maestro, who is also the UNICEF National Ambassador.
The Christmas special album also has a song for children 'Joy to the World', as yuletide holds an important place in children's hearts, by the way of receiving gifts.

Ustad Amjad Ali Khan composes carols on Sarod

Uniquely combining Christmas carols and hymns with the Indian classical strains of the Sarod, Ustad Amjad Ali Khan has composed the yuletide jingles on the traditional.
Aptly titled "Breaking Barriers" as it combines western lyrics with Indian the album has nine compositions.
Christmas hymns and carols, which usually are recorded on a piano, for the first time have been composed on Sarod by the maestro.
"I wanted to perform these beautiful Christmas renditions since 1995 but could not do so due to other commitments. My sons then shared this idea of mine sometime back and it happened this time," Khan told us.
The album, timed to coincide with the Christmas celebrations, is aimed at spreading the message of peace, compassion, brotherhood and one faith, he said.
"This album is my interpretation of the popular Christmas hymns and carols. All the compositions have been played by me and I have improvised them within the same notes," said the maestro, who is also the UNICEF National Ambassador.
The Christmas special album also has a song for children 'Joy to the World', as yuletide holds an important place in children's hearts, by the way of receiving gifts.