interiors

In respomnse to Helping the Elderly Downsize I commented: Moving is stressful and can possibly kill, particularly older people. I found the line, "In a few weeks she managed to get him moved in with his wife, who died four days later at age 82." telling. Yes, it is good for our elders to live in places that are easy for them to ambulate comfortably, but we must be careful about how we go about this. We should should not 'kill the patient', and we need to be watchful of the mental effects of relocation, e.g., depression, feelings of isolation, loneliness, etc.

In response to  Hotels vs. Airbnb: Let the Battle Begin , I wrote the following: Although we have had some good, and even excellent, experiences via VRBO, I prefer hotels, inns and B&B's. On trips, I have no interest in cooking or cleaning up after myself. Travel for me is about pleasure, relaxation, and enjoying local experiences. It helps that we can afford the costs, and the times we opted for a short rental was for cost, either because we had less money, or because hotels seemed to offer little for their high costs. Respectively, once on our honeymoon to Italy where we rented an entire house for a week on the Italian Riviera, and another a flat in Amsterdam, situated within the canals and near a university. I am not a big fan of such services, but what gets me annoyed is the illegality and the exposure to risk that these services create. We own our condo in a doorman building, and have entertained the idea of subletting for a year or more so we can enjoy the country and/o...

In response to an article What Is a Man For? in The New York Times, I responded: I saw this quote from the short article description and did a double-take, "woman realizes she doesn’t need a man to provide, protect or procreate" and I was dumbfounded. For some of us, it has always been about desire, about sharing one's life, about a marriage of equals. Granted, my spouse, takes care of me in many ways, but then again, so do I take care of her. In truth, we both provide and protect each other, but we also enjoy each other, build a life together, enable each other.

In response to Sorry, We Don’t Take Obamacare in the The New York Times I wrote the following: The 'failures' of the ACA will be used differently by the major parties. The Republicans will use it as a cudgel to reduce it, while the Democrats will see it as a reason to move toward single-payer ala Medicare. Even under a single-payer type system, there will be problems, but as a progressive and humane citizenry, we need to move toward a better system, one that covers all, regardless of the ability to pay, paired with FDA, FTC, and USDA - there are other related enablers of poor public welfare - that act in citizens' interests, not corporations.

A response to an article,  AirBlabNBore in the The New York Times : From our own travels, if anyone was a chatty nuisance it was me.  We have used VRBO before AirBnB came along, and we have never had to socialize much, luckily. Our first experience was on our honeymoon, an entire house overlooking the Italian Mediterranean, and other than meeting someone to get the keys, we were entirely alone. Another was in Savannah, where we rented an apartment owned and designed by a professor at SCAD, Savannah College of Art and Design, and again, if anyone was a nuisance it was me, curious about the designer. More recently, we had a wonderful apartment in Amsterdam, across from a university and hemmed by the canals, where we were met by the owner's friend. Although she was civil, she was rushed, needing to get back to work, and not interested in getting to know us.  Imagine what the hosts must put up with...

A response to NY Times Well article, Churchgoers May Live Longer : There are other studies that have shown this correlation, but it does not really get at the heart of the matter, that any regular social activity has the same effect. The benefits accrue to people and activities that are regular and social, but of course, living in a religious state - I mean the US as state - means that the questions support the religiosity of its populace. A quote from the Harvard Gazette: "Social and productive activities that involve little or no enhancement of physical fitness lower the risk of all causes of death as much as exercise does," says Thomas Glass, an assistant professor at the Harvard School of Public Health.  The actions they refer to include going to church, restaurants, and sports events, taking short trips, playing cards and games, socializing for its own sake, gardening, cooking for others, shopping, community work and, of course, paid employment.

A response to There are so few female programmers because they find it BORING : As usual, the assumption that math predicts ability is assumed. Did you do any research of published data? Also, you likely do not realize that Mathematics majors, score about equally on the mathematical and verbal portions of the SAT/GRE. Math is not simply math. Some samples, from four different studies: This study supports prior research showing mathematics reasoning and verbal ability were each significant predictors of success in computer programming. The results of the study indicate that high scores on the verbal part of the SAT test facilitate generating solutions on the word programming problems; however, the high scores obtained on the SAT test are not significant if the students do not posses specific problem solving skills in their background. About 60% of the variance in programming aptitude was accounted for by this single factor. Six, out of 18, cognitive factors loaded signifi...