What I'm Reading Now-The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story

The Hot Zone: A Terrifying True Story by Richard Preston--As a good/terrifying follow-up the The Stand, I decided to pick up a book about viruses, viruses that can spread rapidly and kill you horribly. Good times.

Hey, so does everyone remember, back in the late '80s, when the Ebola virus broke out in a monkey facility in Reston, Virginia, right near our nation's capitol, and there was some concern that it might get out and burn through the population with a kill rate of up to 90%? No? Yeah, me neither, and it's a good thing too. (Or maybe ya'll do remember, and I just didn't pay attention because I was too young to be sufficiently scared.) The fact that it went largely unnoticed by the public (or, at least, by me) is probably because it didn't get out of control and kill everyone in its path, but not for lack of opportunity. Basically, the people involved just got lucky. (Quick little note here: If you ever have a piece of monkey spleen that you think might be contaminated with some kind of horrible virus, and you want to send it to somebody in a lab, just be aware that they frown upon receiving samples that are A) "wrapped in aluminum foil, like pieces of leftover hot dog" and B) packed in ice which is beginning to drip and melt and run red with melty, potentially-virusy monkey blood.)

If you can handle all the gory details, and I mean gory--the details in here are not for the faint of heart--this is a really interesting read about viruses, the fascinatingly horrific effects they can have on people (and animals), and on biocontainment procedures.  I know that sounds really dry, but it's not. This is an account of what goes down when the higher-ups go, "Oh, sh*t." 'Cause you know it's bad when the higher-ups go, "Oh, sh*t." Also, there are cave elephants.** (Honestly, this is what finally made me reserve the book at my library.)

According to the book, The United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) "conducts research into ways to protect soldiers against biological weapons and natural infectious diseases. It specializes in drugs, vaccines, and biocontainment." The Ebola virus is one of the viruses that the folks at USAMRIID work with, and the people who work with it are generally considered a little crazy; the general consensus seems to be, "To mess around with Ebola is an easy way to die. Better to work with something safer, such as anthrax."

When anthrax is your "safer" bet, you know you're playing with something scary. Contaminated primate meat is often thought to be the originating source of Ebola infection in humans, but the virus's origins are still unknown. Where did the primates get it? Marburg virus is related to Ebola and similar in its effects. Today, fruit bats are thought to be a reservoir host for Marburg virus, but in 1994, when the book was written, this wasn't known. Reading about the unsuccessful efforts to track down these viruses' origins and seeing how they evolved over time before presumably disappearing back into the jungle, waiting to reemerge, is frightening even today.

These viruses spread and multiply quickly. As of the writing of this book, there were three known strains of Ebola; today there are five. Ebola Zaire tends to be highly lethal in humans; Ebola Reston seems to have no symptoms in humans, yet, according to the book, experts can't really discern any genetic difference. The idea that a virus can shift so dramatically and yet unnoticeably was played out against the backdrop of AIDS, which had been spreading rapidly and inexplicably and was only just beginning to be understood by science. The idea that the virus behind this deadly disease could mutate at any time and become something even worse is lurking in the background throughout the book. The implications are just as scary today*** with the recent SARS, bird flu, and swine flu outbreaks, not to mention the plain old regular flu, and the fact that things like hantavirus, the plague (this is why fleas are NOT OK, people!) and Ebola still rear their ugly heads from time to time.

I said earlier that the cave elephants are what finally made me read this book, and that's true, but it had been on my radar for a while because of the author, Richard Preston. Preston is also the author of The Wild Trees, which, if you've been a long-time reader, you will remember was the book that was responsible for all of our grand tree climbing adventures. Now, I'm not about to go sign up to become a Biohazard Level-4 worker after reading this book, but I did enjoy it. I was in turns horrified by facts (blood comes out of every orifice?), shocked by behaviors (Really? You thought it would be a good idea to smell the potentially lethal virus culture to see if your sample had been contaminated??), and just plain interested in what I was reading, all the while hoping that my book wasn't covered in Ebola spread by some carelessly wrapped monkey spleen.

**The cave elephants play a pretty minor role, so don't get too excited about this part.

***Edited to add: Yikes! See what I mean? I haven't even had this published for half-an-hour, when I saw this article about a snake virus that might be a cross between Ebola and something else.

What I'm Reading Now-Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World (part I)

Mycelium Running: How Mushrooms Can Help Save the World by Paul Stamets--Okay, so I have to start out with a couple disclaimers: 1) I started this book about a year ago and never finished it, BUT I've been dying to talk about it since I finished had to turn it back in to the library. I even went so far as to buy my own copy since the library only has three copies and the wait list for it was always ridiculous...but I never got around to picking it back up. The point is, don't let the fact that I didn't finish it make you think it's not worth picking up. It totally is! 2) This post is all mostly lead-up to the actual book review which is in a separate post. So if you just want to skip all the interesting weirdness that is this post, be my guest, but I think you'll be missing out.

So, why have I finally decided to talk about this book? Well, mostly because of the pile of ants that were swarming my hair clip on my bathroom counter tonight. "Eh?" you say? Oh, sorry, "Ew," you say? Well, yeah. This has actually happened a few times over the last several years now. The first time was when we owned an ice cream store and I thought perhaps I had accidentally gotten some ice cream on my hair clip while I was hunched up on the top shelf of our walk-in cooler trying to de-ice the back of our condenser unit with a blow torch. (Yeah, that happened...frequently.) Aaaanyway, the ant swarms continue to this day even though we sold the store several years ago, so I have discarded the ice-cream-on-my-hair-clip theory and moved toward the theory that the ants are mining the rubber that makes up the grippy surface on the inside of the hair clips because it's petroleum-based. Obvs.

*crickets*

OK, first, watch this TED talk by the author, Paul Stamets. This is what made me seek out the book in the first place. I know it's 18 minutes, but it's an interesting 18 minutes. Mushrooms can do amazing things! (If you really don't want to sit through all 18 minutes, then skip ahead to 7:32 and watch until 9:40). That was the part that intrigued me the most and made me want to learn more.

OK, so you saw how the mushrooms ate up the oil, right? You may also know that ants are somewhat famous for being fungi farmers.  So, what I'm thinking is that the ants have figured out that there is this petroleum-based product that they can harvest and use to grow some kind of fungus. Makes sense, right? By the way, they don't only go after my hair clips. I've also seen them tear up surgical tubing and various types of seals on containers. It doesn't happen slowly over time either; it's not like I have to shake a pile of ants off my hair clips every time I go to use them. (Ick!) They (my hair clips) will exist on my bathroom counter or my nightstand, in my purse or on the desk next to my keyboard, in and out of my hair, unmolested for months, maybe even years, and then one day, BOOM! Hair-clip-shaped pile of ants! The only thing I can figure is that the rubber breaks down to a certain point where it suddenly becomes the perfect fungus-starter and the ants move in to take advantage. 

So: Ants mining rubber to grow fungus. That wasn't in the book (at least not in the parts that I read), and I think I might be onto something here. Maybe Paul Stamets will do some studies on this and get back to me! 

OK, so feel free to take a break here, or move on to part II, wherein I actually talk a little bit about the book. 

What I'm Reading Now-The Reincarnationist

The Reincarnationistby M.J. Rose-Meh. For me, this book was just a series of extremely telegraphed events, and I never reached that point where I just couldn't put the book down. I'm okay with telegraphed, but it has to be intriguing. Sometimes you know what's going to happen, but you still can't wait to see if you're right because if you are, it's going to be really funny or super sad or totally awesome and you want to see it play out. Not so much with this book.

So, quick rundown: Josh is living in present day NYC, but he was injured a few years ago, and ever since he's been having what seem to be memories of a past-life; but they are more than just memories, they're more like lurches from the present into the past. The Phoenix Foundation works with children who are experiencing similar episodes, but they normally don't work with adults. Josh, of course, is the exception. In Rome a major archeological find has been unearthed; a tomb of one of the Vestal Virgins has been discovered and in this tomb is a box that is rumored to contain the legendary Memory Stones. These stones are supposed to be able to help with past-life regressions, and if they exist they are worth a lot to different people for different reasons. Someone breaks in, the stones are stolen, and chaos ensues. Also, the woman in the tomb was probably the love of Josh's life around 390 A.D., but is she really? Why was she buried alive? Did she really have the stones? Who has them now? Why are they killing people and kidnapping children? See? This should be intriguing, right? That's what I thought too. I'm not saying this book was terrible; it was interesting, I just wasn't ever on the edge of my seat.

The one thing about this book that I did find fascinating was the quote from Rudyard Kipling at the beginning of Chapter 1 (that's Location 158-65 for those of you following along on your Kindle readers in the second-smallest font. For the rest of you, I would assume this is somewhere near page 1. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, you can go here). Anyway, here's the quote:

They will come back, come back again,

As long as the red earth rolls.

He never wasted a leaf or a tree.

Do you think he would squander souls?

Ooh, doesn't that just give you goosebumps (or chicken skin for those of you in Hawaii)? Reincarnation is one of those things that I certainly don't think is impossible, but it's also a pretty big stretch to say, "Yup. That's the way it works. I'm certain," but those last two lines right there make a lot of sense to me. That brings up a whole new quandry though.

What are we right now, about 6,000,000,000 people worldwide, give or take a few hundred million? Ok. Well, what happens when we get to 7,000,000,000? Where do those extra billion souls come from? Are those the souls that have finally evolved (devolved?) enough to be human? What did they evolve or devolve from? I don't know if evolve is quite the right word, but you all know what I mean, right? Does a super-courageous rescue dog who has saved many lives finally get to come into the world as somebody's beloved baby girl? Does an elephant that went on a rampage and killed her baby have to come back as an amputee beggar in the streets of India? (Because, you know, elephants are the physical manifestation of Nirvana. I'm pretty sure.)

Did the world start out with one soul, and has it just been stretched thinner and thinner as each new person comes into the world? Do we all get souls? What if there is only a set number, and some of us have them and some of us don't? Does it change throughout your lifetime? Can you lose your soul? Gain a soul? This reminds me of the questions that were brought up in Unwind, by Neal Shusterman.

Okay, I'll stop now. I'm sure if there are any religious scholars reading this, they A) stopped reading a long time ago or B) continued reading but have made a notation in their wills to have their graves dug extra wide so that they will have plenty of room to roll over in them when they finally get there.

If anybody has any thoughts on reincarnation, I'd love to hear it.

Other people who have reviewed this book:

Jill (softdrink) at Fizzy Thoughts

Dewey at The Hidden Side of a Leaf

If you have read this book and want me to add your review here, please let me know!

$omething to keep an eye on

If you have overdraft protection on your checking account which is provided by a credit card, please be sure to check your credit card statements to make sure that overdraft protection hasn't been invoked and charged to your credit card when your checking account has not, in fact, been in an overdraft situation.

This has happened to us twice recently-a $150 charge has shown up on our credit card statement as a cash advance with the description "Overdraft Protection" even though our checking account was never even anywhere near being overdrawn.  We eventually got them fixed, but it was a pain both times.  You have to get the credit-card-division people on the phone with the bank-division people, otherwise they just run you in circles telling you that it's a problem on the other side of the house.  

I'm going to assume that this is an innocent mistake, but innocent or not, it's a good way for a bank to quietly build up some cash (well, good might not be exactly the right word, but you know what I mean).  This is a large bank I'm talking about here, a bank that claims to have "added more than two million net new retail checking accounts for the second year in a row" in 2007.  You might be thinking, "What's $150 to a bank this size?"  Well, not much all by itself, but for the sake of argument, let's assume that they had no existing checking accounts prior to 2006 (even though the bank has been around in some form or another for over a century, under its current moniker since about 1929, and operates in over 20 countries world-wide) and that a mere 10% of those checking accounts have overdraft protection via a credit account.  That's 400,000 checking accounts, and if each one of those accounts was accidentally charged a one-time fee of $150 for overdraft protection, that's $60,000,000 right there.  $120,000,000 if they all got charged twice like we did.  

Now granted, a lot of people will catch an error like that and work to get it resolved, but a lot of people out there never even look at their statements, don't keep good enough records to know whether or not this is a legitimate charge, or are too busy worrying about other things to call up the credit card company and fight over $150.  Let's face it, for some people $150 isn't worth fighting over.  So, how many of these $150 charges go unnoticed?  I have no idea.  Again, let's be conservative and say 5%.  That brings the total dollar amount that the bank gets to keep down to a mere $3,000,000.  Ok, so that's still chump change to a bank this size, but remember we only counted 2 years' worth of new customers.  Let's expand that now to include all existing customers.  I don't know what that number is, but I guarantee it's a lot more than $3,000,000.  That's a lot of free money that the bank didn't have a right to and that should be in their customers' pockets.   

Again, I'm not saying that this was intentional on the bank's part, I'm just saying that little things add up, and this has the potential to be a huge benefit for an already huge corporation at the expense of its customers.  With all the craziness that's been going on in the banking world lately, I'm sure there are bound to be some technical glitches as banks close, merge, purchase, sell off assets, etc., so check your bank and credit cards carefully to make sure you aren't being charged incorrectly.  Just because something appears on your official bank statement does not mean it's legitimate!  

John McCain, Elephants, and Courage

Here's a nifty little coincidence. As mentioned in my last post, I just finished reading Why Courage Matters: The Way to a Braver Lifeby John McCain and Marshall Salter. One of the points that they drive home in this book is that courage means doing something that you know is right even if you are afraid of the physical, psychological, or social ramifications of doing so, even if, especially if, you KNOW that the outcome is likely to be not only unfavorable but possibly even dangerous, if not fatal. I read this book while I was in VA, visiting my mom. A few days later, while I was waiting around in the airport, I picked up Water for Elephants: A Novel.

On the plane ride home, I saw Horton Hears a Who! which is about an elephant (Horton) who is on a mission to save a community of people he can't see (the Whos of Whoville). They live on a speck, and Horton can hear them, but he can't see them; and the leader of his community is fit to be tied when Horton's nonsense about believing in life you can't see starts to influence the youngsters. She calls for his head on a platter, and Horton is facing real, physical danger; but he persists in his promise to help save Whoville because as he says,"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant. An elephant's faithful one hundred per cent." As I'm watching this, I think, "Wow, Horton is courageous in the sense that John McCain would recognize and appreciate."

On the second leg of my flight home, I open up Water for Elephants: A Novel, and the epigraph reads thus:

"I meant what I said, and I said what I meant...
An elephant's faithful--one hundred per cent!

--THEODOR SEUSS GEISEL, Horton Hatches the Egg, 1940"



I mean, seriously, what are the odds? What does it all mean? I recently read The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination, and the author talks about paying attention to coincidences. In particular, he talks about his personal experiences with travel-related coincidences. So, seriously, what does this mean??? Am I about to face some situation which is going to require elephant-sized courage? That can't be good.

My latest widget/What I'm reading now

Yay me! I have successfully installed another new Amazon widget. It's been up for a while now, but I am just now getting around to celebrating it. Publicly. I am always so excited any time I do anything new here and it A) doesn't cause my entire blog to disappear into cyber space and B) seems to work!

**Edited 3/5/10-I've noticed that I seem to get a lot of traffic here from people searching for "reading widget" or something similar.  I figured I should probably jump in here to avoid any frustration caused by looking for a widget that no longer exists-I have replaced my Amazon widget with a Goodreads widget.  I think it was because I was using the carousel format (see "Hot Titles from Amazon" widget toward the bottom of the page) and you have to have a minimum number of titles in order for that to work properly, and I wasn't consistently reading 6+ books or whatever it was.  So...just wanted to put that out there for anyone who might have come here searching for information on Amazon widgets.**  

So, anyway, I figured since I have this list of "What I'm reading now" I should probably comment on it once in a while, so here is a quick synopsis of my current reading list (I'll try to update more regularly so as to avoid the long posts):

Stuart: A Life Backwardsby Alexander Masters-I actually finished reading this a couple of weeks ago. I enjoyed this look at homelessness in the U.K. As the title implies, the book mostly follows Stuart's homelessness which is due, at varying times, to his running away from home, mental illness, violence, drug use, and various combinations of the above all the while dealing with MS and multiple incarcerations as well. The author is quite honest throughout the book, not glossing over his ill-will toward Stuart at times even though the politically-correct thing to do would have been to be sympathetic for his plight and make allowances for Stuart's terrible childhood and apologetic for these fits of disgust toward Stuart. Masters is not heartless, but Stuart is very difficult to like at times, even with a good understanding of his tortured background. As Stuart himself points out, a lot of people have gone through hard times and not turned out the way Stuart has. Stuart, while actually being quite a success story as someone who has worked his way through "The System" from homelessness to having his own actual private residence, is still a complete mess. He is quite honest with Masters about this as well. He's messed up, he knows he's messed up, but he can't quite figure out how to get un-messed up. Overall, it's a good look at the homeless plight in England and how difficult it can be to work one's way back up out of it.

Born Standing Up: A Comic's Lifeby Steve Martin-I actually finished this a while ago too, but wanted to include it here. I don't have a lot to say about it other than it was a quick, easy read and it was enjoyable. One thing that struck me about Steve Martin is that he had only good things to say about the people mentioned in his book. Everyone knows Steve Martin is a funny guy, but I walked away from this book feeling that he is a classy guy as well. Granted, some of the people mentioned were mentors to him or people who helped get him started in "the biz," people for whom you would expect some obligatory high praise, but there were ex-girlfriends and former co-workers and the like mentioned as well, and I don't think he ever took a shot, glancing or otherwise, at any of these people. He always made a point of mentioning the good things about them and did so very genuinely and graciously.

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Mealsby Michael Pollan-I am about 3/4 of the way through this right now. It's a dense read. I'm not flying through it the way I thought I would, and I sort of have to keep making myself go back to it. It's not that I dislike it, it's just not grabbing me the way I thought it would. Pollan visits farms of different scale and various production methods to see what is really going n with our food. It starts with a study of corn. Americans eat a ridiculous amount of corn. Thanks to our government, we literally have more corn than we know what to do with, so we make up things to do with it. This might seem like a good problem to have, but it has, in large part, led to the downfall of the American diet. High fructose corn syrup-where do you think that came from? Corn-fed beef? It's got a great, consistent marbled texture that we all love so much, but cows don't normally eat corn. Look around the next time you are driving through Iowa. Do you see any cows out grazing in the corn fields?

After giving us a thorough run-down on corn, Pollen visits industrial feedlots where cows are mass-produced. They are fed corn because it's cheap and it fattens them up better than grass, and nutritional supplements to fortify the corn, some of them consisting of fats from other animals...you know, like the cows would eat in the wild...when they're done grazing on their corn. Additionally, they are given antibiotics and other drugs because the conditions they are kept in are not conducive to cleanliness and illness is common and because they are not good at digesting corn. Pollan visits "organic" industrial farms-same concept, mass production, but the animals are fed organic corn. Also, they have access to outdoor areas, but by the time most of them reach an age where they would be allowed to go outside, they have no interest in doing so and are so stressed by their indoor conditions that exposure to outdoor elements is likely to lead to disease or infection anyway. Pollen also visits a "grass farm" (the owner claims to farm grass, not cows). In this model, cows are allowed to eat grass, chickens eat the grubs that grow in the cow dung, chickens (and cows) fertilize the grass, and pig tails don't have to be clipped in order to prevent other neurotic pigs from chewing them to bloody stumps, something which is apt to happen on a standard industrial pig farm when the piglets are weaned from their mothers too soon, all in the name of mass production. Basically, the cows, chickens, and even the pigs, are used in one way or another to ensure that the pasture is as healthy as can be. As a result, the farmer gets beef, chicken, eggs, and pork all off of one relatively small tract of land and all without the use of chemical pesticides or herbicides. As an additional bonus, the meat from grass-fed cows is said to be healthier for us because of the balance of Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids, which is different in grass-fed cows than it is in corn-fed cows. Grass-fed beef also has less saturated fat than corn-fed beef, and eggs are more nutritious because the chickens convert all the good stuff in grass into good stuff in eggs.

At the end of all this, the author is still trying to decide what to do with this information. At one point he decides he wants to make a meal out of ingredients grown, hunted, or gathered by himself. The growing part, he's ok with, but he's never fired a loaded gun before, and his mother has filled him with the fear "that put picking a wild mushroom in the same class of certain-death behaviors as touching downed power lines or climbing into the cars of strangers proffering candy." Thinking about these food choices-dangerous vs. non-dangerous-leads him to thinking about other food choices, and he does some reading on the philosophical values of vegetarianism and decides to give it a try.

This is about where I am now. I definitely think this is a book worth reading, even though it takes a little work to get through. People, in general, are very out of touch with where our food comes from, and there is a lot of vagueness and misunderstanding about labels like "organic," "sustainable," "sustainable organic," "grass-fed," etc. that Pollan manages to shed some light on. While Pollan seems to be pro-sustainable-organic and, possibly, pro-vegan by the end of this book (???), you can see where his leanings come from as the book unfolds. He does not attempt to villainize the industrial farmers who are earning their livings doing what they know how to do. He does rant a bit about the government, but I think it would be hard not to after seeing its policies in action.



Latticework: The New Investingby Robert G. Hagstrom-I'm not quite half-way through this book yet. It's taking me a while as well. In a nutshell, it takes theories like equilibrium, evolution, and other "big ideas" from psychology, sociology, biology and the like and tries to show how they are related in a latticework of ideas. This latticework is then to be applied to investing for a smarter way of investing. I guess. Basically, there's more to investing than just crunching numbers. I have recently started dabbling in stocks, and I like this idea because this is sort of how I go about my investing. I really don't pay any attention to much more than the current price, historical prices to a degree, what I think of the company, and why I think the company will or will not do well. I am not day trading in the sense of trying to buy and sell at the absolute daily high or low, but I do like to watch my stocks from day to day and see what its going on and try to time my investments a little bit. I don't know if this book will help, but I want to explore the theories within. Bonus-I like the artwork on the cover! (See, this is about how I pick my stocks, too! LOL.)

Icy Sparks (Oprah's Book Club)by Gwyn Hyman Rubio-Eh. I did manage to finish this, but it was work. It's a story about a girl growing up in 1950's rural Kentucky who has Tourette's syndrome. Obviously, nobody knows what the heck is wrong with her, but I didn't find her at all sympathetic. Maybe I am just amazingly intolerant, but I mostly just wanted to slap her and tell her to get her sh*t together. For me, part of it was her tendency to tell stories. I think this was supposed to make her endearingly creative and therefore make us feel even more sorry for her when her imagination would run away and get her into even more trouble than she was already in, trying to escape the woes of her troubled existence and all. Instead it made me want to slap her and tell her to quit lying. She ends up in a treatment facility and eventually finds comfort in religion. I liked the book better toward the second half, as Icy grew up a little bit and was able to find her voice a little more. The message of tolerance in the book is good, I just found it hard to get to...because I'm so intolerant.

The Botany of Desire: A Plant's-Eye View of the Worldby Michael Pollan-I've picked up several of Michael Pollan's books in the past and mentally shelved them on my "want to read someday" list, not realizing that they were all by the same author. After watching Michael Pollan's talk at TED about how we are all pawns in corn's plan to take over the world, I finally went on a Michael Pollan borrow-a-thon from the library. I haven't started this yet, but I am accruing late fines already. Some day they are going to have to name a library wing after me.

The Road (Oprah's Book Club)by Cormac McCarthy-I haven't started this yet either but it's gotten strong reviews from several people I know.

A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Centuryby Witold Rybczynski-Frederick Law Olmsted is the guy who designed Central Park. I was really excited to see this book sitting in the "what people are reading now" section of my library. I like reading about gardening and huge undertakings by inspired visionaries. I've only just started it, but I don't think I will finish it. I am usually not very critical of writers' styles, but this guy drives me nuts! He's providing a lot of background info which, quite frankly, I just don't think is going to be relevant to the story; and he makes a lot of suppositions and presumptions which seem to go against everything he has learned about his subject. As a biographer and a story-teller, I suppose that's his right, but he just seems awfully contrary. Hmph. I was expecting something more along the lines of The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed Americaby Erik Larson, which I think might have actually included Mr. Olmstead and his amazing vision. I would recommend reading that before this.

Getting Started in Value Investing (Getting Started In.....)by Charles S. Mizrahi-This was also sitting in the "what people are reading now" bin at the library, and I had JUST started my stock dabbling, so I took it as a sign and grabbed the book. I honestly have no idea what it is about other than getting started in value investing. I'll let you know if it's any good.

Recession-proof!

Stock Challenge June 2008 is on! Over at Growing Money there is a contest to see which reader can pick the most successful stock for the month. By most successful, I mean a stock that will have a higher percentage gain than any of the other stocks picked for this competition.

My pick is InBev NV (INB). I am picking this stock because A) they deal in alcohol, and alcohol is fairly recession-proof. People will find a way to fund their vices. You may not be able to drive to work, watch cable TV, or go on vacation, but you can usually afford a six-pack and B) there are talks of a pending purchase of Anheuser Busch which I am counting on (no matter how unrealistically) to go through by June 30th, when the contest will end. Mmmmmm....beeeeer.

I realize my reasoning my be less-than-scientific or even rational, but it's what I'm working with. Wish me luck!

Dreams, Depression, and Alzheimer's

First, a disclaimer: This post feels incredibly rambly and all-over-the-place to me right now (you know, as opposed to all my succinct posts to date), but the idea has been rolling around in my brain for a while now, and it was time to get it out of my head and onto paper, as it were. As it turns out, this is quite fitting, given the post itself. I will try to revise this and make it more succinct, but for right now, it is what it is. So, without further ado:

Dreams, Depression, and Alzheimer's
What do all these things have in common? That's what I'm hoping to piece together here. I've been reading various things lately that make me think (way too optimistically, I'm sure) that in dreaming could lie the cure for Alzheimer's disease. Well, maybe not the cure, but at least something that might lessen its effects. Okay, hear me out.

My theory: This article discusses a recent study which suggests that Alzheimer's is more likely to develop in people who have suffered from depression than in people who have not. According to

this book people who suffer from depression show improvement when they start recalling dreams. Ergo, dream recall may help ease patients' suffering from Alzheimer's. (BTW, I don't know how this widget got here or how to get rid of it. I realize its placement is extremely tacky, but I don't know what to do to remove it, so apologies.)

I'm currently reading a book called The Three "Only" Things: Tapping the Power of Dreams, Coincidence, and Imagination by Robert Moss (see link above). On page 49, the author states that "clinical studies strongly suggest that people suffering from symptoms of depression start to recover when dream function increases-as monitored by brain waves and/or the length of the phases of rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep-and that they experience a decisive shift for the better when they increase their dream recall and their sharing of dreams." He does not reference any of these clinical studies, but his theory seems, at least in part, to be based on his discussions with a Dr. Robert Weissberg, who sometimes works with depressive patients, and "has noticed that the patients who are most successful in remembering dreams are often the ones who experience the most rapid improvement in their condition."

We've been hearing for years about how dreaming is restorative, but Mr. Moss adds this additional twist about dream recollection that I hadn't heard before. This lead me to think that people suffering from depression are somehow missing out on dreaming, (which makes sense because depression and insomnia are often linked), and, therefore, are also missing the therapeutic effects of dream recollection as well. So it follows that restoration of proper REM function (whatever THAT might be) should be an easy fix for depression. A quick search on the Internet lead me to believe that that pretty much seems to be a load of crap. Well, not entirely, but it's certainly not as cut and dry as I would have liked. From my intensely scientific selection of the two articles that I read (they were in the top 3 results of my Google search and the site names looked somewhat respectable) and objective reading (is there anything here that supports MY theory?) of said articles, I learned that depressed people actually dream a lot more than non-depressed people. Huh. Perhaps Mr. Moss did not have Google handy when he was writing his book.

Not to be deterred, I have amended my theory. Actually, scratch that. I just reread my theory, and it still stands up. I just have to rearrange the reasoning behind my theory a little bit. Isn't that how the best theories work? Hey, do you think Newton had gravity all figured out in one sit- down blog session? The initial theory was good (SOMETHING just made that apple fall out of that tree and down to earth.) The supporting arguments just needed to be worked out.

Depressed people dream a lot, and according to this web site since we often use dreams to work out issues while we sleep, dreaming tends to result in a lot of stress hormones being present in our bodies, so over dreaming leaves us exhausted. If depressed people are awakened every time they show signs of dreaming, the signs of depression will lift, but they are left feeling anxious and stressed out during the day, presumably from the lack of issue-resolving at night. I'm simplifying a bit here, but the article also indicates that the reason that depressed people dream more is because they tend to worry a lot, so they have a lot of stuff to work out at night. So, it seems to be a bit of a vicious cycle. Lots of worry=lots of dreaming=lots of stress hormones=waking exhausted=generally feeling like crap=worry about chronic exhaustion=additional worry on top of previous day's unresolved worries=more dreaming, etc.

I think this actually strengthens my theory. If a person is experiencing a lot of stress or worry, and he is dreaming about it all the time, writing down those dreams is a good way to start a) addressing the things that are on your mind, consciously and subconsciously and b) working out the solution. Not only does writing it down give you the chance to let go of it-it's written down, you don't have to remember to think about it-but it also allows for some deeper introspection than what you normally do when you just remember a dream or tell someone else about it. I have done this, and there are a lot of times when I write down something that seems perfectly innocuous and irrelevant, but once I start writing out the details and explanations surrounding it, I realize that it totally relates to something that is going on in my life.

So...let's see if I can tie this all together. People who are depressed tend to have a lot of worries. They also tend to dream a lot, which would indicate that they are working out those worries, but they're dreaming about them so much that they are exhausting themselves. Physical exhaustion also leads to mental exhaustion. When you are mentally exhausted you just can't problem-solve well, so all those worries that you are carrying around are just building up. Also, dreams tend to be fleeting and unless you make a concerted effort to recollect and record them, you often have no benefit, no ability to utilize any of the solutions that are being presented to you in your sleep. This leaves you dealing with the same issue again and again. So, written recollection and analysis of dreams could prove beneficial both in allowing a person to "let go" of a current concern and move on to something new since the concern has already been dealt with and the "solution" written down as well as in allowing later follow-up and introspection of the "solution" with a fresher, more rested brain. Even if a solution doesn't present itself, I think dreams often allow a way for a person to voice a concern or issue that perhaps she didn't even realize she was carrying around or didn't feel was a valid concern, something that she feared couldn't be vocalized in the "real" world without seeming petty or ridiculous. That in itself can be very stressful. Theoretically, once these daytime stressors are reduced, night-time dreaming should scale itself back, leading to less exhausting sleep. This leaves one more physically and mentally refreshed and better able to problem-solve during the day, reducing the amount of issue-resolving that needs to go on at night, which leads to less dreaming, etc.

If this "dream therapy" can indeed help ease depression and Alzheimer's is often preceded by depression, then perhaps incidents of Alzheimer's can be reduced as well. I realize that I have taken a highly simplified view on a lot of fronts here. Clinical depression is a complex issue as is Alzheimer's, and there are causal elements that need to be taken into account, but all theories have to start somewhere. Why not here?