You know you are old when you medical report looks like an inspection report on a “fix it upper” and you not sure you want to go through with the purchase. My doctor (whom I love), sent me a copy of my medical report. Of course, I was hopping whe would say, “avram is in fantastic shape (she gets to see the whole package so to speak). He has a body of a 40 year old and a brain of a 20 year old (actually I really would prefer the body of a 20 year old and the brain of a 40 year old but somethings are too much to hope for). “ Well it did not say that. Instead it listed all the problems I have built up over the years. The good news is I think I am in much better shape than most my age (62 years) but I guess you can not live without some wear and tear. My doctor and I had a big discussion about having my DNA screened for dispositions for certain problems. There are several new companies that are going to be doing genentic screening. The New York Times had a pretty good article on this topic. I am going to use Navigenics which was co founded by my dear friend and sometimes physican, David Agus. MY doctor does not think I should do this because she rightfully asks what will I do with the information. My answer which is probably correct, is “worry more”. But I can’t pass up a new technology
Archive for November, 2007
You know you are old when you medical report looks like an inspection report on a “fix it upper”
November 27, 2007Thomas Friedman for President
November 14, 2007
I read a great op-ed by Tom Friedman (a man I have respected since he first quoted me in The Lexus and the Olive Tree J). Tom made me realize (again) that many if not all of the great problems before us actually have solutions except maybe one? How do we get rid of the people that occupy (and I mean occupy) our government. We are dying of a political cancer. Our politicians only seem to care about getting elected. They think we are too pety or too stupid to hear the truth or maybe they don’t even know what that word means. I don’t know if Tom can manage but Tom can think. Bush can manage. He managed to drag this country into an awful war. He managed to tarnish our image around the world. He managed to screw up our economy. He managed to transfer our wealth to our enemies. I am hoping the Barack is different but frankly I do not know. He is the only serious candidate for president that I can consider now. But he needs to speak out and be clear about his solutions to the problems facing this country. In the mean time can we start a draft Tomas Friedman campaign?
Can I be an honorary woman?
November 10, 2007No I don’t mean that I want to cross dress although I have to say my calves looked pretty good the one time I tried on my wife’s red patent leather pumps and I do think I might be the original metro sexual. But this post is about something else. There is a Jewish concept called Tikkum Olom. It means healing or repairing the world. It is a powerful concept because inherent in it is understanding that this is our mission as human beings . Actually the concept can be taken much further when applied to the universe as we know it but I won’t go into quantum mechanics and cosmology here. During the last several years, I have noticed that it is women that are taking on the role of healers and repairs of the world. Of course there wonderful and caring men, like my dear friend, Larry Brilliant, head of Google.org or even Al Gore or even my own sons, but more and more I have been seeing women reach other to take action. A few nights ago, we were invited to a reading by Riane Eisler, The event was organized by three women. Riane, talks about the need to move from “dominator” societies to “partnership” societies. And while she did not say it, I thought this about moving from the masculine to the feminine. It interesting to me that when we talk about the future and the macro changes we can expect, we mostly talk about things such as the continuing impact of technology (for instance, The World is Flat, by Thomas Frieman), the potential of genetic engineering, and the economic progress of developing countries like India and China as well as issues like Global Warming, the rise of Islam. I have not seen much written about the potential of a change from male driven societies to societies lead by women. But we are starting to see women taking greater and greater roles in the leadership of government and business. The 21st century may be the first century where woman will play the leading role and if that happens, then we can be optimistic about the future of our planet. I believe that technology can provide the billions of people in this planet with all the basics for survival (food, medicine etc) but only when our business leaders think that it is more important to help others than to buy a bigger jet. And when our government leaders understand that wining is not someone else loosing. It will not be easy for woman to assume the leadership role. Most of women in the world our suffering under the domination of male oriented societies. So those of us in the develop world have to lead in freeing them to make their contributions and heal the world.
