Thoughts about “The Hunting Ground” movie.

“The Hunting Ground” is 2015 documentary film about the incidence of sexual assault on college campuses in the United States, and what its creators say is a failure of college administrations to deal with it adequately.

I saw the movie for the first time, last night. My sense is that with the systemic defense put up by Universities, the best way to go forward and make progress, is to leverage the right media. A solution would be to get a prominent and credible publishing company to produce a ranking that focuses solely on Campus Safety, detailing the number of incidents and assaults of all nature, including rape, of course, during the course of a year.

 This Safety Ranking would grade each institution on the basis of the quality of its campus police, its ease of reporting, its ability to listen compassionately, its follow through as well as any immunity (or lack thereof) offered to star-athletes, etc. In effect, this ranking would counterbalance and complement any purely scholastic quality, best-value or best experience rankings.

The caliber of the media outlet shepherding these ranking is of course paramount and would be instrumental in giving them both flawless credibility and high visibility. Just my two-cent...

Women mountain-bikers

I love mountain-biking and the only elements I fear are falling, going over the handlebar and colliding on single track. To alleviate that later risk, I have a bell that I use liberally before any blind corner, yet, that doesn't prevent shock-encounters and I've had my share of those, some more brutal than others.

Of course, there's that key rule for single track riding; The cyclists traveling downhill should yield to the ones headed uphill. With very few exceptions, men generally get that rule, but most women don't. Is it because female are spatially challenged and can't tell uphill from downhill, or is it that they expect men to always yield to them, no matter their right to it? I don't know, but their attitude ticks me off.

Yesterday, as I was riding my mountain bike uphill, I came across two girls yakking as they were barreling down the trail. At first they didn't appear willing to slow down, but they eventually stopped when they saw that I was neither stopping nor yielding to them. I thought to myself, “hey, we're making progress!”

Then two miles down the trail, in a notorious blind area, I met that girl that was going like a bat out of hell; she didn't even try to stop and I'm the one who violently hit the brakes in a last-ditch effort of self-preservation. I came to a full stop while she blasted through, I continued and soon realized that as a result of my pulling on my rear brake lever, the hydraulic disk brake was stuck and was jamming the wheel.

I was forced to walk the bike home and this gave me a perfectly good reason for blaming that particular girl and all the other women mountain-bikers, the world over, for my ordeal!

Are Americans more gullible than Europeans?

They are traits that Americans have that can't be found in Europeans and vice-versa.

Europeans tend to be more cynical, less optimistic and less creative and their American counterparts just the opposite on these very points.

With this, Americans are also much more gullible; they'll take on a new philosophy, a bizarre religion or a radical diet just on a whim. It may not last, but they'll try the new thing.

Why? Is it because they're more flexible in their thoughts, more malleable, also more religious as a whole and self-critical than the typical, heathen, European?

Your turn to tell me what you think and why!

Visualizing today's world...

I came across this sketch on Facebook and for me, it tells the whole story and provides the perfect visual overview of the interaction (should I say the clash) between democracy and religion.

As democracy has developed over time, religion has always been prowling to erode it with the hope of weakening it and eventually taking it away.

In today's world, when politicians are draping themselves in the shroud of spirituality to sell their story and when extremist Islam wants to take over the world, better start sticking a finger or two inside the crack of that dam of secularism before the irrationality of religion bursts out and floods our world.

Janet Yellen and Wall Street

This past week, the Federal Reserve Board has played tap dancing, again, while enjoying its annual junket-meeting in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

While the US economy is mostly on a deflationary mode (i.e. last month's CPI numbers) the Fed continues to scare the bejesus out of investors.

I vacillate between thinking the entire board of governors, including Janet Yellen, are a bunch of morons, or they simply are in cahoots with Wall Street to promote a perpetual trading and churning environment.

Thirty-one year in Park City!

The end of August always brings crisp morning air, perfect weather and spots of leave change all over the mountain.

Today is also the 31st year we made it as a family to little, run down, not much of a town Park City in 1985. It was pretty much barren, no trees and very quiet. Real estate was down on its knees, the ski industry was developing, but still a far cry from what was going on in Vail or Aspen.

The road leading to town still was a two-lane highway crossing a dairy farm. Today, our little mountain is in full bloom while we are declining a bit, but still in good enough shape to enjoy the result of one of our best life choices ever.

Colono$copy?

If you are over 50, chances is are that your doctor is telling you to have a colonoscopy. If someone in your family has had colorectal cancer, this might be a wise recommendation, but the procedure is a real pain somewhere (no pun intended).

However, if you and your family are cancer-free, you might do a FIT test instead (this is a fecal immunochemical testing) on a yearly basis as some studies show that it saves more lives and cost the least of any colorectal cancer screening method, including colonoscopy.

I'm referring to a 2010 study by Dr. Steven J. Heitman,of the University of Calgary in Alberta, and this what he and his team found: If no one was screened at all, there would be 4,857 cases of colon or rectal cancer and 1,782 deaths over the lifetime of every 100,000 people in North America. Annual testing with FIT reduced cases of colorectal cancer to 1,393 and deaths to 457. 

Colonoscopy done every ten years, with follow-up exams every 3 to 5 years when polyps were found, would reduce cases to 1,825 and deaths to 624. While FIT was more effective than colonoscopy, it needed to be done every year, while colonoscopy screening is recommended every ten years.

Besides, even though it might seem counter-intuitive that screening with FIT is even more effective than colonoscopy, this is simply due to the more frequent screening interval with FIT.

If the inconvenience of colonoscopy screening are a concern, choosing FIT might be a good option as long as you have no family or personal risks, you conduct the test properly, do it yearly, you follow up with colonoscopy if the test test is positive.