Foreign Perspectives » Miscellaneous

How long should you prolong a life?

Arnold — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:58:26 +0000

We’ve had a small run of deaths in the family lately which has set me thinking just how long you should consider prolonging a life.

In the past, prolonging a life generally meant a reasonably short lengthening so the issue of quality of life didn’t really enter into matters. Prolonging a life a few months or perhaps a few years seemed like a “good thing”. After all, there were painkillers to relieve any major pain so you weren’t torturing the person in any sense.

However, these days it’s quite a different matter. If you’ve a disease like malignant Mesothelioma you could potentially be living for years yet get to the point quite quickly where you were effectively a vegetable to those around you. That’s how my uncle spent his last decade of “life”. Was it worthwhile prolonging his “life” that extra decade? Well, consider the impact of having done just that….

For a start, he had a number of minor strokes over that decade so he was in to hospital just about every one of those years. Minor strokes don’t seem so bad but each one destroys part of your brain so as time went on there was less of him there. When we left for France some six years or so ago he could move his hand and in rare moments would stumble across the name of someone close to him that was visiting him in the nursing home. Last year, he could neither move nor speak.

Possibly more noticeable was that ten years back he was able to walk and see various friends and family now and again. Granted, his mind wasn’t all there at that time but aside from wandering out at all hours and thinking that every day was Sunday, he managed to get by quite well. In his final years he only saw his sisters briefly each week and never saw any other friends or family. In the eulogy at his funeral service the massive difference between his early life travelling the world and the final decade couldn’t have been more striking.

On the other hand, consider my cousin Harold. He’s been diabetic since he was 13 which sounds really awful and to some extent that’s certainly true. However, that didn’t stop him having quite a full life right up until a few weeks ago. Whilst he didn’t get to travel the world as Andy had, he certainly had a lot of good times with his family right throughout his life. Oh, sure, the diabetes was a major hassle causing him to lose his toe and his kidneys to close down but keeping him alive throughout that time did give him quite a good quality of life and indeed a good life (“quality of life” rarely means that, of course).

Prolonging a life that’s reasonably good does seem worthwhile. The snag is that there’s a tendency to prolong it way, way beyond that time these days, simply because we can.

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Do anti-smoking laws do what they’re intended to do?

Arnold — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 10:42:43 +0000

I was watching a film from the 1950s the other day and one of the most striking things about it was just how much smoking the various characters did.

You just don’t see that these days but was that the result of anti-smoking legislation? Well, in the early days it certainly was. Prior to the various laws kicking in, the tobacco companies made a point of what we’d now call product placement where-ever they could. The whole idea was very similar to Coke’s present day approach: get your product associated with everything good in life and people would use it more. Thus Coke were out with their “the taste of freedom” in the days when the Berlin wall was collapsing.

More recently the anti-smoking laws around Europe have been tightened up considerably. Sometimes it seems even to me that the “no smoking in public places” laws have gone that little bit too far to the extreme. However, it surely must be a good thing that you no longer see the guys lighting up their Rocky Patel when their child is born. Could it ever have been a good thing to associate a poisonous carcinogen with a baby? Thankfully too, the restaurants are a joy to be in these days and we take our family to them when the previous smoke filled atmosphere put us right off.

So, yes, they do generally do their job. The approach can initially be seen as heavy-handed but when you look back on how far we’ve come it certainly seems the case that they have worked and saved quite a number of lives in the process.

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Are online tutorials worth bothering with?

Arnold — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 09:02:37 +0000

Online tutorials are all the rage with the Open University these days.

Why isn’t all about money though obviously money does play a big part in it. For instance, my 30 point astronomy course comes with two in-person tutorials and two more online ones for our tutor group vs a more typical 4 in-person ones for the older human biology course. For the astronomy course, it looks very much like it’s all down to cost.

However, on the shorter courses online tutorials are in place of no tutorials at all. Many years ago when I did the 10 point introductory astronomy course, there weren’t any tutorials at all (though you could call your tutor in theory). These days the equivalent 10 point science courses all come with online tutorials.

In the middle ground are the 15 point courses which are basically a 30 point course load but taken over half the time. Thus they should come with two in-person tutorials but in reality they come with only online tutorials. Frankly if my experience with the cardiology course is anything to go by, there really aren’t any online tutorials. Thus far the online “tutorial” has consisted of the tutor posting a question in December and receiving a couple of replies from some students within a few days. There’s been no activity on that tutorial forum since.

The other problem is with the course-wide tutorials which are run by the astronomy course. Within a few hours of the first one starting there were far more messages than I for one could cope with. Were any relevant? Who knows? I certainly didn’t have the time to go through and read all the stuff.

So, “probably not” is the conclusion I’m coming to.

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Isn’t it worse when a disease could have been prevented?

Arnold — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:28:17 +0000

One of the problems with technological disease creations like Mesothelioma is that it just wasn’t appreciated at the time that working with things like asbestosis would subsequently cause all kinds of incurable diseases.

Although it sounds obvious to us that having loads of asbestosis fibres knocking around your workplace and home isn’t a good idea, that was the best solution available at the time. Even now, there are many people who have ironing boards with those little asbestosis panels for the iron. Have you even thought about that? I know that we didn’t until we tried to get rid of ours and it ain’t so easy to do.

Similarly, it seems laughable that various extremely harmful products were openly advertised as not only being something that you should buy, but as things that you should buy because they were good for your health. It might sound crazy but not so long ago that was the case with cigarettes. Look at a film from the 1950s and it’s quite staggering how many of the characters were smoking.

One wonders what “safe” product we all use will have major league health problems in the years to come. My bet is that mobile phones will be figuring in the legal claims in a few decades time but I’m sure there’ll be other equally dangerous products around at the moment.

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Getting rid of those pesky wrinkles

Arnold — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:20:25 +0000

One of the hassles of getting older is that you start having to look for the best wrinkle serum to try and get rid of those pesky wrinkles.

Sadly, it’s not, yet, possible to actually remove the wrinkles but that will come in due course as there’s a growing tide of money looking into this issue as one would expect given the changing global demographics.

In the meantime though, it’s the most unintrusive cover that you need to look for.

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Is working from home really viable these days?

Arnold — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:10:30 +0000

With the economy being in the doldrums there’s an awful lot of people out there basically twiddling their thumbs whilst waiting for the next job opening to appear.

It doesn’t have to be like that though as the number of ways to earn extra income from home has exploded in recent years. The mix of opportunities has changed quite dramatically too. No longer is the “pin money” something just for the bored housewife but rather it’s for everyone.

Startup costs are minimal to non-existent too which is handy in this cash-strapped economy. That in turn means that there’s little or no downside in trying out a number of potential opportunities as most of the time your initial commitment will be extremely low.

So, what’s stopping you?

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Ah, but there isn’t a “best” weight loss treatment

Arnold — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 23:03:33 +0000

The problem that you have when you start on a technology driven weight loss programme is that you start off looking for the best weight loss products when in fact there isn’t a single “best” product as such.

That’s not to say that there aren’t “best in category” product because there clearly are such things around. What there isn’t is a single one size fits all product. For some the best product will be found in a pill to reduce appetite, for others it’ll be an ongoing exercise programme and for others a change of diet. Unfortunately, you’ll rarely know in advance which is best for you or rather what mix of products and approaches is best for you.

Hence, my strategy is to start off with the cheapest in each category. Last year simply choosing the cheapest diet pill on the shelf in the supermarket was quite effective to begin with: certainly no less effective than the pill sitting right beside it which cost almost ten times the price. Likewise, the cheap (if you could call it that) health club was just as effective as the most expensive (the only real difference there was that the machines were much closer together).

So when you are looking, the most practical approach is simply to go for the cheapest in category as a trial run.

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Isn’t it a hassle being a teenager?

Arnold — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:56:18 +0000

Sometimes (well, most of the time) we forget how hard it is being a teenager in any era.

These days in place of the end of course exams the assessment goes on throughout the course. So in place of the one-time exam stress they’ve continual stress coinciding with the continual assessment. That I can at least empathise with as I’ve just received the latest assignment results from the psychology degree that I’m doing.

Then there’s the things that we’ve long since forgotten about like looking for the best acne treatment. Oh, there are better treatments around these days but it’s just a hassle that I’m sure the little guys could do without.

And that’s just the hassles that we even think about.

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Sending sick photos

Arnold — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:49:51 +0000

One of the problems that we always had a couple of years ago was that our little guys were on this side of the world whilst Wendy’s Mum was on the other side of the world and she’s the one with the in-depth medical experience.

That meant a succession of eczema pictures and the like. Thankfully nothing was ever overlly serious though it was nice to be able to check up on some of the things quickly and easily without needing to run to the hospital whenever something weird arose on junior 1 or junior 2.

How on earth did people manage such things pre-internet?

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Isn’t exercising boring?

Arnold — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 22:43:41 +0000

Probably the most boring part of any weight loss or fitness improvement programme is the actual exercise.

Starting off on the treadmill is probably the worst. It always seems to take forever to notice any difference with it, even when I’ve the difficulty ramped up so much that the track is almost vertical. The snag is that if you don’t put that or a similar exercise activity into your overall programme you won’t get the benefits for your leg muscles.

What the health clubs do to relieve the boredom of all this is to install lots of TVs and play a selection of programmes on them. However, frankly, that gets pretty boring after a while too. Granted, the newer clubs have individual screens at each exercise machine but who wants to watch TV all the time? One neat way out of that is reading and I did rather well last year going through my Child Development course, managing the daily reading during the exercise slot thus making maximum use of that time.

So, yes, the exercise is boring but don’t forget that you can do interesting things whilst you’re doing it.

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