Stroke Recognition: More Information Beyond the 3 Basic Questions

Last March, I wrote about stroke recognition. We have printed this information and posted it on our fridge:

The warning signs of a stroke are:

• Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm, or leg, especially on one side of the body.
  
• Sudden confusion, trouble speaking, or understanding.
  
• Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes.
  
• Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination.
  
• Sudden, severe headache with no known cause.

The three easy questions are:

1. ask the individual to smile.
   
2. ask him or her to raise both arms.
   
3. ask the person to speak a simple sentence.

If s/he has trouble with any of these tasks, call 911 immediately, and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

But there is much more that is worth knowing. From Jack:

There is an additional bit of information to be aware of: the possibility of reversing the impact of a stroke if one gets proper medical treatment within three hours of symptom onset. This applies to the majority of strokes which are caused by blockages in blood supply to part of the brain. It does not apply to those caused by bleeding into the brain. The steps required for possible stroke 'reversal' are:

1/ Get to a major hospital emergency department as soon as possible, and certainly within three hours of symptom onset.

2/ Bring up the possibility of administering clot-busting drugs to the emergency MD immediately; if he/she is on the ball and facilities permit, an emergency CT scan should follow very quickly. The CT is necessary to detemine if the stroke is caused by a blockage /clot (good) or a bleed (bad). If it is the former, then you should receive a clot busting drug intravenously. All of this ideally transpires within a three hour time frame of symptom onset.

Don't assume this will automatically happen. [There are instances when it hasn't.]

This link is an older statement for the public, but still applies.

And this link gives a broader context to treatment.

Christmas-nomics

Two totally unrelated items about economics and Christmas:

1. Daniel Gross writes in Slate that Christmas tree sales are a good concurrent indicator of consumer spending during Christmas.
   
2. Christmas lights and timers. With the invention of the little LED Christmas lights that use very little electricity, it probably makes no sense to buy a $30 outdoor timer that will turn the lights off during the day. I haven't done the calculations, but I can readily imagine that leaving even 120 of these lights on for 24 hours a day for a month adds no more than a few dollars to the electricity bill. So why bother with a timer? In fact, if the prices represent the opportunity costs of using the scarce resources in various ways, it would downright anti-social and inefficient to buy a timer for these lights.

Update: There's more here, at the new site for this blog.

How to Attract a Mate

This advice is for males.

I recently listened to the podcast interview of Donald Cox by Russell Roberts. Near the end of the podcast, they agreed there are only three ways for men to show they have the financial wherewhithal to sire large, healthy clans:

1. Laminate your income tax return and flash it around. Failing that,
   
2. Buy an expensive car or
   
3. Buy an expensive watch [reg. req'd, h/t to BenS for the link].

While the list is amusing ($1.5m for a watch!!??), I can think of several other possibilities.

• Buy expensive gifts for prospective partners.
  
• Make huge donations to specific charities (Bill G appears to have learned this well).
  
• Wear expensively tailored clothes.
  
• Alternatively, wear a military officer's uniform.
  
• Order only the best wines.
  
• Snub the PLO.

I'm sure there many more. Feel free to add to the list.

Since I would lose any of these competitions, I'm delighted to live in a monogamous culture.

Might Israel Try to Destroy Iran's Nuclear Weapon Capability?

With the recent hostile speeches by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Israel must take a very cautious stance. On the one hand, he sounds like someone who might very gladly use nuclear weapons against Israel just to get rid of the Jews, in which case a pre-emptive strike is called for. On the other hand, he might be attempting to provoke an attack by Israel, with the hope of cementing other Muslim support against Israel.

Stratfor has an interesting take on how Israel might attack Iran, should they decide to do so. [subscription req'd; h/t to JP]

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's latest inflammatory statements, in which he called the Holocaust a "myth" and suggested that Israel's Jews be relocated to Europe or even Alaska, are part of a series of provocations that have severely escalated political tensions between Iran and Israel. Furthermore, Israeli military officials have said that Iran is within months of being able to produce nuclear weapons. Because of its extreme vulnerability to a nuclear attack, Israel's threshold for using the military option to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear capability is lower than the United States'. Should Israel decide to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, the operation would be risky, difficult and politically delicate -- but not impossible.

The major problem would be forming the political alliances that would free up some air space for the IDF to fly through.

Then again, consider this by C. Hart of WorldNewsDaily:

Most media attention has focused on when Iran might have nuclear capability and if Israel should act against Iran independently. Little attention has been paid to the possibility of an Iranian pre-emptive strike against Israel, despite the fact that this remains a major concern of Israel's military advisers.

Worried About Avian Flu? Don't Try to Stockpile Tamiflu via the Internet

It seems that many people are not only concerned about the possibility of an Avian Flu pandemic, but they are trying to prepare for it by stockpiling Tamiflu, despite repeated warnings (see here and here) that it may not be very effective in most instances.

But of course stockpiling Tamiflu through regular channels is difficult. The gubmnt has indicated it will commandeer much of the supply for whomever it deems most in need. And at current, gubmntly-induced artificially low prices, there is an excess quantity demanded. Not surprisingly, many people wishing to hedge against the possibility of an avian flu pandemic are turning to the internet to order and stockpile Tamiflu. Let's hope it has some placebo effect because much of the vaccine ordered over the internet turns out to be counterfeit, with possibly no more than vitamin C as its main ingredient [h/t to Jack for the link].

[A]gents have seized 51 separate packages, each containing up to 50 counterfeit capsules labeled generic Tamiflu.

The fake drugs had none of Tamiflu's active ingredients, and officials were running tests to determine what the capsules did contain. Initial tests indicated some vitamin C in the capsules, said David Elder, director of the Food and Drug Administration Office of Enforcement.

... Agents became suspicious because Tamiflu is produced by Swiss pharmaceutical manufacturer Roche, and there is no generic version available.

This is to be expected. When the gubmnt sets a price ceiling, black and grey markets develop, and it is much more difficult to assess quality and reliability, and to enforce contracts, in these markets.

How to Attract a Mate

This advice is for males.

I recently listened to the podcast interview of Donald Cox by Russell Roberts. Near the end of the podcast, they agreed there are only three ways for men to show they have the financial wherewhithal to sire large, healthy clans:

1. Laminate your income tax return and flash it around. Failing that,
   
2. Buy an expensive car or
   
3. Buy an expensive watch [reg. req'd, h/t to BenS for the link].
   

While the list is amusing ($1.5m for a watch!!??), I can think of several other possibilities.

• Buy expensive gifts for prospective partners.
  
• Make huge donations to specific charities (Bill G appears to have learned this well).
  
• Wear expensively tailored clothes.
  
• Alternatively, wear a military officer's uniform.
  
• Order only the best wines.
  
• Snub the PLO.

I'm sure there many more. Feel free to add to the list.

Since I would lose any of these competitions, I'm delighted to live in a monogamous culture.

Advice for IT Start-up Companies

Many people seem to have the notion that the way to get rich in the information technology industry is to start a company and then sell it to Yahoo, Microsoft, or Google. That kind of thinking is a clear example of the ex post, ergo propter hoc fallacy. Just because some entrepreneurs have made money by doing this, it does not follow that (a) this was their goal, or (b) setting out to build a company that you can sell is a good strategy. Generally speaking, the biggies won't want to buy your company unless it is successful and could make a lot of money on its own anyway.

Here is Paul Kedroski on this topic:

If you are building a startup solely with the intent of flipping it to one of the majors then you are playing Russian roulette using a gun with five full cylinders, and one cylinder containing a bullet that flits in and out with 50% probability. It is, in other words, a stupid game, one that ex post looks more rational than it would truly be to have done ex ante.

The best way to get purchased by anyone -- GYM included -- is to build a great team, find a large and growing underserved market, build a great product/service for which people will pay more than it costs to provide, grow faster than the market, and stay paranoid that a hundred other companies are gunning for you all the time. If that sounds a lot like the path to building a company, not merely one that is built to flip, it isn't just a coincidence.

Building companies to flip is a dumb exercise, one that more often than not produces neither a company nor flipping.

One possible exception to this strategy emerged in the comments (I recommend you read them all): If part of the plan for obtaining venture capital for a startup must include the possibility for a sell-off to GYM, then by all means it is worth thinking about and planning for that possibility.

Trade Restrictions and Disaster Relief

What is the best way to amplify the damaging effects of a natural disaster? From The Emirates Economist:

Use the strong arm of the government to prevent foreign suppliers from rushing in when domestic supplies are disrupted.

Who loses? The consumer.

Of course, if foreign suppliers rush in, domestic suppliers will scream about "carpet-baggers" and "foreigners" ripping them off and exploiting them. But these complaints will be smoke to disguise their attempts to protect their local market power.

It is sad, but politicians will tend to respond to the arguments of domestic suppliers, not consumers, and the effects of the disaster are made all that much worse as a result.

As an example, EmEc links to this item, which points out that hurricanes Katrina and Rita severely damaged the U.S. sugar crop, thus shifting its supply curve to the left and nearly doubling the price of sugar. Opening the borders to imported sugar could help reduce the size of this effect...

Gift Shopping on the Internet

. . . . . .

Composite Drawlings Praises Bolton's Job at UN

Rebekah K. at Composite Drawlings also writes a weekly column for her local newspaper; fortunately, it is also available online for us all to read. In a recent piece, she praises the job John Bolton has been doing at the United Nations.

First, at the beginning of this month, Bolton told the UN — as they signed the Palestinian Resolutions which, among other things, condemn Israel for defending itself against terrorism and call for Israel to surrender even more land to the people who were trying to eliminate them — they were increasingly demonstrating their irrelevance.

... Following that scathing speech, he came out three days later (after another suicide bomber attacked and killed innocents in Israel) with a few choice words for the Security Council: "you have to speak up in response to these terrorist attacks. It's a great shame that the Security Council couldn't speak to this terrorist attack in Netanya, but if the Council won't speak, the United States will."

Bolton has been pressing the members of the United Nations to start cleaning up their acts, has demanded that those who sit on the Human Rights Commission have at least made an effort to protect basic human rights (no more China, shooting civilians for sitting in protest against local land-grabbing governments, no more Zimbabwe and its bulldozing homes of the poor, no more Cuba and imprisoning good people for having the chutzpah to contract AIDS, no more Iran or North Korea or any other nation whose record on human rights is blatantly abysmal). He’s informed the UN that the corruption which seems to flow from the top down must be cleaned up, or else we will find — or build — a new treaty organization which is willing act both responsibly and effectively.

... Dang, it must gall the folks who wanted him filibustered into oblivion! He came in fast and low, under the radar, and slipped in by interim appointment, and now there’s nobody to stop him from wreaking havoc on the heretofore smug, slimy oysters at Turtle Bay.

The Best Christmas Present You Can Give a Young Person

Smash their calculator(s).

I am semi-serious.

Last week I had several first-year university students complain because I will not let them use calculators on exams, and they did not know how to calculate a present value problem which was basically the following:

NPV = 1210/(1 + .1) + 1210/(1 + .1)(1 + .1) - 2000

I know I seem like a curmudgeon, but this reaction from university students (who presumably had "A" averages in secondary school) is frightening and discouraging.

Depreciation of the U.S. Dollar:a question of "when", not "if"

The U.S. dollar has remained strong during the fourth quarter of 2005 despite continuing trade and U.S. federal gubmnt deficits. There are two related reasons for its continued strength:

• Anticipated continued tightening by the Fed, albeit at a slower pace, has kept U.S. interest rates attractive for foreign (and U.S.) short-term financial capital.
• Continued unease about international politics makes the U.S. economy seem less risky than many other options. As I asked last spring, "Where else would you put your money?" I realize there are many options, but just how risky and how attractive are they?

Ben Carliner pointed out last month that the strength of the U.S. dollar is not likely to persist:

Well, in the short term at least, America’s twin deficits just don’t seem to matter. The markets’ attention is elsewhere, and for much of the world, continued economic growth is predicated and strong US demand. Unfortunately, in the long run, current account deficits do matter, and putting off the day of reckoning will make the correction, when it does come, all the harder.

Boom!
Nouriel Roubini has a similar outlook:

In 2006 the structural medium term factor that will tend to weaken the dollar - the large and growing US current account deficit - will reassert its role while the short term cyclical factors that have lifted the dollar this year will tend to weaken their effect. So, at the end you cannot fight the laws of gravity as the cyclical forces that have defied such gravity are temporary while the forces that will cause a gravitational fall of the US dollar are as strong as ever.

Ooomph!
However, Brad Setzer suggests that maybe the rest of the world is willing to keep financing the U.S. twin deficits for quite some time:

Of course, the US can only spend more than it earns so long as the rest of the world is willing to finance the US.

And the People's Bank of China is certainly aware of that it will take large losses on its dollar portfolio if it continues to finance the US. Last I checked, Yu Yongding sits on the PBoC's monetary policy committee, and he was pretty clear about this in a recent speech.
... So far, though, Yu has not convinced the Chinese government to cut back on its reserve accumulation: Chinese reserve accumulation has grown every year since 2000. And so long as China, Russia and Saudi Arabia's central banks are as willing as the markets to finance the US - if not more willing - the US seems set to keep on spending.

So when will they stop, if ever?

For a set of invaluable links and references on the economics of foreign exchange rates, see this post at The New Economist.