Great example of social constructions around death being challenged, there is something to be learned from this Ghanaian understanding of death.

The New York Times recently published a gem, an article on relationships entitled "The Happy Marriage Is the "Me" Marriage."

Here are some excerpts:

For centuries, marriage was viewed as an economic and social institution, and the emotional and intellectual needs of the spouses were secondary to the survival of the marriage itself. But in modern relationships, people are looking for a partnership, and they want partners who make their lives more interesting.

While the notion of self-expansion may sound inherently self-serving, it can lead to stronger, more sustainable relationships, Dr. Lewandowski says.
“If you’re seeking self-growth and obtain it from your partner, then that puts your partner in a pretty important position,” he explains. “And being able to help your partner’s self-expansion would be pretty pleasing to yourself.”

The concept explains why people are delighted when dates treat them to new experiences, like a weekend away. But self-expansion isn’t just about exotic experiences. Individuals experience personal growth through their partners in big and small ways. It happens when they introduce new friends, or casually talk about a new restaurant or a fascinating story in the news.

After students reported falling in love, they used more varied words in their self-descriptions. The new relationships had literally broadened the way they looked at themselves.

Over time, the personal gains from lasting relationships are often subtle. Having a partner who is funny or creative adds something new to someone who isn’t. A partner who is an active community volunteer creates new social opportunities for a spouse who spends long hours at work.

Additional research suggests that spouses eventually adopt the traits of the other — and become slower to distinguish differences between them, or slower to remember which skills belong to which spouse.

“People have a fundamental motivation to improve the self and add to who they are as a person,” Dr. Lewandowski says. “If your partner is helping you become a better person, you become happier and more satisfied in the relationship.”

QUIZZES!  

There are two quizzes on the relationships one can take as an indicator of the successfulness of their relationship, one provided with the New York Time article, and one available through Dr. Arthur Aron's webpage.  Both are very similar.  Enjoy!

Lewandowski, G. W., Jr. (2010). Break-ups aren’t all bad: Coping strategies to promote positive outcomes. APA: Research in Action

Strong, G., Fincham, F. , & Aron, A. (2009). When nothing bad happens but you’re still unhappy: Boredom in romantic relationships.  In Mind, 8.  

For more interesting articles on relationships check out some of the works by Dr. Arthur Aron, Dr. Elaine Aron, and Dr. Gary W. Lewandowski Jr.

The New York Times recently published an article regarding a new proposal that would make it harder for medical students in Caribbean schools to learn in New York.  

My Comments on Caribbean and American medical students in general:  

(1) from the very beginning, kids are made to falsely believe that the only profession out there in the real world is one as a medical doctor

(2) these kids wrongly believe the only way to help people in this world is through becoming a medical doctor

(3) students need to take time to figure out if medicine is right for them, and with streams of misappropriated idealism mixed with misinformation on the challenges  of being a doctor, students feel they have to rush to become a physician and being a doctor is an easy thing 

(4) these "kids" (epistemically and morally) who end up with medical degrees also end up putting patients at risk  


Particularly insightful comments from the article:  

“These are designed to be for-profit education mills to train students to pass the boards, which is all they need to get a license,” said Dr. Michael J. Reichgott, a professor at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx.

...

The Regents are struggling to compare the academic and professional performance of students from the domestic and foreign schools. The Government Accountability Office, a federal agency, tried to do so in a report aimed at determining whether the foreign schools should continue to qualify for federal loans.

The report, issued in June, found that on average, foreign-trained students lagged behind their American-trained peers in passing the medical licensing exams. 

...

Meanwhile, St. George’s continues to turn out doctors like Janine Reinhardt, 27, who grew up in Massapequa, N.Y., had a 3.97 grade-point average as a biology major at Cornell, but scored 27 on the MCAT. She said she probably needed a score of 30 to get into an American school.

When you hear about Muslims in the mainstream media, its never anything positive.  With over 1 billion Muslims in the world, the news seems to only focus on the more controversial aspects.  In a 24-hour news cycle, news stories about the Taliban, radicals, extremists, etc is what gets aired.  These 24-hour news organizations want money, advertisers will only give them money if people are watching TV.  How do they get people to watch TV?  Make things controversial, violence sells.  Enough with the commentary, I can tell you readers (do I even have readers?  The internet is so saturated with bloggers...) are getting bored.  There is a new blog that has been set up called "Muslim Good News," whose goal is to bring you news stories that are often under-reported.  

Another cool website, created after NPR's Juan Williams' crazy comments, examines "Muslim garb."  Hint:  There is no such thing as a "Muslim garb".  If you haven't, check out an insightful, well written piece by a Rhode Scholar challenging Juan Williams' comments.

New York Times has an interesting piece out on a wrap up of the top ideas of 2010:


Here is a sample: Do It Yourself Macroeconomics


Until recently, the economics profession largely controlled the production, dissemination and interpretation of economic data. Now there’s a new trend afoot: do-it-yourself macroeconomics, in which ordinary citizens pull apart the data and come to their own conclusions.

The democratization of economics owes much to the financial crisis that first hit in 2007. That ongoing catastrophe, which few economists predicted, tarnished the profession’s reputation, prompting some to look elsewhere for answers. They turned to — where else? — the Internet, where vast amounts of economic data that had once been hidden from public view were now online. Sites like FRED, maintained by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, enabled anyone with a connection to the Web to download data on everything from local home-price indexes to credit-card balances to weekly fluctuations in diesel prices.

At the same time, a growing army of knowledgeable “econo-bloggers” began analyzing the data available online. Strikingly, many of the authors of these blogs — the brains behind the Big Picture, Calculated Risk, Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis and others — aren’t academic economists but people with real-world experience in financial markets. Their Web sites offer sophisticated interpretations of economic data and hold passionate debates with their readers over the merits of the data. As a result, economic data that were formerly greeted with grudging acceptance by the public — the latest unemployment figures, for example — are now the catalyst for endless popular exegeses.  STEPHEN MIHM

Granted this is ridiculously time consuming because of all the waiting that needs to happen, but its good bread.