Why the media really suck at their job....

Yesterday Keri told me about having heard on the radio that there was some research that showed that weight lifting might lead to glaucoma.

Now, Glaucoma is a serious thing (WARNING: Boring definition) :

Glaucoma is a group of diseases of the optic nerve involving loss of retinal ganglion cells in a characteristic pattern of optic neuropathy. Although raised intraocular pressure is a significant risk factor for developing glaucoma, there is no set threshold for intraocular pressure that causes glaucoma. One person may develop nerve damage at a relatively low pressure, while another person may have high eye pressures for years and yet never develop damage. Untreated glaucoma leads to permanent damage of the optic nerve and resultant visual field loss, which can progress to blindness.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaucoma

I was skeptical, but I'm not a complete idiot, so I decided to look it up in case it was something to worry about. I did a quick search Google and picked the first 3 articles. Here's the headlines:

Lifting weights raises risk of glaucoma (MSNBC)
Weightlifting May Boost Glaucoma Risk (WebMD)
Weightlifting increases pressure within the eye (EurekAlert!)

Wow! Research has always shown that weight lifting helps the body to store energy efficiently, clear toxins and promote health. But according to these headlines - which is undoubtedly the ONLY source of information the radio personality used - weight lifting now might be the cause of Glaucoma!!

Then I read further...

It turns out that some research was performed in Brazil and published in the Archives of Ophthalmology. The research shows that pressure in the eye significantly rises when holding your breath when exerting the most pressure while weight lifting. If you know anything about exercising, you should know that proper breathing is essential. The original article can be found here: HTML or PDF.

The control exercise was the Benchpress (yes, just the one exercise) which is an exercise that most people perform incorrectly to begin with. The subjects did two sets of four repetitions at 80% of their maximum capacity. The first set the subjects exhaled normally on the last repetition. They waited an hour and performed the second set this time holding their breath on the last repetition. Their eye pressure was then measured while the subject still held the bar up. Their research showed that there was a 60% increase in eye pressure when breathing normally and a 90% increase when holding ones breath - which is a stupid technique.

The fact is that the research was conducted to measure the effects of weight lifting on eye pressure during weight lifting because all of the previous research had been done on the lingering, long-term effects of both aerobic and weight lifting training. And here's what will blow your socks off: the previous research shows that both cardiovascular exercise and weight lifting decreases eye pressure in the long-term.

Those articles published by the suppossedly respectable media had drawn the conclusion that weight lifting leads to a specific health risk. The research merely points out that eye pressure increases significantly when improper technique is used, even though the long-term result of weight lifting is lower eye pressure. Although there is a risk in developing normal-tension glaucoma due to repeated changes in eye pressure, the truth is that there is already plenty of research to show that regular weight training, along with cardiovascular exercise, improves all around health.

Proper technique, good nutrition and regular cardiovascular exercise is all that is required.

Confessions of a Google Addict

Hello, my name is Andrés Pérez and - *choke* - and I am a google whore!

Every morning I open up my daily dose of favorite pages. The very first one is my Personalized Google page. Take a look:



Let me first point out a couple of the less obvious points in this screenshot. I've got 4 firefox extensions that have to do with Google services.

First, there's the little yellow line on the bottom-right corner.
It's for Google Notebook. It's a nifty service where you can select clips from web pages and they will be saved to a public or private "notebook."

Now let's talk about the extension that puts my name on the top-right corner of the browser. It's the Google Browser Sync extension. This extension saves my browser tabs, history, cookies, etc. and allows me to restore those settings in any computer that has the Firefox extension.

There are two that are not always visible. First is a greasemonkey script that I ripped off which pops up whenever a web site is referencing one or more feeds (RSS or ATOM). That thing on the right is what I see. It allows me to subscribe the feed to Google Reader.

Another extension that's not always visible is Google's Blogger Web Comments. If a website I am viewing has been linked to from a blog, it lists an excerpt of each. I have it set so only one excerpt is shown.



Now, one Google service that I don't use is Google Bookmarks. I think it's primitive. So you might have noticed from the screenshot of my personalized google page that I use Yahoo's del.icio.us service. I love it! Of course, I haven't exactly betrayed Google. It's a module on my Google page. And the module is of my own creation - ripped off and improved from someone else's. But, that means that I have to host it someplace, so I opted for Google Base!





Now, for email I use Google's Gmail like a good geek. It's just so dreamy. No, I don't have a problem! Although I also use Google Calendar. And when I say that I use it, I mean that I use it daily:



I conned my girlfriend into using it. Now we coordinate bills, errands and work holidays with it.

Along with Personalized, Gmail, Reader and Calendar, I supply my daily Google fix with Google Finance. Sure, it's not great, but every morning I take a quick look at my 401(k) investments and it provides me with enough information, in my opinion.

What else, you ask? Well, I actually do use Google Spreadsheets for some budget and expense tracking. Did I also mention that I have a site with Google Pages? Yeah, it's really nothing too exciting, as you can see!

Do you want more? I actually have a browser tab with Google Maps opened at all times for when I feel like mapping out an area. Although, if you know me you know how terrible I am with directions, and then you would probably approve and if you approve then you're an enabler, so shame on you (but thank you!).

Will the madness ever end? On my personal and work computers I have installed Google Talk, Google Desktop, Picasa and Google Earth. What is wrong with me?!

And, in case you missed it, Blogger - the site you are at right now - is owned by Google.

I please simply help love me Google!

Working man

Today is the first day of my 4th week here at JDSU. So far it's been great. The guys I'm working with are dedicated, intelligent and hard-working.

I've been looking forward to working for so long now. College was "fun" and all, but I was pretty tired of it and was really itching to get out and actually do some real work!

I got my first task assigned to me on the first day and I've been going at it since. It's nice to be working in UNIX when I program. I don't care how good Visual Studio is - and it is good - the *NIX environment is just much better suited for software development. With MSVS you get a software suite that provides a comfortable development environment. With UNIX, the entire OS is a comfortable environment!

The hardest thing for me to adjust to has been learning when to put the work down and go home. Even harder has been to learn to take time for lunch, instead of eating while working. So during lunch I've been playing around with Inkscape, an SVG creation tool, in order to create a wallpaper with the JDSU logo in it. I think I did well.

One thing that I haven't had to adjust to has been living with Keri. Today is our one month anniversary of moving in together, and I am having a freaking ball! After almost 4 years of us dating long-distance, I am really enjoying spending so much time with her. Somehow even the mundane stuff like cleaning the apartment can be a lot of fun.

So things are pretty sweet, I guess. Finally getting out of college has been liberating. I have finaly begun to live the life that I wanted for myself.

My big sister's wedding ...

... is tomorrow! Holy crap! How crazy is that?! I couldn't be happier for her! I mean, this is just so cool.

I'm obviously not going to win a pulitzer for this blog.

Her geek of choice (since all cool girls are dating geeks these days) is a really good guy - heck, the man is a developer. Can't go wrong with that! ;)

So there's tons of family that has been flying over here from Puerto Rico and Florida and Boston and ... wherever. Pretty exciting. I'm going to get to see family that I haven't seen in years - some of them I haven't seen since I left Puerto Rico 10 years ago!

So Felicidades, Vivian!!!

Now I have to go run some errands. This moron forgot to bring socks so now I need to buy some. *sigh*

I have a home!

Keri and I have found a place to live!! It's in McLean and it's a gated community called Avalon Crescent. To be honest, we were running out of time and might have had to move into an apartment we didn't like, but we lucked out with this one.

At a slightly higher price than was in our range, Keri had dismissed this complex and a couple other ones, but she liked them and had kept them around. So, as our options quickly dwindled, we took a look at them.

We didn't didn't like our second option, but by then we had already seen this:




The best picture I could find.


This is our layout: 'The Garfield'. It's 1,172 sq. ft.

It's great! As you step out of the foyer you walk into the living room and dinning room which is quite large and full of windows. It's gorgeous! Both bedrooms have walk-in closets and are attached to bathrooms. My bedroom is the one called '#1' in the lower-right corner of the floorplan.

Keri and I couldn't be more excited. We went from having little hope in finding a place we would like to signing a lease for what appears to be exactly what we wanted! And for a reasonable price!

I know this is such an average thing: I graduated so I got an apartment with my girlfriend. But it's the everyday, average events in life that make it all worth while!

So, friends and family, come and visit us!

This son of Borikén....

On BBC News:

Puerto Rico budget woes deepen

Anger has been growing over the financial crisis
Thousands of workers in Puerto Rico are threatening to go on strike after a budget crisis partially shut down the island's government.
read more...

There have been a lot of problems down there since I left 10 years ago. The standard of living has gotten worse. Just last month the government had to shut down to save money.

Last semester I went back with my family. I took Keri along with me. I was so excited to show her the country where I grew up. But from the moment we walked into my grandmother's condo, we were slapped in the face by the heat of the unconditioned air - the lights were out due to rolling blackouts that stretch across the entire island. Family members have had to buy generators because the electricity that they pay for is so unreliable. The island is plagued by corrupt politicians and is suffering from a parent country that does not listen to it.

Last week 95,000 government workers were put out and half a million students were sent home when the governement and its schools were forced to close in an attempt to resolve the deficit problem. Because of this action, Moody's, a credit company, downgraded PR's bonds, junking most of them. So now our credit is shot, making the situation even worse.

People in the states talk about how the economy is slow and how spending isn't what it should be, but what they don't realize is that places like Puerto Rico, which is a self-governed commonwealth of the United States, gets hit much harder than any of the states.

I read these articles and hear about the condition of my home country and I just want to get up on my feet and yell out a cry of HELP!!! PLEASE HELP!! My people are in need and we're just a passing story on cnn's webpage. There is so much wealth in the states. Most americans just don't realize how blessed they are. But here we have an entire island of american citizens - 3.8 Million of them - living in poverty.

Try to imagine if what is occuring down there would happen here. Imagine if Virginia or Rhode Island had to close all government building and send the kids home because the state debt was so high and the governmental coffers so low that officials couldn't pay for the government to run. Could you imagine the uproar? The media and the talking heads would declare a national disaster and Bush's poll ratings might actually go down even further. Thousands would call for federal aid and an investigative commitee would be assembled to determine exactly who is to blame for allowing such a state of affairs to develop. Yet their is no uproar for Puerto Rico. We're just a side note in the news.

And why should the federal government or the media care? We're not allowed to vote for the president. We have no congressional votes. We're just second-class citizens living in a spit of land whose military worth has been exhausted and its only value is as a tourist stop.

That's why the only uproar you will hear is my own pitiful cry.


Pictures from the articles that I've been reading:



If you want to read more about this, I have a few saved links: http://del.icio.us/HokieGeek/puertorico+crisis(one is in spanish)