NYC Triathlon Swim: My Hudson River Diary

New York City Triathlon, July 14, 2013, 6:45 AM

Minute Zero: Coming down the ramp onto the race-start-barge in the Hudson River at 99th Street.

Goggles, check; swim cap, check; stopwatch on zero, check. Interview with the race announcer over the public address, I’m Tzvee from Teaneck, New Jersey. Yes, it’s my first triathlon; yes, I’m on a relay team.

Line up, look into the river. Fourteen other swimmers in my wave and many of them sit down on the barge and jump in at the tone. So do I. It’s four feet from the barge to the water.

Minute One: I’m in the Hudson. It’s dark. I go in much deeper than I thought I would. It’s dark all around me. This was a mistake. I need to get out.

Wow, I now finally understand the psalm, “Out of the depths I cry out to you O Lord.” I do not like this at all. I’m back to the surface. It’s choppy. My heart is racing. My chest is tight. I’m not swimming. I need to swim. But where am I? Not sure. Start to do the breast stroke. Others around me are swimming. It’s cold. What a bad idea this was.

Minute Two: Still not swimming the crawl. Wetsuit. Should have worn one. Would float better. Another real dumb decision. Still doing the breast stroke and my breathing is too shallow. Realize that I am in full panic. Adrenalin starting to pump.

I’m not gonna make it. I see tomorrow’s obituary, “Teaneck Rabbi Drowns in Hudson… He always loved swimming, family recalls.”

I pray, “Shema Yisrael.” “Hear O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one.”

Okay, so how do I get out of here? I am dizzy and disoriented. Just in case, I pray some variations, “Our father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.” Oh heck, “Hail Mary full of grace.” Hey, you never know. Oh, cover those bases, “Allahu akhbar.”

Minute Three: Still floundering. Tell myself to take deeper breaths. Urge myself to start to do the crawl. You can do this! No I can’t. I will swim over to that kayak and hop on board.

“Put your head down and swim!” That tight chest feeling is just panic. Not a heart attack. You wimp, you have six stents in your coronary arteries. You will be okay. Breathe, just breathe. Stroke, just stroke.

Minute Four: I’m coming back to grips with my reality. Ha! I muse that I will call out to the lifeguard on the surfboard, “I made a pledge to the United Jewish Appeal and haven’t paid it yet.” Old joke. The UJA definitely will make sure I get out alive.

I’m swimming now but going sideways. A guy in another kayak is pointing and waving at me to go in another direction. I am zigging and zagging. I’ve been swimming nearly every day for thirty years but boy, am I sucking at this swim.

Minute Five: I’m starting to get awareness for where I am and where are the other swimmers. “How long O Lord?” I sure haven’t made much progress. A long, long way to go.

Guess I really don’t like open water swimming in the Hudson. A little late to think about that now. Okay. Just stroke, breathe, stroke, breathe.

Minute Six to the Exit: Okay wow, we are doing this. Holy moly, it is far. No turning every 25 meters at the end of the pool. Can’t see any lane markers on the bottom of the river. No plastic lane dividers to gauge the direction. I am still veering right and left. There are currents and wakes. Salty I don’t mind. But feh. It’s dirty water.

Starting to bump into other swimmers. That’s good. Seems like a very long time. Stroke, breathe. Heart is strong. Breathing is better. Panic is easing.

Seems now like forever. Finally see the exit ramp ahead at 79th Street and a crowd of swimmers in front of it. A New York moment. Traffic jam is slowing us down at the Henry Hudson River off ramp.

Get to the ramp, a strong hand grips my hand and pulls me up. I’m out! Alive. But oh crap, I never started the stop watch. And double crap, now I have to run barefoot on asphalt to the bike transition. It’s long, it’s annoying. I reluctantly jog over half a mile. Hey, I am getting happier anyway.

I give my chip to my teammate, our rally team biker. He rides off.

I am done.

Check off that one.

Halleluyah.

Rabbi Dr. Tzvee Zahavy, who lives in Teaneck and writes the monthly Dear Rabbi column for the Jewish Standard, was inspired by his triathlete son Yitzhak, who did the entire NYC triathlon and raised money to help victims of terror through Team One Family. Tzvee did the NYC Tri swim leg with help from his two Team One Family teammates, Harvey Lederman and Leiba Rimler, who did the biking and running legs.

Donate here to help the families.

Published in the Jewish Standard, July 26, 2013.

Read God's Favorite Prayers

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Times: Lap Swimming in the NYC Outdoor Public Pools

From The New York Times: "The Water's Fine, and So Is the Competition - Lasker Pool is part of the city's Lap Swim program, where outdoor swimmers can compete."

...It’s no secret that New York has outdoor public pools that are open throughout the five boroughs in July and August. What you generally find are parents and young children, and teenagers horsing around. Lesser known is the Lap Swim program, open from 7 to 8:30, a.m. and p.m. for Early Bird and Night Owl sessions. It’s a quiet, orderly affair, where adults swim laps in roped-off lanes in otherwise empty pools...

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In Mommy Edith's Memory - Please Quit Smoking Today

In 2000 my mother Edith Zahavy passed away on the 4th day of Tammuz after six months of hospitalization at Mt. Sinai in NYC. She was 79. For 63 years she smoked, mostly menthol cigarettes. The corporate tobacco pushers hooked her into addiction by giving her free samples outside her school, Hunter College, when she was a teenager. They supplied her habit for six decades. For several years prior to her death she could hardly walk because of her profound vascular disease, heart disease and emphysema. Her last months in the hospital on a respirator were awful as all of the organs of her systems weakened and failed.

My mother was a beautiful, selfless, generous, creative, religious person who dedicated her whole life to her family, to her friends and to her students. She first brought us up (myself and my brother and sister) and then went on to teach in the NYC public schools. She stood behind my father, me and my siblings through thick and thin. But through the years she always smoked, mostly Newports and Salems.

As I remember her -- an active vibrant woman -- I plead with you -- if you smoke cigarettes -- QUIT TODAY. Please for the sake of the memory of my mother -- for your own sake -- for the sake of your spouse, your parents, your children, your friends -- please stop.

(Repost annually from 2006)

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Times: Mindful Meditation Makes You three times more Compassionate

In a truly remarkable article the Times explains that science has demonstrated that mindful meditation makes a person more compassionate.

I wrote about the mindfulness of Jewish blessings and the compassion of the grace after meals in my 2011 book, "God's Favorite Prayers."

Ever since I studied and practiced meditation in the early nineties, I knew the connection between meditation and compassion was the basic premise of the practice. Yet I did not expect that science would "prove" the causal link.

The Times describes one breathtaking study - where the incredible conclusion is that mindful meditators are three times more compassionate than non-meditators.

Here is the article.

The Morality of Meditation
By DAVID DeSTENO
MEDITATION is fast becoming a fashionable tool for improving your mind. With mounting scientific evidence that the practice can enhance creativity, memory and scores on standardized intelligence tests, interest in its practical benefits is growing. A number of “mindfulness” training programs, like that developed by the engineer Chade-Meng Tan at Google, and conferences like Wisdom 2.0 for business and tech leaders, promise attendees insight into how meditation can be used to augment individual performance, leadership and productivity.

This is all well and good, but if you stop to think about it, there’s a bit of a disconnect between the (perfectly commendable) pursuit of these benefits and the purpose for which meditation was originally intended. Gaining competitive advantage on exams and increasing creativity in business weren’t of the utmost concern to Buddha and other early meditation teachers. As Buddha himself said, “I teach one thing and one only: that is, suffering and the end of suffering.” For Buddha, as for many modern spiritual leaders, the goal of meditation was as simple as that. The heightened control of the mind that meditation offers was supposed to help its practitioners see the world in a new and more compassionate way, allowing them to break free from the categorizations (us/them, self/other) that commonly divide people from one another.

But does meditation work as promised? Is its originally intended effect — the reduction of suffering — empirically demonstrable?

To put the question to the test, my lab, led in this work by the psychologist Paul Condon, joined with the neuroscientist Gaëlle Desbordes and the Buddhist lama Willa Miller to conduct an experiment whose publication is forthcoming in the journal Psychological Science. We recruited 39 people from the Boston area who were willing to take part in an eight-week course on meditation (and who had never taken any such course before). We then randomly assigned 20 of them to take part in weekly meditation classes, which also required them to practice at home using guided recordings. The remaining 19 were told that they had been placed on a waiting list for a future course.

After the eight-week period of instruction, we invited the participants to the lab for an experiment that purported to examine their memory, attention and related cognitive abilities. But as you might anticipate, what actually interested us was whether those who had been meditating would exhibit greater compassion in the face of suffering. To find out, we staged a situation designed to test the participants’ behavior before they were aware that the experiment had begun.

WHEN a participant entered the waiting area for our lab, he (or she) found three chairs, two of which were already occupied. Naturally, he sat in the remaining chair. As he waited, a fourth person, using crutches and wearing a boot for a broken foot, entered the room and audibly sighed in pain as she leaned uncomfortably against a wall. The other two people in the room — who, like the woman on crutches, secretly worked for us — ignored the woman, thus confronting the participant with a moral quandary. Would he act compassionately, giving up his chair for her, or selfishly ignore her plight?

The results were striking. Although only 16 percent of the nonmeditators gave up their seats — an admittedly disheartening fact — the proportion rose to 50 percent among those who had meditated. This increase is impressive not solely because it occurred after only eight weeks of meditation, but also because it did so within the context of a situation known to inhibit considerate behavior: witnessing others ignoring a person in distress — what psychologists call the bystander effect — reduces the odds that any single individual will help. Nonetheless, the meditation increased the compassionate response threefold.

Although we don’t yet know why meditation has this effect, one of two explanations seems likely. The first rests on meditation’s documented ability to enhance attention, which might in turn increase the odds of noticing someone in pain (as opposed to being lost in one’s own thoughts). My favored explanation, though, derives from a different aspect of meditation: its ability to foster a view that all beings are interconnected. The psychologist Piercarlo Valdesolo and I have found that any marker of affiliation between two people, even something as subtle as tapping their hands together in synchrony, causes them to feel more compassion for each other when distressed. The increased compassion of meditators, then, might stem directly from meditation’s ability to dissolve the artificial social distinctions — ethnicity, religion, ideology and the like — that divide us.

Supporting this view, recent findings by the neuroscientists Helen Weng, Richard Davidson and colleagues confirm that even relatively brief training in meditative techniques can alter neural functioning in brain areas associated with empathic understanding of others’ distress — areas whose responsiveness is also modulated by a person’s degree of felt associations with others.

So take heart. The next time you meditate, know that you’re not just benefiting yourself, you’re also benefiting your neighbors, community members and as-yet-unknown strangers by increasing the odds that you’ll feel their pain when the time comes, and act to lessen it as well.

David DeSteno is a professor of psychology at Northeastern University, where he directs the Social Emotions Group. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Truth About Trust: How It Determines Success in Life, Love, Learning, and More.”

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Summer at the Teaneck Swim Club, the Tenafly JCC Outdoor Swimming Pool + 10 more world class dramatic pools to think about

The start of summer. With nice weather ahead we look forward to swimming outdoors every day in Tenafly or Teaneck.

TSC open every day starting.

JCC OTP open every day starting.

And here are some of the other pools that we'd like to swim in...We've been to some of them...[reposted from 08].

Cool pools: 10 favorite hotel swimming spots By Gary Warner

The Orange County Register

Some like it hot. I do not. After a steamy day of going from museum to shop to cafe to hotel, I am in dire need of something big, cold and relaxing. No, not a beer. Well, OK, a beer would be nice, too.

I'm talking about a pool. A hotel swimming pool. A beckoning oasis of deep, crisp blue.

Over 10 years, I've dived and dipped into hundreds of Olympics, kidneys, minerals and infinities, from Bali to Baltimore. Most are fine but forgettable, so I cling to fond memories of laps gone by on my short list of classic dips. Come dive into the deep end of my list of favorite pools. You don't even have to shower before entering.

Hotel Gellert — Budapest, Hungary

The Turks invaded then receded from this part of Europe, but they left behind a love of watery luxury. Bathhouses decked out with fountains and colonnades still offer a classic soaking experience, with a rubdown costing a little extra.

You can stay at the Hotel Gellert or simply pay less than $10 to play pasha in its art nouveau 27-meter indoor swimming pool ringed with butterscotch-colored marble columns and lion heads spitting water.

Hotel Inter-Continental — Chicago.

The liquid miracle of The Miracle Mile. Rooftop pools are all the rage today, but people were agog in 1929 when what was then the Medinah Athletic Club built a 129,000-gallon junior Olympic-size pool above the grand ballroom.

With its tiled walls, viewing stand and potted plants, what is now the Inter-continental's pool retains the feel of a Jazz-era hangout. After a long day of dirt, grime and noise wandering the exciting urban scene in central Chicago, the pool seems like a great secret oasis in the heart of the city.

Inexpensive splashes:
Great pools usually come with the steep price tag of a luxury hotel but here are a few of my favorite "cheap dips" from around the country:
Best Western Ramkota Inn, Sioux Falls, S.D., 605-336-0650. Great indoor water park with 130-foot slide.
Caliente Tropics Motel, Palm Springs. 888-277-0999. www.calientetropics.com. Poolside tiki and torches.
American Inn, Hardin, Mont. 406-665-1870. A 140-foot slide at a simple motel near the Little Big Horn National Historic Battlefield.
Days Inn, Memphis. 3839 Elvis Presley Blvd. 800-329-7466. www.daysinn.com. Guitar-shaped pool across from Elvis' Graceland mansion.
Chico Hot Springs, 1 Chico Road in Pray, Mont. 800-HOT-WADA (468-9232). A rustic spa with a large hot mineral swimming pool.

The Palace of the Lost City — Sun City, South Africa

The Palace of the Lost City is the epic top-end hotel of Sun City, the once-controversial gambling resort in an enclave within racially segregated South Africa. Today it's a swimmers' paradise open to anyone with a fat enough wallet.

The Valley of the Waves pool area has 13 waterfalls, 20 cascades, two man-made rivers and six ponds. A wave pool featuring six stone lions that spew fountains of water from their mouths can churn out 5-foot-high breakers. The Temple of Courage is topped by a crumbling stone rotunda from which a nearly vertical water slide sends the brave on a swift 210-foot descent into a pool. If you can't make it all the way to Africa, many of the same water effects are at its sister hotel, Atlantis, in the Bahamas.

Park Hyatt Tokyo — Tokyo

Long before "Lost in Translation" made the Park Hyatt Tokyo an international celebrity, it was my favorite hotel in Asia. The hotel occupies several high floors of the Shinjuku Park Tower, one of the city's tallest skyscrapers. The aerie atmosphere extends even to the hotel pool, which sits in a cathedral-like space on the 47th floor. The 20-meter pool is pretty in itself. But it's the setting that is so stunning. From lounge chairs at poolside I could gaze out at the forest of steel and glass of the business district's high-rises. In the evening, the neon of the Shibuya and Ginza districts shimmered in the distance. Mesmerizing.

Renaissance Esmeralda — Indian Wells, Calif.

Since the mercury here regularly gurgles above 100 degrees, it's little surprise that the desert resorts scattered around Palm Springs have one of the best collections of cool pools in the country. The Korakia Pensione's small, lovely Moroccan-style pool made the Travel Channel's national Top 10 list.

My personal favorite is the array of splash spots at the Esmeralda, also one of the area's top golf and spa resorts. Three adjacent pools, one with a gushing waterfall, create a kind of aquatic garden.

Kids are the key here. Nearly all the pools are no deeper than 3 feet, so Mom and Dad can hang around the central bar watching a ballgame while the offspring cavort a few feet away. A stretch of trucked-in beach is the spot to make sand castles in the desert.

Flamingo Las Vegas — Las Vegas

Vegas is one of the true pool Meccas of the world. You can choose from the wave pool at Mandalay Bay, the massive classical-tinged swimming areas at Bellagio and Caesars Palace, and the acres of shaded pools at the Tropicana.

But my choice is the Flamingo, boasting 15-acre grounds with four pools. The centerpiece is a massive lagoon with an 18-foot waterfall that is the hotel's party place on hot days. Kids like a linear pool that's connected by a series of small waterslides. My favorite is the small adults-only oval pool, with its fantastically shocking-pink world. It's ringed by tall flamingo statues in front of pricey cabanas that come with their own television and telephone. Be prepared: It can be very crowded on weekends.

Amandari — Ubud, Bali, Indonesia

In the quiet hills far from the tourist routes sits one of the heartbreakingly lovely Amanresorts of Asia. The luxuriously cool and shady cottages are hard to leave. But I loved spending a couple of hours lolling in and around the hotel's infinity pool, the tag put on pools that use a flat rim with a gutter just below to create the illusion that the water simply floats off into space.

The far wall dropped into a ravine with a green forest canopy sitting above some of Bali's iconic terraced rice fields. Palms swayed in the warm, humid breeze and a small river rushed down the hill toward the sea. I folded my arms over the edge and watched as a Balinese woman with a large kayak balanced perfectly on her head walked by. A remarkable travel moment experienced without even getting out of the pool.

Grand Wailea — Wailea, Maui, Hawaii

For pure "wow" factor, this ultra-expensive Maui resort can't be beat. My preteen son and his friends prefer the wild times of the Grand Wailea to any other hotel pool in the islands. The eye-catching Hibiscus Pool features 2.2 million Mexican tiles. It's the quietest pool — no one under 16 is allowed.

The kids won't squawk. All the real action is over at the Wailea Canyon Activity Pool. A series of interconnected pools feature six waterfalls, slides, swinging ropes, whirlpools, an infant pool, a swim-up bar and a poolside sandy beach. The Lava Slide is a 238-foot-long ride, while the churning Ana Puka Slide spins swimmers in circles.

Spending over $400 a night gives the guests a sense of entitlement, and the crowd at the Grand Wailea can get a bit testy when the lounge chairs near the pool run out around midmorning. Do try to tear yourself away from the pool for a dip in the beautiful beach that fronts the hotel.

Hyatt Regency Kauai — Kauai, Hawaii

There are other great pools on nearly every island, from the water-park atmosphere of the Westin Maui and Hilton Waikaloa Village on the Big Island to acres of water at the Marriott Kauai and Princeville Resort in Kauai to smaller jewel-like pools at the Halekulani in Waikiki and the Hotel Hana-Maui.

My favorite among these is the pools at the Hyatt Regency Kauai, on the sunny south side of the Garden Island. The Hyatt requires a major water-park-like experience, since it fronts the rugged, rough Shipwreck Beach, making ocean swimming an unwise proposition on many days.
Guests can splash in a five-acre saltwater lagoon or a couple of freshwater pools. But what gets the Hyatt Regency on my list is the wandering man-made river that flows from the hotel's terraced gardens down to a small pool next to the saltwater lagoon. Along the way are lots of inlets and grottoes for a watery version of hide and seek. On the downside, the channel is about 4 feet deep and covers a lot of territory, so keep an eye on the youngest of your swimmers.

The Biltmore Hotel — Coral Gables, Fla.

A gorgeous landmark in the town that dubs itself "the city beautiful," the Biltmore's 700,000-gallon pool is the largest hotel pool in the continental United States. It would be hard to feel crowded here. Sometimes the pool can be oddly empty — the high-end clientele seems to prefer sitting waterside to performing cannonballs or cherry bombs.

Before World War II, the pool was the site of spectacular water "galas" that would draw thousands of onlookers. Johnny Weissmuller, the future Olympic swimmer-turned-movie Tarzan, once taught swimming here.

If you are a pool fanatic, check out the nearby Venetian Pool in Coral Gables, which has been called the most beautiful public swimming pool in the United States.

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Without Wearing Neckties, Israeli Jewish adults attending synagogue 'happy and healthier'

Even though the ordinary Israeli who attends synagogue does not even own a necktie, a social scientist has "proven" that "Israeli Jewish adults attending synagogue 'happy and healthier'"

In fact the researcher involved already knew the answers before he even conducted his "studies." Professor Jeff Levin has spent his career "proving" the health benefits of religion for the world. There is zero chance at this stage of the game that he would come up with a conclusion to disprove his base assumptions.

We are shocked by this discovery though for a specific reason. We've been criticized for discussing in our "Dear Rabbi" column a rule requiring tie-wearing by Jews in a local synagogue if they want to receive a Torah-honor on Sabbaths and Holidays.

Here's a nugget from a letter to the editor of the Jewish Standard that fervently defends the wonderful meaning of the tie-wearing practice by Dr. Reuben Gross:

Rabbi Zahavy takes a strong stand with the congregant. He labels the shul’s dress code as “nonsense.” This is hardly appropriate language coming from a rabbi about a shul’s policy, which follows the dictates of no less a person than the prophet Ezra (6th century BCE), who enacted the rule that individuals should give special “kavod” (honor) to the Sabbath, marked by their change of clothing.

Truly we did not know that Ezra the Scribe (usually not called prophet) knew about neckties in the 6th century BCE.

And so we wonder how Jews in Israel who attend shul regularly can be happier and healthier even though they do not own or wear ties.

Or let's be positive here. Can you imagine just how happy and healthy these synagogue attenders would be in Israel if they wore neckties?

Perhaps we can start a new program to promote even greater health and happiness in Israel: Neckties Without Borders for Religious Sabras.

Here is a news report on the impressive research on the health benefits of attending synagogue:

Israeli Jewish adults, who go to synagogue regularly, pray often, and think of themselves as religious are much healthier and happier than their non-religious counterparts, two new studies have suggested.

Baylor University researcher Jeff Levin, Ph.D, said that commitment to Jewish religious belief and practice is strongly associated with greater physical and psychological well-being.

One study used 2010 data on 1,849 Jewish adults from the Israeli sample of the European Social Survey and has been published in Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, an official journal of the American Psychological Association.

The other study used 2009-10 data on 991 Jewish adults from the Israeli sample of the International Social Survey Programme's Religion III survey and has been published in the Journal of Happiness Studies. (ANI)

Rabbi Neckties

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Am I dead yet? NYTimes Warns of Dire Consequences of "Cheating Ourselves of Sleep"

From The New York Times, a poorly argued article, "Cheating Ourselves of Sleep," concludes that, "Failing to get enough sleep night after night can compromise your health and may even shorten your life."

I shared the article with a friend who knows that often I do not get enough sleep and the response was that based on this article I ought to be dead by now, several times over.

Here are some phrases and then snippets from the awful alarmist article, in order but without context, showing how little hard logic, science or medicine underlies the claims in the article about your health from the prestigious New York Times. 

Note the use of blurry terms like "chances are" "most people" "can compromise" "may even" "can profoundly affect" "are negatively affected" "a risk factor" "tend to" "can be harmed" "linked" "may ultimately result" "risks...are higher" "may also be" "risk may also be elevated" "risk may result" "increased risk" "can also experience" "may be more susceptible" -- the connections between lack of sleep and all of these potential health conditions are just plain blurred and conditional and none of them is causative. Nowhere does the article give any hard numbers or actual percentages of anything bad caused directly by diminished sleep.

Yes if you don't sleep enough it is nearly a certainty that the next day you will feel tired. I don't know where and how the Times concluded that less sleep "may even shorten your life." 

That's going way out on a limb. As I read this foggy article through a few times I could see nothing that proves too little sleep will cause you to die more quickly.

Here are the shoddy sentence snippets for the above hazy phrases.

• Think you do just fine on five or six hours of shut-eye? Chances are...
• ...most people require seven or eight hours of sleep to function optimally. 
• ...can compromise your health and 
• ...may even shorten your life. 
• ...can profoundly affect memory, learning, creativity, productivity and emotional stability, as well as your physical health.
• ...a number of bodily systems are negatively affected by inadequate sleep
• ...a risk factor for depression and substance abuse
• ...People with PTSD tend to relive their trauma when they try to sleep...
• Dr. Germain is studying what happens in the brains of sleeping veterans with PTSD in hopes of developing more effective treatments for them and for people with lesser degrees of stress that interfere with a good night’s sleep.
• ...myriad bodily systems can be harmed by chronically shortened nights. 
• ...linked insufficient sleep to weight gain. 
• ...may ultimately result in Type 2 diabetes. 
• ...The risks of cardiovascular diseases and stroke are higher in people who sleep less than six hours a night.
• ...(In terms of cardiovascular disease, sleeping too much may also be risky. Higher rates of heart disease have been found among women who sleep more than nine hours nightly.)
• The risk of cancer may also be elevated in people who fail to get enough sleep. ...The increased risk may result from diminished secretion of the sleep hormone melatonin. 
• ...an increased risk of potentially cancerous colorectal polyps in those who slept fewer than six hours nightly.
• ...Children can also experience hormonal disruptions from inadequate sleep. 
• Dr. Vatsal G. Thakkar, a psychiatrist affiliated with New York University, recently described evidence associating inadequate sleep with an erroneous diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in children. In one study, 28 percent of children with sleep problems had symptoms of the disorder, but not the disorder.
• ...short sleepers may be more susceptible to everyday infections like colds and flu. 
• ...During sleep, new learning and memory pathways become encoded in the brain, and adequate sleep is necessary for those pathways to work optimally. People who are well rested are better able to learn a task and more likely to remember what they learned. The cognitive decline that so often accompanies aging may in part result from chronically poor sleep.
• With insufficient sleep, thinking slows, it is harder to focus and pay attention,...
• ...In driving tests, sleep-deprived people perform as if drunk, and no amount of caffeine or cold air can negate the ill effects.

Some Talmudic points of complexity to consider:

1. If you sleep less, you have more waking time, so in effect you definitely are living awake longer. There are no hedges about that fact.
2. That assumes that being awake is preferred to being asleep - because you can produce more and experience more of life. If you are unproductive and idle - sleep may be no less preferable to waking.
3. The article does not even begin to delve into the value of dreaming while asleep. At the very least, dreams can be interesting, entertaining and dramatic. I've done some impressive things in my dreams and also have confronted some true nightmares.
4. I've solved numerous problems while dreaming and have come up with innovative concepts and ideas.
5. Aside from the alleged health value of sleep - of which I not convinced - it is hard to assess what has more value - waking life or sleeping life. And your mileage may vary. Some people never remember their dreams. Some people dream in black-and-white - nothing at all colorful or vivid.

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Is it kosher to bring a gun to the swim club?

Unless we are talking about a super-soaker toy, no, not in my backyard. It is not kosher to bring a gun into my swim club. I don't really care what the gold old boy yahoos in West Virginia do - see the story below. Just don't bring any gun to the Teaneck Swim Club or the JCC where my friends and relatives go to swim in safety.

And by the way even the toys are getting downright dangerous. Consider you can "ice" your friends with the NERF SUPER SOAKER ARCTIC SHOCK Water Blaster - about which we are told by Hasbro:

This powerful soaker lets you freeze your friends with icy blasts of water! The ARCTIC SHOCK soaker’s Ice Drum has a large 25-fluid-ounce capacity and you can fill it with ice for a super-chilled soak. Fill the drum and pump for a freezing blast of water at targets up to 30 feet away! The Ice Drum works with other Clip System SUPER SOAKER blasters (sold separately) and SUPER SOAKER Water Clips work with the ARCTIC SHOCK soaker. Fill additional Water Clips (sold separately) and use them to refill fast. Put the competition on ice with the ARCTIC SHOCK soaker!

From ProPublica, some dangerous summer news.

Now, You Can’t Ban Guns at the Public Pool
by Lois Beckett, ProPublica

If you feel unsafe at a public pool in Charleston, W.Va., you may soon have the right to lie there on a towel with a handgun at your side.

For 20 years, Charleston has been an island of modest gun restrictions in a very pro-gun rights state. But its gun laws — including a ban on guns in city parks, pools and recreation centers — are now likely to be rolled back, the latest victory in a long-standing push to deny cities the power to regulate guns.

Since the 1980s, the National Rifle Association and other groups have led a successful campaign to get state legislatures to limit local control over gun regulations. These "preemption" laws block cities from enacting their own gun policies, effectively requiring cities with higher rates of gun violence to have the same gun regulations as smaller towns.

Before 1981, when an Illinois town banned the possession of handguns, just a handful of states had preemption laws on the books. Today, 42 states block cities from making gun laws, according to the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Even Illinois, which has long allowed its cities to pass gun control measures, is about to invalidate local restrictions on concealed handguns and ban any future local regulation of assault weapons.

Gun rights advocates argue that allowing cities to have their own gun laws creates an impossible situation for law-abiding gun owners, who cannot be expected to read ordinances for every town they might pass through.

The preemption campaign has racked up so many victories nationwide, it's now focusing on holdouts like Charleston, population 51,000.

Charleston's current gun restrictions include a three-day waiting period to buy a handgun, and a limit of one handgun purchase per month, as well as bans on guns on publicly owned property, such as parks and pools.

West Virginia Delegate Patrick Lane crafted an amendment to an unrelated state bill, now passed, that will likely force Charleston to erase those restrictions.

"Crime could happen anyplace. You obviously want to be able to defend yourself and your family if something happens," Lane said, when asked why anyone would want to bring a gun to a public pool.

The NRA did not respond to requests for comment, but its website calls Charleston's restrictions "misguided" and "unreasonable." Its site has closely tracked the progress of the repeal of the ordinances, which it states "would have no negative impact whatsoever on Charleston." The site has repeatedly criticized Charleston's Republican mayor for "speaking out publicly against this pro-gun reform."

It's not clear what effect the spread of preemption has had on public safety. "It's very hard to determine what causes crime to go up and down, because there are so many variables," said Laura Cutilletta, a senior attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

But in Charleston, Police Chief Brent Webster says he's worried about losing the city's current restrictions, in particular the law banning guns at city pools, concerts and sporting events.

"You will have some citizens say, 'I can do that now, so I'm going to do that,'" Webster said. "I am greatly concerned."

"When they're diving off the diving board, is that [gun] going to be in a book bag? Is that going to be lying under their towel and an eight-year-old kid is walking through the pool area and picks it up?"

Two of the city's former police chiefs also say they're worried about losing the ban on guns in public places that attract kids.

"That has nothing to do with the Second Amendment right. It has to do with public safety," former Chief Dallas Staples said.

Charleston's mayor, Danny Jones, who's fought to keep the gun restrictions, said the city now has no choice but to do what the state legislature wants and roll them back. The state legislature packaged the rollback requirement with a popular measure giving Charleston more leeway in how it raises taxes.

"I'm still reeling from all this, because it's going to affect us in a very negative way," Jonestold reporters after the law passed.

Keith Morgan, president of the West Virginia Citizen's Defense League, a gun rights group, said the group been pushing for an end to Charleston's ordinances for years, and that the change would protect law-abiding gun owners from a "minefield" of conflicting local laws.

Lane, the West Virginia delegate, also said that gun-owning commuters were put at risk as they traveled through different cities with different rules.

But neither Lane nor Morgan could cite an example of a gun owner being prosecuted for accidentally breaking the law during their commute, or by accidentally wandering into a city park. When Morgan himself once showed up at the Charleston Civic Center with a gun, he said, he was simply asked to leave, and he did. In lawsuits the West Virginia Citizen's Defense League filed against gun ordinances in Charleston and Martinsburg, the plaintiffs cited their fear of potential prosecution.

The main burden of Charleston's laws for gun owners has been the inconvenience of waiting three days to purchase a handgun, and only being able to buy one handgun at a time — something that can be particularly troublesome "if you're buying a present for your family and there happens to be a Christmas sale at the retailer," Lane said.

Former Charleston law enforcement officers say the handgun restrictions, passed in 1993, helped the city tamp down on the drugs-for-guns trade that was rampant at the time. But since then, gun stores have sprung up right at the city's borders, said Steve Walker, a former Charleston police officer and now president of the West Virginia branch of the Fraternal Order of Police.

"Honestly, I don't know whether with them repealing it, it is going to help them or hurt them," Walker said of the handgun restrictions.

State legislators said that city officials are overplaying their fears.

"I don't see everyone with a concealed carry permit deciding to go to a pool and carry a gun," said Democrat Mark Hunt, a state delegate, "So what if they do? They're law-abiding citizens."

Charleston’s mayor said he has a plan if somebody brings a gun poolside: “We're going to close down the pool."

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Is the New Dunkin’ Doughnut, Egg and Bacon Breakfast Sandwich Kosher?

CBS reports that there is a New Dunkin’ Doughnut, Egg and Bacon Breakfast Sandwich.

It's made from a glazed donut, fried egg and bacon. And it has only 360 calories.

No, it is not kosher? It has bacon.

It's also a violation of improperly mixing up the distinct categories of the universe. Desserts, must not be mixed with real foods.

I mean what next? Cupcake burgers? Fries with whipped cream?

And lastly, yuck.

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Topless German Protesters in Berlin Burned a Barbie Doll on a Cross

I get it - a Barbie doll has an exaggerated ideal body type that frustrates some women.

I do not get the symbolic action of this part of the protest:

Reuters reported that Topless German Protesters Burned a Barbie Doll on a Cross.

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Times: Cholesterol Drugs Called Statins are Bad for You

I stopped taking statin pills 6+ years ago when Lipitor gave me liver disease. My cholesterol is low now due to my strict regimen of aerobic exercise and a healthy diet. No pills.

A medical study described in the Times pitting exercise against pills should be incredibly troubling to people who take statins:

...The unmedicated volunteers improved their aerobic fitness significantly after three months of exercise, by more than 10 percent on average. But the volunteers taking the statins gained barely 1 percent on average in their fitness, and some possessed less aerobic capacity at the end of the study than at its start...

Whoa - statins are bad for your aerobic fitness. That's not what we want to hear.

...This finding joins a small but accumulating body of other studies indicating that statins can negatively affect exercise response. Lab rodents given statins, for instance, can’t run as far as unmedicated animals, while in humans, marathon runners on statins develop more markers of muscle damage after a race than runners not using the drugs...

Whoa - statins promote muscle damage in athletes. I felt muscle damage after one week when I took the Lipitor. Blood tests showed that the drug attacked my liver.

Finally, it's wrong that the Times frames this in an article whose title is a question, Can Statins Cut the Benefits of Exercise?, when the article describes a study that demonstrates it is a fact that statins do cut the benefits of exercise - they promote muscle damage - or in plain terms - statins are bad for you.

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Eat less; swim more

Strange advice from USA Today, "Double up: Diet, exercise together are key to success". We've known all along that if you want to get into good shape you need to eat less and swim more:

Folks who want to get in better shape and eat healthier are often encouraged to make one change at a time, but a new study finds that people are the most successful when they tackle their diet and exercise habits simultaneously.

"It comes down to making them both priorities and thinking about both throughout the day," says lead researcher Abby King, professor at the Stanford (University) Prevention Research Center.

King and colleagues worked with 200 inactive, mostly overweight people, 45 years and older, who had relatively unhealthy diets that didn't include enough fruits and vegetables and contained too much saturated (animal) fat.

Published online in Annals of Behavioral Medicine, the study shows participants were divided into four groups: One learned to make diet and exercise changes at the same time; another learned to make diet changes first and then a few months later began working on their exercise habits. A third group changed their exercise habits first, then their diet later. And the fourth group learned stress-management techniques but did not get diet and exercise guidance.

Participants weren't trying to lose weight, just live healthier lifestyles. Health educators met with them at the beginning of the year and then called them once a month to provide advice and support.

The goals were for participants to meet the government's physical activity guidelines of doing at least 150 minutes a week of moderate-intensity physical activity, such as walking, eat five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day and keep their saturated fat intake to 10% or less of daily calories.

The findings after one year: Those who made changes in their diet and exercise habits at the same time did the best at meeting all three goals — eating enough fruits and vegetables, limiting saturated fat and exercising enough to meet the government's guidelines.

Participants who started with exercise first also did pretty well at meeting diet and exercise goals, but not quite as well as the group that did both at the same time, King says. Those who started with diet first managed to meet dietary goals but not their exercise goals.

She says the results were surprising, because doctors and nutritionists often encourage people to make one change at a time. "For some people, that may be the best approach, but we found that you may get the most bang for your buck by making these changes together."

This was not a weight-loss study, and participants were not taught portion control and other strategies important for weight loss, King says. However, some people did drop pounds, and researchers are studying those results now.

Tim Church, director of preventive medicine research at Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Baton Rouge, says, "This provides really strong evidence that you might as well do both from the beginning of your program."

Felicia Stoler, a registered dietitian and exercise physiologist in Holmdel, N.J., says when she works with patients she gives them both a nutrition plan and a physical-activity plan. Many people would rather change the foods they eat than their physical activity, she says. "But when people become more physically active they feel better about themselves, and they often no longer want to put bad food in their system."

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App Measures Your Brainwaves to Know When You're Busy

We like this, been waiting for it for decades.

Gizmodo reports, "Automatic Do-Not-Disturb Measures Your Brainwaves to Know When You’re Busy."

Italian-born neuroscientist Ruggero Scorcioni has developed a new technology that will help you get stuff done by deflecting phone calls or other notifications away when you're busy. Finally, technology to help keep your brainspace clear when you need it.

Ruggero showed us his tech implemented as an app on smartphone at an AT&T event in New York this morning. The technology works by measuring your brainwave activity using a commercially available headset which talks to your phone via Bluetooth. When your activity goes above a certain adjustable threshold, Ruggero's app automatically holds your calls using a publicly available AT&T API.

The key to Ruggero's app are the algorithms he uses to process the brainwave data. Beyond simply holding your calls, Ruggero says the technology could be used to hold your e-mail notifications and other interruptions until you've got the mental bandwidth to address them. He won an AT&T hack-a-thon back in January, and used the $30,000 prize to start his new company Brainyno. Here's hoping he finds a way to keep those pesky Facebook alerts from distracting you when you're trying to work.

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Passover Shabbat Bris for baby Zev Zahavy

We welcomed Barak and Miriam's son, Elana and Maya's Brother, Shaiel, Yair, Gavi and Eitan's cousin, Yitz and Julie's nephew, our grandson Zev Mendel Zahavy, at his Passover Shabbat Bris today in Brooklyn, where he was named after my father Zev of blessed memory, who passed away 11 months ago.

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No to the NYTimes Op-Ed: The Talmud is not a Valid Diet Book

From The New York Times: OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Rabbi Jonathan Crane: The Talmud and Other Diet Books suggests that, "When Mayor Michael Bloomberg's anti-obesity programs fail, look to God and the ancient Greeks." And it suggests that local ordinances are not the way to resolve the obesity problem.

"...Perhaps a different approach can be considered, one that begins from within. Instead of fixating on indulgence and excess, as do so many top-down and outside-in efforts, we should focus on what it means for each individual to be sated..."

We are not impressed with this obvious advice. The Talmud derives from a culture at least 1500 years detached from ours and continents apart. Eating practices of today in the USA are not comparable.

And particularly today, we need to observe that the Talmud is not a valid diet book -- after two days of Yom Tov and two Seders, where surely we ate and drank more than we needed to and we were instructed by age old rabbinic writings that it was a religious necessity to do so!

Let's hope all people continue both to work on their inner appetites and monitor carefully what they eat and to observe the new regulations that help to curb the obesity outbreak in our midst. And let's pray for the success of legislation that helps end the epidemic of fatness brought on in large part by the relentless marketing of junk foods to our populace by greedy corporations in search of a fast buck.

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Is TV Kosher for Dogs?

Is TV kosher for dogs? Yes it is, now that the Israeli Dog Channel offering, DOGTV, is live in California, at $9.95 a month.

TV channel for dogs launched in Israel

An Israeli cable TV company has launched a television channel that is aimed primarily at dogs.

The channel, available in Israel via the Yes satellite company was first launched last February in California's second-largest city San Diego, where it reached some 483,000 homes.

"DOGTV is scientifically developed and Pup approved. DOGTV is cable's first television network for dogs that is created exclusively for canines, and the humans who love them," the Jerusalem Post quoted the company's website as reading.

It further read that the channel provides TV for dogs with three types of programming offering relaxing and stimulating content as well as positive behavioural reinforcements.

The company's site said that dogs that are left alone tend to become anxious so the calming sounds and music in the relaxing segments on DOGTV were created to keep them peaceful.

The site added that unlike any other TV channel, every frame and every sound on the channel is designed 100 percent for dogs.

The company has claimed that years of research led it to develop special content to meet the specific characteristics of canine vision and hearing, like enhanced colouring to emphasize details and stress on contrast, brightness, and frame rate; and the use of sound effects, music and specific ranges of frequencies that best suit dogs.(ANI)

See more news about the channel.

Check Out 44 Talmudic Books
See the 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English
Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore
Experience God's Favorite Prayers

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Is Niacin kosher for your heart?

No, niacin is not kosher for your heart.

USA Today via Detroit Free Press alerts us to a new study that found, "Niacin doesn't help heart, may cause harm, study says."

We knew this eleven years ago. After Lipitor gave us hepatitis and the cardiologist told us to take Niaspan, instead we looked it up and found no reason to believe that Niacin pills would be a benefit to us.

After doing the math, we politely refused to take any cholesterol reducing medication. The studies showed a "reduction in risk" which meant that the meds did not cure or prevent disease.

Now it turns out that we were right. The meds actually can cause disease.

PS: Friday we got our cholesterol numbers (first time in about 5 years): 191 total, 88 HDL; 2.2 ratio Total/HDL. We eat eggs every day and take no meds. We swim 100 laps a day and eat nuts and vegetables, fish, yogurt, cheeses and lean meats.

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Is Marijuana Kosher for Passover?

Via Earth Times with a big smile. Passover pot is not a problem for Sephardic Jews. Is cannabis kosher for Passover for Ashkenazic Jews?

Is pot kitniyot? It's up to the rabbi

JERUSALEM (UPI) In Israel, rabbis are trying to determine if hemp and its cousin, marijuana, are on the list of legumes that some Jews must abstain from during Passover.

This year, the Green Leaf Party, which advocates legalization of marijuana, warned its members by e-mail that it may be considered kitniyot, or a legume. Observant Ashkenazi Jews abstain from kitniyot during the holiday.

Rabbi Daniel Ayin told the Jerusalem Post that the issue is whether hemp seeds -- and marijuana -- are considered edible. If they are edible, then Ashkenazi Jews should not eat them during Passover.

Ayin said that individual rabbis can make the decision for their congregations.

One couple, who for some reason did not want their last names used, told the Post they only realized that they might have a problem when a friend offered to buy their marijuana. Daniel and Sarah, both recent emigrants from Chicago, said he told them he was making the rounds of all his observant friends before the holiday.

To play it safe, the couple got rid of their stash -- not by selling it, which they decided would be inappropriate -- and gave the house an extra ritual cleaning.

[repost]

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Israel's Plagues Hotline: Press 8 to Report Locusts

AP reports a real news story from Israel.

Israel opens locust hotline as devastating insects hit neighbouring Egypt ahead of Passover
BY IAN DEITCH, THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

JERUSALEM - Israel is on a locust alert as swarms of the destructive bugs descend on neighbouring Egypt ahead of the Passover holiday.

Israel's Agriculture Ministry set up an emergency hotline Monday and is asking Israelis to be vigilant in reporting locust sightings to prevent an outbreak.

Locusts have a devastating effect on agriculture by quickly stripping crops.

Swarms of locusts have descended on Egypt, raising fears they could spread to Israel.

The locust alert comes ahead of the Passover festival, which recounts the biblical story of the Jewish exodus from Egypt. According to the Bible, a plague of locusts was one of 10 plagues God imposed on Egyptians for enslaving and abusing ancient Hebrews.

And here's the "menu" you get when you call the "Israel Plagues Hotline."

Listen Carefully, Our Plagues Hotline Menu Selections Have Not Changed

Press 1 to Report a Plague of blood (דָם): Ex. 7:14–25
Press 2 to Report a Plague of frogs (צְּפַרְדֵּעַ): Ex. 7:25–8:11
Press 3 to Report a Plague of lice or gnats (כִּנִּים): Ex. 8:12–15
Press 4 to Report a Plague of flies or wild animals (עָרוֹב): Ex. 8:20–32
Press 5 to Report a Plague of pestilence (דֶּבֶר): Ex. 9:1–7
Press 6 to Report a Plague of boils (שְׁחִין): Ex. 9:8–12
Press 7 to Report a Plague of hail (בָּרָד): Ex. 9:13–35
Press 8 to Report a Plague of locusts (אַרְבֶּה): Ex. 10:1–20
Press 9 to Report a Plague of darkness (חוֹשֶך): Ex. 10:21–29
Press 0 to Report a Death of the firstborn (מַכַּת בְּכוֹרוֹת): Ex. 11:1–12:36

Check Out 44 Talmudic Books
See the 36 Volume Kindle Talmud in English
Ponder the Questions of Whence and Wherefore
Experience God's Favorite Prayers

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Is BVO Kosher?

The Times reports on the possible health issues of BVO, an additive found in Gatorade and other drinks. According to Jewish law, the chemical is kosher. But given the health risks, we don't think anyone should consume it.

We are told that, "about 10 percent of drinks sold in the United States contain brominated vegetable oil, including Mountain Dew, also made by PepsiCo; Powerade, Fanta Orange and Fresca from Coca-Cola; and Squirt and Sunkist Peach Soda, made by the Dr Pepper Snapple Group."

The Times reports on a young woman who started a petition on Change.org to ask for the removal of brominated vegetable oil from Gatorade.

This information about the chemical in the article is particularly troubling:

...While most people have limited exposure to brominated vegetable oil, an extensive article about it by Environmental Health News that ran in Scientific American last year found that video gamers and others who binge on sodas and other drinks containing the ingredient experience skin lesions, nerve disorders and memory loss.

Michael F. Jacobson, co-founder and executive director of the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said some studies show that B.V.O. collects in fatty tissues, raising questions about what its effect might be during weight loss. Dr. Jacobson, who looked into the research on brominated vegetable oil after being asked about it by The New York Times, concluded, “The testing of B.V.O. is abysmal.”

He said the longest studies of the ingredient he could find covered only four months, while most food additives are usually tested for two years, making it impossible to establish a safe level of consumption.

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