Archive for May 7th, 2008
Instant gratification still too slow
ON the heels of the subprime/West Nile crises article comes a related news story on instant gratification in relation to your health.
A decades long study by the Harvard School of Public Health and published in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that women (nurses) who quit smoking were 13% less likely to die of vascular or heart problems within the first five years of quitting. Five to ten years later they were 18% less likely to die of respiratory diseases and by thirty years were 21% less likely to die from cancer.
The “quit smoking for instant gratification” angle, will likely not gain traction with today’s pandemic of fast-paced, gimme gimme now, spoiled rotten youth who are accustomed to results counted in seconds or days, or about the length of time it takes teens to light a cigarette and procure alcohol, respectively.
Foolish investors attract Egyptian plagues
Today we’re told that the West Nile virus could be breeding in neglected swimming pools of foreclosed homes. Let’s hear it again for people so impatient for the vestige of success that they spend themselves into oblivion.
It’s a shame, though, that responsible citizens too must suffer not only the economic downturn but also the threat of febrile and neuroinvasive torment.
In the case of ‘patient persistence’ versus ‘immediate gratification’, I think we’ve got to hand this victory to the mosquito and the 1000-year-old West Nile Virus. Enjoy your malarial swamp, sub-prime idiots.
