“In Estonia, we speak slowly,” she said. “We almost don’t open our mouths when we speak. We don’t have to articulate the words. It’s our nature. It’s colder there, and people spend more time inside, and that’s why we’re like this. I think there’s a very big difference between Estonian and Czech people, and how they speak and express themselves.”

Nohova, who lives in Prague with her Czech husband and two daughters, has since mastered both the Czech language and the art of more active articulation.

But the 35-year-old yoga instructor says even though they now speak the same language, she and her husband still have their differences, especially when it comes to a healthy lifestyle.

Regiina Nohova, a native of Estonia who now lives in Prague with her Czech husband.
​​
“In the beginning, I think we were very different about food, especially after our daughters were born,” she says. “About healthy food and how important it is. He said it wasn’t so important. And about exercise also, I think. I do yoga and he doesn’t do yoga. Even now.”

It could be argued that such differences exist in every marriage.

But a new study in the United States now suggests that it could be the language you speak that affects your attitude toward a range of healthy habits, comprising everything from diet and exercise to how much money you save for your retirement.

M. Keith Chen, an associate professor of economics at Yale University, claims that languages whose grammar contains no explicit future tense — languages like Mandarin, Japanese, German, and yes, Estonian — are spoken by people who, statistically, are healthier and wealthier.

“The Japanese have been saving [money] for decades, despite effectively negative interest rates,” he says. “The Chinese save like crazy. Germans are known as big savers. All of the Scandinavian and Nordic countries are also invariant savers. So that was the first relationship [between language and behavior] that I was really interested in.

“Is it possible that if your language doesn’t force you to think differently about the future and the present, then it’s actually easier for you to save for the future, because, well, the future feels more similar to the present to you.”

‘It Rains Tomorrow’

Chen reached his startling conclusion by gathering economic and social data from countries worldwide and then comparing them to the languages spoken in those countries.

What he found was that people in countries that ranked higher in terms of overall physical and fiscal responsibility almost invariably spoke languages categorized as having a “weak” FTR, or future-time reference.

(Think of Germany — one of the European Union’s strongest economies — where people can forecast weather without using a clear future tense by saying “Morgen regnet es,” or “It rains tomorrow.”)

English, Czech, Russian, Persian, Turkish, Georgian, and other “strong” FTR languages, by contrast, scored more poorly in terms of overall physical and fiscal responsibility.

(Think of Russia — which has some of the poorest health and lowest life expectancies in Europe — where people use an explicit future tense to talk about the weather by saying “Zavtra budet dozhd,” or “It will rain tomorrow.”)

Future Tension

Time and again, Chen says, his research indicated that it was the people with no future tense in their languages who were, in a sense, less likely to be tense in the future:

“You find exactly the same pattern,” Chen says. “Families that speak weak-FTR languages are 24 percent less likely to have ever smoked intensely — meaning more than a pack a day for a year. They’re 13 percent less likely to be obese. They have better grip strength by the time they retire. In numerous measures, they’re in better long-run health.”

Chen’s study has sparked a sensation within the linguistic community, with some analysts and opinion-writers gleefully suggesting that language may actually be to blame for some of the world’s most intractable problems, from the Greek bailout crisis to why some people can’t fit into their jeans.

Many linguists, however, have dismissed Chen’s findings outright.

Julie Sedivy, who teaches linguistics and psychology at the University of Calgary in Canada, says connecting language to behavior is “irresistible” for many people.

But she maintains that research like Chen’s rarely demonstrates that any true relationship exists between grammar and traditional characteristics like thriftiness or healthy living.

“We still have the impression that some languages are more logical, or orderly, or romantic, than others,” she says. “But this is really coming from associations that we have with the speakers of those languages, rather than the specific devices that the languages offer themselves.”

Chen’s study is currently up for academic review and has yet to be formally published.

So in the meantime, it may be too early to blame your mother tongue for the two kilos you gained last month.

By Daisy Sindelar, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
Copyright (c) 2012. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

In 2005, Florida became the first state to explicitly expand a person’s right to use deadly force for self-defense. Deadly force is justified if a person is gravely threatened, in the home or “any other place where he or she has a right to be.”

Most states have long allowed the use of reasonable force, sometimes including deadly force, to protect oneself inside one’s home — the so-called Castle Doctrine. Outside the home, people generally still have a “duty to retreat” from an attacker, if possible, to avoid confrontation. In other words, if you can get away and you shoot anyway, you can be prosecuted. In Florida, there is no duty to retreat. You can “stand your ground” outside your home, too.

If self-defense is invoked in Florida, the person is immune from criminal or civil prosecution.

In the Martin case, the local police chief has said that they did not arrest the shooter, George Zimmerman, because their initial investigation supported his self-defense claim, and that they were therefore prohibited from making an arrest or prosecution. (The police report on the shooting refers to it as an “unnecessary killing to prevent unlawful act.”)

The police chief has since temporarily stepped down, after a vote of no-confidence from the city. The case is being investigated by the Department of Justice and a Florida state attorney. A grand jury will convene on April 10 to decide whether charges can be brought against Zimmerman.

Zimmerman’s lawyer said in an interview with ABC News that Zimmerman will be protected under Florida’s self-defense law.

In Florida, a homicide case can be thrown out by a judge before trial because the defendant successfully invokes self-defense. The burden is on the prosecution to disprove the claim in order to bring charges, rather than do so in the trial. The Florida state attorney leading the prosecution told ABC news that the self-defense law means it is “more difficult than a normal criminal case” to bring charges.

Florida is not alone in its expansive definition of self-defense. Twenty-four other states now allow people to stand their ground. Most of these laws were passed after Florida’s. (Some states never had a duty to retreat to begin with.)

Here’s a rundown of the states with laws mirroring the one in Florida, where there’s no duty to retreat in public places and where, in most cases, self-defense claims have some degree of immunity in court. (The specifics of what kind of immunity, and when the burden of proof lies on the prosecution, vary from state to state.)

Many of the laws were originally advocated as a way to address domestic abuse cases 2014 how could a battered wife retreat if she was attacked in her own home? Such legislation also has been recently pushed by the National Rifle Association and other gun-rights groups.

Click on the state to see its law.

Alabama

Arizona

Georgia

Idaho

Illinois (The law does not include a duty to retreat, which courts have interpreted as a right to expansive self-defense.)

Indiana

Kansas

Kentucky

Louisiana

Michigan

Mississippi

Montana

Nevada

New Hampshire

North Carolina

Oklahoma

Oregon (Also does not include a duty to retreat.)

South Carolina

South Dakota

Tennessee

Texas

Utah

Washington (Also does not include a duty to retreat.)

West Virginia

Sources: Legal Community Against Violence; National District Attorney’s Association; Association of Prosecuting Attorneys.

By Cora Currier, ProPublica

2012 is a Leap Year. As was 2008 and 2004 and the year 2000. Normally, a year that can be evenly divided by 100 is not a Leap Year but if it is divisible by 400 then it is. Thus the year 2000 was a Leap Year but the year 1000 was not and neither would be the year 3000.

The Chinese calendar has a leap month about every 3 years and the name of the leap month is the same as the previous lunar month. The Jewish calendar has a leap year 7 times in a 19-year cycle.

The chance of being born on Leap Day in the Gregorian calendar is about 680 out of a million (1 in 1470). Which means little more than 4 million people (out of a world population of 7 billion) have their birthdays on Leap Day whereas on average approximately 19 million people share a birthday every day other than Leap Day. Because Superman always appears so young and because nobody knows for sure how old he is, tradition has it that he is a Leap Year Baby.

Ladies, if he did not pop the big question on Valentine’s Day then February 29th is your day because tradition has it that a woman can propose to a man on Leap Day.

When numbers instead of letters are used to spell a whole word it is called leet – which, in leet, is written as 1337. Another example is n00b, a term for newbie. Andsoforth.

Leet originated in the 1980s in relay chat services and on bulletin boards. If you look at it for the first time it might seem difficult to understand but you’ll be surprised how quickly you will catch it. Train your brain with this example of leet:

7H15 M3554G3
53RV35 7O PR0V3
H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N
D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5!
1MPR3551V3 7H1NG5!
1N 7H3 B3G1NN1NG
17 WA5 H4RD BU7
N0W, 0N 7H15 LIN3
Y0UR M1ND 1S
R34D1NG 17
4U70M471C4LLY
W17H 0U7 3V3N
7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17,
B3 PROUD! 0NLY
C3R741N P30PL3 C4N
R3AD 7H15.

Glad you caught that! As you’ve noticed, you can also combine the use of leet, textese and normal spelling or even morph it.

5p34k1ng 0f wh1ch, a1s0 c: Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch

Our solar system makes up only a tiny part of the Milky Way. To compare, if the entire Milky Way would be the size of the United States, our solar system would only be the size of an American penny.

Earth's position in the Milky Way

It’s not that Earth is that small. Earth weighs 6 sextillion, 600 quintillion tons. Yet, 764 planets the size of Earth will fit into Saturn, the second largest planet in our Solar System and our farthest planet visible by the naked eye.

Saturn and Earth in comparison

At the same time, Saturn – named after the Roman god of agriculture – is small compared to our sun. You can fit 1,700 planets the size of Saturn into the sun. It takes Saturn 29½ years to orbit the sun. Even so, compared to other suns our sun is small (the biggest known sun, VY Canus Majoris, is 2,000 times the size of our sun) and only one of an estimated 200 billion stars (and more planets) in the Milky Way.

It takes our sun 250 million years to complete one rotation of the Milky Way.

But consider that the Milky Way is only one of 200 billion+ galaxies, each with billions of stars, in the known universe. Our Milky Way is not even the biggest galaxy, being only 100,000 light years across (and 1,000 light years in thickness). The Milky Way is a spec in the universe: the size of the universe is estimated to be 13,7 billion light years in size.

A tiny ship

Earth is a tiny ship in a vast ocean. The famous astronomer Carl Sagan constantly tried to remind us of our fragile place in the universe. In 1990, he requested that the space craft Voyager 1 take a picture of us at a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion km) away from Earth. The picture tells the story: Earth is a Pale Blue Dot in the galaxy.

Earth is a Pale Blue Dot in the Milky Way

Our humble home

70% of the earth’s surface is covered in water. We live on a small part of earth. We live on a spec of a spec in the universe. Honestly, it shouldn’t be that difficult to reach out to each other.

The controversial practice, known as “pay for delay,” occurs as part of patent litigation settlements and typically buys a brand-name drug company more time to sell its blockbuster drug exclusively until its patent on the drug expires. Federal Trade Commission regulators have said the practice costs American consumers an estimated $3.5 billion each year, and have pushed for a ban.

But now it appears the drug company Pfizer is adding yet another twist to its efforts to delay generic competitors. As The New York Times reports, the company seems to have struck a deal with certain pharmacy benefit managers – the middlemen in the pharmaceutical industry – to block generic versions of Lipitor.

Lipitor, Pfizer’s blockbuster cholesterol-lowering drug, is among the world’s best-selling pharmaceuticals, and this isn’t Pfizer’s first attempt to protect it.

In 2008, the company settled patent litigation with Ranbaxy, an Indian generic manufacturer, striking a deal that guaranteed that Pfizer would not have to face challenges from Ranbaxy’s generic version of Lipitor until the end of November 2011. Pfizer granted Ranbaxy some incentives as part of the bargain but said it made no payments. Nonetheless, a group of pharmacies filed suit against Pfizer and Ranbaxy last week over the deal, calling it 201Can extraordinary ripoff201D and alleging price-fixing between the two companies.

Now that it’s November 2011, Ranbaxy and other drugmakers are gearing up to offer cheaper versions of Lipitor. As The Times reports, Pfizer has tried to counter this competition by offering big discounts on Lipitor to the middlemen that process prescriptions for pharmacies and other buyers, giving them discounts in exchange for having them block generic versions of Lipitor for another six months. Here’s The Times:

Many drugstores are being asked to block prescriptions for a generic version of Pfizer’s Lipitor starting Dec. 1, when the company loses its patent for the blockbuster cholesterol drug and generic competition begins.

Medco Health Solutions, among the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit managers, is one of the companies issuing instructions, seeking to have pharmacists keep filling prescriptions with the more expensive Lipitor for six months.

See some of those instructions sent to pharmacies by the pharma middlemen. The documents were released by Pharmacists United for Truth and Transparency, a group of independent pharmacists. (We first noticed them posted at the blog Pharmalot.)

According to the group, Pfizer’s plan would mean that customers at the pharmacies serviced by these middlemen would receive Lipitor even when they’ve been prescribed a generic version. Because Lipitor co-pays would also be reduced to the level of generic co-pays, customers might not notice, but employers and Medicare Part D would pay the same amount as before, despite the availability of a cheaper alternative.

A Pfizer spokesman gave The Times a statement saying that the company was committed to ensuring that customers had access to Lipitor but declined to answer additional questions.

Article by Marian Wang, ProPublica

Of the 650 types of leeches, only a small number of Hirudo species are used, the most popular being the Hirudo medicinalis. They’re usually sold 20 to a pack, at US$7 apiece.

Also see Use of the medicinal leech (but please note that the graphics are not for the faint of heart).