I Work With These People

The technology addicts, not the stoners.

LONDON, England -- Workers distracted by phone calls, e-mails and text messages suffer a greater loss of IQ than a person smoking marijuana, a British study shows.

The constant interruptions reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic, according to a survey carried out by TNS Research and commissioned by Hewlett Packard.

The survey of 1,100 Britons showed:

• Almost two out three people check their electronic messages out of office hours and when on holiday
• Half of all workers respond to an e-mail within 60 minutes of receiving one
• One in five will break off from a business or social engagement to respond to a message.

Nine out of 10 people thought colleagues who answered messages during face-to-face meetings were rude, while three out of 10 believed it was not only acceptable, but a sign of diligence and efficiency.

But the mental impact of trying to balance a steady inflow of messages with getting on with normal work took its toll, the UK's Press Association reported.

In 80 clinical trials, Dr. Glenn Wilson, a psychiatrist at King's College London University, monitored the IQ of workers throughout the day.

He found the IQ of those who tried to juggle messages and work fell by 10 points -- the equivalent to missing a whole night's sleep and more than double the 4-point fall seen after smoking marijuana.

"This is a very real and widespread phenomenon," Wilson said. "We have found that this obsession with looking at messages, if unchecked, will damage a worker's performance by reducing their mental sharpness.

"Companies should encourage a more balanced and appropriate way of working."
Wilson said the IQ drop was even more significant in the men who took part in the tests.

"The research suggests that we are in danger of being caught up in a 24-hour 'always on' society," said David Smith of Hewlett Packard.

"This is more worrying when you consider the potential impairment on performance and concentration for workers, and the consequent impact on businesses."

My Kind of Congressman

Washington, D.C. – Arizona Congressman Jeff Flake, who represents the state’s Sixth District, today released the following statement regarding his vote against House Resolution 148, which supports the goals and ideals of Financial Literacy Month.

“Given Congress' appetite for pork barrel spending and penchant for deficits, we’re in no position to lecture anybody on financial literacy,” said Flake. “Perhaps we should have included a provision in the bill requiring Congress to practice what it preaches.”

Congressman Flake was one of two Members of the House of Representatives to vote against House Resolution 148, which passed 409 to 2.

Who's Lighting the Cigarettes?

BLOEMFONTEIN, South Africa -- A South African zoo wants a chimpanzee to quit smoking cold turkey. Keepers say Charlie the chimpanzee picked up the habit from visitors at the Bloemfontein Zoo who sometimes toss him cigarettes.

"It looks funny to see a chimp smoking," a zoo spokesman said, but Charlie's trick could cost him his health. The zoo is asking people to stop tossing cigarettes and contributing to the chimp's habit.

A zoo official says Charlie "acts like a naughty schoolboy" and hides his cigarettes when workers are around.

Beware of Those Sneaky Real Estate Brokers

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Did you pay your real estate broker too much? The U.S. Department of Justice may be set to turn Tulsa, Okla. into a test-case for ending the stranglehold 6 percent commissions have over the real estate brokerage business.

MONEY has learned that Justice's Antitrust Division is gathering information on the bully tactics that full-commission brokers in Tulsa allegedly use against their discount rivals to discourage commission-cutting. The probe follows other recent efforts to spur competition in the real estate industry.

According to a copy of a Justice Department subpoena obtained by MONEY, federal investigators are seeking information on "possible anticompetitive conduct in the provision of real estate services in the Tulsa area" as well as "documents related to refusal to cooperate on real estate transactions."

An Antitrust Division spokeswoman confirmed the existence of the investigation but declined to provide additional details.

One of the NBA's Good Guys

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Golden State Warriors guard Derek Fisher donated $700,000 to Arkansas-Little Rock on Monday night, and a new auxiliary gym on the campus of his alma mater will carry his last name.

Fisher presented a giant check to the school's athletic director, Chris Peterson, before the Warriors hosted the Los Angeles Lakers, Fisher's former team.

Most of the money will go to establish and fund the "Fisher Fellows" program, which will provide guidance to children from nearby Southwest Middle School to better prepare them for high school with the goal of going to college. The students will be paired with student-athletes from Arkansas-Little Rock to learn concepts of life and academics, as well as organizational, social and athletic skills.

A portion of the donation will go toward the construction of an auxiliary gym, which will be called the Fisher Gym. It will host the Fisher Fellows program.

"I'm extremely fortunate to be in a position where I can provide my assistance to something that has had a huge impact on my life and career," Fisher said. "I hope this mentoring program will give some of the students in Little Rock the chance to reach their potential and achieve their dreams, much like I had the opportunity to do so as a youngster."

The All-Important Webster Update

A little fame goes a long way--especially when you're Emmanuel Lewis.

The pint-sized Webster alter ego managed to escape unscathed from a speeding ticket this week thanks to a star-struck police officer.

The lead-footed Lewis, whose preferred mode of locomotion in the '80s was being toted around in Michael Jackson's arms, was clocked doing 70 in a 45 mph zone in the rural Georgia speed-trap town of Warwick on Tuesday.

Officer Ron Kirk tagged Lewis as the actor raced up State Route 300. An Atlanta resident, Lewis was hauling an SUV back to his home that he had purchased in Albany, in the southern part of the state.

Kirk pulled over the rig and immediately recognized the 33-year-old Lewis.

"Well, I grew up watching him and he was very nice and professional, so I just gave him a courtesy warning," Kirk told Albany television station WALB.

Before he let Lewis go, however, Kirk requested and received an autograph. The former child star also posed for a photo op with Kirk and the town's police chief, Randy Howard Jr.

Kirk told WALB that Warwick gets a good chunk of revenue from speeding tickets. He says that Lewis was likely unfamiliar with the area and didn't realize the speed limit dropped in the town.

Capital Punishment

Ok, is there anyone on the planet that doesn't think this guy should be executed? Anyone?

TAMPA, Fla. — A 9-year-old girl was raped, bound and buried alive, kneeling and clutching a purple stuffed dolphin, state prosecutors said in documents released Wednesday.

Jessica Lunsford's (search) body was found March 19 buried about 150 yards from her house in Homosassa, about 60 miles north of Tampa.

According to the documents, Jessica was found wearing shorts and a shirt — different from the pink nightgown her family said she was wearing when they reported her missing Feb. 24, The Tampa Tribune said in its online edition late Wednesday.

The body was wrapped in two plastic trash bags knotted at her head and feet in a grave covered by a mound of leaves, the state attorney's office said in the documents.

Jessica died of asphyxiation, according to a coroner's report. A convicted sex offender,John Evander Couey (search), 46, is charged in her slaying.

Officials said they believe Jessica may have been alive in Couey's home while police and volunteers searched for her. After she was killed, Couey fled to Georgia.

Wily Mo! Wily Mo! Wily Mo!

Two more home runs last night...that's 5 on the season. Rich Aurillia says he's never seen anyone hit the ball as hard as Wily Mo...and he spent several years playing with Barry Bonds.

Best of all...he's only 23. 23!

I have to give old leather pants (Jim Bowden) some props. He believed in Wily Mo, and Wily Mo looks like the real deal.

Oooops!

What's a few hundred thousand deaths between friends.

CHICAGO — Being overweight is nowhere near as big a killer as the government thought, ranking No. 7 instead of No. 2 among the nation's leading preventable causes of death, according to a startling new calculation from the CDC.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimated today that packing on too many pounds accounts for 25,814 deaths a year in the United States. As recently as January, the CDC came up with an estimate 14 times higher: 365,000 deaths.

The new analysis found that obesity — being extremely overweight — is indisputably lethal. But like several recent smaller studies, it found that people who are modestly overweight actually have a lower risk of death than those of normal weight.

Biostatistician Mary Grace Kovar, a consultant for the University of Chicago's National Opinion Research Center in Washington, said "normal" may be set too low for today's population. Also, Americans classified as overweight are eating better, exercising more and managing their blood pressure better than they used to, she said.

The study — an analysis of mortality rates and body-mass index, or BMI — was published in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association.

Based on the new calculation, excess weight would drop from the second leading cause of preventable death, after smoking, to seventh. It would fall behind car crashes and guns on the list of killers.

The Words of the New Pope

Thus the moral theologians of the Western Hemisphere, in their efforts to still remain "credible" in our society, find themselves facing a difficult alternative: it seems to them that they must choose between opposing modern society and opposing the Magisterium. ...Thus we stand before the difficult alternative: either the Church finds an understanding, a compromise with the values propounded by society which she wants to continue to serve, or she decides to remain faithful to her own values (and in the Church's view these are the values that protect man in his deepest needs) as the result of which she finds herself on the margin of society. ... But one cannot struggle against nature without undergoing the most devastating consequences. The sacrosanct equality between man and woman does not exclude, indeed it requires, diversity. ... Christianity is not "our" work; it is a Revelation; it is a message that has been consigned to us, and we have no right to reconstruct it as we like or choose.

--- The Rupture between Sexuality and Marriage: Reflections on unnatural liberation by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger.

Today what people have in view is eliminating suffering from the world. For the individual, that means avoiding pain and suffering in whatever way. Yet we must also see that it is in this very way that the world becomes very hard and very cold. Pain is part of being human. Anyone who really wanted to get rid of suffering would have to get rid of love before anything else, because there can be no love without suffering, because it always demands an element of self-sacrifice, because, given temperamental differences and the drama of situations, it will always bring with it renunciation and pain.

--- The Question of Suffering, the Response of the Cross By Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger

Great News Out of Rome

Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger of Germany, a longtime guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy, was elected the new pope Tuesday evening in the first conclave of the new millennium. He chose the name Pope Benedict XVI.

Ratzinger, the first German pope in centuries, served John Paul II since 1981 as head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In that position, he has disciplined church dissidents and upheld church policy against attempts by liberals for reforms. He turned 78 on Saturday.

The Changing Landscape in the Middle East

Much good is happening.

Traffic and "The Starbuck's Effect"

Almost every morning for a decade, Roger Bratter has stopped at a Starbucks in Gaithersburg to sip a grande latte sans foam or a green tea and spend 20 peaceful minutes with the newspaper before heading to his auto repair shop.

Grabbing a cup at home, he said, just isn't the same.

"Our kid's got to go to school. My wife has to get to the Metro. I've got to get to work," Bratter, 54, said during a 7:30 a.m. visit last week. "If I have to make [coffee] and clean it up, it's just an extra stress factor."

Minutes earlier, at the same Starbucks on Quince Orchard Road, Steve Elgin, 41, pulled into the drive-through. A venti latte once or twice a week takes the edge off his one-hour commute between Frederick and Gaithersburg.

"It gives me something to do on [Interstate] 270," said Elgin, an executive in an insurance claims company.

The two men represent what one researcher says is evidence that the national craving for gourmet coffee may be adding mileage to the morning rush hour. And the numbers might be significant enough to complicate efforts to reduce traffic congestion, save fuel and reduce air pollution.

She calls it -- what else? -- the "Starbucks Effect."

"If you see people replacing an in-home activity like brewing your own coffee with an activity that requires a new [car] trip, that's not exactly the trend we're looking for," said Nancy McGuckin, a travel behavior analyst who used U.S. Department of Transportation data to develop her findings.

McGuckin built her thesis from the department's National Household Travel Survey, a periodic study of about 70,000 households in which each member keeps a diary of comings and goings -- who's driving where, how far and for what purpose.

What McGuckin and two colleagues found in comparing the 1995 and 2001 surveys, the two most recent ones, was that 1.6 million new more Americans tacked personal errands onto their commutes. Studies have long shown that errands are an integral part of the daily routine, especially on the way home from work, when arrival times are more flexible. Women continue to outpace men in these trips, shouldering most of the early-evening family tasks after leaving the office, such as grocery shopping and picking up children.

Advice for Dave Miley

We went and saw the Reds beat the Astros Saturday 3-2. I came away with two observations:

1. Wily Mo Pena must play everyday.
2. Danny Graves must not.

More Trouble for the Bluebirds

If Highlands fans didn't think it could get any worse...it can.

And oh yeah, the KHSAA is still reserving the right to recoup its mountain of legal fees from Highlands - a bill that several lawyers familiar with the case have said could reach more than $100,000.

Nike Eyes

This strikes me as...well...illegal.

After grounding out in his first at-bat Saturday, Ken Griffey Jr. was seeing red the rest of the game.

The Reds center fielder slipped inside the team's clubhouse and re-emerged wearing a pair of orange-tinted contact lenses manufactured by Nike.

"I wore them off and on for two weeks," Griffey said. "I was debating on whether I should use them during a game.

"After that first at-bat I decided, 'All right. I'll try 'em now.' "

The vision-enhancing lenses, which are not yet available to the public, seemed to work. Griffey walked and doubled twice in his next three at-bats.

"I don't feel comfortable hitting in glasses," said Griffey, who has 20-20 vision. "Some people can. Some people can't. But with these, they're fine."

The purpose of the lenses is to clarify and highlight objects, such as the spinning seams on a pitched baseball.

Reds closer Danny Graves sported a similar pair of Nike lenses around the clubhouse during spring training but decided against wearing them during a game.

"Everything that is red is red," Griffey said.

"Everything else has like an orange tint. ... It's just different. You're not squinting. Your eyes are more relaxed."

More Material for that Tough Humanities Teacher

Thousands of previously illegible manuscripts containing work by some of the greats of classical literature are being read for the first time using technology which experts believe will unlock the secrets of the ancient world.

Among treasures already discovered by a team from Oxford University are previously unseen writings by classical giants including Sophocles, Euripides and Hesiod. Invisible under ordinary light, the faded ink comes clearly into view when placed under infra-red light, using techniques developed from satellite imaging.

The Oxford documents form part of the great papyrus hoard salvaged from an ancient rubbish dump in the Graeco-Egyptian town of Oxyrhynchus more than a century ago. The thousands of remaining documents, which will be analysed over the next decade, are expected to include works by Ovid and Aeschylus, plus a series of Christian gospels which have been lost for up to 2,000 years.