Inventing Letters Along the Way

STRESS got you when you begin to think that everything is a matter of life and death. For this, Natalie Goldberg explained in her book, Wild Mind (1990): “Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.”

The International Labor Office (ILO) issued on April 28—in time for the World Day for Safety and Health at Work—a report entitled, “The Emerging Risks and New Patterns of Prevention in a Changing World of Work,” that noted significant changes in the patterns of employment in the recent decades and had a hand in emerging new risks that affect the workforce. These risks include work restructuring, downsizing, subcontracting and outsourcing, all making it harder for workers to achieve balance between healthy life and productive work.

In countries like the Philippines, with populations working in precarious employment status, people accept jobs with low occupational safety and health (OSH) standards, low wages, and poor working conditions.

A study conducted by Michael Hilton and Harvey Whiteford of the University of Queensland School of Population Health in Herston (Australia)—it involved 11,259 employees (60 percent female) and six employers—found... [Read more.]

This article appears in SunStar Cebu newspaper on 2 February 2011.

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The "Lungs" of Our Homes

As trees slowly disappear with growing urbanization, the Rooseveltian lungs are replaced with more dangerous electrical lungs at home, many of which can damage the genetic materials of the human lungs. FRANKLIN Roosevelt said: “A nation that destroys its soils destroys itself. Forests are the lungs of our land, purifying the air and giving fresh strength to our people.” In Cebu today, however, people may have given up “fresh strength” for the material conveniences of an urbanized province. Even the more far-flung towns in the province of Cebu have already shown signs of urbanization. And it will not be long when even forests will cease to be. Nonetheless, the “lungs” have been replaced with electric air fresheners, with all the varied approaches to freshen the air—at least in the cities and the suburbs. But four Japanese researchers—three from the Iwate University (Ueda, Morioka, Iwate) Department of Veterinary Medicine and one from the National Institute of Health Services (K...

Dealing with TURP

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Sex Industry Weathers Financial Crises

Varmus Christopher Forbes.com 12/29/08 14:00:05 GMT The sex industry traces back to 500 B.C., when traders from the Greek port of Miletus sold olisbos, an early version of the dildo. Today, the business of sex (including pornography) now runs into the tens of billions of dollars. (No official estimates are available; Wall Street analysts don't tend to track this stuff.) And while print and video sales are ebbing, as more free adult content has become available online, sales of un-reproducible sexual aids are still healthy. "Of course, there's concern about the economy, but right now our sales are growing," says Michael Trygstad, founder of Wet, a lubricant manufacturer in Van Nuys, Calif. "We've grown 30% this year alone. We've had to completely automate our factories to meet the tremendous demand. People are deciding to stay at home and engage in inexpensive entertainment.'' Slick marketing--and the ability to shop anonymously online--helps, too...

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