Vacuum Cleaners Suck Too Much: Is There a Best Vacuum Out There?

Confession: I have a bit of an obsession with vacuum cleaners. Mostly because there is a complete disconnect between what experts like Consumer Reports recommend and the user experience. Go ahead. Look at the reviews on models that Consumer Reports suggests we buy. You'll be shocked at how awful the reviews are.

The truth is, quality is pretty poor and customer service is even worse.

The most recent Consumer Reports vacuum reviews shared failure rates for various brands of vacuum cleaners.

The vacuum brand most likely to fail and need repair? Hoover.

Find more information on buying a vacuum cleaner and how to separate the wheat from the chaff here.

Country vs. City: South vs. North: Which Is Better?

New York Magazine has a piece on what causes big cities to thrive based on a new book Triumph of the City. A few good tidbits here.

1.People live longer and have more productive lives in cities as opposed to the country. I guess the mythic countryside we all yearn for is not actually all that good for us!

2.The higher the average temperature in January, the higher home prices are."For every five degrees that a city’s January temperatures top the national average, its real-estate prices will beat the national mean by 3 percent..." So this explains the growth of warmer Southern climates.

A city's January temperature is the single best predictor of its prosperity.

I wonder how global climate change with impact the divide between North and South?

Octopus 'Hugs' Shark, Shark Dies, Parenting Fail Ensues

My little one recently asked to see some video of an octopus and this was the first one we stumbled on, prompting the following conversation:

LO: Mommy, what's the octopus doing?

ME: Uh....he's hugging, yeah that's it, hugging the shark.

LO: And bending him in half?

ME:Yes, it's a special octopus hug.

LO: But the shark isn't moving! What happened to the shark mommy?

ME: Something you'll have to discuss with your future therapist.

LO:What's a tearafist?

ME: Hey, how about a cookie?

Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell

I've been reading the book Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell. It's been interesting. His thesis is that timing is everything from when you were born, the month you were born down to how many hours you practice a skill.

There is some truth to what he says, but he tends to neglect the idea of passion as a driving force. Bill Gates would not be who he was without a driving interest in computers.

Three takeaway tidbits:

1. Birth month plays into sports performance when sports programs are organized by age. 2/3 of professional hockey players were born in January, February or March. Simply because they are the older 3 or 4 or 5 years olds starting out in hockey which puts them ahead physically compared to their peers. Since sports cull out the best and brightest, the younger players get left behind at a startling rate. This birth month bias holds true across multiple sports.

2.It's not talent, it's how much you practice. Researchers found that the difference between a performance musician and a music teacher is the hours of practice. Music teachers are competent, but not elite musicians because they don't practice as many hours as professional musicians.Musicians practice at least 10,000 hours to master their instruments and that is how they become stage ready. So the recommendation is that anything must be practiced for 10,000 hours in ordered to be mastered.

3.In the US school system, gifted tracks start early. As with sports, young 5 year olds, born later in the year, may be left behind as their more developed, early birthday peers outperform them. By the time younger peers catch up, it's too late, the best and brightest have already been selected and there's no real second selection period for gifted programs (although, in my experience, High School has some flexibility). This gives some credence to the idea that parents should not push children into school early.

The Flaws in Medical Science

From Newsweek:

"If you follow the news about health research, you risk whiplash. First garlic lowers bad cholesterol, then—after more study—it doesn’t. Hormone replacement reduces the risk of heart disease in postmenopausal women, until a huge study finds that it doesn’t (and that it raises the risk of breast cancer to boot). Eating a big breakfast cuts your total daily calories, or not—as a study released last week finds. Yet even if biomedical research can be a fickle guide, we rely on it.

But what if wrong answers aren’t the exception but the rule? More and more scholars who scrutinize health research are now making that claim. It isn’t just an individual study here and there that’s flawed, they charge. Instead, the very framework of medical investigation may be off-kilter, leading time and again to findings that are at best unproved and at worst dangerously wrong. The result is a system that leads patients and physicians astray—spurring often costly regimens that won’t help and may even harm you."

Two questions to ask before taking a medicine or making a change based on medical research:

1. How will it help? What is the benefit?

2.How could it hurt? What is the risk?

Chinese Tiger Mom Roars

Amy Chua's book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother has been making waves across the media and online since it was published. The basic premise of the PR buzz? That treating your children like slaves produces elite intelligence and musicianship.

However, having read the book for myself, what's publicly available is not quite the full story. Chua is not nearly as superior as she thinks and she knows it. Unfortunately, that tidbit of insight comes at a high price, her talented daughter shuns the violin, maybe forever. Perhaps an alternate title for Chua's book could have been 'How to Destroy a Talented Violin Prodigy in 12 Easy Steps.'

Lots of good reading on this tidbit.

Excerpt of the book.

Psychology Today's Bloggers have been having a field day with this, lots and lots of armchair psychoanalysis.

The father speaks up. Did he agree with Chua's extreme parenting practices?

Good blog post on Chua and Asian superiority that asks some pointed questions and with lots of other tidbit links to follow.


Are Tiger Moms the reason why Asian kids are in therapy?

New Yorker book review gives excellent insight on not just the book but how it reflects our insecurities in a global world.