The American Institute for Cancer Research has just published a Major New International Report on Cancer Prevention This work is the result of a 4-year project conducted by 15 of the world's leading researchers in diet and cancer in order to produce a comprehensive new report on diet and cancer prevention. They conclude that eating right plus staying physically active and maintaining a healthy weight can cut cancer risk by 30% to 40%. The above link lists their specific dietary guidelines. This report also cautions against eating foods that have not been refrigerated for long periods, like at a potluck. Apparently some foods can develop carcinogenic bacteria as a result.

"He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." ¾ Nietzsche

"In the Nazi concentration camps, one could have witnessed that those who knew that there was a task waiting for them to fulfill were most apt to survive." ¾ Viktor Frankl

Viktor Frankl died recently at the age of 92. That he lived so long after surviving three years in Nazi concentration camps during WW II is a remarkable tribute to the soundness of his Logotherapy principles.

In his classic book, Man's Search for Meaning, Frankl tells of a time during his imprisonment when he fell ill with typhus. Wasting away from starvation with rags for clothing and no heat, his chances were slim. Upon his arrival at Auschwitz, his captors had stripped him of his clothes. Within these clothes he had hidden the only copy in existence of the manuscript to his first book. His "new" clothes were the torn rags of another prisoner who had been gassed. In a pocket, he found a single page of a Hebrew prayer book containing the most important Jewish prayer. He interpreted this coincidence as a challenge to live his thoughts rather than merely putting them down on paper. While ill, he jotted on little scraps of paper, notes that would enable him to rewrite the manuscript if he were to survive captivity. "I am sure that this reconstruction of my lost manuscript in he dark barracks of a Bavarian concentration camp assisted me in overcoming the danger of cardiovascular collapse."

"Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he that is asked." ¾ Viktor Frankl

Frankl concluded that mental health is based on a certain degree of tension¾ the tension between what one has already achieved and what one still ought to accomplish. He believed such tension is inherent in human nature and indispensable to mental well-being. Rather than seeking a tensionless state, the ideal situation is to be striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal¾ a freely chosen path. Frankl believed that a man's task must be to find a meaning that is unique and specific, in that it must be fulfilled by him alone, and that this search should be the primary motivation in his life. "…success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself, or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself."

"…everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms¾ to choose one's own attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." ¾Viktor Frankl

In firms that enjoy increasing returns, mechanisms of positive feedback operate ''to reinforce that which gains success or aggravate that which suffers loss. Success attracts quality people which breeds more success. Growth allows companies to pay for quality people via stock price appreciation, which lowers the cost of labor.

At an individual level, it can become increasingly difficult to maintain balance when success accelerates at increasing rates in a positive feedback cycle. Character, the ability to say no, to set limits, to choose ever more intelligently what you say yes to, becomes increasingly important. What was it that Forrest Gump said about Elvis? "I guess he sung too many songs. Had himself a heart attack or something."

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