Tom Jefferson, an epidemiologist with the distinguished Cochrane Collaboration in the Britain, explains that we don’t really know what protection flu vaccines offer. Fascinating interview.

But, getting to the key question: What should people do to prevent the flu?

If they want to base it on good evidence, they should wash their hands.

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Salon's Andrew Leonard:

It's amazing the effect Wal-Mart can have on entire industries.  And headlines like this one, among many others, are why I will only eat fresh caught/wild salmon.  I won't touch the farmed stuff.

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My 2-year-old daughter surprised me recently with two words: “Daddy’s book.” She was holding my Kindle electronic reader.

Here is a child only beginning to talk, revealing that the seeds of the next generation gap have already been planted. She has identified the Kindle as a substitute for words printed on physical pages. I own the device and am still not completely sold on the idea.

My daughter’s worldview and life will be shaped in very deliberate ways by technologies like the Kindle and the new magical high-tech gadgets coming out this year — Google’s Nexus One phone and Apple’s impending tablet among them. She’ll know nothing other than a world with digital books, Skype video chats with faraway relatives, and toddler-friendly video games on the iPhone. She’ll see the world a lot differently from her parents.

Fascinating article from Brad Stone stating that, quite simply, the unflagging rate of tech advancement is creating mini generation gaps whereby these mini-generations can be identified and grouped by what technology they grow up with during formative years.  Makes perfect sense, because more than once I've observed that young kids today are familiar with an iPhone in a way that kids of eight years ago are not.  My son, now 5, tries to touch, swipe and pinch the screen of every mobile phone he comes across.  Eight years ago, kids would have been introduced to a BlackBerry or Windows Mobile phone or something from Nokia and then introduced to an iPhone.

Another thing I think about: what will tech look like when my son is 16?  How many disruptive technologies will come down and displace the things that, by today's standards, are considered contemporary?

And perhaps the biggest question of all: speaking from psychological, cognitive, sociological and developmental perspectives, what long-term effect will all this technology, replete with its 'information anywhere' capability, have on people?  Today, we see all sorts of psychopharmaceutical drugs aimed at what we now consider mainstream psychological conditions: anxiety, ADHD, depression.  It's interesting -- and not just a little scary -- to consider what we'll be 'treating' 15 years from now as a result of people being overstimulated, forced to multitask beyond what the human mind can reasonably do (some argue we're there already) and rely on technology for everything: information, answers, directions, social consensus, morality.

Even as a tech geek, I reel sometimes.  As a guy who used to read a book a week but now struggles to get through one a month (most of my reading is web reading, which, arguably, is more convenient due to its more fragmented nature), I wonder where this is all going.

I know -- I think I'll check out a Kindle.  If, of course, the Apple tablet disappoints.  Then -- yes, then -- I'll get back to reading at a tyrannosaurid rate.  Right?

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I could read all day about Don Wildman.  Susan Casey’s profile of him in Esquire is equal parts fitness horror:

A deep growl booms out from the center of the room, where Don Wildman, the Circuit's master practitioner, wearing faded jeans and a Sonic Youth T-shirt, stands barefoot, holding a pair of fifty-pound weights. Muscular, lean, six-two, with a trim beard, he looks like Sean Connery, if Connery had borrowed the body of a U.S. marine. This gym, filled with cutting-edge equipment, occupies a wing of his home. I've heard about the Circuit, I've heard about Wildman, and I've come to see for myself what, exactly, is going on in here.

And life wisdom:

Humans waste a lot of energy worrying about things. Might get cancer, might go bankrupt. Might marry the wrong person or screw up at the office. Emerging from war, Wildman no longer had these kinds of concerns. At twenty, he'd crawled out of the darkest of pits, and in comparison, 1950s America looked like one big, golden party. Anything was possible. And no matter what went wrong now, it wasn't likely to result in death. "My father gave me a piece of advice once," Wildman says. "He said, 'Never walk. Always run.'"

And boy, has he ever.

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Dr. Jonny Bowden, one of my favorite authors on the subject of nutrition, provides another datapoint for something I’ve telling anyone who will listen:

A landmark research study by Dr. Michael Shechter of Tel Aviv University’s Sackler School of Medicine and the Heart Institute of Sheba Medical Center, with collaboration of the Endocrinology Institute, shows exactly how high carbohydrate foods increase the risk for heart problems. Researchers looked at four groups of volunteers who were given different breakfasts:

• cornflake mush mixed with milk- not unlike the typical American breakfast
• a pure sugar mixture
• bran flakes
• a placebo (water).

Over four weeks, Dr. Shechter applied a test that allows researchers to visualize how the arteries are functioning. It’s called “brachial reactive testing” and it uses a cuff on the arm, like those used to measure blood pressure, which can visualize arterial function in real time.

The results were dramatic. Before any of the patients ate, arterial function was essentially the same. After eating, except for the placebo group (who drank water), all had reduced functioning. Enormous peaks indicating arterial stress were found in the high glycemic index groups: the cornflakes and sugar group.

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New research has yielded two metrics that allow doctors to more accurately predict heart attack risk for patients.  Hint: it isn’t cholesterol.  Instead, researchers from the Hanyang University in Seoul analyzed the red blood cells of their subject groups and then measured their levels of omega-3 fatty acids and trans-fatty acids.  The results turned out to be even more accurate than the standard Framingham risk scores most doctors use.

The current research-- published online on June 9, 2009 in the British Journal of Nutrition-- found that the new measures did even better than the Framingham measures in predicting heart attacks. Those who had the lowest levels of omega-3's in their blood had the greatest risk of heart attack as did those who had the highest levels of trans-fats.

Specifically, the omega-3 fatty acid index-- which is the sum of red blood cell EPA and DHA-- was significantly lower in heart attack patients compared with controls, while total trans-fatty acids were significantly higher. Those whose omega-3 fatty acid index was among the top third of participants had an amazing 92 percent lower risk of heart attack than those whose levels were in the lowest third.

Meanwhile, when it came to trans-fats, the exact opposite was true. For those whose total trans-fatty acids were in the top third, the risk of heart attack was a whopping 72.67 percent higher than subjects in the lowest third.

In semi-plain English, this means two things:

1. Avoid man-made trans-fats, period.  If you see anything on your food labels that says hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil, throw it away.  It’s garbage.
2. Keep your omega-3 levels up.  I take a high-quality fish oil supplement day and night, and I try to eat a lot of toxin-free, wild-caught cold water fish.  You can easily do the same.  (I think fish oil is one of the most important supplements a person can take.)

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