HEADLINES [click on headline to view story]:

The Doctor's Consultation 

Agony Column

Camera Class by Snapshot

Dogs - Man’s best friend

Money Matters

Life in the Laugh Lane

The Doctor's Consultation: Despite what some women will tell you - Man is not a large rat!

by Dr. Iain Corness

Have you ever wondered just how a new drug finds its way on to the pharmacist’s shelves? Just how do the pharmaceutical companies manage to develop newer drugs such as ACE inhibitor antihypertensives when there were already plenty of alternatives? Or the apparently stiff competition in the drugs for males with Erectile Dysfunction. (I am sure you have all been receiving emails every day offering you newer and stronger lead for your particular pencil!)

However, when any new medication is formulated, there begins a very long process before the new “wonder drug” is licensed for use by you and me. Part of that process is testing the compound on live beings. Note I did not say “human” beings. Those live beings are usually convenient test animals, of which Mr. Rat the rodent is a prime example.

We always need to know how poisonous is the new drug. Mr. Rat is then fed the new compound in ever increasing quantities until the dose high enough to kill 50 percent of the rat population is reached. The scientists call this the LD50 (Lethal Dose for 50 percent) for the new compound - but remember this is for rats. If it takes 10 mg of compound A to kill 50 percent of the rats, but only 1 mg of compound B, then B is 10 times stronger than A.

Pregnant Mrs. Rats are also fed the new drug and the offspring are thoroughly examined to see if there are any abnormalities, greater than the ‘normal’ amount of expected abnormalities. Yes, no animal, including us, is without a usual percentage of birth abnormalities. Laboratory rats in particular are well known for being able to develop all sorts of abnormalities if you even just look at them sideways!

Only after this exhaustive testing is the drug then used in limited test runs on a very limited human exposure group. And, by and large, that does not include its testing on productive age females.

All this takes an enormous length of time, so next time you read of the new wonder drug “breakthrough” do not expect that this will appear in the pharmacy next week. Unfortunately, many of these new drugs will end up never being released as further research often turns up problems that only made themselves apparent after long term usage.

However, even the ones that do get released have to be approached with caution. Just because rat testing appeared to show that the drug was “safe”, does not mean that humans will also react the same way. As the caption this week says, Man is not a large Rat! This is one reason why women in particular must be very careful with the drugs they take during pregnancy, particularly in the first three months, that time when the growing foetal structures are susceptible to toxic chemical damage. In fact, any woman who has to take regular medication should ask her obstetrician about the relative risks. However, this does not mean stop taking the tablets as soon as you miss a period. Letting the maternal problems run unchecked can be an even greater risk to the baby than the risk from the medication taken by Mum.

Antenatal care is a very specialized branch of medicine and I do recommend that you should check in with your obstetrician for advice. You may not be a rat - but you don’t want to be a guinea pig either!

Agony Column

Camera Class: Different shots are all around you!

by Harry Flashman

Do you want to get some very different shots this weekend? Well, different pictures are within easy reach, and are there for you to capture. Look at the weird shot with this article, for example. Taken on the planet Venus, with the space ship in the background. Or in actual fact taken in a botanical garden with a geodesic dome hothouse in the background.

I was walking through the botanical garden one weekend and fell into the cactus area, and that was when I noticed the strangely shaped hothouse in the background. Moving around it slowly I ended up with this framing, which with the low viewpoint and a wide angle lens made the foreground cactus a dominant feature, with the geodesic dome space ship the secondary item in the shot.

So what has all that got to do with your photography? Geodesic domes aren’t that common in Thailand. What it really means is that you have to develop your photographic ‘eye’ and then let your equipment do the work for you. I do not really care if you don’t know an f stop from a door stop, set your camera on ‘Auto’ settings, but learn to look for different subjects.

When you take shots of your girlfriend sitting in a deck chair at the beach, this is what we would call a ‘record’ shot. Not a world record, but merely a record of someone deck chaired on the beach one January weekend.

No, the shots you should be aiming for are ones with some impact and composition. What about this weekend screwing your wide angle lens on your camera (or locking the zoom on “wide”) and seeing what you can produce? Start looking through the viewfinder and walking in closer to subjects.

The beauty of the SLR style of camera is that you are actually looking through the lens at the subject. What you see is what you get (the WYSIWYG principle), but so often people spend more time looking over the top of the camera instead of closing one eye and totally visualizing everything in the scene through the viewfinder. Only by concentrating on what is actually there, will you start to get some different photographs. Forget what you ‘think’ you are looking at, but judge the shot only by what is actually in the viewfinder.

Begin by deciding what you want to shoot. You choose the subject! A temple, a statue, a house, a car, anything! What you have to do is make the subject the ‘hero’ in the photograph, and the easiest way to do that is to make the subject fill the frame. And how do you know when it fills the frame? By looking through the viewfinder and noting what is dominant in the frame. This sounds so simple it is laughable, but go and pick up one of your books of photos and see how often you ‘fill the frame’? You may be amazed to see just how infrequently.

Now we both know that by getting in close with a wide angle lens you will get optical distortion. Subjects closest to the lens will be appearing larger than they really are, and subjects further from the lens looking smaller than they really are. This is why you do not take flattering portraits of people with a wide angle lens, because the nose becomes dominant! But the wide angle approach is the way for dramatic distortions which can add that element of impact and excitement to any photographic study. The differences between ‘record’ and ‘award winner’.

The message this week is to go out and take shots. Decide on the subject matter to be covered, use the wide angle for drama and look through the viewfinder to compose the shot. Take one, turn the camera 90 degrees and then taken another. Now walk in even closer till the subject fills the frame (you can even let it flow over the edges of the frame for further impact), and take the shot again, plus another 90 degree rotation. Do that and see how your shooting will improve.

Dogs - Man’s best friend: Orientation on the different dog breed/groups

Nienke Parma

Although deep down inside ‘a dog is a dog is a wolf’, as a result of centuries of intensive selective breeding a great variability in the anatomy and behavior between the different breeds has occurred.

For a better understanding of a dog’s mind, and thus its behavior, it’s important to know the characteristics of each breed or at least those to which each breed belongs. Mongrels are great challenges as often it’ll be a surprise what the outcome will be once fully grown - big, small, long or short-haired, guard or hunting dog. Of course, the behavior doesn’t depend only on the breed characteristics. As I have explained in earlier articles, dog behavior depends for a major part on the dog’s learning experiences during its (early) life.

There are over 1000 different breeds in the world, according to the ethnologist Desmond Morris. He defines a breed as “a type of dog that differs from all others in some way, has a separate history and breed name, and has been breeding true for a number of generations”, a definition I feel quite comfortable with.

Not all of these breeds are recognized by the major Kennel Clubs. For instance, the Federation Cynologique Internationale (FCI) recognizes a little over 330 breeds, while the American Kennel Club (AKC) has only some 150 breeds registered. So the AKC views the Schnauzer, for example, as one breed while the FCI divides it into three breeds: the miniature Schnauzer, Schnauzer and Giant Schnauzer.

Specific traits can be found in several breeds. So, there is the Bloodhound, a specialist in following a track, the Rottweiler was bred specially for herding and watching over the cattle and guarding its boss and, therefore, needed a brave character and a strong mouth. The retrievers, on the other hand, bred for retrieving game, are known for their soft mouth.

The FCI divides the breeds in the following 10 breed groups: 1. Sheepdogs and Cattle Dogs (except Swiss Cattle Dogs), 2. Pinscher and Schanuzer - Molossoid breeds - Swiss Mountain and Cattle Dogs and other breeds, 3. Terriers, 4. Dachshunds, 5. Spitz and primitive types, 6. Scenthounds and related breeds, 7. Pointing Dogs, 8. Retrievers - Flushing Dogs - Water Dogs, 9. Companion and Toy Dogs, 10. Sighthounds.

As Thailand is, through the AKU (Asian Kennel Association), a member of the FCI, they should follow their classification system. However, at most dog shows the following classification is followed, which is closer to the AKC classification system: 1. Toy group, 2. Thai group, 3. Utility group, 4. Hound group, 5. Gun Dog group, 6. Terrier group, 7. Working Dog group. Despite this, in my articles I will follow the FCI classification.

For more information on dog-issues, boarding, training or behavior please contact LuckyDogs: 09 99 78 146 or lucky4paws@yahoo.com

Money Matters: Do pigs have wings?

Part 1

Alan Hall
MBMG International Ltd.

A Happy New Year to all our readers. The time has come to talk of many things and to see if pigs have wings. Given some of the forecasting that is going on for 2005 it may seem to some people that pigs really can fly. One noted economist recently said that he expected the Dow Jones 30 to be at 11,800 by the end of 2005. Given the economic circumstances that prevail at the moment and ridiculously high P/E ratios I think I would prefer to listen to the Walrus.

I believe that the markets are in for an uncertain year over the next twelve months but that there is still money to be made if you know where to look. Below you will find the MBMG International Investment strategy update for the next three months.

For those of you that may be considering a lump sum investment then you should really only consider doing a Personal Portfolio Bond because of the almost unlimited investment choice, whereas if you just invest with one finance company then you are limited to a comparatively small range of funds.

If anyone is considering investing on a regular basis – monthly, quarterly, etc, then we are presently recommending Generali, Friends Provident International and Zurich International because of the superior fund selection they have.

For those of you who already have funds then you may wish to consider what I have written below. We are also happy to advise on any other funds that you may wish to discuss.

The basic concept that we like to follow is core/satellite - i.e. we look for a core fund holding that works for all situations and we personalise that with a satellite holding of funds that weight the core in favour of a client’s individual requirements.

It follows, therefore, that the core fund must satisfy the basic requirements of all clients. In general these can best be described as consistent growth and/or income (income in reality is a form of growth that is available and accessible on a regular basis) with security. Our core holdings are actively managed portfolios of all five asset classes - cash, property, equities, fixed interest and alternatives.

However, each client has a highly individual appetite for risk and therefore a very different potential for reward.

Our core philosophy is efficient investment – at every risk point on the spectrum the investment should offer the maximum reward for that level of risk.

In practice this isn’t always a constant. For example, there is currently nothing at the extreme high risk end of the scale that is acceptably efficient and so all our portfolios are showing an unusually high degree of commonality.

Our basic maxim is ‘what if?’ For every view that we hold about the markets, we always wonder what would happen if we’re wrong and as far as possible seek managers who aren’t tied to one way positional moves without any security of something else happens. We talk openly with the marketplace about any funds that are interesting and if we’re not fully able to form a clear view then we will always seek expert external analysis.

Our main takes are still the same:

1) Recently we stated that extreme volatility was likely to persist in both directions in the market – it was an extremely dangerous time to be taking any positions in markets that are not clear cut – therefore arbitrage and low volatility strategies were likely to be good performers. This has paid off handsomely – although most volatility has been to the upside, meaning that equities have also performed well, our core and satellite holdings have matched the strong returns from the equity markets at a fraction of the level of inherent risk. We will continue to maintain this strategy.

What if we’re wrong? This strategy is still likely to yield high single/low double digit returns – the only exception would be if we get clear, flat investment horizons going forwards – in that case, these will underperform but should still make small profits – i.e. they would represent a missed opportunity not a disaster. However, the risks associated with buying into a very limited equity opportunity are just too high right now.

2) A couple of months ago we also said that equities and property are overvalued and will correct sharply sometime in the near future. These, therefore, are best avoided unless via some methodology (e.g. long/short or market neutral) where the return of the investment isn’t correlated to the performance of the markets. UK residential property markets have just reported their sixth consecutive month of decline. World stock markets, though, have moved higher, driven, we believe, almost exclusively by a Fed-injected liquidity bubble that looks extremely prone to an imminent burst. Long/short and market neutral managers have slightly underperformed long only equities but strongly outperformed property – in both instances at only a fraction of the risk. We continue to favour non-correlated strategies.

What if we’re wrong? If the equity markets continue to go up strongly (and that would be little short of miraculous) then we would continue to underperform while still recording positive gains.

3) In November our fixed interest view was that the market was on the brink of turning positive - treasuries having already started their correction and while there might be one or two more rate movements upwards in the near term, they already offered value again and it was a good time to move back in there. We are very happy with the results this has produced, although the turning point has probably now been passed and even though no great returns have been generated over the last couple of months, the Euro treasuries in particular look good and remain a buy. Rotation from equities could lead to dramatic increases in bond values that would make short-term profit taking worthy of consideration. For now, we’re buying selectively.

What if we’re wrong? Even if interest rates increase, slowing growth constraints mean that this can only be very temporary – one rate rise is feasible; more than that very unlikely. If we’re wrong it can only be in terms of premature timing, but that is less likely now than it was two months ago. That would mean a small short term underperformance which would be recovered soon. There is scope here although with some risk of short term volatility.

More next week…

The above data and research was compiled from sources believed to be reliable. However, neither MBMG International Ltd nor its officers can accept any liability for any errors or omissions in the above article nor bear any responsibility for any losses achieved as a result of any actions taken or not taken as a consequence of reading the above article. For more information please contact Alan Hall on alan@mbmg-international.com

Life in the Laugh Lane: Retired! (Tired again?)

by Scott Jones

Artists don’t retire. There’s always another story to write, another photo to take, another sucker to con. I won’t stop composing until I’m dead and start decomposing. Two years ago I left America for a relaxing holiday, but now I have columns to write, posters to design, music to perform, charity money to raise and an wizened appointment book. I need to go back to America for a vacation. Retirement has been a foreign concept to me, but since I live in a foreign country and am over half a century old, a retirement visa or Non-Immigrant O was my best options. (“O” for Other. I thought it meant Old.)

I won’t cease composing till I’m decomposing.

It took a month to jump through the official hoops: copy this, promise that, photo here, sign there, transfer a gazillion baht to a Thai bank account. My final hoop, one day before my current visa expiration, was the doctor’s letter. I woke up feverish, hot, cold, too weak to ride my motorcycle. It wouldn’t look good if the letter said I was dead. For the next 36 hours I was dead in bed like a flattened snake on the highway.

The next day was Deadline Day, Christmas Eve. I’d never gone to a hospital sick and tried to convince them I was well. Somehow I got into the doctor’s office without collapsing in the lobby. “Me? Red? Hot? Sweating? No, feel fine, love Thailand, working on my tan, fell asleep in the sun. Don’t touch me. Mind if I lie down on your desk?” Luckily he only needed to know I had height, weight, blood pressure, pulse and something thumped in my chest. On the ride to Immigration, my motorcycle stalled three times. Pushing it up hills and ramps to jump start it on the way down, I lost weight and height. My pulse matched my blood pressure. “Merry Christmas, Mr. Uniform! No, I won’t need the visa for a whole year. I’ll be dead tomorrow. Mind if I lie down here on the counter?”

On Christmas Day I was officially retired and I’ve never been so tired. I was getting hotter and weaker but at least I could go to a hospital and lie down instead of just lie. My temperature was 103ฐF. At 106ฐ it’s possible your hair will burst into flames. I staggered into the lobby followed by stray dogs who wanted to sleep near me because they thought I was the sun. “Merry Christmas! I need to see a doctor quickly before I set my clothes on fire. Only one doctor here? Fine, I’ll just wait in the morgue.” She let me lie down in an empty room. Nurses came in and warmed their lunches on my forehead. If I hadn’t been a zombie I’d have come prepared for my urine test. You take the tiny cup into the bathroom and fill it with murky, unfiltered apple juice. As the nurse reaches for the cup, you look at it and say, before you drink it, “Oops. It’s a little cloudy. Let me run it through again.”

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