Category: Articles

Newsday

March 11, 2008

By Maureen Ker

Move over Rocky. Here comes MMA.

Mixed martial arts — banned in New York and decried as “human cockfights” by Sen. John McCain — is going mainstream.

MMA officials just launched a campaign to eliminate an 11-year ban on competitions in New York.

On Friday, the sport will explode onto the big screen with the release of “Never Back Down,” starring Sean Faris and Djimon Hounsou.

At the Renzo Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academy in midtown, enrollment in its Brazilian jiu-jitsu classes has jumped threefold in two years. MMA includes many of the techniques found in Brazilian jiu-jitsu. The academy has produced some major MMA fighters — including members of the famed Gracie clan.

MMA resembles a bar brawl, complete with kicks, punches and blows to the head. The matches end with a takedown where the loser is choked into a stranglehold or forced into submission by a limb lock.

That said, MMA fighters shrug off the danger.

“MMA looks violent but the fighters are pros,” said MMA fighter Igor Gracie.

“Anyway, there are good doctors,” he added.

He should know. Gracie has suffered a broken nose, and his head’s been stitched up a few times. Still, he said the sport is not all about brute force, and that it is 30 percent physical, 30 percent technique and 40 percent mental.

The Gracie name is synonymous with MMA, but the sport’s roots go back to an ancient Greek sport pankration, which combined boxing moves with wrestling techniques. There were few rules in a fight: no biting or eye gouging. Fights often ended with the loser’s death.

Its modern equivalent never goes that far. The Ultimate Fighting Competition, the largest and most prestigious MMA competition, outlaws groin attacks, fish hooking, head butting, eye gouging and spitting.

Even with restrictions, a typical fight makes wrestling matches look like some fantasy role-playing sequence.

Scholastic Math

By Maureen Ker

How many votes does it take to win the U.S. presidency? Read an electoral vote map to find out.

Whether it’s choosing the next American Idol or deciding what’s for dinner, making decisions in a group often involves voting for your favorite. Whichever option receives the majority, or more than half, of all the votes is the winner. But when it comes to the U.S. presidential election, the majority vote doesn’t always decide who wins.

Just look at what happened in 2000. It was the closest election in U.S. history. Then Vice President Al Gore received 50,999,897 popular votes (individual votes), while 50,446,002 voted for the then Texas Governor George W. Bush. Yet Bush was the winner. How did it happen?

Simple. The president is elected by a majority of electoral votes, not popular votes. Each of the 50 states and Washington, D.C., is assigned a certain number of electoral votes. The greater the state’s population, the more electoral votes it gets. In most states, the candidate who receives the majority of the state’s popular vote wins all of that state’s electoral votes. * (Chosen electors from each state actually cast these votes in mid-December, nearly a month and a half after the November 4 election. These electors are known as members of the Electoral College.)

In 2000, Bush won 30 states for a total of 271 electoral votes. Gore won only 20 states, receiving 266 electoral votes. ** What does it all mean for Senator Barack Obama and Senator John McCain? They have run their campaigns in an effort to get a majority of the 538 total electoral votes. So in a way, majority does still rule!

*Nebraska and Maine divide their electoral votes by districts within the state.

**One electoral vote was not cast.

New York Daily News

January 8, 2008

By Maureen Ker

The middle-age man with a weather-beaten face crouches over a red book in a corner off the sidewalk and scribbles on a notepad, while a young woman sitting across him wears a worried expression.

After an agonizing few minutes for the fidgeting woman, the man looks up from under his worn straw hat and speaks to her in soft, reassuring tones. She nods and reaches into her purse to pull out a $20 bill. The man accepts the money and bids her farewell.

Master Li has just seen his first patient of the day.

Li Feng Jun — or Master Li, as he is more commonly known on the crowded streets of Flushing — is not a doctor. He is a Chinese fortune-teller.

He sits outside the LIRR Main St. station in a recess off the busy sidewalk seven days a week, rain or shine, to advise the worried and the dejected.

The beginning of the new year marks the peak season for fortune-tellers. This is the time when anxious souls approach Master Li to find out if Lady Luck will beckon in the year ahead.

Fortune-tellers such as Li play a unique role in Chinese society. They are often respected professionals who advise businesses about deals and mergers.

To troubled individuals, they also act as discreet street psychotherapists. Their methods are unorthodox — usually invoking superstitions about a patient’s karma and consulting arcane manuals to divine the future.

But for those who fear the stigma of mental illness, their services can be invaluable.

Li, 56, claims no special powers but rather relies on years of experience in reading faces — and a little red book containing astrological data — to ascertain a person’s fate.

“My job is to reduce their stress,” said Li, who believes that much that stress comes from adapting to a new country.

“They are worried about money and finding a job. They talk of suicide and turning to crime to make ends meet,” Li said of his customers.

After 28 years in the business, Li has heard it all. “Love, money, family and work. What else?” he said. “People have the same problems everywhere. In China and in America.”

The big difference in America, Li said, is that the cops let him be. “In China, the government would harass me constantly and I have to keep moving about in the marketplace. Here, no one bothers me,” he said.

So he camps outside the LIRR station on a rickety stool his eyes scanning the passing faces. In the summer, he steels himself against the heat with a bottle of water and a battered straw hat with a band that reads “Good Luck.” In winter, a velvet fedora, a heavy wool coat and thermos of tea protect him from the elements.

But Li isn’t without his critics.

“Such superstitions can harm people,” said Susan Wu Rathbone, known in the neighborhood as Auntie Wu. She is the founder of the nonprofit Chinese Immigrant Services.

Like Li, Auntie Wu helps people with their problems. But she relies on more practical methods.

“We provide English classes and help immigrants find jobs and housing,” said the outgoing octogenarian. “Everything is free of charge.”

Newsday

March 13, 2008

By Maureen Ker

Katia Frishman tried for four years to get pregnant and finally underwent in vitro fertilization, only to miscarry after three weeks.

The 37-year-old Upper East Side woman and her husband didn’t give up, but decided to supplement their efforts with a method rarely mentioned in Western fertility clinics: Acupuncture.

Sticking needles into a woman to help her conceive may sound like quackery, but a recently published study backs what acupuncturists have long claimed: the ancient Chinese practice may help women undergoing in vitro fertilization become pregnant. The study, published in the British Medical Journal, found that acupuncture before and after embryo transfer increased the chances of pregnancy.

“The fertility drugs my doctor prescribed were really hard on my body,” said Frishman, vice president for IT technology procurement at a hedge fund. She decided to try acupuncture after researching the subject on the Internet. Five months later, she was pregnant. “I was really surprised when I got my blood test back,” she said.

Frishman’s dream came true on Feb. 20 when she gave birth to Maya Isabella, who weighed in at a healthy eight pounds, one ounce.

“My husband and I are just over the moon now,” said the overjoyed mom.

Acupuncture is the practice of inserting fine sterile needles into specific parts of the body known as acupoints. According to Xiu Juan Yang, an E. 55th Street acupuncturist who specializes in treating infertility, the needles stimulate both blood flow and what Chinese medicine identifies as “Qi” a kind of life force flowing through the body.

“Acupuncture works because it increases blood flow to the uterus and ovaries,” she contends.

Because the needles are very fine and don’t pierce the flesh deeply, the treatment is painless. “I used to go in and take a nice nap for 45 minutes,” said Frishman. “It was very relaxing.”

The treatment usually spans about 45 minutes to an hour, and after an initial session priced at $110, patients pay between $50 to $100 per visit. Most patients undergo 15 to 20 sessions.

Laura H., a 44-year-old who works in law enforcement was “very skeptical” when she heard about using acupuncture to treat infertility. “I wouldn’t say I was desperate to have a baby but I was very close to it,” she said.

With the help of intrauterine insemination and regular acupuncture sessions, Laura is now into her second trimester of her pregnancy: “For me, I see a clear correlation between acupuncture and pregnancy,” she said.

Despite the recent study, carried out by researchers from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, Georgetown University School of Medicine and VU University in Amsterdam, Western medical research is divided on whether acupuncture can help treat infertility.

Dr. Zev Rosenwaks, director of The Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center warns that it is too early to draw any conclusions. “I am not sure if this completely proves that acupuncture works,” he said.

Still, there’s no harm in trying, Rosenwaks added: “We have to keep an open mind.”