The Valentine Cheat Sheet

Well, with Valentine’s Day just about upon us, thought I’d point you toward my new hobby site: www.Free-Love-Letters.com (note the hyphens if you ever type it into a browser).

Yeah, there are a lot of romantics out there who need a hand, uh … sharing their hearts. I thought I’d give them a cheat sheet for doing so. Shoot, people shouldn’t need to hire a writer just to tell someone “I love you.” (Ok, so I put that option on the site too, though.)

Pretty much like any greeting card or e-card, this site just gives you a way to pick out words that match your feelings so you can send ‘em on to someone. Free.

And now the kicker: I strongly recommend you check out the humorous love poem here:

http://www.free-love-letters.com/funny_love_poems.html

Yeah, I bet it’ll make you laugh. Comes as a free MP3 too.

How Pfizer Bought this Man

I was reading an article the other day about a new drug that is supposed to help people quit smoking by binding the receptors that normally bind the nicotine … and ask for it when they’re addicted and nicotine isn’t given to them.

The article was by a doctor who said he often resists giving new drugs to his patients because of the risk of side effects. But he was surprised to see this one work on a number of them.

Then he mentions a study that had been done on the drug, and says, “Although the study was paid for by Pfizer, the company that makes the drug, I was surprised at how successful it was in trials.”

. . .

Excuse me? Did he say “ALTHOUGH”??? Was this doctor bought, or is he just using poor English?

It’s not ALTHOUGH Pfizer paid for it that the trials showed good results. It’s BECAUSE Pfizer paid for it. A very distinct difference if you ask me.

This is one of those things a lot of people don’t realize about pharmaceuticals — that their trials are often paid for by the companies who make them … and make a fortune by them. (Most profitable industry in the U.S.) And then the FDA gets huge sums of money from the pharmaceutical companies to “speed up” the approval process.

Speeds it up, all right. That’s how Vioxx was approved too. And it’s only killed as many as 61,000 people. I love the FDA.

The #1 Medical Breakthrough since 1840

Ask the pharmaceutical industry what the greatest medical breakthrough has been since 1840, you might hear them tell you it’s whatever is on the market today and costs the most.*

Ask any wealthy spammer, he’ll probably tell you it’s Via$g&ra. **

 But I’m pleased to announce that, according to a recent article***:

Sanitation was voted the most important medical milestone in the past century and a half on Thursday in a poll conducted by a leading medical journal.

Improved sewage disposal and clean water supply systems, which have reduced diseases such as cholera, was the overwhelming favorite of 11,341 people worldwide who voted in the survey conducted by the British Medical Journal.

It surpassed antibiotics, the discovery of DNA, and anesthesia, which were among the top five milestones in the poll. Participants were asked what they thought was the biggest medical advance since the journal was established in 1840.

This is, of course, from the BRITISH Medical Journal, and I’m not sure a journal in the U.S. would get away with touting such sacrilege. But I’m glad to see we have doctors somewhere in the world believing that a healthy lifestyle can actually contribute to well-being.

Presumably a healthy diet didn’t make the list because those have been around forever, and we just don’t make use of them?

I like to think, too, that modern holistic practices based on biophysics will appear in lists like these in the next 10 years or so. Along with nanotech, no doubt.
* Pure conjecture, I’m sure.
** Not too much conjecture here.
*** Yahoo! never provides permalinks to their news releases, so you’ll have to trust me or do a web search for the article. It’ll be extra ironic if you use Google for the search.

YOU — The Next American Idol

I got a kick out of this — a talent agency looking for actors and models. You get a free portfolio website and the all-important chance of winning a FREE TRIP to the next American Idol audition.

It’s funny to me, because it’s the last thing I would want to take part in, and I’m one of the three people in America that doesn’t watch the show. But if you REALLY want to get into the next audition, well, all you have to do is:

Sign up for their FREE Starter Kit. (Oh … I think shipping is like $1.87.)

There’s always something new. Kind of.

The Limits of Limitless

Don’t know if you’ve ever run across this online, 3D world: Active Worlds. It’s sort of an online chatting forum, but in 3D with avatars, your own, custom-built home, and all that. I got a kick, though, out of their tour page, where they say:

With over 1000 unique worlds to choose from, the opportunities for exploration and adventure are limitless.

Now, in a technical sense, I can have limitless “exploration and adventure” right here in my office. I mean, I can walk forward and backward in here every day until I croak, right? But in the spirit of true limitlessness, does 1000 worlds really do the job?

Or is that about as limitless as the word limitlessness – which is long, but … limitless?

 I like words.

The Way of Starbucks is the Way of the World

Starbucks (actually following a precedent set by other companies — they’re behind the ball) is getting trans fats out of the food they sell. That’s good for us and for them.

There was a song I heard once about “The Advertising Man,” which is about how they use(d) advertising to sell us cigarettes. And one line goes:

Now crack’ll kill you quickly. That’s why it’s gotta go. They’ll get more of your money if they kill you nice and slow.

And that’s exactly the point with getting rid of trans fats. We can’t kid ourselves that Starbucks sells us anything (except their $1.80 bottles of water) that’s healthy for us. All of it is likely to make us sick in the long run. But without trans fats, the process should take longer.

So, pour me another caramel machiatto please.

Diets Feeding the Oil Companies

Found this interesting info today while reading the latest Ideal Bite:

“A vegan’s diet consumes just 219 gallons of oil per year, while a vegetarian diet uses 303, and a meat-eater’s uses 401. “

Of course there’s a growing number of people like me who, though interested in healthy(er) eating, believe that soy is actually unhealthy in many respects. I still eat soy (I also eat poultry), but I try to limit my intake. Another day, another blog entry, maybe I’ll put together some factoids on this whole soy issue. Then you’ll be convinced.

(You might still not care though.)

Before the Segway

This must be how people got around before the Segway was invented:

 http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xqvvn_lorenzo

New Year, New Blog

A new year, and with it, a new choice for blogging.

I’ve tried WordPress before, but I was inspired by my brother’s new blog, which introduces people to his new book. And I realized it was time to leave Blogger behind and head back here.

Here I’ll sometimes respond to things I see in the world, but I’ll also post news on my writing (two novels currently underway) and my work in biophysics, as well as any other projects I get myself into.

For anyone vaguely interested in my latest doings, this’ll be about as up-to-date as anything short of a phone call.