soap?

“Actually there are three systems,” Dr. Cordova said, because Cuba has two: one is for party officials and foreigners like those Mr. Moore brought to Havana. “It is as good as this one here, with all the resources, the best doctors, the best medicines, and nobody pays a cent,” he said.

But for the 11 million ordinary Cubans, hospitals are often ill equipped and patients “have to bring their own food, soap, sheets — they have to bring everything.” And up to 20,000 Cuban doctors may be working in Venezuela, creating a shortage in Cuba.*

I TOLD YOU PEOPLE THIS WOULD HAPPEN

Rochester, it's go time, buddy.

A horde of decaying zombies invaded San Francisco's downtown Apple store on Friday evening, hunting for brains, terrifying the customers, and gnawing on iMacs. ...
It was difficult to judge the exact number of zombies that shuffled through the city's shopping district, losing limbs, blood, and unmentionable body parts along the way, but probably at least 150 converged on Union Square. Then they decided to visit nearby businesses, including the Apple store, Nordstrom, the Disney store, and the Westfield Mall.

It's starting. My dreams were just prophecy. I'm telling you people: This is REAL and it's SERIOUS.

i'll bet somehow tipper gore is behind this

How long until this shit gets pinned on W? I mean, 80's American punk was supposedly so pissed off by Reagan, and by how he and the whole con$ervative country wanted to just like shut down their whole like lifestyle, man... Azerrad tried so hard to shoehorn in this vague anti-Reagan theme without ever really explaining what it actually was that supposedly got these bands so pissed off. Now, we have something with the potential to be just as revolutionary in the music industry (net radio) as the punk/indie movement is/was, and all that's missing is a conservative political movement to blame. Get to it, slackers!

dude where's my ab lounge

I'm not sure anyone's brought this up yet with Michael Moore's *Sicko*, but one of the biggest costs on US health care is... people like Michael Moore: The World Bank has estimated the cost of obesity in the U.S. at 12 percent of the national health care budget... The Lewin Group examined the costs of fifteen (15) conditions causally related to obesity. They included: arthritis, breast cancer, heart disease, colorectal cancer, type 2 diabetes, endometrial cancer, end-stage renal disease, gallbladder disease, hypertension, liver disease, low back pain, renal cell cancer, obstructive sleep apnea, stroke and urinary incontinence... This method established the direct health care costs of obesity at $102.2 billion in 1999. [Indirect costs surely boost that figure even higher].*

donkey cannon

A little slow this morning, folks. Rochester and Booby and me hit up the sports bar we love to hate last night to watch that thrilling Spurs/Jazz game alongside that thrilling BoSox/Yanks game. Wow. Good thing there was a trivia game going on that we DOMINATED. Our team, Donkey Cannon!, nearly doubled the score of the 2nd place team, and our efforts garnered us a coupon forgiving us a $50 bar tab. Which, we used all of that. And we were drinking $2 Miller Lites, so... A little slow this morning, folks.

Anyhooters, some new bloggy stuff: You may have noticed that new little animated gizmo o'er yonder. It's part of the iLike deal. Basically, iLike hooks into your iTunes and tracks what you play, then uploads it to a personal page for all to see. That little application in the sidebar just kinda publishes what's on the page: songs in your music library that have the most plays, what you've recently added to your library, songs you've tagged as your favorites, and what you've recently played. I've got my quibbles with it (namely that it doesn't update enough), but it's a fun little deal. If you want to sign up for iLike, add me as a friend. Firetruck and Rochester are on there, too.

You can see that my most-played song is "Such Great Heights" by the Postal Service. Which, that's an excellent song, but I've no idea how it got to be my #1. Further, I suffered a library-related accident the other day which, among it's many side effects, completely wiped out all my playlists. So, I have no idea why iLike still thinks that's my most-played song. Cos right now it's probably actually "Impossible Germany" from the new Wilco album. Which is great. Also, The Onion had a great interview with Jeff Tweedy the other day. This is part of his answer to a question about the sort of disappearance of albums as lavishly produced art forms, like in the 70s:

It reminds me of how much was lost with the gains of punk rock. Punk rock messed up a lot of shit. As much as I love it and as much as it's probably the main reason I'm making records today, it really threw out a lot of stuff that wasn't so bad. It wasn't such a bad thing to have people working hard at making up songs. It wasn't all just rock-star excess, and it didn't all need to be torn down. I understand why punk was seen as a necessity then, but I don't know why there's still some sort of idea that musicianship is uncool.

I don't really like punk that much, although I appreciate its position in the history and development of rock music. I think what's missing from this discussion, though, is the sort of hand-in-hand development of punk music and indie labels. It's tough to imagine that bands like Wilco would be as successful as they are without indie labels and the business model they've used.

Anyway. The accident was caused by me moving all my digital music to a new external hard drie. It's 250 GB, which should be big enough, by my rough-ass calculations, to hold all of my music, ripped in 192 kps mp4/aac format, three times over. It allows me to not have to worry about finding structures and space to display all of the physical cds, which is an increasing problem. With iTunes and the Airport Express, I can simply keep all the music on the hard drive (with the cds as a physical backup), have instant access to anything in my collection, and stream what I want to hear wirelessly to the stereo. A few clicks and it's on my iPod. The only hitch is ripping all the cds I have, which is a lot.

So, that's what's going on. With Sanjaya and The OC gone, I'm trying to figure out new things to blog about. I did have another Star Wars dream the other night, but I'll spare y'all the details. Suffice to say that I played the role of Dr. Luke Skywalker.

Later, jerks.

weird spam I just got

Hello my friend!

I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here [link omitted] are bad.

Look, the site and call me 1-800 if its wrong..

My dog and I are still alive :)

Uh....

3000, what was that story about the dude who called 911 after he killed his wife and asked the operator to watch his dogs while he was in prison?

Go Stosh!

Piz got the job!

I'm a uni-tard!

world war p

The reports in Hong Kong said the disease began killing pigs after the Chinese New Year celebrations in February, and is now spreading. But state-controlled news outlets in China have reported almost nothing about the pig deaths, and very little about the wheat gluten problem.

This is how the zombie war starts. Something mysterious starts killing people in rural China, and the government covers it up until it's too late to do anything about it. See? This is what happens when you put Commies in charge.

tv not bombs (and tv bombs) and bomb-ass tv

Taken as a whole, and enacted with a willingness to pursue the American interest, Obama's speech shows an understanding—dare I say a conservative understanding—of America's foreign policy challenges. If nothing else it raises the hope that, as Professor Weinberg of Puget Sound reminds us, "candidate Obama may want to bring the boys home, but President Obama will see that decision in a different light."

I don't know if the Dawg reads this blog, but I'd be interested to see what he thinks about this article, being (from what I can tell) an early Obama supporter.

Obama has a pretty liberal voting record, but it's fair to say that Iraq and foreign policy looms extremely large in the upcoming election. It will be interesting to see how democrats react, if at all, to stuff like this. I think this article also doesn't take into account what he said at the debate. (I wasn't able to watch last night's Rethuglikkkcan$ debate because I was roped into watching two endless hours of Gray's Effing Anatomy. I guess I don't understand why people like that show. And by people, I mean women. Cos there is zero reason for men to watch that show.)

Also, and only tangentially relatedly, I love how 30 Rock has had a sort of running joke about voting for Obama. They seem to realize that it's pretty much the most PC vote ever, and are simultaneously attracted and repulsed by that. Brills. I can't wait for the DVD of that show.

"Love and peace is in all our hearts."

In the land before irony...

He also railed against the war in Iraq and likened Bush administration officials to Nazi war criminals.

"This current administration is no exception. They should be tried and hung and shot," he said.

Yeah, man! Fuck those fascists!

But, wait... hung and shot? Isn't that a bit much? And what if the trial found them innocent?

you should be reading this outside

But perhaps the biggest bombshell about vitamin D's effects is about to go off. In June, U.S. researchers will announce the first direct link between cancer prevention and the sunshine vitamin. Their results are nothing short of astounding.

A four-year clinical trial involving 1,200 women found those taking the vitamin had about a 60-per-cent reduction in cancer incidence, compared with those who didn't take it, a drop so large — twice the impact on cancer attributed to smoking — it almost looks like a typographical error. ...

Only brief full-body exposures to bright summer sunshine — of 10 or 15 minutes a day — are needed to make high amounts of the vitamin. But most authorities... have urged a total avoidance of strong sunlight or, alternatively, heavy use of sunscreen. Both recommendations will block almost all vitamin D synthesis.

Those studying the vitamin say the hide-from-sunlight advice has amounted to the health equivalent of a foolish poker trade. Anyone practising sun avoidance has traded the benefit of a reduced risk of skin cancer — which is easy to detect and treat and seldom fatal — for an increased risk of the scary, high-body-count cancers, such as breast, prostate and colon, that appear linked to vitamin D shortages.

The sun advice has been misguided information "of just breathtaking proportions," said John Cannell, head of the Vitamin D Council, a non-profit, California-based organization. *

Sunscreen blocks production of Vitmain D, too. So, thanks for effing that one up, public health authorities. We should totally nationalize health care.