SEATTLE - Coming soon next to the Coke and Pepsi in a store near you: ham-and latke-flavored soda to make your holiday feast complete.
It even will be kosher, the company making it says - including the ham.

Primus anyone?

Salt Lake Tribune - Mmmm, ham soda

Fascinating, and encouraging.

Cheap, safe drug kills most cancers - health - 17 January 2007 - New Scientist

"This is probably about as close as you can get to universal," said Paul B. Ginsburg, president of the nonpartisan Center for Studying Health System Change in Washington. "It's definitely going to be inspiring to other states about how there was this compromise. They found a way to get to a major expansion of coverage that people could agree on. For a conservative Republican, this is individual responsibility. For a Democrat, this is government helping those that need help."

I'm very interested to see how this goes. On it's face, it appears to be a good compromise, but I'm only going on the limited detail of this article. I'm pleased to see people trying to figure out universal health care, and if this is a feasible plan, then I won't argue.

Of course, it's politically useful as well :

Mr. Romney, who is considering running for president in 2008, said in an interview Tuesday that the bill, passed by a legislature that is 85 percent Democratic, was "95 percent of what I proposed."

He said, "This is really a landmark for our state because this proves at this stage that we can get health insurance for all our citizens without raising taxes and without a government takeover. The old single-payer canard is gone."

I think it's premature for Romney to declare that categorically, but it's ideologically desirable for him to believe so.

Massachusetts Sets Health Plan for Nearly All

If it takes a while to clear the cobwebs after waking up, that's understandable -- "sleep inertia" leaves some people so groggy they might as well be drunk, researchers said on Tuesday.

"For a short period, at least, the effects of sleep inertia may be as bad as or worse than being legally drunk," said researcher Kenneth Wright of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Interesting.

[ They should've just asked me... I'd have told them straight up that I feel essentially drunk when I wake up. Shit, I consider myself lucky if I don't bash into something on my way to the shower. -k]

Study: Waking up like being drunk

Mike the Usurper wrote:

When she finally did find a pharmacy with it, she said she was told the pharmacist on duty would not dispense it because of religious and moral objections.

If the pharmacy doesn't carry something (and in this case they comment later that a bit over half the pharmacies in the state don't carry it), then they don't carry it. If I owned a pharmacy, and I carried it, and I had an employee who refused to fill a prescription, I ask why, and if there is a medical reason (drug A, which the person is on, reacts badly with drug B) then we tell the person and we refer them back to their doctor based on that. That's a valid reason to defer filling the prescription.

If I have an employee who refuses to do it for "religious or moral reasons," I get a new employee. Kosher butchers don't carry bacon, and religious kook pharmacies don't carry RU-486. I can't get bacon at a kosher deli, they don't carry it. But if I go to a non-kosher butcher for bacon (which they have) and get told, "No, I won't give you bacon because it's against my religion," then that person is working in the wrong place.

Agreed. For the record I'm anti-abortion, but pro-choice. It's not inconsistent.

If I think war is immoral, I don't join the army. I *certainly* don't join the army, work myself up to quartermaster, and then refuse to issue ammo to the soldiers. That's the analogue here. If you don't like it, protest, lobby, vote your concience, pray, whatever. But bugger off when it's time for other people to make their choices.

Rape victim: 'Morning after' pill denied | The Arizona Daily Star

Excellent search engine for nutritional data.

This is the best online database I've found for food info. It has not only the basic foods, and nearly every item from the fast food chains, but also many exotic items from restaurants. Chef salad, miso soup, tuna sashimi, movie popcorn with and without butter... It's all here, and frequently with multiple listings from different sources, so it's possible to compare different sets of information.

[ Yeah, it's good stuff... i've used it to lookup foods before. I've wondered off and on if it's worth paying them 30 bucks for the service to track diet and workouts and get all the other tools or if i should just use excel.

It always strikes me, when I start looking things up, how much one fast food meal can screw you over. I ate a pile of sushi last night, and that was about 600 calories. The number 6 from wendys that i had for lunch was over 1300. And that Chipotle steak burrito with everything ... 1200c. Nice.

15 minutes on an exercise bike burns about 120. That's about twice as many as casual walking for the same period. -k]

CalorieKing Food Database

] Falling in love may be a great feeling but the next time you feel
] lovesick,missing your sweetheart, rush straight to a doctor as now
] the doctors have warned that the throes of passion should
] be seen as a potentially fatal medical disorder.

[ Whatever. Powerful emotions can cause mental instability?! No fucking way! Give this doctor the nobel prize in the category of "Proofs" of Otherwise Obvious Facts. -k]

Falling in love can kill you!

Everyone should be drinking green tea. It has various health benifits listed here. most exciting is it helps you lose weight.

[ I love green tea. Probably don't drink enough of it though. -k]

green tea and health

] Psychological stress can take off several years from your
] life as it makes your cells age faster.

] It was found that Telomeres and telomerase, parts of the
] chromosomes responsible for aging, are affected by
] psychological stress which also takes it's toll on the
] molecules believed to play a key role in cellular aging
] and, possibly, disease development.

[ Not to mention, it'll suck more while you're living it. I think this past summer took about 6 months off my life, in addition to the 3 months that were ruined by the bs from my job. -k]

Stress can make your life 10 years shorter

] Emergency workers had to remove some sliding glass doors
] and lift the couch, with Grinds still on it, to a trailer
] behind a pickup truck. Removing her from the couch would
] be too painful, since her body was grafted to the fabric.
] After years of staying put, her skin had literally become
] one with the sofa and had to be surgically removed.

[ Jesus. I mean, how does this happen? The filth must have been unreal. -k]

480-Pound Woman Dies After Six Years On Couch