Count me in as someone who used to have great results with Alka Seltzer Cold medicine. No more. Luckily, I haven't gotten a bad cold recently. What annoys me is that the active ingredient they had to remove, phenylpropanolamine (PPA), was never found to cause any harm in the dosage used in cold medicines. It was also found in diet pills, and there were instances of stroke in diet pill takers. The recommended dose for some of the diet pills was 75 mg per day. The strokes happened within three days of women starts taking PPA.
I hate that when they find a problem with a drug, the only solution is to completely remove it from the market.
I must confess to enjoying "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Celtic Wisdom." I bought it because the title entranced me. However, I found it useful becase my only background in Celtic history is college courses, and I found it difficult to follow the conversations of New Agey friends, even though I allegedly had studied Celtic culture. The book bounced between demanding rigour and scholarship (learning the Celtic language is seen as a minimum) and warning against upsetting faerie believers. One of my professors did say that the real attraction of Celtic history and the Druids is that the gaps in the historical record allow people to find justification for their own beliefs in the past - and to claim to be historical while just making shit up. Makes me want to go out and rent the new King Arthur movie.
On a more serious note - my 15 yo niece is getting into Wicca. She is a serious type and fond of books. Can anyone suggest a good book on Wicca I could give her to help start her on her way? Thanks!
Thanks for the great thread. Painful memories. A friend of my brother's was left in a permanent vegetative state after a motorcycle accident. Turns out that the helmet he was wearing had a knack for protecting heads and breaking necks. They lost. When the insurance ran out, his single mother shot him and then herself. Wonder why their story isn't floating around the ether?
Chloe: The cocoa undoubtedly came from (as mentioned above) Dunkin' Donuts, where they serve their cocoa at a temperature slightly hotter than the surface of the sun. I get sick of coffee sometimes and I order my cocoa with ice cubes in it. Odd, but it works.
Strangely enough, I don't like my coffee super hot, and Dunkin Donuts is the only place that serves it cool enough for me to drink right away. Go figure.
Graydon:
Someone who never tells you anything that reflects poorly on them or their interests is lying to you. Noticing the lack of anything that has a cost to them in their communication won't tell you what they're lying about, but it will tell you that they're lying.
How do we convince America of this before the next election?
On Tort Reform (gack, cough) in General:
Anyone who talks about "tort reform" without including limits on what corporations can do to screw over individuals. Playing the game of "if only the world were as perfect as you and me," I would: 1) Give corporations some level of liability protection against punitive damages, but only if they maintain a certain level of transparency in their dealings with the public. Hiding known dangers, lying to the court, not fully co-operating with the disclosure process, etc. 2) After preliminary hearings, judges would be allowed to declare who will pay the court costs if they feel that the case is hopelessly slanted towards either side. This would push corps. to settle and scare off frivilous defendants. This could be limited where previous corporate wrongdoing is involved.
How 'bout the Bible-believers-except-for-those-annoying-Jesus-parts-ians?
Long but works.
Speaking of knitting, did anyone else notice that on the episode of Sex and the City where Charlotte learned to knit, she was using a Bernat acrylic yarn? I tried to explain to my husband why I was laughing so hard. Not to diss acrylic knitters, but to imagine Charlotte in a shop selling it was just too much.
My new favorite theory on OBL is from Matthew Yglesias's blog. Namely that the Pakistanis realized that Osama is so popular in Pakistan that the government would not survive his capture by the Americans, so they quietly captured and killed him, stashing the body where the Americans would never find it.
That actually kind of makes sense. And how long does anyone think the Bushies would be able to keep quiet about capturing Bin Laden?
One of my all-time favorite New Yorker cartoons:
There are some small fish inside a (square) fishtank. They are looking at a pile of fish skeletons outside the tank. One says to another:
"I thing it's time we reconsider this this thinking outside the box."
Cracks me up every time.
I remember a line from one of David Mamet's books of essays back in the 80's. He basically said that Tyranny was creatiing chaos, and then offering yourself as the only was out. I've worked for several small businesses, and as soon as I've recognized that trait in an owner, I've gotten the hell out. Really hoped I'd never see it in a President.
I saw the Nightline too. O'Neill just freaked me out. I kept expecting him to start fondling those books and start hissing "Precious, Precious." I remember the Frontline clips. He has aged horribly (has the face he deserves).
I was over at Washington Monthly(.com - a great site) and the trolls on the Swifties/Nightline thread were now claiming that the Vietnamese villagers account discredited Kerry's because they said they never saw Kerry. Duh! If they'd seen Kerry, he'd be dead, and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
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