as I live a few more questions: January 2007

The drug dichloroacetate appears to target cancer cells, causing them to die. Its potency as a cancer killing agent has been tested in tissue cultures and mice, with very promising results. However, clinical trials need to be run.

Since the drug is not patentable and can be produced very cheaply, pharmaceutical companies won't fund those trials.
Why isn't this story front-page news in every newspaper? Just because there's no pharmaceutical industry PR firm handling it?

This Canadian scientific discovery has appeared in very, very newspapers, one among them being The National Post:

A simple molecule, used for decades to treat children with rare metabolic diseases, commits immortal cancer cells to a natural death and could soon be used to treat many forms of cancer, according to a new study.
cancers, including lung, breast and brain tumours.
important for the future of cancer, said Dr.

Evangelos Michelakis, a author of the study. (Source: Leong, Melissa. , National Post, January17, 2007)

At least I'm not the only one:

The one addict from Intervention that haunts me is Kelly F. from (image left), a beautiful blond man hell-bent on alcoholic self-destruction. He agrees to go to rehab only because it means he can get his dog back, the only creature he appears to care about.

But the first thing he does after leaving rehab is buy beer. A drunk panhandler who lives on the street, he eventually loses his beloved dog. About a year after the episode aired, :

and were approached by yet another beggar.

This particular beggar who so dearly loved his dog Odie. Although I recognized him myself once my wife said, “hey, weren’t you on A E”, I am very sad to say that he looks nothing like he did on the show. He looks at least 10 years older and had a large abscess on his right lower jaw, and although I am not a doctor, I would be very surprised if he lasts another year.

This sort of story just tears my heart out. Totally engaged, I sit there on the couch and talk to the TV set: How can you be so stupid? Omigod, she's chugging another beer!

With that attitude, she is so not gonna make it through rehab.
I know, I know, some may laugh at other people's predicaments, and others may judge the TV series to be exploitative of addicts, but there is a very strong, real sense of caring about these people and what happens to them that I find, um, well..

.. addictive.

Oh God. Why do I have this feeling that one day soon, I'm going to open a door in a hotel room and come face to face with ??

P.S. So do need Intervention interventions if they become workaholics?

And if I keep having Intervention interventions, does that mean I need an Intervention-intervention intervention???

AAARGH!!!

!
He's tried this two times — it's failed twice, the California Democrat said. I asked him at the White House, 'Mr.

President, why do you think this time it's going to work?' And he said, 'Because I told them it had to.' Asked if the president had elaborated, she added that he simply said, 'I told them that they had to.

' That was the end of it. That's the way it is. (source: , CBS News)

Boy, if that doesn't sum up Bush's approach to the war in Iraq: Let's just throw more troops into the killing fields.

Then again, this is the same stubborn administration who still insists that is a terrorist, even after complete exoneration in a public report, a handwritten apology from our prime minister, the resignation of the head of the RCMP, and a $10 million cash settlement.

continue to press the Americans to take Mr. Arar off the watch list.

governments firmly objecting to the treatment of Mr. Arar. Canada has removed Mr.

Arar from Canadian lookout lists and we have specifically requested that the United States amend its own records accordingly,” the Prime Minister said.
Washington this week to remove Mr. Arar from the list, an action that was criticized by U.

S. Ambassador David Wilkins as an attempt by the Canadians to meddle in U.S.

affairs.
treated by another country,” Mr. Harper said.

(Source: Galloway, Gloria. , Globe and Mail, Jan. 26, 2007)
Thank God for people like new House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and those Democrats (and some Republicans) who are speaking out about the enduring folly of the Iraq war.

And for people like American Senator Patrick Leahy, who has the opportunity to use his influence to speak out about the terrible injustice that has been done to an innocent man in the name of homeland security .
Yesterday I received a piece of mail from my Member of Parliament, Ron Bruinooge (for whom, I hasten to add, I did not vote in the most recent election). What I read, and how it was written, made me very angry.

Canada's ruling Conservative party has halted a pilot program to provide safe-tattoo supplies to prison inmates, the purpose of which was to reduce the transmission of diseases such as Hepatitis C and HIV/AIDS within the prison system.
It has been suggested in the newsmedia that the cost of the program would be covered, if it stops the spread of Hep C or HIV to as few as five other inmates per institution (thereby saving the government from paying associated healthcare costs later on when inmates become ill). So Rod Bruinooge, my Conservative member of parliament, says in his mailing (reproduced above, the item I'm holding in my hand in the foreground): I was against free tattoos for convicts and am proud our government ended this Liberal program.

So he's proud that his government short-sightedly cut this pilot project, even before it could even be properly evaluated by the government's own public health department? You are a political opportunist, pandering to the lowest common denominator using Fox-News-scare-bites devoid of any meaningful context. If you were indeed serious about ensuring my tax dollars were spent wisely, you could do a cost-benefit analysis and share the results with us, rather than simplistically paint the issue as an example of the previous Liberal government's misspending.

And you're NOT getting my vote next time around, for exactly this sort of nonsense. For God's sake, give the public some credit for being smart enough to figure out issues for themselves, instead of feeding them this pablum, you idiot. displayed on-screen above (PDF from CMAJ website, Jan.

24, 2007). (from the CBC website, Jan. 11, 2007)
Yes, I know, it sounds like a cheesy porn site, but Superdickery started out as a collection of old comic book covers showing Superman being.

..well, being a dickhead:
A: Back in November of 2004, a guy named Mike Miksch started a thread at a Transformers message board called about insane comic book covers throughout the ages.

Initially it was a laugh in at the expense of Lois Lane Comics, but before the responses had gotten past even the first page, Mike had posted a pair of pictures marry Titanman, and inadvertently set the tone for the resulting 30+ a dick, but the such was subsequently dropped from the mantra. And board forums, which Mike didn't become aware of until his coworker came see that Mike started it. From there it was imitated by on Jimmy Olsen comics.

That made the front page of , where someone posted a link to the original thread on , so it all came full circle.
At more than a quarter million views, that thread beats out the nearest competitor ten times over. Such is the appeal of Superman is a Dick.

(Source: )

From there, the website has grown, and now there are galleries devoted to just about every aspect of American comic book art that you can make fun of. I found myself laughing out loud at the funny/bad/warpedness of it all. Here's an example from the Weird Science gallery at right.

Only 18 shopping days (including today), before my birthday (hint, hint...

)
What I really, really want is (either plain, or dipped in chocolate)...

but I'm willing to settle for any similar, uhh, confection.
(Oh I am so going to hell for this..

.)
For some reason, the song Ismya Vova has been running through my head for the past few days. That is, I could remember the song, but not the singer or album I had first found it on!

After some determined searching through my iPod this afternoon, I finally found it! Here's a to the mp3 version.
If it sounds familiar, it's because it was used for a series of Air Canada commercials back around 1998.

René Dupéré, famous for creating the music for numerous Cirque de Soleil shows, was the composer for Ismya Vova, which won a Original Music. The album I found it on was an Air-Canada-produced CD called Dreams ( ).
I was trying to figure out what language the performer, Élise Velle, was singing in.

Turns out it's a made-up language with no meaning at all. It was designed to sound so evocative!
In the current war of words between Rosie O'Donnell and Donald Trump, The Donald's latest salvo is:

If you talk to Rosie for a little while, she's crude, she's tough, she's arrogant, she's pushy, she's disgusting.

Uhh, Don, you're proving my point that often, that which most irritates you about other people, are qualities that you yourself have. Let's do a quick run-through, shall we? Hmmm.

.. Crude, tough, arrogant, pushy, disgusting.

Check, check, check, check, checkeroo, Don. Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

Oh, and just for the record, Mr.

Trump? Rosie may have her moments as a blowhard, but at least she's not pretending to be anything other that who she is. You've become a walking caricature of yourself, as full of himself as Star Jones ever was, and if I see one more media picture of you with your over-Botoxed wife #3 pushing that gilded baby carriage around, I think I'm gonna throw something at my TV set.

I'm with Barbara Walters on this one; I'm taking Rosie's side. Replacing Star Jones with Rosie O'Donnell was the best move they ever could have made to revitalize The View.

(Taken from my Last.

fm statistics, Jan. 1 - Dec. 31, 2006)
2.

Grey Eye Glances – Days to Dust
6. Madrigaïa – Three Ways to Vacuum Your House: Part I
For more than three months, she has come to Arlington National Cemetery to talk to Colin about the minutiae of her life, to kiss his narrow white headstone topped with a Star of David and to stretch out her slim body next to his as if they were lying together again.
Kira is no war widow.

She is 19, and just barely, at that.

(Sandhya Somashekhar, Cold Ground for a Summer Love , Washington Post, Monday, January 1, 2007, page A01; base photograph at left by Sarah L.