Friday, February 10, 2012

Nobody Asked Me, But...

 
1) The 2012 World Press Photos of the Year have been announced. Obviously, they were taken in 2011, but this is the overall winner by Samuel Aranda. You can see the others here.
 
2) The 1% wins again. 99% of women in America, and 98% of Catholic women, use some form of contraception, but because a few non-lay (pun intended) folks and a bunch of right-wing hypocrites get their panties in a knot, Obama will cave. WHEN WILL YOU GROW A DAMNED BACKBONE, MR. PRESIDENT????
 
3) Where do you draw the line, huh? When do you see some benefit for your appeasements? To end the Iraq war, you moved troops to Afghanistan. To close Gitmo, you sent the prisoners home to either stew in anger over their wrongful incarceration or to go right back to fomenting trouble. To pass healthcare reform in the first place, you knelt in front of Ben Nelson and other "moderate Democrats." To get the debt ceiling raised, you collapsed on taxes...and then the damned deal didn't get done anyway. Where does it all end?
 
4) CPAC is happening this week. To quote Katherine Hepburn in On Golden Pond, "The loons! The loons!"
 
5) Maybe if they'd had brought a TV into the room, we'd have gotten a better deal, and not another bailout.
 
6) Humiliating candidate is humiliating. And humiliated.
 
7) I can certainly understand targeting Apple over the deplorable conditions at Foxconn, but the message has to be expanded. ALL technology companies employ workers who are paid below-market wages and work in deplorable conditions. Either we have to go full-on Luddite or we have to figure a way to get everyone on board.
 
8) There's some good news for people who are concerned about developing Alzheimer's Disease.
 
Um, as I found out this week, that now includes me. I've been debating talking about this, since it's so personal and so very very preliminary, but I've had some genetic testing done and apparently I carry the APOE variant 4 gene. Normal risk for a male of European descent is 7.2% My risk is double that, and that's just based on genotyping. Add in the severe dementia that both my parents suffered-- if it was Alzheimer's related-- and my odds rocket up to 60-80% of developing the disease (assuming both parents had Alzheimer's.)
 
Not that I haven't had my suspicions. Just this week, I tried to shower twice in the same hour.
 
9) Let's lighten the mood: Even conservatives are now acknowledging Ann Coulter's "special status."
 
10) Finally, everybody knows that, after heavy exertion, nothing makes a body feel better than a couple of NSAIDs and a massage. But why does massage work so well? Here's why...