...

excellent marijuana prohibition video, The Flower

as required by law ...

http://www.healthcare.gov/index.htm
has launched and it is pretty slick.

once again we come in last

and of course pay the most, and not by a small margin ...

Ezra Klien: U.S. health-care system: Still bad

acupuncture induces body's own painkiller

An article in a recent issue of Nature Neuroscience indicates that at least one of acupuncture’s reported benefits may finally have concrete support and a proposed mechanism of action thanks to laboratory experiments. Researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center, Boston University School of Medicine, and the National Institute of Health report that a neuromodulator (a chemical agent secreted by neurons) called adenosine is the key to why acupuncture lessens pain associated with inflammation and chronic neuropathic problems.

via arstechnica.com

William Li: Can we eat to starve cancer?

Princeton researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain

High-fructose corn syrup is in everything. Corn and more corn. Mmmm corn.

A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.

via www.princeton.edu

HCR Calculator

The Washington Post has a nice tool to calculate the impact of the newly passed HCR bill. What does the health care bill mean to me?

HCR Implementation Timeline

The bill does not change much for 90% of Americans just those that don't have employer based heath insurance coverage. So for those folks, here's a healthcare reform implementation plan: http://docs.house.gov/energycommerce/TIMELINE.pdf

In Africa being alone is what's unusual.

I had a long conversation about this very topic not too long ago in Mill Valley with an African women. She explained how lonely life in America was and how she had never felt loneliness in Africa. Interesting read from the TIMESONLINE.

A student friend from Ghana tells me that the first time she felt lonely was when she came to London. She is not the first African to have told me that. Africans arriving in Europe are shocked that we do not greet family, friends and colleagues every morning. The student had just been called by her mother in Ghana who had asked her — told her — to travel across London to spend Christmas with her aunt who was alone. That she should be alone on Christmas Day was unthinkable.

First Case of Drug-Resistant TB Found in U.S.

Juarez's strain — so-called extremely drug-resistant (XXDR) TB — has never before been seen in the U.S., according to Dr. David Ashkin, one of the nation's leading experts on tuberculosis. XXDR tuberculosis is so rare that only a handful of other people in the world are thought to have had it.

via Time