UK wants to take away a drug (Link Dead) that eliminates the symptoms of Alzheimer’s for those in the early stages of the disease.The drug costs the equivalent of $1800 per year, and allows people to stay out of a $38000 per year nursing home for longer…Do you really want a political organization deciding if your life is worth living or not?Doctors who have come from the socialized medicine systems of europe have come to the US and stated that yes, the quality of care is just as good as the US, but because of waiting lists and government decisions on what care is permitted, the quality of life is much lower in those areas.

All of the advances in optical disc technology since the CD have been of 3 varieties. You either change the reading laser so it can be focused into a smaller dot, you change the distance from the laser so you can focus it tighter, or you add another recording layer. DVD added a layer and changed the distance, HD-DVD added a layer and changed the wavelength, Bluray changed the distance and the wavelength.

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/healthnews.php?newsid=74503This one is of particular concern because my nephew has tons of these train sets. I just sent the url to my brother so he can take a look at it.I suspect we’re going to hear quite a few more of these where companies decided to ignore legal requirements and use substandard parts for years, and we’re just now starting to go back and look at all the bits and pieces we import from over there after the pet food scare.

Every couple of months I torture myself by going through the spam filter of my catchall email account and seeing which of my many throwaway email addresses is gathering the most spam. The usual is true this time as before, the largest actual email addresses are my old ones, my wife’s old username, my friend’s old account on my domain, etc. The typical spam traps all popped up as well, like orders, billing, sales, accounts, support, info, webmaster, contact, accounting, etc.

http://www.wired.com/gaming/hardware/news/2007/06/soviet_gamesWhat I want to know is if they will be making them available to people who could create emulators for them. They’ve scrobbled them back together, but they won’t last forever with no replacement parts being made. Like other arcade games, it’d be good to get them in a form where they can be stored digitally.Of course, without proper archival medium, the actual arcade units might survive longer. ;)

(Link Dead)China is adding an antifreeze like chemical to their toothpaste to make them taste better. Never mind that its a toxic substance. Another in a long line of china lying to their customers. The problem is, it’s almost impossible to buy anything anymore unless its made in china. Of course, China is dismissing that there’s any problem at all… As is typical of a corrupt system where the customer/individual/etc doesn’t matter.

I recently signed up for Blockbuster’s online movie service because they rent out bluray movies. I watched Aeon Flux tonight, and discovered it’s not as bad as most people claim… But as I was putting it back in the envelope to return it I noticed something silly.On the outside of the outer envelope:“Exchange this movie with a DVD inside for a free in-store movie rental.” (They should have said “envelope” instead of “movie” too.

http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000157.htmlFrom the top down to the word “The Remnant” is something I had thought about in the past, but couldn’t find a solid way to express. It could do a bit to explain the Chinese wheat cheats problem I mentioned awhile back too. China seems to have no real rules against cheating the customer. Thus, Screwing the customer is the only rational response over there for those who live in that environment.

I was reading an article about a US academic who was imprisoned and interrogated in Iran for “formenting a soft rebellion”and stumbled across a line that made me laugh for several minutes. In a statement carried by official state news outlets, the intelligence ministry claimed Mrs Esfandiari, 67, had admitted cooperating with the New York-based Soros Institute, run by the billionaire financier George Soros, who has funded opposition movements in eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.

(Link Dead)“A lot of animal food companies buy melamine from us to add in the animal feed,” Ji said. “This can lower the production cost and increase nitrogen levels.”Ji played down the risk, saying that despite China’s repeated food safety scares, the companies could be trusted to use melamine safely.“I believe it won’t do any harm if there is only very small amount,” Ji said. “Otherwise, those companies could not do that.