Soxy

QUOTE(bmags @ May 6, 2007 -> 04:52 PM) pilot or final episode? Duurrrr, sorry, two versions of the season finale that will depend on if Karen gets a pilot for another show. Sorry.

I saw two movies yesterday one really awful and one really good. The really awful first, we went to see Lucky You thinking it would be a funny cute girl movie (that's sort of what it was marketed as). Instead, we were "treated" to an overlong, bloated piece of crap with no discernable plot, acting ability or script. About 60% of the movie is showing stupid poker games with cliched dialogue and overwrought acting. Terrible. Absolutely rubbish. If I wasn't with a bunch of other people, I would definitely have walked out. Then, after dinner, we went and saw Hot Fuzz. I love Shaun of the Dead and British humor in general, and I really enjoyed this movie. I definitely laughed my butt off. I would recommend it, it's a tad long, but definitely still awesome.

I am not sure that I heard this correctly (I was sewing at the time, and that usually takes all of my attention), but yesterday on E they said that there are two versions of the pilot that were shot. And which one is shown will depend upon if Karen (the actress) gets a job with another sitcom or if she'll stay in "Scranton." Also, I also heard that NBC is thinking of expanding The Office to an hour a week.

Link Good for them. Brazil bypasses patent on U.S. AIDS drug By VIVIAN SEQUERA, Associated Press Writer 2 hours, 14 minutes ago BRASILIA, Brazil - President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took steps Friday to let Brazil buy an inexpensive generic version of an AIDS drug made by Merck & Co. despite the U.S. drug company's patent. Silva issued a "compulsory license" that would bypass Merck's patent on the AIDS drug efavirenz, a day after the Brazilian government rejected Merck's offer to sell the drug at a 30 percent discount, or $1.10 per pill, down from $1.57. The country was seeking to purchase the drug at 65 cents a pill, the same price Thailand pays. It was the first time Brazil has bypassed a patent, but Silva said Brazil would consider doing so again on any drug sold at unfair prices. "Between our business and our health, we are going to take care of our health," he said after signing the decree. Amy Rose, a spokeswoman for Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based Merck, said earlier that the company would be "profoundly disappointed if Brazil goes ahead with a compulsory license." "As the world's 12th largest economy, Brazil has a greater capacity to pay for HIV medicines than countries that are poorer or harder hit by the disease," Merck said in a statement after Silva's announcement. A compulsory license is a legal mechanism that allows a country to manufacture or buy generic versions of patented drugs while paying the patent holder only a small royalty. Brazilian law and rules established under the World Trade Organization allow compulsory licenses in a health emergency or if the pharmaceutical industry uses abusive pricing. After Thailand moved to override patents on three anti-AIDS drugs, including those made by Abbott Laboratories and Merck, the United States placed Thailand on a list of copyright violators. In Thailand's capital of Bangkok, AIDS activists rallied outside the U.S. Embassy on Thursday to protest that decision, calling the Thai government's move to slash the cost of pricey U.S.-made AIDS drugs a "lifesaver." The president of the U.S.-based AIDS Healthcare Foundation, Michael Weinstein, called Brazil's action a "victory," saying in a statement, "We salute the courage of countries such as Brazil, Thailand and Mexico who are fighting to ensure drug access for AIDS patients the world over. "Drug companies will go down in defeat every time they place themselves in the way of justice for AIDS patients," he said. But the U.S.-Brazil Business Council said the decision was a "major step backward" in intellectual property law and warned it could harm development. "Brazil is working to attract investment in innovative industries ... and this move will likely cause investments to go elsewhere," the council said in a statement. Although Brazil had threatened to bypass drug patents in the past, the country had always reached a last-minute agreement with drug manufacturers. Brazil provides free AIDS drugs to anyone who needs them and manufactures generic versions of several drugs that were in production before Brazil enacted an intellectual property law in 1997 to join the WTO. But as newer drugs have emerged, costs ballooned and health officials warned that without deep discounts, they would be forced to issue compulsory licenses. Efavirenz is used by 75,000 of the 180,000 Brazilians who receive free AIDS drugs from the government. The drug currently costs about the government about $580 per patient per year. "The price is 136 percent higher than this lab (Merck) offers to Thailand," Health Minister Jose Gomes Temporao said, and the price "threatened the viability of the anti-AIDS program." The Health Ministry says a generic version of efavirenz would save the government some $240 million between now and 2012, when Merck's patent expires.

Not being married, I don't know how soon people should date. But I definitely wouldn't date someone until the divorce was finalized (and probably after a couple of months had lapsed there). But maybe I'm just old fashioned.

24, 5'8" (female, so I'm really not short!)

I was also pleasantly surprised by last night (filler before Veronica Mars, woo!). Blake was my favorite and that dark dye job--yum! I wouldn't kick him out of my bed for eating crackers! (I must say he looks almost exactly like Jason Bateman now.) Hopefully Chris Richardson will go home--I get that vibe from him that he thinks he's all that, and he's not even a quarter of that. Hopefully one bad week won't send Jordan packing.

Link to sample type test I got a 100%. Woohoo! I can stay a citizen!

I've seen a couple commercials for Holiday Inn Express and wow, those are really dumb.

QUOTE(Alpha Dog @ Apr 29, 2007 -> 01:37 PM) I agree that talk radio is conservative-dominated. It was a medium written off by most people as useless until conservative shows took over. Sports talk also helped revive am and talk radio shows in general. But for network tv, conservative shows are extremely hard to find. And size-wise, Fox doesn't match the big 3. For 'cable news', yeah they are a big player. But does Joe Sixpack watch The Factor, or Nightline? And newspapers, how many conservative leaning papers are there, because there surely are some that lean so far the left you would think they would fall over. Does Joe Sixpack watch the news at all? Just a general question: but does anyone know what percentage of people watch the news daily?

It's not available here in Upstate NY, but my corolla can't burn it anyway. My dad bought a GMC truck that can burn E85, and that's all he buys.

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Apr 26, 2007 -> 07:50 AM) Personal plea: please re-think Edwards. Dig a little deeper - I think there is very little substance there. Eh, I'm probably going to end up voting Kucinich again. I like voting for someone that actually thinks like me (although about a foot shorter).

QUOTE(Heads22 @ Apr 26, 2007 -> 01:21 AM) Nebraska is Satan's midrift. Who would have thought Satan was so boring?

I drove home today for a long weekend and I'm always amazed by a couple of things: 1.) Does Ohio ever end? Because it feels like a never ending wasteland to me 2.) Best part of Indiana? 70mph speed limit on the thruway 3.) Why does Illinois even post speed limits? No one ever goes under 75 anyway.

QUOTE(kapkomet @ Apr 25, 2007 -> 02:36 PM) This is one guy who has never waivered from his personal beliefs and isn't afraid to tell you about it. I may disagree with him hugely, but I applaud him and actually respect him for being the most stand up guy running for president. I actually did vote for him in the 2004 primaries. I think by the time I did, though, Kerry had all but locked up the nomination. I'm still thinking of voting for him next time around, but John Edwards is seeming better lately.

Okay, so I promise I was not on any mind altering substance when I thought of this but--how do we know that life can only exist in terms of "carbon based" like here on earth? Isn't it possible some other sort of element could be the basis of life--thus making it not necessary for a planet to be "earth-like" for there to be life? That always has boggled my mind. That and, when you send a letter abroad, you pay the US post office for a stamp--but how do the other post offices of the world make their money? Does the US post office send them part of the money, or do they just figure that it all evens out in the end?

QUOTE(southsider2k5 @ Apr 24, 2007 -> 01:02 PM) Hopefully this isn't like the "only" party threads, and we can cross comment... Anyways, does anyone else feel like this race so far is pretty much like watching ESPN? You can pretty much only hear about what the Yankees and Red Sox are doing, unless you watch really closely, then you might pick up something else. I totally agree, and I am so over Clinton and Obama. Seriously, new choice please!

That old liberal bastion the Chicago Tribune also calls for A-Go to, well, go go go. EDITORIAL The man who was not there Published April 24, 2007 In his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, it was sometimes hard to recall that Alberto Gonzales is the attorney general of the United States. More often, he sounded like an outside consultant, with no operational authority at the Justice Department and only a limited knowledge of what was going on in the offices around his. The difference is that when outside consultants are no longer of any use, they move on. Alberto Gonzales has not, and it's time he did. His handling of the firing of eight federal prosecutors last year, something believed to be unprecedented at this stage of an administration, has been incompetent at best. Nothing he has done since the controversy erupted in January suggests he recognizes how he went wrong, how badly he failed or what to do about it. President Bush would be doing himself and the nation a favor to ask that his attorney resign and make room for someone who is interested in actually doing the job. At the outset, we gave Gonzales the benefit of the doubt. We argued that there was only thin evidence that the U.S. attorneys were fired for improper reasons and that Congress had a duty to hear what Gonzales and his former chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, had to say before drawing any conclusions. Now, those two have been heard, and what they said confirms that the dismissals had little to do with improving law enforcement. Getting rid of poorly performing employees is the obligation of any boss, and that is what the attorney general says he was doing. But Gonzales didn't seem to know -- or care -- whether the people he axed were good or bad. Asked why he fired Margaret Chiara, after a meeting with an aide, he pleaded ignorance: "I don't recall the reason why that I accepted the decision on Dec. 7." Asked about a prosecutor whose dismissal was considered but rejected, he said: "This was a process that was ongoing that I did not have transparency into." It would be unreasonable to expect the attorney general to undertake personally a review of all U.S. attorneys, but no one else appears to have done so either. There was no systematic process for evaluating the people in these jobs, and several of those who were removed had gotten good performance reviews in the past. Gonzales, based on his testimony last week, fired them without bothering to find out why. An alternative view is that he knew very well why he was getting rid of at least some of these prosecutors: for naked partisan motives. David Iglesias landed on the list after Sen. Pete Domenici (R-N.M.) called Iglesias to complain about his failure to indict Democrats suspected of corruption -- and after the senator repeatedly complained to Gonzales as well. John McKay of Washington state was criticized by local Republicans over his refusal to pursue voter fraud allegations in a governor's race narrowly won by a Democrat. It's not yet clear whether unsavory political motives played a role in the dismissals. The Judiciary Committee hopes to get testimony from White House senior adviser Karl Rove and former White House counsel Harriet Miers to help resolve that important question. But whether the decisions originated in the White House or the Justice Department, it is clear that Gonzales was largely a figurehead. When the important responsibilities of his office were being discharged, he was effectively absent. In apologizing to the eight U.S. attorneys, he said, "They deserved better from me." They did, and the American people deserve someone better as attorney general.

QUOTE(Texsox @ Apr 24, 2007 -> 06:30 AM) Bush = Carter with less body bags. Do you mean just in terms of popularity? Because I think Carter had a much better approval rating from other world leaders and (other than the Iran Contra mess) had better international policies. He just couldn't handle domestic issues.

warm thoughts and good vibes jim.

Story Soldier: Honor troops like Va. Tech dead By ALISA TANG, Associated Press Writer 15 minutes ago KABUL, Afghanistan - An Army sergeant complained in a rare opinion article that the U.S. flag flew at half-staff last week at the largest U.S. base in Afghanistan for those killed at Virginia Tech but the same honor is not given to fallen U.S. troops here and in Iraq. In the article issued Monday by the public affairs office at Bagram military base north of Kabul, Sgt. Jim Wilt lamented that his comrades' deaths have become a mere blip on the TV screen, lacking the "shock factor" to be honored by the Stars and Stripes as the deaths at Virginia Tech were. "I find it ironic that the flags were flown at half-staff for the young men and women who were killed at VT, yet it is never lowered for the death of a U.S. service member," Wilt wrote. He noted that Bagram obeyed President Bush's order last week that all U.S. flags at federal locations be flown at half-staff through April 22 to honor 32 people killed at Virginia Tech by a 23-year-old student gunman who then killed himself. "I think it is sad that we do not raise the bases' flag to half-staff when a member of our own task force dies," Wilt said. According to the Defense Department, 315 U.S. service members have died in and around Afghanistan since the U.S.-led offensive that toppled the Taliban regime in late 2001, 198 of them in combat. NATO's International Security Assistance Force said that the flags of all its troop-contributing nations are flown at half-staff for about 72 hours after the service member's death "as a mark of respect when there is an ISAF fatality." Sgt. 1st Class Dean Welch, who works with Wilt at the U.S.-led coalition public affairs office, said the essay is a "soldier's commentary, not the view of the coalition and not the view of the U.S. forces." Welch added that such outspoken opinion pieces are rare. Wilt suggested that flags should fly at half-staff on the base where the fallen service member was working and in the states where they hail from. He said some states do this, but not all of them. He wrote that the death of a U.S. service member is just as violent as those at the university last week, but it lacks the "shock factor of the Virginia massacre." "It is a daily occurrence these days to see X number of U.S. troops killed in Iraq or Afghanistan scrolling across the ticker at the bottom of the TV screen. People have come to expect casualty counts in the nightly news; they don't expect to see 32 students killed," he wrote. "If the flags on our (operating bases) were lowered for just one day after the death of a service member, it would show the people who knew the person that society cared, the American people care."

QUOTE(Gregory Pratt @ Apr 22, 2007 -> 05:32 PM) So are the overhead things like on airplane where anyone can open them or do they have locks? Is it just one big long one like on planes or different? It's similar to planes, but I don't remember there being locks. Which I was nervous about on an overnight train. Although from Buffalo to Chicago there's not a lot of people on the train.

QUOTE(Gregory Pratt @ Apr 22, 2007 -> 05:09 PM) I'm not paying extra money for sleeper cars, no. I'm going to get the thirty day pass -- if that covers sleeper cars, great, and if not, I can sleep in my car. That's something I want to know about. What type of arrangements are there for your bags? Is it just bring it onto the car and put it under your seat or over? When I took the train, I usually checked my bag and then had my laptop and a few other items with me. Ditto what Rog said about the food, it's so expensive on the train. Also, be ready to meet some very interesting people. Lots of Amish.

QUOTE(Balta1701 @ Apr 14, 2007 -> 11:21 PM) Government mandated study on abstinence only programs discovers...Abstinence only programs appear to do exactly nothing. Great Op ed about sex ed in Africa. I thought this was especially interesting in tandem with the recent findings about abstinence only programs efficacy in the US.

Happy Birthday! Cha cha cha!