A couple of weeks ago I was on a flight from STL to ATL and my left eye was really bothering me - felt like I had something in my eye the whole trip, but I couldn't find it. When we landed I went to the restroom and managed to see that I had what I can only describe as an in-grown eyelash. It was sort of curled back in on itself and part of it was caught under the eyelid causing irritation.

So I managed to get ahold of it and pull it out. Actually, it pretty much fell out when I touched it. And all was right with the world. Until yesterday. My eye got sore yesterday morning. By afternoon I had developed a whopping stye in exactly the same place as that in-grown eyelash. Boy, does that hurt. According to AllAboutVision the best treatment is mostly doing nothing - maybe use a little ointment or eyedrops to increase comfort. I have antibiotic opthalmic ointments and homeopathic eyedrops. Guess that's all I can do for it at the moment.

It's a beautiful day for a motorcycle ride, but I'm not sure I want to ride with only one good eye...

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Terry Frazier at 11:59 AM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |
Categories: Health and Fitness

Friday, April 27, 2007

Read The Bills

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There are 160 pages of Congressional bills listed at WashingtonWatch.com. 160 pages, at ~20 bills per page.

Keeping up with legislation, cyberstyle

WashingtonWatch is a site that summarizes legislation pending before Congress, and allows user comments on each piece of legislation. The site is nice and clean, and the explanations proposed laws are clear and understandable.

The home page lists all the legislation currently pending, but grouped by tabs for categories such as: Most Popular, Newest, Greatest Cost, and Greatest Savings. If you click on a proposed law it will take you to a page where you can leave a comment about the legislation. Also, users can edit the section that describes why the legislation should or shouldn't be passed. Sort of like Wikidpedia, except probably with more controversy as the site becomes more popular.

What’s wrong with this picture? This is a great site, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that we don’t need 635 largely self-serving, ego-centric, half-witted politicians voting on 3,000+ ways to pick our pockets and screw up our lives. Because you know - you just know – they haven’t actually read any of them.

The only bill any of these clowns should be voting for right now is this one – Read The Bills Act. Of course, the Law of Unintended Consequences says even this bill will make things worse. Hat tip to Ernie.

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Terry Frazier at 11:21 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |
Categories: Policy & Regulation

Where's the Chocolate?

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This would be funny if it weren't true. Don't you just know some dipshit marketing guy thinks he's a genius for having this idea. From Oligopoly Watch:

Chocolate or Mockolate?
Big world's biggest confectionery companies, including Nestle and Hersheys, are doing what oligopolies do beat, influencing government regulation in their favor. At stake is the very definition of chocolate. According to a Bloomberg article ("Hershey Battles Chocolate Connoisseurs Over Selling `Mockolate'". April 24):
The Chocolate Manufacturers Association, whose members include Hershey, Nestle SA and Archer Daniels Midland Co., has a petition before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to redefine what constitutes chocolate. They want to make it without the required ingredients of cocoa butter and cocoa solids, using instead artificial sweeteners, milk substitutes and vegetable fats such as hydrogenated and trans fats.
The reason for the requested change is the great expense of cocoa butter, a required ingredient. Big Candy would like to substitute cheaper stuff, included the dread trans-fats. [...]

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Terry Frazier at 11:06 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |
Categories: Business & Finance

Thursday, April 26, 2007

Something Seriously New In Printing - Bone Grafts

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Recent article in the Daily Mail reports on new use of an inkjet-style printer being used to fashion accurate, biodegradable bone grafts for cosmetic surgery and other uses. Fascinating...

The artificial bones created from an inkjet
By ELEANOR MAYNE
14th April 2007

Scientists are creating artificial bones using a modified version of an inkjet printer.

The technology creates perfect replicas of bones that have been damaged and these can then be inserted in the body to help it to heal. The process will revolutionise bone graft surgery, which currently relies on either bits of bone taken from other parts of the body or ceramic-like substitutes.

[...]

Found via FUTUREdition from The Arlington Institute.

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Terry Frazier at 9:11 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |
Categories: Health and Fitness

The "Chrysler Unit"

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Business pundit Steve Hannaford needed a new term to describe the value of today's billion-dollar-plus mergers and acquisitions. The disaster that is DaimlerChrysler has given Steve just what he needed:

How Many Chryslers?
Truly the Daimler-Benz purchase of US-automaker Chrysler in 1998 was a stupefying disaster. Through the alchemy of its business acumen, Daimler management transmuted the value of Chrysler from an estimated $40 billion to a value of, to judge from the current bidding, around $5 billion, give or take a few hundred million.
[...]
But some good can come out of the merger. Based on what seems to be the approximate price of the company, we will describe big mergers and acquisitions henceforth in terms of Chrysler unit, that is to say, in $5 billion increments. For example:
AstraZeneca bought MedImmune for three Chryslers ($15 billion).
The latest bidding for ABN Amro has raised the price of the bank to nearly 20 Chryslers.
Nestle bought Gerber for a little over one Chrysler.
Spanish bank Banco Bilbao Vizcaya bought an Alabama bank chain for almost two Chryslers.
State Street Bank bought IFS for bit less than a Chrysler.

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Terry Frazier at 8:37 PM | Permanent Link | Trackback URL |
Categories: Business & Finance

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