A condom for your CD?

How's that for a catchy title? Thought that might grab your attention. Actually, this is a very cool idea developed by a company called - d-skin. These are protective "skins" that slip on to your CD/DVD collection that keep them from ever getting scratched and any CD/DVD player, whether it be home, car or PC can read them while the skin is on. So if you want to maintain a pristine disc collection, you might want to slip a few of these on. They can be bought at Walmart, BestBuy (also online), Gamestop, and Media Play. BestBuy has a sale on them online at the moment, although I didn't check shipping costs. Might be cheaper to just walk into a BestBuy store. To learn more about these, visit the d-skin home page .

Health

Vioxx Concerns Yikes! (The following from Dr. Mercola's blog) - A large study funded by the FDA did what some people--me included--believed almost impossible: Showed the risk of taking drug giant Merck's popular COX-2 inhibitor Vioxx increased one's chances of a heart attack by 50 percent!

Even more distressing: Patients taking the highest recommended daily dosage of Vioxx had three times the risk of heart attack and sudden cardiac death as those not taking standard painkillers. Sudden cardiac death, a sudden electrical disturbance of the heart that is not considered a heart attack, is the nation's biggest cause of death.

Researchers came up with the potentially damaging findings on Vioxx, a $2.5-billion-a-year blockbuster medicine, after analyzing the medical records of 1.4 million people.

In fact, patients taking the typical starting dose of Vioxx had a 50 percent greater chance of heart attack and sudden cardiac death than patients taking any dose of Celebrex.

If you've forgotten, the market for pain relievers is about $10 BILLION per year. Anytime you deal with numbers that large there will inevitably be corruption, greed and negative influences.

Besides, you can create your own anti-inflammatory just by changing the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fats in your diet.

Computers

Use Instant Messaging a lot? Then you should check out this review of Trillian Pro 2.013 . It enables you to talk to your friends and buddies on all the services (MSN,AOL,Yahoo, ICQ) and will show them all to you in 1 window. How cool is that? You don't even need to download those other services, although you do need to have signed up with them so that you have a username, so that others can see you're online. I've used it for years - works like a champ. Authors keep it updated and are quick to fix any attempts by AOL or Yahoo to block messages (this doesn't happen very often any more, as those services seem to have accepted Trillian). There's a free version but the $25 pro version has some nice perks and is worth the price, imho. The actual web site for Trillian is at CeruleanStudios.com


Word of the Day
excoriate 1.To tear or wear off the skin of; abrade. 2. To censure strongly; denounce. Usage - "an editorial that excoriated the administration for its inaction", " there has been mostly silence from those leaders, even from those who privately excoriate the cleric as a rabble-rousing upstart"

Quote of the Day
"Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well-housed, well- warmed, and well-fed."
Hermann Melville

Web Site of the Day
Alternet.org - AlterNet's journalistic achievements include being named one of NPR's five "winners on the Internet," winning a Webby in the Print and Zines category and a nomination in the "activism" category, and winning Utne's Independent Press Award for Online Political Coverage.

YTD Indexes
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Nasdaq -7.12
S&P 500 +.31