The Washington Examiner offers an interesting take on Steve Jobs – his ability to mostly say no to politics and avoid the lobby machine. Tim Carney writes: Under Jobs, Apple largely avoided the unseemly games of campaign contributions and lobbying. Consider this extraordinary fact: despite being a $100-billion-a-year company in a rapidly changing industry, Apple never [...]

The state of Michigan is going to force doctors to report the BMI of their child patients to the state. Gov. Rick Snyder plans to direct doctors in Michigan to begin monitoring the body weight of their young patients and provide the data to a state registry in one of the most extensive government efforts [...]

Rodale News is running a fantastic article by Emily Main: “Wikileaks Memos Reveal U.S. Gov’t Pushing Gene-Altered Crops Worldwide.” According to the article, currently available documents “provide interesting insights into how aggressively the U.S. State Department is pushing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) abroad.” While most of the rest of the world is flat-out rejecting these [...]

From the Wall Street Journal: Rep. Joe Sestak defeated five-term incumbent Sen. Arlen Specter in Pennsylvania’s Democratic primary election Tuesday. Mr. Specter is the third incumbent in as many weeks to lose his re-election bid in an intra-party contest. You wrinkled, old piece of totalitarian shit – good riddance.

Personalized genomic medicine – at a Walgreens near you! From an article in the Washington Post: Beginning Friday, shoppers in search of toothpaste, deodorant and laxatives at more than 6,000 drugstores across the nation will be able to pick up something new: a test to scan their genes for a propensity for Alzheimer’s disease, breast [...]

I had a couple of recent posts on the organ donor issue: #1 here, and #2 here. I received an interesting comment on my blog, and an email, from Kidney Mama, who sent a link to this post on her blog. Donation cards are not the answer for kidney transplants, and here’s why (Thanks to [...]

I thought this idea was worth passing along. Each day, I get hundreds of emails from readers – the good, the great, the bad, & the ugly. One thing I get a lot of is … articles off the web that readers think I may be interested in for purposes of blogging or writing. This [...]

It’s true – the spoofs from the movie Downfall are being blocked on YouTube. Constantin Films owns the rights to the movies, and the company has claimed copyright infringement. Here’s a good article on TimesOnline, with an even better title: “Hitler’s Copyright Panzers Roll Out.” As I’ve noted before, the director of the movie, Oliver [...]

My hometown is electrified about the great news: GM is paying back its loans. A cartoon from the Detroit Free Press on the “seven dirty words”: I can think of two really dirty words that would please even Joe Wilson: “You Lie!” When I heard the payoff figure of $6B on the news, my eyebrows [...]

Whenever I want to be entertained by great talent, good music, or just plain fun stuff, it’s on the web … where I can view it on my (very old but spectacular) Samsung SyncMaster 20.1″ monitor. If you like the Bill Shatner song stuff, this one is golden.