Thursday, February 12, 2009

51st Grammy Awards - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lots of ideas for anyone looking for new music. Some I want to hear include; # The Sinatra Project – Michael Feinstein, # Jingle All the Way – Béla Fleck & The Flecktones, Best Electronic/Dance Album

* New York City – Brazilian Girls
* Alive 2007 – Daft Punk
....and much more

Follow the link for the entire list of nominations.

51st Grammy Awards - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Court Says Vaccine Not the Cause of Autism - US News and World Report

Court Says Vaccine Not the Cause of Autism - US News and World Report: "Thursday's decision follows a published report earlier this week that the British doctor whose 1998 paper fueled international fears of a link between childhood vaccines and autism had manipulated and changed the data to make his case.

An investigative report by the Sunday Times of London stated that Dr. Andrew Wakefield and his colleagues altered confidential and public records to support their claim that eight of 12 autistic children attending a routine clinic at Wakefield's hospital had developed symptoms of autism only days after they were given the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. But, almost all of the children had developed symptoms of autism well before receiving the shot, according to published reports.

Wakefield denied the allegations in the Sunday Times of London report.

Since Wakefield's original paper was published in The Lancet, numerous studies have failed to find a link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

In February 2008, British researchers reported in the Archives of Disease in Childhood that their large study failed to uncover a connection. The researchers based their finding on a sample of 240 children -- 98 who had been diagnosed with autism, and two comparison groups: 52 children with special educational needs who were not autistic; and 90 children who had no developmental problems."

Court Says Vaccine Not the Cause of Autism - US News and World Report

Court Says Vaccine Not the Cause of Autism - US News and World Report: "The ruling, which involved test cases of children from three different families, was a setback for parents who had filed claims seeking monetary awards from a U.S.-run vaccine compensation program. More than 5,500 such claims have been filed. The claims were reviewed by the Office of Special Masters, part of the U.S. Court of Federal Claims.

'It was abundantly clear that petitioners' theories of causation were speculative and unpersuasive,' the court said in one of the three cases ruled on Thursday. The court also said 'the weight of scientific research and authority' was 'simply more persuasive on nearly every point in contention,' the Associated Press reported.

Federal health experts applauded the decision."

Monday, February 09, 2009

So what if Phelps smoked pot -- he's in good company

"Of course, it isn't only athletic stars who have been known to indulge in reefer madness. Important scientists such as Richard Feynman, Stephen Jay Gould, Margaret Mead and Carl Sagan, billionaire executives like Richard Branson and Bill Gates, and a great many of the literary and musical geniuses of the last century or so -- William Butler Yeats, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong and Bob Dylan among them -- got high. So have many of our top elected officials, notably including California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a highly successful actor and businessman whose pot habit was immortalized on film in "Pumping Iron"; New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, another hard-driving billionaire who once told a magazine interviewer that he had not only smoked dope but "enjoyed" it; Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, and Al Gore, former vice president, Google director, and winner of an Oscar and the Nobel Peace Prize."

Madoff Claims Another Victim - Forbes.com

Too bad it's too late to fire Harvey Pitt. This was going on during his tenure too and he either ignored it or never caught on. Pitt did an interview on CNBC shortly after the story broke and when they tried to pin him down he said the 'facts are still evolving' or something like that. Lying through his teeth was my opinion at the time. Madoff Claims Another Victim - Forbes.com