When people say discrimination causes a lot of “heartache” they may be more medically accurate than they think.

A new study by a study by researchers at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago says stress could be causing coronary artery calcification in black women. Health Day News reports this:

The investigators found that the more discrimination the women felt, the more likely they were to have coronary artery calcification, a buildup of calcium in blood vessels that’s associated with atherosclerosis.



“We know from other studies in this area that stressful life experiences can have an effect on cardiovascular outcomes,” Tene Lewis, a health psychologist in preventive medicine at Rush, said in a prepared statement. “Discrimination appears to be a stressor that has particular relevance for the health of African-American women.”

The study included 181 middle-aged black women from the Chicago and Pittsburgh areas. The women completed a questionnaire that assessed their experiences of subtle discrimination, such as being ignored or treated with a lack of courtesy or respect.

“The women reported discrimination in the form of having poorer service in stores or restaurants, being treated as if they were less smart, or being treated as if they were dishonest,” Lewis said.

Lewis notes that discrimination is more subtle in the 21st Century. But there’s still this bottom line finding:”The study found that coronary artery calcification was present in 59.6 percent of the women and the more discrimination they reported, the more likely they were to have any calcification,” it reports.

This raises a question. If it’s eventually widely accepted that discrimination may be dangerous for your heart, does this mean we’re going to start seeing a rash of lawsuits charging that clients were physically impacted by discrimination? We suspect there at least some attorneys who are printing out this article right now…

…but it proves yet again the validity of Einstein’s theories:

Near Perfect “Einstein Ring” Discovered

Summary - (Apr 29, 2005) Gravitational lensing happens when the gravity of a relatively close galaxy acts as a telescope lens to focus the light from a more distant galaxy. It allows astronomers to see distant objects they could never have a hope of observing with current instruments, essentially looking back to moments after the Big Bang (cosmically speaking). The galaxies are never perfectly lined up, though, and the “natural telescope” is a bit blurry. But now astronomer Remi Cabanac has found one of the most complete lenses ever discovered: a near perfect Einstein Ring, magnifying a distant galaxy with incredible clarity.

Be sure to read the entire article to get the full significance of the discovery.

A hint. Incredibly sweet.

No, not me. It’s this.

….reportedly backs the U.S. version of events in the continued furor surrounding a case that has thrown a monkey wrench into U.S.Italy relations.

Our all-too-infrequent linkfest aimed at bringing you DIVERSE VIEWS from all over the Blog-o-you-know-what. So we do NOT limit them to one viewpoint. Opinions do NOT necessarily represent the views of The Moderate Voice. This will be expanded a bit MORE today and when this sentence vanishes this post will be complete.

IS CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR ARNOLD SWARZENEGGER GOING TO BECOME THE NEXT JESSE VENTURA? It’s a very interesting — and valid — question, as those of us here in California can attest. Jonathan Singer looks at this issue.

AND IS ARNIE PULLING A PETE WILSON? Professor Bainbridge reminds us about what happened to Pete Wilson. FOOTNOTE: I was a reporter on the San Diego Union, which had good relations with Wilson, who had been San Diego’s Mayor. Wilson’s right hand man was the wonderful and brilliant Otto Bos, a former Union reporter. Otto suddenly died and it was after his death that Wilson veered towards anti-immigration rhetoric and a bit more to the right, which doomed the GOP in California. It’s a pity because Wilson was one of the more solid officials the state has seen. (Some Wilson people are in the Ahnold’s administration).

MORE ON THE STATE OF TALK RADIO from Pennywit.

AND WHAT ABOUT TELEVISION? Some say it makes you smarter.

THOSE WEIRD STAR TREK FANS: Should parents hide their kids from them?

DARFUR: It leaves an impression on a kid.

THIS JUST IN!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We reported the story of the burrito weapon at a school. Now here’s a detailed, complete report.

FAVORITE POLITICAL WEBSITES: Right Wing News’ John Hawkins has assembled his list of favorite top 20 political websites and invites others bloggers to do the same and send them to him and he’ll link to them.

Just when you thought science had already made most of its key, dramatic discoveries there’s this news: advanced technologies have helped European and American astronomers to take the first-ever picture of a planet outside our solar system.

It seemed to be a red speck and some insisted it was a star some 225-light years away from Earth in the Hydra constellation. But scientists now say a Very Large Telescope in Northern Chile has confirmed its true status.

The New York Times notes that scientists earlier believed this was a planet, but couldn’t prove it — but the use of advanced technology seemingly clinches the case.

A reddish speck photographed near a dim and distant star last year is indeed a planet, about five times the mass of Jupiter, an international team of astronomers is reporting today.

They say the results bolster their claim, put forward last fall, that this image was the first of a planet orbiting a star outside the solar system.

The planet, about 230 light-years from Earth in the constellation Hydra, orbits a kind of failed star known as a brown dwarf at a distance of at least 5 billion miles, twice as far as icy Neptune is from our own sun. Spectroscopic measurements show water vapor in its atmosphere, suggesting that it is cold like a planet and not hot like a star.

“This discovery offers new perspectives for our understanding of chemical and physical properties of planetary mass objects as well as their mechanisms of formation,” Gael Chauvin of the European Southern Observatory in Chile and his colleagues wrote in the paper, in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics.

When Chauvin’s group first announced the discovery of the object, known officially as 2M1207b, last year, they admitted that they could not prove that it was not just a background object unrelated to the brown dwarf.

Subsequent observations using the Very Large Telescope on Cerro Paranal in northern Chile and a system designed to take the twinkle out of starlight and thus get sharper images showed that the dwarf star and the suspected planet were moving together across the sky, cementing the notion that they are gravitationally bound.

The AP’s story contains this cautionary note:

Lynne Hillenbrand, an assistant professor of astronomy at the California Institute of Technology, said the findings were intriguing, but cautioned against calling the object a planet.

“The claim of an object being a planet is subject to one’s definition of planet and there are different camps on what that definition is,” Hillenbrand said.

In recent months, different groups of astronomers have published competing claims about directly observing extrasolar planets.

Earlier this month, German astronomers published a photograph of an object 450 light-years from Earth that they claimed was the first direct image of an extrasolar planet. But astronomers sparred over the photo, saying that it was possible that it could be a brown dwarf based on the object’s mass.

Last month, scientists using NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope said they directly measured light from two known Jupiter-sized gas planets orbiting distant stars, but did not get images of the planets separate from their stars.

Outlook: as technology becomes even more advanced more of the vague areas will be totally cleared up.

There’s a new company called Clean Flicks. They bill themselves as the “leading provider” of edited Hollywood movies — and reportedly Hollywood is not totally pleased. Clean Flicks removes profanity, violence, graphic violence and sexual content.



That should leave about 2 minutes of a 2 hour Hollywood film…But we digress.



The issue came up on Joe Scarborough’s always lively MSNBC talk show, Scarborough Country. The transcript is here. Here’s how Scarborough frames the controversy:

SCARBOROUGH: You know, it says, if Hollywood won‘t clean up its act, well, they have a right to do it for them. But there are a lot of people in Hollywood who believe this is not only breaking the law; it‘s censorship, and it‘s some guy out in middle America butchering their films.

All of this promoted this response on a blog called Jesus’ General…



We do seem to be at a point in history where technology can filter out almost anything we want. What do YOU think?

Apple’s new Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger operating system was a huge smash as it went onsale yesterday — and we’re not lion.

Bill Gates may have the numbers (and bankroll) but, as usual, Apple has the enthusiastic, almost cult-like devotees. Just look at some of these reports.

CNET News:

SAN FRANCISCO–Mac fans let out a collective roar Friday night, with thousands of eager shoppers turning out at Apple stores across the globe to scoop up Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, the latest version of Apple’s operating system, as it went on sale at 6 p.m. PST.

Among the 200 or so people that lined up for more than a block outside Apple’s downtown San Francisco store was Austin Liu, a freelance Web designer and student. Liu, who admits to being “caught up in the whole “‘Cult of Mac’” said there is something undeniably cool about all things Apple.

“Microsoft could never get a crowd like this,” said Liu. Liu took a swipe at Microsoft, joking that far fewer will show up “when Microsoft finally releases Longhorn or Longtime or whatever it is,” referring to the next version of Windows, due out next year.

Library supervisor A.J. Real turned out with two friends to snag a family pack of Tiger, a $199 version of Tiger that can be used on up to five computers in a household. Single copies of the OS, which features improved searching and other features, sell for $129. Real and friends found themselves about 35 people back in the line, which began forming around 4 p.m.–two hours before Tiger went on sale.
“We got here at 3,” Real said. “Then we got hungry.”

The Taipei Times:

Apple Computer Inc yesterday released the latest version of its Macintosh operating system, OSX 10.4. The company described the software, dubbed “Tiger,” as its most innovative product to date and the safest for local users.

“We have high expectations of Mac OSX Tiger, which we believe will alter user behavior with various new functions that simplify work processes,” Kong Yuk-loong, general manager of Apple Computer’s Taiwan branch, said at a press conference yesterday.

The operating system went on sale at 6pm yesterday, priced at NT$4,390 (US$140.3). One official at Apple Taiwan, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Apple’s Macintosh operating system has been adopted by 23 percent of computer users around the world, but its market share in Taiwan is still less than 10 percent.

Nonetheless, Apple’s market share is increasing steadily, boosted by its best-selling iPod digital music player series, which has swept the local market, he said.

As Daffy Duck would say: “Market share, shmarket share — what does it matter as long as we love it. And it isn’t made by Microsoft!”


Japan Today, in fact, thinks it’ll take away some of Microsoft’s customers:

Apple’s brand new Mac OS X Ver.10.4 Tiger has enough features to lure Windows users away from Microsoft. More than 200 new features include the Spotlight, which lets you instantly search for files, emails, contacts, images, movies, calendars and applications; and the Dashboard, which you can use to check phone numbers, perform calculations and other tasks with one click.

And then there is a masterful marketing strategy, notes USA Today:

To woo customers to pay $129 to upgrade to its new Tiger operating system, Apple Computer (AAPL) is testing an offer that may be a first in computer retailing: free installation or a one-on-one training session with a Macintosh specialist showing personalized tips and tricks.

A Wired News story has a headline that also suggests the new system is highly popular in convalescent homes:”Mac Fans Drooling Over Tiger.”

Well, perhaps we misinterpreted that….

Turning BLOGS into a BUSINESS? Why, who ever heard of such a thing!



But there are serious attempts to do so by individual bloggers and people who’ve signed on to a group concept. And here’s one of the most promising ones yet, via Roger Simon:

Charles Johnson, Marc Danziger and I have been sneaking around over the last few months, trying to turn blogs into a business. We have enlisted some others with names familiar to you with the intention of working in two areas - aggregating blogs to increase corporate advertising and creating our own professional news service.



With respect to advertising, we do not wish to go into competition with Henry Copeland’s BlogAds, which we fully support. (Some of us even have them!) We are working on another model that will sell ads en masse, not blog-by-blog. We expect this model to go live within a few weeks.



As for the Blog News Service, a lot of work needs to be done and a lot of questions answered. An editorial board consisting of Glenn Reynolds, PowerLine, Lawrence Kudlow, Hugh Hewitt, Marc Cooper, Wretchard of the Belmont Club and Tim Blair, as well as the founders, is already in place with other bloggers in many countries having signed on as contributors.



This is no way meant to be exclusive. We invite you all to join us. On the advertising end, any blogger — whether political or not — is welcome. We would be delighted to place ads on your blog and pay you for them. You may find out more and, we hope, join by simply emailing us….

Click on Roger Simon’s link above to get his email address.

This could be something that would work. Of course the key is going to be getting a cross-section of bloggers, representing all kinds of weblogs (not just political) and ideologies.

Media blogger Matt Sheffield, on his great new blog, adds this:

My take: newspapers are to computers what news is to data. The first two exist only for the sake of the second. Data processing is why we use computers. News is why people read the newspaper.

For decades, the tech world has been continually updating its data delivery systems, now, the media world needs to do the same with news delivery. As a physical medium, news publications are doomed, as a virtual medium, they have a chance if they adapt. Otherwise, Pajama Media and its successors and rivals will dispose of them.

Indeed: in 1982, as a newly hired San Diego Union staff reporter (I had been working on the Wichita Eagle-Beacon before that and before that wrote from New Delhi, India and Madrid, Spain), a top journalism prof from LA sneered and told me: “You’re a dinosaur. 10 years from now no one will be reading newspapers. It’ll all be on computer.”

He was WRONG. Many early attempts by newspapers go beyond paper news delivery fizzled. But in recent years, with the huge growth of the Internet, many newspaper circulations are either stagnant or falling and they’re offering content online in a different way then they envisioned years ago (for one thing, mostly for FREE).

So perhaps part of this arrogant person’s sneering prediction is coming true: papers aren’t dying but they seem infected with what is LITERALLY a “terminal” disease unless they adapt. It seems like Pajama Media is looking at all of the issues this will entail thoughtfully, cautiously and creatively. And — given this carefulful, thoughtful planning — their long term prospects, if they launch as expected, could be bright..

You KNEW it just had to happen: the curt New York soup chef mercilessly lampooned in the classic Seinfeld shows as the “Soup Nazi” is going to clone his New York style restaurant so YOU can experience the soup but…he promises, not the New Yawk attitude.

It’s the ultimate in franchising. Well, maybe not quite: Tony Soprano butcher shops would be that…

But this is FOR REAL, the AP reports (and it is not April 1):

Signs will be posted in each of “The Original Soup Man” franchises bearing chef Al Yeganeh’s strict rules for ordering, such as “Have your money ready!” and “Move to the extreme left after ordering!” But a company spokesman said workers will be prohibited from shouting, “No soup for you!” at customers who disobey. Yeganeh and his partners have signed deals for 123 outlets so far, with the first slated to open in the New Jersey town of Ridgewood this summer.


The group hopes to have 1,000 franchises at shopping mall food courts and airports in the United States and Canada within seven years. The partners also plan to sell refrigerated soup in markets.

“We really plan to take this whole concept international because Al is world renowned,” said John Bello, chairman of Soup Kitchen International, the five-month-old venture named for Yeganeh’s original storefront restaurant in New York City.

The storefront has been a tourist attraction since the 1995 “Seinfeld” episode in which Jerry, George, Elaine and Kramer become frequent visitors to the Soup Nazi’s takeout restaurant before angering him and having their soup orders abruptly cut off.

As in the “Seinfeld” episode, Yeganeh’s real recipes are closely guarded secrets. He and his chefs have been working with experts at Rutgers University to adapt the recipes to preserve taste and freshness when making huge quantities of soup and shipping it across the continent, according to operations manager Linda Gavin.

Hey, someone tell this company: “No preservatives for YOU!” But we’re sure it’ll be fresh (just like the character on the TV show).

PS: There is one teeny-weeny condition the chef has laid down, Entrepreneur reports:

Later this year, the real-life “Soup Nazi” will begin selling his legendary bisques, chowders and gumbos at franchised locations throughout the country–but with one missing ingredient: Mr. Yeganeh plans to bar the franchisees from using the term “Soup Nazi” in their promotional materials. In fact, he doesn’t want his simmering soup empire to have any overt association with the show that helped make him famous. Tie-ins with “Seinfeld” will be “strongly discouraged” among franchisees, the company says.

For all the attention and business that the “Seinfeld” publicity has brought him, Mr. Yeganeh is not exactly grateful–in fact he says he loathes the show’s star. He refers to Jerry Seinfeld as quot;Jerry the Clown,” and insists that it was he who helped make Mr. Seinfeld what he is today. The source of the friction is the nickname that the show made famous, the “Soup Nazi,” which he says is offensive.

And, this report notes, he insists he is not franchising for the money:”"I don’t need the money,” he says, eyes widening slightly. “I’m already rich. I was rich before ‘Seinfeld.’ “



Then:“No money for YOU!”

Be careful what you carry with you to eat: it may be hazardous to your freedom:

CLOVIS, N.M. - A call about a possible weapon at a middle school prompted police to put armed officers on rooftops, close nearby streets and lock down the school. All over a giant burrito.

Someone called authorities Thursday after seeing a boy carrying something long and wrapped into Marshall Junior High.

The drama ended two hours later when the suspicious item was identified as a 30-inch burrito filled with steak, guacamole, lettuce, salsa and jalapenos and wrapped inside tin foil and a white T-shirt.

“I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry,” school Principal Diana Russell said.

A burrito becomes a weapon after you eat it.

It’s too early to tell the impact of last night’s press conference by President Bush but there are some ominious rumblings and if you listen closely they’re still whispering “trouble.”

Political events such as major speeches, policy changes, and presidential press conferences usually take a while to “sink in.” But one factor that remains out there is a peception that there have been far happier political days for George Bush.

There are various signposts — and one that political watchers often monitor is what becomes the conventional wisdom via the news magazines. Newsweek’s Howard Fineman, now writes that Bush has lots his political touch. But he’s not only talking about a host of issues and events but Bush’s relations with Republicans in Congress. According to Fineman:

…many members of Congress think the White House has long acted in an imperious and dismissive way toward them. They like to be stroked, and the president has limited patience for that kind of thing. Like most CEOs, he prefers to give orders to loyal subordinates in a clear chain of command. He distrusts independent power, even in his own party.

This doesn’t sit well in Congress. Lots of Republican senators resent the White House. In the House, the Stockholm syndrome applies—they’re more likely to love their captors—but you still can hear some grumbling, and not just from Chris Shays. It may be payback time inside the Republican Party. And that’s not good news for the president.

Indeed, the Democrats have been primed for payback for some time now. Independent voters and centrists who voted for the GOP are, polls say, irked over issues related to the GOP’s move to shore up its Christian Evangelical base and their payback may be handed over in 2006. (Bush took a step at his press conference to distance himself from religious right leader James Dobson.) Will the press conference — with its refined stance on Social Security and the move to take a more conciliatory approach to opponents than social conservatives take — mark the beginning or the end of Bush’s recent political problems?

An anti-abortion group lost its case in Britain’s highest appeals court to challenge the right for British couples to create babies via in vitro fertilization to help cure sick siblings.

UK’s Medical News Today reports:

This ruling is the result of an appeal by the Hashmi family, whose son who was born with thalassaemia major. The Hashmi’s say the only hope for their son, who is now six years old, is to create a child with the same tissue type.

Zain (the son) has to have regular transfusions plus loads of medications throughout the day. Thalassaemia major is s serious genetic disorder. Patients with thalassaemia major doe not produce enough red blood cells.

Doctors aim to take stem cells from the newborn’s umbilical cord and transplant them into Zain.

Mrs Hashmi was overjoyed with the new ruling, she said “It is nice to know that society has now embraced the technology to cure the sick and take away the pain. It has been a long and hard battle for all the family and we have finally heard the news we wanted to hear.”

Making ‘designer babies’ is a controversial subject throughout the world. Many scientists and doctors say it would cure many sick children. Some worry that this could be the beginning of more ominous things to come.

Indeed, as England’s Times Online notes, this has been a long — and emotional — case with implications throughout the world:

Two years ago Raj and Shahana Hashmi, his parents, were granted the right to have the embryo of their next baby, produced using in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) treatment, screened to ensure its blood-type was compatible with Zain’s.

They hoped that once the baby was born, its tissue could be used in a bone marrow transplant.

Mrs Hashmi has since had a number of miscarriages and is now 40. The case continued in the courts, nonetheless, because the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics (CRE) - which opposes the selection of embryos on the grounds that the unselected embryos are not given a chance of life - pressed for the High Court judgement to be overturned, claiming that the creation of designer babies was against the law.

Josephine Quintavalle, who heads the group, argued that the screening of embryos had broader implications and could be used in future to select children with particular traits, such as sex, appearance and intelligence.

Prediction: Given the passions this issue arouses, we’ll see ripple effects from this ruling in other countries…and probably not in the all-too-distant future.

The Internet is clearly a potential political force — and we need look further for confirmation of this fact than this news story:

MOSCOW, April 29 (RIA Novosti) - FSB analysts have admitted for the first time that the Internet poses a threat to Russian authorities. Referring to the experience of Ukraine and Georgia, a representative of the FSB Center for Information Security, Dmitry Frolov, put forward an idea to impose stricter technical control over the Russian Internet domain during a round table on legislation on communications and IT at the Federation Council on Thursday.

Both Biznes and Gazeta.ru report the FSB proposed imposing immediate control over users and providers of Internet services, which is the crux of an idea to tighten up control that has long been under discussion by the Russian authorities.

“All providers must be ordered to keep track of Internet activities conducted by their registered users,” Frolov said. In his opinion, providers must register permanent and dynamic IP-addresses of their customers and send this information to the security agencies. He also said it was necessary to “introduce mandatory registration of mobile phone users, considering they have Internet access.”

The FSB is the Russian federal intelligence agency. And it clearly wants to keep closer tabs on who is reading what, writing what, and using what phones. More:

In his reasoning, the FSB representative constantly referred to the flood of extremist sites “of various political backgrounds,” which can “use the Web for mobilizing political forces against state authorities.” He referred to recent events in Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine as striking examples.

Despite the obvious threat expressed by the FSB representative, businessmen and officials from the Information Technology Ministry reacted to his statements skeptically. “We believe the Internet should not be controlled,” said Alexander Parshukov, a ministry spokesman. He said the current Law on Media provided a solid legislative base covering the responsibility of providers for Internet content.

“In fact, all providers have long been cooperating with the security agencies,” said Alexander Malis, the vice president of Korbina-Telecom. “There is no need to impose additional control. Besides, in the majority of cases it is virtually impossible to establish the identity of someone sending an e-mail.”

Still: it’s hard to believe a member of a federal intelligence agency would make such a suggestion — unless it displays the tip of the iceberg of thought within at least some segments of the federal government.

The FDA has approved a drug that proves a Gila Monster can be a diabetes patient’s best friend.

Or, Gila Monster spit, to be exact. The reason: Byetta, known chemically as exenatide, is derived from a Gila Monster’s saliva and it has now been given the green light by the FDA to become an injected option for Type 2 diabetics to control their blood sugar.

The Washington Post notes that, for now, it’s supposed to be used with older drugs and not alone. More:

Some 18 million Americans have diabetes, the vast majority the Type 2 form, in which the body loses the ability to turn blood sugar into energy because it either doesn’t produce enough insulin or doesn’t use it correctly. It is closely associated with obesity.

When diet and exercise aren’t enough to control Type 2 diabetes, patients can try certain oral medications to lower blood sugar. The most common, drugs called sulfonylureas, spur the body to produce more insulin.

When those drugs fail, adding Byetta to them offers patients a new option to try before resorting to injections of insulin.

Byetta is the first so-called “incretin mimetic,” meaning it mimics action of a hormone called GLP-1 that’s secreted by the gut to spur insulin production after a meal _ but only when blood sugar is high.

That’s important, noted FDA metabolic drugs chief Dr. David Orloff, because other diabetes drugs spur insulin secretion even if blood sugar already is low, leading to the risk of hypoglycemia.

Byetta is a synthetic version of a protein found in the saliva of the Gila monster that works similarly to the human GLP-1.

The San Diego Union-Tribune has a great piece (which should be read in full) on Dr. John Eng, the researcher credited with the discovery. A small part:

Eng came across what he thought were very interesting studies done in the early 1980s by gastroenterologists at the National Institutes of Health, who noted that the venom in certain snakes and lizards caused inflammation of the pancreas, where insulin is made. Of particular interest was the hormone in the venom of the Gila monster.

Eng thought he had developed a test that would allow him to further investigate the lizard’s venom. So he ordered some dried and preserved samples out of a catalog from a serpentarium in Utah…

In 1992, Eng’s studies revealed that the venom contained two compounds, including one that had never been documented. He named it exendin-4.
The compound seemed to have properties similar to a human gut hormone, GLP-1, that was being researched around that time by scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital.

GLP-1 was exciting to researchers because it stimulates insulin secretion from the pancreas only when blood sugar is high, Eng said. When blood sugar levels are normal, GLP-1 seems to know not to stimulate insulin, the hormone that helps cells process blood sugar.

“That’s ideal for treating diabetic patients,” Eng said. “As a clinician working with diabetics, the struggle is to try and achieve as much glucose (blood sugar) control as you can to prevent bad complications like kidney failure, retinal disease that can cause blindness and nerve damage that causes loss of sensation in the feet.”

But there is one hitch: there are some concerns about side effects, as The Street.Com details:

During an Amylin conference call Friday, the company exploded with a collective “woohoo!” But some analysts didn’t see much to holler about yet.

Mark Schoenebaum of Bear Stearns is concerned that “twice-daily injections and [side effects such as] nausea will be a hindrance to rapid adoption and that the upper end of Street expectations will need to be reined in.” Bear Stearns says it’s a market maker in Amylin’s securities.

PERSONAL NOTE: My grandfather Abraham Ravinsky had diabetes and used to monitor it and do all the treatments himself. When he died, it was not due to his diabetes. But over the years I’ve known many people with diabetes, two of whom (a journalist and a ventriloquist/magician) died of complications that turned fatal once they developed problems with their feet. This is great news for diabetes patients. And it also suggests that the spitting mad Gila Monster may be here for another reason..

One upon a time in land called the United States there was something called the Presidential news conference and no matter what party the Prez belonged to he could call one and get on prime time TV — but that was once upon a time..

In a showdown that featured inside-the-Beltway lobbying and bare-knuckle boardroom negotiating, Donald J. Trump and President Bush effectively squared off yesterday in pursuit of the same parcel of real estate - a piece of the NBC-TV prime-time lineup. And it was the president who blinked first.

But in the end, the president’s aides appeared to be every bit as canny as those representing Mr. Trump. The decision by the White House to move up the starting time of its news conference by a half-hour - a move that NBC sought, at least in part to protect the starting time of Mr. Trump’s “Apprentice” show - set off a chain of events that wound up garnering the president live coverage on all fourmajor broadcast networks.

As the New York Times notes above, there are new/old realities of 21st Century television (economics)so for a President to get on now during prime time isn’t a given. The irony is that in Bush’s case no one can’t say “He’s abusing the privilege..” because if anything Bush hasn’t held a prime time conference in a year. It was almost time to put his photo on a milk carton. More:

For all the networks, the very selection of last night by the White House, regardless of the time, posed a dilemma. It was first night of the so-called May sweeps period, one of three main times in the year in which network ratings are closely tracked, with an eye on setting advertising rates for the next year.

It was that timing, as much as the White House suggestion that Mr. Bush had no major announcement to make, that gave the networks pause about going live, several executives said.

It isn’t election year so the argument couldn’t be made that he was running for office. The argument COULD be made that a bunch of hot-button issues hung in the balance — Social Security, the Republican’s apparently getting ready to use their long-threatened nuclear option to ban the filibuster on judicial nominees — and that perhaps the President wanted to sway voters. But that would be all the more REASON to hold