Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Friday, December 22, 2006

Find the Celebrity in You

From my sister. Just for fun.

Ever wonder which celebrities you resemble most? Well, now there is an easy new way to find out:



Just click on the image above to enter the site, upload your photograph, and this site will show you the ten celebrities (out of 4,016 listed) that you resemble most.

In addition to the female celebrities above, according to the facial scanners at MyHeritage.com, I also looked like Ewan McGregor and Christian Slater.

Includes all kinds of celebrities: actors, authors, poets, artists, sports stars, musicians, philosophers, psychiatrists, scientists, and politians.

However, I still think that the celebrity I look the most like is my sister Stacy (see below) who, according to the site above, looks like a cross between Meg Ryan and....Alice Cooper ?!?!

And apparently her boyfriend Max resembles Fidel Castro! Click here to see his results!


If your results reveal any kind of resemblance to Benicio del Toro, please email me privately....

Friday, December 15, 2006

UConn Monkey Shocker

From the latest edition of Good Medicine Magazine:

Federally Funded Monkey Study Gets Second Look:

Accusations of animal negligence against a neuroscience researcher at a University of Connecticut lab have been corroborated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. For the past 15 years, UConn Health Center faculty member Dr. David Waitzman has been drilling holes into the heads of monkeys, implanting steel springs in their eyes, inflicting brain damage, and measuring the effect of the brain damage on the monkeys’ eye movements. An inspection of Dr. Waitzman’s lab resulted in five citations for noncompliance that contributed to the death of a rhesus monkey named Cornelius. The lab has been cited by the USDA before for not effectively seeking out alternatives to potentially painful or distressful procedures.


Maybe they should give Dr. Waitzman a taste of his own medicine and send him up to the UConn Dental Clinics for treatment, where all of the above is the 'standard of care'.

Monday, December 11, 2006

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

State Judge Rules Against HMOs

Here are some quotes from a story that ran in The Hartford Courant on November 30, 2006. I found this story interesting because this is the same judge who presided over the mercury hearings that I attended this past summer. At issue then was whether or not dentists in this state were exempt from Connecticut's new Zero Mercury law, which states that no products shall be sold in this state if they contain mercury, a very toxic heavy metal used in dental amalgam. He ultimately dismissed the dental mercury lawsuit on the grounds that we, the people/public/consumers/plaintiffs, had no legal standing.

Health maintenance organizations that are paid almost $700 million by Connecticut taxpayers to care for low-income residents must tell the public how they spend the state's money, a Superior Court judge said Wednesday.

The ruling was a victory for advocates for the poor, who demanded the information because they believe the HMOs are paying doctors so little that many refuse to treat patients covered by the state-paid Medicaid health insurance program.

The HMOs - Anthem Health Plans, Healthnet of Connecticut and Community Health Network - have refused to disclose how much they pay doctors participating in Medicaid because they say the figures are trade secrets.

On Wednesday, Judge George Levine said that by virtually controlling the health care delivery for 311,000 children and their parents covered by the state's Husky Medicaid Plan, the HMOs are serving a government funtion.


I wonder if this will provide a precedence for overturning 'corporate confidentiality' rights that see industry able to fleece taxpayers, intervene in the democratic process and even physically harm (as is the case with mercury poisoning) with impunity.