21-Aug-02

"Are there some good programs for macs that block pop-up ads?" I ask this for a friend, I use Pop-Up Stopper -- free version -- for Windows and it works great.  Another option is to move to Mozilla, but hopefully someone knows of a good program.  Let me know of freeware, shareware, etc. comment [] 5:51:14 PM | permalink

posted by BGM August 21 12:02 PM | 6 comments. Da liddle guy checks out (in 18 months) Jean Cretien, the Prime Minister of Canada, has just announced he's stepping down thereby avoiding a party revolt and also neatly sinking his main opponent's chances. Will Canada ever find another PM who is as politically astute and at the same time as cartoon-like and embarassing (cough) Mel Lastman (cough)? Favourite memories, please..... [MetaFilter] I hope Frank McKenna ends up as leader, or maybe John Manley, for the Liberals.  Mike Harris for the Canadian Alliance?  If they unite the right, maybe, but that could take a million years.  Things may get interesting, but it's still too soon.  No Sheila Copps please.  Paul Martin is getting older and the only thing I know of that he would do differently than Chretien would be to offer Quebec separatists the world, and screwing ROC (the rest of canada). comment [] 3:49:17 PM | permalink

Robert Scheer In Iraq and Afghanistan, our current allies will be tomorrow's enemies By Robert Scheer Trial by public humiliation Some birth mothers in Florida must publish their sexual histories in local newspapers if they wish to place their child for private adoption By Janelle Brown Salon Premium Exclusive comment [] 8:32:55 AM | permalink

Pot easiest drug to buy, U.S. teens say. Beer or cigarettes harder to come by, drug survey finds. Quebec's ER law spooks doctors. Canada's doctors are up in arms over the Quebec government's decision to force physicians to work in understaffed emergency rooms, as well as its plan to bring in more legislation that would make them essentially government employees. Canada ranked among worst in health care. Canada spends more on health care than any other industrialized country, but ranks among the worst in the world for quality, according to a report (Fraser Institute) comparing Canada to 25 European and Asian countries with a similar universal, publicly funded system. Lottery audit branded a bad bet. Loto-Québec is using the carrot but not the stick to try to check on gambling by minors - a method that one critic says is just public relations. La climatisation des hôpitaux: trop cher, selon Legault. La climatisation de tous les établissements de santé du Québec coûterait des centaines de millions de dollars et demeure impensable pour l’instant, estime le ministre de la Santé, François Legault.  Air Conditioning in the hospitals would be too expensive to implement, no surprise there, but if people die in the waiting rooms I hope their friends, family members, etc., sue your fucking asses off.  I wouldn't be surprised if many have already done so, and accepted money to keep quiet about it all.  See study above: "Canada ranked among worst in health care", get it together fellas.  I had to e-mail the Prime Minister two years ago wondering why my wife had to wait six weeks to have her gallstones removed, she was in pain and couldn't do anything, and insurance doesn't pay you to wait for an operation, only supposedly help you after operations.  I'll stop now before I turn into a terrorist or something.  -- Just Kidding!!!  (A day or two after my e-mail to the P.M. the hospital called and was to operate on my wife a week later.  The doctors discovered an infection when they were removing the gallstones too, no wonder she was so sick, too bad the doctors she saw previously couldn't detect that, eh?  Health care in Canada, not too $, but you may die awaiting so-called-health-care services, or even worse, die because of a poor assessment, old machinery, or your next rendez-vous, etc.) comment [] 7:52:48 AM | permalink

Excerpt from last night's The National: Panel discussion on legalizing marijuana IAN HANOMANSING: And as you heard earlier in the show, new concerns have been raised about the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. Joining me now to talk about the pros and cons of prescription pot is Dr. Isra Levy of the Canadian Medical Association in St. John, New Brunswick. And in Toronto, Alan Young, a lawyer and professor at Osgoode Hall Law School. HANOMANSING: Dr. Levy, let me start with you. When you heard the Minister's comments, did you view that as a victory for the CMA? DR. ISRA LEVY (Canadian Medical Association): Well, we saw it as a victory in a sense for the public in Canada. We've been telling the Minister and her predecessor that we've got some concerns about the regulations that we outlined over a year ago. And those concerns predominantly relate to safety, safety concerns. So, the Minister's recognition of our position is certainly, I think, as a positive step, not for doctors but for Canadians. HANOMANSING: And I'll ask you about those safety concerns in just a moment but Professor Young, let me bring you into this. You have clients who use marijuana for medicinal purposes and what do you think they're view and indeed what was your view when you saw or read the Minister's comments. ALAN YOUNG (Professor, Osgoode Hall Law School): Well it's not shocking. It's very disappointing. It's not a surprise because we knew the government would start to back peddle from this project, but when you make a commitment and a promise to sick people to alleviate their suffering, you can't just with some whimsy decide that it wasn't a good idea and back peddle from it. A lot of people are suffering right now. There are 400,000 medical marijuana users in Canada so the announcement today is not joyous for those people. HANOMANSING: And what is happening with those medicinal marijuana users, your clients, what are they doing to get that marijuana? YOUNG: Well, with the limited energy that sick people have, they have to enter the black market, find drug dealers, expose themselves to contaminants and adulterants and it's a very bad situation. Currently in Manitoba, there's over 200 kilograms of very pure safe marijuana which should be used in open label clinical trials to see if it's going to help people. It's very sad that this government is forcing my clients and many patients out onto the street to look for medicine. HANOMANSING: Dr. Levy, you talked about safety concerns. So often in this story when medicinal marijuana is talked about, it seems like such a benign thing, the compassion clubs, by their very name, sound like things that only help and don't hurt. What are the health concerns from your perspective? LEVY: You know, Mr. Young and I actually share the same, and the compassion clubs, share the same desire to see Canadians who think that they need some kind of relief from medication or from some alternative to medication get that relief. We know though that marijuana is an addictive agent. We know that it's a dangerous agent. We know that it has short term negative health effects. We know it affects cognitive function. We know it causes anxiety and panic. We certainly know and I was worried at one point about Doug MacKay. We certainly that when you're, when you smoke marijuana, your cognitive function is down and people who operate motor vehicles after smoking marijuana are at higher risk of having crashes. So there are a number of short term concerns. There are a number of longer term concerns. We know that there's some relationship to long term cognitive impairment. Certainly smoking any agent is not safe. The material that made, that is in Manitoba may be pure in a relative sense, but I think to argue that it's safe simply is not something that we can do because cannabis, smoked cannabis certainly has long term side effects, just like tobacco does. HANOMANSING: Professor Young, your view of those concerns? YOUNG: Yeah, I fundamentally disagree with almost everything that was said. Smoking is a dirty delivery system. It's not an appropriate way to take medicine and ti will to chronic bronchial impairment. That is probably the only documented harm. All the other things that the doctors mention, we have suspicions of their suggestions of, it's never been verified in the human population study. This is one of the most benign harmless substances on the planet. And when we look at the side effects of conventional pharmaceuticals, the side effects from marijuana are marginal and the cognitive disorder and impairment the doctor is speaking of, there are many studies that indicate that is simply not true. Of course, when you are intoxicated, you aren't the brightest person but the intoxication does wear off. So I see this as a very safe product and I think that the Minister's suggestion that she's concerned about safety is just disingenuous. HANOMANSING: Let me ask you about that and I'll ask Dr. Levy about that in just a moment, but do you think the opposition to this is based on morality that's wrapped up in scientific questions. YOUNG: No. I believe it's a product of being considered the 51st state. I believe what has happened this year is that the Americans have started throwing their weight around to talk about retaliatory trade sanctions and clogging up the board or I think that's what's happened. There's nothing, except encouraging news coming out of clinical studies around the world about the medicinal value of marijuana so the only thing I see happening here is politics, not medicine. HANOMANSING: Dr. Levy, if you and the Canadian Medical Association saw results in your hand after a proper study that suggested that the benefits, medicinally outweigh the detriments, would the CMA then sign on to the use of medicinal marijuana? LEVY: For the use of medicinal marijuana delivered by safe delivery system for patients in whom it's been demonstrated as effective, absolutely. Physicians across this country advocate absolutely for access to medications that have been proven and with a relative safety versus side effect decision have been well constructed and well thought through. HANOMANSING: And what do you think it would take to get the kind of results that you would like to see? How long a study? How many people? In other words, how practical would it be to get the kind of empirical data that you and your colleagues want? LEVY: Well, let me just complete the thought that I had which is that Mr. Young acknowledged at the beginning of his comment that this is a, this is a dirty delivery system. There are trials that show that cannabinoids do have medicinal effect. It's, the issue here is the delivery system. Clinical trials take a long time, there's no question about that. But that's not to say, that's not a reason for not doing them. It's not a reason for not embarking on them. And there are trials internationally that have been commenced. There are trials that Health Canada has talked about doing. The real issue though is that at the end of the day when those trials all end, the regulatory agencies are going to have to review them and they're going to have to review the clinical evidence and they, you know, will have to make the assessment as to whether or not to license a drug that's going to go through good manufacturing practices that's going to be marketed in a way that physicians are prepared to be gate keeper as they are to conventional pharmaceutical agents. HANOMANSING: Let me just jump in here, Professor Young, perhaps unfairly, I only have about less than half a minute, what would you like to see next? YOUNG: I understand. Well I can tell you, my clients don't have the luxury to wait ten years for the clinical trials to complete. They're going to take a long time. Cannabis is a very chemically complex substance. Thirty years ago, the Dane Commission said start the research. The government didn't. Right now my clients and these patients should get access to the medicine. Let the government do the research to confirm that it's valuable. But the burden should not be on sick people. HANOMANSING: Professor Young, Dr. Levy, thank you very much. YOUNG: My pleasure. LEVY: Thank you. comment [] 7:15:36 AM | permalink

The FBI issued a worldwide bulletin seeking the arrest of Saud A.S. al-Rasheed, 21, of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. (AP /FBI) ...: " I'll keep my eyes open in terrorist-haven Montreal. comment [] 7:01:05 AM | permalink

Random: Stupid Biased News Media and the Cute Little Puppies. If someone says 'Oh those poor little puppy dogs in Afghanistan' one more time, I'm gonna let them have it! [Morons Dot Org] comment [] 6:49:03 AM | permalink

Now It Can Be Told: A wily liberal activist who hides behind the pseudonym “veggiemama” has blown the lid off our nefarious plan to unseat Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D – Saudi Arabia), just in time to change the course of the election. Now that the polls are open in Georgia and there are precious few hours to set things right, I have decided come clean and reveal the true extent of The Plot. [The Indepundit] comment [] 6:42:13 AM | permalink