I've dated women who drank lots of red wine, and I never noticed purple teeth. The Fab Five give a lot of good tips, but that wasn't one of them.

Uh-uh, Jon, the red wine danger is a deadly one. I think food might help, but it happens to me enough to limit red wine consumption to in private.

Maybe its genetic, like the way the noses of some Irish people turn red when they drink....

I think you're standing on shaky ground with this one, Jon. Genetic staining? I think it's that other drinks or food may rinse the stain off.

I think you're standing on shaky ground with this one, Jon.

I think I need to use more winkies in my posts.

You remember those chewable tablets from the dentist that stick to plaque and turn your teeth red where you didn't brush? Red wine could work like that.

Congrats Jimi, I'm down to a pack a week so I'm nearly there.

Ken, don't forget where Murdoch learnt the TV/entertainment business and got his start. Our commercial broadcasters are old hands at the 'treat-the-viewers-like-shit' style of program scheduling, also known as the 'Viewers! What are they? I'm only interested in advertising revenue' style, or the increasingly prevalent 'If-it's-not-sport*-or-real-estate-advertising-dressed-up-as-entertainment-it's-purely-filler' school. This last one pretty much ensures that QE will be treated reasonably but Firefly & Monk, NSM.

(*and yeah, I think that the BB & Australian Idol type shows come under sport, spectator TV.)

ooh, Maggie Walsh is now a cop Captain in LA* :)

Ken, don't forget where Murdoch learnt the TV/entertainment business and got his start.

Umm, Rupert only owns print media in Australia. He didn't get film and TV until he branched out to the UK and US; he learnt about screwing viewers from them. :)

Thanks for the regards everyone. No-one is more surprised, by my success at quitting, than I am. I've tried dozens of times in the last 22 years and they all failed dismally. I guess this time worked b/c I prepared better: I set a quit date a few months earlier and as June 26 approached, I became more determined to succeed. I only used patches for a couple of weeks and after that it was just a matter of, "well, I've gone this long, might as well go a bit longer."

Oh and I have no stress in my life, so that helps more than anything else.

* Dragnet

Interesting article on global economics by Stephen Roach (Morgan Stanley guru) about the G7 meeting last weekend and the impact of the global policy directions.

some snippets ...

It’s worth underscoring how the world would benefit from an orderly depreciation of the dollar. From the standpoint of the United States, a weaker currency shifts the mix of economic growth from domestic demand to exports. Given America’s massive external financing needs -- currently more than $2 billion of capital inflows per business day -- foreign investors will probably need to be compensated for taking currency risk. That should result in higher real interest rates and a related suppression of domestic demand growth.

For the US, Dubai was also a watershed event. The motivation is not hard to fathom. At work is an increasingly powerful interplay between economics and domestic politics, as America’s jobless recovery appears on a collision course with the Bush Administration’s re-election hopes. With America’s fiscal and monetary levers already fully engaged, the currency option takes on new and critical importance as the only means left to provide macro stimulus to a beleaguered US labor market. It remains to be seen as to whether such tactics will work -- especially with IT-enabled outsourcing creating a new and lasting global labor-cost arbitrage that biases US employment growth to the downside.

History tells us that the US dollar has only just begun its downward descent. On a broad trade-weighted basis, the dollar (in real terms) has fallen about 8% from its early 2001 highs. In a full-blown current account adjustment, a drop of around three times that magnitude can be expected -- not all that different than the 30% real deprecation of the dollar that occurred in the late 1980s when the current-account disequilibrium was far less acute. In the end, a lopsided world has no choice other than to accede to a weaker dollar. The G-7’s Dubai communiqué now puts the major economies of the world on the same page with respect to the global rebalancing that such a currency realignment can trigger. The road ahead will be long and arduous -- and not without risk, especially in oft-volatile currency markets.

...From the standpoint of the United States, a weaker currency shifts the mix of economic growth from domestic demand to exports. Given America’s massive external financing needs -- currently more than $2 billion of capital inflows per business day -- foreign investors will probably need to be compensated for taking currency risk. That should result in higher real interest rates and a related suppression of domestic demand growth.

to translate - suppression of domestic demand growth+higher interest rates equal continued unemployment.

plus:

As an important aside, a weaker dollar will also be helpful in America’s anti-deflation campaign -- having the effect of transforming imported deflation into imported inflation.

So we get higher prices too. More unemployments and the return of inflation. And these are the benefits.