Some nice b.orger who'd watch tv with me and share shopping trips needs to buy it.

Plus bonus proximity to mac!

I would accept this gift! And send something (TBD) in return.

Right on. Send me your address, and someday I will mail it!

isn't the connection between a lifetime of smoking and its odds of causing one to develop lung cancer a well-supported medical fact

The funny thing is, there's a more immediate -- and always overlooked -- connection between smoking and hardening of the arteries, i.e. heart attack country. Nobody (outside of, like, doctors) ever says "coulda seen that coming" when an ex-smoker has a heart attack, but lung cancer tends to get the full force of the cause-and-effect stinkeye. (There are also weird genetic factors involved in the lung cancer-smoking connection, too, which is why my grandmother smoked an obscene number of cigarettes in her lifetime and still managed to live into her 80s cancer-free.)

I do recall reading an essay by Russell Banks in which he described, in his childhood in the 40s, calling cigarettes "coffin nails." But I think that's the kind of thing where, people kind of know something's bad for you, but they don't know it know it for a really long time.

(Until that day in health class where they make you look at slides of blackened, cyst-ridden lungs. Almost as much fun as the horrible livers of alcoholics!)

Operation Lets Muslim Women Reclaim Virginity

The operation in the private clinic off the Champs-Élysées involved one semicircular cut, 10 dissolving stitches and a discounted fee of $2,900.

But for the patient, a 23-year-old French student of Moroccan descent from Montpellier, the 30-minute procedure represented the key to a new life: the illusion of virginity.

Like an increasing number of Muslim women in Europe, she had a hymenoplasty, a restoration of her hymen, the thin vaginal membrane that normally breaks during the first act of intercourse.

I meant to add Yikes to my post above.

Salon mentioned that a while back in Broadsheet. I seemed to be the only person in the letters who thought it was a dandy idea.

Icky, sure, but no more icky than the idolization of virginity in the first place -- at least it levels the playing field.

God machine back. Have universe.

lisah: [link]

(that'll be current whenever you click on it.)

We all heard about this on NPR this morning right? [link] Surprise yourself!

Yeah, now I wish I had ordered a few weeks ago, when it first came up here. Now it'll be ruined!

("No one goes there any more -- it's way too crowded!")

I just hope stormy doesn't happen before I have a chance to pick up my dog and walk him! (also, really really hope it doesn't do something crazy like knock out power!)