Business argot, then translation
I read the following big-pharma stock market update without comprehending a word of it. In fact, as soon as I realized the subject matter was financial, I broke out into a cold sweat and my face started to melt.
Thank goodness Business Week digested it and then regurgitated it in a language even I can sort of understand.
(RTTNews) – Targacept (TRGT | charts | news | PowerRating) revealed Wednesday that AstraZeneca (AZN | charts | news | PowerRating) decides to continue development of AZD3480 in Alzheimer’s disease and cognitive deficits in schizophrenia. The company stated that under this collaboration deal it would receive $20 million Payment from AstraZeneca. The company noted that this announcement follows the finalization by AstraZeneca of previously disclosed studies of AZD3480. Targacept climbed in early trading Wednesday, but lost momentum and saw little movement through mid-day. The stock has, however, climbed further in the last few minutes. The stock is higher by $2.25 at $9.69 on the year’s heaviest volume and is trading at a new historic high. Previous to today’s move, the stock had been range-bound since early November./ Copyright(c) 2006 RealTimeTraders.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Translation after the jump.
liz | 2:49 PM | Uncategorized
Mental illness made me do it: Steal lingerie
From IOL:
Taipei – A Taiwan man has been sentenced to eight months in jail for stealing women’s lingerie, a newspaper reported on Friday. Chang Cheng-wei, 31, from Taichung City in central Taiwan, has stolen at least 109 pieces of lingerie over the past three years.
The report said a woman had been losing lingerie drying on the wash-line on her balcony for a long time. So she installed a security camera, which caught Chang in the act.
Chang claimed he suffered from mental illness which caused him to steal lingerie and pleaded for leniency, but the judge said that if Chang was ill, he should have seen a doctor. Since he had disturbed local residents’ lives, he deserved to be put in jail. – Saoa-dpa
[Image from—where else?—Frederick's of Hollywood.]
liz | 12:50 PM | Uncategorized
The perils of tough love
Thanks to Amara for sending me the below article about troubled kids from Reason Magazine . The whole notion of “tough love” is problematic; it leaves so much room for abuse. Really deliinquent kids are often sent to so-called boot camps where they’re ostensibly taught discipline. The issue with such places is that for every kid who thrives in that environment, there are probably two or more who are traumatized. Kids die from abuse in such programs—abuse disguised as discipline. The problems have been serious enough for Jeb Bush, no soft touch, to shut down Florida’s state-run youth boot camps and forbid like programs that still exist from employing physical and psychological punishment. But as this article makes clear, such prohibitions can only be enforced to a certain degree. Private programs are exempt.
The Trouble with Troubled Teen Programs: How the “boot camp” industry tortures and kills kids
[Photo by Rochie via Flickr.]
liz | 11:50 AM | Uncategorized
BBI: Reminder: Medicare Open Enrollment Date
Open enrollment for some people ends this weekend, so keep the following in mind. [Thanks to A-List Promo for the image.]
From NAMI:
Who Needs to Contact Medicare Before Midnight December 31?
The short answer is anyone who wants to switch their drug coverage for the coming year, or who did not enroll in 2006. In addition, Medicare beneficiaries who are happy with their prescription coverage also need to carefully check into changes in coverage for 2007 including:Changes in premiums and cost sharing,
Adjustments to formularies (the list of covered drugs),
Movement of specific drugs to different cost sharing tiers, or
Imposition of new or different utilization management policies on specific medications (prior authorization, step therapy, quantity limits, etc.).If a Medicare drug plan made any of these adjustments to their coverage policies for 2007, then they were required to notify all enrollees in writing by October 31 through an “Annual Notice of Change” or ANOC letter. In addition, Medicare has also been sending notices of changes in coverage in recent, especially for dual eligibles whose status as “Low Income Subsidy” is changing (see details below).
liz | 10:46 AM | Uncategorized
I try to be open-minded…
I’m fascinated by this kind of thing. Sure, the lady could’ve been paid. She could’ve been faking. And yes, this guy looks and talks like Thomas Haden Church and should probably dry his hair when he gets out of the shower. But what if this works? I have such a terrible phobia of vomit, and it really causes me a lot of trouble. I don’t think I could go through a similar treatment given the nature of that phobia, but boy, I’d love to have it resolved.
liz | 3:55 PM | Uncategorized
Slow Jews day
Ha ha. I’m making fun of the fact that I’m jetlagged and sleep-deprived. Don’t worry—I’ve got a million like that one.
Though you might be breathing easy because the holidays are over, don’t let your guard down. We still have to survive New Year’s Eve, which is arguably more depressing because you always think, “Maybe next year will be bettter,” which then causes you to think about last year and why it didn’t meet your expectations. Plus, you’ve eaten all kinds of crap over the holidays and have gained five pounds and you know your NYE resolution to lose weight will only make you glum.
Oh, sorry. Am I projecting?
Anyway, if you’re still feeling like you’re having a hard time, check out “Mental Illness: Coping With the Holidays” from Mental Health Ministries. Download it here.
[When I looked at the NAMI press release about the brochure, it mentioned Rohatsu, and I was all, "whahatsu?" It's a Japanese Buddhist holiday, hence this image from buddhamuseum.com.]
liz | 3:41 PM | Uncategorized
Glad tidings for 2007
This sentence from an Associated Press article by Frederic J. Frommer gives me hope for the new year:
After years of trying, advocates think they have a good chance of getting Congress to pass legislation next year that would require equal health insurance coverage for mental and physical illnesses, if their policies include both.
Yeah, baby! Apache jump on it!
Mental health bill to face House vote
liz | 1:18 PM | Uncategorized
Noose removal
In the U.K., where there’s a problem with suicidal prison inmates, guards will now be given knives, which they’re expected to use to cut people down when they try to hang themselves. This solution came as a result of the discovery that 90 percent of inmates that attempt suicide do so by hanging. The knives aren’t really knives; they’re more like scythes designed to cut through rope and fabric. Sounds kind of like a fishing gaff or something. While I appreciate the effort to pay attention to this issue, maybe they should be asking why so many of their inmates are suicidal, and deal with that.
Prison issue knives to officers to cut suicide rate
[Don't use the knife in this photo if you're planning to cut a noose. It's good for newsprint, though.]
liz | 11:29 AM | Uncategorized
Cutie pie
For last week’s column, I wrote about CuteOverload.com, and the deliciousness therein.
THE TROUBLE WITH SPIKOL
Precious Matters
What happens when my two passions—bargains and adorableness—collide.
by Liz Spikol
There are certain words that make my heart beat faster. “Value,” for one. “Dollar,” for another. “99 c.”—arguably not a word—is especially beguiling.
This is not, as you might think, because I’m cheap—or poor. I’m doing okay. But it’s a question of values.
Why spend $3 on toilet paper if you can spend $1? Why buy a $28 candle when you can buy one for a dollar? Why buy $12 place mats at Pier 1 when you can find the same exact place mats for $1 each?
These aren’t rhetorical questions. I really want to know.
Until I’m persuaded otherwise, I’m sticking with Value City, where I recently purchased a cottony nightgown with yellow ducks on it. I say, “cottony” because I think it’s actually made of flammable plastic softened by boll weevils under the influence of too many pesticides. But it sure is cute. And it cost $3.
When I got it home I put the nightgown on over my clothes—that’s how excited I was to own it—and ran to the mirror, where I discovered one size does not really fit all. It was much too long, and it billowed ridiculously around my thin frame. (Yes, I’m saying thin frame. You want to argue?) The lace up the front was like a brittle shredded doily. The buttons were strangely slippery—maybe from the pesticides.
But the duckies! So incredibly cute. And if there’s any word I love as much as “value,” it’s “cute.”
My cute obsession is all encompassing and borderline self-destructive. I spend hours poring over photos of puppies, kittens and all other baby animals. That there’s now ample video footage online just makes it worse. How can I not click on a clip titled “The Tiniest Mew”? What am I, made of steel?
When I see cuteness, my insides melt. My blood pressure drops, and I get dizzy. I feel elated and unbearably moved. Tears form in my eyes, and I feel the world has been carefully designed to meet my needs. It’s everything I searched for in religion but never found.
Consequently, I cruise YouTube’s cute offerings like a sweaty-browed porn addict. I look for new videos because they stop “working” after about 10 views. I get ridiculously excited when I see there’s a new video of basset hound puppies—preferably with big, floppy ears they’ll trip over.
If the computer stalls while loading a video of kittens “discovering the big bed,” I get panicky and frustrated. When the little mewling and purring of the kittens on-screen gets too loud, I turn down the volume on my computer so no one knows what I’m doing. And I always keep another browser window open so I can toggle quickly between screens. Is this not a cry for help?
Thankfully, my job requires that I search for cuteness. I have a “cute fix” category on my website—which, I’ll remind you, is a blog about mental health. Every couple of days (not more often; that would seem desperate) I post a cute picture, ostensibly because people with mental health issues could use a little cheering up. In reality, the feature serves my addiction, making blog readers unwitting enablers.
The sine qua non of online cuteness is, of course, Cute Overload, the creation of the brilliant Meg Frost. On the site Frost employs her Rules of Cuteness to assess submissions, and she’s developed a cuteness dialect—including words like “baroo” and “anerable”—that other cute addicts employ in the comments section.
Not surprisingly, the comments aren’t the sophisticated political commentary you might find, say, on Daily Kos.
Here are a few examples I found in response to a photo of puppies inside a plastic bin of mint candy: “eeeeeeeeeeek puppehs!!!” And “Them’s some sleeeeepy lil stubbypuffs!” And, more sensibly, “That is so cute! Look at the little leg dangle! I bet their fur is so silky. I’d love to rub lil warm pupper body again my cheek.”
I’ve never felt so much kinship in my life. These are my people.
I’ve long wanted to be one of Cute Overload’s so-called cuteologists, but my submissions haven’t made the cut. I did place myself—defiantly, I’d say—on the Cuteologist Map, which features cute hunters from everywhere from Finland to Australia. And a video of my sugar gliders made it onto Cutecast, which is Cute Overload’s new video component. But it’s not the same. Until I get onto the home page, I won’t be satisfied.
But everyone hits rock bottom. Walking out of the gym the other day, a little girl passed me on the stairs. Generally, I don’t respond as acutely to human cuteness, but she was pretty charming.
I’d seen her marching around the gym in imitation of the adults, and it made me feel tender. I looked at her tiny nose and pink cheeks, and smiled at her in a goofy way.
She turned to watch me go, and then called after me, “I like your Hello Kitty backpack!”
Suffice to say, I’m getting a new gym bag. Is a Pikachu backpack too silly? Because he’s awfully cute, and I know where I could get one for cheap …
CO’s Rules of Cuteness (a Sample)
>> More than one species of baby flopping around is cute.
>> A thing, accompanied by a smaller version of that thing, is always cute.
>> Piles of a cute thing jack up a cuteness rating exponentially.
>> Fuzz + floppy limbs = cute.
>> A cute animal + food = even cuter.
[This photo is my latest submission to CO. I think it's a winner.]
liz | 10:55 AM | Uncategorized
Depression Confession: Jessica Simpson
Jessica Simpson is down in the dumps. She fled the stage while singing “9 to 5,” a truly awful song, at the Kennedy Center awards ceremony, and Nick Lachey has moved on to someone nicer and cuter, while she’s left with her now-pretty sister Ashlee. (At least before Ashlee’s nose job, she could console herself by saying she’s the hot one in the family. No more.)
What’s the solution? According to Fametastic.com, to go to Colorado instead of Hawaii. Isn’t that backwards? Hmm. At any rate, if you care about all this, feel free to go to the link below. Personally, I’m falling asleep just thinking about it.
Jessica Simpson scales down Christmas holiday due to depression
[This photo is from Jess' happier days, when she felt both patriotic and lewd simultaneously.]
liz | 7:16 PM | Uncategorized
