Truly living without a heart

Yahoo News reported on the story of soon to be 15 year old D'Zhana Simmons, who lived 4 months without a real beating heart.  The article describes the advances in medicine for children.  Simmons underwent two heart transplants, with the most recent one being in October.  She will have to continue take heart medicine for the rest of her life.  Her doctors do believe that she may need another transplant before she turns 30.  A great read.  Click continued below to read the full article.

Continued

Watching a lot of TV, you probably are unhappy

A study by the University of Maryland has found that unhappy people watch more TV than normal.  It describes those unhappy people as being able to find some comfort with watching TV, as they are not very social, nor willing to find other activities.  While happier people go out and socialize more.  The article goes on to say while the economy is getting worser, more people will probably continue to watch more television.  Click continued to read the full article via yahoo news:

Continued

Pirates are still around, and they are stealing oil

A developing story in the news today is about how Somali Pirates have hijacked a Saudi Arabian-Owned Oil Tanker.  This story not only is a wild headline to read or even hear about, especially when you hear the word pirates in 2008, but it is true and extremely important.  This story has already affected the oil markets today, when the news came out, crude oil went up over a dollar.  Now crude is down over a dollar.  Stay here for updates on this story.  Click continued below to read an update from Bloomberg:

Continued

Watch what you say about a mother

This weekend the advertising people for Motrin made a big error.  They put out an ad geared towards new mom, who wear around there babies on there website.  A site that as of right now can't be assessed.  These mothers can usually be seen carrying around there newborns in slings or some other different types of ways.  The Motrin ad mentioned all of these ways, but the ad crossed a line, that sent mothers to the Internets, and all of the various mother blogging communities.  The ad implied that mothers were wearing around there newborns as a way to be fashionable.  The ad is below with the written transcript is below:

Wearing your baby seems to be in fashion. I mean, in theory it’s a great idea. There’s the front baby carrier, sling, schwing, wrap, pouch. And who knows what else they’ve come up with. Wear your baby on your side, your front, go hands free. Supposedly, it’s a real bonding experience. They say that babies carried close to the body tend to cry less than others. But what about me? Do moms that wear their babies cry more than those who don’t. I sure do! These things put a ton of strain on your back, your neck, your shoulders. Did I mention your back? I mean, I’ll put up with the pain because it’s a good kind of pain; it’s for my kid. Plus, it totally makes me look like an official mom. And so if I look tired and crazy, people will understand why.

As mentioned it sent out a shock wave, as you can read on the New York Times blog "Motherlode", that wrote about it today, executives at Motrin and Taxi New York City (the agency responsible for the ad), are trying fix the mistakes they made.  This story will be something to keep an eye on in the coming days.

"Did I just say...."

On MSNBC's Morning Joe, the host Joe Scarborough, dropped a nice F* bomb on live TV around 8 a.m. this morning.  Was it on purpose?  No, it was clearly an accident, this is evident because as you will see in the clip below.  Scarborough was attempting at telling a story, he meant to say F*, but used the entire word instead.  A few seconds later Mr. Scarborough had to ask what he had just done, because he just realized he hadn't said what he thought he said.  This was probably due to his producers probably screaming in his ear.  He did apologize for his actions.  

When justice doesn't get justice

In an article on the New York Times web site, that will be in tomorrows print edition, Erik Eckholm writes about a very disturbing trend. The trend is the lack of public defenders for the growing amount of cases in the country. Mr. Eckholm writes about how in Florida's Miami-Dade county there is a lawsuit that has been filed by lawyers to cut back on there workload. A workload that has increased over the last few years from somewhere around 210,000 clients/cases to over 225,000. The article goes on to describe how Florida is not the only place hard hit by this trend. It is happening all over the nation, along with a growing case load, budgets are also being cut. In Florida a budget cut of somewhere around 12%. The article also tells antidotes of lawyers who because they had such big caseloads they missed out on providing all of there clients with proper legal service. In one case a man who would've gotten 1-year in jail, did not because his lawyer could not get to him in enough time, he ended up receiving 5-years in jail. A very interesting article, that is linked below:

New York Times

"A beautiful thing to behold"

Last nights election of now President-Elect Barack Obama left many commentators with feelings of euphoria.  This was very evident in comments made by African American commentators.  One that really hit home were the comments made by PBS's Tavis Smiley on NBC last night.  Mr. Smiley is an African American from the state of Indiana.  A state that he was shocked to see still "in play" for Obama late into the night, a state that later on has gone for Obama.  The 5 minute video is below:

GO VOTE!!

Very simple message today to anyone who reads this blog.  

It doesn't matter who you vote for, just go out and vote.  It is your civic right and responsibility.  GO DO IT!!