Lobbyists be Gone

Remember when the new administration said, "There is no room for lobbyists in this Administration" just a few short months ago?

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney.com) -- The fight over health care overhaul is on track be the most expensive issue ever to hit the hallways of Congress.

The bill for lobbyists, television ads and political donations has topped $375 million - or enough to pay the entire insurance tab for about 30,000 families a year. 

The largest chunk has gone to direct lobbying of lawmakers and other policymakers. In the first half of 2009, the health care industry spent nearly $280 million on lobbyists, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

"The health sector is on track in 2009 to spend more on lobbying than it has on any other year in U.S. history - and by a lot," said Dave Levinthal of the Center for Responsive Politics, which analyzes and collects lobbying and campaign spending figures. And we think our elected officials really work for us?

Quotable

When people cease to believe in God, they don’t believe in nothing; they believe in anything.

Stimulated Internet

The $787 billion stimulus bill set aside up to $350 million to create a national broadband map that could guide policies aimed at expanding high-speed Internet access. According to AP, it is also to figure out where broadband Internet access is available and how fast it is. The NTIA also wants extensive data on that behind-the-scenes Internet infrastructure. Officially, the goal for the map is to help shape broadband policy and determine where best to invest the $7.2 billion in stimulus money earmarked for broadband programs.

In addition to the NTIA's mapping project, there's a parallel push at the FCC to gather more detailed data on broadband subscribers. Both efforts are designed to aid the Administration in setting telecom policy, said Colin Crowell, a senior counselor to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Of course the mapping will not be done by the February 2010 release date of a national broadband plan being developed by the Federal Communications Commission, which is also mandated by the stimulus bill.

North Carolina's state broadband authority e-NC already maintains a map of broadband availability in the state, detailed enough to list individual addresses, according to executive director Jane Smith Patterson.

Rory Altman, director at telecommunications consulting firm Altman Vilandrie & Co., which has helped clients map broadband availability, said $350 million was a "ridiculous" amount of money to spend on a national broadband map. The firm could create a national broadband map for $3.5 million, and "would gladly do it for $35 million," Altman said.

Dave Burstein, editor of the DSL Prime broadband industry newsletter, believes a reasonable cost for the map would be less than $30 million.

Internet service providers have already committed to handing over data about where they have broadband coverage, so the main job will be to collect and translate that information into a map.

When the Pew Internet and American Life Project surveyed people who didn't have broadband in 2007 and 2008, it found that most of them aren't interested in it, find the Internet too hard to use, or don't have computers.

Most Expensive Chocolate

I found it. Knipschildt's La Madeline au Truffe was recognized by Forbes Magazine as the most expensive chocolate in the world.

La Madeline au Truffe starts with a decadent 70% Valrhona dark chocolate, heavy cream, sugar, truffle oil and vanilla as the base for the rich creamy ganache. A rare French Perigord truffle is then surrounded by this ganache. It is enrobed in Valrhona dark chocolate and then rolled in fine cocoa powder.

The result is pure extravagance! Lying on a bed of sugar pearls in a silver box tied with a ribbon. For a 1.9 ounce ball as shown, costs $250. This product is made to order and ships within 14 days of order date. Product has a 7 day shelf life. Mmmm!

Chocolate

There is a theory that chocolate slows down the aging process. It may not be true, but should you dare take the chance?

Unwanted Catalogs

When you receive unwanted catalogs or other paper mail from specific sources, call the (usually toll-free) customer service number of the organization or business and request that your name be removed from their mailing list.

Other options are to make your request via e-mail from the company's website, or via letter or postcard.

Since the mailing label will help the company identify how you are listed in its files, have the label handy when you call, or tape it to the postcard if you make a written request. Sign and date your request. Think of the cycle, they print the stuff, send it to the post office, which delivers it to our mailbox, and we take the paper from the mailbox, and deliver it to the garbage. What a waste. Literally!

Double Chicken

 KFC Double Down Sandwich - Two pieces of bacon and two slices of cheese smothered with the Colonel’s Sauce and two fried chicken patties as buns. Mmmm!

Speaking of Chicken

Did you ever wonder what chicken poop is good for? A study last month Aug, 2008 shows that shooting ranges in Japan have extremely high levels of lead in the soil. To get rid of this, they developed a method of remediating the contamination by mixing the soil with chicken poop to reduce the bad environmental impacts from the lead.

The study  (published in the Journal of Environmental Quality this past month, and last year at the Soil Science Society of America) demonstrated that the amendment reduced the toxicity characteristic leaching by 90%. It also showed that levels were reduced even further when plants were grown in the amended soil.

Smell This

The male gypsy moth can 'smell' the virgin female gypsy moth from 1.8 miles away.

Cool Charger

 An 8in x 6in universal recharging pad with a conductive surface that powers up to four mobiles and iPods at a time from the mains. You attach a specific adaptor sleeve to the device to charge, then simply place it on the pad.

A recharge is said to take as long as with a conventional charger. The pad comes with one sleeve (you choose), and others can be bought separately, with major phone brands such as Apple, BlackBerry, Motorola and Nokia supported.

The Duracell MyGrid that you see here is one of those that can charge several mobiles at one time including products from Nokia, Motorola, BlackBerry, as well as the iPhone and iPod touch. It should be available in October for $80. 

You have to buy a device (sleeve) to plug into your devices so they can attach to the surface. Seems like a multiple power cord strip with less cords.

Brain Gel

An injectable hydrogel could aid recovery from brain injury by helping stimulate tissue growth at the site of the wound, researchers say.

Research on rats suggests the gel, developed by Dr. Ning Zhang at Clemson University, South Carolina, and made from synthetic and natural sources, may spur growth of stem cells in the brain. She predicted the gel may be ready for human testing in a few years.

Following a brain injury the tissues tend to swell up and this causes the loss of more cells, compounding the damage caused by the original wound. The standard treatments attempt to minimize this secondary damage at the site of the injury, for instance by lowering the temperature or relieving the build up of pressure, but their impact is often limited.

Scientists believe that transplanting donor brain cells into the wound to repair tissue damage is potentially a more productive approach, but while this method has produced limited results when used to treat brain injuries. The donor cells do not tend to thrive at the site of injury, or to stimulate repair. This could be due to inflammation and scarring at the injury site, and the lack of supportive tissue and blood supply to provide the necessary nutrients.

The advantage of the new gel, which is injected into the injury in liquid form, is that it can be loaded with different chemicals to stimulate various biological processes.

First, Dr. Zhang used it to help re-establish a full blood supply at the site of a brain injury in rats, potentially providing a much more friendly environment for donor cells to thrive. In follow-up work, she loaded it with immature human stem cells and the chemicals they needed to develop into fully fledged adult brain cells. After eight weeks of treatment with this mixture rats with severe brain injuries showed signs of making a significant recovery.

Quotable

"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." -Ben Franklin

Bad Ad

Wow, this recession really has taken its toll. Now these Benjamin Franklins are only worth 001 dollars each.

Look close.

Quotable

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.