Is the News Bad in a Forest If No One Reports It?

MAC QUICKEN

Michael Roth: ‘I have found MoneyDance is a pretty good alternative to Quicken on the MAC. They also let you download a free trial so you can give it a test drive.’

YOUR PARENTS’ ACHY JOINTS

Mike Mattes: ‘Glucosamine with chondroitin has worked for me also. But (as a diabetic) I found that it raised my blood sugar levels to out of control. Had to stop.’

☞ Oops.

Bob Hunter: ‘Having heard similar stories about the success of glucosamine with chondroitin, I tried it a couple of years ago. After a year, I reluctantly stopped having seen no change. My orthopedist tells me it only helps about 10% of those who use it, which is great if you’re one of those 10%.’

☞ Here‘s one somewhat more favorable assessment. Worth reading if you are considering this regimen.

Dave Matson: ‘Some admittedly modest Internet research reveals that glucosamine and chondroitin may indeed have a positive effect, but as with most natural/herbal ‘dietary supplements,’ research into safety and efficacy is largely lacking. All such products on the market are courtesy of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994 (DSHEA), one of the worst laws passed in the Nineties. This is the law that brought us ephedra and countless other dangerous products that are essentially completely unregulated. It’s long, but I highly recommend reading this synopsis of DSHEA.’

Emerson Schwartzkopf: ‘I started taking the stuff daily some 10 years ago when my joints sometimes got a bit sore on a daily basis (why not hedge against the arthritis that crippled my father?). I haven’t had joint pain since, and I don’t seem to suffer any side effects from long-term usage.’

David Ellis: ‘Glucosamine – I took it for two years, but never noticed a difference. Fish oil- with magic Omega3s did work. I started with 4 capsules and moved to 10. I don’t need my arthritis prescription any more. I used to crawl off the aikido dojo floor. Now I feel 20 years younger.’

Lynn: ‘Our dog, a Samoyed named Paddy, had a limp and had to take rather dangerous pain pills. We got him on G+C and, after a while, no more limp. They say he has arthritis and that stuff has done wonders. I always recommend it to people based on doggy evidence. He needs chewables which cost more, but he’s worth it.’

☞ Our dog, a Golden named Tarzan, is fully limber but had a really persistent cough. They say laughter is the best medicine, so we sat him down in front of Seinfeld reruns for a week and it went away. OK, we have no dog, but I think it would work.

TRANSPARENCY

Dave Sirota pulls together an interesting list:

President Bush has said that “in a society that is a free society, there will be transparency.” . . . But as the record shows, Bush is anything but pro-transparency. See the record for yourself:

• Knight-Ridder reports today that the Bush administration announced yesterday that it has “decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government’s top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.”

• When unemployment was peaking in Bush’s first term, the White House tried to stop publishing the Labor Department’s regular report on mass layoffs.

• In 2003, when the nation’s governors came to Washington to complain about inadequate federal funding for the states, the Bush administration decided to stop publishing the budget report that states use to see what money they are, or aren’t, getting.

• In 2003, the National Council for Research on Women found that information about discrimination against women has gone missing from government websites, including 25 reports from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Women’s Bureau.

• In 2002, Democrats uncovered evidence that the Bush administration was removing health information from government websites. Specifically, the administration deleted data showing that abortion does not increase the risk of breast cancer from government websites.

☞ Oh . . . and we are still waiting for the secret list of participants in Vice President Cheney’s energy policy – the one that even a subpoena from the Government Accounting Office could not pry loose. (And who blew Valerie Plame’s cover? And why won’t the White House be transparent about its pundit pay-offs, like the one to Armstrong Williams?)