- No school embodies all that is jacked up about the current
landscape of college sports more than Boise State. The Broncos, having long
been the ginormous fish in the tiny pond that is the Mountain West Conference
and wanting to play against the big boys of college football, was committed to play football in the Big East
starting in 2013 while all of its other sports, ironically, were to compete in
the Big West. Their arrival was viewed as a big get for the Big East, which
hoped to have a 12-team, coast-to-coast football conference, with a
championship game even though the conference’s seven non-BCS football school
recently voted to bolt the conference in search of a new home. Playing in a
conference that made no sense at all geographically was bad, but even worse is
Boise State bailing on that commitment before playing a single game. That’s
right, the school announced Monday it was reversing course and staying in the
Mountain West. According to Big East officials, the conference worked hard to
keep Boise State in the fold by was "unwilling" to give the Broncos
the deal that kept them in the Mountain West. "We worked hard with
Boise," Big East commissioner Mike Aresco said. "We explored a lot of
different ways to keep them. No question. Ultimately, we were unwilling to do
the things they wanted.” The Mountain West’s offer included a re-working of its
television contract with CBS Sports Network to allow the conference to sell
packages of its games to other networks. In other words, teams that appear on
national TV more often make more money – teams such as Boise State, whose home
games will also be sold in a separate package. The Broncos also managed to
stiff-arm the conference into allowing it/teams that play in BCS games and the
equivalent when the new postseason system starts in 2014 to keep half the
money. With Boise State back in the fold, Mountain West commissioner Craig
Thompson said his league is considering its own expansion plans……
- Does the color of the pill your doctor prescribes make any
difference in whether or not you take it as prescribed? If you ask investigator Dr.
Aaron S. Kesselheim, assistant professor of medicine in the Division of
Pharmacoepidemiology and Pharmacoeconomics at Brigham and Women's Hospital in
Boston, the answer is yes. Kesselheim led a study that found generic
medications that differ in color may make people less likely to want to
continue taking them. His team looked at patients who were taking
anti-epileptic drugs and used a national database of filled prescriptions from
2001 to 2006 to see if and when patients stopped filling their prescriptions.
Once they identified that point, researchers checked to see if the prior
prescriptions had varied in shape or color before the patient stopped taking
their medication. Of those studied, 11,472 patients stopped getting their
prescriptions and 50,050 others continued taking their medication. Those whose generic
prescription medication changed colors from the time they first time they
filled the prescription were over 50 percent more likely to stop consuming
them. "Pill appearance has long been suspected to be linked to medication
adherence, yet this is the first empirical analysis that we know of that
directly links pills' physical characteristics to patients' adherence
behavior," Kesselheim said. "We found that changes in pill color
significantly increase the odds that patients will stop taking their drugs as
prescribed." Individuals taking pills for epilepsy were most likely to
discontinue their medication under such circumstances (53 percent) while 27 percent of people taking the same
prescriptions for other reasons were more likely to stop taking their pills
once the color changed. Because generic medications make up more than 70
percent of all prescriptions given to patients and an estimated 50 to 75
percent of patients do not follow the advice of their health care professionals
when taking medication, figuring out ways to keep that pill train rolling are
obviously important……..
- Chill out, backwards-thinking towns across Massachusetts. Eighteen states and the District of Columbia
allow the use of medical marijuana and your state is one of them. So why are
you still fighting to keep sales of medical marijuana illegal in your town? A
new state law legalizing the use of medical marijuana went into effect in
Massachusetts went into effect Tuesday, but not every town wants to abide by
the will of the people. In fact, some cities are researching ways to change
their zoning bylaws to ensure sales of medical marijuana remain illegal in
their municipality. So far, these ass-hatted efforts are largely limited to the
eastern half of the state, but if this idiocy goes on any longer, there is a
decent chance this imbecilic thinking will begin infecting residents of
communities in the western part of the Bay State. These chron-opposers are up
in arms because apparently they have been living under rocks for decades and
were shocked by a new report claiming that one in 15 high school students smoke
marijuana on a near-daily basis. How that number comes as a surprise to anyone
is beyond imagination because a person who doesn’t know that teens love the
hippie lettuce must also not know that teenage girls think Taylor Swift is a
hero and believe that Justin Bieber doesn’t actually suck. Hopefully reason
will prevail and local governments will not foolishly continue to fight a law
that the people of Massachusetts decided to approve. Hell, the state Department
of Public Health has assured everyone that it will issue regulations to make
sure nobody takes advantage of the new law, so the entire state can rest
assured that there is NO way ganja will make its way into the hands of any
person without a legal prescription for it………
- When seeking criticism of anything in the entertainment
world that doesn’t involve looking like Elton John after a sneak attack by the
dressing room of a power punk rock band, former “American Karaoke” contestant
Adam Lambert is not a great source. That didn’t stop Lambert from weighing in
on the problems he saw with the new movie version of “Les Misérables.” Lambert, who
seems to believe he’s something other than a colossal musical punchline, tweeted
that the music in the film "suffered massively [because of] great actors
PRETENDING to be singers.” He added that that "the industry will say
'these actors were so brave to attempt singing this score live' but why not
cast actors who could actually sound good?" There is a doctoral dissertation-length
piece to explain why well-known actors were cast instead of no-names who sing
really well, but the bottom line is that Lambert has no real knowledge of what
it takes to make a great movie and judging from the music he’s released so far,
he doesn’t know much about that side of the entertainment industry either.
However, one of the film’s stars not only doesn’t have a problem with Lambert’s
critique, but actually agrees with the flamboyant former karaoke competitor. "I
don't disagree with Adam," Russell
Crowe tweeted. "Sure it could have been sweetened, [director Tom] Hooper wanted it raw and real, that's how it was." Raw, real
and judging from the film’s earnings thus far, finding plenty of fans to see a
movie that “suffered massively.” Lambert did write that Anne Hathaway's vocals were "breathtaking," praise
she’ll undoubtedly print out and use to prop herself up when she’s feeling
blue………
- Times are most definitely changing in Russia. A country
where getting drunk is both a sport and a way to forget that you live in an
oppressive Communist hell hole where you can’t get rid of a ruler even if 97
percent of the population votes against him treasures its alcohol, to say the
least. They just have a funny way of showing it as of Tuesday. Previously,
Russians classified beer not as an alcoholic beverage, but as food. Beginning
Jan. 1, a
law that declared beer is alcohol, not food, went into effect. Under these new
rules, beer can only be sold in licensed outlets and not as street kiosks, gas
stations and bus depots like it has been. Additionally, Russians won't be able
to buy it from shops between 11 p.m. and 8 a.m. and beer commercials will not
be allowed on TV or radio. Why the sudden veer toward Prohibition-istic
philosophies? Oddly enough, there is an actual government effort to reduce
alcohol abuse in Russian, where one in five male deaths are linked to the
drinky-drinky. Some – namely the brewing industry – have argued that the
crackdown will have the opposite effect and make alcohol even more popular. "It
will be tougher if you want to buy a beer on the way home from work, or pop
down from your apartment," said Isaac Sheps, chairman of the Union of
Russian Brewers. "So you have to stock at home. And stocking beer is more
problematic than stocking vodka. It's bulky, it's big and there's no room for
it in small homes. It's much easier to buy two bottles of vodka and manage for
your instant need for alcohol.” That’s right, an instant need for beer. Like if
a scene straight out of a beer commercial breaks out in your apartment building
and hot women are suddenly dancing on the table in your living room….and you
don’t have beer handy. Granted, vodka is still kind in Russia and according to
government statistic, it accounted for almost 50 percent of alcohol sales
between January and November, while beer claimed 32 percent of the market. Angry
(and beer-deprived) Russians can direct their rage toward former President Dmitri
Medvedev, who initiated an array of measures aimed at reducing what he called a
"national calamity." Hope your happy now, D………
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