Jennifer Aniston reveals what, to her, is the perfect guy.
The actress — who has dated Vince Vaughn, John Mayer and Bradley Cooper since her 2005 divorce from Brad Pitt – says she’s looking for a “normal” and “funny” guy.
“Nothing other than be a gentleman,” the 40-year-old singleton said of her ideal man. “A normal, nice guy. That’s all any girl wants I think. Maybe someone who is kind and funny.”
A new book explains. As far as I can tell, the answer is: It depends.
Now that‘s useful.
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Andrea adds: There really are limitations to the things “science” can uncover.
So that’s why I’ll post this item about Canada’s high infant mortality rate…
Prada said Canada’s relatively high infant mortality rate — the rate at which infants die before their first birthday — may be due to a high number of premature births and fertility programs increasing the number of multiple births, along with a variety of socio-economic and environmental factors
…while reminding you of this item, about how abortion is correlated with the subsequent premature delivery of wanted pregnancies.
A Swedish man does his best to appear ridiculous:
Swedish father Ragnar Bengtsson, 26, has entered into an experiment that he hopes will help him breastfeed his future children.
On Tuesday, the Stockholm family man began stimulating his breasts with a pump in a bid to produce milk.
“Anything that doesn’t do any harm is worth trying out. And if it works it could prove very important for men’s ability to get much closer to their children at an early stage,” Bengtsson told The Local.
Now that’s what I call worrying about your children’s best interests.
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Andrea adds: Wow. That’s very weird. Weird that he would try, and weirder still that he would go public with it. Classify this one under “When life imitates the Onion,” again!
Oh, I know. You’ll say these things are rare, that cervical cancer is a bad thing and that immunization programs are worth the risks. Certainly that’s what the experts always seem to say. But this 14-year-old girl was alive and now she’s dead.
Dr Caron Grainger, Joint Director of Public Health for NHS Coventry and the city’s council, said: “A 14-year-old girl took ill at a school in Coventry and was taken to University Hospital in the city where she later sadly died. Our sympathies are with the girl’s family and friends at this difficult time.”
She added that the incident happened shortly after the girl received the vaccine, but “no link can be made between the death and the vaccine until all the facts are known and a post-mortem takes place.”
[…]
Earlier this month, the drug safety watchdog MHRA said that thousands of schoolgirls were suffering suspected adverse reactions to the vaccine. Doctors’ reports found that girls of 12 and 13 were experiencing convulsions, fever and paralysis. The analysis drawn up by MHRA found that 2,107 patients reported suspected adverse reactions, with several reporting multiple reactions.
At the risk of sounding like a worse quack than I am (I’m not opposed to all vaccines; just the flu shot and this one, really): Why the rush to vaccinate girls given those kinds of side effects?
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UPDATE: Health officials say it’s “most unlikely” the vaccine caused her death.
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SECOND UPDATE, THURSDAY MORNING: “A girl who was vaccinated against cervical cancer died from a malignant tumour of the chest and not from a reaction to the jab, it was revealed.”
Oh boy, the knives are about to come out:
In a study which will cause renewed debate over who have to divide their time between caring for their offspring and going out to work, the researchers found children whose mothers worked were more likely to be driven to school, to watch more than two hours of TV a day, and have sweetened drinks between meals.
Children of mothers who worked full time also ate less fruit and vegetables, the study suggests.
Middle class families suffer the same problems as the findings remained similar even when household income was taken into account, the paper said.
It’s funny. We are surrounded by people who seem to think that moms actually don’t matter. I’m sure there are plenty of examples of families that work well even if Mom is out working, and sure, some women really don’t have much of a choice in the matter. But that doesn’t change the main point, which is that, all else being equal, growing up with Mom is better than the alternative. So why this?
Research author, Professor Catherine Law, paediatric epidemiologist at the Institute of Child Health, said: “Our results do not imply that mothers should not work.
“Rather, they highlight the need for policies and programmes to help support parents to create a healthy environment for their children.”
If this were a study showing that, say, breast-fed babies tended to be healthier than formula-fed ones, you think the researchers would insist that what was needed was a good set of policies to help support parents?
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Andrea adds: The fantastic lengths we will go to to avoid stating the obvious are amazing. That said, I believe most women have more sense about them, and they get the results of said study, furthermore, as Margaret Wente pointed out in her recent column, know what they prefer to do too. The main thing may be in this and so many other cases–the women reporting the findings are themselves working with kids. And very few will advise themselves against their current course of action.
Now I know what to get David Frum (and others like him) for Christmas. Phewf. This is a relief.
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Brigitte is unspeakably happy to report: “Sarah Palin ‘Going Rogue’ goes No. 1 on Amazon, Barnes & Noble sites; beats Dan Brown ‘Lost Symbol'” That will really annoy all the right people. Good Job, Sarah!
A man is accused of killing both his girlfriend and her unborn child – he apparently wanted her to have an abortion and she’d refused. He will be charged with double murder. If the mother had decided to abort the baby (even at 8 months), the child’s life would not count.
What a sorry mess.
I try to be a reasonably reasonable kind of person. I like to know the why, not just the what. I rarely take anything for granted. And then, sometimes, I’m just a quack with a persistent bee in my bonnet (if you’ll forgive the mangled metaphor). For years I have scoffed at those who get the flu shot. And I’ve raved and ranted against them, too. The flu vaccine is useless at best, I’ve always said. And probably worse than that. (I’m also not a fan of Gardasil, which in my mind is way worse than useless at best.)
Now it turns out doctors are starting to catch up with my anti-flu-shot quackery:
A “perplexing” Canadian study linking H1N1 to seasonal flu shots is throwing national influenza plans into disarray and testing public faith in the government agencies responsible for protecting the nation’s health.
Distributed for peer review last week, the study confounded infectious-disease experts in suggesting that people vaccinated against seasonal flu are twice as likely to catch swine flu.
The paper is under peer review, and lead researchers Danuta Skowronski of the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control and Gaston De Serres of Laval University must stay mum until it’s published.
Met with intense early skepticism both in Canada and abroad, the paper has since convinced several provincial health agencies to announce hasty suspensions of seasonal flu vaccinations, long-held fixtures of public-health planning.
“It has confused things very badly,” said Dr. Ethan Rubinstein, head of adult infectious diseases at the University of Manitoba. “And it has certainly cost us credibility from the public because of conflicting recommendations. Until last week, there had always been much encouragement to get the seasonal flu vaccine.”
Not only that: I was at a social gathering lately and was chastised by more than one guest (including one who is a nurse) not to shake hands and kiss friends (I’m French; the kiss-on-both-cheeks thing is something I do without thinking). There are messages on the radio reminding me to sneeze in my arm, etc. And I just want to scream. I’m healthy and not completely stupid. I know how to deal with the flu (stay home and sip chicken-noodle soup). It’s actually quite simple, and the more “experts” try to meddle with how normal people deal with normal health questions, the more they mess things up.