The crazy lady strikes again

Discovery Health Channel ran You: The Owner's Manual, a program based on the book of the same name, which book was written by Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Michael Roizen. (They ran this program on September 16, 2006.) I watched both this and Oprah Winfrey's show with these two doctors on September 15, and the two shows were virtually identical, the only difference being that Winfrey interviewed Drs. Oz and Roizen in between taped segments. (The taped segments were lifted from today's Discovery Health... Sign in to see full entry.

This news story illustrates the Law of Unintended Consequences to perfection. In the story, Russ Bynum of the Associated Press describes a ghost town, abandoned by undocumented immigrants who were moved from the town he describes back to their homeland, in an attempt to enforce American immigration laws. I have two relevant observations about this situation. First of all, the town mentioned in the story should not have been that economically dependent on undocumented immigrants. The only reason... Sign in to see full entry.

One of the few areas that psychotherapists get right is that there is a distinct difference between emotional truth (the way you feel events happened, and your reactions to those events) and factual truth (objectively-verifiable events or scientific facts). This entry is specifically devoted to emotional truth - the way I react to certain people, and to certain tasks that I must perform for those people. In a series of recent phone calls, emails and blog comments, I promised to help Constance... Sign in to see full entry.

(This is one of my earlier reviews from Epinions.com, back in the days when writing the bare minimum of a review - at the time, Epinions.com had its servers programmed to reject any post with a word count of under 100 words, and there were plenty of 100-word reviews on that website - got excellent ratings. Nowadays, one virtually has to write War And Peace to be considered a quality writer over there.) Coping With Prednisone was co-written by a pair of sisters, one of whom (Julie Ingelfinger,... Sign in to see full entry.

This article talks about a woman that had a 14-pound-plus baby. Apparently, this woman is prone to having big babies; her next-youngest son was 12 pounds at birth, and her twins weighed 8½ pounds each (for a total of sixteen pounds' worth of baby). I don't see how this woman made it through all those pregnancies with all those big babies. I wonder if she's planning on having any more. Sign in to see full entry.

I am firmly on record as believing that there is no such thing as writer's block. That's because working journalists have to write something daily - and revise, and edit, and clip some more, until the boss says an article will fit into that three column inch space in the obituary section. If you are forced to write daily just to hold a paying job, you learn the folly of the concept of writers' block so rapidly your head will spin. At the time I originally wrote this post, I had apparently had an... Sign in to see full entry.

(This material was written at some point between September 2000 and May 2002, when I was temporarily living in a house I'd inherited from my late parents. I'd grown up in that house, and this entry refers to the woman who lived next door for many years. I hope that if she has passed away, she is resting in peace. She was in what I would consider to be very bad shape, although I would not deliberately tell this directly to either her or her son and daughter-in-law. In fact, I do hope they are not... Sign in to see full entry.

I may be joking about the food order, but I'm not joking about the spinach. An outbreak of E. Coli-induced gastroenteritis - fatal for at least one person - has afflicted ten states as of this writing. Public health officers are urging people to avoid eating bagged fresh spinach entirely, especially if you're in my situation - your immune system is knocked down due to chemotherapy, HIV infection, or the use of transplant drugs. There are some good principles to follow in most all other... Sign in to see full entry.

When I was a youngster, my mother's specialty cookies were egg-nog cookies. I'm going to try to develop my own recipe, because hers has gotten lost in the sands of time. All I remember is that the binding liquid was dairy egg nog, and that brandy extract (no, not Christian Brothers, but extract, like what McCormick spice company used to make) was a part of the recipe. What goes on top of egg-nog cookies is colored frosting - green sugar frosting (made with powdered sugar) for Christmas tree... Sign in to see full entry.

This entry was originally posted on March 9,2003. In my opinion, the information is still at least a little relevant. So many places - rural areas in particular - have few or no conventional medical options. PR Newswire is a repository of press releases from all over the world. Although the site has an area for journalists, there is also a portion of the site open to the public, and this section is where I got this press release on the liability-insurance crisis. (I used to post press releases... Sign in to see full entry.