Charlie Sheen is the highest paid sitcom actor on TV. The guy makes more for a few hours' work a week than many of us could make in several lifetimes. Yeah, I can see why he's all depressed and self-destructive!
Sorry, CBS, but I'm not going to contribute anymore. Two and a Half Men is now off my DVR scheduler. Let me know when he straightens himself out -- Robert Downey Jr. was able to do it. I'm sure Charlie can pull it off too if he puts his mind to it.
What would they look like in our night sky?
Two different news stories out this afternoon, two very different vibes.
Yahoo is laying off another 100 to 150 workers in Sunnyvale.
Meanwhile, Google is planning to hire another 6200 people in the biggest expansion of their workforce yet.
Regarding Keith Olbermann’s ouster from MSNBC… and I’m pretty sure this was an ouster… this was also a negotiated exit. Keith wasn’t happy. NBC didn’t want him around with Comcast taking over.
NBC probably paid him lots of money to leave before his contract was up. In return, he’ll honor the noncompete agreement, and he’s probably barred from telling us how it all really went down.
In the meantime, TMZ has some alleged insider information – and they’re usually pretty good with the inside media stuff. You can see their article here.
I’m really sad to see him leave. Countdown was part of my afternoon ritual when I get home from the office. But, depending on the terms of his exit, we may have him sooner rather than later on radio or the Internet. It’ll probably be awhile before he can do another TV show though.
The Interwebs have been humming the last couple of weeks about a new treatment for tinnitus showing great progress in perhaps actually ending the condition for good – a combination of sound therapy with an electrical stimulation of a certain nerve.
The really good news is that human trials begin in WEEKS.
The bad news is that they’re in Belgium.
Almost as soon as we published that very popular post about University of Texas at Dallas researchers' efforts to silence that high-pitched problem known as tinnitus, readers began leaving comments and sending e-mails in which they all asked the same question: How can I participate in the forthcoming human clinical trials? So I asked Emily Martinez, the UTD spokesperson charged with publicizing the efforts of Drs. Michael Kilgard and Dr. Navzer Engineer.
Martinez said trials are actually beginning "in the next few weeks," but, sorry, they'll take place in Belgium. She wasn't sure when they'd move back to the U.S. -- or even where in the U.S. So she put me in touch with Dr. Engineer (whose name, I'll admit, I love saying aloud).
Engineer said they're beginning in Europe for one simple reason: "The approval process for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration takes a long time, as you can imagine, especially compared to that in Europe, where approvals are much faster. We want to see what happens in the first three, five patients in Belgium, then come back to the U.S. and say, 'This is the effect it has on patients with severe tinnitus.' So the time line isn't clear." He hopes to have solid results in human within the year, at which point trials will begin locally.
But if there is a chance of expediting clinical trials on U.S. soil, it rests with the military -- which is particularly interested in the results, given the hundreds of millions spent each year treating returning combat veterans. (Engineer says two groups have expressed deep interest in the tinnitus "cure" since it was announced last week -- soldiers and musicians, no surprise there.) Says Engineer, "We hope this year we can facilitate or strengthen that relationship with the military."
The day began with “blood libel” and ended with amazing, soaring, inspiring words from our President.
We could be on the verge of a breakthrough.
CHICAGO (Reuters) – A new treatment that retrains part of the brain that processes sound may help silence tinnitus -- a ringing in the ears that afflicts 10 percent of senior citizens and more than 40 percent of military veterans, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.
They said a device that stimulates the vagus nerve in the neck while simultaneously playing different sounds for several weeks helped eliminate the condition in a group of rats.
A trial of the treatment in humans is set to start in Europe this year, said Dr. Navzer Engineer of MicroTransponder, a medical device company affiliated with The University of Texas at Dallas, whose study appears in the journal Nature.
Tinnitus is sometimes brought on by hearing loss. It occurs as cells in the inner ear are damaged, often from a loud noise. Current drugs help mask tinnitus, but the condition is incurable.
The Arizona Assassin was so mentally unstable that he was scaring people.
His college kicked him out and wasn’t going to allow him back until he underwent psychiatric evaluation.
The US military didn’t want him.
And yet he was able to legally purchase and carry a semi-automatic gun in Arizona.
Ladies and gentlemen, my friend Richard Dickson…
If You Declare War, Don't Be Surprised When Someone Shoots
from Some Damn Fool Idealistic Crusade by Richard Dickson
For years, we've been bombarded with claims that violent films and violent video games lead to violent behavior. We've been urged to tone things down, slap ratings on them, think of the children, and plenty of other admonishments designed to prevent another Columbine.
Meanwhile, the political rhetoric has been ratcheted up to the point where it's perfectly acceptable to talk about "Second Amendment solutions" to laws and lawmakers we don't like. Or to post a picture of targeted political districts with gun sights over them. Or to talk fondly about the period of time when half the country violently opposed the other and got more US soldiers killed than any other war in history. Or cavalierly hoist up signs with guns, or worse, hoist up actual guns, at political rallies.
Where were all the concerned admonishments then? Where were the responsible voices asking that the consequences of such actions be considered? "Oh, it's just politics," we were told.
Well, "just politics" got twenty people shot yesterday. Six of them are dead.
Read the rest. It’s worth a few minutes of your time.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Neuromonics is turning out to be the most effective treatment available for chronic tinnitus, but the cost -- not covered by insurance -- is prohibitive.
The intervention, called Neuromonics, retrains people to manage how they hear the internal sound. But it's not covered by insurance and is expensive - about $4,500 for a device that resembles a portable music player and for sessions with an audiologist to tailor the treatment.
Teri Kim, 48, of Cary, N.C., started the therapy in August, and almost quit a month into it when she still hadn't gotten relief from the high-pitched whine that has blared in her head for years. Then she gradually began having good days and even good weeks as the whine began to diminish.
"It was wonderful," Kim said.
The therapy works on the finding that many cases of tinnitus (pronounced teh-NYE-tus or TIN-eh-tus) are produced inside the brain, not the ear.
Rebecca Price, an audiologist at Duke who provides the therapy,, said the internal sound is often accompanied by hearing loss. When the ear can no longer pick up a certain sound frequency, scientists theorize, the brain fills the void, causing a non-stop din.
Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/01/03/3295526/tinnitus-treatment-music-to-some.html#ixzz19zZveiYn
