BY HARRY RING
Just say no - Most members of a federal advisory panel said they favored approving Procter & Gamble's Olestra, a fake fat to be used in potato chips and other snacks.
The Center for Science in the Public Interest says Olestra depletes the body of key vitamins and can cause dehydration, nausea, bloating, and "anal leakage." Panel members shrug that if people experience such problems, they'll simply stop buying it.
Capitalist values - An international group of airlines have worked out a new and assertedly more liberal policy to compensate air crash victims. A news dispatch said, "The sums would vary according to the standard of living and salaries in individual countries so that insured victims and relatives in the developed world would receive more than those from emerging nations."
He thought it was a strike? - During the recent shutdown of federal agencies, the governor of Arizona led 50 National Guard members to Grand Canyon National Park in a bid to keep it open and not lose tourist revenue. But the feds said it would be illegal to have "volunteers" staff the park.
Not at all surprising - According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Marilyn vos Savant, author of the "Ask Marilyn" column, has an IQ that ranks her as the world's smartest living person.
Truly a great society - AIDS patients with a particular form of pneumonia who are covered by Medicaid are nearly twice as likely to die than those able to afford private insurance. To diagnose the pneumonia and treat it correctly requires a bronchoscopy, an expensive testing technique. Medicaid reimburses hospitals for the procedure at a small fraction of the rate paid by private insurers.
`Labour leader'? - "Britain needs successful people in business who can become rich by their success, through the money they earn. Penal rates of taxation do not make economic or political sense."- British Labour Party leader Tony Blair.
Now will you shut up?- Question to the "Ask Marilyn" column: "Is it really true that the rich pay very little tax?" A: "No, and this is the myth... that has created the unwarranted and destructive dissension among the so-called economic classes in this country."
Just be sure to keep commerce in - A Sudbury, Canada, councilor is organizing a movement against shrinking Christmas to Xmas. "Let's leave Christ in Christmas," he urges.
Thought for the week - "You start royal service as a monarchist, but you very quickly become a republican." A former butler to the United Kingdom's royal family.