The Heritage Foundation plays key role in Massachusetts' new health care initiative A few weeks back, UC Berkeley's Nicholas C. Petris Center on Healthcare Markets and Consumer Welfare (named after the former California state senator whose legislative career was marked by his deep concern with California's health care issues) sponsored a seminar on health care. One panel examined the current status of California's Proposition 63 -- the State's 2004 mental health initiative funded through ... [full story]

"Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food"- Hippocrates, father of medicineThere are a few key concepts that must be understood before we discuss wellness nutrition.  The goal of any wellness intervention including nutrition is to increase health and well-being. So we must start out with, what is health?Health, by definition, is a state of consistent balanced cell function. All living things, including humans, are composed of individual living cells working ... [full story]

Dear Jim: Our wood deck gets hot, almost too warm to be comfortable, in the summer sun. It seems to make adjacent rooms hotter. I am also tired of the maintenance. What decking options do I have to keep it cooler? -Ron H. Dear Ron: An old dark discolored deck can become comfortably warm in the summer. This heat will reradiate in through windows and make your house walls warmer. If the prevailing breezes are ... [full story]

Well, the good news is the President has finally come up with an immigration policy. The bad news is nobody can figure out what it is yet, but hey, give the man his props; he gave it a shot. Sensing what could be called a somewhat dissatisfied electorate in the same way a 13 acre glacier might be referred to as an ice cube, he delivered his long awaited speech on immigration and uncharacteristically revealed ... [full story]

"The Da Vinci Code" Anagrams being an oft-used device in this bloodless tale of bloodlines, rose lines and poorly-scripted flatlines, the urge to join in was too great to resist.  Unwittingly (and that's part of the film's problem), the letters of "The Da Vinci Code" ("DC") spell out its own secret warning - DC: Avoid it Hence. For the three of you who have been stuck in some sarcophagus since the international bestseller of the ... [full story]

In case you didn’t notice, the world is not a perfect place. There’s war, pollution, hunger, injustice, and of course Anna Nicole Smith. Even little things don’t make sense: rush hour traffic not going anywhere, boxing at the Goodwill Games, DVDs showing us highlights of movies THAT WE’RE ABOUT TO WATCH. One night, after being flagrantly overserved by a bartender, I scribbled on cocktail napkins a list of world improvements. First I called it “If I ... [full story]

One of the dumbest fads I ever suffered through was the 'Baby On Board' signs people used to put in their car windows during the 1980s. This originally started out as a friendly warning to other motorists, urging them to drive cautiously, as there was a small infant in the car.The people who used these signs needed to read them a little more closely though. These were the drivers who would tailgate you on residential ... [full story]