Posted by: in Your Business
A couple of years ago, I got concerned about what I was reading in Joe Mercola’s newsletters about the dangers of long-term use of Lipitor and other statin drugs, so I talked to my doctor. His reply: “All of us baby boomer doctors are taking statins. They’re perfectly safe.” So I’ve continued to take Lipitor. But I wonder…
Now I see that there are concerns about Vytorin and Zetia. The NY TIMES reports that these drugs have not received strenuous testing from the FDA and that there is some evidence they may cause cancer. the NYT article says, casually, that statins are “an older form of cholesterol-lowering medicine whose effectiveness and safety are not in question.” Lipitor has been noted as the most-prescribed drug in the world. Are all of these people taking Lipitor in danger? Who knows? A segment of Good Morning America in February had a good discussion of some of the issues surrounding use of Lipitor; the segment was titled, “It’s the Lipitor, stupid.”)
There are benefits to being old and remembering the past, and then there are drawbacks. Remember Thalidomide? Are the statins another case of what I call “Lucy and the football”? If you remember in the Peanuts comic strip, Lucy kept promising Charlie Brown that she would hold the football for him while he kicked it, but every time, she pulled it away at the last minute. She kept promising to hold the football, but each time he trusted her, and each time she broke her promise. That’s what I feel like with the FDA and the drug companies. They keep saying, “trust us,” but how can we?
In the years since the drug companies discovered the wonders of advertising, I’ve been concerned more and more that they are trying to control the FDA, the AMA, and the rest of the medical world. If the FDA would approve drugs with only limited clinical trials, how safe are other new medications? How much do you know about the drugs you’re taking? What does it say about a drug advertisement when the discussion of the side effects is longer than the discussion about the benefits?
What do you think? Are you taking a statin? Do you worry about the safety of these drugs?
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Filed under: Estates
Earlier this summer the LA Times covered the story of this home in L.A.’s Beverly Crest neighborhood which is dominated by a 5,000-square-foot swimming pool graced with a towering stone fountain. The fountain was stated to be designed by the acclaimed Mexican architectural firm of Luis Barragan and Raul Ferrera.
The current owner, Eugene Leoni and his business partner, Anthony Brent bought the site, including the 4,900-square-foot house planning to use the offices for their real estate projects, put a tiny money in it and sell it. Instead they turned it into a four-bedroom showcase masterminded by designer Tim Campbell. The fountain, officially Campbell Divertimento Fountain is Historic-Cultural Monument No. 637. Some architectural historians states that Barragán only did one project in the U.S. and this isn’t it but others point to the fact that the names Barragán and Ferrera are clearly stamped on the blueprints dated 1987 and Leoni and Brent have correspondence between Barragán’s office and the home’s previous owner and that Ferrera was the sole designer. The bottom line is no one knows how much Barragán contributed.
But let’s forget the fountain for a moment and focus on the modernist home with it. The home is totally design perfect. There’s a loggia adjacent to the V-shaped massing of the Divertimento with a summer kitchen. The ground floor is built for amusing with a game room, long dramatic bar and wine room along with a bedroom suite. Upstairs there’s a living room with sleek kitchen, dining room with a massive window, and a formal living room with fireplace that leads to the bedroom wing with master bedroom suite and terrace, and two stylish bedroom suites. What’s it lacking? It’s doesn’t have blockbuster views but that’s a small complaint with a home like this. It is listed at $9.95 million.
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Continue reading The Campbell Divertimento, Estate of the Day
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Filed under: Estates, Charity, Green, Real Estate Developments
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Perhaps a true sign of luxury living is buying land that will be protected instead of developed. You’ll soon have your opportunity to bid on such a parcel as The Adirondack Chapter of the The Nature Conservancy has announced the listing of 90,500 acres of pristine forestland for sale in upstate New York. The timberland previously belonged to paper company Finch, Pruyn and Co. and, according to listing broker LandVest, “represents the first time in more than a century that these lands have become available on the open market.”
The parcels will be available by sealed bidding in 5 sale blocks in acreage ranging from 1,691 acres to nearly 60,000 acres. All are subject to a strict conservation easement, though eventually some of the land will be open for hiking, hunting, fishing and other outdoor adventures. See more images that’ll make you want to flee your desk upon viewing at LandVest’s listing page.
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Deciding to “take note of something” and forgetting what that something is can be really frustrating. This is where something like Evernote comes in.
Evernote lets users capture information easily and makes it available almost anywhere. Take a snapshot of a product’s brand name, scan a receipt, record your own voice, and save web content with a single click. These are just some of the ways Evernote use to ensure that you won’t forget something that you need to remember (you need to remember to check your account, though).
Getting an account is painless and free, though there is a 40Mb storage limit for free accounts. Once you’ve your account, all you need is the right Evernote version for your device. The downside? The mobile phone software is available only for Windows Mobile phones and the iPhone and there is no desktop version for Linux yet. Once you have the software up and running, synchronizing data from different sources is just a matter of point-and-click. To access your files, just log on to your account via your web browser and all the information you’ve saved is available to be searched, sorted and tagged.
It sounds like a blessing for overly absent-minded people who, hopefully, aren’t too absent-minded to remember to check out Evernote.
Evernote has versions for Windows Mobile phones, the iPhone, Mac OS X 10.5, and Windows XP or Vista. The web versions are compatible with most browsers.
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