Hey Women, Taking Vitamins Might Kill You that Much Faster

Well, there is a 2.4% increased risk of dying anyway.

The new study linked a number of individual vitamins and minerals to the slight mortality risk, including multivitamins, vitamin B6, folic acid, iron, magnesium, zinc and copper.

For example, of the 12,769 women in the study who took a daily multivitamin, 40.8 percent had died by the end of 2008, whereas 39.8 percent of the 10,161 women who hadn't taken a daily multivitamin had died.

Mursu said that the design of the study did not allow the researchers to determine if there was a specific cause for the increased mortality.

That doesn't make sense. Wouldn't the study authors be able to look over the data and determine that this vitamin or that vitamin has a higher chance of mortality then the others? Also I would like to know if there is a trend in how the women are dying. So for instance if they all died of some horrible cancer or something then it would be nice for the authors to point that out. In any case I think there might be a lot less pill popping going on going forward.

Sarah Palin Will Not Run: Thank God!

At least she bowed out early so we can get to the actual people running against Obama and get away from Palin bashing by the press.

Wasilla, Alaska After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for President of the United States. As always, my family comes first and obviously Todd and I put great consideration into family life before making this decision. When we serve, we devote ourselves to God, family and country. My decision maintains this order.

She would suck the air out the room and become an easy win for Obama going forward. I think her reputation is just too damaged by the press to be anything except for a television pundit. I mean even though it was Tiny Fey that made that "I can see Russia from my house" remark it has still stuck with Palin even now. If she ran for president she would be defeated by 20 points I think.

Default Social Networker Found

This is a pretty interesting report by Nielsen Research on the default visitor to a social networking site.

Our most active social networker/reader of blogs is a woman between the ages of 18 and 34 and likely to be Asian or Pacific Islander. She lives in New England, holds at least a bachelor's degree and earns less than $50,000 a year. 

I was kind of surprised that this person is Asian and from New England though. Maybe the poll was skewed that way due to how these people were sampled. In any case marketers need to target this person in order to generate a larger percentage of sales via social networking.  

Green Jobs Programs Created Jobs: Each one Cost $4.85 Million

Talk about no-bang for big bucks.

After spending $17.2 billion of the $38.6 billion allocated for green-jobs stimulation, the programs have created a total of just over 3500 jobs, for a price tag of $4.85 million each.  Now the Inspector General at the Department of Labor has recommended the shutdown of a green-jobs training program that has only placed 15% of its participants:

I just think the "green jobs" sector is mostly pie-in-the-sky stuff so far. I mean the Red Chinese are better at creating solar panels mostly due to their lax environmental standards. Plus, when companies are cutting back the first thing they think about slashing is any "green" initiatives which have high payouts up front but usually have negligible results. I remember IBM was pushing their green data center a while back and it seems to have been a pretty dismal failure.

In any case $4.85 million for each job is case-in-point on how inefficient the government is at creating jobs.

RIP Steve Jobs

Well, I guess a whole era in computing has ended. He was quite a visionary.

Apple Inc. said the company's co-founder Steve Jobs died Wednesday. He was 56. "We are deeply saddened to announce that Steve Jobs passed away today," the company said in a brief statement.

"Steve's brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives. The world is immeasurably better because of Steve."

With the launch of the IPhone 4S it seems that the people coming up behind him may not have the visionary zeal that this guy had. I used to hate Apple but they have really changed my mind and I can see that their products are really quite superior to anything else out there. Hopefully the rest of the people at Apple can pick up the slack.

Xbox to Support Live TV

I am reserving judgement to see how much this service will cost per month.

You already know about Verizon bringing live TV to the Xbox 360, but it turns out that was just the tip of Microsoft’s great big television-related iceberg.

In an effort to transform the television experience, Microsoft has struck deals with nearly 40 entertainment providers to start injecting more media into their gaming platform.

I will watch ads but I will not pay a per month charge on top of Xbox Live. I can only do this for Netflix and perhaps Hulu but that will pretty much be it. Even the ESPN thing on Xbox Live isn't worth my money. However if Verizon just does it for free I might be watching Verizon TV as much as my regular cable.