Last Call

Wrapping up this fine evening, we have the following highlights:

Elizabeth Edwards will stop cancer treatment after doctors advised her that it would not be productive. In a touching Facebook release, she demonstrates strength and class and everything one could hope to muster after an announcement of this nature.

A young woman in London purchased a sandwich and her Stradivarius was stolen. If you think you had a bad day, it can't be compared to how this she feels. A generous reward has been announced, but so far the violin has not turned up.

Haitian government now figure more than 2,000 people have died of cholera since late October. The worse news is that there is not an expected improvement anytime soon. The United Nations said last week that the death and infection tolls could be twice as high as officially reported. It's pretty bad when 2,000 is the optimistic figure.

Missouri's governor Jay Nixon believes that you should have to visit a doctor for a prescription for medicines that are currently available over the counter. This would make it slightly more difficult for meth distributors to use pseudoephedrine to manufacture the drug. In the meantime, hundreds of thousands of uninsured Missourians will not be able to get simple medicine and will suffer. This is after rejecting other methods of controlling the legal but abusable substance. There has to be a better way than this, Jay.

Google launches its book store, and is expected to rival Amazon. The formats can be read on the Droid phone, and is actually compatible with nearly every reader except Amazon's Kindle. They have a delightful free section, and at a glance, I was impressed. I'm very curious to see how it holds up in the long run. Amazon has dominated the market for so long, it would take a Google to knock them down a peg. In a final bid for the market, the untapped resource is a way to reach out to writers and help them get their books out to the public. Is Google Publisher next?