Breast cancer -- as with other cancers -- is still a mystery, and there are various kinds, so risk factors vary depending on what sort of tumors you're talking about. At least some of this was confirmed by my own doctor:

Carroll interpreted his results by using seven risk factors regarding breast cancer:

--A low age at first birth is protective to the mother;

--Childlessness increases the risk of breast cancer;

True and true. At my last annual, my doc was assessing my various cancer risks, and she said quite plainly that not having had kids before 30 was a big-ish risk factor. Bummer, but I really resent the corollary (which she did not state, because she knows me) which is that "career women" are putting of having children, etc. Sorry kids, but sometimes "shit just doesn't work out" and the good partner/good (potential) father just doesn't materialize before 30, so you can dispense with the hectoring.

--Hormonal contraceptives are conducive to breast cancer; and

Interesting, because I have also been told exactly the *opposite*, i.e. being childless OC would provide some protection against development of cancer cells. I wonder if its because OC mimics the hormone release of pregnancy? I wonder also if this only refers to the types of cancer that feed on estrogen, see below:

--Hormone replacement therapy (HRT) is also conducive to breast cancer.

That is only true of *some* breast cancers (there are many). Some types of cancer feed on estrogen, others do not (others just show up because they show up), so this is only partially true.

Another risk factor she told me was early menarche, which of course I can't do anything about. I was athletic (gymnast), rail-thin and raised by hippie parents who ate whole grains and lots of dark green veggies and lean meat, so inasmuch as people can control weight gain in their children and stave off early menarche, you can't control genetics -- sometimes it just happens.

Can you sign up for a username? You're hilarious and I want to read more.

I also use those end-of-year reports to get a similar sense of where my money is going, in my case I'm trying to figure out whether it would be more economical for me to buy a car rather than rent or use Zipcar for the weekends when I go away. Its a lot easier than writing down all my purchases to the penny in a notebook throughout the day.

Tangentially, I would love to see someone try to cook up a profile of me based on my buying habits and maybe trace a trajectory of life changes based on sudden appearance and disappearance of various items/themes from my purchasing history. I work with a bunch of dudes who love that pattern-recognition stuff, maybe I'll get them to draw some conclusions about me and see how right they are.

Or Maybe nature is trying to tell us somehting. There are too many people on this planet, so nature is taking care of it. Unfortunately man is interfering with this adjustment by deveoping invetro fertilzation. Or maybe, just maybe, the superior gender(women)are taking over.

What? That doesn't even make sense. Are you saying women aren't affected by poor diet and toxins in the environment? Where on earth did that come from? That's just plain weird.

A screwball comedy about colliding worlds!

The pitch:

Jodie Foster is a stay-at-home mom who insists on breastfeeding her only child until she is five-and-a-half.

Nicole Kidman is a single career woman with six children that she leaves in the care of a handsome undocumented manny by day, and home-schools at night.

What can possibly unite these two such disparate characters, you ask?

Why, the Magic of Mixed-Up Muff Maintenance! The Salon where they have both taken their six year old daughters for "Mommy & Me" mini-mani-pedis and thong shopping is thrown into turmoil over the use of synthetic strips in their organic beeswax waxing kits, leading to a wacky case of mistaken identity. Watch as these two strong-minded women at first recoil, then come to understand "how the other half lives" in this hilarious look at the politics of pudendal preservation.

Cameos by Martha Stewart, Germaine Greer, Katie O'Beirne, Camille Paglia, and the Harvard Med School Lactating ADD Mom.

Featuring the music of Tori Amos, Dar Williams, and Eminem.

What is news, however, is that these 9,000 products do not have to list aspartame as an ingredient in the product. So, you can buy something, after having read the label which gives no indication aspartame is in the product, and you are buying a product with aspartame in it

That is false. Per FDA regulations all products containing aspartame have to contain this warning:

"Phenylketonurics: Contains phenylalanine."

This is also a required label in Canada.

I bet the boys down the hall can't wait for another all-night build cycle "game night". Last time it was GH, Nintendo Wii, and "Spinal Tap". This is a lot more interesting.

What's to stop airline employees from smuggling drugs or other contraband in your luggage?

Have the airline wrap your luggage in plastic. This was actually *required* when I flew out of India in May (on my dime, though, which I couldn't figure out). When I flew out of Chennai, all luggage went through x-ray, right there in the terminal in plain sight of everybody, then had to be wrapped (on my dime, so lucky I had some rupees on hand), before they would let me proceed to the ticket counter.