Friends,

I am overwhelmed by the response to "Sicko." And I'm not just talking about all the wonderful, heart-felt letters you've sent me and the stories you've shared with me about the abuse you've suffered from our health care system.

No, I'm talking about how thousands of you are taking matters into your own hands and using the movie to do something. From Seattle to New England, each day I learn of numerous groups holding meetings or dinners after the movie to discuss it and to plot a course for action. A church in Plano, TX took its weekly bible study group to see "Sicko." 70 people crammed into a Wisconsin coffee shop's back room. Groups are plotting over pancakes in Illinois and microbrew in Missouri. E-mail addresses are being exchanged in theater lobbies. A Connecticut group is inviting legislators to see "Sicko" and keeping a tally on their website. Local groups have been buying out theaters to have special screenings for their members. Information tables are set up, literature is distributed, action groups are formed.

It's all an amazing sight. I can't tell you how thrilled I am to see the impact a movie can have. For all of you who have written me to ask, "What can I do," well, read more about what others have done here

Posted: 7:08:30 PM  

Posted: 4:56:06 PM  

It's August, which means it's time for the annual Mars Hoax.
An email is going around claiming that Mars will approach Earth on August 27th; the encounter will be so close, the email states, that Mars will rival the full Moon in size and brightness. Imagine the tides!

The Mars Hoax email first appeared in 2003. On August 27th of that year, Mars really did come historically close to Earth. But the email's claim that Mars would rival the Moon was grossly exaggerated. Every August since 2003, the email has staged a revival.
It's as wrong now as it was then.

REALITY CHECK: Would you like to see the real Mars? Wake up before dawn and look east. Mars is having a close encounter with the Pleiades star cluster.
Sky maps: Aug. 5, 6, 7. The planet looks like a pinprick-bright red star, nothing like a full Moon, very pretty next to the Pleiades.

Posted: 12:18:46 PM  

As farmers in the UK brace for a possible repeat of the 2001 foot-and-mouth disease outbreak that led to the slaughter of millions of animals, drove many of them into bankruptcy and cost the country an estimated $17 billion, authorities are saying the discovery of the virus on a farm near London may be due to a biosecurity failure from a nearby pharmaceutical laboratory run by a U.S. corporation.

Posted: 12:08:00 PM  

Good morning fellow adventurer!

It's AS IF the stars have aligned... as if the word has been spoken... AS IF you just won the cosmic lottery!
This is IT... there's never, EVER, been a better time for YOU... to begin living the life of your dreams.
Make haste, ENJOY, consider it done, GIVE THANKS, and tonight...
CELEBRATE!

Posted: 11:50:22 AM  

Summer doesn't last long on the edge of the Arctic circle, but on the remote Solovetsky Island on Russia's White Sea it marks the remarkable return every year of Beluga whales just metres from the shore.

Posted: 11:38:07 AM  

The US soldier who exposed the abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison found himself a marked man after his anonymity was blown in the most astonishing way by Donald Rumsfeld.

Follow up, today online:

Soldiers just 'letting off steam'

Posted: 11:35:21 AM