Take a break from getting waste off green beer to come out and see “Iraq for Sale: the War Profiteers”, which will be kicking off Providence Students for a Democratic Society’s anti-war Week of Action during this the week of the fifth anniversary of the Iraq War. It starts at 7:30 at MacMillian Hall, Room 115 (on Thayer between George and Waterman) on Brown’s campus. It sounds pretty cool:

The story of what happens to everyday Americans when corporations go to war. Acclaimed director Robert Greenwald ( Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed) takes you inside the lives of soldiers, truck drivers, widows and children who have been changed forever as a result of profiteering in the reconstruction of Iraq. Iraq for Sale uncovers the connections between private corporations making a killing in Iraq ( Blackwater, Halliburton/KBR, CACI and Titan) and the decision makers who allow them to do so.

Oh and no excuses because admission is free.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. aviation regulators on Thursday proposed to fine Southwest Airlines Co a record $10.2 million for allegedly failing to inspect planes for structural cracks.The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said Southwest continued to fly uninspected aircraft even after the carrier notified the agency that it had missed a mandatory deadline to complete the work.

Jonathan Spencer, consultant forensic scientist and firearms expert, said that although the gun, which fires bullets at a speed of 399 feet a second, was tiny, it could still prove fatal and in the eyes of the law was as dangerous as a machine gun. He said: “The general threshold for perforating the skin is about 330 feet a second.

“Apart from bone, skin offers the greatest resistance to penetration. If it can pass through the skin it is potentially lethal, even if the bullets are small.”

But WFB was an arrogant crank, who defended the slaughter of millions:

One of the advantages of being young and stupid in such a go, Go, GO! world is that you can pretend that by the time you’re all old and craggly, the wizards will have cured all the scary degenerative ickies that await on the other end — cancer, Alzheimer’s, baldness, etc.

And then, one day, you’re in your late twenties, and not much seems to have changed over the previous couple of decades. (Except that a few of your contemporaries have been stricken by cancer and/or baldness.)

But as somebody who saw 1 or 2 grandparents succumb to Alzheimer’s, this is pleasant news:

Drug “can reverse Alzheimer’s symptoms in minutes”

A drug used for arthritis can reverse the symptoms of Alzheimer’s “in minutes”.  It appears to tackle one of the main features of the disease - inflammation in the brain.

It’s a little bit awkward to navigate — it turns out that the three bodies found in a South Providence home this week weren’t the result of foul play. Retrospectively, is this a relief or not? I don’t know. The perpetrator wasn’t a human with an axe to grind, but rather a faulty heating system of the sort that could be found in any of tens of thousands of ramshackle Providence housing units.

PROVIDENCE — No foul play is suspected in the deaths of three people found inside a South Providence house yesterday, and preliminary findings are consistent with carbon monoxide poisoning, the state medical examiners office announced today.

Police believe an improperly installed heating system that leaked carbon monoxide led to the deaths. A heating system expert was inspecting the system this afternoon.