Verizon gets bashed a lot these days, sometimes deservedly so. I’ve been a customer of theirs for years, and yet I’ve never hesitated to complain about the way they nickel-and-dime me to death. (Selling me “Unlimited” text messages that really means only 100 non-Verizon text messages, for instance.)

Sometimes, though, they get things right like the recent improvements that have tripled my signal strength.

Or the way they helped an 80-year-old man who’d taken to calling his late wife’s old cell phone number every day for three years just so he could hear her voice again. Unfortunately, the message was lost when the company archived old greetings and messages, leaving the man bereft.

Until they learned about what had happened, that is. They restored the message, and now Charles Whiting can hear his late wife’s voice whenever he wants.

Sweet, huh?

Remember when I marveled at the way a man’s wedding ring can turn him from an attentive, helpful guy to a slacker, sloppy spouse?

I wasn’t kidding.

Now, thanks to Rammer, I also have the statistics to prove it.

[S]cientists analyzed surveys gathered in 2002 from 28 nations, from 17,636 respondents (8,119 males and 9,517 females) as part of the Family and Changing Gender Roles III Survey. All respondents were either married or cohabiting with a significant other.

Overall, they found men spent about 9 hours a week on housework compared with women, who spent more than 20 hours weekly.[...]

Regardless of the couples’ relative earnings or work hours, cohabiting males reported more household hours than did their married counterparts, while the opposite was true for women, with wives picking up the broom more often than live-in girlfriends.

The scientists attribute this change to the “traditionalizing” effects of marriage, which is to say that, while shacking up, both sexes feel responsible for helping out with household chores. Once married, though, both genders seem to view housework as primarily the wife’s responsibility. So, the reasoning goes, husbands slack off from the efforts they’d previously made while wives wonder what the hell happened.

But does bringing up the subject help remedy the imbalance? Oh hell no.

So, as for why women gain weight after that wedding ring slips onto their fingers? Chances are it’s because they’ve since realized they already picked up 180ish pounds of dead weight, so what’s another 40 going to matter?

Growing up in California as I did, I always knew the “Big One” could strike at any moment. We joked about it a lot, as a matter of fact, although few people considered the possibility worthy of actually moving to somewhere more safe.

But, frankly, if I were still living in California I’d start wondering if maybe now’s the time to get out. It was bad enough with the droughts, and wild fires.

Last week’s earthquake in Northern California — right near my hometown, as a matter of fact — now has scientists worried that the “Big One” is just around the corner.

The largest earthquake to hit the San Francisco Bay area in nearly two decades struck last Tuesday with a magnitude of 5.6. This tremor, centered near San Jose, lasted half a minute and was felt as far away as Oregon.

No one was reported killed or hurt from the quake, but geological experts warn that it is a sign of much worse to come.

Tuesday’s quake “significantly increased the probability” of a detrimental earthquake coming from one or both of two nearby fault lines according to the California Earthquake Prediction Evaluation Council, a board that advises the state’s Office of Emergency Services on quake forecasts. Those faults are capable of producing a 7.0 magnitude earthquake or even higher, reports the Salinas Californian.

Seriously, if it were me I’d be looking into buying Arizona real estate and building myself a beach cabin… then just kicking back my heels and waiting for the Pacific Ocean to come to me.

What if there were a cure for cancer, or at least a way to slow its devastation, and one man stood between it and the world? That’s exactly what’s going on in the efforts to unravel the mystery of a plant grown in the Ecuadoran forest, known as ‘Bittersweet’ by locals who say it fights cancer, lupus and maybe even AIDS.

Scientists have been able to test an extract of the plant in vivo (meaning: on lab rats injected with cancerous cells who were then administered the plant extract). The results are phenomenal: half the rats never developed a tumor at all, while fewer tumors appeared in the treated rats (and grew more slowly) than in those not given the extract.

There’s only one problem: the Ecuadoran doctor who obtained a patent on the extract won’t identify the specific plant it comes from, and there are many in the area that share the same name. He also won’t say whether it grows wild or must be cultivated. So, rather than fast-tracking the substance as a possible cancer-fighting medication, researchers must instead spend time and money locating other compounds with similar chemical makeup in the hope of finding one that works just as well.

Ecuador’s “Bittersweet” isn’t the only plant that cancer patients are hoping proves capable of wiping out the deadly disease.

For over a century now, folk remedies have touted the marvels of a black cancer salve, based anecdotal reports claiming the key ingredient — usually bloodroot — “ate away” cancerous tumors and lesions. Now, aging Baby Boomers passing on their memories of grandma’s cures, are fueling renewed in “herbal” remedies like cansema black salve and other concoctions containing escharotic — corrosive — agents like zinc chloride.

Proponents of these salves, including one known as CanX claim a 97% true cure rate. But unlike the Ecuadoran plant extract, scientists haven’t been able to replicate these results with in vivo testing, and there are as many horror stories about disfiguring burns as there are claims about the balms’ curative effects.

Meanwhile, who knows how many disfigurations could be prevented, and cancer patients cured, if it weren’t for the greed of one man in Ecuador who seems to have forgotten his oath to share such knowledge as is his for the good of those who are to follow.