| Thorn: Odd couple of journalism
They were Oscar and Felix; Laverne and Shirley. One was a clean-cut overachiever. The other, a disheveled rebel who once looked at a roommate brandishing a toilet brush and said: "Clean the toilet with that? I've been scrubbing my back with it." One was a Yale WASP. The other, a college dropout, the son of communist Jews. It was button-down collar meets hippie, detail man meets big-picture guy. And here's the damndest thing: for one brief moment, it was a match made in heaven. You may have seen the movie about this pair - a little thing called All the President's Men - but you haven't had as much fun learning about the peccadilloes of Watergate scribes Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein as you will reading Alicia Shepard's Woodward and Bernstein: Life in the Shadow of Watergate (Wiley, $24.95), which details the duo's triumphs and foibles, pre- and post-Watergate.
Green olives ease problems with hiccups
I have been meaning to write you about this for a long time. I have used one or two green olives for hiccups for many years, as have all my family members. I don't know why it works; it just does. It stops them almost immediately. It even worked on a friend who had been through surgery and had suffered for three weeks until I gave him an olive. Have you ever run across anyone else who has used this? I'm rather curious as to why it works. We have been collecting hiccup remedies for more than 30 years, but this is the first time we have heard of using green olives. Most hiccup remedies work by stimulating the phrenic nerve at the top of the hard palate. Chewing crushed ice or swallowing a spoonful of granulated sugar or ice cream seems to interrupt the hiccup reflex.
Schering-Plough Net Rises on Cholesterol Drugs' Sales (Update6)
Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Schering-Plough Corp.'s fourth- quarter earnings surged 62 percent as the combined sales of its Vytorin and Zetia cholesterol drugs jumped to $1.1 billion. Net income rose to $204 million, or 12 cents a share, from $126 million, or 7 cents, a year earlier, the Kenilworth, New Jersey-based company said today in a statement. Revenue increased 14 percent to $2.7 billion, spurred by a 46 percent rise for Zetia and Vytorin. Chief Executive Officer Fred Hassan closed plants and fired 2,000 workers to cut $100 million in 2007 costs. Schering, the eighth-biggest drugmaker by sales, said it expects revenue from the company's cholesterol drugs to increase this year even as the treatments face competition from generic copies of Merck & Co.'s Zocor.
Taftville church marks century
NORWICH -- Through times of uncertainty and change, the "green church on the corner" has been a source of continuity and stability for its parishioners. The Taftville Congregational Church celebrated the 100th anniversary of its building at 16 N. B St., Sunday by looking to the past, while embracing the future. The Rev. Arthur Dunham, church pastor from 1963 to 1974, said the parish's long and storied history is a credit to its members. .
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