The Proposed Cable a la Carte Plans Aren't at all for Your Benefit [Cable]

The talk earlier this week of cable companies proposing a la carte cable plans made it sound like they actually wanted to do something for their customers. Well as IT World explains, the cable companies still reek of greed.

According to Kevin Fogarty, the ulterior motive behind this a la carte push is to transform in demand (and costly) channels such as ESPN into HBO-esque premium channels. Most channels would still be packaged as a bundle.

Skyrocketing TV broadcast deal costs have come down the line to cable companies, however, forcing them to pay as much as $4 per subscriber to run ESPN, according to cable-industry research firm SNL Kagan.

Niche special-interest channels like the History of Knitting Channel, on the other hand, either get onto channel listings free in order to fill out the list and make it more impressive-looking, or actually have to pay to be included (presumably in handmade socks; there hasn't been a lot of money in knitting since the automatic loom was invented).

Sigh. #FIXCABLE

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Another Benefit of Smoking Weed? It Might Be Able to Cure PTSD [Science]

There's such a long list of awesome things about smoking weed that I'm starting to lose track of all the benefits. One thing I'm pretty sure I never heard of before though: marijuana might be able to cure post-traumatic stress disorder.

Post-traumatic stress disorder is a serious psychological disease that can flip lives upside down. So if smoking a little ganja can possibly prevent it, shouldn't we issue it to soldiers right away? Well, it's still in its early stage of testing as scientists have only proved that it works on rats.

According to Dr Irit Akirav, the leader of the study, there's a "critical window of time after trauma, during which synthetic marijuana can help prevent symptoms similar to PTSD in rats". That "window of time" is within 24 hours of the trauma happening. That's a pretty tight timeframe (especially given the work the army does) but according to the study, the rats that were administered marijuana within 24 hours didn't exhibit any PTSD symptoms after while those who didn't use marijuana or used marijuana 48 hours after trauma, still had signs of PTSD.

Whenever they're ready to test on humans, I'm sure they'll have a ton of volunteers willing to try it out. All in the name of science, right? [AFP via Death and Taxes Mag, Image Credit: Jason Swarr/Shuterstock]

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