Argentine president: Eat pork, spice your sex life

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Argentine-president-Eat-pork-apf-13832280.html

Argentine president: Eat pork, spice your sex life
President Fernandez tells Argentines they'll have a better sex life if they eat more pork
Thursday January 28, 2010

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Argentina's president thinks eating pig meat is really sexy.

Many people in this beef-loving nation reacted with surprise Thursday after Cristina Fernandez promoted pork in a speech during which she not only said pork is better than Viagra, but suggested she's personally proven it.

"I didn't know that eating pork improved sexual activity," Fernandez said in a meeting with representatives of the swine industry late Wednesday. "It is much more gratifying to eat some grilled pork than to take Viagra."

She even joked that "it was all good" after she enjoyed some pork with her husband, former President Nestor Kirchner.

"I think they might be right," Fernandez said to a laughing audience.

The president's half-joking speech in which she announced subsidies for the pork industry won prominent play on television and radio stations, prompting discussions on whether Argentines should add more pork to their diet.

Argentines are among the world's biggest consumers of red meat, and most people here stubbornly reject the idea of replacing beef with chicken, pork or other meats. Despite Argentina lying along rich South Atlantic fisheries, seafood is rarely seen on dinner tables.

Fernandez approved subsidies to keep the price of pork low despite inflation, and her government has also recently subsidized red meat producers after beef supplies sharply declined in the South American country.

The head of the association of pork producers, Juan Luis Uccelli, supported Fernandez's speech by saying that Denmark and Japan have a much more "harmonious" sexual life then the Argentines because they eat a lot of pig meat.

"In Osaka, Japan, there is a village in which the people who reached 105 years old and ate a lot of pork had a lot of sexual activity," he told radio Mitre.

Others were skeptical.

"There is no study showing that pork meat significantly improves sexual activity," Amado Bechara, a specialist in sexual disfunction, told the Web site of the newspaper La Nacion.

Medical marijuana vending machines open in L.A.

http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2008/01/hot-button-medi.html

Hot button: Medical marijuana vending machines open in L.A.

Americans who have traveled to Japan are no doubt familiar with the ubiquitous jidoohanbaiki: standalone vending machines that dispense soft drinks, coffee, food, comic books, paperbacks, clothing (including underwear and stockings), videos, CDs, jewelry, flowers — and booze (beer, whiskey, sake).

California went a big step further today: Vending machines that dispense medical marijuana.

The first two were activated today in Los Angeles at licensed cannabis clubs. State voters approved doctor-prescribed marijuana in 1996 for patients suffering serious pain or nausea who don't get relief from other drugs. (Here's background on medical marijuana in California.)

This is how the AVMs — Anytime Vending Machines — work:

• Customers bring their prescriptions for approval at the AVMs, housed in enclosed room guarded 24/7.
• They are fingerprinted and photographed.
• They receive a pre-paid credit carded loaded with their individual profiles.
• They choose their dosage (3.5 grams or 7 grams) and one of five strains of marijuana.
• The marijuana is in capsule form and dispensed in vacuum-sealed packages.
• They can buy no more than 1 ounce a week.

Anticipated future vending: Viagra, Vicodin, Propecia and anti-depressants. (Seriously.)