Passed on by someone I know

This is an email I just received by someone who is a trusted source of information and involved in the medical research field. Since independent research is available online, I'm passing this on:

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Hi! I'm sending this on to you because I thought you might be interested. I just found out about Herpes Whitlow, which is a herpes infection in the fingers. A friend of mine has HSV-2 in his fingers and recently passed it genitally to his sexual partner through manual stimulation (they were aware of, and accepted the risk before becoming sexually active). I believe herpes infections in the fingers are relatively rare; however knowing someone who contracted it this way makes it seem like a risk at least worth considering. I'm not trying to introduce paranoia or anything, but it may be worth considering when assessing the relative safety of manual stimulation. To me it just further enforces the
importance of testing and knowing one's sexual status, as not much is really truly "safe". There's a fair amount of information online if you're interested (including pictures), though I haven't really had the chance to comb through it (just grist for the mill right now).

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I'm hoping this doesn't take on the aspects of the usual hoax email forwards with "A friend of mine knows this guy who has this cousin who's dog's last owner had a neighbor and it REALLY HAPPENED TO HIM", but it's still some information I thought was important to pass on.

argh

This isn't really a big deal, certainly not a life changer.  But a commercial just came on to remind me of something that is about to happen that annoys me.

We actually passed a law that says all broadcast television signal has to go digital by 2009.  I'm annoyed because I find the cost of television to be unreasonable.  There are a couple of shows I enjoy watching, but most of TV is crap and in order to watch my handful of somewhat-interesting shows, I am expected to pay a fortune for a range of channels that I won't watch and a thousand shows that I detest.  So I don't.  I have a TV that is hooked up to my DVD player and VCR (yes, I still own one and yes, I still watch movies on it).  I have an antenna that pics up about 8 channels, and I can see 3 or 4 shows that I enjoy.  Mostly, I rent the DVDs, but two of my shows will probably never make it to DVD and are not available online (nor do I receive those stations).

Radio is free because it relies upon its sponsers and their commercial advertising to pay for their service.  I'm fine with that.  If I want to avoid the advertisers, I can pay for satellite or listen to internet radio (which ties me to my computer) or listen to CDs and MP3s which I am legally supposed to pay for.  I understand entertainment is a business and they have to make money somewhere.  If I can get something for free, I'm willing to make some compromise like having commercials.  TV used to be like that too.  But now (or soon), there will be no more free TV, even with commercials.  No, even when you pay for the service, you still get advertisements.  And there is no option not to pay anymore.  That sucks.

Requiring all broadcast signal to go digital means I won't even get my 8 static-ey channels anymore.  If I want to see these shows, I have to buy a new TV (because mine is not capable of receiving digital - it's too old) and then pay for a cable service of some sort.  Or, I can go without.

It's not life-altering, it's not even emotionally upsetting.  It's just annoying.