The ability of people with diabetes to test their own blood glucose is probably the most important advance in controlling diabetes since the discovery of insulin in 1921-22. Yet few of us know anything about how self-testing of blood glucose began, and many of us take our blood glucose meters for granted.

The race to be the first to market non-invasive—or at least minimally-invasive—blood glucose systems is nearing the final lap.

With all the resources for diabetes available on the Internet now, how do you decide where to start? By looking here.

The Internet, especially the World Wide Web, can add a powerful new dimension to small business marketing. While the Internet won't replace traditional marketing tools, it can be an efficient way for small businesses to compete equally with big business in reaching customers everywhere.

The little Pacific island nation of Tonga became a satellite giant through a strange twist of fate. It happened by chance because, one after the other, two neighbors who in 1987 were living in San Diego, California, were looking for a tropical paradise where they could retire.

It was a rainy night and the meeting was stormy. Leaders of a new organization of Latin American cable operators formed to combat cable piracy had gone to Guatemala last October to persuade cable companies there to get legal.

"Another sunny day in paradise?" Or, "Aren't there any seasons here?"

We've all heard these stereotypes about our weather. But even here in sunny Southern California the weather keeps changing. Those of us who live here know that's just its nature. Why else would we talk about liquid sunshine?

These days some people are doing more than talking about the weather.

It seems strange that the most important work on the glycemic index comes from Australia and Canada. Why not from the United States, where we have otherwise made so much progress in treating diabetes?

The first book to bring us the facts about the glycemic index attributes the American lag to academic politics. It sounds like another example of the NIH factor. No, it's not the National Institutes of Health, but rather that it was Not Invented Here.

For those who are open-minded enough to accept findings from other countries, the book is The G.I. Factor: The Glycaemic Index Solution, published in Australia and New Zealand by Hodder Headline Australian Pty Limited in April 1996.