Anti-Theft lunch bags make thieves think your sandwich Is moldy. Here's the website if you want to order some..... but as of 2010/09/29 they are temporarily out of stock but you can reserve some.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
"Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" > Change the lyrics to include the word "PRIVACY"
Broad new regulations being drafted by the Obama administration would make it easier for law enforcement and national security officials to eavesdrop on Internet and e-mail communications like social networking Web sites and BlackBerries, The New York Times reported Monday. Click here to read the entire article.
Fox pays GOP presidential hopefuls
Image via WikipediaFox News faces a dilemma as the 2012 presidential campaign, which traditionally starts right after midterm elections, nears: The network has four potential candidates on its payroll in Sarah Palin, Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee, and Rick Santorum. That’s every major contender save Mitt Romney who’s not currently holding office. The politicians’ paid contributor deals have caused a rift within Fox News and frustrated competitors, because the candidates are contractually forbidden from appearing on another news channel. [...] Fox says that once the Republicans declare they’re running for office, they’ll have to sever their ties to the channel. But they’re likely to delay that announcement, as Fox offers an unparalleled platform to spout an unfiltered message to conservatives.
News democracy may be coming to America
“As more people get news from cable channels and websites that offer a particular point of view 24/7, it becomes increasingly important for viewers to sample multiple sources in order to best understand the issues and proposed solutions,” said Michael Freedman, a professor of media and public affairs at George Washington and executive director of its Global Media Institute. “This trend is only increasing.”
Saturday, September 25, 2010
More than 45% of dogs & 59% of cats are overweight
From the Daily Beast
“Jamal, he’s a super-handsome guy and he comes in and he does a combination of things,” says personal trainer Jessica Waldman, 34 years old, talking about one of her favorite clients. “He does 30 minutes of exercises that are core strengthening, and he’ll also do instability work.” That is, he’ll balance or power walk on an unstable surface to strengthen his back and stomach muscles. Then he does an obstacle course to limber up, or some endurance work on the treadmill.
And then he gets a treat. Read the rest of the article.
Other information on this important subject
- Association for Pet Obesity Prevention
- Obesity Facts & Risks
- Facebook: Association for Pet Obesity Prevention
- Canine Weight Management & Obesity Prevention
(Senator) Christine O'Donnell on Evolution, circa 1998. > Really?
If you need to watch her say it click here.O'DONNELL: You know what, evolution is a myth. And even Darwin himself...MAHER: Evolution is a myth? Have you ever looked at a monkey?O'DONNELL: Well then, why they -- why aren't monkeys still evolving into humans?
The Huffington Post has some more that may be of interest.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Monday, September 20, 2010
Sunday, September 12, 2010
For all you detail oriented people out there.
So there I was, smug in my personal blogisphere, diddling myself with some pseudo intellectual drippings from my scattered mind & I receive the following note from a person I hadn't seen in 30 long years.
Just noticed a misprint on your blog...I believe it's "piqueing" not "peaking". [...] the "offending" word is right below the tital on your blog.
So I looked and sure enough under that majestic title of JAN RIFKINSON'S UNIVERSE, I had painstakingly written:
"Items peaking my interest. Videos, links to interesting or topical stories, my movie & book reviews, essays, commentary, humor and photos."
It really pissed me off because it took me a long time to come up with that line. I wanted to explain my blog in a single line, no word wrap.
By nature I'm a pretty anal person -- no, no -- I mean I'm very detail oriented so this was a thunderbolt that struck me both in head & heart. BUT I respect accuracy more than embarrassment so, in shame, I jumped back into Google's Blogspot > Edit layout & started fiddling again. So now the line reads:
Items that pique my interest. Videos, links to interesting or topical stories, my movie & book reviews, essays, commentary, humor and photos.
Please note that I've use both an ampersand and the word "and" in the same sentence. Lest you think I was not paying attention, you're WRONG. I had to do that so it would fit on one line, i.e. no word wrap.
So Peter Brinkerhoffenswine, you turned out to be more anal than I am but now I'm even more satisfied that I took you on a re-doubled bet in backgammon 30 years ago. Yeah !!
Friday, September 10, 2010
Whatza a Goolsbee? The last line may explain it all.
Breaking news from Politico
President Barack Obama will announce Austan Goolsbee as the new chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers at an East Room news conference on Friday, providing continuity in the face of a political storm. A senior administration official said Goolsbee, 41, will succeed Christina Romer. Goolsbee is a member of the CEA, and staff director and chief economist on the President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board. As a University of Chicago economics professor, he advised Obama’s 2004 Senate campaign and 2008 presidential campaign. Last year, he won a “D.C.'s Funniest Celebrity” contest.
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
That dreaded Lyme disease & those damned ticks
From The Wall Street Journal. Written by Laura Landro.
While most people worry about tick bites after outdoor activities like camping, hiking and golf, the majority of bites happen close to home.
The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases are investigating an alarming rise in several different types of tick-borne infections including Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever and ehrlichiosis. Not only are more diseases being spread by ticks, but more species of ticks are transmitting disease, including some, like brown dog ticks, not previously considered a danger to humans. The blood-sucking parasites are the leading carriers of disease in the U.S. and second only to mosquitoes worldwide.
The CDC is promoting "integrated tick management," which includes the use of landscaping to discourage ticks and recommending people treat yards in affected areas with pesticides. Studies by Kirby Stafford, chief entomologist at the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, show that 82% of ticks on a property are within three yards of the lawn perimeter, particularly along woodlands, stone walls, and ornamental plantings.
Dr. Stafford's recommendations include making a barrier of wood chips made of cedar—a natural tick repellent—between wooded areas or stone walls and lawns heavily used by the family, keeping pets out of woods, and avoiding vegetation that attracts deer. As an alternative to chemical pesticides, Dr. Stafford is also working with the CDC to field-test the effectiveness of new organic repellent products that use such substances as rosemary oil, Alaskan cedar and garlic. Some are already on the market.
Often victims aren't aware they've been bitten. Most ticks are hard-backed and can be the size of a pinhead. They may not be noticed until they have embedded themselves in the skin, growing larger as they gorge themselves on blood. Disease can often be avoided if ticks are removed within 24 hours.
To combat the spread of ticks on animals, the CDC and the U.S. Department of Agriculture have been working with state and local officials to study applying insecticides directly to animals in the wild. For deer ticks, which carry three types of disease including Lyme, studies show that feeding stations armed with pesticide can sharply reduce ticks on deer. When the deer eat corn in the feeders, four paint rollers filled with pesticide brush against their ears, neck, head and shoulders. Bait boxes that apply pesticides to mice have also worked. In Arizona, the CDC has been fighting an outbreak of Rocky Mountain spotted fever spread by brown dog ticks by going door-to-door to place tick collars on dogs.
Behind the rise in ticks and the diseases they carry: More homes are being built near wooded areas and on land once used for farming that has reverted to secondary forests. The deer population around the country has exploded. Infectious disease experts also cite warming temperatures and increasing humidity.
"The more people study ticks, the more new pathogens are discovered," says Joseph Piesman, who oversees tick-borne diseases at the CDC.
While some tick-borne infections cause only mild illness that can be treated with antibiotics, others can require hospitalization and cause serious long-term health issues. There are few vaccines for tick-borne diseases.
Reported cases of Lyme, the most prevalent of tick-borne diseases, have risen sharply over the last decade, with 35,198 cases in 2008 compared with 13,000 cases in 2000. The CDC says because of under-reporting, the actual number of cases may be three times as high. Though still largely a problem in the Northeast and upper Midwest, Lyme is turning up all over the U.S. If not correctly diagnosed and treated, Lyme can cause chronic joint inflammation, neurological symptoms such as facial palsy, impaired memory and heart-rhythm irregularities.
Other tick-borne illnesses, though less widespread, are also on the rise. In 2008, there were 2,563 reported cases of Rocky Mountain spotted fever , compared with 579 in 1999. The fever can be quickly fatal unless treated with a powerful antibiotic. Last May, Wisconsin and Minnesota warned about a new species of the tick-borne bacteria ehrlichia, not previously found in North America, which can cause flu-like illness. The disease is transmitted by lone star ticks, which have spread to more states in recent years and are also linked to a new illness, called STARI, for southern tick-associated rash illness.
Tick-borne diseases often exhibit symptoms that look like something else. Without rapid or reliable tests for some diseases, it can be hard for doctors to suspect and diagnose, says David Davenport, an infectious disease specialist at the Michigan State University Center for Medical Studies. "These are rare diseases most physicians don't know much about, or they learned in medical school that the diseases only occur in certain areas," says Dr. Davenport. "But these patterns are rapidly changing and a whole lot of what we are trying to control is a moving target."
Connie Sargent, a nurse at Bronson Methodist Hospital in Kalamazoo, Mich., was admitted to the hospital as a patient last summer after she spiked a fever of 104, became sick to her stomach, and a red rash spread all over her body. Dr. Davenport diagnosed Rocky Mountain spotted fever.
Ms. Sargent did notice some bites, but wasn't sure if she got them gardening in her yard or while at her lake cottage in Traverse City. She was successfully treated with the antibiotic Doxycycline. It took her several weeks to recover. Now, she uses tick repellent when gardening, dons long sleeves and examines herself when she comes inside.
On Wild Horse Island in Montana's Flathead Lake, soft-backed ticks bite quietly in the night, typically inside cabins in wooded areas, leaving people infected with relapsing fever that can cause repeated illness over years. Scott MacDonald, whose family developed the island and sold part of it to the state as a park, was infected with relapsing fever along with several relativesin a 2002 outbreak. Everyone recovered after treatment, he says.
Tom Schwan, an expert in tick-borne diseases at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases' Rocky Mountain Laboratories, who first identified the outbreak on the island, has helped property owners rid cabins of ticks with pesticides and remove rodents' nests that harbor ticks. He is now studying how animals and birds may be spreading the disease in Western states.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
The Kit Thomas Affair
Before our first class at St. John's, we sat in a stairwell of a private apartment building near school and communed about this or that and maybe shared from a small waxed paper bag of deep fried banana chips. It was a private time between us. This was in Puerto Rico, in the mid 50's.
Once, at my house in Cupey Alto (in the country), she leaned over and, to my great surprise, kissed me although I can't remember where she planted it. However, I do remember it was a very special, gentle moment. Even today, I can see us sitting on that tree trunk. I was probably 12 or 13 at the time. I think she was too.
Her name was Kit Thomas and she was my girl friend. We never had sex. I don't think we even petted – just look at the picture; there wasn't that much to pet, anyway -- but our bond was tight. It was very serious even though she was about a head taller than I was.
I don't know how long our 'affair' lasted but I think it was a long while but at that time of life, days were long (unlike how short they seem when you get older) so maybe our relationship lasted only for a few weeks or months, instead of years.
Anyway, Kit's dad had been temporarily transferred from -- was it White Plains? -- to organize the a Boy Scouts of America chapter in Puerto Rico and he had an office in Old San Juan, the very quaint, cobble stoned, 500 year old city which is the capital of Puerto Rico. Sometimes we'd go into Old San Juan just to wander about and to visit Mr. Thomas which, ultimately, gave us the idea.
You see, at the end of 9th grade, I was leaving for a summer school-camp in Vermont to prepare for my transfer into a rather fancy Pennsylvania prep school the following academic year.
By this time, Kit and I had sworn our love to each other, proclaimed our joint fidelity while apart and to formalize that promise, we each removed our exchanged rings which we wore around our necks (a public demonstration of our commitment to one another) and placed them into two little envelopes and onto the bottom shelf of Mr. Thomas' big black safe with the gold writing on it, behind his office desk. It was a solemn ceremony and Mr. Thomas looked on, quietly, respecting the moment.
For me there was a slight let down after that as I liked 'belonging' to Kit but I knew everything would be okay; somehow it would work out. Who understood or even thought about the future in those days.
Then I went off to camp.
There I got 'prepared' for prep school, was taught speed reading, played with an old, four door, black Mercury and learned about "Jew shoes" but that's an altogether different story.
At the beginning of the summer, I was able to communicate with Kit by the single public telephone that lived in a cramped booth in the main building.
I 'paid' for these calls by providing my grandfather's telephone number in New York to the long distance operator (nobody asked him if he could or would accept those charges) but finally, one day, I was informed that Kit had left Puerto Rico to spend the summer with friends in her hometown.
I had no further contact with her until summer's end. Strangely, I don't remember how I felt about that loss but, with current introspection, it probably gnawed at me as that's my personality.
Finally, by summer's end, I reconnected with Kit only to discover that our little world had been invaded by another male; not by the home town hero, the high school president, the homecoming king, the varsity baseball, basketball player or quarterback, but by a lowly soda jerk who worked at the local hangout.
Once, at my house in Cupey Alto (in the country), she leaned over and, to my great surprise, kissed me although I can't remember where she planted it. However, I do remember it was a very special, gentle moment. Even today, I can see us sitting on that tree trunk. I was probably 12 or 13 at the time. I think she was too.
Her name was Kit Thomas and she was my girl friend. We never had sex. I don't think we even petted – just look at the picture; there wasn't that much to pet, anyway -- but our bond was tight. It was very serious even though she was about a head taller than I was.
I don't know how long our 'affair' lasted but I think it was a long while but at that time of life, days were long (unlike how short they seem when you get older) so maybe our relationship lasted only for a few weeks or months, instead of years.
Anyway, Kit's dad had been temporarily transferred from -- was it White Plains? -- to organize the a Boy Scouts of America chapter in Puerto Rico and he had an office in Old San Juan, the very quaint, cobble stoned, 500 year old city which is the capital of Puerto Rico. Sometimes we'd go into Old San Juan just to wander about and to visit Mr. Thomas which, ultimately, gave us the idea.
You see, at the end of 9th grade, I was leaving for a summer school-camp in Vermont to prepare for my transfer into a rather fancy Pennsylvania prep school the following academic year.
By this time, Kit and I had sworn our love to each other, proclaimed our joint fidelity while apart and to formalize that promise, we each removed our exchanged rings which we wore around our necks (a public demonstration of our commitment to one another) and placed them into two little envelopes and onto the bottom shelf of Mr. Thomas' big black safe with the gold writing on it, behind his office desk. It was a solemn ceremony and Mr. Thomas looked on, quietly, respecting the moment.
For me there was a slight let down after that as I liked 'belonging' to Kit but I knew everything would be okay; somehow it would work out. Who understood or even thought about the future in those days.
Then I went off to camp.
There I got 'prepared' for prep school, was taught speed reading, played with an old, four door, black Mercury and learned about "Jew shoes" but that's an altogether different story.
At the beginning of the summer, I was able to communicate with Kit by the single public telephone that lived in a cramped booth in the main building.
I 'paid' for these calls by providing my grandfather's telephone number in New York to the long distance operator (nobody asked him if he could or would accept those charges) but finally, one day, I was informed that Kit had left Puerto Rico to spend the summer with friends in her hometown.
I had no further contact with her until summer's end. Strangely, I don't remember how I felt about that loss but, with current introspection, it probably gnawed at me as that's my personality.
Finally, by summer's end, I reconnected with Kit only to discover that our little world had been invaded by another male; not by the home town hero, the high school president, the homecoming king, the varsity baseball, basketball player or quarterback, but by a lowly soda jerk who worked at the local hangout.
There was no going back.
So much for that romance which I still remember fondly.
Monday, September 06, 2010
NPR > What do a Saudi Prince, Fox News & the New York mosque have in common?
The proposed construction of an Islamic center and mosque close to ground zero in New York City has inspired intense scrutiny from news outlets this month — and few have outstripped the Fox News Channel in their interest.
That's especially true on Fox's opinion-driven shows in the morning and evening hours. Familiar figures including Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have repeatedly asked where the money for the center will come from. Yet the parent company of Fox News shares a financial backer with the imam who is at the center of the firestorm. The second-largest holder of voting stock in News Corp. is Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a nephew of the Saudi king. And through his philanthropies, Waleed has given generously to initiatives pursued by the imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf. But that connection has not been spelled out by Fox to viewers.
That's especially true on Fox's opinion-driven shows in the morning and evening hours. Familiar figures including Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have repeatedly asked where the money for the center will come from. Yet the parent company of Fox News shares a financial backer with the imam who is at the center of the firestorm. The second-largest holder of voting stock in News Corp. is Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, a nephew of the Saudi king. And through his philanthropies, Waleed has given generously to initiatives pursued by the imam, Feisal Abdul Rauf. But that connection has not been spelled out by Fox to viewers.
[...] according to the latest filings with the SEC, Waleed now holds 7 percent of the voting stock in News Corp., more than any other person not named Rupert Murdoch .....
Saturday, September 04, 2010
Thursday, September 02, 2010
The 10 highest paid CEOs who laid off the most workers
From Huffington Post
A grim fact of the recession is that it pays to lay people off.
The CEOs who laid off the most employees during the recession are also the CEOs who took home the biggest pay checks, according to a study released last week.
Discovery News > Resort attracts men with virtual girlfriends
Sad, sick, weird, funny or what? I dunno.
A resort in Japan is offering young men a tourism destination to frolic with their virtual girlfriends. The resort is based on a game called "Love Plus," which encourages players to develop long-term relationships with virtual women. Read the rest of this story here.
A resort in Japan is offering young men a tourism destination to frolic with their virtual girlfriends. The resort is based on a game called "Love Plus," which encourages players to develop long-term relationships with virtual women. Read the rest of this story here.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
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