Posts from — April 2008

Not even vegens are safe: FDA: Same Salmonella strain in recalled cereal sickens 23 people

Symptoms of salmonella infection include nausea, vomiting, fever, diarrhea and abdominal cramps. It can be life-threatening for people with poor health or weakened immune systems, including young children and the elderly.

The FDA said people who experience such symptoms after eating a puffed wheat or puffed rice cereal made by Malt-O-Meal should contact their doctors and report the illness to state or local health authorities.

The FDA said the recalled products were distributed nationally under the Malt-O-Meal brand name, as well as private labels including Acme, America’s Choice, Food Club, Giant, Hannaford, Jewel, Laura Lynn, Pathmark, Shaw’s, ShopRite, Tops and Weis Quality. The cereal bags have “best if used by” dates from April 8, 2008 (coded as APR0808), through March 18, 2009 (coded as MAR1809).

Consumers with products from the recalled lots are advised to throw them out, and retailers have been told to remove the cereals from their shelves.

This is surreal – getting sick from your breakfast cereal.

Most people have probably heard about the 8 teenagers who were involved in beating another teen senseless, so they could post the video of the beating on the ‘Net. The incident took place in Polk County, Florida, which is the home of Interstate 4 Jamming which has been following the case.

The Interstate 4 Jammer predicted at 7:15AM this morning that someone in the daytime sleaze media would get involved, someone like “Dr. Phil”.

Guess what: Bondsman: Dr. Phil Posted Bond For Teen Accused Of Ringleading Videotaped Beating

The teen accused of masterminding a videotaped “animalistic” attack against a fellow teenage classmate is out on bond, and she has celebrity talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw to thank for it, according to a bail bondsman.

The bondsman told media gathered at a Polk County jail Friday that Dr. Phil posted Mercedes Nichols’ $30,000 bond.

When Nichols was released from jail, a man arrived and idenfitied himself as a Dr. Phil producer and ordered local media to leave the area because the Dr. Phil Show had exclusive rights to the story, according to reporters on scene.

Good call Jammer.  Dr. Phil, you really need to see a shrink, because you are one sick puppy.

Florida License Plates

Beneficiary

A weekend feature of Why Now.

I’m upgrading to WordPress 2.5. I you can read this it probably worked.

Update: Well, it seems to have worked and I’m really sorry I did it, because I really hate the backend.  I hate the way it looks; I hate the way it’s arranged; I hate the color choices; I hate the text choices; I pretty much hate everything about it.

If it wasn’t such a hemorrhoid to move, it’s enough to make me look for a different package.

One of the joys of everyone “packing heat” in Florida: Gun Accidentally Fires, Hits Chili’s Customer

MELBOURNE, Fla. — A gun belonging to a customer inside a Chili’s restaurant in Melbourne accidentally discharged, hitting a nearby person eating dinner, according to police.

Police said officers were called to the restaurant at 955 Wickham Road just after 11:30 p.m. Friday.

When officers arrived, they found the victim had suffered a gunshot wound to the lower leg in a dining area of the restaurant.

That’s why guns should be left in the hands of the people with training, like the military…or, maybe not: Misfired artillery crashes into girl’s bed

JEFFERSON TOWNSHIP, New Jersey (AP) — A piece of artillery that was apparently misfired by the military crashed through the roof of a New Jersey home miles away Friday and injured a young girl’s cat, which had to be euthanized, officials said.

No people were injured when the two-pound piece hit the Jefferson Township home about two-and-a- half miles from the Picatinny Arsenal and landed in the girl’s bed, said Peter Rowland, arsenal spokesman. She wasn’t home, but her cat was sleeping on the bed.

Your mileage may vary.

First off, while she hasn’t shown any competence at anything she has done in this administration, the media should at least show her the minimal respect of using her last name, you know, like all of the incompetent guys. Clinton isn’t the only one who has to put up with this misogynist crap.

The Associated Press tells us that: Jimmy Carter Draws Criticism From Condi

(AP) Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice criticized former President Carter on Friday for his reported plans to meet the exiled leader of the militant Palestinian group Hamas during a visit to Syria.

Carter has not confirmed the plans to meet Khaled Mashaal, but Hamas has said the former Democratic president sent an envoy to Damascus requesting a meeting with the militant group’s officials.

[Read more →]

Come on, when was the last time a cable company overlooked an opportunity to jack up their bill? You had to know they were going to pull something: Digital transition could cost cable customers

WASHINGTON – For months, TV viewers have been told by government, by industry and by the media that if they already subscribe to cable, there’s no need to worry about the coming transition to digital broadcasting.

So cable customer Doris Spurk was surprised to learn that thanks to the transition, she would have to rent a converter box for $5.95 per month, per television set, plus pay for a $60 service call to install it. With five televisions in her home, the conversion would increase her bill by 75 percent.

“It really ticks us off,” the 63-year-old central Florida resident said. “If they are in the right and can do this — charge these prices — then the educational effort that the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) is doing is really misleading everybody.”

Yes, the cable company could run both the analog and digital signals, and some of them might, but they can save bandwidth and make a larger profit by switching to all digital and “leasing” a $50 converter for $6/month for every analog television a customer has. The $60 service call for a $10/hour technician with 30 minutes of training is icing on the cake. When they lost the ability to charge for the cable splitter and wire for extra sets, and then cable-ready TVs cost them the ability to lease converter boxes, you had to know they were looking for another opportunity to screw their customers.

I don’t watch television, and the antics of cable companies is one of the main reasons.

After over six years as The People’s Republic of Seabrook, Jack Cluth is now What Would Jack Do?, reflecting the reality that he is no longer based in Texas, but Beaverton, Oregon.

Clara Moskowitz at LiveScience writes that Scientists discover black holes on the Internet

You’re pounding the keyboard, double-clicking away, sighing and grumbling, but to no avail: That devilish little hourglass icon refuses to give way to the Web site you’re trying to reach. Most Internet users have encountered trouble reaching online destinations, but they often attribute the problem to their wireless network cutting out or a server momentarily going down.

Sometimes, though, the problem is more mysterious. At any given moment, messages throughout the world are lost to cyber black holes, according to new computer science research.

I think that my current problems are related to the TLD [Top Level Domain] DNS [Domain Name Server], essentially the “phonebook” for sites that are in the “.us” domains, but it could be a hidden backbone problem.

One annoying thing about the article is that it doesn’t provide a link to the “Hubble” site, which is an odd omission for Internet technology reporting.

Proving it will attack anyone if the interests of the Six-PAC of Media Conglomerates is annoyed, the Associated Press reports: FCC Fines Stores For Hawking “Useless” TVs

(AP) Federal regulators fined Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Best Buy Co. Inc. and other retailers a combined $3.9 million on Thursday for failing to label analog television sets properly as subject to become essentially useless after the United States switches to digital TV next year.

The Federal Communications Commission also handed down $2.7 million in fines to other companies for violating other digital TV rules that involve shipping analog equipment and blocking technologies such as the V-chip.

An FCC rule, adopted last May, requires retailers to add labeling to analog-only TV equipment that says it will not receive signals without a special converter box after the nationwide digital transition.

[Read more →]

Ready For Launch

These cats need some discipline.

[Editor: Ringo sweeps back her ears in preparation to go zooming off. As the weather has improved she spends more time outside.]

Friday Ark

MBW at Wampum takes offense at what Clinton, Obama, and the DNC are up to with the California delegate selection process, calling it Bad Form.

These people spend an awful lot of time and energy messing around in the processes of the state parties. You have to wonder where this power to interfere in the process comes from. If I were the head of a state delegation I would be tempted to tell the delegation to abstain on the first vote, and then vote for whoever they wanted after that. You don’t “empower” people when you tell them what to do, you generally tick them off.

I’ve seen people in various places decrying the “politicization of the Olympics” in protesting the torch relay. They have apparently been led to believe that the Olympics are supposed to be some larger version of the Disney “It’s a small world” exhibit, without the annoying music.

Fortunately the British still maintain that the study of history is of actual significance in the world, and the BBC reports on The Olympic torch’s shadowy past.

I was involved in a insignificant way in the 1972 Munich Olympics while stationed in Germany. I have a rather different view of the games than others.

Jack K. at the Grumpy Forester noted one element of the Shrubbery’s latest passion, the Colombia Free Trade Agreement, that he’s attempting to push through Congress: “need for this agreement is too urgent; the stakes for our national security are too high to allow this year to end without a vote.”

I know a number of Colombians, and they don’t seem to know what the Shrubbery’s talking about. We are rather forceful, if unsuccessful, in blocking the major cash crop of Colombia, cocaine, so what is this about?

If you look at the economy of Colombia, there isn’t much of vital national security interest, unless you are trying to apologize to your wife, because Colombia is an exporter of cut flowers, gold, silver, platinum, and emeralds. Personally I’m a bigger fan of their coffee and bananas. They do export some crude oil, but not enough for Darth Cheney to get greedy over. They have a trade surplus with the US, but they are well down the list of our trading partners.

About the only thing I can think of is that the Hedgemony might think this will annoy Hugo, the mouth of Venezuela, but Hugo doesn’t get along with Colombia anyway, so that’s not much of an annoyance.

Sorry, I’m at loss, just like my friends. This must have something to do with some corporation trying to cut some kind of deal in Colombia that something in this treaty will make possible, because the duties on Colombian products aren’t really significant, unless you’re Eliot Spitzer and need a platinum and emerald ring…and broach…and necklace…and a thousand roses.