Archive for May 31st, 2007
Got Ten Minutes..Help a Graduate Student
May 31st, 2007
If you woulds like to participate in an interesting survey about blogs and politics, head on over to Betsy’s Page.
The questions in this survey are precise making it easy to reply and the entire questionnaire takes less than ten minutes to complete.
If you wish to take the survey from here this is the link.
Posted in 
Less Spam?
May 31st, 2007
This morning I checked my email and had 100 messages, two of which were legitimate and the rest all spam. Fortunately, I have a good spam filter and just glance at them to see if I see a name I recognize then select all and delete.
Now comes this story of a 27 year old man in Seattle, who is one of the ten largest spammers, being caught.
SEATTLE — A 27-year-old man described as one of the world’s most prolific spammers was arrested Wednesday, and federal authorities said computer users across the Web could notice a decrease in the amount of junk e-mail.
Robert Alan Soloway is accused of using networks of compromised “zombie” computers to send out millions upon millions of spam e-mails.
“He’s one of the top 10 spammers in the world,” said Tim Cranton, a Microsoft Corp. lawyer who is senior director of the company’s Worldwide Internet Safety Programs. “He’s a huge problem for our customers. This is a very good day.”
A federal grand jury last week returned a 35-count indictment against Soloway charging him with mail fraud, wire fraud, e-mail fraud, aggravated identity theft and money laundering.
Soloway pleaded not guilty Wednesday afternoon to all charges after a judge determined that — even with four bank accounts seized by the government — he was sufficiently well off to pay for his own lawyer.
He has been living in a ritzy apartment and drives an expensive Mercedes convertible, said prosecutor Kathryn Warma. Prosecutors are seeking to have him forfeit $773,000 they say he made from his business, Newport Internet Marketing Corp.
A public defender who represented him for Wednesday’s hearing declined to comment.
Pay for a lawyer on your own, dime, fella. You’ll get better representation and you won’t need that money for a long time to come.
WTC Heroes Getting Blood Cancers at Alarming Rate
May 31st, 2007
OK, I looked for this article in the NY Times and Washington Post but the only place I could find it was here, which is actually a NY Post story on the Fox web site. I quit reading the NY Post a while back because they changed formats and seemed to be more local and gossipy than real news, but this short blurb is interesting.
A group of 9/11 responders has contracted blood cancers at an unusually young age, and top doctors suspect the disease was triggered by an unprecedented “synergistic mix” of toxins at the World Trade Center site.
The WTC Medical Monitoring Program is now studying a group of Ground Zero workers, including cops, construction workers and volunteers, suffering from cancers such as leukemia, lymphoma and multiple myeloma.
“The kind of thing that worries us is that we have a handful of cases of multiple myeloma in very young individuals … a condition that almost always presents late in life,” said Dr. Robin Herbert, co-director of the program at Mount Sinai Hospital.
“That’s the kind of odd, unusual and troubling finding that we’re seeing already,” she says in an interview with the New England Journal of Medicine, which comes out today.
9/11 is going to continue to make people ill and claim lives for a long time to come.
How Did This Happen?
May 31st, 2007
I’ve been following the story of the man with drug resistant tuberculosis for the past few days and it is a very troubling story.
The man wanted to get married in Greece, saw his doctor for something and was told he had TB. He says he was advised not to go on the trip but not told he couldn’t go on the trip.
After he had been on a couple of planes, sitting around dozens of people, he was finally tracked down in Italy by the CDC, who told him he had a very deadly form of TB and to go to the US Embassy or an Italian hospital for treatment and isolation while the CDC worked on getting him back to the States.
He decided on his own if he followed those instructions he would die, so he headed to Prague and hopped a flight to Montreal then drove back into the United States and turned himself in in New York.
Did I mention he was told his passport had been flagged and he was on a no-fly list?
Now everyone is going crazy trying to locate all the passengers he might have infected so they can get a skin test to see if they have TB. His wife doesn’t, and he claims he wasn’t coughing on the flights.
How did this happen? If this guy, who had his passport flagged and was on a no-fly list could so easily re-enter this country or enter any other country, how easy would it be for anyone who has a mind to inject himself with the bubonic plague, ebola virus, superflu or any other disease that could potentially kill millions in a pandemic to get into this or any other country?
Homeland Security doesn’t seem to be living up to its title. It doesn’t just mean watch out for people in turbans praying loudly in an airport anymore. Those are the easy catches.
The other bad thing about this incident? Even though he was doing all of this against the CDC instructions to not do it he never broke a law and has not been arrested. He is in a hospital with federally enforced isolation now, but they’re still looking for those he came in contact with and could have exposed to a deadly form of TB.
An Invasion of Privacy
May 31st, 2007
Last night I went to Google.com and saw a heading for maps. I clicked on it and put in my address. Not only did I find directions to my house if anyone wanted them, but I found an aerial shot of the entire neighborhood. If I zoomed in I could see my own house.
I saw my neighbor’s car in the driveway of his house, I could see my house and even my five year old grandson pointed out the outside storage buildings we have in our yard and his sand box!
I did the same for my children’s homes and saw them in great detail also, down to the playhouse in the back yard.
I then clicked over to Drudge to see what his headlines were and his headline was Google being able to see license plates and people on the street. I clicked on the link to see a guy standing outside a strip joint and could easily read the neon sign on the window of the establishment.
I had had a friend email a link to me several months ago with an aerial shot of my house, asking if that was my house.
Somehow I feel we are living in the age of Big Brother and I don’t like the feeling.
A good way to live
May 31st, 2007
So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart.
Trouble no one about his religion; respect others in their view, and
demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life,
beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its
purpose in the service of your people. Prepare a noble death song for the
day when you go over the great divide. Always give a word or a sign of
salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely
place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none.”When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and for the joy of
living. If you see no reason for giving thanks, the fault lies only in
yourself. Abuse no one and nothing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools
and robs the spirit of its vision. When it comes your time to die, be not
like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when
their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their
lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a
hero going home.”TECUMSEH
Dodd, Richardson to Skip Fox Debate
May 31st, 2007
If the Congressional Black Caucus is disappointed, that’s to bad.
Democratic presidential candidates Bill Richardson and Chris Dodd will not participate in a Democratic debate co-sponsored by Fox News Channel this fall, joining their three top rivals in bypassing the event.
Their decisions, acknowledged by campaign aides Wednesday, is sure to disappoint the Congressional Black Caucus, whose political education and leadership institute is Fox’s partner in the debate.
But Richardson, the governor of New Mexico, and Dodd, a senator from Connecticut, have been under pressure to shun the debate from liberal groups who say Fox is biased against Democrats.
The debate exodus began two months ago when John Edwards became the first candidate to announce that he would not attend the Sept. 23 debate in Detroit. A week later, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama announced they also would not participate.
Troops Confront Lieberman On Iraq Visit
May 31st, 2007
Is it time?
Spc. David Williams, 22, of Boston, Mass., had two note cards in his pocket Wednesday afternoon as he waited for Sen. Joseph Lieberman. Williams serves in the 82nd Airborne Division from Fort Bragg, N.C., the first of the five “surge” brigades to arrive in Iraq, and he was chosen to join the Independent from Connecticut for lunch at a U.S. field base in Baghdad.
The night before, 30 other soldiers crowded around him with questions for the senator.
He wrote them all down. At the top of his note card was the question he got from nearly every one of his fellow soldiers:
“When are we going to get out of here?”
