There’s a bug of some kind going around. It doesn’t feel like a normal head cold and it isn’t really like the flu.

I’ve had a sore throat, a sinus headache, drainage, a persistent cough and so on. Benadryl cold and allergy seems to help, but hot tea with lemon and honey does almost as much good.

A friend has had it off and on for about three weeks, I’ve had it for just over a week, and one person I know has just been hospitalized because it turned into pneumonia.

According to a nurse I spoke to, this thing settles in, backs off for a couple of days lulling you into a false sense of security, and then comes back in full force.

The basic problem appears to be viral, however it has a tendency to turn into an upper respiratory infection that turns into the pneumonia.
All I can say is if you’re coughing up green stuff go to the doctor, and if the doctor gives you antibiotics take the full course.

In the mean time everyone I’ve run into, at work, at the grocery store and in the bookstore either has it, is just getting over it, or is starting to show the first symptoms.

I never seem to get what ever is going around and yet in the last year I gotten sick twice. Either I’m not as resilient as I used to be or the bugs are getting tougher.

This is from the York Daily Record:
Kirsten Taylor, 29, was found unconscious Wednesday night at the couple’s Pennsylvania home. She was taken to York Hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
Her husband Toby Taylor told police that he had clipped an electrical cord to his wife and plugged it into a power strip, which he then turned on and off.

He told authorities the couple had used the technique before.

Taylor, 37, was jailed Thursday in lieu of $100,000 bail on involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges. He did not have a lawyer at his arraignment and no lawyer had been entered in his court file as of Friday.

York County Coroner Barry Bloss called it a case of “bizarre sex.”

Political Nevada is posting once again.
A friend posted to it quoting my blog on gerrymandering, and the blog owner posted on his experience with the neighborhood caucus.

On the whole the blog owner is more upbeat and optimistic in his views than myself, but even he admits that the system is broken. He suggests a primary instead of a caucus.
—This is a novel idea, one man one vote. But that complicates the power broker’s schemes and we wouldn’t want them to have to play fair once in a while.

This is from this morning’s NYT:
Mrs. Clinton scored a clear victory measured in the number of people attending the caucuses on her behalf. But Mr. Obama’s campaign was successful by another measure — in the allocation of delegates to the national nominating convention, a result of a complex formula that gave more weight to votes in some parts of the state.

Let me guess. Somebody told you that your vote was just as important as everybody else’s. They also told you a big fat white dude was going to carry a big bag of toys down your chimney.
Aren’t you kind of old to keep believing this shit?

The signs say Clinton won.
Talk about pure unadulterated bullshit. She got her butt kicked where it really counted. The votes went to Clinton and the delegates went to Obama.

Following a time honored, nationwide political tradition, the Nevada Dems gamed the system.

Just a brief note on the gerrymandering here on the strip.
The caucus takes place on Saturday morning. –This leaves out Observant Jews.
The votes cast in these new at large precincts carry five times as much weight as normal precincts. –In other words, for every two votes cast in the hotels there must be 10 votes cast by regular voters, to achieve the same number of delegates.

The Clinton campaign says they have nothing to do with the failed lawsuit, but here’s ex-president Clinton before the hearing defending the lawsuit.

A couple of questions before I go.
Why did the Clintons refuse to allow anyone access to Hillary’s papers, instead choosing to have them locked away in the Clinton Library and off limits to the public, if she isn’t hiding something?
What happened to her getting rid of “stunning record of secrecy” in the Bush administration?

There’s a reason I don’t trust politicians, any politicians.

ger·ry·man·dered, ger·ry·man·der·ing, ger·ry·man·ders
To divide (a geographic area) into voting districts so as to give unfair advantage to one party or group in elections.

Obama will win Nevada because a judge has decided that gerrymandering is ok by him.

Mr Obama won the endorsement of the Culinary Workers Union, the biggest service sector union, earlier this month. Giving him a major advantage in the Democratic caucus, thanks to a masterful bit of maneuvering senior members of the party.

A decision to create nine new precincts within casinos on the Strip - the main stretch of high-profile casinos and hotels in Las Vegas - was approved by the state’s Democratic Party last summer.
They will be open to any shift worker working within 2.5 miles of the Strip when the caucuses are held.

A failed legal challenge was filed by the state teachers’ union and other groups with ties to Clinton. However, the Clinton campaign has said it was not involved with the lawsuit.

Giving his ruling, Judge James Mahan said: “The Democrats can set up their own rules just as the Republicans can.
“It is not up to some federal judge to come along and say, ‘I don’t like that’.” …..Strange. I thought that’s what judges were supposed to do.

This decision does make a person wonder by what means the judge got elected.

Benazir Bhutto, who was killed in a suicide attack at the end of 2007 stated in November that the Osama bin Laden, the head of the international terrorist network al-Qaida, had been killed. Bhutto claimed that she even knew the man who had killed the prime suspect of 9/11 terrorist attacks in the USA. According to Bhutto’s words, Bin Laden was killed by Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh.

Bhutto released that statement on November 2, 2007 in an interview with Al-Jazeera TV channel. Bhutto spoke in English in the program titled Frost Over the World. However, no one paid any attention to her words. Speaking about the enemies, who did not wish to see her back in Pakistan, she said: “Omar Sheikh is the man who murdered Osama bin Laden.”

It’s a shame that nobody tried to get her to site sources. Especially when you consider that the body is worth 25million US Dollars.

The statement occurs about 2:15 into the video.

In July 2007, President Bush signed a controversial executive order on the treatment of suspects detained by the CIA which did not outlaw the agency’s use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” such as water-boarding.
In December, the House of Representatives approved a bill that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation techniques such as water-boarding.
President George W Bush has threatened to veto the bill, which would require the agency to follow the rules adopted by the US Army and abide by the Geneva Conventions, if the Senate passes it.

The US Director of National Intelligence said he would regard water-boarding as torture if it was used against him. –He refused, however to comment on whether or not it would be legally defined as torture.

On a personal level, I would not hesitate to use such a measure if I thought it necessary. –Which is why there are protections in place to prevent such practices.

The only thing that separates this country from the places referred to as “third world countries,” is democracy, freedom of speech and protection from our own police.

However, with King George and his Court Jesters running things, and no intervention by Congress, our rights are being lost at a record pace, and we’ve become the most feared third world country on the planet.

Have you ever wondered where to take that special someone to propose marriage? This is a trip that will be remembered forever.

Australian Federal Minister for the Environment Peter Garrett, takes in the view from the purpose-built Wilkins glacial blue ice runway in front of the first Airbus A319 jet to carry passengers from Hobart, Australia to Antarctica.

A license has been issued for airline Skytraders to fly passengers from Hobart, the capital of the southern island state of Tasmania, to Wilkins aerodrome, near the Australian Antarctic Division’s Casey Station.
The runway is 4 kilometers long, 700 meters thick and moves about 12 meters southwest a year because of glacial drift.
It is located some 70 kms from Casey Station.

The 3.400 kilometers flight is expected to take around four hours in each direction.

—-I found no mention of ticket price. Primarily because, at this point in time, it is designed to carry scientists not tourists.

My advice is to write them. If there appears to be enough demand I’m quite certain some sort of eco-tourist arrangements can be made.

Sweden’s military is investigating a major security breach after a member of staff left a memory stick holding classified data on a public computer.

Recently it was discovered that USB sticks full of US military secrets were being sold on market stalls in Afghanistan.

Nobody’s data is safe.
Normally I would recommend encryption, but if they are coming up for sale in quantity on the black market, you can bet that encryption codes and passwords are also readily for sale.

An informal survey by Centennial Software showed that 66% of people mislay USB sticks and that 60% of those devices have business information on them.

I know they make moving data from one computer to another simple, but what about things like security?
This take your work home and lose it is getting out of hand.

Forced encryption would take care of a lot of carelessness, but the black market is a criminal activity. There is nothing that can be done to stop it. All that can be done is to try and contain it.

There is also software that prevents the use of usb drives. This costs money, but it will help secure our data. More businesses, states and government agencies will implement it just as soon as there is a real penalty for losing our data.
—-This means probably never.—-