I heard a story about Venezuela on NPR this morning. A political action group is being charged with treason for encouraging citizens to vote against the sitting president. The group receives funds from the US through the National Endowment for Democracy. The gist of the story is that American money is being spent to further American interests instead of bolstering a democracy.

Well...duh. (Issue 1)

Generally speaking a strong democracy is in America's best interests. As an ostensibly democratic nation we deal better with other ostensibly democratic nations. However, not all governments perform admirably in following our wish list, whether the government is democratic, oligarchic, despotic or other. American money should most definitely be spent to further American interests. One of our great interests is fomenting democracy so our money is very often spent supporting democratic causes but this does not and should not mean that we will spend money on supporting a democracy against our national interests.

Um...excuse me? (Issue 2)

How exactly is giving money to a party working within the democratic framework of their country not supporting democracy? Isn't one of the tenets of democracy the ability to organize change from within? The money here is being spent in support of a candidate in a democratic election. Since when is it not democratic to support a candidate in an election?

Conclusion

NPR really pisses me off sometimes.

Posted by: Jim at 11:50 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Okay, so I'm getting pretty experienced with pain management. The crap I've got requires some form of external medication in order for me to function like a relatively normal person. I say relatively because, let's just face facts here, I ain't never gonna be accused of being normal. Hehe.

Anyway, the specialist I saw (the last doc I saw about whatever I've got) gave me Vioxx. This worked pretty well. When i was taking Vioxx I was pretty much back to regular function. General lack of pain, free body movement, wrestling with the kids, lifting heavy objects, stuff like that. The only thing it didn't really tackle was my feet. Still, it worked and I was in better shape for using it.

Then Vioxx was recalled because it kills people. People on Vioxx have a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Fuck.

I kept taking it anyway, seeing as I didn't have that many left and am not in any particular risk category for heart problems. I looked forward to the day when I could see the doc again and get a prescription for Celebrex, which was the drug that Vioxx users were being switched to (in the majority).

In the meantime I needed something of the over-the-counter variety. I went to my old friends acetaminophen and acetylsalicylic acid. They'd carried me through many a hangover and headache. They sucked. Didn't really get rid of the pain at all. I tried ibuprofen. That worked pretty well but not for a very long time and I had to take a pretty large dose for it to work. It also started to make me violently ill.

Enter naproxen sodium. More commonly known as Naprox or Aleve. Aaaaaahhh!!! (<--- Angels singing)

It worked. Really well. Maybe not quite so well as Vioxx but well enough to function and no stomach problems, no need to overdose. I was happy and relieved that I had found something that worked to take me through to when I could get Celebrex.

Then late last week some problems surfaced regarding Celebrex. It seems that it kills people. People on Celebrex have a higher risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Fuck!

What the hell is up here? Now the FDA is looking into the entire class of drugs and it's possible that they might all be classified as unsafe. The entire class of drugs! This is the class of drugs specifically designed to get rid of the pain I've got.

Fuck!!

But wait, there's more. On my ride into work this morning I heard about a test that is being aborted because the drugs being tested were greatly increasing the risks of patient's suffering heart attacks and strokes. The drugs involved? Celebrex and naproxen.

Fucking Aleve, which has been on the market for 30 years, over the counter for more than a decade, regarded by all as one of the safest pain killers available, is suddenly found to increase risk factors for heart attacks and strokes but this isn't discovered until I need it?

Fuck you, universe!

Posted by: Jim at 11:59 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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You're in your van and your two year old daughter is asleep in the back seat. You've got to stop and pick something up from the office. Do you:

A) Wake the tyke up and bring her inside with you?
B) Lock the doors and roll up the windows and go in alone?
C) Leave the van running and unlocked with your sleeping child inside while you go into the building alone?
D) A or B
E) Anything except "C". Really, just about anything you can possibly think of besides "C". Don't pick "C"!

If you picked "C", how would you feel while watching the van drive away?

Lovely Wife comments on a local woman who chose poorly.

Posted by: Jim at 11:55 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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Lycos has invested a lot in anti-spam infrastructure for their users but spam is still a huge problem. How do you stop the spammers? Passing laws doesn't work - they just rent servers in places where there are no laws against spamming. The spammers themselves don't seem to be susceptible to anything.

But their customers are. Lycos has designed a tool to give those customers exactly what they want - traffic. Lots and lots and lots of traffic.

Lycos launches screensaver in fight against spam

Haarlem (pts) - The Internet portal Lycos http://www.lycos-europe.com has developed a screensaver that endlessly requests data from sites that sell the goods and services mentioned in spam e-mail. As the BBC http://www.bbc.co.uk reports, the company is hoping to make the monthly bandwidth bills of spammers rocket by keeping their servers running flat out. According to the Internet firm, if enough people sign up and download the new tool, spammers could end up having to pay to send out terabytes of data. By getting thousands of people to download and use the screensaver, Lycos hopes to get spamming websites constantly running at almost full capacity.

The individual burden isn't much (about the same as downloading an MP3 file over the course of a day) but the combined requests of thousands of trial users in Sweden have already had a dramatic effect. Response times from targeted sites have already dropped by 85 percent.

For the sites advertising through spam there are two damaging effects. First, they have performance issues. As huge numbers of requests come in their servers can't respond as quickly. Secondly, the Cialis and fetish gear merchant sites are using massive amounts of bandwidth - something they must actually pay for.

This is great. Spam is used because it is cheap. Make the use of spam expensive and people will stop using it.

Yay for Lycos!

(Tip credit to Dopple-G)

UPDATE
Kate has more, including a link to the download.

Posted by: Jim at 11:50 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment
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