Sad news, Overcode passed away on Saturday, September 17th.

More information and a guestbook is on his home page http://overcode.yak.net

Valhalla welcomes its latest hacker. John, may you Rest in Peace.

John's War with Melanoma is over

One percent of adults ages 20 to 64 now take the drugs, according to Medco, which administers pharmaceutical benefits for managed care companies.

"I think this shows a clear recognition and new thinking that treatment for A.D.H.D. does not go away for many children after adolescence," said Dr. Robert S. Epstein, the company's chief medical officer.

Theraputic doses of stimulants is indeed preferable to cocaine abuse.

Maybe there is just nothing worth paying attention to for a lot of people. Let's just drug the nation, as long as they are paying into THE SYSTEM.

Use of Attention-Deficit Drugs Is Found to Soar Among Adults - New York Times

A bandwidth thief gets caught in the act...

When bandwidth thieves get caught

President George W. Bush took responsibility on Tuesday for any failures in the federal response to Hurricane Katrina and acknowledged the storm exposed serious deficiencies at all levels of government four years after the September 11 attacks.

I don't want to meme CNN's homepage so I'm linking a different copy of this story. This is important. It means the Administration has acknowledged that the federal response wasn't rapid enough and will work to address the problem going forward. Its the best sort of answer you could expect.

[ And more than I expected, in truth. Just the day before, the administration official line was "It's no one's fault...", while subtly insinuating that, in fact, it was the fault of the mayor and governor. I've got to admit, it's actually refreshing to see the president sac up for this one. You know, a little.

That being said, I'm not certain that the "my bad" will necessarily lead to the administration working to address the problem. I'd like to think it will, but I'll hold off on praise until I see for myself. As someone said in the other thread, if i run over your foot and then say "Sorry, dude, that was me." and then do nothing more, it's a pretty meaningless gesture. -k]

Bush - I am responsible.

Well, from my own experience, our healthcare flat SUCKS. Maybe I am not rich enough to get to enjoy the 'speed of our healthcare.' Maybe I just have a bitchass HMO, but I had a high priced PPO and it was no different. The insurance companies that are for profit are telling the doctors what to do and when they can do it.

Let's see - a broken bone that 3 doctors couldn't seem to diagnose (they didn't want to do new x-rays) but that I KNEW existed....leading to death of the bone....then 9 more years of begging someone to x-ray it or something because it hurt....then 6 months after I finally got the freaking x-ray to be able to get an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon...then... through 2 years of 'prescribed conservative treatment' when my doctor knew immediately what my problems were and wanted to do surgery. I couldn't have the surgery until I ran on the conservative treatment treadmill for 2 years, during which time, the conservative treatment that the HMO prescribed actually exacerbated my RLS, which is now so very severe and my nerve damage so extensive that they say I cannot have the surgery that I needed to start with and it would not work NOW anyway.

So here I am with a neurological disorder from HELL that compels me to walk to relieve the pain and I can't even freaking walk.

So, I just can't see how a person could hate the US's wonderful healthcare system as much as I do. IT DOESN'T FREAKING WORK and it costs out the ASS!

RE: The New Yorker: The Moral Hazard Myth

"Somebody asked George H.W. Bush Monday about the criticism of his son's handling of Hurricane Katrina, and the former president said that the critics ought to tell it to his wife -- and that they ought to don a flak jacket before trying. But this morning, it's Barbara Bush herself who might want to think about some protective clothing, at least metaphorically speaking.

The former first lady toured the Astrodome Monday, and along the way she opined that many of the refugees from New Orleans were so poor to begin with that they ought to be pretty happy with their temporary digs in Houston. "What I’m hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," Barbara Bush said in comments first aired on the public radio program "Marketplace" and reprinted by Editor & Publisher. "Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

In the midst of that last line, you can hear the former first lady chuckling."

There just aren't words, really, to say how tactless that was.

Barbara Bush on those lucky refugees

] While it's important to respect your children's privacy,
] understanding what your teenager's online slang means and
] how to decipher it is important as you help guide their
] online experience. While it has many nicknames,
] information-age slang is commonly referred to as
] leetspeek, or leet for short.

Wow.

Best quote:

] It's important to remember that the leetspeek community
] encourages new forms and awards individual creativity,
] resulting in a dynamic written language that eludes
] conformity or consistency.

Microsoft at their most transparently self serving:

] Their use could be an indicator that your teenager is
] involved in the theft of intellectual property, particularly
] licensed software.

:-o

OMG lolol MS needs to get a grip!

Microsoft guide to l33t speak.

New York — It began, fittingly enough, with jazz from New Orleans natives Harry Connick Jr. and Wynton Marsalis.

But "A Concert for Hurricane Relief," a heartfelt and dignified benefit aired on NBC and other networks Friday night, took an unexpected turn thanks to the outspoken rapper Kanye West. Appearing two-thirds through the program, he claimed "George Bush doesn't care about black people" and said America is set up "to help the poor, the black people, the less well-off as slow as possible."

Frankly, I'm very impressed that he had the balls to speak out like this. Corporate America doesn't like it when people deviate from scripts, but basically West was only a little bit off the mark. His main statement was that "Bush doesn't care about black people", but it's really got nothing to do with whether the people who are dying in New Orleans are black or not. What matters (or rather, doesn't matter) is that the vast majority of the people still trapped in New Orleans are very, very poor. Which means that, demographically speaking, they don't vote, they don't put money in lobbyists pockets, they don't hold any kind of political power, and their ability to promote political campaigns is limited--so there's very little chance these people are going to be able to impact Bush in any possible way. The political machine has learned that almost any sort of mismanagement can be covered up in just a few months of campaigning and careful spin-doctoring, and at worst, power will simply shift from one faction to the other for a presidential term or two.

In short, it's not that they're black, it's that they're poor. There's plenty of white (and asian and so on) people down there that Bush cares just as little about.

So long as poor people are busy trying to blame each other (blacks versus whites and vice-versa) they're never going to get around to seeing that their real enemy, the people who really are responsible for generation after generation of poverty and ignorance, are Bush and people just like him, who only care about the poor when it comes time to get them to watch the television so they can be told which faction of rich people have the best interests of "America" in mind. They make their rafts of empty promises and smile and shake hands just long enough to keep their power, and then they go back to their ranches and condos and gated communities and have as little as possible to do with the poor until it comes time for the next round of lies and deception.

If West were paying attention, he'd have figured this out by now. Hopefully he will soon because America needs more people to wise up to what's going on.

I agree. Howard Dean said it best when he pissed a bunch of people off - America has CLASS issues. Politicians use race issues to further divide the poor. We've got to go past the race issue and talk about CLASS issues. Its just that poverty in this situation has mainly hit blacks. There are certainly poor white folks in that mess as well as old people of every sex and color. They are all POOR. Also, because they are poor, they are social suspects. I am sick of hearing that 'they are ignorant and only mooch off the government.' None of the people I hear saying these things - and after going out today, I have certainly heard those things said - they don't even KNOW those people...if they have jobs, what they've contributed to society. It is like being poor makes you automatically GUILTY of being dumb and lazy. I have a problem with that.

Kanye West *almost* gets it--Bush doesn't care about poor people

k wrote:

In a sign of growing lawlessness, Tenet HealthCare Corp. asked authorities late Wednesday to help evacuate a fully functioning hospital in Gretna after a supply truck carrying food, water and medical supplies was held up at gunpoint.

"There are physical threats to safety from roving bands of armed individuals with weapons who are threatening the safety of the hospital," said spokesman Steven Campanini. He estimated there were 350 employees in the hospital and between 125 to 150 patients.

Tempers flared elsewhere across the devastated region. Police said a man in Hattiesburg, Miss., fatally shot his sister in the head over a bag of ice. Dozens of carjackings were reported, including a nursing home bus. One officer was shot in the head and a looter was wounded in a shootout. Both were expected to survive.

We've reached postapocalyptic.

One of the police chiefs said there are rapes happening inside the Superdome. There are reports of gangs of armed men walking the streets raping women. People shooting at helicopters. This thing you just reported.

This disaster has been a wake-up call to me. Your best bet in a disaster for your survival is guns and ammo. The government is not going to protect you.

I've also read where National Guard troops threatened to kill a group of people who broke into a kitchen looking for food. If you're starving in that cess-pool, what would you do? I'd do the same thing. People looting for TV's, fine, shoot to kill. Looting for food? It's going to go bad anyway. Might as well let it nourish someone.

I predict the sale of guns will increase greatly in the next month.

RE: Superdome evacuation suspended because of fires and gunshots

Made for the women in South Africa, it hooks into an assailant (assailant's penis, that is) and disables them...or does it perhaps only enrages them?

anti-rape device spurs controversy