Lost and Found

In possibly the weirdest and creepiest story in recent memory, a woman who disappeared 18 years ago was found the other day. Jaycee Dugard, kidnapped at at 11, was rescued at the age of 29 after being shut off from the world. The article is worth a read, as I can't even begin to think of what to say about this. How this sex offender Phillip Garrido and his wife got away with this for so long is beyond me. Cops routinely checked in on him as part of his parole, and he was even reported to the police for strange behavior. He had Jaycee and her two daughters, Starlite and Angel, ages 15 and 11, whom he fathered, living in a tent complex on the other side of his fence. His neighbors didn't say anything, even though they knew he was a sex offender and heard kids and showers in the backyard. Possibly the weirdest aspect is how Jaycee never tried to leave after being abducted. According to the article, Garrido even spent time in jail while she was living back there and she just stuck around. She had access to the internet and even went out in public as Allissa. She didn't even tell her children that she had been kidnapped. The more I read about it, the more incredible it gets. HOW DID THE POLICE NOT CATCH ON!

Photos from the shanty Jaycee and her kids lived in.

A senile old woman from Fulton, Missouri decided to take matters into her own hands when she got fed up with planes flying around a municipal airport near her home. Judy Davis decided that the best way to take care of the annoying planes would be to shoot them down with a hand gun. If you ask me, bringing a hand gun onto a runway and shooting at a plane is definitely a reasonable way to go about expressing your anger.

The new Mac OS, Snow Leopard, launched this week and is selling for just $29 as an upgrade compared to $99 to go from XP to Vista. It takes up less than half the space the old OS did, wakes up and shuts down twice as fast and even has the touch pad enabled for entering Chinese characters (pretty cool if that's of any use to you, which for 100% of the people reading this I would imagine it isn't. Still pretty sweet though.)

According to the Gallup Organization, America's love affair with Obama is coming to an end. In the latest poll Obama's approval rating is nearing the 50% mark. If he were to fall below 50%, Gallup says it would be the third fastest drop to below majority approval since World War II. The two presidents that dropped below majority approval faster? Gerald Ford, and the previous Democratic president, Bill Clinton.

One reason for the disapproval is his increasingly liberal policies, the latest of which could give the president emergency control of the internet with the ability to shut down private networks. This is coming from Fox News, so take it as you will, but still a bill that could potentially give the government power to take over computers in the event of a cyber emergency is a bit scary. The way the actual bill is worded makes it seem like they may only be able to control computers used in coordination with a federal contract, but it is still vague enough that the possibility for government computer control is still there. Live Free or Die Hard must have really scared the Senate if they feel this is necessary.

And, lastly, in the sports world, some negativity is headed Brett Favre's way. I really can't stand how he keeps coming back, stealing headlines and whatnot, and have also refused to read any articles about him. That is, until the headline "Brett Favre's Awful Play" was too good to pass up. It lead to an article about Favre's illegal crackback block on Eugene Wilson of the Texans. He was lined up at receiver in the Wildcat with Tavaris Jackson in the gun, and just dove at his knees to attempt to make a block, injuring Wilson on the play. It was a filthy block, and I'm glad the announcers said didn't hold back and give Favre any special.



Fin.

Koalas, Chlamydia and Health Care

Okay, it's been awhile, not that anyone reads this anyway. I'm going to try to promote this more and post a little more regularly. Anyways, here are some thoughts.

Apparently koalas need a sex education class. According to a passing statement in this article, 50% of the koala population is effected by chlamydia. Sam, apparently an internet sensation for living through the Australian brush fire, died of the disease. The headline of the article really overshadows the experience of this koala, but thats the sensationalist media for ya.

Yayyyy Obama!

Okay that was a little sarcastic. However, the White House is encouraging people to rat out others for stating thier opinion on whats going on, mainly with health care. In the original official White House blog post , people are encouraged to send an email to a certain address "if you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy." The reason given on the blog (not made up by me) is that the White House can't keep track of all the "disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care."

To me, this is a clear a violation of freedom of speech. Look, the bill is over 1,000 pages and is worded in a language not used by the common man. People are going to get what it says wrong, and, after looking at the actual bill, you really can't blame the every day person for distorting what it says. But to actually come out and essentially say, "Hey, could you let us know if anyone is badmouthing the health care bill? We appreciate it and we'll handle it from there, thanks" just seems against what this country supposedly stands for. I realize its now a felony to shed a negative light on our savior president, but to want people to rat out their fellow citizen to the White House is in no way acceptable.

Let's take a look at the main issue that seems to be causing a hang up, page 58. Here it is, copied from the bill link I just posted:

‘‘The goals for standards under paragraph (1) are that such standards shall—...enable the real-time (or near real time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service and, to the extent possible, prior to service, including whether the individual is eligible for a specific service with a specific physician at a specific facility, which may include utilization of a machine-readable health plan beneficiary identification card..."

and on the following page:

"The standards under this section shall be developed, adopted and enforced so as to—...enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with the related health care payment and remittance advice"

Well, then. I don't know about you, but this is a bit confusing. It took me a couple reads to understand it in bill format just so I could whittle it down into paragraph form. To me, it would sound as though this bill, if enacted, would give every citizen utilizing national health care a card. On that card would be information saying whether or not that person was eligible to receive a specific treatment from a specific doctor at a specific place. Now, this isn't really revolutionary. Having your medical records on a chip is something that has been discussed (possibly tried, I've done enough research though) in the past. To me, it makes sense to have all your information with you in case of emergency. If you're travelling in a different city and something happens, it would seem to me that it would be a hassle to contact your doctor at home to make sure you can have certain medications or what not. By this time, if something serious happened, you could be dead. Having all of your medical info on you is logical. Opponents of the bill are just sensationalizing it by taking that one sentence of a 33 line section of the bill, and circulating that.

Now, the part that does worry me is the second quote I posted. This would appear that in some way, the government would have access to a designated bank account of yours, as to ensure you had the funds to pay for your procedure. I know the government can pretty much get access to your account anyway, but that's only if you give them a reason to get a warrant to go into your account. This would seem give the government the ability to freely access your account. I realize the government has little, if any, interest in randomly going through ordinary people's personal bank accounts, but the possibility is a bit frightening.

A logo has also been developed, and the design incorporates the Obama logo. Is this about him or attempting to improve health care? We get it, Obama, you won. Now drop the branding and focus on the country, not yourself. Of course, as I say this, I'm including the logo. I hate myself sometimes.

Overall, I don't think the bill will get passed, since to implement and follow every part of a 1,000+ page bill would be near impossible. However, the discussion it generates is definately an interesting one.

Also, if either of my readers hasn't seen the Obama joker poster that plastered LA, here it is.

On a non-Obama, slightly biased note, earlier today Bing, Microsofts answer to Google, was called out on a little game their engine was playing. If you go to their site and enter "Why is Windows so expensive?" into the search bar, one would assume that something would come up about Windows' OS. Instead, here is what was at one point the first result. As of 4:30 pm, that link has dropped to the seventh result. Still, even if this is the equivalent of a GoogleBomb, it doesn't look good on Microsoft's part to have an Mac result come up as the first hit under the news for that particular question.

George Sodini is a real creep. He really hated women due to his own inability to hang on to one, and decided the best way to go about handling this would be to go to his gym, turn the lights off and fire bullets into the darkness before finally killing himself. I read the online diary he posted before it was taken down, and apparently this guy had less hits to his blog than even I do. He has been planning this attack since last year, but I guess no one read what he wrote because he was able to finally carry out his plan. At one point in January I believe it was, he said that he was going to do it, even giving a time, but then chickened out. Just a weird, weird story.

Today was the day of the social media fail, as Twitter was the target of a Denial of Service attack, Facebook encountered regular errors, and something happened to LiveJournal (I just didn't read about it because I dont care.) Here's the info.

One last thing, there's a pretty cool article about whats living in the depths of the ocean. It's a lot of words to skim, but the pictures of "Earth's Own Aliens" are pretty sweet.