Worldwide Withdrawal of VIOXX (rofecoxib)

Merck News Item
Sept. 30, 2004 - Merck &. Co., Inc. today announced a voluntary worldwide withdrawal of VIOXX® (rofecoxib), its arthritis and acute pain medication. The company's decision, which is effective immediately ... due to an increased risk of cardiovascular event and stroke.

Green Day hit No.1

Entertainment News Article | Reuters.com
Reuters - Pop-punk band Green Day scored its first No. 1 album on the U.S. pop charts on Wednesday with "American Idiot," the group's fifth studio set and its first release in four years.

Hooray!

William Shatner's sensational version of 'Common People'

Hear William Shatner's sensational version of 'Common People'
NME - Almost 35 years since the release of his debut album, William Shatner, television’s Captain Kirk and TJ Hooker has teamed up with esteemed singer-songwriter Ben Folds (as his producer/co-writer) to deliver what can only be described as one of the least highly anticipated albums of the year.

Loud Music Can Collapse Lung

Loud Music Can Collapse Lung
Reuters - Blasting music can be hard on the ears and the neighbors, and now researchers say it can also pack enough punch to collapse a lung.

Reporting in the medical journal Thorax, they describe the cases of four young men who suffered a lung collapse -- technically called pneumothorax --that appeared to be triggered by loud music. Three of the men were at a concert or club when the pneumothorax occurred, while the fourth was in his car, which was outfitted with a 1,000-watt bass box because he "liked to listen to loud music."


Never mind the water cannons for riot control. Barry Manilow at 1000 Watts will have the streets cleared in no time!

Net security threats growing fast

Net security threats growing fast

• Vulnerabilities are now exploited in 5.8 days on average
• 1,237 vulnerabilities came to light in the first six months of 2004
• 95% of these vulnerabilities were rated very severe or above
• 4,496 Windows viruses were detected in the first six months of 2004
• This number is four and a half times as many as in 2003
• Latvia, Macau and Israel are the top three sources of attacks

The latest is a critical Security Update for JPEG Processing (GDI) which allows malicious code to be hidden within a JPEG image file.

Script kiddie malicious code insertion software is already available.

Kobe Bryant Police Interview

Kobe Bryant Police Interview
The Smoking Gun - The full 'unsanitized police interview' of Kobe Bryant the night after the alleged rape.

If you want to know what Kobe's 'thing' is, allegedly, skip to page 18

The rape case has of course been dropped, although a civil suit is pending.

O'Connor Wants People to Stop Heckling

O'Connor Wants People to Stop Heckling
Sinead O'Connor wants people to stop heckling her and making fun of her and, as we say on this side of the pond, 'taking the piss'.

Despite my long time, if superficial, love of the singer, I believe one of her greatest assets when she broke into the heady world of pop success was her obvious expression of her tortured soul.

Someone once told me this gem of advice; "Never let anyone f*** with your head. And don't go messin' about in it too much yourself"

The meaning of this was immediately clear to me. If you continually deconstruct your mind with repeated self analysis, or worse still, you allow someone else to do the same, the rebuild will always prove unreliable.

In search of the source of her angst, the singer has lurched from one apparent psychic crisis to the other.

One thing's for sure: writing a 2000 word essay in the paper asking people to stop making fun of her is like asking a wasp not to sting you when you have stirred up it's nest.

Four in a Row

Jeanne Tears Across Bahamas Toward Fla.
Hurricane Jeanne got stronger, bigger and faster as it battered the Bahamas and bore down on Florida Saturday, forcing hundreds of thousands more residents to hurriedly shutter their homes ahead of its anticipated devastating punch.

News Agency Neutered by Fakery

News agency, CBS, has effectively been neutered by the faked documents saga.

Strangely reminiscent of another news agency 'scandal' based on falsehoods, which eventually forced the chairman of the BBC, Greg Dyke, to resign, and resulted in the murder, oops, sorry, suicide, of Dr David Kelly.

Dr Kelly, the UK's senior weapons inspector, was found dead in the woods soon after saying to several people that he would end up dead in the woods if he didn't shut up. He didn't support the intelligence that was being used to justify the case for war; which he knew was part of a longer term strategy code-named, Operation Rockingham.

Half a tablet of a painkiller was found in his stomach and a laceration to the small ulner artery of one arm. Those in the know say he was injected with Succinylcholine and the artery was cut after death to hide the needle mark.

Weapons expert Dr David Kelly told of "many dark actors playing games" in an e-mail to a journalist hours before his death.

Dark actors indeed.

Videos of hostages

Currently, a British hostage, Ken Bigley, is being held in Iraq. The situation is being milked for all it is worth by the hostage takers. They have already brutally murdered two American hostages snatched at the same time; Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley.

The family of the British hostage are doing all they can to keep him alive. Their superhuman efforts have already extended his life - of that there is little doubt.

Also of little doubt is the eventual outcome: a video released on an 'Islamist website' on the internet.

While searching the internet for news on the hostage situation, I inadvertantly searched the web instead of the news. Something caught my eye. It was a small quote in the description; "50,000 people an hour are watching the video. Over 1,000,000 people have already seen it," bragged the man being quoted.

I had soon established that there is an internet web site where the beheading videos can be watched. A for profit web site, that is. One specializing in sicko viewing with, among other vile things, the videos of the beheadings. Why I was surprised at this, is not clear to me. I also had little doubt that the figures quoted were probably accurate.

I do know one thing. You can never 'unsee' something. Once you have seen a horrific or disturbing image, it can never be erased from memory. I found this out in my earlier days on the internet, where I suddenly developed an appreciation for the general censorship we live with and sometimes complain about.

I chose not to watch the video.

The Bones are in the Election Bag

Secrets and ties of the Bonesmen
"One of the oddities of this year’s Presidential election is not that George W Bush and Senator John Kerry were near contemporaries at Yale - although their privileged backgrounds are worth noting in a country that prides itself on its democratic, meritocratic traditions - but that they were also members of the same "secret" society. Skull and Bones."

The enemy is us

The enemy is us
by Sam Gardiner, a retired Air Force colonel who has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, Air War College and Naval War College.

"In war, you deny information, spread lies and use psychological warfare. An expert on military information operations explains how Bush has mastered this technique -- and used it against the American people."

"During the early part of the war, there was more deception than truth in the comments and press briefings of the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Among the fabricated stories was the early surrender of the commander and the entire 51st Iraqi mechanized division.

We were told of an uprising in Basra -- it did not happen. We were told Iraqis had stolen U.S. uniforms to commit atrocities -- this was not true. We were told on White House and State Department Web sites that the Iraqi military had formed units of children to attack the coalition -- untrue. We were told of a whole range of agreements between the French and Iraq before the war over weapons -- false. We were told Saddam had marked a red line around Baghdad and that when we crossed it Iraq would use chemical weapons -- completely fabricated."

Seroxat and Prozac 'could make people homicidal'

Antidepressant aggression concern
Expert warns of the dangers of the possibilities of homicidal behaviour posed by class of antidepressants known as SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors).

Time, Tesla, and the Philadelphia Experiment

Time Can be Turned Back - PRAVDA.Ru
Rummaging around Pravda, I discovered this story about time travel, a subject I find fascinating.

The basic story is this:
US scientists working in the Antarctic spotted a swirling cloud, sent a weather balloon up and watched it vanish in the vortex. They pulled on the rope, the balloon reappeared but ... the chronometer had reset to January 27, 1965, the same day, 30 years in the past. The experiment was repeated ...

(I think there were some episodes of Stargate with very similar plots)

Usually, behind a story no matter how wild, is some glimmer of a basis, even if it is just weather balloon experiments (or Stargate). After all, the best tale is one with a grain of truth so I set about searching the internet for the actual source of the story. All roads led back to Pravda with a few detours by way of discussions on message boards, all based on the Pravda story.

However, along the way my attention was drawn towards another well known conspiracy tale with eerie echoes of the Pravda time travel one, and like most people, I love conspiracy theories, even if I don't believe them all.

The other tale is that of the Philadelphia Experiment, also known as Project Rainbow.

The basic tale is this:

Allegedly, in the fall of 1943 a U.S. Navy destroyer, the USS Eldridge, ID Number; ED-173, was made invisible and inadvertantly teleported from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Norfolk, Virginia, and back again during highly classified Government experiments into cloaking ships from radar detection using massive electromagnetic generators, and based on Einstein's Unified Field Theory for gravitation and electricity.

You may have seen the 1984 movie, The Philadelphia Experiment, which is based on the Project Rainbow events as told by Carlos Allende, a.k.a. Carl Allen, who wrote a series of strange letters to one Dr. Morris K. Jessup in the 1950's in which he described what he claims was at least one of the several phases of the Philadelphia Experiment.

In the movie, and according to most 'accounts' of the experiments, Escort-Destroyer-173, The USS Eldridge, is enveloped by a fine green swirling fog as the massive electromagnetic field generators powered up, before suddenly vanishing from sight and, according to varying accounts of 'survivors', being swept upwards into an enormous swirling vortex. The ship then reappears almost instantaneously in Norfolk, Virginia, where it remains for a short period of time before teleporting back to Philadelphia though remaining invisible for several hours.

However, things had gone disasterously wrong and the crew are badly affected; 5 crew members whose bodies were fused into the deck of the ship, others frozen solid where they stood and yet more who had small metal compasses in their pockets and had burst into flames on exposure to the massive forces involved.

Two brothers allegedly leapt over the side of the ship as it was swept into the vortex. Then things get really complicated ... you can read about it here.

The official, US Navy, version of the 'Philadelphia Experiment' (i.e. there was no experiment).

Only when Nikola Tesla, the uncredited genius, is mentioned, does everything make sense. He was a man out of time, a genius, some of whose work is still classified today. One famous Tesla experiment is said to have occurred using nothing more than an osciloscope and an oscillator, with which he almost brought down a large towerblock in order to demonstrate harmonics to a sceptic.

If Tesla's harmonics principles were applied to Einstein's Unified Field Theory and combined in a controlled way, the possibility exists to vibrate the object at precisely the right frequency for it to slip out of phase with its surroundings into sub-timespace. When the frequency was then altered slightly, the object would reappear in our timespace, corresponding to the frequency with which it was now vibrating. See String Theory.

TBN's Promise: Send Money and See Riches

Send Money and See Riches
Yahoo! - Pastor Paul Crouch calls it "God's economy of giving," and here is how it works:
People who donate to Crouch's Trinity Broadcasting Network will reap financial blessings from a grateful God. The more they give TBN, the more he will give them.

Being broke or in debt is no excuse not to write a check. In fact, it's an ideal opportunity. For God is especially generous to those who give when they can least afford it.

Works for Crouch! His network reaps a whopping $120 million per year and helps fund generous annual salaries for Crouch ($403,700) and his wife, Jan ($361,000), not to mention an array of perks, including a TBN-owned jet and 30 homes across the country, among them a pair of Newport Beach mansions and a ranch in Texas.

Praise the Lord!

Is Britney Pregnant?

Britney Wants a Baby ... Now!

Is Britney Spears pregnant?
In a TV interview the star said she "hopes to get pregnant on her wedding night".

Is this a pre-emptive statement on the part of the singer, only too aware of the influence she may have on some of her more impressionable fans?

War Hero or a Phony?

The New York Times: A War Hero or a Phony?

Is John Kerry a war hero or a medal-grabbing phony?

"I didn't really want to get involved in the war."

... the Swift Boat Veterans' claim that he received it for a minor injury he got while blowing up food supplies to keep them from the enemy

Did Mr. Kerry deserve his Silver Star? Absolutely. He earned it for responding to two separate ambushes in a courageous and unorthodox way, by heading straight into the gunfire.

Spyware taken to a new level?

Ok, call me paranoid. I probably am. But why on earth does Macromedia require, or even allow, websites to have access to the webcam and microphone of a user? Spyware taken on a whole new meaning? WTF?

I was rummaging around the website of my favourite band, Green Day, recently. Feeling somewhat seasick with the flash graphics (my age, I know), I right-clicked to turn the video off and the menu appeared. From the properties, this little nugget:

All websites with a flash component can, theoretically, have full, unrestricted access to the webcam and microphone of the viewer? Spyware indeed!

End of an Era - Belle de Jour

The end of an era is upon us.
Belle de Jour, the famous blog otherwise known as "The Diary of a London Call Girl", is at an end.

"All things pass. For instance: Harts the Grocer, I am saddened to note, are now Tesco Metro. But that is the way of things. I'll miss this. The time will never be right to finish the diary - so I am ending it now."

Sniff.

Police Arrest Teen Planning Columbine-Like Attack On Highschool

Officer.com: Michigan Police Arrest Teen Planning Columbine-Like Attack On Highschool

Items found during the searches include blueprints stolen from the high school, an AK-47 and other weapons, ammunition, 15 pipe bombs and instructional bomb-making videos and materials, reported WDIV-TV in Detroit. Police displayed some of the items, including tools stolen from local construction sites, in a Friday press conference.

Plagues of Locusts

Locusts on the march

For anyone looking to add a plague of locusts portent to the increase in hurricanes and other natural disasters

Space's largest window is built

Space's largest window is built
Um, why?

Pup shoots man, saves litter mates

Pup shoots man, saves litter mates

CNN.com - A man who tried to shoot seven puppies was shot himself when one of the dogs put its paw on the revolver's trigger.

Arf, arf, arf, arf ...

Jennifer Aniston Angst - Someone not paying the bills?

The website of the lovely Jennifer Aniston is unavailable. Actually, if you click onto http://www.jenniferaniston.com/, you get a picture of a logo telling you this fact and an email address to click on should you want more information.

However, if you search for the Jennifer Aniston Website in AskJeeves.co.uk, the following bizarre message is served up as the site description:

""PLease be advised that this site, Jennifger Aniston, has been disabled due to gross incompetence shown by her management in that no one "

Not good Friends then?

A quick dip into the source code of the page reveals the full extent of the mini-drama:

"PLease be advised that this site, Jennifger Aniston, has been disabled due to gross incompetence shown by her management in that no one has ever paid a bill for the services delivered, nor has there ever been the type of communication or consoderation that most of us would expect from a personality of her popularity and wealth."

Ouch!

Extremely funny are some of the keywords in the meta-tags, such as, "microsoft sucks" and "jennifer aniston has never paid a bill, nor has her management".

You read it here first!

Batman rocks Buckingham Palace

Campaign staged on Palace balcony


(Copyright, BBC)

A Fathers 4 Justice campaigner dressed as Batman is protesting at Buckingham Palace, the group has said. Jason Hatch, 33, entered the grounds and scaled a wall onto a balcony, said group spokesman Matt O'Connor.

Mr O'Connor said: "We've got a guy dressed as Batman who's on Buckingham Palace on a balcony. He legged it past the armed guards."

Previous exploits of the group can be found here

Hee hee hee! Maybe someone left the Bat-light on?

On a more serious note, you would think that with all the terrorist activity and attrocities happening in the world and the supposed extra security measures in place, a bloke in a Batman outfit managing to outflank and outwit some of the world's 'best' security, tends to make fools of them.
Batman should be given a medal for exposing the rubbish security but no doubt 'they', those establishment figures who have been made to look like complete arses, will 'throw the book' at the poor guy.

Michael Jackson and the Voodoo Curse

(2003)
Jacko Put Voodoo Hex on Spielberg, Geffen

Just when you thought Wacko Jacko could not get any more bizarre, a new report says Michael Jackson hired an African voodoo chief to put a death curse on Steven Spielberg and David Geffen.

Didn't he watch Buffy for goodness sake? Everybody knows magic has consequences.

Blogs v's 60 Minutes

Blogs v. 60 Minutes

Tech Central Station -
"… 60 Minutes has obtained a number of documents we are told were taken from Col. Killian's personal file. Among them, a never-before-seen memorandum from May 1972, where Killian writes that Lt. Bush called him to talk about 'how he can get out of coming to drill from now through November.'"

however

Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs noticed that said documents were kerned, meaning that they had been typed on a modern word processor. Touche.

How To Become An Alpha Male in 18 Easy Lessons

How To Become An Alpha Male in 18 Easy Lessons

These step by step lessons, courtesy of Halley, who writes the blog, HalleysComment, will have you strutting your way to the beginning of the Greek alphabet in no time.

Block Porn

Someone tried to spam the medical forums I often frequent selling cigarettes, which I thought was in rather poor taste. So I decided to subscribe the said spammer to one or two porn sites as a way of returning the favour.

I typed "porn" into Google, and found this site, called Block Porn, which I thought was hilarious:
http://drew.corrupt.net/lp/

The TOS for using Blogger forbid linking directly to the site and if you are easily offended, I recommend you do NOT visit the site.

"Sneakers" comes true in the solving of the Riemann Hypothesis?

"Sneakers" is the 1992 movie with Robert Redford as the lead and co-starring the now deceased River Pheonix, as well as the very talented, Sidney Poitier, and portly genius that is Dan Aykroyd.

The gist of the film is that a mathemetician has deciphered some age-old math formula and has built a 'black box' which is capable of deciphering any code, no matter how complex and unbreakable the cryptography involved.

Quoting from a review of the movie; "The technological black box that everybody is after, an array of computer chips that can decode any encrypted message, isn't a very plausible invention..."

Which is where the Riemann Hypothesis comes in.

The Riemann Hypothesis is a mathematical problem which is so complex, it defies simple description. The long and short is that if it is solved, then all current cryptography becomes meaningless since it could be decoded with ease.

This would put all current financial systems reliant on cryptography into the category of obsolete and useless and would plunge the worlds financial systems into chaos.

Word has it that the Riemann Hypothesis has been solved and the guy is keeping very quiet, even refusing to submit his solution in order to claim the $1, 000, 000 prize up for grabs to anyone who can solve the problem.

Who can blame him? The mathematical wiz in the film "Sneakers" gets bumped off after he builds his 'black box'. Need I say more?!

Chinese get hard on porn

China gets tough on internet porn

BBC - China introduces tough measures against internet pornography, including possible life imprisonment.

Adding a BlogThis! button to Firefox

Blogger Help : BlogThis! ?

Adding a BlogThis! button to Firefox!

Just drag and drop the BlogThis! link to your browser's link bar and you have blogging functionality in Firefox

Porn dialers find new hole

Porn dialler fraudsters find lucrative loophole

The Register:-
sneaky java form-filler does dirty things when surfing porn sites

59 Year-old Jailer Charged in ciggie-sex

Smoking Gun:
Jailer Charged In Ciggies-For-Sex Swap - August 25, 2004

allegedly gave a female inmate two cigarettes in exchange for oral sex.