Good news, Princess Sparkle Pony is not gone

http://sparklepony.blogspot.com/2011/08/ew-condi-n-daffy-wankbook-story.html

PSP is always a good read

Tamiflu only reduces flu by 12 hours !?!

There has been a report in the UK Daily Telegraph http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/swine-flu/5989184/Swine-flu-Tamiflu-reduces-flu-symptoms-by-just-half-a-day.html on an article published in the Lancet about the effectiveness on Tamiflu (oseltamivir).

In healthy adults, tamiflu reduced the average length of time that symptoms lasted by 0.55 days, while relenza, cut it by an average of 0.57 days.

People at risk of complications, such as those with heart or lung problems, saw slightly more benefit – tamiflu cut the length of time they felt ill by 0.74 days and relenza by 0.98 days.

 

Please note people still have had flu.

 

I was intrigued because the above result seems very similar to the kind of results achieved by Vitamin C (ascorbic acid).

When compared with Vitamin C and it’s effect on rhinoviruses please see http://www.quackwatch.com/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/DSH/colds.html . Please remember that Influenza and the Common cold are not the same thing.

 

Curiously Vitamin C seems to have a marked effect of reducing colds under certain circumstances (events of high physical stress). I cannot recommend exceeding the standard dose guidelines, however the price of vitamin C versus lost productivity makes Vitamin C a worthy item of study. When you see the amount of VitaminC that is sold in the average pharmacy in Australia, if it was not working it would not be on the shelves.

A Chrome experience

Introduction

I am one of those people who started using Chrome not long after it became available mostly because I like the Google brand and I find it useful in the real world. At home I use nothing else. The last time I deliberately chose Internet Explorer was when I had to send my tax return.

At work it tends to be Explorer on Windows XP. That is how our software has evolved. With time, like all businesses, more and more work has moved on to the web. In fact after power failure, then software/hardware failure, the third biggest problem we could have is not being work via the web. We can survive but we don’t like it.

Problem

Over time Explorer 7 became clunkier and slower to load. IE8 is quicker than IE7 and we have migrated to IE8. Today we had a problem with access to PDF invoices over web from one of our suppliers. (I suspect that there has been an upgrade with IE8 and the suppliers software has not yet caught up with it. )

Solution

I had downloaded Chrome and was using it on two other terminals firstly as a trial and then continued to use because of its quick loading of one of our work-related websites. I suggested to the colleague concerned that we download Chrome and try that to access the PDF invoices. It took 5 minutes to download and set up Chrome. The colleague needed access to the websites of our two major suppliers, this was achieved and the necessary webpages were bookmarked by simple drag-and-drop. From Go to Whoa, it would have taken 10 minutes. We won’t stop using Explorer simply because most of our staff are comfortable with Explorer and our major software provider uses IE in various applications.

Please note, Chrome does not require Adobe Acrobat to read PDF’s so all that Adobe nagware is not activated.

Conclusion

As we approach the end of the normal Australian financial year we do not want any interruptions. Setting up Chrome was quick and did not significantly slow my regular work on a busy morning.

The ideal solution would have been to contact the IT people at our supplier and discuss this issue, we will still do that. We won’t stop using Explorer simply because most of our staff are comfortable with Explorer and our major software provider uses IE in various applications. I will admit that with software if it is not broken don’t fix it. (As an example we have to use a certain older version of Java).

 

The controversial Fruit Opinions cartoon from xkcd

From xkcd.

Fruit opinions

Everybody has an opinion on fruit.

Spot the cheese-eating Surrender Monkeys

 

From the Brisbane Times

 

Israeli troops halted a diplomatic convoy carrying France’s consul general Alain Remy at the Erez crossing on Tuesday and held it for six hours as it left the Gaza Strip and returned to Jerusalem, the foreign ministry said.

“The convoy, which included other European diplomats, was subject to two warning shots from Israeli soldiers,” ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier told reporters.

Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner summoned Israeli Ambassador Daniel Shek “to protest this unacceptable incident and demand an explanation,” he said.

 

Cheese-eating Surrender Monkey?

 

If Europe would like to hint to Israel about who has the power all they have to do announce an audit of money transfers to Israel over suspicion of money laundering in regard drug trafficking and hold them up for 3 months, after all this is what the Israelis have done to the Palestinians. According the CIA World book in regard to illicit drugs -” increasingly concerned about ecstasy, cocaine, and heroin abuse; drugs arrive in country from Lebanon and, increasingly, from Jordan; money-laundering center.”

Will this happen?

Prince Karel Schwartzenberg "Zionist Prince"

The current President of the EU Karel Schwarzenberg has been described as a “Friend of Israel, a Zionist Prince.” From Haaretz

A New America emerging – Garrison Keillor

It was more than Democrats feeling their oats or African-Americans celebrating the unimaginable, more than revulsion at the gang of bullheads who held power for too long. It was a huge gasp of pleasure at a new America emerging, a country we all tried to believe in, a nation that is curious and venturesome, more openhearted and public-spirited.

All kinds of people, the slim and sleek, the XXXLs, the heavily insulated, the carefree, and we moved through ranks of souvenir sellers — whatever else he may accomplish, Obama has been a boon to the pin and T-shirt trade — and in our slow trek toward the Capitol, one felt the enormity of the day for the black people around us. I wouldn’t try to express, I simply was grateful to be among it. Old ladies with sore feet hauled themselves along.

Garrison Keillor, Slate – read all of it at Slate

Garrison Keillor is on my list of Americans I would like to meet.

Thank you, tag surfer and Santi Tafarella at Prometheus Unbound for pointing out the article.

xkcd

always good

Frequency

At this time no goal has been set for frequency of posts.

First post

This blog is intended as a simple foray into the net to share with others ideas. I do not expect nor hope that all will agree.