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datico

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[dead] 17 years ago

Snippets from the article:

"My guess is that you can expect to see a lot of panic over this issue in the near future. But the key is to remain calm -- this isn't the first time the public has been warned about swine flu. The last time was in 1976, right before I entered medical school and I remember it very clearly. It resulted in the massive swine flu vaccine campaign.

"Within a few months, claims totaling $1.3 billion had been filed by victims who had suffered paralysis from the vaccine. The vaccine was also blamed for 25 deaths.

"However, several hundred people developed crippling Guillain-Barré Syndrome after they were injected with the swine flu vaccine. Even healthy 20-year-olds ended up as paraplegics.

"And the swine flu pandemic itself? It never materialized."

"More People Died From the [1976] Swine Flu Vaccine than Swine Flu!"

"Personally, I am highly skeptical. It simply doesn't add up to a real pandemic.

"But it does raise serious questions about where this brand new, never before seen [swine flu] virus came from, especially since it cannot be contracted from eating pork products, and has never before been seen in pigs, and contains traits from the bird flu -- and which, so far, only seems to respond to Tamiflu. Are we just that lucky, or... what?"

"Could a mixed animal-human mutant like this occur naturally? And if not, who made it, and how was it released?

"Not one to dabble too deep in conspiracy theories, I don't have to strain very hard to find actual facts to support the notion that this may not be a natural mutation, and that those who stand to gain have the wherewithal to pull off such a stunt."

I forgot to mention...for those occasional must-get-up-very-early mornings, I drink a coke before bed (usually I'm tired enough it doesn't phase me) and sleep with the light on. 4-5 hours later, I'm up.

I swear by this concept: http://www.homedics.com/products/soundspa-sunrise.html Even just a simple timer on a lightswitch or lamp works for starters. I find the natural sunrise effect to be less jarring however. I used to use an X10-type system as well, controlled by a server to dim lights at night and brighten them in the am. This was ideal but X10 was flaky so I'm using the SoundSpa Sunrise until I can upgrade to something more reliable.

The point as I see it, normally one thinks of programming in "a" language, not 5-7 at once! Just imagine trying to rewrite this paragraph in multiple foreign languages...let's see, nouns in Japanese, verbs in French, adjectives in Russian, and the remainder in Taglish? Illustrates just how demanding web development is. And consider, not only are there best practices to follow for each real language, the conclusion reveals there must be implicit best practices (or at least opinions) for mixing them as well.