Moonage Spacedream

Swine Flu cases map

This is kind of cool in a macabre kind of way. A fellow named Henry L. Niman has put a map together on Google Maps.  Now the entire world can find where every single swine flu incident has occurred:

View H1N1 Swine Flu in a larger map

Technorati Tags: google, H1N1, henry l niman, map, swine-flu

Avian flu finally mutates

We had a big scare about five years ago over Avian Flu.  I had a little fun with it then because there was tons of media hype, and no deaths or anything.  One here and there just wasn’t justifying the term pandemic.  At that time, I had some fun with people who were peddling avian flu masks and such.  They went out of business apparently.  The links don’t work any more.  Now, several years later, we have a real scare going on in Mexico.  Apparently it’s finally mutated as predicted and spreads a lot more easily.  My plan for right now is simply not to go to Mexico.  The White House’s plan right now is to keep an eye on it.  They were quick to point out that Obama had been to Mexico recently and wasn’t sick.  68 deaths in Mexico are something to be serious about tho.

However, having been to Mexico myself, about ten years before the outbreak became an issue, I know that the sanitation systems in the US and Mexico are vastly different, as well as medical preparedness.  Although I am concerned for the people of Mexico, I’m not terribly concerned living where I do about my own safety.  I’m still not ready to consider this a pandemic of the proportions of the 1918 Spanish Flu.  The world has developed a lot of medicine since 1918.  It definitely is, however, something we need to do more than keep an eye on.  Rather than monitoring it, I think the White House needs to be sending medical personel down there ASAP to make sure the Mexicans have all the tools they need to deal with it and end it right there.  I just think that’s not necessarily a good response to what’s happening.  I’d prefer a lot more aggressive tone.  Something like what the World Health Organization mentioned:

Based on this advice, the Director-General has determined that the current events constitute a public health emergency of international concern, under the Regulations.

Concerning public health measures, in line with the Regulations the Director-General is recommending, on the advice of the Committee, that all countries intensify surveillance for unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness and severe pneumonia.

Better, but I’d still prefer something like “We’re sending Avian Flu busters to Mexico to seek out and destroy any semblence of Avian Flu we encounter.”  Monitoring just doesn’t make me feel all that much safer.

Technorati Tags: 1918 Spanish Flu, avian-flu, influenza, Mexico, mutate, mutation, pandemic, pneumonia, world health organization

Edgar Mitchell and aliens

Edgar Mitchell is once again making a highly visible claim that aliens exist.  This is not the first time he’s done that.  Because he’s a hero to some degree, having walked on the Moon and all, people want to believe him.  However, even though I want to believe him, he makes it real hard by claiming psychics and mystics are real in his book The Way of the Explorer: An Apollo Astronaut’s Journey Through the Material and Mystical Worlds.  If that doesn’t make it hard enough, he also believes in the shadow government run by the military.  This where things start to get real dicey for me.

First of all, I don’t believe in psychics.  The ability may exist, but I don’t think mankind has that ability at this time.  Second, I don’t believe in mystic healing.  Lastly, I am pretty confident on a personal knowledge level that there is no shadow government run by the military.  The US government itself has some pretty amazing military stuff at its disposal.  I can’t imagine another entity having anything remotely powerful enough to give it any challenge.  And lastly, there are a lot of things aliens have to overcome in order to get to Earth.  If they can overcome the barriers of space travel, why in God’s name would they do it to gut cattle or tag people?  That makes absolutely no logical sense at all.  If they can overcome the speed of light, they could see right through tissue and just look at whatever it is they want.

So, as much as I’d like to believe Mitchell, because he’s an astronaut and all, I just really think he’s nuts.  There is life out there, but I am quite certain they don’t gut cattle or tag people.  They may have visited here in the past, and they may be doing it now.  But, with some of the lunatics we’ve had in Washington, including Jimmy Carter, who did believe in UFO’s, there is no reason to assume it’s been covered up.

Technorati Tags: alien, apollo 14, conspiracy theory, cover-up, dennis kucinich, drake's equation, drake's theory, edgar mitchell, fermi-paradox, gut cattle, healing, jimmy-carter, military, mystic, psychic, shadow government, space, tag people

JibJab’s Environmental PSA

This is a classic!

Technorati Tags: environmental, Humor, jibjab, psa, public service announcement

Life at Blood Falls

First of all, look at where I’m talking about:

Looks scary, creepy, to me.  Pretty nasty place.  Now, underneath that blood it’s cold.  Very, very, cold.  Needless to say, there’s no light.  There’s not even oxygen.  This is about as bad as it gets on Earth.  Odd thing is, there is life.  Now, it’s not terribly advanced or anything.  It’s just bacteria.  But, this bacteria obviously doesn’t need the things we need to exist.  It feeds off the sulphur that gives that blood look.  The big picture here to me is once again, we’ve found life where life shouldn’t exist.  In other words, searching for oxygen and water on a planet isn’t terribly necessary.  It does make it more likely for advanced life, I assume.  And, if you’re looking for some criteria to search for, it helps narrow down the search from millions of stars with planets to probably tens of thousands.  But, the assumption that Earth could be the only orb with life just keeps getting less and less likely.  Under these conditions, and the under-sea volcanic discoveries, life could possibly exist on Europa or Enceladus.  That would even allow for more consideration on Mars, even if it doesn’t have any real water as we need. 

This is very cool even if it doesn’t make the huge headlines of the world.

Technorati Tags: antarctica, blood falls, enceladus, europa, life, mars, sulphur

Personal antivirus

If you’re cruising the net innocently enough, and all of a sudden this pops up:

Press the little red X.  It will possibly be followed by a screen looking like a scan.  Press ESC.  Then you might see this:

Press the little red X again.

Vundo is trying to install itself on you.

Now, I got this pop-up reading Foxnews.  That does not mean Foxnews is infected.  It just sat around waiting for an innocuous moment to run.  It came from somewhere else.

I immediately run some malware removal tool such as Malwarebytes.  If it doesn’t find anything, you’re safe.  Only clicking OK would have installed it.

Technorati Tags: antivirus 2009, internet, malware, personal antivirus, rogue antivirus, virus, vundo

Pirate Bay founders found guilty

First we had Napster, then Kazaa, then a bunch of imitators.  Over the last couple of years tho, the king of file swapping was The Pirate Bay.  Whereas most P2P sites allowed you to download files directly, torrents were much cooler.  You would get pieces of the file from all over the planet.  They even had nifty graphics showing you where they were coming from.  I use torrents quite a bit.  It’s just a simple, quick way to get what I need.  However, I hadn’t used Pirate Bay for a while.  They just got too busy.  These guys learned real quick that their bread and butter when it came to file swapping was of course, copywritten music and movies.  Now, their defense was the same as Napster and Kazaa, they didn’t possess any copywritten material.  However, they sure didn’t make any effort to make sure their users were not.   A simple search using their search engine would yield about any movie or song you wanted.  That is enabling.  That is what keeps getting these people in trouble.  Result, the same as Napster and Kazaa.  Now that Pirate Bay is probably on its way out, there will be yet another file swapping program to take its place.  Which leads me to my question, if there is basically always someone ready to fill the void left by prosecution, what’s the point of the prosecution?  It seems they are fighting a losing battle.  These files and companies are all over the planet, there’s no way they’ll chase them all down.  There obviously needs to be a Plan B for dealing with this problem.  Banks use exploding cash.  Something like that I think would work a lot better than just simply litigating one company after another.

And, once they have chased down every single P2P provider on the planet, then they’ll realize there are much easier and safer ways to get what you want in the first place.

And, clue to the next guys who want to set up shop pirating coyywritten stuff, don’t name yourself after the crime you intend to commit.

Technorati Tags: copyright, file swapping, internet, kazaa, napster, p2p, pirate bay, sweden, torrent

What does Conficker do?

That’s been the big question of the last couple of weeks in the cyber-world.  This is apparently one of the answers:

The dreaded Conficker computer worm is stirring. Security experts say the worm’s authors appear to be trying to build a big moneymaker, but not a cyber weapon of mass destruction as many people feared.

As many as 12 million computers have been infected by Conficker. Security firm Trend Micro says some of the machines have been updated over the past few days with fake antivirus software — the first attempt by Conficker’s authors to profit from their massive “botnet.”

Criminals use bogus security software to extort money. Victims are told their computers are infected, and can be fixed only by paying for a clean-up that never happens.

Very simple rule of thumb here, KNOW YOUR ANTI-VIRUS, NEVER INSTALL ANOTHER ONE ON TOP OF IT!  EVER!

Anything that says you have a virus and need to do something about it, press the little red X and close it.  If you can’t do that, CTRL-ALT-DEL and kill it.  Answering yes or no will install it in most cases.  Here’s a sample of one:

In this case, pressing “enable protection” infects your computer.  Only pressing the little red X or killing the screen is safe.  I imagine Conficker looks something like that.

Now, anyone who uses Microsoft’s updates is probably safe from Conficker. But, there are many viruses, some of them pretty harsh, that use the same method to get you.  So, don’t worry about whether or not this is Conficker if this happens, just KILL IT.  Then make sure you have Windows Updates turned on and they it is working properly. If you don’t know if you have updates turned on or not, GO HERE.

Technorati Tags: antivirus, conficker, protection, virus, windows update, worm, zlob

Moon scoops science again ( yes, there is lightning in volcano plumes )

Here’s today’s headline I’m whining about:

For the first time, scientists have been able to “see” and trace lightning inside a plume of ash spewing from an actively erupting volcano.

When Alaska’s Mount Redoubt volcano began rumbling back to life in January, a team of researchers scrambled to set up a system called a Lightning Mapping Array that would be able to peer through the dust and gas of any eruption that occurred to the lightning storm happening within. Lightning is known to flash in the tumultuous clouds belched out during volcanic eruptions.

The lightning produced when Redoubt finally erupted on March 22 was “prolific,” said physicist Paul Krehbiel of New Mexico Tech.

Here’s my story from May 7, 2008:

Amazing image of the Chaiten Volcano – Chile

Although I didn’t go into a lot of detail then, that is lightning in the plume of the volcano.  Lots and lots of lightning.  Guess I should have been more obvious.

UPDATE: Universe Today has a much better write-up on this story.  Notably:

Lightning is a frequent occurance during volcanic eruptions. The Lightning Mapping array allows scientists, meteorologists and storm chasers to pierce the veil of clouds to “see” lightning as it occurs

Technorati Tags: chaiten, lightning, msn, new mexico tech, paul krehbiel, redoubt, volcano

Obama to block the sun

This is the headline:

The president’s new science adviser said Wednesday that global warming is so dire, the Obama administration is discussing radical technologies to cool Earth’s air.

John Holdren told The Associated Press in his first interview since being confirmed last month that the idea of geoengineering the climate is being discussed.

One such extreme option includes shooting pollution particles into the upper atmosphere to reflect the sun’s rays. Holdren said such an experimental measure would only be used as a last resort.

“It’s got to be looked at,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury of taking any approach off the table.”

They’re borrowing from the concept of global cooling.  Volcanos often send so much ash into the atmosphere it will cool the Earth for a while.

Meanwhile, we’ve had this happening in Alaska:

And, we’re experiencing this in Chile:

I don’t think Obama’s team needs to be worrying too much about sending particulates into the atmosphere, the Earth does that just fine.

Additionally, if they DO send particulates into the upper atmosphere, and then we do have serious volcanic activity, the consequences could be a lot more severe than doing nothing.  Given my druthers, I’d just as soon they not mess with the atmosphere until we have a better grip on what’s going on up there.

Technorati Tags: ash, Global Warming, global-cooling, john holdren, llaima, obama, redoubt, volcano