Best & Worst Asthma Cities

Jan. 18, 2007 Web MD -- The "A" in Atlanta might as well stand for asthmaasthma, according to the Asthma and Allergy Foundation of America.The nonprofit patient organization says that for asthma sufferers, Atlanta is the worst U.S. city to live in. Atlanta earns its "worst" score from the city's high asthma death rate, high pollen levels, and severe air pollution.

However, 12. Los Angeles rated at number 12 worst.

Seattle ranks best or, in this case, least bad on the group's list of the 100 "most challenging places to live with asthma." "People can't just move away from their asthma since every city in America has a variety of risk factors," Johnson says.

Indeed, even Seattle flunks some AAFA tests. The city gets "worse than average" scores in asthma prevalence and only "average" ratings for air quality, uninsured rates, school inhaler-access laws, and number of asthma specialists.

Ahh mannnnn, Seattle? I don't want to move back to Seattle, just visit every now and than.

The 10 worst asthma cities, according to the AAFA, are:

1. Atlanta (last year: 4th)
2. Philadelphia (last year: 3rd)
3. Raleigh, N.C.
4. Knoxville, Tenn.
5. Harrisburg, Pa.
6. Grand Rapids, Mich.
7. Milwaukee, Wis. (last year: 5th)
8. Greensboro, N.C. (last year: 7th)
9. Scranton, Pa. (last year: 1st)
10. Little Rock, Ark.

Places I have thought about moving to:

49. Las Vegas
87. Baton Rouge, La. (before the hurrican)
94. Sarasota, Fla.
Phoenix, AZ didn't make the list

onlinehumor.blogspot.com/

The Top 10 Best Cities for Asthma Sufferers

1. Orange County, CA
2. San Jose, CA
4. San Diego, CA
5. McAllen-Edinburg-Mission, TX
6. Syracuse, NY
7. Middlesex-Somerset-Hunterdon, NJ
8. Honolulu, HI
9. West Palm Beach-Boca Raton, FL

10. Los Angeles-Long Beach, CA (WRONG!) There has been several articles last year about how bad Long Beach is for asthma.... The only part of Long Beach good for asthma in on the beach streets and those homs are expsenive.

MediaPost Publication's Second Look At Second Life

Second Look At Second Life

by Shankar Gupta, Friday, January 19, 2007 THE LONGER LINDEN LAB'S SECOND Life sits in the media spotlight, the more likely it is to burst into flames. This month, the independent gaming press notes a brewing Second Life backlash, even as marketers and media companies like Scion, iVillage, Dell, IBM, Song BMG and others rush to join the virtual world.

I've already confessed my skepticism about Second Life's value to marketers, and it's puzzling that the marketing community that "wouldn't be caught dead" on somewhere like MySpace would be so enthusiastic about Second Life. The conventional wisdom about advertising against user-generated content is that UGC has a lot of viewership, but advertisers don't want to get caught with their brands next to bum fights, racism, child porn, dictator execution videos, or what have you.

Second Life provides the same--or worse--pitfalls, but with a tiny, tiny fraction of the audience offered by social media like MySpace and YouTube. I'm sure some blue-chip advertisers would be mortified if their ads turned up next to the racy party pics of a twenty-something on MySpace, but much more offensive things can happen in front of a brand name in the virtual world. Take CNET as an example. In December, when the publication interviewed controversial Second Life businesswoman Anshe Chung, their theater--bedecked with CNET branding--was attacked by griefers who bombarded Chung with flying, animated penises. Here's a link to the video on YouTube, for the curious.

CNET handled the event with admirable good humor, but it's doubtful that other brands would feel the same way. And just as it was in vogue last year to send reporters into Second Life to bring back tales of the wondrous virtual world, in 2007, editors will be looking for stories of the violent, the sordid, and the homicidal. Makes MySpace look pretty tame, no?

He knows whats important

TOKYO (Reuters) -

The director Martin Scorsese said he did not have any expectations about an Academy Award.

"I learned a long time ago that, with "Mean Streets" and "Taxi Driver", that you can't make a film to get the golden statue. And if you try it doesn't work."

Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio said on Thursday that director Martin Scorsese deserved to win an Oscar for his new movie, "The Departed".

Despite being regarded by many as a master of cinema, Scorsese has never received an Academy Award for a single film, including for such revered works as "Raging Bull" and "Taxi Driver".In addition to the Golden Globes, the Broadcast Film Critics Association named Scorsese the best director and "The Departed" the best film, raising expectations that he might finally win an Oscar either for best picture or best director.

The Onyx: Better then iPhone

Apple’s Iphone could have some tough competition in the future. The Onyx looks better than the iphone. The Onyx combines mobile communications with a very technology sleek looking adaptive user interface industrial design.

“By combining Synaptics enabling technology, interaction design proficiency and concept prototyping capabilities with Pilotfish's user interface and industrial design expertise, the Onyx concept illustrates what is possible when a thoughtful approach is used to incorporate new technology in the mobile environment.”- Synaptics website

Clear capacitive touch screen

As Synaptics says on they’re website “life is activity based, not application based.” The Onyx brings together a phone, GPS, music, teleconference and calendar that all work simultaneously by seamlessly integrating the functions into activity based functionality.

I want some Onyx. Here’s the bad news.

“The Onyx concept is purely a concept platform designed to encourage discussion within the mobile community. Onyx will not be launched by Synaptics or any mobile phone OEMs. The enabling capacitive ClearPad technology is expected to be productized and available to OEMs by the end of the year.”

Study's conclusions could push telecommuting

December 04, 2006 (Network World) -- Despite the growing popularity of telecommuting, regular commuting continues to grow, with a new class of worker -- the extreme commuter -- traveling more than 90 minutes to get to work. Commuters who take public trains and buses wind up taking twice as long to get to work as people who drive, the study found.

In 1980, the average travel time nationwide was 21.7 minutes. That grew to 22.4 minutes in 1990 and shot up to 25.5 in 2000. These averages were driven up by the large number of commuters in New York, where more than 10% of commuters travel for an hour or more to work.

Other states in which more than 10% of commuters travel an hour or more to work are New Jersey, Maryland and Illinois. California just missed this percentage.

Meanwhile, the ranks of telecommuters have risen dramatically since 1990, according to the Telework Coalition. In 1990, about 4 million people telecommuted at least once per year. That number has grown to about 45 million today, says Chuck Wilsker, president and CEO of the Telework Coalition.

According to the same study, the number of teleworkers supported by broadband connections leaped from 4.4 million in 2003 to 8.1 million in 2004.

The growing travel times for physical commuting may encourage more businesses to offer telecommuting options if workers consider time traveling to work as wasted. A survey of 1,400 chief financial officers said offering telecommuting as an option is the second-best way to attract top job talent. The best way is offering more money.

Spam Law Claims First Conviction

Jan 18, 2007

Spam Law Claims First Conviction

JAN 18, 2007 09:04:07 AM | Add Comment (0) | Permalink

A California man found guilty of running a phishing scam will face a sentence of up to 101 years in federal prison, according to an Associated Press report in The Mercury News.

Authorities say Jeffrey Brett Goodin is the first to be convicted under the federal CAN-SPAM antispam law for bilking America Online users out of credit card and billing data. He then used his ill-gotten gains to go on a shopping spree, the AP says.

Goodin’s scam included compromised e-mail accounts that appeared to be coming from the America Online billing department, which then directed victims to input sensitive data on websites he controlled, the AP reports.

Goodin was also convicted on 10 other charges, including wire fraud and attempted witness harassment, according to the AP. His sentencing date is June 11.

-Compiled by Shawna McAlearney

Radio station puts all the blame on the employees. Typical.

A California radio station has fired 10 staff members after a contest to drink as much water as possible to win a new Nintendo Wii game console resulted in a woman's death, a company spokesman said on Wednesday.

Jennifer Strange, 28, a mother of three, died from water intoxication after taking part in a "Hold your wee for a Wii" competition on a morning radio show on Sacramento station KDND-FM Friday.

She was one of about 20 contestants who tried to outdrink each other without going to the toilet and was reported to have drunk about seven quarts (6-1/2 liters) of water in a bid to win the Wii for her children. She was the runner-up.

After the contest she called in sick at work and was found dead at her home about five hours later.

A spokesman for the station's parent company, Entercom/Sacramento, said 10 staff members, including several on-air DJs, had been fired from the station over the incident.

"They are no longer with the company for violating the terms of their employment agreements with the station," said the spokesman, without elaborating on contract details.

It would be very interesting to see who got fired? Was the station manager fired? How about show producer? Contests go through a lot of checking before they are approved and set in motion… The "violating the terms of their employment agreements" is just they're way of saying it's not our fault, don't sue us.

In an online recording of the show, the DJs can be heard making comments joking about people dying from water intoxication, even discussing a case in Northern California two years ago in which student Matthew Carrington, 21, died after drinking too much water during a fraternity pledge.

One of the DJs even admitted they maybe should have done some research before the contest.

The contest was stupid and I can not believe no one, not the producer, editor, manager... no one did any research into health related concerns.

no child left behind... and those that are, are forgotten

This op-ed by Secretary Spellings appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on January 14, 2007.

Above all, the law put American resolve behind the revolutionary idea that "every child can learn," setting a goal of 2014 for all students to be able to read and do math at grade level. This has proven especially beneficial to disadvantaged and minority students.

The results can be seen in schools such as the American Indian Public Charter School in Oakland. More than half of the student body demonstrates limited proficiency in English, while 83 percent qualify for free lunch. In 2004-05, 70 percent of sixth-graders scored proficient or better in the English-Language Arts portion of the California Standards Test, up from 36 percent two years earlier. For math, the numbers rose from 48 percent to 78 percent.

Thirteen- and 17-year-olds may not have shown as much improvement as nine-year-olds. But that is precisely because reformers have focused their energies on the earlier grades.

Well, of course the education establishment is protesting. These results suggest that the Bush approach is feasible after all, and this would mean that their opposition to results-based testing is going to hold less and less water with parents. But it's all BS, both sides, along with most of U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling's speeches and public appearances.

Yes, there are good arguments for not focusing only on teaching to the test. After all, civilization has given emphasis to test scores for eons, and the resulting inflexibility and lack of imagination, in the modern era, has a less vibrant cultural life. Japan, has only recently begun to be an exporter of culture (rather than an importer) in the last couple of decades, accelerated just over a decade ago with the beginning of Japan's period of economic stagnation. Taiwan's bursts of cultural experimentation have also accompanied sputtering in the economic engine. Nonetheless, Americans will probably find some sort of balance, hopefully, but also doubtfully.

What is most worrying to the public school teachers' unions, of course, is that this implies what The Economist refers to as "inconvenient reforms". That is the heart of the issue. Why? Because the unions are more interested in their own existence, than in the welfare of they're members and everyone it affects. Politics!

In response to the charge that the results are less obscurely positive for the older age teen groups, there is not only the point made by The Economist, that "refirners have focused their energies on the earlier grades", but that this is the wise thing to do.

First, 13- and 17-year-olds are at a later stage in life, when they are less likely to absorb new things at school due to the variety of social pressures, high school problems and general teen angst.

Second, by focusing their energies on the 9-year-olds, reformers are paving the way for better 13- and 17-year-olds four and eight years later.

Why would improvements among 9-year-olds sbe more important? The fact that you ( a 9 year old "minority") has done better than expected might encourage you to have more self-confidence, and disregard the tired old stereotypes that unbelievably still exist and are even unconsciously promoted throughout communities, some reinforced by older "minorities." When you're 13, or 17, you'll still retain that self-confidence, knowing that you can beat the historical trend. With so many things working in your favor, and at the same time not working against others, what you end up with, a year from the test, is a confident group of 10-year-olds. In two years, a confident group of 11-year-olds…and so on and so forth.

This former of Governor of Texas is not so stupid as some like to make him out to be, he just acts that way so that we refuse to believe that anyone that stupid is actually in control. It's a great ploy that is working. His minions such s U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spelling's is just additional puppets for him and his cronies to puke out lies and double talk.

Caffeine Isn't A Drug, It's A Supplement

C:\COFFEE.POT empty (A)bort (C)reate (F)all asleep?

Over cups of java flows matters of romance, high finance, government affairs (sometimes literally), common gossip and low comedy. Coffee is a social adhesive: A warmer of tongues, a soberer of minds, a stimulant of wit, and a safe 1st online date meeting arrangement. From roadside mugs to the classic demitasse, it is the democrat, the republican, the liberal and the activist... and now it may be the new drinkable health supplement.