AT&T is down

This does not inspire confidence — though it is unrelated to their actual 3G network performance — especially since it’s long been known that the weakest link in the “iPhone experience” is AT&T.

Michael Jordan's Weird Mustache #1

I don’t know if it is Chaplin or Hitler, but this has led to questions from people all over the internet…

Michael Jordan's Weird Mustache #2

Michael Jordan's Weird Mustache #3

The Dresden Files: Changes

…portrayed Harry Dresden with a face that reminded me of someone. That someone? Well, I think it looks like:

Joe Flanigan from Stargate: Atlantis

Joe Flanigan from Stargate: Atlantis. Am I right? And am I not the biggest nerd in the world?

Let’s break it down…

1. Yes, this scammer has the testicular fortitude to actually use the FBI’s real address on their e-mail letterhead.
2. Despite this intensive investigation where they uncovered my e-mail address, they are unable to address me by name, only as “BENEFICIARY”. If you doubt how deep their investigation went, read on…
3. This is the mention of the nebulous “Intelligence Monitoring Network System”. I’d like to monitor the intelligence of anyone stupid enough to respond to this scam.
4. Blah blah blah… oh wait, the FBI says this is Safe (with a capital ‘S’!) and 100% risk free! Oooh!
5. The FBI is apparently extremely thorough…. despite being unable to determine my name, they did find the name of a South African lottery agent. Who knows how many precious man hours our loyal public servants used to help me get to my lottery winnings? Hopefully, no terrorists snuck by while they were checking up on my lottery winnings using the “Intelligence Monitoring Network System”!
7. The guts of the scam — they want me to pay this “agent-in-charge” $370.00 to get at my $800,000 lottery winnings.
8. Of course, this lottery agent dude has a Hotmail
   address. (I smile because usually it’s a Yahoo! address…)
9. Continuing with the trend of putting their balls right out there, this email claims the FBI is authorizing me to pay the $370. No need to consult with anyone else, ’cause this e-mail from the FBI says it’s okay! And did I mention it is Safe and 100% risk free?
10. And finally, poor John Miller… he’s cited (correctly) as the FBI’s guy when it comes to public affairs.

I consider this spam to be an impressive display of courage and/or stupidity, and I can’t help but wonder if there is some poor sap who is using dial-up who is scratching his head and popping a v1agra while chatting which HOT CHICKS NEAR YOU all the while thinking that it must be okay, because it really does look official…

Lost in all the discussions about the effects of Iceland’s volcanic activity and how it is affecting people’s ability to travel across the Atlantic is the fact that it is affecting healthcare here in the USA.

The story is pretty straightforward: there are only a handful of places where we can acquire molybdenum-99 and technetium-99m which are used in nuclear medicine and medical imaging.

Fast Facts on Molybdenum-99 - Where Is It Made?

To get an idea as to how these isotopes are used, here’s a snippet from medpagetoday.com:

The technetium-99m is used in more than 16 million nuclear imaging procedures every year in the U.S. alone for, among other things, sentinel node biopsies in cancer surgery, bone scans, and staging cancer patients.

The interesting thing is that (as you can tell from the map), this material is not available domestically. Everyone wants to fight tooth and nail politically over drilling (or not drilling), or building more nuclear plants (or not), and reforming healthcare (or not). But it isn’t obvious how all of this is interrelated, and how, for example, our lack of domestic capability to produce isotopes from our own nuclear plants might compromise our ability to keep up with the needs of patients regardless of what our healthcare policies look like.

Now, for added drama, let’s have a volcanic eruption in Iceland that stalls flights to/from Europe.

Lava flow from the Icelandic volcano

Concurrently, let’s have an outage of the only Canadian nuclear reactor that produces these isotopes. Back to medpagetoday.com…

But the main source of supply for North America — the NRU reactor in Chalk River, Ontario — has been shut down since last May and isn’t expected back online until April at the earliest. (See Canadian Reactor Shutdown Slows Nuclear Medicine)

Meanwhile, one of the reactors that has been picking up the slack — the Petten facility in the Netherlands — is to shut down this week for six months of maintenance.

So far, clinicians have been “getting by,” according to Robert Atcher, PhD, of the University of New Mexico, who is past president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine and chairman of its isotope committee.

By the way, that article about the shortage was written *before* the Icelandic volcano erupted. So if it was a crisis before the eruption, imagine what it is like now…

So now you get scenes like the one in my doctor’s office — where people are being turned away because we lack a sufficient amount of material to actual treat patients.

Who needs death panels and bread lines when our existing (and currently, “unreformed”) system can still experience shortages like this? This problem would occur regardless of the system in place as long as we have a dependence on others for critical materials.

So, sure, people may not like have a nuclear reactor in their backyard, but you may notice that the United States of America does not produce any of it. Zip. Zilch. We’ve “outsourced” all of the production of this material to other countries, the closest of which is Canada. And while we have “connected the dots” to see how a dependence on foreign oil might be a fundamentally bad idea given that the states that produce that oil seem to harbor a lot of anti-American sentiment among their populace, and I have to wonder if everyone who is being a nimby might be a bit short-sighted. We need to make sure we are a self-sufficient state, and we need to balance the need to globalize with the ability to sustain ourselves should the geopolitical (or, as in this case, the environmental) landscape change. And we need to take a holistic view of these issues and stop letting partisans whip everyone in to a frothy rage over things that don’t compute when taken together.

Long story short, the key to a great song is complete emotional honesty and a willingness to be vulnerable in the performance. I think every artist knows this, but I think that people sometimes get wrapped up in looking for formulas that define how someone “makes it” as a commercial musician. “Oh, you have to sound/look/dance like this…”

But truth be told, I’ve listened to quite a few musicians who are too young to be trusted to rent a car who, nevertheless, seem to be able to crank out a song that just grabs the listener. It’s not a matter of technical proficiency. It’s not a matter of them being child prodigies who have developed chops that none of the rest of us are capable of playing. It’s a matter of combining the talent and the emotional honesty in to a single work of art.

Now, this leads to my next point — part of the skill in knowing how to pull the listener in to a song is knowing what the cues are that will resonate with them. If you know me, you know I’m a huge fan of Girl Talk, who has a knack for creating mash-ups that touch on the familiar and the unfamiliar to create grooves that just speak to the listener. You can check out his creative process….

…but I think it’s nice to look at one of his finished works.

I’ve also been a huge fan of synthesized music. For example, There’s a part of me that loves stuff like Kraftwerk’s “Trans Europe Express”…

I also know this song has very little emotional impact on folks, whereas Enigma’s “Return to Innocence” seems to stir up feelings. Is it the chanting? Is it the lyrical content? Or is it just a richer arrangement that pulls the listener in? I’d say yes to all three.

So back to the church music. There is beautiful is music being made by people who belong to various faiths around the world. There is something transcendent about the sounds of people engaged in practicing their faith, and — at its’ best — an authentic selflessness shines through. It is inspirational to listen to, because unlike the songs that focus on the transient things that may only last a lifetime, these songs speak to something eternal… something that calls to all of us the same way a dance hall song coaxes us to the dance floor.

Even more disturbing, what’s an extreme meat snack?

The mind boggles!

His middle name would have to be Xavier. I’m just sayin’!

(It’s actually Friday, but I thought this talk was so inspirational that it has me thinking about hitting the ground running on Monday!)