the new tribe

or old tribe, or whatever it is.... anywho: can we post all kinds of nudie pictures again or what?

Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

I just watched a documentary with the same title as this blog entry and it was really interesting. I didn't realize before watching it how little I actually knew about the whole scandal.

A bit of trivia: Enron was largely responsible for the rolling blackouts in California. Individual traders at Enron would call our various electric plants and have them shut down long enough for energy prices to go up (by 2000 percent sometimes) before selling our own power back to us, eventually bilking 30 billion dollars from California and effectively GETTING GOV. DAVIS RECALLED! It's not surprising that gee dubya did nothing about it at the federal level because Enron and Ken Lay were some of bush's biggest campaign contributors.

update: french toast crunch baby-mama drama

I recieved in the mail a coupon for a free box of General Mills cereal. their customer service is most impressive.

....

this is an interesting infographic regardless of your position regarding the conflict.

N. Korea vows nuke response to U.S. attack

~America, maybe it's time for you to start paying attention to "politics". Our National Missile Defense system doesn't work, if they want to blow us up, they probably can. ~

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea vowed on Monday to respond with an "annihilating" nuclear strike if it is attacked pre-emptively by the United States.


The Bush administration responded sternly, saying while it had no intention of attacking, it was determined to protect the United States if North Korea launched a long-range missile.

"Should North Korea take the provocative action of launching a missile the U.S. would respond appropriately, including by taking the necessary measures to protect ourselves," Julie Reside, a State Department spokeswoman, said.

Still, Reside said, the United States and other countries that have negotiated with North Korea are seeking a fundamentally different relationship with the reclusive regime. She said that relationship must be based on the complete and verifiable elimination of North Korea's nuclear weapons and nuclear program.

"We and our partners in the six-party process continue strongly to urge North Korea not to launch a long-range missile and, instead, to return to the six-party talks," she said in a statement.

The six-party talks, suspended by North Korea, involved negotiations by the United States, China, South Korea, Japan and Russia with Pyongyang over the country's nuclear program.

The North's warning effectively stepped up its customary anti-U.S. vitriol, in which it often accuses Washington of plotting an attack. The North has recently come under heightened scrutiny after reports by the United States and Japan that it has taken steps to prepare for a test of a long-range missile.

The North's Korean Central News Agency, citing an unidentified "analyst" with the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper, accused the United States of harassing Pyongyang with war exercises, a massive arms buildup and increased aerial espionage by basing new spy planes in South Korea.

"This is a grave military provocation and blackmail to the DPRK, being an indication that the U.S. is rapidly pushing ahead in various fields with the extremely dangerous war moves," the dispatch said.

"The army and people of the DPRK are now in full preparedness to answer a pre-emptive attack with a relentless annihilating strike and a nuclear war with a mighty nuclear deterrent," the report said.

DPRK stands for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

The report concluded by urging the U.S. to "get out of South Korea promptly." About 29,500 U.S. troops are stationed in South Korea as a deterrent against the communist North.

On Friday, Pyongyang accused the United States of driving the situation on the Korean Peninsula "to the brink of war," and said it is fully prepared to counter any U.S. aggression.

Washington and Japan have said in recent weeks that spy satellite images show North Korea has taken steps to prepare a long-range Taepodong-2 missile for a test-launch.

Estimates for the range of the missile vary widely, but at least one U.S. study said it could be able to reach parts of the United States with a light payload.

Speculation that Pyongyang could fire the missile has waned in recent days, however, since the country's top ally and a major source of its energy supplies, China, publicly suggested North Korea should not to go ahead with the test.

A news report said Monday that China has offered a new proposal over the stalled six-party talks.

Chinese State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan told Ichiro Ozawa, the head of Japan's main opposition party, that China had relayed the proposal to Japan, the two Koreas, the United States and Russia, Kyodo News agency reported, citing party officials.

The report did not elaborate on the proposal. An opposition party spokesman in Tokyo could not be reached for comment. Ozawa is in Beijing for a six-day stay that party officials hope will include a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao, according to Kyodo.

The United States and its allies South Korea and Japan have taken quick steps over the past week to strengthen their missile defenses. Washington and Tokyo are working on a joint missile-defense shield, and South Korea is considering the purchase of American SM-2 defensive missiles for its destroyers.

The U.S. and North Korea have been in a standoff over Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program since 2002. The North claims to have produced nuclear weapons, but that claim has not been publicly verified by outside analysts.

While public information on North Korea's military capabilities is murky, experts doubt that the regime has managed to develop a nuclear warhead small enough to mount on its long-range missiles.

Nonetheless, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told U.S. lawmakers last week that officials took the potential launch reports seriously and were looking at the full range of capabilities possessed by North Korea.

Comatose man's brain rewired itself

~I was vehemently against killing Terri Shiavo~

"Doctors have their first proof that a man who was barely conscious for nearly 20 years regained speech and movement because his brain spontaneously rewired itself by growing tiny new nerve connections to replace the ones sheared apart in a car crash.

Terry Wallis, 42, is one of the few people known to have recovered so dramatically so long after a serious brain injury. He still needs help eating and cannot walk, but his speech continues to improve and he can count to 25 without interruption.

Wallis' sudden recovery happened three years ago at a rehabilitation center in Mountain View, Ark., but doctors said the same cannot be hoped for people in a persistent vegetative state, such as Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who died last year after a fierce right-to-die court battle. Nor do they know how to make others with less serious damage, like Wallis, recover.

"Right now these cases are like winning the lottery," said Dr. Ross Zafonte, rehabilitation chief at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, who was not involved in the research. "I wouldn't want to overenthuse family members or folks who think now we have a cure for this."

Wallis has complete amnesia about the two decades he spent barely conscious, but remembers his life before the injury.

"He still thinks Ronald Reagan is president," his father, Jerry, said in a statement, adding that until recently his son insisted he was 20 years old.

The research on Wallis, published Monday in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, was led by imaging expert Henning Voss and neurologist Dr. Nicholas Schiff at the Weill Medical College of Cornell University in New York City and included doctors at JFK Medical Center in Edison, N.J.

Wallis was 19 when he suffered a traumatic brain injury that left him briefly in a coma and then in a minimally conscious state, in which he was awake but uncommunicative other than occasional nods and grunts, for more than 19 years.

"The nerve fibers from the cells were severed, but the cells themselves remained intact," unlike Schiavo, whose brain cells had died, said Dr. James Bernat, a neurologist at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire, who is familiar with the research.

Nerve cells that have not died can form new connections; for example, nerves in the arms and legs can grow about an inch a month after they are severed or damaged. However, this happens far less often in the brain.

The new research suggests that instead of the sudden recovery Wallis seemed to make when he began speaking and moving three years ago, he actually may have been slowly recovering all along, as nerves in his brain formed new connections at a glacial pace until enough were present to make a network.

Researchers used a new type of brain imaging only available in research settings — not ordinary hospitals or rehabilitation centers — to establish the regrowth. It tracks the direction of water molecules in and around brain cells, an indicator of brain activity.

"It's a roadmap of how the connections are running," Schiff said.

Doctors compared Wallis' brain function to that of 20 healthy people and another minimally conscious patient who showed virtually no recovery for six years. All were imaged twice, 18 months apart.

In Wallis' brain, "what we first see is how overwhelmingly severe this injury was," with many abnormalities compared to the healthy people, Schiff said.

The second set of images showed changes from the first, strongly suggesting that new connections had formed. These correlated with areas of the brain that affect the ability to move and talk.

The other minimally conscious patient — a 24-year-old man who suffered a severe brain injury in a car accident when he was 18 — also had evidence of changes in nerve connections, but they were not organized in a way that made a difference in his ability to function.

"We'll have to understand more about why recovery occurred" in Wallis' case, Zafonte said. "The question is 'why?' It's not just 'wait.'"

Until that is known, imaging cannot be used to predict who will recover, or to help patients' brains rewire, he said.

The Charles A. Dana Foundation, which finances brain research, funded the scientific work. The lead author, Voss, also received money from the Cervical Spine Research Society, whose sponsors include companies that make spine care products. The British Discovery Channel and HBO paid to fly Wallis and family members to Cornell for tests.

"Most neurologists would have been willing to bet money that whatever the cause of it, if it hadn't changed in 19 years, wasn't going to change now," Bernat said. "So it's really extraordinary."

Wallis' father said his son is now able to make jokes. "That was something he wasn't able to do early in his recovery," Jerry Wallis said. "He now seems almost exactly like his old self. And he very often tells us how glad he is to be alive."

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060...wN5bmNhdA--

FTC II

I wrote to general mills regarding the change to their product, and this is the response I got:

Thank you for contacting General Mills regarding French Toast Crunch. French Toast Crunch recently went through a product reformulation and we are sorry to hear of your dissatisfaction with the recent reformulation of French Toast Crunch cereal. The changes made on the product are:



The size of the cereal pieces is the same but the shape has changed from “bread-shaped” to a more square shape similar to Cinnamon Toast Crunch.
The “glossy” sugar coating on the cereal pieces was changed to a “sugar dusting” coating.
The new product has more syrup taste and less cinnamon taste.
In keeping with our quality guarantee, an adjustment for your purchase will be sent to the address you provided. Please allow up to 14 days for arrival.

We appreciate your loyalty to General Mills and hope you continue to choose our products.



Sincerely,



Rakeb Abeba

General Mills

Consumer Services

What the *#@+ happened to French Toast Crunch?

I've never been big on dessert foods, but I am a snacker, and French Toast Crunch usually fit the bill (actually, Amanda just discovered them a couple weeks ago). Ninety percent of the reason that they are amazing is because they're shaped like tiny French Toasts. Now all of a sudden they are arriving at stores looking like Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which is to say, boring. What gives?

still bad?

try this one:

www.youtube.com/watch

bad day?

watch this!

www.youtube.com/watch