How to use parasites to cure autoimmune diseases

Autoimmune diseases are pretty strange conditions. Basically, your body is attacking itself. Why your body attacks itself is up for debate but one theory is that modern society is so clean and sanitary that our immune system – which evolved to help us over millions of years – has nothing to fight off so it gets confused and turns on itself. These are nasty long-term conditions without much if any medicine that promises a “cure”. Prednisone works very well for many (they even use it for organ transplants so your body doesn’t reject it) but taking it long term will cause premature aging and dissolve your bones, leaving you bedridden.

Radiolab has a great episode on this topic where a man with severe allergies and asthma intentionally infects himself with hookworm (by walking barefoot in the latrines of 30-40 African villages) in the hope for a cure. This Sept 2009 episode  (which you can download from Radiolab here) is absolutely amazing but if you want to get to the story about the hookworms helping autoimmune diseases fast forward to the 33:00 mark.

Hookworm (Prep4md/flickr)

Quite possibly the most entertaining radio program I have listened to and after you listen to it you can find out updates on the man’s cure and the business he is making out of it here. Reading the comments it appears that he is charging $2900 for the so-called “helminthic therapy” treatment but if you want to give it a try to cure your disease you are probably out of luck as he doesn’t do business with USA customers due to FDA regulations. Looks like you are going to have to take a trip to Africa and get your feet familiar with outdoor open pit toilets. You can still visit his website that sells the parasites though. Lots of info on there (including conspiracy theories involving the FDA and big business), apparently someone thinks it is even a possible cure for Autism.

I wish there was a way to donate directly to Radiolab, the shows they produce are very entertaining and informative and I send them a thousand thank-yous.

Enjoy, and good luck!

Cronyism in HR Hiring and the Workplace Politics that Result

I have been talking a lot about Cronyism in the workplace. You can’t outlaw it, the best way to know what you’re getting is still if someone internal can vouch for them. This shows that the interview HR processes in modern business are still no better at selecting high-quality applicants than random (like the stock market). There is a good study right there. But what happens in real life then is whenever one of these high-up business types gets a job, they have to protect themselves by immediately beginning to replace anyone who might move against them or who was already internal and is bitter about not getting the job. They plant their own friends and ex-coworkers into related positions around them as much as possible.

I have seen waves of this replacement behavior occur at all my  jobs, 3 “generations” worth at at the current one now. Its amazing, and very smart politically. But it leads to:

• incredible amounts of loss in productivity and
• money wasted on political BS.

Starts to feel like government and business are no more or less efficient than the other…its just that we can only control business with our spending and government with our participation. And they work to attempt to distract us into doing neither all the time.

Netflix Speeding up Frame Rate Playback speed to Save Time

I love streaming Netflix videos but had to cancel because the videos alternate between normal speed and about 20% faster than normal. Is it just me or are some shows – some segments of shows – deliberately sped up to make slower scenes play faster? I don’t know if they do this to save time (more commercials) or to affect the pacing of the story but it is quite annoying.

It's not a bug, it's a FEATURE! Why watch only four movies when you can now watch five in the same time! Note: feature is mandatory.

I initially noticed playback speed varying between normal and about 20% faster on netflix and figured it was my video card or something. Then the same effect happened on a friends computer and finally a TV with netflix built in; there were scenes or sections of scenes where the movie seemed to be playing back frame rates faster than normal by about 1.2x or 20% faster than the original recording. Netflix may do this to:

• save bandwidth (but I can’t believe that all the movie aficionado purists out there aren’t complaining about this)
• Synch audio with playback speed that is limited by available bandwidth (Initially I thought this was the issue but it happens on faster connections as well)
• caused by platform issues (no, it happens on windows and mac and a vizio tv)
• caused by software issure (no, everything is updated)
• Throttling by the Netflix server. (the account isn’t used that much)
• Dropping frames. (shouldn’t affect overall playback rate though)
• ???

I tend to think it is intentional as the audio is always pitch adjusted so it sounds normal and the playback isn’t choppy but transitions between normal and fast smoothly. For me, some of the shows are simply unwatchable as I can’t let go of my veil of disbelief when everything is happening 25% faster than in real life!

This isn’t a solution to a problem but if you would like to look into the issue further on your machine here is a post here that describes how to look into silverlight diagnostics for more info on frame rate.

Again, this happens with videos on several different computers, laptops and televisions,  high end and low end, with a download speeds between 756 and 6mbps, day and night. I have tried all updates and also tried pausing the video for several minutes to give it time to buffer. My CPU utilization is within reasonable limits. The computers have SSDs and a quad core 4ghz CPU with 8 gigs of ram. What is going on? I can’t find anything about this online, not even on good ol’ Hacking Netflix. Why isn’t there rage in the streets?

Looks from now on it is DVD’s or nothing. I can’t take the fast speed anymore.

Have you noticed Netflix or even television shows playing faster than normal, sped up but with audio pitch correction supposedly so we won’t notice? Does it bug you too? Please comment!

Note: I am in the process of taking videos of screens playing the same movie, streaming vs DVD and playing them side by side to compare the difference. Check back soon!

Google analytics: in-page analytics error for ga.js

Google in page analytics gives me this error: ” Your site doesn’t load ga.js from Google. If you host the Google tracking code on your own servers, it isn’t updated automatically and can miss important changes.”
I can’t find out what the problem is, the code is sitting right there in the header and looks just like it should. It gives me this error also : “[Error: 20007]” I wonder if there is some kind of conflict with the other code on the page?
I definitely don’t have the code on my own server.
I found this thread on their help website regarding the error 20007, at least i am not the only one with the problem. Everyone says it is beta and hope to have it fixed soon.

Apparently others find that the page overlay in analytics works in IE but not firefox (how ironic!)

“dark matter” found to be just “rocks”

Gee if we are just discovering planets it was a pretty broad statement to say dark matter is not planets. they say it is too cold to be planets but i always wondered why it couldn’t be that instruments aren’t strong enough (read:Kepler satellite!)
from: http://www2b.abc.net.au/science/k2/stn/archives/archive133/newposts/2568/topic2568204.shtm

“dark matter can’t be rocks. We have mathematical models of the rate of rock formation as a function of the amount of dust, most interstellar rock is formed from dust. But most importantly, if dark matter was rocks then we would see some of these as they pass through the solar system and they would have orbits that completely distinguish them from comets and asteroids. No such rocks have been seen.”

Well that is a pretty broad statement. Either people are way too confident in their technology (when your tool is a hammer everything looks like a nail) or there is some serious BIG stuff out there that cannot be accounted for.

Nova’s Niel Degrass covers it in a short segment here but the explanation still leaves me wanting
http://www-tc.pbs.org/s3/pbs.videoportal-prod.cdn/media/swf/PBSPlayer.swf

Watch Dark Matter, Of Mice and Memory, Hany Farid, Wisdom of the Crowds on PBS. See more from NOVA SCIENCENOW.

 

Yes, I know I am ingnorant and WRONG but it hasn’t been explained well enough to non scientists. At the minimum they aren’t putting in effort proportional to the amount of coverage this magical ether of mysterious stuff called dark matter really is.

gps tracker warrants – a question

if cops don’t need a warrant to put a gps tracker on my car (if it is parked in a public space) then do i need permission to put GPS trackers on all cop cars I see?
Thinking of an awesome website that shows you positions of all

Regal Cinema in Portland Oregon Plays 3D movies in 2D, charges for 3D

Yes, they charged extra! I wasn’t the only one complaining but the manager said we were liars and didn’t know what 3D movies looked like and said he watched it himself to confirm we got what we paid for – a 3D movie!
No, no, no. Sorry charlie. The glasses you gave us were real. They worked fine in the previews. The extra money you charged everyone was real, $28 for two tickets. But 3D? NO, not a single frame!

What kind of recourse does one have when a theater manager calls you an uninformed liar? I paid for services that were not rendered. I should have walked out immediately but it wasn’t like the movie was ruined. I figured they6 would gladly refund the $7, not so. What are you going to do, take a video of the movie to prove them wrong after the fact’? (yeah, try that and see how it goes!)

517-629-2957 Scam – medicare fraud

They claim to be from medicare. Oh really? Then what is my medicare number? Grandma is having them call 9 times in one day! call the # back and there is no number there, obviously they are faking their caller ID.
Scammy people, who knows where they are from or if they are selling a fake product or out trolling for social security numbers?
Started recently, october 10th 2011 from what I can tell. Found a thread here with the most info anywhere on this phone number.

How to make a bootable privatix linux USB flash drive for private web surfing

you boot from CDROM as before. Choose “Live” not failsafe, it should work for you. boot all the way up (takes a sec from CD)

then, you use “su” root password:

privatix

thats the user pass AND the root pass for all CDROM’s. When you create USB, you get to set your own for both passes. The “normal” bootup user is

user: privatix
pass: privatix

same as for root (but username is root there)

if you go “su” and hit return, type privatix, you should see

root@privatix#

type prompt after. If you type exit at any point and hit return, it hsould go back to this:

privatix@privatix$

all the rest works the same as before instructions for making any live cd. if you want I could write a script (we could even post it online) that would do it all for you in one command line like this:

makeusb /home/pablo/Downloads/linux.iso /dev/sdb

where first argument is the ISO location, second is the /dev device file location. There is a folder at the / (top level like C drive sort of) folder where a folder called ‘dev’ lives. you can get to it with

cd /dev; ls

to list the contents. each ‘file’ is an open IO port into a device on your system. the ‘sd’ part is usual a usb drive or phone of some sort. your usb without formatting is ussually going to be ‘sdb’ or ‘sdc’ maybe ‘sda’ but not likely. if formmated, it also has a number like your C drive will from Ubuntu as in /dev/hda2 or /dev/hdb1 or something… the numbers are not exactly set, they change from boot up to boot up sometimes and depending on order of hotplug of usb’s etc.

canon pixma ip 4820 hack tips for printing disk labels directly

Using the CD-Print-Tool V7 I was able to reset the firmware of the 4820 printer to think it was a european version, not a US version. See, in Europe the Canon pixma ip 4820 (an others) can print ink directly on cd and dvd surfaces, giving you a pro look without labels which are cheap looking, peel off and can cause imbalances when playing.
Epson has some kind of patent here and NO ONE can print direct to disks besides them. well, on a standard inkjet anyways. Im fine with that BUT Epson printers CLOG constantly and doing a clean cycle makes the problem worse. Unless you print every month or so – forever – then if you skip say 6 months, plug it in to print and it will be as good as dead because you can’t replace the print heads. With the Canon, you can. After going through 4 Epson printers with the same clog of death problem I swore them off forever so Canon printers were my only hope.

http://pixma.ulmb.com/?p=485  — read this page in full

great site that goes through step by step BUT remember you have to have paper loaded in both trays AND
I needed to follow this guy Nick’s comments in the above webpage comment section to get it to work. Otherwise CD Print Tool v7 would just quit after the third step.

1) complete the printer set-up as stated in the instruction manual.

2) start and complete step one listed above.

3) load paper into both the cassette and the rear tray feed.

4) now start step 2 following the single letters.

5) after the third click on ‘set’ CD Print Tool v7 will quit

6) restart it, set the area to ‘EUR’ and click ‘Print 2′ – Do not click ‘set’. I only got two pages from this, one with colours and a list of ‘things=things’. On this sheet “cdrs=(0000)” was listed in the first line of text. The second sheet simply printed “CDR SENSOR=OK”.
The reason for only two may have been that I printed out the first sheet the day before when I clicked “Print” – “Print 2″ didn’t work and crashed the system first time round.

7) Click ‘OK’ in the screens that are up and repeat one more ‘EUR’ adjustment with ‘Set’

Then adjust ‘EUR” one further time and click “Print”. This action should provide a printout of the first page (similar to the above trio of pages). This time ‘(CDRS=0082)’

9) I then simply unplugged from the PC and put the USB back into my mac and – viola – I printed my first disc on my hacked printer.

Just to note – it took me three attempts to get the read out to change to ‘EUR’ on the print out. This was my fourth attempt with the PC and it worked very smoothly. The first three times I did not have paper loaded in both feeders, and when I hit “Print 2″ for the first time after following the instructions for the second time, the CD Print Tool crashed the PC. A little more patience then and I would have been up and running quicker.

Basically you let the Print Tool quit after the third step, start it back up then (with EUR selected)  press the “print 2″ button. After it prints, confirm the printout codes, my first try before this guys tip is below, then the winning confirmation:

do two more “SET” button presses with EUR selected and then hit the “print” button. Note he says his procedure is for a different model but it worked fine for my model too.

Oh, for the print out codes you want CDRS=(0000) to be ANYTHING other than 0000. Mine was 0082, others 0088, just depends. That and it should print a barcode inding in EUR  and another page with the words CDR SENSOR=OK.

SCORE!

printout confirms that the hack worked and the printer can be used to print on disks

Uninstall and reinstall the printer and all is good.

Hopefully canon doesn’t change the driver to make it so the USA and EUROPE have different cartridges. There was a comment on the site about that but hopefully it was just an epson rep. trying to scare people?

Thanks guys and good riddance to Epson printers forever!