Today in the technology department, I have two links for you.

The first one I found from an email forward from my Mom. (HI MOM!) There are some NASA pictures. Most look authentic, although the first one or the second one I’m not positive about, as you can see land fairly clearly and lots of blue sky, so it would seem to be too low an altitude to be a walk in space. However, I may be wrong, since I don’t know much about the spacewalks. Anyway, some good pictures, from the website of a guy called Texas Jim:

TexasJimNASA

The second thing was an AP article today about metal whiskers. No, they are not something you find on your husband’s face, or the newest thing in punk rock decor. They are tiny metal splinters that appear on electrical equipment, and are responsible for small equipment failures all the way up to a satellite failure. I’ve run into jobs where the electrical equipment has these things, and I always wondered about them. So for me it was interesting to read.

MetalSplinters

Safeway had some new frosted flakes cereal on sale a few weeks ago so I bought one. It was under their Organics label. Due to the increasing popularity of organic food, a lot of the big chains are getting into it as well, which is both a good and bad thing. Overall probably good, as it may get rid of some of the chemicals in the foods we eat and thus be a little healthier. More demand also helps push more farmers into organic. On the bad side, sometimes the chains kill prices for the suppliers. The rapidly increasing demand also has forced many companies to go overseas in search of organics, and in some cases the standards there are not too strict. I read an article about overseas problems somewhere, but can’t find it so I’ll leave that for the future.

Organic food sales were about $17 billion in 2006, up from $13.8 billion in 2005. From 1997 to 2004, organics grew at a 17 to 21% annual rate. What was once a small niche market has now moved into the mainstream.

Anyway, I was glancing at the list of ingredients today and saw “Natural Brown Sugar Flavor”. That’s I guess our ambiguous flavor of the day. Is it NATURAL brown sugar flavor, or is it natural brown sugar FLAVOR? My guess is the latter.
I had to laugh.

Speaking of things that don’t quite make sense, the Oakland school district is requiring all volunteers to be fingerprinted and to spend up to $100 of their own money to undergo FBI background checks. Now I can see asking someone for a background check if they walk off the street, but for parents that have kids at the school, it makes no sense. For some low income parents, it’s a lot of money. You’d think that the schools would be doing all they can to get parents involved, but you’d be wrong.

Well, I started out with one clip and found two more.

First up, a link to a funny video on You Tube. Someone took a clip from a film about Hitler which was in German, and added their own subtitles. It involves "iSketch" which I have never heard of, but apparently is some kind on online or computer game. Even if you don't know what it is, it's still funny.

Link is below:
YouTubeiSketch

Next up,
An interesting video called “Japanese Human Art”. It's not funny, but sort of cool, performance artists doing something I haven't seen before.
JapaneseHumanArt

Last, but certainly not least, is another pretty funny video of a comedy sketch by two comedians who call themselves “Men in Coats”
MenInCoats

Last week at the Oakland airport, airport officials prevented a flight of Marines from visiting with friends and family in the passenger terminal because supposedly they weren’t screened by the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) in New York prior to their arrival in Oakland. Their flight originated in Kuwait, then to NY, then Oakland, then to Hawaii.
Officials were also concerned because the troops had their weapons on board. The TSA later said the troops had been screened by US Customs in NY.

I guess if you want to find a bunch of idiots, come fly to the Oakland airport, it appears we have several on hand. They are free to a good home, as long as you promise to take them with you and not bring them back. Another plan would be to replace the airport officials with chimpanzees. They would cost a lot less, be far more entertaining while we’re waiting to board our planes, and most likely do as good a job or better. I’m sure passengers would even willing to bring a banana to the airport with them to give to the new “executives”.

I can see the airport officials’ concerns. It is common knowledge that Osama bin Laden has scores of secret operatives who have infiltrated the Marines, and once they finish their year deployments fighting in Iraq, are on a secret mission to come to Oakland on a stopover, storm out of the plane and shoot Americans.
I don’t know, stuff like this really makes you scratch your head and wonder how people so stupid can get to positions of such power.

The TSA is however, not far behind, and are determined to give our mentally challenged Oakland airport officials a run for their money:

Some TSA highlights:
TSA paid a company to recruit new screeners; the taxpayers wound up spending $143,432 in recruitment costs for each screener — each screener — in the terrorism hotbed of Topeka, Kan.

In Newark, NJ, the TSA’s Red team testing of screening beat the screeners 20 out of 22 times.

In Dallas, a passenger managed to carry on a 4 foot sword onto an American Airlines plane.

In Hawaii, a baggage screener accidentally dropped a binder of information designated SSI (Sensitive Security Information) into a passenger’s luggage while it was being screened. The passenger, Navy veteran Joe Langer, only discovered the binder when he unpacked the bag the next day.

There was another travel blog that had interesting info on TSA rules. They will allow lighters on planes now but require cd players and sleep apnea masks to be removed from carry on luggage and X rayed separately. It also appears that getting on the pre-screened list of approved fliers does not really help to speed your travel up at all:
FlyingBlog

10/7/07 Update:
Just watching 60 Minutes tonight, they interviewed the American running Interpol. An intelligent, honest guy. Turn out the Dept of Homeland Security has no personnel at Interpol. Only now did they send a letter to Interpol where they say they will "consider" assigning a person to Interpol by the end of the year. Given the nature of the threats to the US and the fact that most of them are from overseas, you'd think DHS would work closer to Interpol. Obviously not.

If this keeps up, DHS will announce their arrival in one of those miniature clown cars where 6 clowns get out. Only it'll be six DHS employees. I think a bunch of sixth graders could do a better job than DHS and TSA.

There was a study about back pain and acupuncture that appeared in Monday’s “Archives of Internal Medicine”. Some researchers at a German university compared three methods of treating back pain:

1) Traditional acupuncture
2) Fake acupuncture
3) Medication

For the fake acupuncture, the needles were not inserted as deep as they normally would be, were not manually rotated or moved, and were not inserted into the traditional acupuncture points in the body.

The results were as follows:
47% of the patients getting traditional acupuncture improved
44% of the patients getting fake acupuncture improved
27% of the medication patients improved.

The researchers don’t know if the fake acupuncture worked due to the placebo effect (where you improve because your mind thinks you’ll improve) or if it was due to the body’s reactions to the pricks, possibly releasing natural painkillers or changing the way the brain processes pain signals. In any case, a very interesting study, and perhaps if duplicated elsewhere, it will result in people taking fewer drugs.

Another drug related story coming out this week was a National Institute of Health study on flu vaccines. It concludes they may not be of much value for people older than 70. In the past, authorities have pushed flu shots for the elderly, raising the percentage of vaccinated seniors 65 and older from 15% in 1980 to 69% in 2006. Surveys have shown winter death rates for seniors have fallen 50% or more, and that was thought to show that the vaccinations worked.

The researchers at NIH believe that previous studies did not take into account the fact that healthier seniors were more likely to get vaccinated and the infirm seniors were less likely to do so. Also, the infirm would have naturally higher death rates. When they factored these things in, the benefit from the vaccines was greatly reduced. This sort of ties in to a Dutch study done in 1992 that found vaccines were effective 57% of the time in people ages 60 to 69, but fell to 23% for those 70 and over. Apparently flu shots stir up antibodies in your system quite easily in young people but less so as you age.

While the conclusion of the study was that flu shots were questionable for 70 yrs and older, they still recommended them since there may be at least some slight benefit, which is better than nothing.

And, moving on, there was another news report out on osteoporosis (the weakening of bones). This is something 50% of elderly women have and 25% of elderly men. More than 300,000 hip fractures occur in the US each year. Roughly 1 in 5 elderly victims die within a year of breaking their hip. (This statistic really surprised me).

Most doctors tell their patients to take Fosomax and other bisphosphonates, which are a type of drug that stop bone breakdown. However, the pill can sometimes cause heartburn and other problems. In addition, you have to take it on an empty stomach in the morning and wait 1/2 hour before eating. Because of the hassle an side effects, many people stop taking the drugs. Novartis just released a study on a new once a year injectible bisphosphonate called Reclast, and found 28% fewer deaths and 35% fewer fractures in patients getting the injection. No other drug for osteoporosis has gotten results as good as this, so sounds like Novartis found a winner.

Last, but not least:
A new study released by researchers in Denmark has found a surprising link between the amount of trans fat consumed in your diet and the likelihood of changes in your sexual behavior. The study is somewhat preliminary, as it only involved 450 participants and has only been running since 1992. The researchers hope to triple the number of participants in a follow up study starting in January, and will also be continuing the original study until 2012.

The study was initially begun to study the effect of trans fats in people’s diets, and to further investigate suspicions that trans fats were actually more harmful than saturated fats. In 2005, while running various data mining checks through the results, one of the research assistants noticed a strange phenomena. Those people that consumed the highest amount of trans fats were 35% more likely to be transvestites.

This was ground breaking news, as it was the first study to link diet to sexual behavior. Only now is there proof that transvestites are the result of trans fats. Furthermore, transvestites were 47% more likely to need an organ transplant, 42% more likely to drive a Trans Am, 28% more likely to have problems transposing numbers incorrectly, 31% more likely to be able to translate a foreign language, 53% more likely to be involved in relationships with transsexuals, and 67% more likely to take public transportation to work.

(Okay, yes, the trans fat study bit is a joke, figured I’d lighten things up at the end. The other studies were real.)