According to NASA, laptops on board the International Space Station have been infected with a computer virus.

Viruses intended to steal passwords and send them to a remote server infected laptops in the International Space Station in July, NASA confirmed Tuesday.And according to NASA, this wasn’t the first infection.

“This is not the first time we have had a worm or a virus,” NASA spokesman Kelly Humphries said. “It’s not a frequent occurrence, but this isn’t the first time.”

Guess what. The computers weren’t protected with any kind of anti-virus software. And due to “security policies”, NASA won’t reveal how the virus arrived on the infected laptops. I think we all have our suspicions, if ya know what I’m sayin’ and I think that you do.

As technologically advanced as NASA is, they can’t bother to protect the data on their computer systems? These rocket scientists need to hang out with computer geeks.

You know I have to say it…guys, it’s not rocket science.

P.S.  Would someone please tell Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum they don’t have to hit EVERY large object circling the planet…

Sen. Obama’s lack of humility (real or perceived) is already a problem.  So his notion that it is somehow statesmanlike — rather than egotistical –  to look like the emperor in a 1950s sword-and-sandal epic is staggering.  Why is it that neither he nor his staff are able to see how bad this looks to the Average Joe?  

Reuters:  Obama speech stage resembles ancient Greek temple.

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s big speech on Thursday night will be delivered from an elaborate columned stage resembling a miniature Greek temple.

The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos’ National Football League team plays.

Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington’s Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party’s nomination for president.

He will stride out to a raised platform to a podium that can be raised from beneath the floor.

Frankly, I think they should go completely bonkers and raise him off the podium after the speech using hidden wires.

I just can’t fathom why, of all the songs you could associate with London, they chose the Led Zepplin classic ”Whole Lotta Love.”  Why pick this tune? Why? It doesn’t represent anything to do with sports, the Olympics or modern-day England. 

It was a hit 39 years ago. 39 YEARS AGO!  (Not that it really mattered.  The NBC version was mostly the echo of the stadium’s speakers. Did somebody forget to plug in the sound board or something? Sheesh.) 

But they couldn’t leave it alone, either:

Organizers of the London 2012 Games commissioned the band’s guitarist Jimmy Page to record a new version of the song to be performed on top of a special red double-decker bus accompanied by Leona Lewis, winner of the ITV reality television show The X Factor (to introduce the 2012 Olympics), with David Beckham looking on.

But, according to London 2012 officials, Lewis - who grew up in east London close to the Olympic site - requested a change to the song’s second verse because she was worried they would not make sense for a female singer.

In the original, recorded in 1969, frontman Robert Plant sings, “I’m gonna give you every inch of my love“.

But in the version that will be sung tomorrow, however, Lewis changes the words to “every bit” of my love.

The band also agreed to a request from organisers to drop the third verse, which includes similar sexual innuendoes, to fit in to the eight-minute performance,” adds the story.

If you need to censor/edit a song to make it acceptable, maybe you should just have chosen a different song?    Maybe the Beatles’ “All You Need is Love” would have been a better choice.  And more quintessentially British. 

So Sen. Obama’s choice for VP is Joe Biden. A man with a bad case of foot-in-mouth disease, who first ran for president in 1988, and has never mustered more than nominal support from Democrats let alone the American electorate. 

Per the NY Times:

He has a long history of making statements that get him in trouble. He was forced to apologize to Mr. Obama almost the moment he entered the race for president after he was quoted as describing Mr. Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy,” a remark that drew criticism for being racially insensitive. While campaigning in New Hampshire, Mr. Biden said that “you cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin’ Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent.”

Mr. Biden quit the presidential race this year after barely making a mark; he came in fifth in Iowa. He was forced to quit the 1988 presidential race in the face of accusations that he had plagiarized part of a speech from Neil Kinnock, the British Labor Party leader…

Note to Sen. Obama:  The object of the game is to win! If you’re all about “change,” why pick a lifetime politician who has been in office LONGER THAN McCAIN?  He’s been in the Senate since I was in grade school.  Longer than half of America has been alive.       

I can only figure that a lot of people must have said “no” to Obama for him to pick Biden.  He brings nothing in terms of the electoral college.  Sen. Obama already has the coastal liberal elites vote.  What he needs is voters from the Midwest, the South and Western states — and Sen. Biden doesn’t pick up those voters.

What I’m wondering is how we got to the point that all of the candidates/running-mates (so far) are from the Congress with the lowest approval rating in history?  It’s enough to make me want to throw things. 

I peruse articles online all the time and my focus is sometimes on health care, food and gas prices, etc. And I usually read them through and think about what they are saying and see if it actually makes any sense. Most of the time it does.

But the thought occured to me when I read an article about how the health care moguls are getting into other products. There are some statistics in the article that says certain people can afford to buy individual policies because they make over x dollars.

So my question is: Exactly how did they determine that these people can afford this?

Just because someone happens to make $75,000 does not automatically say they can afford anything. It also doesn’t say they can pay more taxes, buy more life insurance, pay higher prices for cars and food.

For instance, here are some questions that might apply to the situation:

How much do they pay in taxes now? Not every “rich” person fail to pay taxes.

Do they have kids in college or are they supporting their out-of-work kids? We KNOW how much college costs. And the reports lately say that more and more people are losing jobs because the corporations have to keep their bottom line for profits up there for the overseas investors.

Are they supporting their parents? More and more news is coming out that the “boomers” are going to comprise 25% - 40% of the population in the next 10 years. And who won’t support their parents since they supported their kids most of their lives?

Are they stuck in the middle of the housing crunch? Not everyone ran out and maxed out their loans on their house. Some of us stayed away and only did a loan we could afford. But property taxes, property insurance, school taxes, fire district taxes, etc have increased because the house value increased. Now the house value is dropping but not the taxes or insurance. Although the government is helping out those people, at my expense, who were greedy, or just did not bother to read what they were signing, there is NO help for people who did the right thing. We just have to ride the tide.

The point I am trying to make is this: Unless you know what every one of those people have as NET income, don’t assume they have all this money laying around. And stop talking about how they can afford stuff when you DO NOT KNOW.  That is how all this mess started. Assuming people can afford this and that so let’s do this house loan, let’s raise this tax on this group, let’s increase our prices on food….etc.

And before you blast me for this, I am there. You have already seen my blogs on food and fuel. How’s this for things you can afford…….?

Current property taxes: School District tax, State tax, City tax, County tax, Library tax, Hospital tax, Fire District tax, County Park tax.

Telephone taxes and Fees: Federal Excise, City Utility, 911 State excise, Funds Federal ADA, State telephone assistance, Federal Universal Service Fee, City Sales Tax, Regulatory Charge, Administrative Charge, Effect of City Tax, County 911 Surcharge, State Sales Tax.

Utilities Fees and Taxes: City Tax, Gas Conservation Program charge, Delivery Charge, Utility Tax, Refuse Tax, Franchise Fee, FCC Regulatory Fee.

So no, I can not afford insurance, higher property taxes, more Fire District taxes, more school taxes, etc. Like most people who have never seen as much as $75,000, I can not afford this.

Or the new car, Viagra, skin wrinkle remover, more Cable services, newer cell phones, or any of the rest of the stuff you see on TV commercials…….

I might set up my own “Usage Tax” - you all are using me too much…..Gonna charge everytime you show me a commercial for something I can not afford, can’t use, don’t want, or don’t need.

Except maybe the blood pressure medicine…..

Since I went into semi-retirement early last year, translated as no longer working and looking for work, I obviously became more conscious about prices of everything. Now, with food prices, along with everything else, skyrocketing allegedly due to fuel prices, I check even closer and obviously cut back on a lot of stuff.

Remember back when the various manufacturers, like Fritos, Lay’s, etc started giving you larger bags to make you think that you were getting more for the same price? And when everyone started complaining about the half empty bags of chips, they said it was due to “settling during shipment”?

Well now they are giving us smaller packaging. But, and there is usually one, the packaging is coming with a price. Like the same or higher price as the previous packaging. Except the portions are even smaller now. Check it out. Snickers bars used to come in 6-packs and ran for about $1.99. I saw a package today in Rite-Aid that was an 8-pack. But the bars are half the size of the normal ones. And the price was $2.19. Now, I don’t mean they were half the length I mean half the width, looking just like a Twix.

So, what used to cost us about $0.33 per full-sized bar for a 6-pack now costs us $0.55 per bar for what is equal to a 4-pack. That is a 66% increase in price.  Hershey’s has announced they are increasing their prices by 11%. It is going to be interesting to see how small their portions get.

And that is not the only thing I have seen shrink. Several of the brands of muffins have shrunk in size, as has the length of bread loaves, butter is msaller, cheese is smaller, etc. Check it out the next time you go to the store. Smaller packages, smaller portions, higher prices. [Bread used to be normal thickness - now it is thinner but same number of slices or less.]

Traders on Wall Street think that there may be a reduction of consumer confidence and purchasing due to pricing. You Think?!?

The easiest way to stick it to people is hitting them on essentials, like food. The government and watch-dog organizations are always after other corporations about pricing gouging. Like airlines, telephone companies, etc. Not saying they don’t, but I find it curious that no one is investigating food price fixing or price gouging. They did on gas but that was only after the car manufacturers started reporting losing profits.

The nation is on a kick about nutritious food to the point where they are now telling businesses like McDonalds and Burger King that their food is not healthy enough. Why? Because there is an EPIDEMIC of obesity. Now, I have tried unsucessfully to find out what bug exactly caused this epidemic and have yet to find the medical reason. But a lot of “professors” are jumping on the bandwagon about this, so it must be right, Right? Yeah, right.

I wonder when some of these professors are going to stop and admit:  If you raise food prices so high that they exceed any familys budget, people can’t possibly get the so-called nutrious food into the house. They can not afford it. Therefore, they HAVE to go elsewhere where it is cheaper. [Ever check on why organic food costs twice as much as the more "unhealthy" food?]

And if you have to work more hours in order to make more money to pay for food and gas, exactly when do you have time to be home to make a hot nutritious meal?  Get real for a change.

It simply means this: Everyone are they themselves responsible for what they put in their mouth or their kids mouth, whether it is food, junk food, or whatever. It is not the corporations - that is just an easy way to accomodate those people who have too much time on their hands to complain about anything they can find, regardless of how outrageous. [Like obesity is a public health risk ?? - what about the flu, that is a public health problem.  Fix that and I might start listening.]

And of course you have to tie up valuable government funds to get the city involved in the alleged epidemics all over the country. Course that is another blog - waste of government money accomodating complainers about things the government should not even be involved in….

Seems to me a lot of people are putting their foot in their mouth - hope it really tastes good when you can no longer afford real food.

Oh yeah, I forgot, it isn’t inflation, it is a price adjustment….what was I thinking? Want fries with that?

I am not a ‘fashionista’ - I wear what I like, regardless of what fashion dictates.  My philosophy is simple: as long as the appropriate bits are covered up, and the colors don’t clash, wear whatever you like.  Though I do wonder who came up with the brown/pink color scheme that dominates so much of my nieces’ wardrobes…

And don’t even get me started on shoes.  Granted, I’m pretty solidly into middle-age territory, but shoes HAVE to be comfortable.  Limping around because your feet hurt is ridiculous.  Sorry, I digress…

Do you remember those watches from back in the 70s/80s — Swatches — that you could swap out the color of the watch face?  Or the cheesy jewelry you see late at night on the shopping channel where you can have 1 pair of earrings with a dozen different looks by replacing the (plastic looking) discs?  Well, here’s the shoe version, which looks to be both ugly AND uncomfortable.  The Nat-2 design looks like a regular pair of canvas shoes (more or less, if you ignore the ZIPPER around the bottom), much like the popular Converse brand.  But then you can unzip them to convert them to sandals.  Of course you still have to carry around the part you unzipped, so that’s not much of a help.  And I’m not sure how watertight canvas shoes with zippers are, but hey, don’t let me rain on your parade.   

A team of scientists at Harvard Medical School and Children’s Hospital in Boston have produced a library of stem cells using ordinary skin and bone marrow cells from patients, and said on Thursday they would share them freely with other researchers.

They used a new method to re-program ordinary cells so they look and act like embryonic stem cells — the master cells of the body with the ability to produce any type of tissue or blood cell.

The new cells are called induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells.  The iPS cells behave like embryonic stem cells but do not use embryos, eggs, or cloning, avoiding any need to create, destroy, or harm any human embryos. Japanese scientist Shinya Yamanaka developed the technique first in mice, then used the identical technique for human cells, without use of human embryos or human embryonic stem cells for any of his research.

The team said the point is not yet to treat anyone, but to get as many researchers as possible experimenting with these cells in lab dishes to better understand the diseases.

The creation of these new disease-specific stem cell lines will hopefully bring about the end of cloning (somatic cell nuclear transfer, SCNT). The cloning technique creates an embryo that must be destroyed to harvest its stem cells for experiments.  But cloning has never worked well, and requires a tremendous number of eggs, risking the health of women.  

Yet despite his new success with iPS cells (and previous failures with cloning), Daley says cloning technology is still superior. “The egg does it faster and better,” he said. Well, maybe, if it actually worked, theoretically. In the same way that, theoretically, a Star Trek transporter might be better than an elevator. But only one will get me there now, reliably, repetitively — and without the destruction of human life.

Besides, as any Trekker knows, the transporter was not exactly accident-free…

Who else could have New Testament scholar, (Anglican) Bishop N.T. Wright as a guest, discussing the afterlife, and still make it both informative and funny?

I came across this article in The Telegraph (it’s a couple of weeks old) about a contest called “Name of Russia” , whose goal is to pick the ultimate Russian.    At time the article was written, Joseph Stalin was in second place (the last czar, Nicholas II was in first place).  

Opinion polls regularly name him [Stalin] Russia’s greatest post-revolution leader after Vladimir Putin, the prime minister.

As anyone who has even a smidgeon of knowledge of the 20th century knows, Stalin is best known for his bloody purges and other policies that led directly to the deaths of about 20,000,000 to 45,000,000 people (depending on how you calculate the starvation and bloodshed). The article uses a 15,000,000 figure, which is lower than the usual estimates found in textbooks and various websites.

Seeking to establish atheism as the Soviet Union’s official creed, Stalin destroyed thousands of churches and sent tens of thousands of priests to the gulags and their deaths.

Now it seems the Communists want to have Stalin declared an Orthodox Christian saint. Honest.

Despite the church’s reluctance, St. Petersburg’s Communists are convinced their vision will come to pass. They have already commissioned religious icons depicting Stalin with a halo round his head that have reportedly sold very well around the city.

St. Stalin??  You’ve got to be kidding.  Thankfully, this seems to be mostly the doing of the St. Petersburg Communists, not the faithful, but still… either these guys are completely looney, or they are completely and totally ignorant of what it means to be saint.