Month: March 2014

The Stupidity Embedded in the War on Terror

Fascinating story via TechDirt demonstrating the complete idiocy that characterizes much of the war on terror.

A man in Australia attempted to buy some electronic parts from Element 14, which bills itself as a leading international supplier of electronics. When he showed up at a local Element 14 story to pick up the parts he had ordered online, however, he was told a “hold” had been put on the parts.

The hold, it turned out, was because Element 14 is/was comparing names of customers ordering parts to names on a U.S. terrorism watch list.

The man’s name — David Jones.

Back in 2006 a U.S. Marine was prevented from boarding a flight home because his name — David Brown — was on a watch list. The same year 60 Minutes did a story featuring 12 men named Robert Johnson who were unable to fly because that name is on some sort of watch list.

The watch lists themselves are largely security theater, but it is still a bit shocking to see how the American Terrorism Industrial Complex insists on taking this to its brain dead logic outcome.

Bif Bang Pow’s Twilight Zone Retro 3 3/4″ Action Figures

Bif Bang Pow will be releasing these awesome Twilight Zone 3 3/4″ action figures in August 2014. These are pretty reasonably priced at $9.99 each. No way am I passing on the Henry Bemis toy.

Henry Bemis Twilight Zone Action Figure Continue reading “Bif Bang Pow’s Twilight Zone Retro 3 3/4″ Action Figures”

UN Human Rights Commission Report on North Korea

In February 2014, the UN Human Rights Commission released 400+ pages of material documenting what it called “unspeakable atrocities” in the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea.

In a press release announcing the report, the UN Human Rights Commission said,

“The gravity, scale and nature of these violations reveal a State that does not have any parallel in the contemporary world,” the Commission — established by the Human Rights Council in March 2013 — says in a report that is unprecedented in scope.

“These crimes against humanity entail extermination, murder, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions and other sexual violence, persecution on political, religious, racial and gender grounds, the forcible transfer of populations, the enforced disappearance of persons and the inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation,” the report says, adding that “Crimes against humanity are ongoing in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea because the policies, institutions and patterns of impunity that lie at their heart remain in place.”

Omron 7 Series Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor

Omron 7 Series Wrist Blood Pressure MonitorI’d always wanted a blood pressure monitor as part of my self tracking regimen, but honestly my blood pressure was always very good and most of the decent monitors seemed always to be in the $100 range.

Then my blood pressure started to rise into the pre-hypertension area on a couple of doctors visits, which didn’t make any sense, so I broke down and bought one so I could better track my blood pressure on a day-to-day basis.

After looking around Amazon, I settled on the Omron 7 Wrist Blood Pressure Monitor. The main advantage of the Omron 7 is that being a wrist monitor, it is very compact and portable — I can just toss it in the bottom of my backpack and take it with me anywhere if I wanted. Also, I really hate the sensation of traditional arm cuff blood pressure monitors.

I’ve tested it before and after doctor’s visits to see how well it compares to what the nurse tells me my blood pressure is, and so far it seems to be spot on accurate.

The unit will store the last 100 blood pressure readings each for two separate users (there is a slider that lets you switch between user 1 and user 2). It would be nice to have a USB or Bluetooth option to automatically copy the data, but I simply copy the readings onto a spreadsheet at the end of the week.

The nice thing is that I was able to use the unit to quickly determine why my blood pressure was slightly elevated. I sustained a knee injury and had been taking ibuprofen to deal with some of the lingering pain and inflammation. Using the Omron I was able to determine that my blood pressure was elevated in and around the times I was taking the pain killer, and returned to its normal levels when I ceased taking it. It was good to discover that the elevated blood pressure level wasn’t tied to any underlying health problem.