Shared posts

23 Mar 00:38

Robot Future

I mean, we already live in a world of flying robots killing people. I don't worry about how powerful the machines are, I worry about who the machines give power to.
27 Nov 21:11

No Need To Thank Me

06 Apr 19:18

Sam’s Club, Kroger & H-E-B Remove All Blue Bell Ice Cream Products Amid Contamination Concerns

by Ashlee Kieler
(Steve)

(Steve)

Two weeks after Blue Bell Creameries expanded the recall of products linked to an outbreak of listeriosis that resulted in three deaths, several major grocery chains have taken things a step farther by removing all of the company’s products from the ice cream aisle.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that Sam’s Club, Kroger and H-E-B stores pulled Blue Bell ice cream products out of an abundance of caution over the weekend.

The product removal comes just days after Blue Bell announced it would temporarily close its Broken Arrow, OK, production plant, which was previously connected to contaminated ice cream.

“We are taking this step out of an abundance of caution to ensure that we are doing everything possible to provide our consumers with safe products and to preserve the trust we have built with them and their families for more than a century,” the company said in a statement about the plant closing. “The Broken Arrow operations will be suspended so that our team of expert consultants can conduct a careful and complete examination to determine the exact cause of the contamination.”

Representatives for H-E-B say the decision to remove the treats from stores was a “precautionary measure due to food safety concerns.” However, the chain says it will work with Blue Bell to refill its ice cream offerings.

A spokesman for Blue Bell tells the Star Tribune that the company is aware of the grocers’ decision to pull products and respected the action.

Blue Bell previously recalled several ice cream items in mid-March after tests linked the products to an outbreak of listeriosis that sickened five people in Kansas, three of whom later died.

A joint investigation found that certain Blue Bell brand ice cream products are the likely source of some or all of the people’s illnesses.

The five people who became ill in Kansas were confirmed to be infected with one of four strains of Listeria monocytogenes. All five people – older in age – were hospitalized at the same hospital for unrelated problems before developing invasive listeriosis, suggesting they were infected at the hospital, the CDC reports.

Investigators say the illnesses began between January 2014 and January 2015. Although some of the illnesses began more than a year ago, the listeria cluster identified earlier this month shows that some of the infections are indistinguishable, meaning they are likely from the same source.

Of the patients infected, four consumed milkshakes made with a single serving Blue Bell brand ice cream called Scoops while they were in the hospital.

Recalled products included three-ounce chocolate, strawberry and vanilla ice cream cups with tab lids served in institutional and food service areas, such as hospitals. The original recall also included widely sold products such as Scoops, Chocolate Chip Country Cookies, Great Divide Bars, Sour Pop Green Apple Bars, Cotton Candy Bars, Vanilla Stick Slices, Almond Bars and No Sugar Added Moo Bars.

Sam’s Club, Kroger join H-E-B in pulling all Blue Bell Ice Cream products from their shelves [The Minneapolis Star Tribune]

23 Sep 18:24

Looks Like We're At An Impassé

Looks Like We're At An Impassé

Submitted by: (via forever-voltage)

Tagged: if i fits i sits , sink , Cats
04 Sep 00:39

I Dream Of Cookies

Home | CA, USA

(I come home for a weekend visit with a friend. My mom starts telling a story.)

Mom: “I swear I bought ‘Thin Mints’ the other day, and I hid them in the cupboard like I always do. But they aren’t there anymore and I don’t know what I did with them.”

Me: “That’s funny. Did you give them away?”

Mom: “Well, I had a dream that I gave them away. Maybe I did and just thought I dreamt it? But I remember buying them and hiding them and I asked [My Friend] and she said I didn’t give them to her.”

(The next day my mom gets a text from my sister in Chicago.)

Sister: “Hey, I got your box today! [Roommate] and I are sitting here eating ‘Thin Mints!’”

13 Mar 17:00

The NEW New Glenn Beck

by Ed Brayton

It’s time again for one of those periodic “Glenn Beck is sick of politics and is now reinventing himself as something completely different” articles. This time it’s in the National Review, where Eliana Johnson informs us that he’s now going to be making movies or rap videos or something something something.

Glenn Beck is tired of politics.

“I think politics is a game, and I think people watch politics as a game, like they watch the NFL,” he tells me, leaning back in his chair. He once thought Washington politicians “actually believed in something.” Now, he says, “I don’t think they do.”…

Beck’s disenchantment with news and politics aren’t just for show. Though best known for his flame-throwing political commentary, he is turning his attention to cultural projects like plays and movies. His years in TV, he says, have taught him that news is secondary to culture. “News,” he says, is simply “what the culture allows.”

Oh no, this time it’s totally for real.

A former top-40 DJ, Beck tells me that his foray into TV news wasn’t meant to be permanent. “I hate politics, I always have,” he says. He was working on a TV drama along the lines of HBO’s Newsroom — about the news of the day and the people who put it together — when, in 2006, he got a call from Headline News, CNN’s sister network.

“We thought, well, might as well get in and figure out how television works and learn on somebody else’s dime,” Beck says. When Fox News came calling in 2008 — he was lured there by Joel Cheatwood, a former CNN executive who had jumped to Fox and who has since joined Beck in his new venture — Beck says he considered that gig a temporary one, too. “I walked in and I really thought, I’ll do this for a while because somebody has to ring the bell and then I’ll get out, and I’m still waiting to be able to pass the bell on to somebody else. Haven’t found him yet, but . . . ” He trails off.

Oh come on, seriously? Who is going to believe that? He got an offer from CNN and he took it. Why? Fame and money, of course. He left CNN for Fox News. Why? More fame and more money.

Beck became the country’s leading anti-progressive when, in a series of shows on Fox, he stood at his signature blackboard and explained why Wilson’s ideology was the progenitor of the sort of liberalism embodied by Barack Obama.

“I was so curious about it that I was teaching myself,” he says. “I wasn’t a professor at the chalkboard, I was a citizen at the chalkboard saying: ‘Look what I just found, look at this. I can’t believe I’m finding this stuff and it’s right here in the open. Why isn’t anybody else doing it? I really lost my naïveté, because I really believed that if you could make a case and you could back it up, then the press . . . ” He trails off again. “Oh no, they don’t care. They don’t care. Same with Washington.”

Let me suggest an alternate hypothesis: You didn’t make your case. You babbled incoherently and played a rousing game of six degrees of separation and did some really third-rate Dan Brown symbolic analysis (which was already third-rate to begin with) and ended up with a big pile of bullshit. That’s why no one other than the most ignorant and credulous took you seriously.

25 Feb 15:53

Priorities

by Grumpy, M.D.
Brent writes in with this bit of drama from his practice:


Mr. Husband: "Can you make a house call for my wife? Her asthma is really bad, and she's having a tough time breathing. She won't go to ER, either."

Dr. Brent: "Just bring her to my office. I'll squeeze her in this afternoon."

Mr. Husband: Well, she's been coughing a lot. And, you know, she has that problem that when she coughs, she leaks urine. I can't have that in my truck."

Dr. Brent: "So bring her in her car."

Mr. Husband: "THE NEW BMW?!!! ARE YOU CRAZY???"
31 Jan 19:23

Pop Stars, Bigots and Mass Weddings

by Ed Brayton

I didn’t watch the Grammys because, well, I don’t know why anyone would watch the Grammys (it’s a lot like the Nobel Peace Prize going to Kissinger — once you’ve named Milli Vanilli the best new artist and given Jethro Tull the award for best heavy metal album, I no longer take you seriously). But I heard about the mass wedding, which strikes me as crass and ridiculous (what are they, Moonies?). Still, I am really enjoying watching the bigots absolutely lose their shit over it.

“Hollywood, the entertainment industry and the political left just can’t get enough ‘gay,’” Wildmon said.

He also attacked President Obama for inviting openly gay NBA player Jason Collins to the State of the Union address: “President Obama now has invited an NBA player to sit in the gallery for the State of the Union speech precisely because he has sex with other men and is proud of it. These people don’t just want acceptance, they want middle America’s approval.”

Tim Graham of the Media Research Center accused the Grammys of trying to “flush the Bible on national TV,” while Family Research Council senior fellow Peter Sprigg said the award show has been “shamelessly exploited in support of a radical social and political agenda.”

And more:

IFI’s “cultural analyst” Laurie Higgins writes that the Grammys were “a tragic freak show” and “a gawdy[sic] spitball hurled in the all-seeing eye of a holy God.”

The wedding ceremony, Higgins writes, was “a sorry, sick, non-serious ceremony that looked like something from the garish dystopian world of the Hunger Games” and “a non-wedding festooned with all the indulgent gimcrackery [sic] of Satan’s most alluring playground: Hollywood.” She particularly attacks “homosexual faux-pastorette” Queen Latifah and “the Dorian Gray-esque” Madonna for taking part in the proceedings.

But Higgins disapproval goes beyond the same-sex marriage portion of the entertainment. She also criticizes Beyoncé — the object of a fewrecent tirades from the Right — for providing a “vulgar anti-woman, anti-marriage performance” that Higgins compares to “soft-core porn.”

“Beyoncé has abused her power as a beloved role model for young girls to teach them terrible lessons about sexuality and marriage,” Higgins writes. Her anger extends also to Beyoncé’s husband Jay-Z, whom she claims “seems to revel in the lustings of strangers for his wife.”

“Is it money that motivates his eager embrace of his wife’s immodesty, or pride that he has access to her body when all other leering men do not?” Higgins asks. “If it’s money, how is he different from a pimp?”

May I have some more, please? Your aggrieved howls of outrage are a wonderful source of warmth as the temps outside reach -10 degrees.

21 Dec 01:26

Sigil Cycle

The cycle seems to be 'we need these symbols to clarify what types of things we're referring to!' followed by 'wait, it turns out words already do that.'
16 Dec 18:40

On call, Sunday morning, 2:18 a.m.

by Grumpy, M.D.
Dr. Grumpy: "This is Dr. Grumpy, returning a page."

Dr. ER: "Hi, Ibee. It's Susan, over in emergency. I need your help."

Dr. Grumpy: "What's up?"

Dr. ER: "I have a 20-something guy here, who a few hours ago abruptly became paralyzed from the waist down, with severe lumbar pain. He can't move his legs at all. I sent him for a STAT MRI, which was normal, and..."

Dr. Grumpy: "Does he have reflexes?"

Dr. ER: "Yeah, and sensation is good, too. But he can't move either..."

(yelling, screaming, swearing in background)

(pause)

Dr. ER: "Ibee, are you still there?"

Dr. Grumpy: "Yeah. What was all that noise?"

Dr. ER: "Never mind... When we refused to give him more Dilaudid he just got up and walked out. He's gone."
14 Nov 18:22

Google: Stop Using That Charger That Comes With Your New HP Chromebook 11

by Chris Morran

Got one of these? Google says to stop using the charger it came with.

Got one of these? Google says to stop using the charger it came with.

One of the selling points of the recently released HP Chromebook 11 was that the laptop could be charged using the same micro-USB chargers used for many non-Apple mobile devices. Alas, the chargers supplied with these new Chromebooks can get super-hot (something I can attest to first-hand) so Google and HP from temporarily pulled the computer for sale and told current HP Chromebook 11 owners to use any other UL-approved micro-USB charger to power up their laptops while the companies sort out a resolution with the Consumer Product Safety Commission. [via GigaOm and The Verge]
16 Oct 15:44

Nasty New Cuccinelli Ad Slams Opponent For An Investment That His Own Donor’s Firm Also Made

CuccinelliAd

Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II (R) launched a new advertisement Friday against Terry McAuliffe, calling his Democratic opponent in next month’s gubernatorial election “corrupt” and “despicable” for his 2006 investment in a Rhode Island-based life insurance annuity pool. But while the ad slams McAuliffe for his investment in “an insurance scam that preyed on dying people,” a ThinkProgress review of court documents reveals that another investor was an Ocean State company whose vice chairman is a Cuccinelli donor.

Last week, court documents were released in the case of Joseph A. Caramadre, a Cranston, RI, estate planner who plead guilty to defrauding insurers by using the identities of terminally ill patients. Caramadre’s investors included Monsignor Raymond B. Bastia of the Rhode Island Catholic Diocese, former Cranston Police Chief Walter J. Craddock, and the law firm of a former Rhode Island Supreme Court Justice. According to the Washington Post, there had been “no indication that McAuliffe (D) or other investors were aware that Caramadre was stealing identities.” McAuliffe has denied any knowledge of the scheme.

But Cuccinelli pounced anyway, calling the revelation that McAuliffe had invested in Caramadre’s efforts a “shocking new discovery,” and concluding: “Profiting off the terminally ill: is that the kind of man you want as your governor?”

Watch the spot:

The ad shows a page from the list of investors featuring McAuliffe’s name (mispelled). It also shows the names “NATCO Home Fashions,” and its parents company “NATCO Products Corp.” While McAuliffe’s name appears on the full list once, the West Warwick, RI-based NATCO appears on the list six times.

NATCO Products’s chairman is Robert Galkin. His brother Warren is vice chair. Virginia contribution records reveal that Warren Galkin gave Cuccinelli’s 2013 gubernatorial campaign $500 — his only significant contribution to a Virginia candidate on record.

The court records make clear that NATCO was also just an investor, and there is no evidence that its officers knew what Caramadre was up to either. But using Cuccinlli’s standard, it is noteworthy that he took a significant contribution from an out-of-state donor who he apparently considers “corrupt” for this investment.

Cuccinellli’s campaign did not respond to questions about the contradiction and whether his campaign plans to refund Galkin’s contribution. Galkin and NATCO also did not respond to requests for comment.

The post Nasty New Cuccinelli Ad Slams Opponent For An Investment That His Own Donor’s Firm Also Made appeared first on ThinkProgress.

26 Sep 14:53

Dear Job Recruiter,

by Grumpy, M.D.
Thank you for this ad I received in the mail yesterday.




Let me give you a few pointers:

1. Neuro-Hospitalists are just neurologists, like me. The only difference is that they only work in hospitals. Granted, I don't call myself a Neuro-Officist. Probably because some idiot would pronounce it as "Neuro-Orifice."And calling myself (more accurately) a Neuro-Hospital-Officist just sounds silly.

My point here is that we don't wear surgical hairnets. Or gowns. Or gloves. I suppose if you worked in a hospital you could wear scrubs all the time, but there's no point to the other surgical accoutrements. I do know one Neuro-Hospitalist (I'm not sure it needs to be capitalized either, but you started it) who didn't match into neurosurgery, but 15 years later still plays make-believe by rounding in scrubs with a surgical hat & booties. But that's not normal.

Also, if you're going out of the way to wear sterile surgical gear and look official, you just contaminated your gloves by touching the film.

2. Holding up X-ray films is so 1990's. It's all on a computer monitor now. If the hospital you represent is still using films, that's not a good selling point.

3. It's a freakin' X-ray of a skull. Now, I know you're just a job recruiter, and likely grabbed some stock footage, but this isn't what neurologists look at. We look at MRI's and CT's, NOT PLAIN X-RAYS!!! Especially of a skull. While the skull is of relevance to neurosurgeons and ENT's, my tribe is more concerned with what's inside it. Unless this hospital is still using pneumoencephalograms as a diagnostic tool, a neurologist won't be looking at skull films.

4. If a plain X-ray of a skull is the best neuroimaging this hospital can do, they need a lot of things more than they need a Neuro-Hospitalist.

Yours truly,

Ibee Grumpy, M.D.
13 Sep 13:23

Fox News Promotes End Times Nonsense

by Ed Brayton

Leave it to Fox News to have a serious segment on a “news” show devoted to the question of whether bombing Syria would be a fulfillment of Biblical prophecies. Neil Cavuto brought on Joel Rosenberg, one of the many end times preachers pushing this B.S. and actually took him seriously.

“These are prophecies more than 2,700 years old, some of them, but they have not actually been fulfilled,” Rosenberg said. “But this prophecy, as you just pointed out, talks about the complete and utter destruction of Damascus. That’s an End Times or eschatological prophecy.”

“It’s a very sobering thought to think that a judgment of a city or a country could happen in which an entire city could be wiped out, but that is, in fact, what the Bible is predicting,” he added. “I think it’s wrong for people who teach Bible prophecies to guess — I mean, in a sense try to say for certain it’s going to happen now.”

“But you have 7 million Syrians that are already on the run, 2 million have left the country, 5 million are internally displaced. That Jeremiah 49 prophecy says that people will flee, but there will still be people in Damascus when the prophecy happens. So, the bottom line is that we don’t know if these two prophecies — Isaiah 17 and Jeremiah 49 — will happen in our lifetime or soon, but they could because they haven’t happened yet.”

“Amazing,” the Fox News host observed. “It’s in in there. It’s worth a read.”

Or you could read some actual history and find out that Damascus has been “destroyed” and overrun several times in the last 27 years and there’s absolutely no reason to believe these “prophecies” mean anything at all.

09 Sep 13:17

Why you should always carry clean underwear

by Grumpy, M.D.
This was a prank done to demonstrate an HD television display. A large TV was placed to look like it was window overlooking the city, and several unsuspecting job interviewees were brought in.





Thank you, Officer Cynical!
07 Sep 17:04

Ok You Take the Bed, I'll Stay Here

Ok You Take the Bed, I'll Stay Here

Submitted by: Unknown

Tagged: bed , napping
05 Sep 15:04

Campbell’s Soup Will Now Be Coming Out Of Keurig Coffee Machines

by Mary Beth Quirk

For all those mornings when you’re staring into your cup of coffee and sighing over the fact that it’s not, in fact, piping hot soup, well, okay, you’re odd. But also you’re in luck: Campbell’s Soup says it’s going to start offering K-cup soup packs for the Keurig single-serve coffee machines. This brings up the question of noodles for breakfast — and I think I’m onboard with that.

Where are the noodles going to come out of? Can you use the same machine for soup and coffee or will your coffee come out tasting like alphabet soup? Apparently the K-cup pack of broth brews over a packet of dry pasta and veggies.

And your coffee won’t taste like soup because Green Mountain says its machines cleanse themselves during the brewing process. Very intriguing.

“It’s delicious soup at the touch of a button,” Campbell CEO Denise Morrison said in a phone interview, via the Associated Press.

Three varieties are set to launch next year, including Chicken Broth & Noodle. Everyone’s favorite pick-me-up!

Campbell K-cups to make Keurig into soup machine [Associated Press]


25 Jul 23:42

Meow

by Grumpy, M.D.
Dr. Grumpy: "I don't like the sound of this... I want to admit you directly to the hospital. Let me make some calls."

Miss Felid: "Okay... But what about Mr. Fluffles?"

Dr. Grumpy: "Uh, what about him?"

Miss Felid: "Will you take care of him?"

Dr. Grumpy: "Can't your daughter go over to your house?"

Miss Felid: "But he's not there!"

She sets her large purse on the desk, and Mr. Fluffles looks out to see what's going on.

Dr. Grumpy: "Oh! I had no idea you had him here."

Miss Felid: "So can you take care of him?"

Dr. Grumpy: "Why don't I call your daughter?"

Miss Felid: "You've really hurt his feelings."
28 Jun 13:07

Dear Mrs. Soda,

by Grumpy, M.D.
Please do not leave a message that you changed your mind and want to take a medication.

And, when we call you back 20 minutes later, say that you changed your mind again and now you don't want anything.

Then call just after closing to say you've changed your mind again, and would like me to call something in.

And not have a pharmacy number, or even know what pharmacy you want it called too, when I dial you back.

Then yell at me for not knowing which pharmacy accepts your insurance.
23 Jun 21:26

Dog Gone Liar

23 Jun 15:51

Couple Orders Tie From Banana Republic, Gets Folders Full Of Sensitive Employee Info Instead

by Chris Morran

This is not a tie/pocket square combo. (Photo by Emily Dreyfuss, via Huffington Post)

This is not a tie/pocket square combo. (Photo by Emily Dreyfuss, via Huffington Post)

When you order clothing online, there’s always the chance you’ll get the wrong size or color. But you rarely get three folders full of sensitive employee documents containing things like Social Security numbers, addresses, and tax forms.

But that’s what one couple say happened to them when they placed an order with Banana Republic for a tie and pocket square. But when their package arrived, it was stuffed with the aforementioned documents, all related to employees of BR parent company Gap Inc.

The couple tried to bring the problem to the attention of Gap via the usual channels, but had no luck. The bride-to-be, CNET staffer (and daughter of actor Richard Dreyfuss) Emily Dreyfuss, says they had better luck getting through to the company through its Twitter account.

She says the rep she spoke to explained that these sorts of documents get mailed out in the same generic gray envelopes that their order would have been sent out in, so we’re assuming that someone at Gap HR is sporting a nice new tie and pocket square combo.

Rather than take a second chance at the documents getting mis-shipped, Gap decided to send someone out to pick up the folders in person.

“They’re actually being really nice now,” Dreyfuss tells HuffPo. “They feel terrible and they’re trying to make it better.”

As one would expect, Gap is… say it with us… taking it seriously:

“We take the confidentiality of personal information very seriously and we strive to deliver a perfect customer experience, every time… Regrettably, human mistakes happen and this was one of them. We’re taking immediate action to evaluate and strengthen our processes to prevent mis-mailings in the future and apologize for the error.”