Recently I cited a report about the current shortage of antiviral drugs like Tamiflu that may help lessen the severity of the bird flu.

A Shaklee distributor made this comment to that post: (Read the rest of “Will NutriFeron save you from the bird flu?”)

They can cruise like natives through Morrowind’s capital city of Mournhold. They can accurately describe every golf course from Torrey Pines to the Royal Birkdale. They can draw maps from memory of the Covenant’s High Charity.

So how is it that in the real, non Xbox world, they can’t find their way out of a paper bag? (Read the rest of “Earth will never be the same… if we can find it”)

20 August 2008: Many of these links have broken since I first posted this in October 2005. I’ve updated those for which I could find new links. The original link appears under the strikeouts.

For those of you looking for more information about the California Teachers Association corrected link union dues, here are some links you might find helpful: (Read the rest of “California Teachers Association union dues increase and Proposition 75″)

WHAT: Brand New Swim Goggles, Still in the Wrapper!

HOW IT HAPPENED: Mojo the Flatulent discovered this pair of swim goggles attempting to infiltrate the Wren household. Alert to every threat, Mojo wrestled them out of the shopping bag and neutralized them in the name of God, family, and the Office of Homeland Security. Or maybe he just had a hankering for a little PVC vinyl and silicone.

SQUIRT’S REACTION: Hey, Mom! Look what Mojo chewed up now! Ha, ha! Dude! He put holes right through the lenses! Ha, ha!

TIGER’S REACTION: Whoa! He opened the package and everything! Har, har!

BONNIE’S REACTION: Laugh it up, monkey boys.

HUBBY’S REACTION: (to Mojo) My baby! Did you swallow any of it? Nasty, evil goggles!

REPLACEMENT COST: $12.99.

The Truth Laid Bear has started something new:

At long last, I’ve added a helpdesk support system to TTLB.

Going forward, please submit helpdesk tickets for Ecosystem, PorkBusters, or other issues/questions you may have, rather than sending them to me via email. This will help me organize my support efforts, and more quickly and effectively respond to issues.

What kind of issues can people possibly have with TTLB?

Dear Mr. Bear:

I am not evolving quickly enough in the Ecosystem. What’s worse, you know that little system reboot you did a little while back? Well, it turned me back into a Crawly Amphibian, when I had reached Slithering Reptile status!

Quelle Horreur! My very own de-evolving, and it was just as unpleasant as they made it out to be on Star Trek.

I hope you won’t mind my asking that you please keep all future system reboots to yourself. I mean, I appreciate all the ranking you do and all, but still.

Yours very sincerely,

Bonnie “Just call me Newt” Wren

We’ve been cable-free since 1994 — we get two or three TV channels but they’re kind of fuzzy. We’ll watch TV when we travel if there’s a television in our room, but otherwise we’re limited to DVDs.

So this is what I knew about Lost: people watch a few episodes and before you know it they’re starting forum discussions with titles like “Jack or Sayid?” or “Hurley lost weight” or “Voices whispering lines from comic book?”

You know, crazy, obsessive stuff. (Read the rest of “4 8 15 16 23 42″)

Dude, questions like “how was your day?” or “how was school?” Well, that’s just like interrogation, dude.

Tests confirm that the strain of bird flu in Romania is the H5N1 variety, the strain responsible for 60 deaths in Asia.

Officials have been waiting for the awful moment when H5N1 demonstrates an easy ability to jump from human-to-human, rather than how it jumps now, from bird-to-bird and occasionally, from dead bird-to-human. After reading this misleading headline, I thought H5N1 had made the transition but it appears to be just an irresponsibly-written headline. (Read the rest of “It’s official: H5N1 Definitely in Romania”)

Squirt: You said to pick out the kind of fruit I wanted in my lunch… well here it is. (Places a bag of kiwi fruit onto the conveyer belt.)

Bonnie: Kiwi! How are you going to eat this at school?

Squirt: I’ll bring a knife.

Bonnie: You can’t bring a knife to school! The district has a zero tolerance policy on knives!

Squirt: (rolls eyes) A plastic knife, Mom. Jeez!

Bonnie: I don’t think you’re allowed to bring plastic knives to school, either.

(Looks to Tiger for help)

Are you?

Tiger: Squirt, you can’t bring a knife to school. If you bring a plastic knife, you’ll get turned in. If you get turned in, you’ll have to go to the principal’s office. If you go to the principal’s office, he’ll lecture you. And if he lectures you, he’ll take the plastic knife AND JAB IT INTO YOUR CHEST.

Bonnie: Thanks, Tiger. (to Squirt) See?

If the bird flu wasn’t bad enough, now we know for sure that the killer “Spanish Flu” was “essentially a bird virus.”

And they know this… how?

Because American scientists re-created a living copy of the 1918 Spanish flu, you know, the one that KILLED 50 MILLION PEOPLE.

Initial tests of the virus show that it is behaving like its lethal ancestor, efficiently killing mice and chicken embryos, and growing lustily in lab dishes of human lung cells. Analysis of its eight genes suggests that it was a bird flu virus that, with remarkably few genetic mutations, adapted to human beings.

“Deadliest flu bug given new life in U.S. laboratory, Some applaud scientific feat; others decry move as reckless,” by Sabin Russell, San Francisco Chronicle, Oct. 6, 2005

Via JunkYardBlog.

Tags: Bird Flu, Spanish Flu, H5N1