Fave spam

This is some of the best spam I've ever gotten:

------Original Message------
From: Y.N.
To: yan@dbs.com
ReplyTo: ccyun8@live.com
Sent: Jul 3, 2008 12:44 PM
Subject: RE: EMAIL

Dear friend

I have a project I want you to run with us. It involves exportation of 100,000 barrels of crude oil daily from Kirkuk, Iraq.

If you are interested, email me via: ccyun8@live.com

Mr. Yan.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

emergency!

This is my general experience with emergency rooms too:






-dr-

Breaking News from Ricki Lake and BOBB

June18, 2008 Dear BOBB Friends and Supporters: We wanted to make sure you are all aware of the news story that has exploded over the last 24 hours regarding the recent AMA Resolution against homebirth and Ricki's response to being named in it. In February of this year, one month after the premiere of BOBB, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) reiterated its long-standing opposition to home births. In an obtuse reference to The Business of Being Born, ACOG stated, "Childbirth decisions should not be dictated or influenced by what's fashionable, trendy, or the latest cause célèbre."  If that wasn't enough, ACOG, this past weekend, introduced a resolution to the American Medical Association (AMA) at their annual meeting. The resolution commits the AMA to "develop model legislation in support of the concept that the safest setting for labor, delivery, and the immediate post-partum period is in the hospital...". The reasoning for this resolution begins, "Whereas, There has been much attention in the media by celebrities having home deliveries, with recent Today Show headings such as "Ricki Lake takes on baby birthing industry: Actress and former talk show host shares her at-home delivery in new film...". (Resolution 205, click here to read). Since when did Ricki become an evidence-based data point? What are they so afraid of? Just last week, Medical News Today reports that "about 8.2% of infants born in the US in 2005 had low birth weights, the highest percentage since 1968." US infant mortality rates continue to rank us below 30 other countries, 22% of pregnancies are induced, and most worrisome of all, in the last 4 years, the maternal mortality rate has risen above 10 per 100,000 for the first time since 1977. To us, these seem like the troubling trends, not home birth. News outlets including the AP quickly picked up this story yesterday as it hit TMZ, E! USA Today, Daily News, FOX. Ricki will be featured on Good Morning America this Saturday discussing the controversy. (If you Google "Ricki Lake, AMA" you will see the bloggers are all over this!) Filmmakers Abby Epstein and Ricki Lake teamed up with journalist and Pushed author Jennifer Block to pen the response (following at the end of this email) for the Huffington Post (click here to read). Late yesterday, the AMA changed the final wording on resolution 205 to omit the mention of Ricki. (Hmmm...) The AMA says that the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG) drafted the initial statement so any issues should be taken up directly with them. Stay tuned for more news to come... The BOBB Team DOCS TO WOMEN: PAY NO ATTENTION TO RICKI LAKE'S HOME BIRTH Ladies, the physicians of America have issued their decree: they don't want you having your babies at home with midwives. We can't imagine why not. Study upon study have shown that planning a home birth with a trained midwife is a great choice if you want to avoid unnecessary medical intervention. Midwives are experts in supporting the physiological birth process: monitoring you and your baby during labor, helping you into positions that help labor progress, protecting your pelvic parts from damage while you push, and "catching" the baby from the position that's most effective and comfortable for you-hands and knees, squatting, even standing-not the position most comfortable for her. When healthy women are supported this way, 95% give birth vaginally, with hardly any intervention. And yet, the American Medical Association doesn't see the point. Yesterday it adopted a policy written by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists against "home deliveries" and in support of legislation "that helps ensure safe deliveries and healthy babies by acknowledging that the safest setting for labor, delivery, and the immediate post-partum period is in the hospital" or accredited birth center. "There ought to be a law!" cry the doctors. The trouble is, they have no evidence to back up their safety claims. In fact, the largest and most rigorous study of home birth internationally to date found that among 5,000 healthy, "low-risk" women, babies were born just as safely at home under a midwife's care as in the hospital. And not only that, the study, like many before it, found that the women actually fared better at home, with far fewer interventions like labor induction, cesarean section, and episiotomy (taking scissors to the vagina, a practice that according to the research should be obsolete but is still performed on one-third of women who give birth vaginally). Which is why the American Public Health Association supports midwife-attended home birth. The British OB/GYNs have read the research, too, and have this to say: "There is no reason why home birth should not be offered to women at low risk of complications... it may confer considerable benefits for them and their families. There is ample evidence showing that labouring at home increases a woman's likelihood of a birth that is both satisfying and safe" The other trouble with the American MDs is that they seem to have lost all respect for women's civil rights, indeed for the U.S. Constitution - the right to privacy, to bodily integrity, and the right of every adult to determine her own health care. The "father knows best" legislation they are promoting could indeed be used to criminally prosecute women who choose home birth, say, by equating it with child abuse. Research evidence be damned, the doctors want to mandate you to go to the hospital. They don't want you to have a choice. We think they're spooked. The cesarean rate is rising, celebrities are publicizing their home births (the initial wording of the AMA resolution actually took aim at Ricki for publicizing her home birth on the Today Show!), people are reading Pushed and watching The Business of Being Born, and there's a nationwide legislative "push" to license certified professional midwives in all states (The AMA is against that, too, by the way). The docs are on the defensive. After all, birth is big business-it's in fact the most common reason for a woman to be admitted to the hospital. And if more women start giving birth outside of it, who will get paid? Not doctors and not hospitals. "The AMA supports a woman's right to make an informed decision regarding her delivery and to choose her health care provider," the group said in a statement. But if it really supported women's birth choices it wouldn't adopt a policy condemning home birth and midwives. Because if U.S. women are to have real birth choices, everybody needs to be working together to provide them, not engaging in turf wars at their expense. By Ricki Lake, Abby Epstein and Jennifer Block for The Huffington Post
www.thebusinessofbeingborn.com

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WSJ: brilliant wsj op ed

drazgaitis@yahoo.com has sent you this article link:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121305349075558959.html?mod=rss_opinion_main

Clouds

These storms are driving the midwest crazy.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Like these ads

I know I'm a PR guy and all, but there are some ads I do like (not that they significantly change my opinions about the companies that place them or drive real action). But these HSBC ads always make me pause just for their creative value.

This one made me think of Ellen and midwifery as I board a plane to San Francisco for business. On a new Virgin airbus 320 in a row by myself. Niiiiice.

The other half of the ad is identical, but says "useful" on each. Hmmmmm.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Tikka test

This is a test
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Freeze and reanimate

I wish I were one of these tree frogs today....

http://snipurl.com/2eg2e

<blockquote>
WASHINGTON — This is the way a wood frog freezes: First, as the temperature drops below 32 degrees, ice crystals start to form just beneath the frog's skin. The normally pliant and slimy amphibian becomes — for lack of a better word — slushy. Then, if the mercury continues to fall, ice races inward through the frog's arteries and veins. Its heart and brain stop working, and its eyes freeze to a ghostly white. "Imagine an ice cube. Paint it green," and you've got the wood frog in winter, said Ken Storey, a professor at Carleton University in Ottawa. The frog is solid to the touch and makes a small thud when dropped. But it is not dead. When a thaw comes, the frog is able to melt back into its normal state over a period of several hours, restart its heart and hop away, unscathed.
</blockquote>

More: http://snipurl.com/2eg2e

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Tikka in a bike

Still haven't figured out how to rotate these. Enjoy anyway!
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

photo dump

A whole slew of new photos are up:
12.25.07 - Xmas
12.19.07 - Ellen's photos
12.16.07 - arTpartY twO
11.22.07 - Thanksgiving Barker
11.01.07 - Randoms
10.13.07 - Dolphin-Green Wedding
09.15.07 - Brizzladd Wedding
01.01.07 - Baja Fisheyes

You can find them all here:
http://www.mrdarius.com/photos

I had essentially taken a huge break from posting after the wedding. Enjoy! I wanted to convey a feeling I used to get when I would find really old photos after developing a roll of film to find really old photos at the beginning.

-dr-

sucker for a park

i doubt anyone will look to build a stadium on top of mine and Ellen's park. the suckers in our old neighborhood will likely keep waiting forever for green space.

-dr-

mekas snubbed

Onion gold:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/mtv_movie_awards_snubs

MTV Movie Awards Snubs Director Jonas Mekas Yet Again

LOS ANGELES—Eighty-five-year-old Lithuanian avant-garde filmmaker Jonas Mekas, director of more than 50 movies including Zefiro Torna and the five-hour diary film As I Was Moving Ahead, Occasionally I Saw Brief Glimpses Of Beauty, was again overlooked by the MTV Movie Awards Sunday.

This marks the 17th straight year in which Mekas, known for his signature single-frame style and a penchant for interrupting scenes with several seconds of black space, has failed to join the pantheon of such past winners as Lindsay Lohan, Jon Heder, and Chewbacca. "It is a travesty that Mekas' stark vision of elegiac melancholia has not been rewarded with the coveted Golden Popcorn statue," Boston University film studies professor Ray Carney said. "His [1997] film Letter From Nowhere—Laiskas Is Niekur No. 1 should have easily walked away with Best On-Screen Duo, or Best Kiss, or at least Best Ass." While Mekas expressed regret at the selection committee's refusal to recognize his work, he said he was moved after winning the Nickelodeon Kid's Choice Lifetime Achievement Award in March.

-dr-

Client video

Here's a video from one of my clients, InEnTec:


Yay!

-dr-

Things I learned while the wife was away

In honor of Ellen's love for lists, and Aras' Do's and Dont's lists, I made a list of "things I learned while the wife was away" (said in a booming, echo'y voice):
1) Dish usage dropped 50%
2) So did dish cleaning
3) Strainers are best cleaned using the spray nozzle on the sink
4) The best furniture can be found on the sidewalks of Kensington
5) My childhood dog was put down (more to come on that)
6) The new Indiana Jones movie is about aliens. Skip it. Or at least get your drink on.
7) Wear sunscreen when biking
8) Special batteries are expensive and don't do jack for smoke detectors that won't stop beeping
9) It's easier to sleep when your smoke detectors aren't giving false alarms, but it's harder to sleep when you know all your smoke and carbon monoxide alarms are very unplugged
10) Film is expensive and no one carries any

-dr-

Delta sucks too

In support of my ongoing airline diatribe, I must say that this guy has the right idea (via Gothamist)

$1 Million Lawsuit Over Delta's "Absolute Incompetence"
May 28, 2008, via Gothamist

A Manhattan lawyer blames Delta Airlines for ruining his mother's 80th birthday celebration and is suing the airline for $1 million. Richard Roth says a Delta employee made them miss a flight to South America and losing their luggage for days, telling the Post, "It was the most outrageous experience I've ever had in my life. It was an absolute disaster. One catastrophe after another."

Roth's lawsuit lists a series of grievances, from a "nasty" stewardess who wouldn't let them know if their connection was on time (the family was flying from Westchester to Buenos Aires, with a connection in Atlanta) to a Delta agent who claimed their flight had taken off when it hadn't ("The pilot is not in charge here. I am. All the pilot does is fly the plane.").

Oh, and the family was also told, when they missed their flight to Argentina, that Delta couldn't fly them there for another 2 1/2 weeks. So, after two nights in Atlanta, the family drove from Atlanta to Miami, where they caught a flight to South America.

Roth, who used frequent flier miles for his tickets and misplaced luggage, says he just wanted $21,000 in compensation, but Delta was unresponsive. Now he wants that $21,000, plus $275,000 in compensatory damages for emotional distress and plus much more for punitive damages.

I have to agree with the absolute incompetence jab. We had a trip up to Buffalo from JFK last year that wasn't nearly as nightmarish, but certainly as incompetent on Delta's part. With no weather problems, we were bumped off an overbooked flight, even though we had booked out tickets over 6 months in advance. We initially not offered compensation because we had "missed the announcement" even though we sat in front of the totally bitchy Delta representative starting an hour before the flight. Needless to say, none of the Delta reps never made eye contact with us, and were the cause of flared tempers and tears.

In the end, Delta was able to get us to Buffalo 4 hours late by routing us through Pittsburgh! We missed Act 1 of Damn Yankees, which Ellen's mom was acting that evening. And in the end, we were refunded our tickets and compensated additionally the cost of the tickets.

For Easter, US Airways straight up canceled a flight on us, luckily several hours before we even left for the airport. They did not offer compensation, claiming that their offer to fly us 24 hours later was a sufficient substitute!!! We ended up renting a car and driving to Buffalo through the night. I had to throw a fit just to get a refund from them. Forget about free tickets, much less an offer to pay for car rental, and certainly not a million dollars for risking my life to drive through 7 hours of blizzard (plus the last hour that Ellen drove through perfect weather).

Our travel plans are usually structured around 3-4 day events, and our arrival is linked inextricably to a schedule. Very rarely, I would say, do we arrive on time to anything that involves domestic flights. We'll stick to driving and training as much as possible, and where not, we'll have to plan our flights to have up to 24 hours of delay built in.

-dr-

Kensingtonian

So, this is the second time I moved and had my new neighborhood covered in the New York Times shortly after moving:

Name From London, People From Everywhere
FOR Maggie Tobin and Bob Mason, the last straw in Park Slope was the parking. The couple, who have two young children, lived there for eight years and loved being near Prospect Park and surrounded by friends. But when the time came to buy, they wanted more space and found the prices too high, and they decided they could also live without the ritual of driving around in search of a parking spot, sometimes for 40 minutes...

Hmm...the last straw for us before moving to Kensington was let's see, depressing neighborhood, lack of diversity, domestic abuse above us, loud subwoofers below us, and a crazy drunk neighbor. Glad to call Kensignton home.

-dr-

Organic Breast...milk

Article in the NYTimes on an "all-organic" formula:

For an All-Organic Formula, Baby, That’s Sweet

Amy Chase started feeding Similac Organic infant formula to her second son, Amos, as soon as he was born in November 2006.

“When I saw the organic at Publix, I bought it, no questions asked,” said Ms. Chase, a self-described “yoga mom” in Atlanta.

Like Ms. Chase, many American parents have rushed to embrace Similac Organic formula, even though it sells for as much as 30 percent more than regular Similac. In 2007, its first full year on sale, it captured 36 percent of the organic formula market, with sales of more than $10 million, according to Kalorama Information, a pharmaceutical-industry research firm. (Similac’s parent company, Abbott Laboratories, does not release sales figures for individual products.)

Parents may be buying it because they believe that organic is healthier, but babies may have a reason of their own for preferring Similac Organic: it is significantly sweeter than other formulas. It is the only major brand of organic formula that is sweetened with cane sugar, or sucrose, which is much sweeter than sugars used in other formulas.

more...


Babies like it because it's loaded with sugar! Duh!

I was at an honor society dinner with Ellen last night, where one of the presenters called for formula to be distributed on a prescription-only basis. She presented a lot of data showing that stopping breastfeeding before 6 months are up can be seriously harmful to a baby, however, most women (latinas at least) don't make it past a couple weeks.

-dr-

new parenting blog

Wanted to share this interesting blog with you all:
http://www.natureofnurture.com/

It's that time of life...

-dr-

html template file location adobe photoshop elements

god, adobe couldn't make it any harder to find the web templates for creations in photoshop elements.

on my pc, they're located here:
C:\Program Files\Adobe\Photoshop Elements 4.0\shared_assets\webcontactsheet\simple

the great thing about know where these are, is that you can limitlessly customize the standard html templates they provide. hence, why my photos page template is always changing (when i can find the darn template....


-dr-

Postman in the Mountains

After my Bollywood extravaganza earlier this year, I thought that I might never again watch Asian movies. Horrible acting, sappy plots, incomprehensible social cues, bad music (but good dancing).

But Bollywood's just the India part of Asia.

The same evaluation does not apply to the only Chinese movie I've seen (besides Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon and Karate Kid). Postmen in the Mountains was a rare score for a foreign flick from the library. I know it's cliche, but the best way I can describe the movie is beautiful.

Reading the DVD back, I was fearing a Lethal Weapons-style plot. PITM is about a southern Chinese mountain postman on his last day on the job. One day before his retirement, his son joins him on the 3-day, 80-mile walking journey, a journey he will take over. Minutes from official retirement and a life of pension luxury,, terrorists reveal a plot to introduce roads and trucks in rural areas!

Actually, the only thing that could've been in an 80's actions flick was a scene where the son falls in love with a local girl at a rural postal stop, and they cook gruel while listening to an American rock ballad from the 80's.

Otherwise, the plot of the film is perfect for an unrelenting assault of beautiful imagery from a breathtaking part of the world. Mountains (of course), fields, valleys, streams, and cliffs all play a role. I was surprised to find myself reminded even of the beauty of parts of Lithuania (not the mountain parts).

Anyway, the thing that most made this movie more palatable than a Bollywood movie (aside from it's lack of gaudiness) was being able to relate to the characters' emotions. Son overtaking father. Father remembering youth. Learning/teaching how to express and share emotions. PLUS, the movie features a lovable German shepherd sidekick! How many movies feature lovable German shepherds?

A simple, well-shot movie with o.k. acting, wonderful photography, and a terrific story. Watch, now that I've raved about this movie, I'm gonna find out that somehow it's all just Communist propaganda, and I'll have to hate it.

**UPDATE**
Ha ha! Just as I feared -- in researching the links for this piece, I came across this quote from the end of the NYT review of Postman in the Mountains:

It is an endearing, likable film, though its benign surface may cover some subtle propaganda on behalf of China's centralized government.

The postman, who frequently identifies himself as a state official, becomes highly idealized, always ready to listen and sacrifice himself for the betterment of the masses. The villagers are portrayed as smiling and content, and the region's desperate poverty is played down in favor of lyrical landscape studies.

I wonder what the same reviewer would say of the subtle propaganda in Cheers:

The show's iconic postman-in-a-bar character, Cliff Clavin, upholds the petty American "value" of lackadaisical inebriation. Clavin, who constantly refers to his frustration at work, and his use of alcohol to solve those problems, is a subtle attempt on behalf of America's decentralized government to keep its people docile, passive, and decidedly not "postal."

-dr-