LarryC’s World

Clearly there is a drug crisis in this country. Watch this ad, and listen to the narrator:

By my count, two thirds of this commercial, 40 of its 60 seconds, was a warning about potential deadly side effects! How can a drug this dangerous be approved for general use? Why would any doctor prescribe it? Are mood swings and irritability really so bad to live with that death is preferable? Am I the only person who believes that these constant ads for drugs are dangerous? When we have a pill to cure everything from irritability to the euphemistically named ‘erectile dysfunction’, what is wrong with taking a pill to make you happy, or relaxed, or to smoke something to achieve the same state, or snort a powder? How do we expect anyone to make the distinction between “legal” and “illegal”?

As an old fogey, I am worried about the frequency with which drugs are prescribed for seniors. Half of these advertised drugs are aimed at seniors. Watch any TV show targeted for adults (yeah, as if many of those exist!) and they are filled with drug ads. On 60 Minutes the other night, three quarters of the advertisements were for drugs, both prescription and over-the-counter types. Gee, do you suppose that this abundance of drug ads has more to do with the financial health of drug companies than it does with the health of its human targets? I wonder!!!

Only 2 months to go! I borrowed this image from the official Eiffel Tower web site. I hope they don’t mind. But, it is just 2 months until we board the plane and I am anxious to go. I spent much of the weekend reading a NY Times article on Paris, and making a list of Paris restaurants and bistros to visit.

I’m hoping to update my blog from Paris. I have been testing a post by email feature, and may have access to the web from our hotel. Anyway, even if it doesn’t work, too bad, I’m going, and you can just wait until I return to hear about the trip.

This is my last post on Meerkats. The Whiskers have moved on and so must I. But, before I leave the topic, here are 3 Youtube vids you might enjoy. The first 2 are short adds for season 3, the first is Flower, and the second is Carlos. The 3rd video is a trailer for the upcoming movie from Animal Planet.
Flower Promo

Carlos Promo

Queen of the Kalahari

I made a couple of changes to the site today that hopefully will allow it to display correctly in Internet Explorer. I have been using Firefox for almost 4 years now. I first installed it while it was in a beta release and it has been my primary browser ever since release 1.0. The other day for some reason I can’t recall, I looked at my site in IE, and discovered that it looked bad. It just did not display correctly. I did not write the code for the display of my site, of course. I am using a theme from the wordpress gallery of themes called Tiga. There is a link to the author of this theme at the very bottom of my page.

I experimented with several themes before deciding on this one. The primary reason I chose it is because the author did an excellent job of annotating his code, and was consistent throughout. This makes modifying the theme very easy. Well, when I noticed the poor display in IE, I went to his web site and (re)read his documentation. That’s when I noticed a critical little line that read “So doing this from IE will ensure that this extra code is generated and your pages would look consistent in IE and also most modern browsers.” (emphasis mine) I love his remark “modern browsers”! That’s exactly how I feel and that is why I have a link for Firefox near the top of my page. In my opinion, you should be using FF, it is simply a better browser. But, in case you aren’t, my site should look a little more consistent in IE now.

Now for a Meerkat Manor update… Here and Here are links to a tribute to Flower posted on Youtube.

And here is a cute little widget for the show… Click on the update tab:

I must confess that for the past 2 and a half years, I have been a fan of Animal Planet’s show Meerkat Manor. This show is the result of a 10 year Cambridge University study of the lives of Meerkats in the Kahari Desert of Botswana. With cameras seemingly everywhere, even in their burrows, this show captures the everyday life of Meerkats in intimate detail. Meerkat mobs (as their extended families are known) are led by a dominant female. She leads the mob in foraging for food, staking territory, and deciding where to live. She is also the only one who gets to have babies - pups. The cuteness factor of the meerkats belies the toughness they posses and need to survive in their inhospitable environment.

For the past 2 and one half seasons, the show has followed one mob of Meerkats, called the Whiskers. The leader of the Whiskers has been dominant female Flower. She has been a wise and tough leader who has led the Whiskers to become one of the dominant mobs in the Kalahari. Danger, death and tragedy are always close to the surface in the Meerkats’ world. In past episodes we’ve seen pups abandoned or killed, Flowers son Shakespear barely survived being bitten by a Puff Adder and was later killed by rival Meerkats. There had also been hints of the tragedy that was coming, when the advertisements told of a major change that was coming.

Never-the-less, it was still a shock when near the end of the show, Flower was bitten by a deadly cape cobra, and died! Of course death is a part of life. In the Kalahari, survival is always a struggle and death is a constant threat. Obviously, Flower’s death was a shock to the show’s fans. The Meerkat Manor pages on the Animal Planet web site have been very sluggish all day, and the discussion forums are filled with comments and expressions of grief. Kind of funny that the death of one small 12 inch rodent, thousands of miles away can be considered tragic by so many people. But, that’s why Meerkat Manor is truly ‘Must See TV’.

Here’s the link to the Meerkat Manor web site.

A big change is happening in New Mexico this Sunday, October 7. Soon, there will be one less single area code state. Yes, New Mexico is getting a second area code. 575. We will no longer be included in that list of small (in population) states like Alaska, Montana, the Dakotas, Wyoming, Idaho, and the physically small states like Hawaii, Rhode Island, Vermont and New Hampshire. Nope we’re big boys now! New Mexico used to be the land of 505, not anymore.

Unlike all of the other Area Code changes set for 2007-2008, New Mexico decided against using an ‘overlay’ scheme, where all new numbers would have a different area code. Instead, NM opted for a split. So, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Los Alamos, and the northwest part of the state keep 505. The rest of us, including yours truly, get the new code. So, starting on Sunday, our phone numbers will be in the 575 area code. Of course because New Mexico moves at a different pace from the rest of the country (ie Slower) we have an extra long transition period. Use of the new Area codes doesn’t become mandatory until October 1, 2008! Here’s how the state looks:

We’ve come a long way since the North American Numbering Plan (NANP) was approved in 1947. There were only 87 area codes in the original plan. No one actually dialed an area code before 1951. I saw a recent study that predicted that we would run out of 10 digit numbers in North America by 2037 and would have to go to 12 digit dialing. Thats what cell phones have wrought. Maybe some of the older New Mexico residents are still trying to figure out those new-fangled things, but I haven’t seen a kid between the ages of 8 and 18 who didn’t have a cell phone. And most of them are constantly talking (or texting) on it. If your interested, you can read all about Araea Codes Here!