I've been pretty grumpy around here lately and have decided it's time for a break. I’m going to take a long weekend away from blogging beginning just after I save this. I’ll probably be back with something on Monday to start out the work-week again, but don’t expect to see anything here until then. That way when I break down and post something, you can be happily surprised.
- More on the SSRI news-front: F.D.A. Seeks Suicide Caution for Ten Antidepressants and Regulators Want Antidepressants to List Warning on SSRIs so physicians will be more careful about prescribing them. Now maybe it’s just me, but I always figured that sort of information would be in something like the PDR, but what do I know? This also isn’t exactly new.
In 1990, a Harvard psychiatrist wrote a paper suggesting that some of his patients had become acutely suicidal after taking Prozac.
[nyt] - In this article about Hard-Disk Risk from last year, Simson Garfinkle took a look at what kind of goodies he could find on used hard drives. Fewer than 10 percent had been properly sanitized.
In most cases, easily available software will scrub the drive, but if you’re really paranoid, run the drive through a metal-chipper. That’ll take care of it for sure. [boing boing]Much of the data we found was truly shocking. One of the drives once lived in an ATM. It contained a year’s worth of financial transactions—including account numbers and withdrawal amounts—from a organization that had a legal requirement to not divulge such information. Two other drives contained more than 5,000 credit card numbers—it looked as if one had been inside a cash register. Another had e-mail and personal financial records of a 45-year-old fellow in Georgia. The man is divorced, paying child support and dating a woman he met in Savannah. And, oh yeah, he’s really into pornography.
- Says here Ridge announces new rail and transit security measures, which means that travelling by train won’t keep you from getting wanded and such. Is it time to travel before a guy can’t, or should a guy just stay home to wait for the black helicopters? Tough call. I think letting terrorists at Amtrak might result in a couple people realizing that it’s actually possible to travel by train. I can see the news story now:
Yeah, I feel much safer now. [endwar]In other news, an Amtrak train exploded as the result of a terrorist bomb last week outside Jamestown, North Dakota. Amtrak became aware of the bombing four days after the train was scheduled to reach Seattle. The engineer, porter and terrorist were killed. There were no other passengers. Two acres of sugarbeets were destroyed, ruining one one-hundredth of a percent of a farmer’s harvest.
- The Daily editorial U fans’ arson crimes should not be rewarded with victory looks back at the aftermath of the hockey riots last year, and hopes the Gophers lose this year so Minneapolis won’t be burning again this year. [daily]
- A new Neighborhood group looks to its future as the University neighborhood moves closer to having an officially recognized association. [daily]
- In non-strike transit news, Midway transit link gets a push. It’s the place that made most sense to me for a light-rail line, but there are plenty of difficulties in putting in a line there, since parts of the route are built up and they’ll either end up taking away lanes or knocking down buildings. [press-patch]
- I’m not the only one feeling grumpy about spam. Dan over at Flutterby had a fine quote of the day yesterday that I think is a better solution than any I’ve mentioned so far. [flutterby]