I am also allergic to floppy disks. One option is simply to establish a web e-mail account, something like MyNameStorage@InsertHotMailEquivalent.com, and just e-mail yourself any docs you need easy access to. Alternatively you can use one of the web backup services. I find e-mail simpler because everyone does e-mail. Few university computers have no web access and few home computers are modem-less.
I've lived and worked there a lot. I would send a shipment like that via UPS to Moscow to some friend or to a friendly company then have them send it internally to Khabarovsk. That's how we've been forced to do things generally. If you have no friends in Moscow, I would try contacting the Moscow UPS office directly and ask them about a separate forwarding service.
Until Russian customs leaves behind the Soviet era, this is going to be a problem.
the other, possibly better solution (another we use) is to just wire the damn money and let him pay for it there. The $200 you pay in shipping is going to be close to the markup the local companies will use. Or wait a month and the rules will change. FYI, my emergency visa card replacement was twice refused at customs as contraband. So we had to ship it with some other documents and just not mention that the very dangerous and subversive credit card that allowed me to infuse money into the local economy was present in the package.
let's be medically realistic
on
Caffeine Vault
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· Score: 5
I'd be a little cautious in comparing water overload to caffeine overload. While it is possible for polydipsia (pathologically increased water intake) to cause death, it's actually pretty rare. There are these organs called kidneys that in healthy young people do a great job of keeping up. Eventually, you can overcome the capacity of the kidneys to expel pure water, and if you're not taking in salts, then you can have an electrolyte abnormality, seixure, cardiac arrhythmias, and death. A really old diabetic who developed polydipsia (usually a psychiatric condition, btw, with some people actually drinking straight from their showerheads), would be at pretty high risk since the body is already pretty compromised.
The achlorhydria is also pretty rare, and you can digest much of your food. I've never heard of a reported case of achlorhydria from chronic low-level polydipsia leading to clinically significant malnutrition.
I wouldn't leave people with the impression that caffeine is just as toxic as water. It's not. It's more toxic, and it can kill you if you overdose on it. If you don't do the stupid "deadline in 2 days. No more sleep and a couple boxes of nodoze should solve it", you'll never run into trouble. If one of your coworkers on a project or something starts getting really confused and lethargic after taking a lot of caffeine (slumping down, not making sense, staring off), you should take them to the ER and get charcoal down their throats fast. It'd be hard to get there by drinking coffee (who can get 50 cups down that fast), but those 100mg tablets can add up fast.
Health Effects of caffeine
on
Caffeine Vault
·
· Score: 2
Overall, in moderate doses, for most people, caffeine appears to be fine. Some circumstances which require caution: People with GERD (gastro-esophageal reflux disease) should not use caffeine. This is heartburn in its various instantiations, and caffeine relaxes the sphincter that keeps the stomach from gurgling into the esophagus, which is the point behind reflux. The problem is that chronic reflux can lead to Barrett's esophagus (about 10% of cases of chronic reflux), and Barrett's esophagus is a pre-cancerous condition (about 10% eventually progress to esophageal cancer). The other problem is the overdose. There are reported cases of nodoze used excessively (eg by grad students and IT-ish people) to maintain horrific schedules leading to "Permanent Dozing", ie death. In high doses, caffeine (and its relatives theophylline and methylybromine, the "caffeine" in chocolate) disrupt the function of the heart, causing ventricular arrhythmias and ultimately death. That's fairly rare, but taking several grams of caffeine is fairly risky.
Oh, and the other thing: ever wonder why Excedrin and some of the other headache medicines have caffeine in them? In part, it's because caffeine withdrawal in addicted patients (half of America it seems) can give you headaches. So that's the other thing.
While it will be interesting to know which phones produce what amount of radiation, the data just aren't good enough to even know whether cell phone radiation can cause cancer, let alone whether there is a dose-response effect that matters. Let's face it, for these things to cause cancer, they have to cause some disruption of either proteins responsible for maintaining the integrity of DNA or DNA itself (to an extent that overloads the body's capacity to repair DNA). While radiation clearly can at the right wavelengths, there's just no data that the wavelengths involved, at the doses involved, does anything. There's data in mice that show that their brains heat up some, which would not be related to cancer but might be dumb for a child less than 5, and there's some questionable data I think in rats that there might have been some protein deformation at super high doses. The topic may well merit further research, but I think it's a bit premature to care what the radiation doses are from phones. I'm a heck of a lot more worried about cigar and cigarette smokers and the macho "low-intensity light bulbs" among us that don't wear seat belts. Let's worry about the real public health threats, eh?
I was quite surprised to see the good reviews on slashdot after being very disappointed with Futurama. I was so psyched to see new Groening that I even interrupted a dinner party to force everyone into the living room to watch Homer do the trucker thing (cute, but not as good as Simpsons has been) followed by the new, incisive and insightful dystopia of AD 3000.
As a diehard Simpsons fan, I have been consistently amazed at the ability of the crew to address every sector of society. A world-famous literary critic from Britain tells me that Simpsons is the last great satire, the only redeeming quality in American culture. My Russian friends tell me of the great popularity of "Semejka Simpson", and the 14-year old thugs that make me vaguely nervous on my way to work love that Bart says "Damn" and Homer says "suck". I have been drawn to the careful, often sophisticated exploration of our cultural context and a playful but cricical lackadaisy.
Futurama kept the gags and random cultural references but seems to have lost anything more than that. Suddenly it's that ridiculous King of the Hill, but now a-la Sci Fi. I was actually embarrassed that I had interrupted the dinner party.
My only hope is that Futurama will, as the Simpsons did over two years, mature and become something more than a bunch of loosely concatenated not horribly interesting gags. For now, I'm going to turn the TV off after Simpsons on Sunday night.
Slashdot Mirror
I am also allergic to floppy disks. One option is simply to establish a web e-mail account, something like MyNameStorage@InsertHotMailEquivalent.com, and just e-mail yourself any docs you need easy access to. Alternatively you can use one of the web backup services. I find e-mail simpler because everyone does e-mail. Few university computers have no web access and few home computers are modem-less.
I've lived and worked there a lot. I would send a shipment like that via UPS to Moscow to some friend or to a friendly company then have them send it internally to Khabarovsk. That's how we've been forced to do things generally. If you have no friends in Moscow, I would try contacting the Moscow UPS office directly and ask them about a separate forwarding service. Until Russian customs leaves behind the Soviet era, this is going to be a problem. the other, possibly better solution (another we use) is to just wire the damn money and let him pay for it there. The $200 you pay in shipping is going to be close to the markup the local companies will use. Or wait a month and the rules will change. FYI, my emergency visa card replacement was twice refused at customs as contraband. So we had to ship it with some other documents and just not mention that the very dangerous and subversive credit card that allowed me to infuse money into the local economy was present in the package.
The achlorhydria is also pretty rare, and you can digest much of your food. I've never heard of a reported case of achlorhydria from chronic low-level polydipsia leading to clinically significant malnutrition.
I wouldn't leave people with the impression that caffeine is just as toxic as water. It's not. It's more toxic, and it can kill you if you overdose on it. If you don't do the stupid "deadline in 2 days. No more sleep and a couple boxes of nodoze should solve it", you'll never run into trouble. If one of your coworkers on a project or something starts getting really confused and lethargic after taking a lot of caffeine (slumping down, not making sense, staring off), you should take them to the ER and get charcoal down their throats fast. It'd be hard to get there by drinking coffee (who can get 50 cups down that fast), but those 100mg tablets can add up fast.
Oh, and the other thing: ever wonder why Excedrin and some of the other headache medicines have caffeine in them? In part, it's because caffeine withdrawal in addicted patients (half of America it seems) can give you headaches. So that's the other thing.
While it will be interesting to know which phones produce what amount of radiation, the data just aren't good enough to even know whether cell phone radiation can cause cancer, let alone whether there is a dose-response effect that matters. Let's face it, for these things to cause cancer, they have to cause some disruption of either proteins responsible for maintaining the integrity of DNA or DNA itself (to an extent that overloads the body's capacity to repair DNA). While radiation clearly can at the right wavelengths, there's just no data that the wavelengths involved, at the doses involved, does anything. There's data in mice that show that their brains heat up some, which would not be related to cancer but might be dumb for a child less than 5, and there's some questionable data I think in rats that there might have been some protein deformation at super high doses. The topic may well merit further research, but I think it's a bit premature to care what the radiation doses are from phones. I'm a heck of a lot more worried about cigar and cigarette smokers and the macho "low-intensity light bulbs" among us that don't wear seat belts. Let's worry about the real public health threats, eh?
I was quite surprised to see the good reviews on slashdot after being very disappointed with Futurama. I was so psyched to see new Groening that I even interrupted a dinner party to force everyone into the living room to watch Homer do the trucker thing (cute, but not as good as Simpsons has been) followed by the new, incisive and insightful dystopia of AD 3000.
As a diehard Simpsons fan, I have been consistently amazed at the ability of the crew to address every sector of society. A world-famous literary critic from Britain tells me that Simpsons is the last great satire, the only redeeming quality in American culture. My Russian friends tell me of the great popularity of "Semejka Simpson", and the 14-year old thugs that make me vaguely nervous on my way to work love that Bart says "Damn" and Homer says "suck".
I have been drawn to the careful, often sophisticated exploration of our cultural context and a playful but cricical lackadaisy.
Futurama kept the gags and random cultural references but seems to have lost anything more than that. Suddenly it's that ridiculous King of the Hill, but now a-la Sci Fi. I was actually embarrassed that I had interrupted the dinner party.
My only hope is that Futurama will, as the Simpsons did over two years, mature and become something more than a bunch of loosely concatenated not horribly interesting gags. For now, I'm going to turn the TV off after Simpsons on Sunday night.