another job scammer: dc alarms

if you receive any messages from dc alarms or see any postings on craigslist about working from home answering emergency calls, it's yet another scam. in this case, the scammer gets paid by webex, which is where the link for the 'test' that they send will take you.

craigslist has become a home for scammers by the truckload, which makes it less and less useful. if they don't do something about that soon, folks will stop using them. maybe the time is right for a better-moderated classified ad site.

here is the message we received from dc alarm, for your reference. notice the obvious-scammage disclaimer at the end:

You recently replied to our job posting on Craigslist.org seeking
customer service reps/ virtual assistants.

You are receiving this email from me because your resume has
been reviewed , accepted and you have been selected as a
possible candidate for the advertised position.

We are seeking virtual assistants who will serve as customer
service representatives for our security alarm firm. We have
customers throughout 46 major cities who require 24 hour monitoring.

Your responsibilities will include monitoring remote alarms for faults and contacting the local engineers to service/ repair faulty alarms. You may also be required to take emergency calls.

Candidates should have average to above average office skills, good comprehension, and should be able to type at a fast pace.

Pay is $17.50 per hour and you should be able to work a minimum of 15 hours per week, with the maximum being 40 hours. Payments are made weekly via check or direct deposit. Calls will be routed to the phone number of your choice (this must be a US Number) during the time you are signed into our system only. This will not prohibit you from taking personal calls, as your screen will indicate when it is a call being routed from us. If calls are not answered after 8 rings they are re-routed to another representative.

All applicants need to attend a web based meeting where you will be shown each aspect of the job in details, as well as having any questions answered. Please set aside 1 hour to complete this and also be prepared to take notes. I have also attached 2 tests which will serve to gauge your comprehension and computer skills. In order to meet our deadline of 1st October start date, all documents, tests and orientation should be completed no later than 1st October 6pm EST.

To receive your invitation to the orientation webinar please visit our website at: http://www.profinsoft.com/webex/1st.php and create a trial account using the email you used to apply for the position.

After I receive your username and tests, I will send you a few manuals to look over, along with a choice of 2 times to attend orientation, and a file containing fully functional copies of all necessary in-house software that you will need to have installed and ready before the orientation webinar. It will not be necessary for you to purchase any other additional software programs for this job.

Please note you are not guaranteed employment until you receive an email from myself entitled "Welcome Aboard". Before this time all tests, orientation and paperwork must be completed, the results of which will determine your employment eligibility with us.

If you have any questions please let me know.

Mary Green
Recruitment and Training Manager
DC Alarms
Tel: 1-253-449-8258

** Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail **
The information contained in this e-mail is of a confidential nature and is intended only for the addressee. If you are not the intended addressee, any disclosure, copying or distribution by you is prohibited and may be unlawful. Disclosure to any party other than the addressee, whether inadvertent or otherwise, is not intended to waive privilege or confidentiality. Internet communications are not secure and therefore DC Alarms does not accept legal responsibility for the contents of this message. Any views or opinions expressed are those of the author.

more job scammage

we received the following email from a company we never contacted - yet another scammer pretending to offer a job, but in reality conning folks in order to get their contact information:

Thank you for taking the time to reply to our
job posting here at Paragon Market Research.

Our company develops market research for national
retail establishments. They depend upon our online
data collection methods so they can develop
better marketing campaigns.

Because we have received too many fake resume
attachments from our Craigslist posting, we have
to ask you to not send your resume directly to us
at this e-mail address. Instead, please follow these
instructions so that we can actually view your resume:

You need to head over to one of our websites to
complete all of your basic information on pages 1-2.

PLEASE NOTE – The first portion of general information
will be using our website form, but at the bottom of
the form on page 2 there will be a drop-down menu.

Be sure the select that you are a job applicant from this
drop-down menu. If you do not select this option before
clicking submit, then your information will go into our
regular customer database, and I will not be able to get
your resume promptly.

You can begin filling out the basic information and
upload your resume here:

http://www.alphatricorp.com/pz5.html

I personally apologize for the extra step, but this
will insure us that we receive your application with
no problems AND it also assures us that you are a real
person and that you can follow instructions carefully.

Again, thank you for showing a sincere interest in
our position. I look forward to speaking with you more!

Here is that link again: http://www.alphatricorp.com/pz5.html

Samantha Martin
HR Director
Paragon Market Research

we've also got an example of one of the craigslist postings from the scammers that try to sell you to online colleges or rack up texting fees. these are fairly easy to spot, once you've seen a few. the giveaway is the salary listing - they all show an extremely broad range:

The new incumbent will need to have a flexible attitude and be a strong self starter.

Skills and responsibilities
all incoming calls and general office activity
first point of contact for customer inquires
work through leads and prospects in support of the sales staff
Excellent telephone skills and ability to initiate contact with prospective customers
Microsoft Office and strong writing skills are a must
Sales Force administration experience is a definite plus/requirement
Experience in organizing for trade shows and training events
Logistics and shipping experience
Marketing admin assistance.Make email adds, facilitate campaigns and other graphic ability. Mail merge and mass emails
Best if the person is an ambitious go getter with great interpersonal skills. You can design this job and make it your own
Professionalism and friendliness is required

Location: Cleveland
Compensation: $31,596 - $91,927
This is a part-time job.
Principals only. Recruiters, please don't contact this job poster.
Please, no phone calls about this job!
Please do not contact job poster about other services, products or commercial interests.

if you spot any of these on craigslist, please flag them for removal. if we can get these blocked as soon as they appear, sooner or later these losers will give up, and this part of craigslist will actually be useful again.

the late, great hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

fans have been clamoring for new chapters in douglas adams' hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy (the books, not the lame disney flickage that sucked every ounce of comedy out of what is possibly the funniest thing ever written, ever) for some time. unfortunately, adams has made this difficult by being inconveniently dead.

so let's say that you're a publisher with a much-loved book series that's made you a ton of money, by a truly original voice that cannot be duplicated, but who is busy pushing up daisies. what to do?

you hire another writer, of course, to nail shut the coffin that disney built, chasing away not only potential new fans, but turning off all of the original fans, as well. of course! it's all so simple.

a little advice from elsewhen to del rey, gramercy publishing, etc.: don't pimp dent & company out. instead, spend some time and money & find someone else who can write a new, funny, and original franchise for you.

(like us. just a thought.)

this goes back to our debate about the true ownership of artistic works (and maybe artists, as well). once a given book, play, film, song, etc., is out in public, who does it belong to? legally, of course, it belongs to the copyright holder, but the folks that have spewed lame superhero movies (do you hear us, joel schumacher?), politically-corrected epics (a la steven spielberg, with the 'updated' e.t.), and pop stars that we have an extremely rigid idea of in our collective psyche (paul mccartney), or movie stars (eddie murphy and bill murray) likely have a better - or at least broader - appreciation of artistic ownership than that.

the fact is, if you produce any artistic work and then disappoint your audience via changing the original vision after the fact (midichlorians? really?), you often find that the well has run dry, and no one is interested in your work any more (molly ringwald). in effect, the market punishes pimps.

as content creators ourselves, we can't help but be bothered by this. especially since our artistic process is to recycle & reinterpret images, music, stories, and ideas in order to explore our work from several perspectives. we'd be royally ticked off if any monkey-minds told us that we couldn't do something with the brand that we've spent the better part of 10 years building (and that we are even now rebuilding).

what do you think?

job scam update

we've previously reported on a company that posts jobs on craigslist and, when you apply, sends you an email pitch to a dummy webpage that pitches college classes and tries to send you billable text messages.

a dead giveaway is the lack of company or contact information, plus the rampant spelling errors throughout the site (which consists of only 3 - 4 pages). you'll also see on quantcast or other traffic ranking sites that the site in question suddenly appeared in mid-late august and had zero traffic prior to that.

here are a few more domain names that they're masquerading behind. if you receive email from any of these, please flag them on craigslist so that we can shut these scammers down (since craigslist seems unable or unwilling to do so themselves)

any message from 'jessica lynn' who calls herself an 'hr manager'

apphiring.net

esiapp.com

career network

yourcareersite.com

ecareersite.com

bluestarjobsite.com

careersourceteam.com

jobsource-group.com

careernetworksite.net

hiringsolutionschannel.com

networkedcareers.com

power-careers.net

thecareerapplications.com

gopplassociate.com

wfhp.info

starlitecareers.com

another scammer is beyond.com, inc., which posts jobs on craigslist and - even if you apply within an hour of the post - tells you that the job that you're applying for is filled, but suckers you into registering with them in exchange for the vague promise of 'other jobs'. their site seems legitimate, so maybe this scam is merely the result of a wayward employee covering the cleveland market (where elsewhen is based).

here are some of their aliases:

administrativejobs.com

techcareers.com

financialjobbank.com

administrativejobs.com

entertainmentworkers.com

communicationsjobs.com

constructionjobforce.com

customerservicejobs.com

educationjobsite.com

engineer-jobs.com

armedservicesjobs.com

healthcarejobsite.com

servicejobsite.com

humanresourcesjobs.com

insurancecareersite.com

legalcareersite.com

businessworkforce.com

manufacturingworkers.com

markewtingjobforce.com

retailgigs.com

prjobforce.com

utilitiesjobs.com

realestatejobsite.com

salesjobs.net

sciencecareersite.com

techcareers.com

logisticsjobsite.com

hospitalityjobsite.com

hey dept. of labor folks, isn't there a law on the books re: job sites like these and bait & switch?

if you come across any not posted here, please put their url's in the comments to help your fellow elsewhen'rs spot them. you might also report them here. finding a job these days is hard enough without these scumbags.

lindsay lohan has a girlfriend - so what?

lindsay lohan recently mentioned that she and dj samantha ronson have been dating for a long time.

so what? clay aiken came out of the closet that we all knew he lived in (and redecorated on a daily basis), and even mister sulu married his same-sex partner of many years. there's little enough love in the world without us getting all weird about who loves who (except for those creeps at nambla, who should all be roasted on a spit).

we're more concerned about her endless addiction to booze and her seeming inability to wear underwear. and the fact that, at just 22 years of age, she looks like she's pushing 60.

(honestly, folks, what is it about celebs & riding bareback? are we missing some big new trend, like the shaving thing & arnold palmers? is everybody but us parading around indian style?)

separation of church & state

i'm completely in favor of the separation of church and state. my idea is that these two institutions screw us up enough on their own, so both of them together is certain death.

george carlin (1937 - 2008)

we miss you every day, georgie.

undecided?

historically, what a candidate says when running for office isn't worth the wind their statements generate. since almost 20% of you are undecided which candidate to choose for president, elsewhen is going to help you out. there are 2 good ways to tell what a candidate is actually going to do:

see how they've voted in the past.

find out where they're geting their money.

since we think all politicians are horse thieves and, frankly, since elsewhen ignores the authority of any u.s. president over us, we're singularly qualified to be objective about this (plus campaign coffers and the congressional voting record don't lie). here we go:

barack obama's congressional voting record

john mccain's congressional voting record

and whose pockets they currently live in:

barack obama's campaign finances

john mccain's campaign finances

now get out there and pretend that it matters.

dead water

thanks largely to fertilizer runoff from farms and pond leakage from fish farms, coastal waters around the world are effectively dead - that is, they no longer contain enough oxygen to support life.

although the area affected is small compared to total ocean volume, the affected areas are prime fisheries. also, many folks that have come into contact with water from the dead zones have developed skin lesions and other illnesses.

unfortunately, unless we push the dept. of agriculture to limit the amount and kinds of fertilizers that commercial farms can use - which the current administration is resisting - the dead areas will continue to grow at their current rate, doubling in size every 10 years.

fbi investigates credit crash companies

hallelujah! we can't do anything about the bailout that's going to cost us the rest of our savings, but at least congress is talking about capping the salaries of the execs involved, and now there's word that the fbi is investigating them for possible fraud and other violations. that's good news all around.

(and when it comes time to hang them, we'll chip in for the rope.)

u.s. economy = fire sale

guess what? we paid for it. actually, china mostly paid for it, & you, your children, & your grandchildren get to pay them back. but don't worry: it's only us$500 billion.* so far.

this illustrates the problem with letting neo-cons get their grubby paws on the economy. the game revolves around guessing who will get winged, who will be shot dead, & how much damage the damned dirty apes will do before someone takes them out of the picture.

the problem is, even though we're paying for them, we won't ever own any part of the companies that washington is bailing out. essentially, we're giving them this money as a gift, to counter all of the bad debt that they knowingly took on. essentially, we're rewarding their mistakes, so that none of them learn a thing.

all hail the free market!

(* even without interest, that's an additional us$2,000 in debt for every man, woman, & child in america. added to this year's already-a-record national debt, and we're up to almost us$1 trillion. yep, that's trillion with a 't'.)

christina ricci

'hi, my name is christina ricci, and i have spectacular breasts. see?'

look: we're just as glad as the next blogger that wednesday addams finally got knockers, but would someone please buy christina ricci a bra? seriously. before she puts someone's eye out. because we don't think she even knows what one is.

(we admit to throwing a typical fanboy hissy fit: clamoring for a given actress to drop trou and - when she makes an extended habit of it, a la madonna - completely losing interest.)

quit yer bitchin' #13

how to tell when the new guy in tech support likes you.

90 seconds from now, when he's escorted offsite by security, hr, & his manager, we bet nobody calls dibs on his chair. or anything else that milton here has ever touched. in fact, we bet the office manager has hazardous waste disposal on speed-dial.

who's dumping drugs in our tap water?

we first reported that prescription drugs are in our tap water a few years ago. at the time, the media said that it was due to unprocessed substances in our pee.

really? we thought. 'cause these concentrations are off the charts. are we really that overmedicated?

as it turns out, no. (well, not as much as everyone assumed, anyway.) it turns out that a sizable chunk of the drugs are being dumped into our water supply on purpose by medical facilities - mostly hospitals and long-term care facilities. it's rampant, completely unregulated, and growing.

so how much are we talking? acccording to the associated press, 250 million pounds a year. the drugs and the amounts found are believed to be capable of causing antibiotic-resistant bacteria and mutating dna. and your local water filtration plant has no way to take any of them out. as a result, 46 million of us are drinking them every day.

to see what happens next, go rent the host.

caylee marie anthony is still missing

you've been busy: we know. we know that you didn't mean to forget that caylee marie anthony is still missing.

it's been 3 months, and casey anthony - caylee's sociopathic mother - still won't give up the details of where caylee is, despite the discovery of caylee's hair in the trunk of her car.

so we look ourselves in the mirror and tell ourselves that using torture to get information - even in cases like this - is wrong. but baby, it's a hard road.

surprise! rich get richer

while many of us suffered layoffs & outsourcing and have had to cut back on travel and food due to spiraling costs, you'll be reassured to hear that the top 1% in terms of income continued to rape & pillage at a record rate this year.

translation: the top 1% in income now own at least 35% of all available assets. meanwhile, kids in chicago are skipping school to protest the lack of funding compared to rich suburban schools, a record number of soldiers are committing suicide due to extended tours and insufficient funding of the va, and agriprocessors - the largest kosher meat packing plant in the u.s. - is using child labor - and illegal immigrants, at that!

if someone moved your cheese, it's a good bet that it's somewhere in the rich guy's house.

the motown shakedown

we're going to put our foot down: no more government bailouts.

you're a business. you're a stockholder. you're a ceo. you're supposed to have half a brain cell flickering in your head. you make bad decisions, you make bad investments, you lose. you do not get to raid our social security fund or borrow money from china for our children & grandchildren to pay back. you play the game and you take your chances. nowhere is it written that you play and we pay.

the big 3 automakers are just the latest in an endless line of leeches lining up to dip their beaks in our wallets, blaming the economy for their own malfeasance, stupidity, and outright fraud. they built gas-guzzlers and we suddenly decided that we wanted cars that don't cost the national debt to fill up. is that our fault? hell no!

so watch how your members of congress vote on each of these bailouts, and whether or not they accept campaign money from any of these companies, bearing in mind that the national debt hit us$407 billion this year, and the gao expects us to hit a record high of us$438 billion next year. china doesn't have to beat us, folks. they've already made the downpayment.

our solution: let the market perform what greenspan used to call a 'corrective action'. that is, let failing businesses fail. our economy is supposedly a free market system, not socialist, right? so let the market equivalent of social darwinism run its course. a lot of crooks & idiots will lose their shirts, we'll get to keep ours, and we'll all be a little smarter in the morning.

fast times? not so much

for some of us, fast times at ridgemont high was the coming of age film, largely because of the two ladies you see here: jennifer jason leigh and phoebe cates.

this flick also launched sean penn, and was one of an endless barrage of coming-of-age flicks of varying quality between 1978-1985, and was one of the last film appearances by the great ray walston, but so what?

fast times stuck with us because of its underlying seriousness, realistic portrayal of our deepest fears, and the most bodacious ta-ta's the 80's had to offer.

sure, molly ringwald was the girl we all wanted to rescue, but all that we had to sustain us was a solitary crotch shot from breakfast club. cates & leigh dropped trou more than a decade before molly got around to it. by then, most of us were already married.

now for the sad truth: fast times hit the screen 26 years ago. ms. cates appeared in a string of forgetable comedies (okay, we'll give you paradise), married actor kevin kline and went off to be a mom. as of this writing, she is 45 years old. ms. leigh continued to drop trou in films of ever-increasing quality and eventually even managed to keep our attention when fully clothed (a la hudsucker proxy, one of her best performances). she is now 46.

look in the mirror. we have become our parents. how did that happen? it all went by so fast. will the next 26 years go by even faster? how long before we become our grandparents?

(my beard came in completely grey this autumn. like fast times, it's officially history.)

teach a man to fish...

... and he still can't eat great lakes fish without getting sick.

after the jump, you'll read that 4 out of 10 freshwater fish in this country are in trouble, mostly due to pollution (and yes, that fertilizer you use on your lawn counts).

having grown up on lake huron, worked next to lake st. clair, and now nestled just below lake erie, we've got kind of a thing for the great lakes. bad enough that we allowed crap like zebra mussels to be discharged from bilge and ballast tanks and still do too little to prevent similar incursions from happening every day, but now we've got to kill off our fish and poison lakeside cities in a bad repeat of the 70's? didn't these morons ever see the lorax?

government literally in bed with oil companies

if you think the government and the oil industry are a little too close for comfort, you're not imagining things: government brokers that regulate and collect federal oil royalties have reportedly been sleeping with oil company employees, rigging contracts, and accepting bribes.

so will this affect the offshore drilling debate? who's kidding who: of course not! the money involved is simply too big, and the campaign contributions and other perks are simply too attractive for mere politicians to resist.

meanwhile, the oil industry is experiencing a huge increase in its death toll, largely due to hiring people with little or no experience, lax enforcement of safety standards, and extremely long hours.

will ice age interrupt global warming?

we made it through august without a solar event. that hasn't happened in more than 100 years. and it could make the debate about global warming moot.

the magnetic shield thrown up by the sun helps protect us from cosmic radiation. when the frequency of solar events decline, this radiation increases global cloud cover and causes temperatures to drop. when solar events are low or even nonexistent for an extended period of time, we have an ice age. no big deal - we've had seven or so that we know of, and it's a normal part of the earth's climate cycle. but it would almost certainly mean the end of homo sapiens.

there's still debate over the whole thing, and maybe global warming - which we love Big Macs too much to do anything about - will balance off against it.

either way, it's going to mean some heavy weather for the next hundred years or so. better pack an umbrella.

u.s. banks help foreigners avoid u.s. taxes

rather than increasing our taxes or giving rich bastards (and you know who you are) additional tax breaks, why don't we go after all of the foreigners that invest in our companies but avoid paying our taxes?

of course, going after individual investors will be incredibly difficult, time-consuming, and expensive. in fact, let's face it - it's impossible. but we have another idea that might be easier, much less expensive, and more effective:

go after the banks that help them hide the money.

we know what you're thinking: that's just crazy talk! next thing you know, you'll say we should put bankers in jail for laundering drug money and fronting accounts to overthrow foreign governments!

7 stages of the death of print: denial

esquire seems to think that embedding a small e-ink screen on the cover of an upcoming issue will reclaim the going-going-gone print audience. in reality, where the rest of us live, that's kind of like cramming a chirping greeting card chip between the pages & calling it multimedia.

print guys, listen up, 'cause we're only going to say this 3 or 4 thousand more times:

1. it's a paradigm shift, stupid.
2. the future of print is a museum.

we now return you to your regularly scheduled internet access.

(don't get us wrong - elsewhen has supported e-ink since mit, and we think they're the bees knees for animated t-shirts, billboards, and whatnot. but if esquire really wanted to join the rest of us in this purple cow century, they'd be thinking of things like an iphone/ipod/kindle subscription model, using audio instead of text, video instead of static photos, and supporting the hardware manufacturers that are working to create digital paper.

and, since we're feeling generous today, here's an idea for newspapers: you print wedding announcements and photos, right? well, in case you've forgotten, bad news sells better than good news. why not print pictures of couples that are splitting up? maybe even include video profiles of each party to help them find someone new. and - of course - charge for it, plus charge interested parties that want the former bride or groom's contact information.

we know, we know. you're welcome.)

should pastors pay to play politics?

you probably know that churches and other religious organizations are tax-exempt, but have you ever wondered why? basically, it's a reward for not getting in the way of politicians and public policy. that being the case, if a given religious leader or group does advocate a particular politician or public policy, they should lose their tax-exempt status, right?

since churches own somewhere between 20 and 25 percent of all of the land in the u.s. - not to mention the tens of billions of dollars that they take in each year - the potential ramifications of this are profound.

on september 28, a group of roughly 80 religious leaders, under the tutelage of a group of right-wing lawyers called the alliance defense fund, plans to deliberately contravene the tax law by openly declaring support for and opposition to political candidates. their argument is that religious leaders, under the guarantees regardin freedom of speech, have a right to engage in this type of speech.

here's elsewhen's position: of course religious leaders have a right to free speech. to our mind, there is an easy solution - one that's already well supported by precedent: if the adf supporters engage in political speech, they should lose their tax-exempt status. and they can exercise their right to free speech in the same free speech zones that the rest of us keep getting herded to. problem solved.

(you're welcome.)

surprise! fda finally does something for us

it probably won't surprise you to find out that here at elsewhen, we think that the fda is phrma's bitch. so we were pleasantly surprised to learn that the fda is now posting notice of drugs that are on the market, but are being investigated for potential problems. woohoo! a government agency finally did something in our best interest.

what we'd like to see next: more detail. how many patients had issues with each drug? what were the specific issues, and how serious were they? you know - things that will actually make the information useful.

slurs

it ain't what you're called. it's what you answer to.

d. l. hughley (1963 - ?)

quit yer bitchin' #12

before you even ask, of course this was taken in a bar.

the thing that gets us is, not only did she end up in the wrong bathroom, plus feel compelled to use a urinal rather than a stall, but she insists on being on the phone while doing it.

(just imagine the mental focus involved. bet she went to catholic school. probably dated lyghthouse drummer steve lindsay, too. but then, didn't we all?)

miracles

there are two ways to live your life. one is as though nothing is a miracle. the other is as though everything is a miracle.

albert einstein (1879 - 1955)

no get out of jail cards for gitmo inmates

you know, government hacks and military quacks are often accused of having no imagination, but not by elsewhen - oh no. under tricky dickless and crew, our government has come up with more creative ways to gut the constitution than any administration since the japanese interment. here's our latest example, straight from gitmo, and straight out of the pentagon's mouth:

get sent to prison immediately upon capture

never get to see any of the evidence against you

never get to see friends or family ever again

never get to face your accusers or witnesses to any of your supposed crimes

never get a trial

if you do get a trial, there will be no jury, and current judicial protections will not apply to you

and here's the capper: even if you are acquitted, you will remain in prison for the rest of your life.

does this sound like the way the good guys act to you?

so long, and thanks for nothing

with the bush white house coming to an end and the prospect of another republican sitting in the oval office increasingly remote, the administration is pitching environmentally unfriendly proposals at fire sale speed. here's one of our favorites: giving shipping companies carte blanche to run over whales.

springing abramoff

the justice department has recommended a jail term reduction for jack abramoff - let's just call him jack rip'emoff, shall we? - the crooked lobbyist. in case you've forgotten, rip'emoff was buddy-buddy with the bush white house and certain members of congress, and used money from his clients (such as indian tribes) to buy votes with members of congress and others.

do you smell the white house (which we're tempted to call the shite house, after the last 7 years) doing a favor for a pal, a la scooter libby?

here's our suggestion: burn him at the stake, instead. nothing sends a message like a good bbq. make sure to invite anne coulter; word is she's desparate for some new meat.

we've got rat tart, rat pie, rat tartare...

aside from being a nifty monty python sketch, eating rats is common in much of the world (including medieval england). not because of religious or ethnic tradition, but because it's all most can afford.

so what does it tell you when even the rat meat in camboldia is too expensive for most of the peasants?

(and in case you're thinking, 'hey, well, they eat dogs and whatnot anyway there, right?', the biodiversity decline rate, coupled with the ever-accelerating pace of climate change, leads us to the following prediction: deep-fried rats here in the u.s. in let's say - oh - 40 years. with morlock politics no more than 25 years after that. have you seen our new chest freezer, by the way?)

are rx companies the new satan?

we could go on for days about this one, but let's just score the highlights, shall we?

let's start with this: it appears that genentech has 2 drugs that are equally effective in treating a leading cause of blindness in the elderly. one has a projected cost to patients of us$60, the other us$2,000. guess which one they're not going to make?

there are also new drug labeling regulations coming out this month that will provide legal protection to drug companies that withhold information on risks involved in using their products. (this move is part of an overall campaign by the bush administration since dubya took office to shield companies from lawsuits.)

another possibly-on-purpose failure of the current adminsitration: insufficient oversight of medicare drug programs. and all of this in a time when shrinks have moved to prescribing drugs rather than using talk therapy. soma, anyone?

lights out for lightning bugs

at elsewhen, we are blessed with hundreds of fireflies. unfortunately, their numbers elsewhere are falling faster than mccain's presidential prospects.

(hmm... now that the primary nonsense is out of the way, we need a good nickname for mccain. we're going to miss tricky dickless - mssr. cheney - for the sheer joy that we felt each time we got to use his alias. maybe sen. mccackle?

if you've got a better idea, post it in this clip's comments. if we choose yours, we'll send you an elsewhen t-shirt of your choice. cut-off is 9/30/08. that should give you plenty of time to get snarky.)