Hustler’s Larry Flynt says he owns nude photos of Pfc. Jessica Lynch, but decided not to publish them. That’s kind of you, Larry, to pretend to have scruples, but my money says you don’t have the photos. If you did, you’d publish them. You’ve never backed away from this kind of stuff before, and I don’t expect you to now. Personaly, I think this is probably just a clever publicity stunt, but somebody’s welcome to send me those photos to prove me wrong (joke).
How HIPAA is burning people
I know there are reasons why we have Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), but they seem to be doing more problems than good. One problem is that the law, used to protect a patient’s medical information, has been keeping law enforcement from doing their jobs. From this story:
Police have been unable to cold-call hospitals, asking if a Leslie Rivera-Hager or Sheila Smith is a patient there, because of the new law protecting patient confidentiality. This can make a missing-persons search more difficult.
Before the law was passed, (New Sewickley police Chief John) Daley said: “We’d go through the phone book and call every hospital, asking if they had a patient by that name. Right now, we can’t do that.”
Police could get a search warrant if they had reason to believe that the person was in a certain hospital. But the uncertainties surrounding Rivera-Hager make that impossible.
Al ‘s Morning Meeting, who provided this link, also has talked about how family members, coaches, 911 dispatchers and journalists, among others, are getting screwed by all of this.
I reserve the right to bill content spammers
I posted yesterday about the guy who tried to bill his comment spammer. Jack commented that he was going to throw some text on his site saying that he reserves the right to bill spammers. He’s gone ahead and implemented a change on his site, and I’ve done the same. Below the comments form on my listings, I’ve added the following text:
Note that comment spamming and commercial solicitation will not be tolerated, and by posting here I reserve the right to bill you for my wasted time of removing the comment and for the wasted bandwidth (and my standard one-hour minimum labor rate applies). If you’d like to advertise here, e-mail me, and you can pay for it.
I’m just trying to bulldoze Jon’s server
Jon over at Chuggnutt is getting a pile of traffic to his Matrix Name Generator (which I’m pretty sure I’ve linked to before, but I can’t remember). And by linking it here — again — I’m only trying to do my part to help him out.
Getting annoyed with comment spam?
Just do what Joseph Duemer did and bill your spammer. Thanks to Chris for the link.
Leave it to an Oregonian to create Tomacco
Only somebody from Lake Oswego would try something like this [ducking to avoid the onslaught of crap thrown at me from Valley-based blogs]
Rob Baur of Lake Oswego, Oregon, dreamed of bringing to life his favorite The Simpsons episode, one from 1999 in which Homer grows “tomacco,” a combination tomato-tobacco plant. Even though it tastes foul and has a brown, gooey center, the entire town becomes addicted to the fruit after one bite, and Homer gets rich.
Baur grafted a tomato plant onto tobacco roots, and voil?, he had a real, live tomacco plant. The two plants can successfully become one because they come from the same plant family, which also includes eggplant and the deadly nightshade. The tomacco even bore fruit, although Baur said he believes it’s poisonous because it likely contains a lethal amount of nicotine.
If you’ve never seen the episode referred to, you live in a hole ;-). Otherwise, check out this full run down from the Simpson’s Archive.
Which is more disturbing?
The fact that somebody’s selling a fart in a bag or that two people have actually bid on it? Thanks to Neil for the link.
OK, this is the weirdest site I’ve seen in a long time
Not only that, but it’s got a weird domain:
111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111111.com
Be sure to turn your sound up for the full … uh … experience.
The best way to stop conflicts?
We all know that using self-love is the best method to end war. Really. At least these people are convinced of that.
Jeff Goldblum is watching you poop
This site is just weird. These folks have gone through the effort of creating little printable signs to hang on bathroom stalls….
