Fowl Play

Monday China announced a plan to fight avian influenza A (H5N1) virus, by promising to vaccinate its entire poultry population of 14 billion birds. (But it’s not clear if the vaccine will be for H5N1, per se.) Vietnam plans to kill all live poultry in its two largest cities.

They should also instruct cockfight bird keepers to stop using their own mouths to suck the blood out of their injured bird’s throats. That might help stop the virus from crossing from bird to human, no? They should also keep live poultry away from live pigs to further prevent viruses from crossing species.

In a related story:

SynFlux is urging the CDC, WHO, and the entire world community to replace the term “bird flu” with “fowl flu,” as it’s more poetic. Also, the staff here has been getting complaints from non-fowl birds, like pigeons and crows, whose reputations were severely damaged by the SARS outbreak. They do not wish to be connected in any way to avian influenza A (H5N1) virus, and want it made clear that while they can carry the virus, almost all wild birds have adapted a resistance to it.

One crow who wished to remain anonymous had this to say in an interview with a SynFlux reporter: “We’re just recovering from the negative PR from the SARS outbreak that was so devastating to our population. Not to mention the stigma of the West Nile virus that we now have to deal with every summer. I had to migrate from Toronto to New York City to escape all the racial profiling that’s going on up there. I bet you didn’t know that. And I’m not the only one, ask a lot of the birds you see flying around these parts. Now we’ve got human beings calling H5N1 ‘bird flu’. It’s an insult to the entire avian community, and not a bit ignorant of the humans too, I feel. I mean, generally speaking, only the poultry humans raise for food become ill and die from H5N1. That little fact really gets you thinking. And if the Asian humans would just be more hygienic in how they raise, slaughter, and sell poultry and pork, we might not have this problem. You know, I hate to even imply genocide, but why can’t Vietnamese poultry receive vaccinations too? Our hearts and prayers go out to all our Asian avian brethren.” The crow abruptly ended the interview by flying away in tears.

The Big List

I decided to make a list of all the people that have influenced me as a person. People who’ve helped shape my personality, make me think the way I do, act the way I do. Opened my mind or closed it. All those kind of things. No matter how large or small the effect may have been. I decided to not include family, as clearly my Mother, Father, & Sister have more influence than anyone else. I also decided to break the list in two, for people I know or have known or met, and for people I’ve never met. So while having breakfast (in the early afternoon) at the local diner, I inked out this list on the paper placemat:

People I Know or Have Known or Met: Christian Barone, Steve Utaski, Steve Corsano, Michael Cullinan, Colin Throm, Russel Thomas Raymond, Stephanie White, David Campbell, Leslie Davis, William Resk (Billy Rock), Kelly Pearsall, Mark Magnini, Steve Neulight, Tom Rigatti, Matt Kilburn, Steve Mott, Jon Fordham, Yoko Ono, Marty Abrahams, Anthony Vito Susco, Ralph Galli, Scott Reisberg, Marlen Hecht, Mala Perna, Tom Perna, Mary-Sue Connolly, Tavis Paine Riker, Chuck D, Sharon Middendorf, Michelle DiLeo, Jean Marie Cooper, Mark Pengelski, Jeff Taylor Knudson, Jeff Schetzel, William Renn, David Pena, Boomer Esiason, Valleria Ramundo Orlando, Renee Forbes, Michael Mandrachia, John “Jay” Kostrowski, Ellen Broudy, Debbie Harry, Chris Stein, Paul Smith, Liz Moore, Marc Leckington, Paul Goodman, Andy Summers, the photography professor at Hofstra who’s name I forget and will never remember (sorry), Helena Christensen, Orlando Reyes, K. Stuebben, Puff Daddy, Brenda Buck, M. R. Kremberg, Jerry (from Jersey city, can’t remeber last name, sorry), Rick Rubin, Steve Puchalski, David Lee Roth, Dave Vandervetner, Abbey Katz, Bob Mould, Jason (from Albany, can’t remember last name, sorry), LJ Long, Leo DiCaprio, Vince Grant, Chris Grant, Ken Sirulnick, Tom Slattery, Wayne Jaffe

People I’ve Never Met: Elvis Costello, Paul Westerberg, John Lennon, Ansel Adams, Tim O’Brien, Joyce Carol Oates, George Orwell, Joseph Heller, Mike Ness, Tim Armstrong, Lance Armstrong, Lars Frederiksen, John R. Lott Jr., John Fante, Les Plesko, Jane Brody, Jimi Hendrix, Johnny Ramone, Mahatma Gandhi, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Martin Scorsese, Thelma Schoonmaker, Stephen Speilberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick, Pablo Picasso, Man Ray, Wagner, Johann Strauss Jr., Flea, The Marx Brothers, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Robert Johnson, Thom Yorke, Bjorn Borg, Arron Sorkin, Jeff LeMond, Peter Gabriel, John F. Kennedy Jr., William Clinton, Albert Einstein, Thomas L. Friedman, Bret Easton Ellis, Ralph Nader, Bob Woodward, Charlie Rose, Errol Morris, Kurt Vonnegut, Bill Moyers

This list may evolve, although it may not since I like it as a one-off, spur of the moment, stream-of-conscious effort. I think I hit everyone.

This list is meant to show respect and thanks to those on it.

Battery Scam

What ever happened to the popular use of the 9-Volt battery?

It used to be, not too long ago, that nearly every small radio or electronic device ran off a 9V battery. Now everything seems to run off AA, or worse AAA batteries. Is it me, or do these batteries die sooner?
Once upon a time if you had a typical small mono am/fm radio, it ran off a 9V battery. And that battery would last a long time, sometimes a year or more with average use. Why don’t portable CD players run off 9V batteries? Instead they run off AA’s and drain them very quickly. Is this a ploy for the battery companies to make more money?

Six AA’s at 1.5 volts equal the 9 volts of one 9V battery. I read that one 9V lasts much longer than six AA batteries. Now you may say that a 9 volts is more volts than most devices require. But consider that 9V batteries are routinely used in low-drain devices like smoke detectors. So clearly they could be used to run portable CD players, no?

In fact the 9V is the “go-to” battery for most long-life devices like smoke detectors, carbon-monoxide detectors, pool alarms, PAL lights, active guitar pick-ups, guitar pedal effect boxes, etc. The 9V can last years in such devices; especially the low-drain ones like smoke detectors. You never see a smoke detector running off AA or AAA batteries, since it seems like you’d have to change them every few months! So why aren’t 9V’s used more in regular devices like portable CD players??? Are we being scammed to purchase more batteries when we really do not have to???

Here’s an example: I recently bought a DigiTech RP50 Modeling Guitar Processor. It’s your typical digital multi-effect foot pedal. The AC adapter it came with is rated 9 volts DC 300mA. I was shocked to find it takes six AA’s rather than the 9V typical for such a device. Why????? Am I being fleeced into buying more batteries more often than really needed??? The manual says I can expect 15 hours of continuous use with the six AA’s. That’s like two weeks of use or so. The older pedals with 9V’s in them would last for a about two months. And the beauty was that you’d run down the 9V so it was outputting 7 or 8 volts and it would often give you a better, more mellow tone in distortion & pre-amp type pedals. Brand new, out-of-the-box 9V’s are often thought to produce too harsh a tone. This is especially true with old vintage pedals, where alkaline batteries are never used, since these pedal were made before alkalines were invented and alkalines tend to over-juice them. (These are analog pedals, not digital ones; I don’t think this technique will work with a pedal with a chip in it.) Old-school type blues players would always be harvesting partially drained 9V batteries by playing them in a radios for hours. They’d need a bunch on hand, since they’d run the risk of them dying live on stage, and would need to switch them out if this happened. Although it never seemed the 9V’s died completely, they would slowly lose enough power to finally adversely effect tone, then need replacing. (Okay, my digression alarm just sounded.)

Any electrical engineers out there with any info to share on this issue of AA’s versus 9V’s???

‘brows