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“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” is an oft quoted maxim that I personally feel is true.  However, when applied to bacteria the results are stronger bugs that may be resistant to treatment.

The common use of ‘antibacterial’ products in the home introduces enormous amounts of the chemicals that were previously only used in hospitals and labs.  These chemicals, while very effective at killing bacteria, don’t kill it all.  That this left behind contributes to the production of resistant strains of bacteria.  These strains have also been shown (in the lab) to be resistant to the most common treatments for bacterial infections.

The result is that we are contributing to the evolution of drug-resistant forms of bacteria through our use of anti-bacterial products in our homes.

Stick with soap and water; it is just as effective and does NOT contribute to super-bugs.

Strange but True: Antibacterial Products May Do More Harm Than Good: Scientific American

I just stumbled across a great ‘resource’ for one-liners.  It got me laughing so hard I almost passed my Starbuck’s through my nose… almost.

www.vegard.net - Complete one-liners listing.

I vascillate between being incredibly paranoid (I shreaded my cereal boxes only that one time!) and sharing quite a bit about myself online.  For example, you can find my picture various places online but you won’t find my street address, phone number, etc.

But most people don’t know just how much Google knows about them.

For example, you can find a phone number for most folks by entering their last name and zip code.  If you’re like me and rather not have people Google your phone number they have thoughtfully provided a method for you to remove it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to adjust my tin-foil hat… Those pesky aliens are trying to tell me that Paris Hilton is hot again.

Google PhoneBook Name Removal

I’ve added a new plugin to Wordpress that makes it a bit easier for folks to subscribe to my feed. ‘Subscribe Me‘ adds the handy buttons on the sidebar to enable one-click subscriptions for users of My MSN, My Yahoo!, Google and Bloglines as well as normal RSS users.

Be sure to let me know what you think of it.

Update: I’ve also switched the ‘theme’ (WordPress-speak for ‘visual design & layout’) of the site to something a bit less ‘defaultesque’.

Imagine what would happen if you took email (asyncronous delivery & universal access), IM buddy lists (presence indicators & ‘mobs’ of interest) and voice mail (”Watson! Come here, I need you!”) and mashed them together; this is YackPack.

I think it’s an intriguing idea but I’m struggling to grasp how folks will react to yet another new communication channel in their lives. No one is ready to dump email or their phone or their IM client (those that use one anyway) in favor of this approach for quite some time. And then, only if everyone else in their ‘mob’ does the same thing.

I’m really not sure how to categorize this so for now it’s going to be ‘uncategorized’.

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