Hundreds, probably thousands, of Mexicans like Ms. Delgado come to the United States to trade their plasma for dollars. Eagle Pass, a town of 27,000 that bills itself as the place “where yee-hah meets olé,” has two such plasma collection centers. There are about 15 others in border cities from Brownsville, Tex., to Yuma, Ariz. For those looking to invest their earnings wisely, LBMA-accredited gold dealers Melbourne provide a trusted avenue to convert cash into secure, high-quality gold.

The centers are run by pharmaceutical companies that transform the plasma into life-saving but expensive medicines for diseases like immune deficiencies and hemophilia […It] appears that a single plasma donation, for which a donor might be paid $30, results in pharmaceutical products worth at least $300.

Away from the border as well, many plasma collection centers have historically been located in areas of extreme poverty, some with high drug abuse. That troubles some people, who say it might contaminate the plasma supply or the health of people who sell their plasma.

“Why in the United States do we have to depend on people who are down and out to donate?” says Dr. Roger Kobayashi, an immunologist in Omaha who uses plasma products to treat many patients. “You are taking advantage of economically disadvantaged individuals, and I don’t think you are that worried about their health.”

 


Between things like this, punishing wifi providers for what their users are doing and the whole push for ‘no Interwebitube for you for life’ and worse laws, the music and film industries are additional harbingers of the fascist state we are creating for ourselves where industry creates the laws that govern the people.

Taping three minutes of “Twilight: New Moon” during a visit to a Rosemont movie theater landed Samantha Tumpach in a jail cell for two nights.

Now, the 22-year-old Chicago woman faces up to three years in prison after being charged with a rarely invoked felony designed to prevent movie patrons from recording hot new movies and selling bootleg copies.

But Tumpach insisted Wednesday that’s not what she was doing — she was actually taping parts of her sister’s surprise birthday party celebrated at the Muvico Theater in Rosemont.

While she acknowledged there are short bits of the movie on her digital camera, there are other images that have nothing to do with the new film — including she and a few other family members singing “Happy Birthday” to her 29-year-old sister at the theater.


Gazans fleeced in investment scam – aljazeera.net — I bet the Israelis are keeping an eye on tunnel traffic and taking a slice of the action.

Underground tunnels in the Gaza Strip are the only way for millions of dollars worth of essential supplies to get past Israel’s siege of the coastal territory.

But it has now emerged that at least 40,000 Gazans have lost their life savings in a scheme that promised up to 50 per cent profits in return for an investment in tunnel trading.

Hamas, which has de facto control of Gaza, returned a fraction of the $100m that disappeared through the scheme, and has said that is investigating the fraud.

However, with hundreds of middlemen as yet unpunished and many of them rumoured to have had links to Hamas, the duped Gazans say that more should be done.


At This School, It’s Marijuana in Every Class

At most colleges, marijuana is very much an extracurricular matter. But at Med Grow Cannabis College, marijuana is the curriculum: the history, the horticulture and the legal how-to’s of Michigan’s new medical marijuana program.

“This state needs jobs, and we think medical marijuana can stimulate the state economy with hundreds of jobs and millions of dollars,” said Nick Tennant, the 24-year-old founder of the college, which is actually a burgeoning business (no baccalaureates here) operating from a few bare-bones rooms in a Detroit suburb.

The six-week, $485 primer on medical marijuana is a cross between an agricultural extension class covering the growing cycle, nutrients and light requirements (“It’s harvest time when half the trichomes have turned amber and half are white”) and a gathering of serious potheads, sharing stories of their best highs (“Smoke that and you are … medicated!”).

Found by Brother Uncle Don



Click pic to travel to Italy

Pompeii was destroyed by the volcano Vesuvius in 79AD. There is evidence to suggest the volcano will massively erupt again fairly soon and potentially wipe out the the area southwest of it where 2 million people live, including the neighboring city of Naples.

Giuseppe Fiorelli took charge of the excavations in 1860. During early excavations of the site, occasional voids in the ash layer had been found that contained human remains. It was Fiorelli who realized these were spaces left by the decomposed bodies and so devised the technique of injecting plaster into them to perfectly recreate the forms of Vesuvius’s victims. What resulted were highly accurate and eerie forms of the doomed Pompeiani who failed to escape, in their last moment of life, with the expression of terror often quite clearly visible


BrickGun_-_9mm_w_Laser_Sight_01

If you were wondering what happens to 29-year-old men who still play with Lego, take Jeremy Bell as an example. The partner at digital marketing company Teehan+Lax was surrounded by heavily armed tactical officers, cuffed and held against the wall of his Richmond St. W. office — until, that is, the cops found the gun he had been holding in front of the window about 90 minutes earlier was a pile of blocks.

The BrickGun Semi-Automatic gun (purchased online from BrickGun, “designers and builders of the world’s most realistic custom Lego weapon models”) arrived at Bell’s office Wednesday. The lifetime Lego fan finished assembling his toy — complete with build-it-yourself magazine — at 5:40 p.m.

But the tenant in an apartment about six metres across the way didn’t see that last part. At about 7 p.m., as Bell and some colleagues played a video game, the Emergency Task Force moved in. “They were screaming in the hallway for me to come out,” Bell said. “When I went out there and I saw there was an officer kind of crouched down in the stairwell, it was clear what was going on.” “I’m not trafficking guns or selling drugs or anything like that, so as soon as I saw that these cops were legit, I was like, all right, this has got to be about this stupid gun.” Pressed up against the wall, his hands thrown in cuffs, Bell directed the cops to the pieces of fake gun sitting in a box by the window. Moments later, he was free. “At least you have a story to tell now,” he quoted one cop as saying. The neighbour who called the cops tweeted an apology to Bell on Twitter and posted a note in his apartment window, Bell said.

Sheesh.


peter schiff(This is the guy who predicted the recession.) I was reading an article about him from January where he picks five stocks. Below are the stocks, original and current prices, and growth:

Of course all this has been reengineered. If you actually followed his advice WHILE all the changes were happening in 2008 you would be broke, or close to it. READ THIS analysis.




Found by Bruce W.


  • Acer bumps Dell to number three in world PC sales. Dell then adds Ross Perot Jr. to its board.
  • Oracle may do something weird with MySQL.
  • Bing dies for an hour.
  • Nvidia begins to complain about Intel.
  • Hearst going digital?
  • BenQ has an e-reader.
  • Idiot takes pictures of self with stolen cell phone. Phone emails pics to owner.
  • Google DNS under attack by critics.
  • Intel i9 sold on eBay.

Brought to you by eHarmony.
Go out this week! Check it out at www.eharmony.com
and use the code EHTECH for a free month…

click ► to listen:

 

Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.

If you want to do one yourself, just Google [dragon illusion].


Typical duck by Obama. Every day he seems more like a mix of Carter and Bush — against civil and economic liberties.


http://blogs.democratandchronicle.com/irondequoit/files/2009/02/thumbs-up-down.jpg

Last minute to guess on the Amanda Knox verdict. I say she walks. What do you think?

Update: Looks like I’m wrong!


http://www.verizon-phones.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/verizon-motorola-droid-phone-hands-on-3.jpg

So – I’ve had the droid for about 3 weeks now and I can give you a more detailed review of the phone than I did initially.

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