Las Vegas Now

A sixth gastroenterology center in the valley has shut down. The latest one is in North Las Vegas and was closed late Tuesday afternoon. The City of North Las Vegas sent out a cease and desist letter to one of the clinics, shutting it down until the at least March 19, 2008. The city said the clinic demonstrated a willful failure to be sanitary and called it a public nuisance. It now has to stop all operations or face arrest. Tuesday at the fifth clinic, a Henderson city inspector met with staff and went out to his car for contact information and paperwork. When he came back, the doors were locked and management told everyone to leave before the inspection even began. The City of Henderson then pulled the license. City employees used the clinic, so now they must also be tested.

“It’s ill advised. It’s difficult to understand why they would do that, why they would not cooperate, why they would lock our inspector out. It’s very difficult to understand,” she said. If charges of criminal neglect go forward, Roger believes it could be one to six years for each infected patient — meaning a potential of thousands of years in prison for the doctors.

Eight more former patients at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada have tested positive for hepatitis B and C, according to one Valley physician. This revelation comes as the Southern Nevada Health District closes a sixth facility managed by the same physician. Dr. Mike Karagiozis worked with Lab Corp. to test hundreds of people Saturday who were exposed to the virus by the Endoscopy Center. During that round of testing, Karagiozis said there were eight more people diagnosed with hepatits B and C. Most of the patients tested on Saturday were culinary workers. During their testing, Karagoizis said they told physicians they had HIV while they were patients at the Endoscopy Center.

On the rare occasion that I see a doctor these days, I feel like I am talking to a salesman. After all, they do have expensive diagnostic equipment that they need to pay for.

Andrew Horowitz of the Disciplined Investor showed me this vid nearly a month ago and I thought it was mildly amusing until I began to hear about Yahoo and AOL talking about a merger. Here he overlays the two websites. Except for the logo, they are the same layout.

Las Vegas Now

Billions of gallons of water will pour into the Grand Canyon and eventually into Lake Mead. The Bureau of Reclamation is planning a massive water release by opening the flood gates at the Glen Canyon Dam at Lake Powell starting Wednesday. The release will create a springtime flood along the Colorado River, like ones that occurred before the dam was built. The bureau says it will improve the ecology and recreation in the Grand Canyon. But some believe the flood could harm sensitive areas.

The Glen Canyon Dam is upstream from Hoover Dam. Water that leaves that dam flows through the Grand Canyon and then ultimately ends up in Lake Mead before reaching the Hoover Dam. Wednesday morning, the Bureau of Reclamation plans to open up the dam to send a massive amount of water flooding into the Grand Canyon. It will come out of four massive jet tubes, which bypass the dam’s hydroelectric plant. The hope is to mimic natural floods which occurred before this dam was completed in the 1960’s, scouring miles of river banks in the depths of the Grand Canyon. To give an idea of how much water is being released during that time, the total amount of water released will amount to about 2/3 of what Nevada is entitled to draw from the Colorado River over an entire year.

I hope they give the river rafters a “heads up”.

Full text: Microsoft execs on Vista problems

A federal judge today unsealed internal Microsoft e-mails that have been used to support the plaintiffs’ case in the lawsuit over the “Windows Vista Capable” program. Snippets were previously read aloud in court, but the full messages go further to reveal extensive hand-wringing, at the highest levels of the company, over Windows Vista’s hardware and software compatibility problems after the operating system was launched.

Click here for complete internal email messages from Microsoft

found by Howard Harawitz

She may be Germany’s most prominent woman, but Chancellor Angela Merkel found Vodafone’s new image search software could not identify her.

“I am not in the database,” Merkel said when testing Vodafone’s Otello, a search engine that uses images instead of words, at the CeBIT technology trade fair in Hanover.

“That’s a major gap — please update,” Merkel quipped.

Not exactly ready for prime time.

National Insurance Numbers (NINOs): Format and Security: What to do if you suspect or discover fraud Welcome to the 21st Century.

CLICK HERE

found by Bertie Beattie

the Daily Mail

This is the world’s smallest gun – and although it might look like a harmless toy to some it is anything but as it is capable at firing deadly bullets at a speed of 300mph. The Swiss Minigun, being marketed as a collector’s item, is two inches long, and fires 4.53mm bullets. Costing £3,000 in stainless steel, a gold-plated, diamond-studded version is also available. It cannot be imported into the UK, and buyers in Switzerland and Europe must get a permit from police to own one. The gun is banned in the US – because it is too small to qualify for sporting purposes.

Used by the worlds smallest criminals, you could possibly put an eye out with that thing……maybe!

chicagotribune.com

What do you do when your son is late to a tennis tuneup and team tryouts are two days away? A Lake Villa man hopped in his Piper Clipper airplane Saturday, breezed above the congested roads and landed at a golf course across a highway from the tennis club, where skis on the underside of his four-seater glided across the snow-covered fairway. Police received worried calls about a plane circling twice, then touching down at the Crane’s Landing golf course at the Marriott Lincolnshire Resort. Officials thought they might have a crash, with victims to attend to. Instead, they found Robert Kadera, 65, and his 14-year-old son trudging through the snow, Prince racket and a bag of tennis balls in hand. They had parked on the 7th fairway, just 20 feet south of the retaining wall for Illinois Highway 22. “We’re all pretty dumbfounded,” Lincolnshire Police Chief Randy Melvin said Monday. “I don’t have any idea what the guy was thinking. ….. He was going to park his plane across the street like nobody would notice.”

Kadera said he didn’t want to discuss the particulars of what happened because of potential charges against him. His son, Isaac, a sophomore at Carmel High School in Mundelein, was on his way Monday afternoon to try out for the junior-varsity tennis team.

I’ve heard of soccer moms, but this is ludicrous.

Democrats faced the prospect of at least six more weeks of tough campaigning after Hillary Clinton’s Tuesday night wins in Tuesday’s primaries in Ohio and Texas as she escaped a knockout blow by Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton won primaries in Rhode Island, Texas and Ohio Tuesday night while Barack Obama won Vermont.

“Ohio has written a new chapter in the history of this campaign, and we’re just getting started,” Clinton told supporters in her victory speech in Ohio.

“More and more people have joined this campaign, and millions of Americans haven’t spoken yet. In states like Pennsylvania and so many others, people are watching this historic campaign, and they want their turn to help make history.”

Will Hillary accept the vice-president spot on Obama’s ticket?

We’ve done numerous stories over the years about how easy it is to rig a Diebold voting machine. But this is plain, old, low-tech fraud.

Investigation Launched Into Vote Stealing

Voters reported being turned away from the polls, prompting a criminal investigation into vote stealing, Local 2 Investigates reported Tuesday.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office confirmed it is contacting the victims, all centered around Precinct 219 in southeast Houston.

“I feel really hurt,” said Garland Boone, a voter in the Third Ward neighborhood off Yellowstone, where the scam was reported.

He said his neighbors who are victims “don’t have a chance to express their vote. Everybody needs to express their own vote.”

Precinct Judge Edna Russell told Local 2 Investigates that some senior citizen voters had to be turned away because absentee ballots had already been mailed in using their names.

“Somebody had already voted for me,” said Georgia Ireland.

And in a vaguely related story, McCain says if elected he won’t delve into all the corruption charges leveled against Bush & Co. How forgiving of him.

Want a sugar pill to work really well? Charge more for it.

A study published on Tuesday shows the well-known “placebo effect” works even better if the dummy pill costs more…

Eighty-five percent of volunteers who thought they were getting a $2.50 pill said they felt less pain after taking it, compared with 61 percent of those who thought they were getting a discounted drug.

The results fit with other studies that show charging more for something makes people value it more. But Ariely said the combination with the placebo effect was especially interesting.

Support your local pharmco, eh?

Vatican recants with a statue of Galileo – Timesonline.co.uk: Four hundred years after it put Galileo on trial for heresy the Vatican is to complete its rehabilitation of the great scientist by erecting a statue of him inside the Vatican walls.

The planned statue is to stand in the Vatican gardens near the apartment in which Galileo was incarcerated while awaiting trial in 1633 for advocating heliocentrism, the Copernican doctrine that the Earth revolves around the Sun.
Nicola Cabibbo, head of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences and a nuclear physicist, said: “The Church wants to close the Galileo affair and reach a definitive understanding not only of his great legacy but also of the relationship between science and faith.”

400 years? What took you so long?

Gary Gygax helped keep me out of trouble when I was in junior high school.

I was saddened to hear that Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons and Dragons and the father of modern role-playing games, has died. He was 69 years old.

For many of us who grew up before PCs became ubiquitous and long before it was cool to be a geek, Gygax’s creation meant Friday nights spent playing games with your friends, not wishing you were someone else. Instead of finding creative ways to break the law, we were busy rolling 20-sided dice and doing battle with Orcs and other evil beasts…

So let’s pay our respects: You have to wonder how many of today’s writers, computer programmers, video game creators, and other creative sorts wiled away their winter nights playing D&D. Thanks, Mr. Gygax. You allowed us to use our brains.

I’ll second that emotion.