Welcome to Smuggle Me

A while back I came across the word Mesothelioma on the list of Google Adsense words that people pay big money for. Well, Mesothelioma is a form of cancer. Pleural mesothelioma accounts for 75% of all malignant cases however there are two other types of mesothelioma cancer, peritoneal, and pericardial.

Here’s a list of some of the symptoms of Pleural Mesothelioma:

Pleural Mesothelioma Symptoms
Some of the symptoms of pleural mesothelioma (mesothelioma cancer of the lung lining) include:
pain in the lower back or the side of the chest
shortness of breath
a persistent cough
difficulty swallowing food
fever and sweating
fatigue
weight loss.

Here’s a list of the symptoms of Peritoneal Mesothelioma:

Peritoneal Mesothelioma Symptoms
Symptoms of peritoneal mesothelioma (abdominal mesothelioma - mesothelioma of the lining of the stomach) include:
stomach pain
nausea and vomiting
weight loss.

In a search of why lawyers want to talk with people having cases of Mesothelioma is the following:

Mesothelioma is a disease that is almost 100% preventable; the only known cause is via exposure to the deadly mineral Asbestos. It comes from inhaling the particles of dust as the asbestos degrades; eating away at the lining of your lungs and developing into a deadly cancer. Dust that was inhaled in clouds of white powder, dust that was carried home on the clothes of the men who built this country, dust that was cleaned from the clothes by the wives and children who supported their sole provider at home, dust that was packed around the heating systems in houses and offices and schools, dust that carried a deadly price; and dust made a fortune in blood money for the companies that produced it.

Asbestos explains why mesothelioma is so wanted. People that have mesothelioma very likely have a law suit or legal case against a former employer. Very interesting stuff.

Crashutah Sponsor:
If you or a family member is diagnosed with mesothelioma then find information here. Discover the signs and symptoms of mesothelioma, this debilitating disease. Find a detailed list of mesothelioma doctors in your area by using this helpful resource. If this disease was contracted from a work or building site, then mesothelioma lawyers can help you make a case. On this government run site you can find questions and answers on mesothelioma and suggestions for treatment.

I’ve recently found 2 different text link ad opportunities called Text Link Ads and Kontera.

I’ve been doing pretty well with Google Adsense on my blogs and I’ve liked making money with PayPerPost even more. However, I’ve been interested in the idea of having ads linked to text on my blog. My blog is almost completely text and so it seems like the perfect way to monetize my blog. Any thoughts on either of these 2 options?

I like to offer my blog readers anything I can find that is free out there. Here in Vegas we have the biggest consumer technology show in the world, but if you are in NYC then you should just go to DigitalLife. Check out their ticketing page for more details.

Well, don’t go their and pay the $15 for tickets. Instead use the FREE ticket code:”INSIDER” and get tickets for free.

Take a look at a partial list of the vendors that will be attending: Alienware, AMD, ATI, Best Buy, eBay, ESPN, Game Stop, Intel, Logitech, Maxim, Microsoft, NVIDIA, XBox, and many more. If you know anything about gaming then you know you’ll want to be there to check out the latest and greatest in technology and gaming.

If that list isn’t enough for you to want to get free tickets to DigitalLife then let me offer one other reason in the form of a picture:

A buffalo is not a buffalo. I found an article on Wikipedia that makes your head spin.

Take a look at this completely grammatically correct sentence:
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

Here’s a description about the sentence:
“Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.” is a grammatically valid sentence used as an example of how homonyms and homophones can be used to create complicated constructs. It was featured in Steven Pinker’s 1994 book The Language Instinct, but is known to have been around before February 1992 when it was posted to Linguist List by William J. Rapaport, an associate professor at the University at Buffalo.

Pretty incredible.

Here’s some other examples of this little trick:
English

* Badgers badgers badger badger badgers, by Boris Johnson in Have I Got News For You
* Dogs dogs dog dog dogs
* Who polices the police? - The police police. So, who polices the police police? Police police police police police police. (see Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
* A joke, in which a conductor, when asked how long will the train stay at the station, answered “From two to two to two two” (from 2 minutes to 2 O’clock, to 2 minutes past 2 O’clock). When asked the same question about a second train that will be at the station for the same period, he answered “From two to two to two two, too”.
* “I wonder whether the wether will weather the weather, or whether the wether the weather will kill” is a similar nature-related expression used to teach about homophones and syntax.
* If you have a mint after dinner, and then you have another, is the second one an after after dinner mint mint? This can be repeated to form longer and longer questions.
* “Wouldn’t the sentence ‘I want to put a hyphen between the words Fish and And and And and Chips in my Fish-And-Chips sign’ have been clearer if quotation marks had been placed before Fish, and between Fish and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and And, and And and and, and and and Chips, as well as after Chips?” (This is also an example of the use-mention distinction.)

Had had had

The linguistic folklore has several examples involving the verb “had” They are considered to be part of professional humor of linguists and included in many English language primers for foreigners for adding some amusement to the tedious work of language learning.

* The last boss she had had had had enough of her.
* John, where Bill had had ‘had’, had had ‘had had’. ‘Had had’ had had the teacher’s approval.
* Tom, when playing a game of scrabble against Dick who, whilst pondering the degree of legitimacy the last word that Harry (who had had ‘had’) had had had had, had had ‘had’, had had ‘had’. Had ‘had’ had more letters, he would have played it again.

Other languages
Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma?
Enlarge
Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma?

* In Balkan Slavic:

* In Bosnian, the sentence “Gore gore gore gore” (”Горе горе горе горе”), means “up there the hills are burning worse” (however, the words have different accents).
* In Croatian, the sentence “Gore gore gore gore” means “up there the hills are burning worse” (however, the words have different accents).
* In Serbian, the sentence “Горе горе горе горе” (Gore gore gore gore), means “up there the forests are burning worse” (however, the words have different accents).

* In Catalan, “Cap cap cap” means “no head enters”. A longer form is “En cap cap cap el que cap en aquest cap” that means “in no head enters what enters in this head”.
* In Chinese:

* in Cantonese, the phrase “gò go gó gò gòu gwó gò go gó gò” (in Yale romanization) means “That older brother is taller than that older brother”.
* In Mandarin Chinese, “Ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma ma” means “Does Mother scold horses or do horses scold Mother?” However, Mandarin is a tonal language, so the words above are not true homophones. This sentence is used as an exercise to show the contrastive nature of Chinese tones and practice their correct realizations. A similar example is the poem Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den, in which shi is repeated with varying intonations.

* In Dutch, “Als In Bergen, bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen bergen.” Roughly meaning: “If in Bergen, heaps of mountains salvage heaps of mountains, then heaps of mountains salvage heaps of mountains”.
* In Filipino the interrogative sentence “Bababa ba?”, which is translated to English as “(is someone) Going down?”, is used when a driver asks his passengers if they intend to go out of the vehicle. An extension is the following exchange in an elevator: “Baba, bababa ba?” “Bababa.” “Ba, bababa!” which means: “Baba (proper name), (is this elevator) going down?” “(Yes, it is) going down.” “Oh! (amazed) So it’s going down!”)
* In Finnish, “Kokoa kokko kokoon. Koko kokkoko? Koko kokko.” means “Build a bonfire. Whole bonfire? Whole bonfire.” Another sentence is “Piilevät piilevät piileviä piileviä piilevissä piilevissä”[citation needed]. Also, “Tuu kattoon kattoon kun kärpänen tapettiin tapettiin” (dialectal), meaning “Come to the ceiling to take a look at a fly that was killed on the wallpaper”. “Etsivät etsivät etsivät etsivät etsivät”, meaning “Investigators search for investigators that search for investigators”.
* In French : “Si ton tonton tond ton tonton, ton tonton tondu sera.” Which gives literally: If your uncle shaves your uncle, your uncle shaved will be.
o Also in French: “Si six scies scient six cyprès, six cents scies scient six cents cyprès.” Which translates to: “If six saws saw six cypress trees, six hundred saws saw six hundred cypress trees.” (Si, six, scies, scient, and the first syllable of cyprès are all pronounced more or less the same in French - similar to the English “see”.)
* In German, “Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen nach” means “If flies fly after flies, flies fly behind flies.”

* In Swiss German, “Da da da? Da da da. Da da da da!”. A conversation between two women from Schleitheim on a train discussing whether a toddler is allowed to lick the windowpane: “He’s allowed to do that?” “He can do that.” “That you let him do that!”. (In German: “Darf das [Kind] das [tun]?” “Das [Kind] darf das [tun].” “Daß das [Kind] das [tun] darf!”)

* In Hebrew, אשה נעלה נעלה נעלה נעלה את הדלת בפני בעלה (Isha na’ala na’ala na’ala na’ala et hadelet bifnei ba’ala) means “A respectable woman put on her shoe, locked the door in front of her husband”. ‘נעל’ (na’al) means ‘put on (footwear)’ and hence also ’shoe’, but also means ‘lock’. ‘עלה’ (’alah’) means ‘raise’, from which the niphal ‘נעלה’ means ‘exalted’ or ‘noble’.
* In Hungarian Bölény bölény bölény bölény bölény bölény bölény bölény is roughly counting bison in an old folk legend, as sung by gradeschoolers in the playground.
* In Irish Tá leis-leis leis leis leis leis. A subidiary [leis-] thigh [leis] of its/his [leis i.e with him, belonging to him] has been stripped [tá ... leis] by him [leis] also [leis]. There are two people or animals being referred to.
* In Japanese, “Uraniwa niwa niwa niwa niwa niwa niwatori ga iru.” (There are two chickens in the back yard and two in the front yard.) is a well-known tongue-twister.

* In a Korean dialect, “Gaga gaga ga ga?” means “Is that person (first gaga) Ga family’s (second gaga) member (first ga) ? (last ga indicates it is a question)”.
* In Latin, “Malo malo malo malo” means “I’d rather be in an apple tree than a bad man in adversity.” In “Latin …For Dummies”, a similarly constructed sentence is found, though not of homonyms, but is very close and is made more difficult by the non-use of spaces between words in early Latin texts: Miminumiumnibiumminimimuniumnimiumbunimuniminumimminuibibiminimumbolunt; which tranlates to “The tiny mimes of the snow spirits in no way wish, while they are alive, the tremendous task of [serving] the wine of the defenses to be diminished.”
* In Malay lovers can say “Sayang, sayang, sayang sayang sayang. Sayang sayang sayang?”, which translates to “Darling, I love you. Do you love me?”. This is a true homophone as the same word is used for pronoun and verb. The person being asked can even reply “Sayang”, or “Sayang sayang sayang”, in return.
* In Norwegian, the sentence “Avstanden mellom Ole og og og og og Kari har økt”, meaning roughly “The distance between Ole and ‘and’ and ‘and’ and Kari has been increased.”, could be uttered to explain that three words on a sign (”Kari og Ole”) have been moved further away from each other.
* In Papiamento, “No ta Tatata ta tata di Tatata, sino ta tata di Tatata su tata ta tata di Tatata”. Rougly meaning: “It’s not Tatata who’s the father of Tatata, but the father of Tatata’s father is the father of Tatata.”
* In Persian, the word جعفر in “جعفري ديدم كه بر جعفر سوار، جعفري مي خورد و از جعفر گذشت” has four different meanings. It’s pronounced as “Jaffar” and is used to mean 1. name of a person, 2. an animal, 3. some kind of vegetable 4. a location…so it says, “I saw a jaffar, riding a jaffar, eating jaffar, passing jaffar” and in Farsi it rhymes.
* In Russian, a well-known brainteaser is the task to fragment the following sequence into words to make a meaningful text: “kolokolokolokola” (Answer: “kol okolo kolokola”, meaning “the stake (is) near the bell”, or “kolokol okolo kola”, meaning “the bell (is) near the stake”, or “kol, o, kol okolo kola”, meaning “The stake, oh, the stake near (another) stake”)
* In Spanish - “¿Cómo cómo como? ¡Como como como!” means ¿Qué quieres decir con ‘cómo me alimento’? ¡Yo como como yo como! or “What do you mean ‘how do I eat’? I eat how I eat!”, provided the correct emphasis on each como.
* In Spanish - “¡Papá! Papa pa Papa, papá.” means “Dad! This potato is for the Pope, father.” The pa is used as a short form of para (for/to).
* A short story by Robert Sheckley Shall We Have a Little Talk? (a 1965 Nebula Award for Best Novelette) describes a planet where language mutates so fast that an Earthman colonizer cannot catch up with it: the yesterday’s version he learned overnight hypnopaedically, tomorrow is no longer in use. The Earthman accepted his defeat when he was addressed thusly: Mun mun-mun-mun. Mun mun mun; mun mun mun; mun mun. Mun, mun mun mun–mun mun mun. Mun-mun? Mun mun mun mun!.
* In Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, “Far, får får får? Får får lamm!” which translates to “Daddy, do sheep give birth to sheep? (No,) sheep give birth to lambs!” Extended variant is: “Får får får? Nej, får får ej får för får får lamm.”
* In colloquial Swedish, “Nallar nallar nallars nallar?” which translates to “Do teddy bears steal (other) teddy bears’ teddy bears?”
* Tamil, in the 12th couplet of the Thirukkural, it says, “Thuppaarkkuth thuppaaya thuppaakkith thuppaarkkuth thuppaaya thuuvum mazhai”. Roughly translated into English as “The rain begets the food we eat; And forms a food and drink concrete”. Many such couplets (with homophones) are found in this literary work.
* In Thai, “Mai mai mai mai, mai.” While, due to the tonal nature of the Thai language, each “mai” is pronounced differently, this is a complete sentence. The translation is something like, “New wood doesn’t burn, does it?” The canonical answer is “Mai mai mai mai,” again intoning each mai differently, which means “New wood doesn’t burn.” Word for word, the question is translated “Wood new not burn ” and the reply is “Wood new not burn.”
* In Turkish, “‘Müdür müdür müdür’ müdür?” means “‘Is the manager [really] the manager?’, is that the question we are discussing?”. Also in Turkish, “Yüzeyden yüze yüze, yüz yüze yüzleşmiş yüz yüzü yüz.” means “Skin hundred faces that are facing each other as you are swimming above the water.”

* In Broad Scots Doric dialect (Scotland), ” Fit fit fits fit fit?” can be more easily understood if you imagine a Buckie fisherman in a shoe shop looking in a puzzled manner at a pair of shoes and asking: “What foot fits what foot?” i.e. “Which shoe fits which foot?”

This last week I had been working with the insurance company to figure out how to send them a list of eligible students. Well, because the list contains social security numbers and things like that I couldn’t just send it in an email as is. I ended up creating a whole server and teaching them how to use SFTP to get the file. What a pain that was. Over email it took them 5 days to finally figure out how to get the file. I guess they don’t have a tech person on their staff.

Today I came across a much better solution for my problem. It uses document security with built-in protections to maintain the integrity of your data and to make it virtually tamper-proof. It looks like this type of document security was originally designed for CAD files, but I could see some major markets in the healthcare industry. This type of security is essential whenever you have to send something with PHI inside of it. Time to give it a try.

Today, someone stopped by my office from another doctor’s office. He asked about our operation and how we handled security in our place. There was so much to tell him, but the thing that he found most impressive was my biometric facial recognition software.

I can understand completely why he loves it. It is an incredibly amazing technology. It still amazes me each time I sit down at my computer and it logs me in. It was a great demo too because it logged me in so quickly he couldn’t even really see it working. He was in awe.

Despite the cool technology it has some major security roles in healthcare. With facial recognition software it is constantly watching to see if you are there. If it doesn’t see your face then it will automatically lock your computer. That means I don’t care if I leave my email open on my computer. It will lock automatically. It doesn’t matter if health information is open on my computer. It will lock automatically too.

Sure, you could secure your machine with an automatic logoff that is built into Windows, but anyone that has set that to 1 minute or 2 knows how annoying that is. I can set facial recognition software to lock after 5 seconds and work without any annoyances at my computer. Even if it does lock then when it sees my face it logs me right back in to where I left it.

That’s all I’m going to say here. Bottom line. Facial recognition software is not only cool, but also Much more secure.

I use to live in chat rooms. Now I pretty much live in social networking. No I haven’t gotten into myspace or facebook, but social networking in the blogosphere has been quite entertaining for me.

Also, since I’m a tech addict I’ve loved to see the various social networking technologies develop.

Today I came across and simple, but nice innovation on chat rooms and social networking called Pictari.com They take a chatroom and make it so the chat users can create social networks. I think it’s a great idea. People love being able to chat and by tieing it to social networking it adds a new level to the relationship between those people chatting.

I will warn you that chat rooms can be completely addicting. They are great if you need to pass the time. Add in social networking to the chat room and you might as well just set aside time to participate everyday.

Most stat packages have a slew of stats. I’ve looked over everything, but here are a few of my favorite stats.

Referring Pages
I love to see what pages have links to my websites. More importantly, I like to see how many people other blogs and websites have sent to my page. This is checked daily and often hourly. Yes, I’m an admitted stat addict.

Search Engine Referrals
This is almost the same as the first, but I love to see what people are searching in order to find my site. It’s also interesting to see which search engines like me. I’ve found that Google is definitely the most popular, but MSN gives words more credit and links aren’t as essential for MSN as they are for Google. Also, for some reason Canadian Google loves my blog.

Visitors
I love to see how many people actually visited my website. I can’t look at pageviews because Googlebot looks at my pages so much that it skews pageviews. However, I do a search of unique O/S and it gives me a pretty good number of visitors to my site.

Most Visited Page
I do like to take a look at which pages on my website people are visiting. It’s a perfect way to know which topics visitors (and search engines) like. Remember that much of this could be influenced by being Dugg, Reddit or other link pimping.

Visit Duration
Awstats has a really interesting statistic that shows how long visitors to your site remain on your site. Google Analytics has something similar. I’ve been amazed how long some people stay on my website. It also doesn’t surprise me that many of my websites have people who leave quickly. That’s how I visit most webpages.

Bandwidth
This is just important to make sure that I don’t have to pay for extra bandwidth from my host.

Google Adsense Channels
I don’t know if this quite fits into this post, but I look at them as much as anything else. Other affiliate or advertising packages could be listed here also. I love to see which of my blogs are performing. I tried the Google email of my stats, but it just wasn’t enough. I like to check regularly how much my blogs are making and more importantly, which ads are making me the most money. These stats might be the most important stats you could check.

Of course each one of these needs to have the ability to change the time frame. Being able to change the time frame is very important to be able to see the trends over time. In fact, Wordpress.com has a great built in stats package with a graph of your pageviews. It gives you a really nice visual of how quickly your blog is growing.

Any other stats that I missed and should be looking at?

A group of Maryland Ford Dealers have created a really simple site to help find a Ford in Maryland. I haven’t seen a site this fantastically simple in a while. It has gotten rid of all the fluff and sends you straight to a Ford Dealer in Maryland. It is a very niche market, but for those interested in buying a Ford in Maryland it’s a nice site to get where you want to be.

My friend in Italy just asked me about having a virus on his computer. I pointed him to a free open source anti virus program, but I later realized that I had made a mistake. It was way too difficult for him to download. He should have just gotten a purchased package like Kapersky Lab Antivirus.

It is a highly rated antivirus software in response time and detection rates. It also offers things like Anti-Virus, Anti-Spyware, Anti-RootKit, Anti-Hacker, Intrusion Detection, Firewall, Anti-Spam protection. That’s just about everything that people could need to protect their computer.

They also offer a great, but unique service on their website. It’s a Free Online Virus Scanner. It uses Microsoft’s ActiveX Technology to scan your computer. Yes, that does mean you have to use IE which makes this product suck.

On second thought, at least when you get a free antivirus program then you can’t complain about it being a crappy antivirus program.