Holiday Hypocrisy

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Hopefully most people don't pay any attention to Bill O'Reilly, but lately he's been blathering on about how there's a liberal secular conspiracy to do away with Christmas and replace "Merry Christmas" with "Happy Holidays". I'm a secular liberal (but neither from Hollywood, nor a Jew, so I guess I'm not 100% evil in O'Reilly's book, only about 75%) and I really don't care what people say. I'm not offended if someone says Merry Christmas, because we celebrate it in my family, though mostly in a secular commercial sort of way that involves buying things wrapped in plastic. I think it's kind of silly that stores bend over backwards to avoid the C-word (no, not THAT C-word) this time of year, but it's hardly something to be outraged about. What is something Bill should be outraged about is that Fox News is selling "The Bill O'Reilly Holiday Ornament". Not the Bill O'Reilly Christmas Ornament, mind you. Apparently, even his own employer values profits above Christian ideals. It does beg the question of what other holiday or religion uses shiny balls, as I doubt many of them will be hanging from Menorahs....

Update: It appears Fox has now changed the ornaments to Christmas ornaments, in order to appease the almighty Bill.

New CPR Guidelines

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For those of us who know CPR, there are new guidelines out from the American Heart Association that change the number of chest compressions from 15 to 30 between the two breaths that you give. My certification has long since lapsed, but I imagine it's time to take a class again, once they are teaching the updated curriculum. Thankfully, I've never had to use CPR on anyone but the teaching dummies.

Studies show that the chest compressions create more blood flow through the heart to the rest of the body, buying time until a defibrillator can be used or the heart can pump blood on its own. Studies have also shown that blood circulation increases with each chest compression and must be built back up after an interruption, the association says in its online journal Circulation.

Wireless Alphabet Soup

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If you thought having 802.11a, b, and g to choose from was too much, get ready for your wireless future:

In July 2005, the FCC opened up the use of the 3.65-3.7 GHz band for public use, previously reserved for fixed satellite service networks. The 802.11y working group will develop a standard to use this band for 802.11 wireless networking while introducing a standards-based mechanism to avoid interfering with existing use of this spectrum. Benefit: More frequency space means more available channels, which is nice since 2.4 GHz is pretty crowded (one of my students recently found 960+ 802.11b/g AP's in downtown LA in 20 minutes of walking around the hotel). A standardized interference avoidance mechanism will also streamline the adoption of new frequencies in the future.

With the addition of 802.11y as a physical layer option for wireless networks, we'll likely see some new combination cards within the next few years to support this frequency. With the addition of 802.11n for MIMO, 802.11e for European 5 GHz networks and 802.11j cards for Japanese 4.9 GHz networks, we'll end up with 802.11a/b/e/g/j/n/y cards. Awesome!