Season Four of the History Channel’s series Ice Road Trucker begins tonight at 9 pm. Heart throb and hottie Lisa Kelly continues double clutching and gear jamming her way alongside the big boys.

Lisa Kelly, Ice Road Trucker season 3

Show Schedule

Season Premiere Sunday, June 6, at 9/8c
Episodes in the next 2 weeks

1. Sunday, Jun 6, 8/7c Arctic Thaw: TVPG L
2. Sunday, Jun 6, 9/8c Breaking Through: TVPG L
3. Wednesday, Jun 9, 9/8c Breaking Through: TVPG L
4. Sunday, Jun 13, 8/7c Breaking Through: TVPG L
5. Sunday, Jun 13, 9/8c The Polar Bear Returns: TVPG
6. Wednesday, Jun 16, 9/8c The Polar Bear Returns: TVPG

• Official Kick-Ass site
• Internet Movie Data Base site for Kick-Ass

Have you ever wanted to be a super hero? Dreamed of donning a mask and just heading outside to some kick-ass? Well, this is the book for you – the comic that starts where other super-hero books draw the line.

The print and broadcast media have swarmed into Haiti and now the news is filled with their perception of what isn’t getting done. I would like to address some of these in order to bring some perspective to the wails from the media.

IT IS A DISASTER
When there is a disaster, people are at risk and people die. That’s why it is called a disaster. We need to recognize that a great many people have died and many more are going to die despite our best efforts.

PEOPLE ARE HUNGRY
Most of the population of the Port-au-Prince area relied upon charitable aid from outside Haiti for part or all of their daily existence. Let’ engage our brains and look at some numbers.

Assume that a million people in the PaP area have no food. That means that they need at least one meal today, and tomorrow, and so on. If a plane brings in enough supplies for ten thousand meals, that means that 990,000 people go hungry today and 1 million go hungry tomorrow.

Supplies have to be produced. If all the disaster relief storehouses are emptied, more must be manufactured, shipped and purchased. That takes time. And, let’s not forget that millions of people elsewhere in the world also need those supplies and they were in line first.

In Haiti’s climate, people need about 2 quarts of water per day. 2 million quarts of water every single day. Just where do the bottles for that water magically appear from? The water tankers?

PEOPLE ARE TRAPPED
Most of the people who were buried alive by the earthquake will die. There is no way to rescue all of them. If, somehow, every search and rescue team in the world had arrived just after the quake, most of those trapped would still die. Urban search and rescue takes time. Every building must be examined and searched carefully and safely. There are tens of thousands of buildings in ruins in the quake zone. It is and was never humanly possible to search even a fraction of them before people that are trapped die from lack of water or their injuries.

PEOPLE ARE INJURED
For every injured person you need several aid workers. If 100,000 Haitians are injured in Port-au-Prince, you would need 300,000 plus aid workers just to treat their injuries. The workers need places to work, places to sleep, food and water and medical supplies – all of which are in very short supply. And all of that material is needed on top of the needs of the people in the city.

MEDIA
The media in general have little understanding of logistics. Their food comes from a supermarket or a restaurant. They sleep in hotels. They cannot grasp the concept that in a DISASTER all of the necessities people need to survive must come from outside the area. They cannot understand that food does not come from the supermarket but through a long supply chain that stretches back to a farm somewhere.

Port-au-Prince has one airport, all of Haiti has one airport that can handle the large freight carrying planes. It is a bottleneck that cannot be changed. Until the port is safe to use, all the supplies are coming through the airport.

With the arrival of the United States military, some other options open up. Only the United States has the ability to move supplies to beaches, small landing strips and open areas. That said, it only changes the bottleneck from a very large one to a large one. Most media have no grasp of the amount of material a ship can carry when compared to even the largest plane. Only a working seaport will begin to make a dent in the human need that we see in the news.

Until we have Star Trek’s transporters and food synthesizers, shipping and travel will take time and food must be grown, processed, packaged and shipped.

HOW TO HELP
The thousands of charities that work in Haiti or want to work in Haiti are all competing for your donations. Give to those you have given to in the past and trust. Give through their local branches. Ask if they need volunteers because if you can fill a slot locally, they might be able to free staff to assist in Haiti.

Pray for the people of Haiti, the aid workers and everyone who is working so hard to save those we can. And, pray also for those we cannot save.

Looks like Miley Cyrus is wrapping up the Hannah Montana show. While some Disney execs seem to be out of the loop, there has been confirmation that this is the show’s last season.

Miley turns 18 on November 23, 2010. She may be looking to move into adulthood through another entertainment venue, probably the movies. She is still in the Disney stable, at least until she takes after many of the women that preceded her and fall apart with drugs, lesbian affairs and a career in the toilet.

CBS News Exclusive: Study Of State Results Finds H1N1 Not As Prevalent As Feared

Chuck Simmins states:

I looked at the story and my jaw dropped. Without any research at all, I could tell something was wrong with their numbers.

CBS graphic for story on confirmed H1N1 testing

These numbers are supposed to be through late July, when the CDC asked the states to change their reporting. As we have shown in our prior reports, many of the states had ceased reporting case numbers long before.

Florida:

• Florida had stopped publicly posting case counts before Memorial Day in May, 2009. The numbers in the table were updated with the CDC’s count.
• CBS states that by the end of July, Florida had examined 8,853 specimens and only 17% were positive for H1N1. That means the CBS number of confirmed cases at that point is 1,505.
• However, based on the cases reported to the CDC by July 17, Florida had 2,188 confirmed cases.

California:

• CBS is reporting that California had examined 13,704 specimens and only 2% were H1N1. That makes the CBS case count 274.
• On July 16, 2009, California was reporting 2,655 confirmed cases and 513 probable cases of swine flu.

Alaska:

• CBS is reporting that Alaska had examined 722 specimens and only 1% were H1N1. That makes the CBS case count 7.
• As of August 31, a month after the apparent cutoff for the CBS data, Alaska reported 460 confirmed cases of swine flu.

Georgia:

• The final state that CBS selected to graph was Georgia. CBS says 3,117 specimens and only 2% were H1N1. That gives CBS a confirmed case count of 62.
• Through July 15, 2009, Georgia reported 178 confirmed cases of swine flu.

From the beginning, we raised questions about the data on swine flu. We noted, and were the media source responsible for correcting, the nearly three week delay in updating California’s numbers. We noted the “lost” cases, where the numbers on the state site were higher than those reported by the CDC.

We have editorialized about the lack of preparedness on the part of public health authorities to handle a large disease outbreak. Their unwillingness to divert resources from other areas such as lead paint abatement and childhood obesity has been noted.

We agree that the decision to stop widespread testing was unwise. We agree that there are a number of influenza like illnesses (ILI) circulating.

But this story by CBS does nothing to advance the cause. The numbers are just plain wrong. The selection of the four states they chose for their graph is also misleading. Alaska and Georgia did not suffer a major outbreak of swine flu in the spring. California’s was mid sized and Florida’s was, as well. If CBS wanted to look at states, Wisconsin, Illinois, Massachusetts and Washington would have been ideal picks. That is where the pandemic took hold the worst.