Elizabeth McCaughey Leaves Position as Director of Cantel Medical One Day After Daily Show Interview

— Uncategorized

Elizabeth McCaughey has gained attention recently as being the source of the “Death Panel” discussions that have brought our news networks to a halt time and time again. Leave it to John Stewart over at The Daily Show to pwn her on national television and cause her to leave her position as the director of Cantel Medical the next day. Congratulations John Stewart: you officially pwn the death panel.

Here’s an excerpt from the press release on Friday, August 21st, 2009:

“CANTEL MEDICAL CORP. (NYSE: CMN – News) announced that on August 20, 2009 it received a letter of resignation from Ms. Elizabeth McCaughey as a director of the Company. Ms. McCaughey, who had served as a director since 2005, stated that she was resigning to avoid any appearance of a conflict of interest during the national debate over healthcare reform.”

Resigned? After her performance on The Daily Show, I’m surprised she wasn’t tarred and feathered. John Stewart, yet again, has delivered what other “news correspondents” could not, and publicly debunked most everything the poor woman was trying to say.

Want to see what happened? Check it out.

Part I:

Part II:

Part II – Extended Interview (great stuff here too)

She agreed numerous times to points John Stewart was making in such an absent fashion that the audience could do nothing more than laugh and applaud. She also referred to John Stewart as one would a small dog whilst calling him cute, and “good at arithmetic” in such a Palinesque fashion that I thought a “youbetcha” would erupt at any moment.

Well done John Stewart. Well done.

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Improved AJAX, XHTML, and RSS Safe Function for Converting Entities to ASCII in PHP

— Geekery

In March, I reported on a particular problem that may or may not have arisen for developers. In short: WebKit and, consequently, Google Chrome might have introduced some problems for developers who weren’t properly converting their variables to ensure they were safe for XHTML, RSS and AJAX by converting their characters to the proper ASCII format.

Here’s the solution that I came up with in March:

function clean_string_for_valid_xml($string) {
    $entities_array = array();
    foreach (get_html_translation_table(HTML_ENTITIES, ENT_QUOTES) as $character => $entity) {
        $entities_array[$entity] = '&#' . ord($character) . ';';
    }
    return str_replace(array_keys($entities_array), $entities_array, $string);
}

While this will take care of most special entities that may have to be commonly dealt with, get_html_translation_table, the built-in PHP function designated to handle these type of operations, doesn’t provide a comprehensive list of the entities or elements that one may encounter when dealing with the aforementioned standards where ASCII conversion is necessary. In fact, there are quite a few elements that are missed.

After doing a bit of searching on the internet, I feel I have compiled a fairly complete list of entities that do not appear in get_html_translation_table that may assist people relying on the PHP built-ins. This will handle characters ranging from “ to Ω and all of your ∗ and ≅ characters too.

So, here you go:

clean_string_for_xhtml($string) {
    $entities_array = array();
    foreach (get_html_translation_table(HTML_ENTITIES, ENT_QUOTES) as $character => $entity) {
        $entities_array[$entity] = '&#' . ord($character) . ';';
    }
    $entities_array += array ('''=>''', '−'=>'-', 'ˆ'=>'^', '˜'=>'~', 'Š'=>'Š', '‹'=>'‹', 'Œ'=>'Œ', '‘'=>'‘' , '’'=>'’', '“'=>'“', '”'=>'”', '•'=>'•', '–'=>'–', '—'=>'—', '˜'=>'˜', '™'=>'™', 'š'=>'š', '›'=>'›', 'œ'=>'œ', 'Ÿ'=>'Ÿ', 'ÿ'=>'ÿ', 'Œ'=>'Œ', 'œ'=>'œ', 'Š'=>'Š', 'š'=>'š', 'Ÿ'=>'Ÿ', 'ƒ'=>'ƒ', 'ˆ'=>'ˆ', '˜'=>'˜', 'Α'=>'Α', 'Β'=>'Β', 'Γ'=>'Γ', 'Δ'=>'Δ', 'Ε'=>'Ε', 'Ζ'=>'Ζ', 'Η'=>'Η', 'Θ'=>'Θ', 'Ι'=>'Ι', 'Κ'=>'Κ', 'Λ'=>'Λ', 'Μ'=>'Μ', 'Ν'=>'Ν', 'Ξ'=>'Ξ', 'Ο'=>'Ο', 'Π'=>'Π', 'Ρ'=>'Ρ', 'Σ'=>'Σ', 'Τ'=>'Τ', 'Υ'=>'Υ', 'Φ'=>'Φ', 'Χ'=>'Χ', 'Ψ'=>'Ψ', 'Ω'=>'Ω', 'α'=>'α', 'β'=>'β', 'γ'=>'γ', 'δ'=>'δ', 'ε'=>'ε', 'ζ'=>'ζ', 'η'=>'η', 'θ'=>'θ', 'ι'=>'ι', 'κ'=>'κ', 'λ'=>'λ', 'μ'=>'μ', 'ν'=>'ν', 'ξ'=>'ξ', 'ο'=>'ο', 'π'=>'π', 'ρ'=>'ρ', 'ς'=>'ς', 'σ'=>'σ', 'τ'=>'τ', 'υ'=>'υ', 'φ'=>'φ', 'χ' =>'χ', 'ψ'=>'ψ', 'ω'=>'ω', 'ϑ'=>'ϑ', 'ϒ'=>'ϒ', 'ϖ'=>'ϖ', ' '=>' ', ' '=>' ', ' '=>' ', '‌'=>'‌', '‍'=>'‍', '‎'=>'‎', '‏'=>'‏', '–'=>'–', '—'=>'—', '‘'=>'‘', '’'=>'’', '‚'=>'‚', '“'=>'“',     '”'=>'”', '„'=>'„', '†'=>'†', '‡'=>'‡', '•'=>'•', '…'=>'…', '‰'=>'‰', '′'=>'′', '″'=>'″', '‹'=>'‹', '›'=>'›', '‾'=>'‾', '⁄'=>'⁄', '€'=>'€', 'ℑ'=>'ℑ', '℘'=>'℘', 'ℜ'=>'ℜ', '™'=>'™', 'ℵ'=>'ℵ', '←'=>'←', '↑'=>'↑', '→'=>'→', '↓'=>'↓', '↔'=>'↔', '↵'=>'↵', '⇐'=>'⇐', '⇑'=>'⇑', '⇒'=>'⇒', '⇓'=>'⇓', '⇔'=>'⇔', '∀'=>'∀', '∂'=>'∂', '∃'=>'∃', '∅'=>'∅', '∇'=>'∇', '∈'=>'∈', '   ∉'=>'∉', '∋'=>'∋', '∏'=>'∏', '∑'=>'∑', '−'=>'−', '∗'=>'∗', '√'=>'√', '∝'=>'∝', '∞'=>'∞', '∠'=>'∠', '∧'=>'∧', '∨'=>'∨', '∩'=>'∩', '∪'=>'∪', '∫'=>'∫', '∴'=>'∴', '∼'=>'∼', '≅'=>'≅', '≈'=>'≈', '≠'=>'≠', '≡'=>'≡', '≤'=>'≤', '≥'=>'≥', '⊂'=>'⊂', '⊃'=>'⊃', '⊄'=>'⊄', '⊆'=>'⊆', '⊇'=>'⊇', '⊕'=>'&    #8853;', '⊗'=>'⊗', '⊥'=>'⊥', '⋅'=>'⋅', '⌈'=>'⌈', '⌉'=>'⌉', '⌊'=>'⌊', '⌋'=>'⌋', '⟨'=>'〈', '⟩'=>'〉', '◊'=>'◊', '♠'=>'♠', '♣'=>'♣', '♥'=>'♥', '♦'=>'♦');
 
    return str_replace(array_keys($entities_array), $entities_array, $string);
}

Hope that helps others. Any comments or fixes to the code? Please post them below.

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Beaverhead County Decides to Defer Prosecution of Summer Day in Medical Marijuana Case

— Misc

In February of 2008, I reported on the arrests of Scott and Summer Day. Scott and Summer were doing what so many Americans are finding themselves doing these days: growing their own medicine in the form of cannabis. Scott suffered from a rare condition that usually took the lives of its victims at around age 12. Because of this, he required upwards of $40,000 worth of treatment every month; cannabis provided a relief the costly medicines could not provide.

Almost a year ago, I regretfully extended that report with the loss of a good man: Scott Day. He and his wife found their lives wrapped up in the turmoil of the drug war; the stress of which, ultimately aided in the untimely death of Scott.

In that report, I pleaded for anyone and everyone to contact the appropriate departments in Beaverhead County, Montana to try and halt the prosecution of Scott’s wife, Summer. She was still facing 2 years to life in prison and a fine of up to $50,000 after having to deal with the blow of losing her husband.

Now, I am pleased to report some wonderful news! According to Patients & Families United, Summer Day has had her prosecution deferred! Here’s the quote:

We are very pleased to announce that Beaverhead County has decided to defer its planned prosecution of Summer Day.

Many of you know Summer well, from past gatherings we’ve held, and also knew her husband, Scott Day, who died last September. They became cherished members of the Patients & Families United network from the moment we met them, soon after the western Montana drug task force invaded their home and destroyed Scott’s medicinal garden. At the time, they were medical marijuana patients – but unregistered with the state health department.

In our view, the county’s unnecessary but relentless prosecution of Scott and Summer Day contributed mightily to the worsening of Scott’s health and his premature death. The county attorney’s continued attempt to prosecute Summer, even after Scott had perished, was unfounded and especially unconscionable.

We congratulate Summer on having this legal cloud finally dissipate, and we thank her attorney, public defender Jon Moog, for all his hard work on Summer’s (and Scott’s) behalf. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to know and work with both of them, and gratifying to see another patient cleared of punishment at the hands of our overzealous “criminal justice” system.

Depending on the type of deferment, this means that the charges against her could, eventually, be dismissed.

This is a wonderful bit of news in a long struggle.

ILoveBonnie.net would like to personally congratulate Summer and extend a thanks to her public defender, Jon Moog for his hard work.

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