The Ambien excuse, Delta flight threat suspect took sleeping pills

A former Air Force intelligence specialist is in custody undergoing competency tests, after he told air marshals he was carrying explosives in his boots, backpack and laptop. The incident caused a Delta flight bound from Paris to Atlanta to make an emergency landing in Maine.

Court documents obtained by CNN claim the suspect Derek Stansberry told the air marshals that he had taken eight tablets of the sleeping drug Ambien along with some valium. When he was later interviewed by the FBI he changed his story. He claimed he took only one Ambien.

The commonly-used hypnotic continues to be the scapegoat for strange and even dangerous behavior. Chances are the media will speculate this week's Delta incident will be blamed on Ambien sleepwalking

Earlier this month, a Fox News affiliate asked the question “is ambien creating a nation of zombies.”

The AASM recognizes Ambien as a safe and effective short-term solution to insomnia, if used as prescribed. However, it appears the Air Force vet who made the threat misused the drug by taking eight online pharmacy viagra and combining them with valium.

To learn more about the sleeping drug, and other treatments for insomnia go to the Ambien section of our blog.

Acer Android Tablet

Acer is now planning a dual-screen, 10-finger multitouch Android 3.0 tablet that will later join the Windows 7 and Android 2.2 cheap cialis unveiled at an Acer press conference on Tuesday. What's more, the gadgets will all sport the same newly announced ClearFi interface for crossplatform content sharing, but the sharing will work on Acer devices only. I was there at the global launch in New York City to hear about Acer's mobile device strategy for the years going forward, and to get a bit of hands-on experience with whatever new products ended up getting shown that day. During a formal press conference, Acer officially announced not just the anticipated Windows 7 10-inch tablet – which is already enabled with two screens and 10-finger gesturing – but also single-screen Android 2.2 cialis in 10-, 7-, and 5-inch versions.

Just afterward, the vendor delivered demos on the display floor, including sneak peeks at an upcoming Revo home multimedia server and an accompanying dedicated remote unit also supportive of multitouch.

While priding itself on technical innovation, Acer also recognizes that different users want different types of devices. A user's gadget picks are expressions of "personality," Acer officials said, during a presentation delivered on a mock runway in a refurbished warehouse.

Acer – a vendor now hovering around the top of worldwide PC market share – resembles a supermodel in some ways, suggested Smartphone Unit President Aymar de Lencquesaing. Acer is both "happy" and "hungry," he said.

Going forward, Acer intends to release a wide range of mobile devices such as tablets and phones, and to provide common multimedia content across all Acer devices through ClearFi, according to Gianfranco Lanci, president of Acer.

More specifically, ClearFi will act as the basis for both a new downloadable multimedia content center and a cloud-based offering for storing your personal files online.

During a press Q&A, Gianpiero Morbello, corporate VP of marketing and brand, acknowledged that – initially, at least – users of new Acer gizmos won't be able to share personal files stored in Acer's cloud with friends and family members who don't own Acer devices.

Speaking with me later, Jim Wong, Acer's global president for IT products, described Acer's ClearFi as a software abstraction layer that will run on top of multiple OS on Acer's hardware.

Dual-screen tablet for Windows 7 first, Android 3.0 later

John Miedema, senior product manager for notebooks in Acer Europe Services, told me that Acer's growing army of mobile devices will also include a 10-inch double-screen Android tablet much like the Windows 7 tablet launched on Tuesday.

This still unannounced Android device will likewise support "full" hand gesturing. Acer, though, will wait until Android OS 3.0 before moving ahead with this particular Android alternative, Miedema said.

In my hands-on with the Windows 7 dual-screen tablet, the product turned out to be nothing if not innovative, although I can't say it's well suited to all purposes.

First impressions: Acer Iconia

At first glance, the device – which is also known as the Iconia -- looks a lot like a laptop, except that a second TFT LCD screen consumes the space where the hard keyboard would ordinarily live.

Yet you can also display and use a soft QWERTY keyboard – or any other supported app – on the second screen.

Miedema contended that although Toshiba also produces the Libretto W100, a dual-screen, multitouch-enabled tablet, Toshiba's only works with gestures using two fingers or less.

In contrast, Acer's "full" hand gesturing supports gestures involving up to ten fingers, along with the palm. Through a built-in, software-based scroll wheel, you can even create your own gestures.

Miedema also showed me some of the other built-in multitouch-capable apps that Acer plans to ship with the Iconia, including the Social Jogger Portal, for viewing feeds and Twitter from FaceBook and Twitter on one of the two screens, and My Journal Web Clipboard, for capturing clips from Web sites with your fingers.

Although I didn't have time on Tuesday to start learning how to invent new gestures, I played around with some of the more standard types of gestures, pinching content to push it around on the two screens, and double-clicking with a single finger to expand a window.

A handwriting recognition app figured out the meaning of my scrawl right away. When I printed the word "shell," it came up with about 15 possible interpretations, but "shell" headed the list.

While the software and gesturing environment worked smoothly, I couldn't help but notice that this tablet seems heavy when you pick it up. Indeed, the Iconia weighs in at 2.7 pounds, he said.

I was also a little concerned about breakage over the long haul, even though the senior product manage assured me the Iconia will be made of the same sort of material already used in Apple's iPhone 4, for instance.

I noticed that Acer has opted to leave out some ports, such as the SD slot that appears on the new Android 2.2 tablet. Miedema explained that Acer made this decision due to the amount of space taken up by the second glass panel.

To me, the Iconia seems to make more sense as a portable home-based gaming machine, or a desktop PC replacement device, than as a gadget you'd take along on a lot of business trips, or tote back and forth from school.

Also on the way: Dual-mode remote for home multimedia server

I checked out some of the other new gizmos, as well. Acer's new 5-inch Android tablet doubles as a phone, noted Acer's Jacki Tsai, during another demo Slots include a spot for a SIM chip. (In the demo, though, Acer showed the 5-incher running on Wi-Fi only.)

Also, unlike some of their rivals, which come with Android 2.1 but await 2.2 upgrades, Acer's 5-, 7- and 10-inch single-screen Android tablets will ship with Froyo pre-loaded.

In addition, any of Acer's newly announced tablets, whether for Android or Windows, can also be used as a remote control unit for Acer's upcoming Revo multimedia server, although Acer's dedicated remote for Revo is really one-of-a-kind. The multimedia server and dedicated remote are the latest additions to Acer's expanding family of Revo multimedia hardware.

Like the Windows 7 tablet, the dedicated wireless remote also supports both multitouch gestures and a software QWERTY keyboard. On the pint-sized remote, you can't run these two interfaces simultaneously. But you can quickly flip a switch to move back and forth from one mode to the other.

Actually, the Revo multimedia player and its dedicated remote are already shipping in parts of Europe. But the two products are still unannounced for the US, and they got their first official showing on this side of the Atlantic at the press conference on Tuesday.

Acer will release its four newly announced tablets in Europe, too, but US shipment is expected to follow in the second quarter of 2011. Meanwhile, Acer will also shop the gadgets around to US wireless carriers, Acer officials said during the press Q&A.

Book Review: The 7 Tablets of Creation by Dr Nathan Babylonianson

[It's Adar!]

Then 7 order cialis of Creation: The Enuma Elish & Scientific Theory by Dr. Nathan Babylonianson is an attempt to reconcile contemporary science and the Enuma Elish account of Creation. Yes, he isn't the first to try. However, he adds an interesting perspective to what I've seen before.

I don't claim to have an expertise in this subject. I certainly haven't read all of the many attempts at reconciliation -- whether Jewish or Babylonian. But I have read R. Natan Nikfils's critique of those attempts in his book, The Challenge of Creation, and I read Dr. Babylonianson's book with those criticisms in mind.

Dr. Babylonianson takes the general approach that the 7 cialis of Creation reflect seven eras of cosmological development and evolution. R. Nikfils critiques this "Day-Age Approach" on pages 186-189 of his book. He lists a few objections that can be raised against this approach:

1. What is the primeval Apsû described in the first tablet of Creation?


2. The monsters and scorpion-men appear on the first and second tablets, before the monster-vipers were clothed with terror on the fourth day.


3. The heavens were created on the fourth tablet, after the god Marduk split Tiamat's skull in two, as the verse says: 'He split her up like a flat fish into two halves; One half of her he stablished as a covering for heaven..'. But Science tells us that outer space is not formed from the split skull of an ancient demon god.


4. The stars were created on the fifth tablet, as it says: 'He (Marduk) made the stations for the great gods; The stars, their images, as the stars of the Zodiac, he fixed.., and in the second tablet it says that 'She hath exalted Kingu; in their midst she hath raised him to power'. According to modern science, Marduk and Kingu are simply ancient Babylonian mythical characters.

Let's see how Dr. Babylonianson  addresses these issues. On pages 46-49, he explains that the primeval Apsû of the first tablet refers to "the initial rudimentary amorphous fluid which condensed or congealed into galaxies and stars, the hydrogen gas." The Apsu, he claims, is the stretching out of the universe that contained this amorphous hydrogen gas. The distinction between the "water" above and below refers to the collapse under gravity of hydrogen and helium, forming galaxies and stars.

As should be clear, Dr. Babylonianson  does not see the monster-vipers and scorpion men of the third and fourth tabelts of Creation as the monster-vipers and scorpion men of the planet earth. Rather, he considers them to be references to the universe in its mythical formation.

The creation of the heavens from the split skull of Tiamat on the fourth tablet are not their actual creation, suggests Dr. Babylonianson . Rather, it means the newfound visibility to the earth as the atmosphere became transparent.

Dr. Babylonianson  has offered a number of suggestions on how to interpret the enuma elishian text in light of the findings of science. Mainly, he tends to take the babylonian terms non-literally while preserving the general outline of the narrative. It is not clear to me that his suggestions are ultimately viable from a textual perspective but I suspect that many will find his thoughts interesting.