IN REYKJAVIK, ICELAND, THE CAPITAL REGION FIRE DEPARTMENT and the National Hospital of Iceland have been operating a special type of ambulance called the Neydarbillin (NB) which carries a physician on it.

The hospital has given notice that effective January 15 they will no longer ride on the ambulances. 

Bjarni Thór Eyvindsson, head physician of NB, is not satisfied with the decision.  Eyvindsson claims the decision will have negative impact on the ambulance’s emergency services, since, in his opinion, emergency technicians lack many of the skills physicians have, Morgunbladid reports.

“Both professions have advantages which have come in handy when physicians and emergency technicians cooperate on providing emergency relief,” Eyvindsson said. “The emergency technicians’ training is more about solving problems, hands-on procedures, while decision making, diagnosis and first treatment are in the hands of doctors.”

The Iceland Review has the STORY.

A FRAMINGHAM, MASSACHUSETTS, WOMAN set her boyfriend on fire Thursday then called police claiming he did it himself while he was drunk.

Rosilandy F. DeSouza, 25, tried to kill her boyfriend, Jose Dos Santos, by spraying him with rubbing alcohol and igniting the liquid with a lighter.  When the police arrived they found him suffering from third-degree burns to his nose, hairline and chest, and second-degree burns to his face, ears and the tops of his hands.

In addition, DeSouza’s brother, Caciano Neto, 41, of Marlborough, was also arrested. He is accused of calling one of Dos Santos’ brothers and threatening to have his family in Brazil hurt if he spoke to police.

DeSouza is being held without bond on attempted murder charges.  If she is released she will be placed in Federal custody because she is an illegal immigrant.

The Framingham Daily News has the full blow-by-blow STORY.

FIVE YEARS AGO THE ROYAL OAK, MICHIGAN, Fire Department ordered a matching pair of pumpers from E-One.  But ever since they’ve been in service, they have had a steady stream of severe maintenance problems such as not going into pump gear.

After long and determined negotiations, E-One has relented and agreed to replace them with two brand new engines at no cost to the FD.

Royal Oak Fire Chief Wil White
will now get his fleet standardization.
Free Press photo

“We recognized that the firefighters had lost confidence in the vehicles, so we thought it best to just get them out of there,” said Dan Little, vice president of sales for E-One.

And there was probably another incentive for doing it, too:  Chief White and the city were so impressed by the resolution, they ordered nearly $2 million in other equipment from the same company, including a 100-foot ladder truck and three more pumpers.

The Detroit Free Press has the full STORY.

Royal Oak Fire Dept. WEBSITE.

TWO BROOKLYN RESIDENTS WERE ARRESTED yesterday in New York City for using intimidation to force business owners to buy fire extinguishers.

To compound the matter, the extinguishers were stolen and most of them didn’t work.  They face up to seven years in prison on four counts of reckless endangerment and grand larceny, including two felony counts.

The New York Daily News has the early STORY.

Do you remember this logo?

I don’t know what it was that put it into my head, but the other day I got to wondering about the old Mystery Science Theater 3000 show that swept through the cable tv underground in the late 80’s.

Affectionately known by its fans as “Misty 3K,” the show developed true cult status.  The cornball humor was just hilarious and it would literally keep you laughing out loud throughout the entire program.  In fact, the commercial breaks were welcomed so that you could get a break and rest your laugh muscles.

The producers of the show would dig up the most horrible and nutty Grade B movies, usually the science fiction type,  and show them with a running commentary by the three creatures in the front row, a man and two little “robots” that he had made.  It was the commentary that grabbed you….so hilarious that you would lose track of the movie plot completely and get absorbed with the almost-out-of-control antics of the kibitzers.

The basic premise of the show was convoluted and not really important, but it involved a man, Joel, being held captive on a space ship and forced to watch horrible movies so that a mad scientist could find the formula for movies so bad that he could use them to overwhelm people and take over the world.  Or something like that.

The show would start with one of the best opening/closing doors sequence ever filmed as Joel and his two robot friends, Servo and Crow (and later a third, Gypsy), would enter the theater and sit in the front row to watch some great flicks like Manos, The Hands of Fate; Horrors of Spider Island; and Attack of the Giant Leeches.  Once the movie started, it was off to the races and you were crippled with laughter for the next hour.

The series began in 1988 as a local show on station KTMA in Minneapolis.  After running 13 episodes they caught the attention of the people who were starting up a new cable channel now known as Comedy Central, and the show moved over to there where it ran for seven seasons.  Comedy Central was carried by a limited number of cable systems at first and that added to the cult aura of the program.

After a management change at CC knocked MST3K off the air, they moved over to the Sci-Fi Channel for another four years.  Altogether they made 198 episodes and won a Peabody Award in 1993 along with two Emmy nominations in 1994 and 1995.  The last original program was shown on August 8, 1999.

They might be finished with original productions, but the shows are being re-issued on DVD’s with a batch of four episodes on most of them.  Amazon.com has 28 offerings listed.  If you’re a true MST3K aficianado, then you can read a good, comprehensive history of the program on Wikipedia HERE.  There is also a clip on YouTube showing the program’s campy intro with a portion of the “doors” sequence right at the end HERE.  We have also added a brief film clip in the video box at the top of the right sidebar.

But first, we’d better get this equipment checked out.  I’ll see you at the coffee table.

WOLFHART WILLIMCZIK, physicist & inventor from East Germany and now living in Florida, developed a water-injected jet turbine for fire suppression.  It has proven to be successful.

BASF is using them at some of their oil refinery facilities.

In Hungary, engineers built a large oil-well firefighting rig to use in the country’s many oil fields.  They took an old Russian tank and removed the turret.  Then they mounted two scrap jet engines from a Mig-21.  Water is injected into the exhaust, throttle up, and…..

Watch the video to get a sense of the potential
power of this technology.

ONE OF THE MORE FAMOUS NAMES IN SOFTWARE will move over into the history pile next month.  AOL (the current owner) announced that they would cease all support for its Netscape Navigator and related browsers on the 1st of February.

The once-dominant browser that brought the World-Wide-Web to millions of new computer users has all but disappeared in the software market.

As of this month, Netscape had only 0.6 percent of the browser market, which was still dominated by Internet Explorer with more than 77 percent, according to Web application and analytics firm Net Applications. Firefox was gaining, however, with market share just over 16 percent.

 The Netscape.com Web site will remain as a general-purpose portal and older versions of the browser will still be available for downloading in archived sites.

Read the entire article from PC World HERE.

LONDON’S AMBULANCE SERVICE HAS BEEN RUNNING  a special weekend unit that only handles “drunk out of their mind” calls.

While in service, the “booze bus” as they are called, is not dispatched on normal ambulance emergencies.  They’ll spend all night patrolling the nightclub districts with an eye out for people who have passed out or are otherwise helpless.

As they patrol around town and take drunk calls from dispatch, the “vomit comet” will gather several drunks at a time and take them to the hospital where they lay around sobering up.

The Daily Mail reports:

November was the busiest month ever in the history of the London Ambulance Service and in an effort to cope with the Christmas party season, the service set up a field hospital opposite Platform 10 on Liverpool Street (railroad) Station to deal with the flood of drunk City workers.

Inside this inflatable green tent, there are blood pressure monitors and saline drips everywhere. Nick Lesslar, 39, the duty officer in charge, has two fully-equipped ambulances and three fast response cars at his disposal. 

This well-written and lengthy article tells the full STORY.

Dorchester, Massachusetts:

A fire this morning in a triple-decker killed two children ages 9 and 11 in the Boston neighborhood.  Early indications are that it was started by a space heater in the bedroom of the first-floor apartment where four children were sleeping.

Boston Globe photo

The Boston Globe has the latest HERE.

Chicago, Illinois:

An 8-yr.-old boy is in critical but stable condition after firefighters pulled him out of the basement in a house fire early yesterday morning.  The Chicago Tribune reports:

Ten people — five adults and five children, all apparently related — were inside the home  when the fire, possibly sparked by a space heater in the basement, broke out about 2:50 a.m., a fire official said. 

Firefighters found the boy with his head under a table and in cardiac arrest, the official said. Paramedics revived the boy and put him on a ventilator as they rushed him to Roseland Community Hospital. The child was later taken to Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood.

The Tribune has MORE.

Brooklyn, NYC:

A 3-yr.-old girl was rescued by firefighters Thursday evening after she started a fire, probably playing with a butane lighter.  She is in the hospital with severe burns over 70% of her body.

NY Daily News photo

New York Daily News has the full STORY.

Tempe, Arizona:

Six people including two children are in the hospital suffering from burns and severe smoke inhalation after their apartment caught on fire yesterday morning.  It is believed to have started when a candle fell over.

Arizona Republic photo

The Arizona Republic has the STORY and a VIDEO.

I’m the first to admit it….when it comes to all communications that rely on “1’s” and “0’s”, I’m a true Digital Dunce.  The only thing that has saved me in this tidal wave of digital revolution is the fact that I learned to type when I was about 12 or 13 yrs. old.  So I’m able to make entries if I have good instructions on how to do it.

Back in the mid-’80’s when computers were being introduced into the firehouse level of the FRD, they sent me to one of those introductory classes on how computers work.  Part of the class was a walk-through on using a spread sheet.  That was fun, but when I was finished I still couldn’t set one up.  I remember the instructor, who was from the local university, showing us his e-mail account.  I had never heard of e-mail before.  The internet as we know it now wasn’t yet introduced to the masses.  But I specifically recall that when he opened the mailbox, most of the items in it were…..you guessed it…..spam.

But when it was all said and done, I just couldn’t get the hang of it.  The county installed a computer in every station and hooked them up to the base computer so that we could practice and learn.  (the internet wasn’t around yet.)  The things were set up with that old MS-DOS that had the flashing green letters on a black background.  I remember there were some basic games to play with, too.  Something about guiding the falling building blocks into place to make a wall?

It was a waste of my time to try and do something productive with the computer.  I just let the others who knew how to do it make out their forms and outlines.  Finally I figured out what my problem was.  Whenever I was making an entry, my mind was trying to figure out what was going on inside the computer to make it work.  Constantly, I was mentally charting out the electronic happenings.  It was driving me nuts.  So I gave up trying.

When the internet came along with Netscape Navigator, I jumped back in, determined to make this thing work.  It called for a different mindset….just punch the keys and don’t worry about what’s going on.  Keep the faith and press on!  And that has gotten me through the Rites of Passage into the digital age.

Fast-forward (another new digital term) to this week and consider these survey results that were just published:

1. 38 percent of U.S. consumers are watching TV shows online.
2.  36 percent use their cell phones as entertainment devices .
3. 45 percent are creating online content like Web sites, music, videos and blogs for others.

Just eight months ago, 24 percent of consumers used their cell phones as entertainment devices, meaning that usage has soared 50 percent.   When you refine the numbers to age groups, the 13- to 24-yr-olds come in at double those numbers.

All I can say is:  Wow!

Let’s get the equipment checked out.  I need to get the coffee going.

A TURF WAR IS BREAKING OUT IN VINCENNES, INDIANA over who gets to run the ambulance calls in the city.

The fire chief has approached the city council with a request to begin operating an emergency ambulance from the FD.  The city is currently served by a private ambulance company that operates in the entire county.

According to tv station WTHI:

The department is facing some deep budget cuts, and to make up for it, they are considering expanding the medical service they provide off of the rescue truck with full ambulance service runs.

“What we’re wanting to do is start transporting the patients, so we can receive the reimbursement from insurance companies and individuals,” said Vincennes Assistant Fire Chief David Halter.

Knox County EMS, the private firm says that any intrusion into their coverage area will be financially devastating.  “We’ve already been hit hard with fuel prices,” their spokesman said, “and just to be a back up would be very difficult with them coming along trying to take the first runs.”

Asst. Chief Halter responded, “We’re not wanting the whole pie.  We just want our own little piece.”

At least they’re being up front about it.  The city council is “studying” the proposal.

Read the story HERE.

“The BEER That Made Milwaukee Famous”

Schlitz beer is back on the shelves, but only for a few minutes.  They’re being snapped up by anxious customers just as fast as the stores can stock them.

Pabst Brewing Co. is the current holder of the Schlitz trademark and 25 years after the Jos. Schlitz Brewing Co. shut down, Pabst is running off some batches of the original formula.  They have found out that “The beer that made Milwaukee famous” is just as popular as ever and are increasing production.  Since January they have been filling store shelves in Chicago, Minneapolis, and of course, Milwaukee.

After carefully recreating the original recipe from the company archives and personally interviewing many of the former brewmasters of the company, Pabst brought the famous brand back with an unexpected success with demand outpacing production.  It has been contracted out to the MillerCoors brewery in Eden, North Carolina.  Yesterday they announced that it will be available starting next week in kegs.  The draft product will be released first to 150 taverns in the three cities.

Channel 6 in Milwaukee did this nice video report of the comeback:

Joseph Schlitz first started in the brewing business in 1856.  After running the Krug brewery for two years, he married the owner’s widow and changed the name to Schlitz Brewing.  Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s Schlitz was the #1 selling beer in America.

But then a rapid series of management blunders crippled the company and sales tumbled through the 70’s until they finally shut down in 1981.  Schlitz had a devoted following of customers who swore by its unique flavor.  But in the mid-1960’s Budweiser, who had been #3 in national sales, began a 2-pronged advertising campaign.  First they went after the non-beer drinking customer.  Knowing that many people weren’t drinking beer because they didn’t like the taste, Budweiser convinced them to drink their beer ice-cold.  Any beer served at a temperature below 45º has no taste to it, so A-B got away with it.  Secondly, they tied in their advertising with a “sex sells” policy showing the youngsters that if you drink Bud, then the bikini babes will pile into your car uninvited.

Schlitz started losing business and instead of concentrating on winning it back, they thought that the secret was to change their recipe to be more like Bud’s.  (Remember New Coke?)  That, along with an ill-chosen plan to save money by accelerating the fermentation process, drove even their loyal drinkers away.  The Schlitz flavor was gone…..and soon the business was gone.

It’s great to see it coming back.