Scott McPherson's Web Presence

Christina Aguilera cancels 2 shows due to flu

NEW YORK - Christina Aguilera, who wraps up her world tour this week, has canceled two shows in Australia because she is ill with the flu.

Doctors confirmed the 26-year-old singer is suffering from a viral upper respiratory tract infection with a high fever and abnormal coughing, said concert promoter The Frontier Touring Company in a statement Monday released through Aguilera’s spokeswoman.

Aguilera was put on bed rest for several days, forcing her to miss two shows in Melbourne on Saturday and Monday.

“Unfortunately, I have fallen ill with a bad flu virus,” she said in a separate statement. “This is one of the best cities in the world to perform in and I am truly disappointed that I won’t be able to share my show with you all.”

Several people on her tour have also become ill in Australia, the promoter said.

Aguilera’s final two concerts were set for Thursday and Friday in Auckland, New Zealand.

An incredible AP story in today's Yahoo News, submitted by alert reader Mark Schlaudraff, serves as a cautionary tale to never wear or use portable electronic devices when it is raining or if you hear thunder.

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/070711/ap/d8qakrd01.html

Thursday July 12, 5:36 AM

Lightning Strikes Reported by IPod Users

Listen to an iPod during a storm and you may get more than electrifying tunes. A Canadian jogger suffered wishbone-shaped chest and neck burns, ruptured eardrums and a broken jaw when lightning traveled through his music player's wires.

Last summer, a Colorado teen ended up with similar injuries when lightning struck nearby as he was listening to his iPod while mowing the lawn.

Emergency physicians report treating other patients with burns from freak accidents while using personal electronic devices such as beepers, Walkman players and laptop computers outdoors during storms.

Michael Utley, a former stockbroker from West Yarmouth, Mass., who survived being struck by lightning while golfing, has tracked 13 cases since 2004 of people hit while talking on cell phones. They are described on his Web site,

Contrary to some urban legends and media reports, electronic devices don't attract lightning the way a tall tree or a lightning rod does.

"It's going to hit where it's going to hit, but once it contacts metal, the metal conducts the electricity," said Dr. Mary Ann Cooper of the American College of Emergency Physicians and an ER doctor at University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago.

When lightning jumps from a nearby object to a person, it often flashes over the skin. But metal in electronic devices _ or metal jewelry or coins in a pocket _ can cause contact burns and exacerbate the damage.

A spokeswoman for Apple Inc., the maker of iPods, declined to comment. Packaging for iPods and some other music players do include warnings against using them in the rain.

Lightning strikes can occur even if a storm is many miles away, so lightning safety experts have been pushing the slogan "When thunder roars, go indoors," said Cooper.

Jason Bunch, 18, says it wasn't even raining last July, but there was a storm off in the distance. Lightning struck a nearby tree, shot off and hit him.

Bunch, who was listening to Metallica while mowing the grass at his home in Castle Rock, Colo., still has mild hearing damage in both ears, despite two reconstructive surgeries to repair ruptured eardrums. He had burns from the earphone wires on the sides of his face, a nasty burn on his hip where the iPod had been in a pocket and "a bad line up the side of my body," even though the iPod cord was outside his shirt.

"It was a real miracle" he survived, said his mother, Kelly Risheill.

The Canadian jogger suffered worse injuries, according to a report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine.

The man, a 39-year-old dentist from the Vancouver area, was listening to an iPod while jogging in a thunderstorm when, according to witnesses, lightning hit a tree a couple of feet away and jumped to his body. The strike threw the man about eight feet and caused second-degree burns on his chest and left leg.

The electric current left red burn lines running from where the iPod had been strapped to his chest up the sides of his neck. It ruptured both ear drums, dislocated tiny ear bones that transmit sound waves, and broke the man's jaw in four places, said Dr. Eric Heffernan, an imaging specialist at Vancouver General Hospital.

The injury happened two summers ago and despite treatment, the man still has less than 50 percent of normal hearing on each side, must wear hearing aids and can't hear high-pitched sounds.

"He's a part-time musician, so that's kind of messed up his hobby as well," Heffernan said.

Like the Colorado teen, the Canadian patient, who declined to be interviewed or identified, has no memory of the lightning strike.

In another case a few years ago, electric current from a lightning strike ran through a man's pager, burning both him and his girlfriend who was leaning against him, said Dr. Vince Mosesso, an emergency doctor at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Eardrum ruptures are considered the most common ear injury in lightning-strike victims, occurring in 5 percent to 50 percent of patients, according to various estimates _ whether or not an electronic device is involved. A broken jaw is rare, doctors say.

NOTE:  The photo is not of an iPod after a lightning strike.  It is an iPod after a welding torch got it.  Pulled it off YouTube. - Scott

Good news for fans of the CBS serial drama "Jericho," and to fans of good television everywhere:  The series returns to CBS this week. 

If you are not familiar with Jericho, or the phenomenon that brought it back from the dead, allow me to briefly get you up to speed.  Jericho, Kansas is a fictional town that is caught in the crossfire of a terrorist act, as the terrorists detonate an uncertain number of nuclear bombs across America.  When the Denver nuke explodes, it plunges Jericho into a post-apocalyptic world of uncertainty, rumors, and forced self-reliance.  Where is the government?  What is happening in the adjacent towns?  Who bombed America?

Those thoughts give way to a more pressing and even more deadly situation: One of the adjacent towns, New Bern, has none of the natural resources Jericho has.  Jericho is blessed with an abundance of farmland, fresh water and a huge salt mine.  New Bern is apparently only "blessed" with a paranoid lunatic charismatic sheriff, located somewhere on the false messiah barometer between Jim Jones and Hitler, who has taken the town over.  New Bern's only deliverable appears to be the ability to manufacture crude mortars and ammunition.  And they plan to invade, and conquer, Jericho.

Interspersed within this story are many intriguing subplots, some romantic, some involve deceit, infidelity, intrigue and possible treason, and some involving politics.  in other words, something for the entire family!  One continuing subplot involves the once-mayor, Johnston Greene, played in Emmy-caliber fashion by Gerald McRaney.  Greene has been defeated for re-election, partly because he is so focused on keeping the town together, he did not bother to campaign.  The populist themes of his victorious opponent give way to grim realization that Greene has what it takes to lead and the new incumbent does not.  He gives Greene authority to organize and train the Jericho townspeople to defend their territory against interlopers (rogue mercenary types with clear hints at shadowy, Halliburtonesque connections) and, ultimately, against New Bern's invasion force.

Which is where the first season ended:  With chaos, the fog of war, and the hint of some sort of New American intervention to stop the conflict before it gets any more complicated.

And that is where CBS stepped in, said "Nope, show's over, folks, nothing to see here, move along."  Only the people did NOT move along.  People got on the Internet and got busy.  Almost overnight, once CBS revealed it had cancelled the program, viewers rebelled.  Several "Save Jericho" sites sprung up.  Those sites began linking, and collaborating, with each other.  Finally, in a simple masterstroke, someone linked the seminal, pivotal line in the New Bern invasion story thread to the effort.  New Bern's sheriff sends a walkie-talkie to Jericho's leaders.  They demand surrender.  The response:  A history lesson in the Battle of the Bulge, when the American Army's 101st Airborne Division was surrounded by the German army at Bastogne in December 1944.  The German commander called for the Americans to surrender.  General Anthony MacAuliffe responded in one word:  "Nuts."  So says Jericho to New Bern: "Nuts."  And so said Jericho's fans to CBS. 

Thus began the most creative save-the-program effort in American television history.  The Websites linked to a nut company that ships and delivers nuts.  Within a matter of days, the president of CBS Entertainment was buried under 40,000 pounds of nuts, all sent by enraged Jericho viewers.  In her reply to the fans of the series, Nina Tassler, President of CBS Entertainment, said the following:

Jericho is a serious television program for anyone who enjoys good apocalyptic fiction, science fiction, or survivalist fiction.  Anyone in a post-9/11 world who speculates on what life would be like if "The Terrorists Win" should view this program.  Anyone who ever read "Alas, Babylon" will flock to this show like crazy.  And the emergency management types and homeland security types should consider this as a ripping good yarn!

This Friday night, the pilot airs, followed by the "catch up show" before the series was forced to take a break while new episodes were filmed. Then the second half episodes of Season One will air in successive weeks.  Good news for a fine entertainment that was damaged by bad scheduling (it ran against pre-Idol shows on Fox) and premature discarding by a network that should have known better, but was willing to listen and to reconsider.