(no subject)
i got a call yesterday, at work, from a man named gary strauss. he had security concerns about his internet service, and spent many minutes detailing me the things that have happened to him over the past few days. of strange, returned emails, of calls to his house that resulted in just a hangup, of calls to his ex-wife's house apparently from him that were also hangups. and i thought this was strange. he got into more detail. he's been working on a new cure for hiv for the past four years, which would actually work as both a cure and as a preventative treatment, which is currently in the US patent office (something he mentioned several times, thinking that his phone had probably been tapped by the same people who were screwing with him electronically). and he tells me that this cure approaches the disease from a different way than all of the other 600+ attempts. if it works, we'll know in 4-6 weeks. he talked about how he used to work as a medical researcher for the government, but was paid to go away for being a whistleblower. he talked about how drug companies make billions of dollars off the treatment of aids and hiv and how this treatment would effectively put an end to these diseases, and the implications that this would have in, say, africa, or other places where they've completely restructured themselves in order to fight this growing epidemic, and how they have to take into account the kind of effect that their treatment would have on these societies. we ended up talking for nearly 25 minutes, and i, personally, don't think he's full of shit.