Some time I wonder...

Just this morning I read a news article titled "Victim's family wants end to police chase" with a first line in bold of  "PRESSURE is mounting on Victoria Police to change how it handles police chases after a young father was killed by a speeding driver who had been pursued by officers."

So we have here a first thought about a police chase that caused a fatal accident with an innocent civilian.  But now if you read on you find out that the police called the chase off after less then a minute.  The stupid driver fleeing from police kept speeding and a drove the wrong way down a ramp which resulted in a head on collision killing both drivers and seriously injuring the innocent man's wife.

Now I feel for the innocent victims families.  But I don't see what the police did wrong here?  They tried to stop some one for speeding.  That person didn't stop and soon after they tried to pull the driver over they ended the chase because it was clear he was not going to stop and there was no indication, at the time, that he was some larger threat to the community, like a murderer, which he ended up becoming.

So what does the family want?  Cops to ignore all speeders?  You know where that will lead.  Someone will get killed by a speeder that was spotted by police but did not attempt to pull them over and some one will die.  The public will be out raged.  I feel sorry for the police as is.

Honestly are the procedures not good enough now?  Didn't the police do what should have been done to have "higher priority placed on community safety rather than ensuring a criminal doesn't escape."

The reality is the offender was probably and idiot and a danger to society as is.  The police did what they should have done and the grieving family of the innocent victims are looking for someone to blame.  How about looking at the idiot driver that caused the crash in the first place.

It may sound like I'm uncaring towards the victim's family but I'm not.  I'm just being practical and saying this is a bit of over reacting.  It would be like blaming a school for your kid getting beat up at your local park that is no where near the school after they disciplined the kid that beat up your kid earlier that day for being a bully at school.

Read the full article here at Adelaide Now

The slippery slope! What happens when we allow the government and corporations to whittle away our rights.

In the past few years we’ve been seeing a problem with our rights being taken away.  This not only applies to Americans but, because of the arrogance of the US government, it affects the rest of the world too. 

For far too long the politicians in Washington have been the bitch of corporations.  This problem is 2 fold.  First politicians get their funding for campaigns primarily from corporations and second many politicians have too much personally invested in corporations to be able to stay objective and work for the common citizen.  Even with the laws and regulation forcing them to remove themselves from conflicts of interests it is obvious that while there may not be an immediate conflict of interest that many of the legislation they pass will benefit them later.  IE While Senator A may not currently have any financial interest in industry Y some legislation that sets up Y to be more profitable years down the track can benefit them after they are free from conflict of interest regulations.

 

So one of the things we see going on is more and more rights being taken away from real people and more rights being given to fake people, IE corporations.  For example it is far too easy for a corporation to make an IP claim on a real person and instead of due process the common person has their rights restricted.  False IP claims by corporations have no down side for the said corporation and it is on the real person to fight to get their rights back.  Each legislation passed makes it more and more easy for fake people to take away more and more of the rights of real people.

Take the situation with MegaUpload.com.  The site has been shut down.  Millions of users are denied a service they’ve subscribed to because of these anti-piracy laws that have been passed.  UMG last month force YouTube to take down the “MegaUpload Mega Song” video.  This despite the fact that every artist in the video signed an agreement to do this video.  UMG, a fake person, seems to be having a multiple personality disorder episode.  When brought to court, by MegaUpload, UMG claims that the wrong UMG is being brought to court.  MegaUpload it being forced to jump through hoops to find out on what grounds UMG was able to remove the Video from YouTube.

This is akin to McDonald’s coming to your house and taking your dinner away from you because they believe you stole it but you were eating macaroni and cheese with a glass of milk.  Then McDonald’s just shrugging their shoulders when you ask why they took your dinner.

Legislation like PIPA and SOPA make these powers by fake people even stronger.  Much like NDAA gives you no recourse when being wrongly accused.  These “anti-piracy” legislations just open the door wider for corporations to step on anything they believe is not in their best interest.  It doesn't matter whether or not they have any actual grounds for the IP claim being made.  You as a real person can do shit fuck all about it in most cases unless you want to spend our life savings on lawyers which will probably get you no were in the end.

Speak up, make yourselves heard.  Call your congressmen.  Pay attention to what they vote for and against.  Every time they vote against real people’s rights in favour of fake people’s rights hold them accountable.  Honestly fake people don’t serve in the armed service, don’t go to jail, don’t die, don’t get hungry and with much of the legislation, going through Washington, are not accountable for anything they do.  For fuck sake with limited liability legislation fake people can’t even be sued for hurting you or someone you love. 

Is this the type of “conservative America” you want to live in? An America where your rights are slowly taken away making you numb to further changes.

Are you spreading the truth or not?

If you know me you know that I'm not a big McDonald's fan.  I find the chain and food lacking for various reasons but primarily because I can't eat it any more.
Selfish I know.  But for some reason it makes me ill a few hours after eating it...so I don't.  Thankfully my son no longer eats it either.  I attribute it to not being able to eat many types of "fatty foods" these days.  Cheap pizza, KFC, fatty pork in all forms.  Surprising to me that Hungry Jacks (Burger King) does not seem to effect me like this.  Is it due to the more veggies in the whopper?

Other reasons include their business practices like charging more in low economic regions where they know they can get away with it.  Ironic that the less you earn the more likely you'll pay more for your Big Mac.
Many people complain about McDonald's and that is their right.  I for one don't promote them but I'm a stickler for accurate information and I find that many people exaggerate the truth at best.  Many people pass on faulty information that is out right false or maybe just old information.

Some people just spout shit without even trying to back up their statements like on this Yahoo Answers Page where someone says
"i am not sure if they contain animal fat, they most likely do, but you can be pretty sure anything coming from those joints called a "milkshake" contains no trace of anything dairy."
Spending less than 1 minute I found the list of ingredients with the first ingredient being "Milk"

McDonald's have put in a big effort to make themselves, at least look like they are, healthier these days.  I'll argue against that in a future post maybe.

On to the point of this article.  Passing on the truth and not just "what you have been told"

A friend of mine shared a FB post that went like this

Can You Guess What McDonald’s Food Item This Is?

Say hello to mechanically separated chicken. It’s what all fast-food chicken is made – things like chicken nuggets and patties. Also, the processed frozen chicken in the stores is made from it.

Basically, the entire chicken is smashed and pressed through a sieve — bones, eyes, guts, and all. it comes out looking like this.

There’s more: because it’s crawling with bacteria, it will be washed with ammonia, soaked in it, actually. Then, because it tastes gross, it will be reflavored artificially. Then, because it is weirdly pink, it will be dyed with artificial color.

But, hey, at least it tastes good, right?

Source: http://docakilah.wordpress.com/2011/05/11/can-you-guess-what-mcdonald%E2%80%99s-food-item-this-is

Now normally people just put the URL in and FB makes the post. But after reading the article I first thought that the person read the article, put a bit of their own wording to it and then posted but it seems it comes from an email and mix of other sources.  Which supports what I'm getting at about people just passing on information without vetting it.
Note: I found this article, http://www.snopes.com/food/prepare/msm.asp,  after writing this and edited the paragraph above. 


Let me step back to the original article posted on May 11, 2011.  Just 8 months ago.
Now the title says "Can You Guess What McDonald's Food Item This Is?" but no where in the article does it say ANYTHING about McDonald's.  The logic here being.
Many commercial chicken nuggets are made with mechanically separated chicken.
McDonald Chicken McNuggets are a type of chicken nugget
Therefore McDonald's Chicken McNuggets are made from mechanically separated chicken.

If you agree to that logic then you'd have to agree to this logic

Some people are prostitutes
Your parents are people
Therefore your parents are prostitutes

See the faulty logic here?

Did McNuggets used to use "Mechanically Separated Poultry"? I'm not sure, I can't find an trustworthy source for ingredients in McNuggets in the past.  The current ingredients, as of Jan 19th 2012 are:
Chicken, Water, Flour (Maize, Bleached Wheat), Salt, Canola oil, Thickener (1404), Raising Agents and Mineral Salts (341, 451, 450, 500, 541, 551, 327), Whey (Milk), Spice, Wheat Starch

Now before you say "Chicken could mean Mechanically Separated Chicken" Know that the USDA requires any product that is made from "mechanically separated chicken", or any other meat, to be listed as such.

A few years ago McDonald's went to a single piece of breast meat to make up a McNugget but because most customers preferred the previous version they went back to that.  The previous version is still made from all white meat but it is a pressed nugget meaning that it is smaller pieces of chicken pressed into nugget shapes before being battered and flash frozen.

What about the other ingredients?  What the hell is Thickener 1404 or Raising Agents and Mineral Salts (341, 451, 450, 500, 541, 551, 327)

Thankfully there are sites like http://www.foodstandards.gov.au where you can find out what the numbers mean.
Go look them up and see what you think.  Go look at any processed food you have at home and see what they have in them.

Unless you never use prepackaged food you're probably downing these additives all the time so don't blame McDonald's for using them.

At the end of the day the picture at the top of this rant has about as much to do with a McNuggets as the picture below has to do with you or someone you know.  Sadly the picture below probably has more to do with you or someone you know then the MSP has to do with McNuggets.

Image: Dundee Photographics / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Why people like Bill O'Reilly piss me off.

I hate dishonest people, willfully ignorant people piss me off too.  Bill O'Reilly is at least one of these.

In response to an atheist organisation that puts up bill boards that say things like "Religion is a scam" Bill brings on a spokesperson and tries to rail road them in his usual manner.

The atheist points out the bill boards are to counter the "you are going to hell" bill boards put up by some religious organisations.  Freedom of expression on both sides.

Here is where my issue comes in.  Bill's bad philosophy/theology and the fact that he probably has a lot of followers that subscribe to that philosophy.  I'm not saying being religious is bad philosophy.  What I'm saying is the ignorant bull shit that Bill spills forth from his lips is bad philosophy and either based on him being dishonest or willfully ignorant probably both.

I'll point out what I mean and you decide.

Bill O'Reilly still tries to say we can not explain the tides and that them being regular is a sign of "God".

About 1m50s into this "interview"

O'REILLY: You know, I'll tell you why it's not a scam, in my opinion, all right? Tide goes in tide goes out, never a miscommunication. You cannot explain that. You can't explain why the tide goes in…
SILVERMAN: Tide goes in, tide goes out.
O'REILLY: The water, the tide comes in and it goes out, Mr. Silverman. It always comes in…
SILVERMAN: Maybe it's Thor on top of Mount Olympus who's making the tides go in and out.
O'REILLY: No, no, but you can't explain that.

Watch about the whole thing if you want but the bit I'm talking about is 1m 50s into the "interview" use the link to jump right to the section I'm referring to.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BCipg71LbI#t=1m50s

Bill's reasoning that there is a "God" because he doesn't seem to understand that the moon causes the tides and it because we know this that we can predict, down to the minute when high tide will be for any location on the earth.

Ok so we do know the reason for the tide.  "We" being the collective scientific knowledge of human kind.  Silverman may not know, or more likely he does know but that "interview" would have been very stressfull and he had a hard enough time getting any word in on that "interview"

If you don't understand how the tides work check out this NASA animation

or listen to this kid.

a older more "educational" video

So you can say that Bill might just be ignorant of how tides work but think about this.  This isn't the first time he's used this exact line of reasoning.  If fact it is word for word what he's said many times in the past and when pointed out he moves the goal post like in this video done a year ago.

So he knows why the tides happen.  He therefore is dishonest in saying we don't know what causes the tides.  Now I don't care what your religious beliefs are but do you think that dishonesty and scientific ignorance is a good basis for your philosophy in any "God" or "Gods"?

Watch his whole video just above.  When told about the tide he moves his ignorance out to something else science explains very well.  He is pigeon holing is "God" as a "God of the gaps".  This is where someone tries to use gaps in our scientific knowledge as evidence of their "God" IE "You can't explain [insert topic here] there for God did it".  The problem with this is as our knowledge gets better and these "Gaps" are filled the "proof" becomes less and less.  Worse still it often isn't a gap in our, human kind's knowledge, but a gap in the person's knowledge who is making the claims.  Like Bill who was probably ignorant of what causes the tides, then tries to move it to the origin of the moon, or the sun.

Don't let ignorance drive your faith.  Let faith drive your faith and let the magnificence of the universe inspire you.  Because every time you try to use a hole in your knowledge as proof of your God(s) you cheapen and limit your God(s).  Every time you stand idlely by and don't stop others from doing the same you are complacent with bad theology and philosophy.  Something I bet your God(s) wouldn't be very proud of.

What Bill is doing is probably "Lying for Jesus"  which is a when some Christians believe that falsifying information is acceptable if the falsification brings more people to Jesus or keeps people from leaving.

I served in the USMC for 6 years defending peoples religious rights and it sickens me to think people like this are among the majority of honest religious people.  Sadly those "lying for Jesus" often are just like Bill and try to drown out everyone else when they try to express themselves.

Have a little introspection and decide carefully if you are happy or even proud to be counted as someone like Bill.

Latin night :)

Good music but it id hot

funny things computers are.

It amuses me as I sit here watching my computer try to apply 16 updates in preparation of an image to be taken before some hardware is replaced tomorrow. Normally the updates might take a few minutes to apply but because of the hardware fault it is taking well over an hour. I can't stop the updates without making things worse, had no option to not install the updates,and the updates are not needed before the change of hardware. So as I sit here watching update 6 of 16 try to install I think my time could be better spent on something else but can't leave because I have to kick off the image after these updates are installed. Yay

No Minimum Wage? More tax cuts for the top 2%?

Honestly no minimum wage?  Even if you could get a full time job at the current minimum wage that is 17,748 a year. $340 a week.  For food, for housing, for utilities, for clothing and for medical care, for you, for those that depend on you!

Some republicans like Michele Bachmann support a removal of the minimum wage from the Fair Labor Standards Act.
Click the link to jump to the point I'm refering to but feel free to watch the whole thing and the ignorance in play.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Q3a0udOqhc#t=1m43s

According to her logic the solution to world hunger would be to take the minimal amount of support given now and just spread it even thinner.   The real scary bit is where she says "we need to tamp that down so that the American people can keep more of what they make"

Lets look at this statement.  Some might say she's advocating for a smaller government, which she is, and that we shouldn't take from the poor.  But look here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaGJP0G-hu0#t=3m07s
 (feel free to view the whole video.  The question was about how to address the issues where some corporations don't pay taxes yet she spins it)  She also tried to make it seem like 1 persons entire job was to write just 14 words in the tax regulations.  I'm sure the person she talked to had more responsibility then to just answer her question about a 14 word passage, but I digress.

She thinks that $17,748, and even less, is enough for not only 1 person to live on but often an entire family and that the government should be able to take even more money from these people.

What she really means by "American people can keep more of what they make" is "Business owners should be able to keep as much as they can and the workers should be happy with what they get and the government shouldn't be able to do anything about it."

While I don't think the tax system is perfect I don't think the problem is at the low end of the wage earners.  Raising the tax rates for high income earners to what they paid during the Reagan administration would raise from 35-70 billion dollars a year.  Taxing the almost half of American's that already live below the poverty line by 50% would raise about the same amount of money.

So the Republican/Tea party's solution is that instead of taxing the top 2% of earners, to what they would have been paying during the "golden era" that the republicans and tea party are always saying they want to get back to, We should take half of the income from the people that can least afford it.

Right now in the USA the top 1% of the income earners control almost 25% of the wealth, the top 10% almost 50%.  In the last 30 years 80% of the raises in income have gone to that top 1%.  The trickle down method hasn't worked.  The rich get richer and the poor and middle class get poorer.  What is really bad is that the top 10% of the country has much of the "middle class" convinced that taxing the rich is bad.

The bottom 50% house holds only control 2.5% of the income of our nation.  15.1% of the USA live below the poverty line and among African Americans and Hispanic Americans the rate is over 26%. The "middle class" which in theory should be the largest group control less then 50% of the income and that figure is getting smaller.  Sure some of them are climbing into the bracket of those that control the 50%or more of the wealth.  But what is happening is that the top 10% are controlling a higher percentage of the wealth.  So you'll soon get 10% of the population controlling 60% of the wealth and 50% of the population controlling 1.25%!  How is that fair?

We aren't even talking about raising the income tax of the top 10%.  Just the top 2% and not to any rediculous rate but just restoring it to the rate that was in place during the Reagan administration.

So tell me, are you "middle class"?  Do you think that it is more fair to tax a family of 4 that makes less then $22,350 a year by 50% and that it is unfair to remove the tax cuts that the top 2% income earners get restoring them to what they paid in the early 80s?  Remember the higher taxes the poor people get hit with will effect you.  They'll effect where you want to be.  Yet the republican party has so many of middle class convinced that "class warefare" is being waged against the rich.  Is it unreasonable to have someone that earns $5,000,000 a year pay even the same rate of tax as a household that earns just $50,000 a year.

I can tell you from personal experience that in the late 80's when I was in high school with 3 part time jobs, one of which was working for an accountant, that I saw people that made hundreds of thousands of dollars a year that paid less taxes then I did as a 17 year old high school student working those 3 part time jobs.  Tell me...what class is the "Class warfare" actually being waged against?

I see what many Republicans and Tea Party leader think the problem is.  The poor make to much!  They should be paid less and taxed more!