Friday, August 29, 2008

sun ra - pink elephants



this is pretty special

(i miss how old cartoons were more free to be creative...lol)

hope for more than just america



on a side note, obama makes me proud of Black men.
cheers!

Monday, August 25, 2008

So periodically I have a problem

See I like meat. And I understand that my species has evolved with canine teeth because we're supposed to eat meat (ratio of teeth to food type is about 50/50 molars to incisors and plants/meat) But damn We have made the "industry" INCREDIBLY DISGUSTING, they are poisoning the aniamls, and by default poisoning th epopulation eating them. LIke consider the following, a) antibiotic resistance is sky high, antibiotics are given in massive amounts to animals we eat b) cancer rates have increased liek a billionfold for various reasons, chemical stimulants in meat being one c) if steroids are bad for athletes, why aren't they bad for cows? d) who wants a genetically modified anything?

it makes me glad I switched to farm raised and organics. You can also try some alternative, like ostrich, buffalo, and other non hormone/antibiotic pumped meats. They're pretty good too. And always, whatever you're uncle shot last week. I do believe in game (as long as you eat it)

And if you watch The Corporation it's even worse.

meet your meat

We are supposed to eat meat, just not like this. It's bad for everybody involved. And BTW, to the moronic ass biochem "graduate" who wanted to argue with me, what biochem school did you graduate from (insert UC Davis) that told you bovine growth hormone won't effect humans? Do you know anything about physiology? And if they give drugs to animals, and we eat them, by default we took the drugs... Or maybe you're the idiot that believe the reason why so much environmental estrogen is floating around is because this imaginary group of women are dumping thier birth control pills down the toilet just to mess with you.

To everybpdy else, don't believe the hype. You don't have to be a vegetarian, even just cutting down on your meat consumption helps. Or switching to other sources for your meat. Just knwo that anything that come 10 patties deep in a frozen bag from wallmart for $2 isn't even considered Grade A (and ask yourself... why is there a grading system for beef? Where does the Grade B-F go...?)

The industries don't care about you or what you eat. The owners can afford the healthcare. You can't.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Thursday, August 21, 2008

China get's the Gold

I haven't really been watching olympics, mostly because I'm either working or well... lets face it, it's not World Cup.

Anyway, what I have been watching is all the scandal and misfortune that China is experiencing at the moment and have to wonder, was this always going on, or is it just poetic justice for vast crimes against humanity?

  • I mean everything from telling a little girl her voice is pretty, but she's not so let's replace her with a cute lip syncher. (hmm what could this do to the self esteem of both these girls: one's not pretty enough, the other one shut up and be pretty)
  • There's the underage gymnast who is competing against olympic rules
  • Photoshopped firewoks at the start of the event. That's pretty awesome actually. That's exactly what let the 8 American bloggers to be imprisoned, for reporting that what they saw one TV was NOT what they saw in real life (although they'r ein jail for what they saw in Tibet).
  • What about the martial arts team that was locked in a prison for a year and forced to practice everyday for the opening ceremony. They weren't fed properly so that they'd maintain weight.
  • How about the story, and this is a personal favorite, and speculated to be false; China announces to in two provinces that Blacks and Mongolians shall not be served alcohol and to notify authorities of thier presence because they are all drug dealers and prostitutes (they were also advised to dress modestly and not serve gays either, but not for any particular reason)
  • Then there's the two elderly ladies that have been jailed for being pissed off about what's going on, oh wait not just jailed "re-educated" meaning a forced labor camp.
  • I just watched an HBO special about how bad the one child rule actually is.
  • Misfortune would be stating that the earthquakes, and giant vat of green slime that appeared on the nearby beach was just bad luck, but I think it was warning people not to come.

Now it's not fair to the common people of china, in any capaity, but I'm rather amused that the government, which prides itself on such an illusion of total conrtol has had to face so much embarrassment. I mean it's one thing to be caught red handed, but when you're caught lying and you're a total control freak, well that renders you feeling insignifcant.

Maybe, just hopefully, all this will bring light to what they're doing elsewhere in the world. Help us to focus ont he things that matter far more, like the fact that they fund terrorism and genocide. Maybe this kind of exposure is exactly what the world needs to see. America has been outed as a bunch of country blundering idiots, but everybody knows, it's the quiet kids in class that are the ones to fear. And China has been a silently growing super power for quite some time.

Yes yes, I officially want matching rings AND grills (still no diamonds)


the grill quality at this website is wack... I'd go through Gold Tooth Masters are where mine are from.
But the concept is AMAZING... I mean matching grills? That's hot.
yes I'm a jackass... and you know i'm dead serious.
the link to this fab couple is
one advantage though is they're nickel free... gyea to all of us with metal allergies

Wow. someone hacked Homeland Security, and, wait for it... called the middle east

They racked up $12,000 is Sprint charges (or maybe that was just thier monthly bill). The calls were made from FEMA phones and Sprint halted all outgoing calls and notified thier customer that somebody was make a whole bunch of 3 minute calls to Saudi Arabia, Yemen and India (I like how th enews calls India either middle eastern or asian depending on when it's convenient).

The awesome thing about this is the guy who investigated it said that the hack was 'old school' and pretty easy to do. Um, this is homeland security... yeah.

original article

Hipster Bingo!


OMG I'm SO playing this!


How To Play:Print this out and take it to the next show you go to. When you get a bingo, scream "BINGO!" at the top of your lungs, then break a bunch of beer bottles on the floor and get thrown out.

(*right click to view larger image for printing)

(**oh and YES you can count yourself!)

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

sex love and muder...?

body parts made of bread




watch the little girl get weirded out int he begining

red bears head trip

somehow eerliy appropriate to the times

did you know if you duck and cover you'll protect yourself from a nuclear attack?
or that even a thin layer of cloth or newspaper will protect you from the burn?
the government wouldn't lie.


btw... where's my local shelter?

(i so want to sample that jingle... duck & cover)

Monday, August 18, 2008

Afghan women jailed because THEY were raped... wtf

The Afghan women jailed for being victims of rape

In Lashkar Gah, the majority of female prisoners are serving 20-year sentences for being forced to have sex. Terri Judd visited them and heard their extraordinary stories

Monday, 18 August 2008



Beneath the anonymity of the sky-blue burqa, Saliha's slender frame and voice betray her young age.Asked why she was serving seven years in jail alongside hardened insurgents and criminals, the 15-year-old giggled and buried her head in her friend's shoulder.


"She is shy," apologised fellow inmate Zirdana, explaining that the teenager had been married at a young age to an abusive husband and ran away with a boy from her neighbourhood.

Asked whether she had loved the boy, Saliha squirmed with childish embarrassment as her friend replied: "Yes."

Ostracised from her family and village, Saliha was convicted of escaping from home and illegal sexual relations. The first carries a maximum penalty of 10 years, the second 20. These are two of the most common accusations facing female prisoners in Afghanistan.

Two-thirds of the women in Lashkar Gah's medieval-looking jail have been convicted of illegal sexual relations, but most are simply rape victims – mirroring the situation nationwide. The system does not distinguish between those who have been attacked and those who have chosen to run off with a man.

Sitting among the plastic flowers around his desk, where an optimistic United Nations scales of justice poster competed for space with images of Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai, Colonel Ghulam Ali, a high-ranking regional security officer, explained sternly that he supported the authorities' right to convict victims of rape. "In Afghanistan whether it is forced or not forced it is a crime because the Islamic rules say that it is," he claimed. "I think it is good. There are many diseases that can be created in today's world, such as HIV, through illegal sexual relations."

But there are signs of progress. A female shura, or consultative council, was established in Helmand province last week to try to combat the injustice of treating an abused woman as a criminal, and not a victim. British officers and Afghan government officials from the province's reconstruction team are also overseeing a project to build humane accommodation for the 400 male and female prisoners.

Inside the fortified compound of the prison in Lashkar Gah, Helmand's capital, the 330 male prisoners laze about in the shade of their straw huts. The prison security was was recently upgraded with new razor wire and guard posts following the attack on Kandahar's prison in which more than a 1,000 inmates escaped, including 400 Taliban. Past the main gate, inmates – whether on remand and awaiting trial or convicts – are incarcerated alongside 50 insurgents.

In a separate area are the female "criminals" – the youngest is just 13 years old – along with their small children, who must stay with their mothers if no one else will claim them. Their only luxury is a carpet, two blankets, basic cooking facilities and two daily deliveries of bread. They have neither medical care nor, as Colonel Ali acknowledged, "basic human facilities", such as washing areas, electricity and drinking water. All this he hopes will be rectified when the new building his finished.

Pushing her five-year-old son's arm forward imploringly, Zirdana, 25, pointed to the festering wound buzzing with flies. The little boy was just two months old when his mother was convicted of murdering her husband, his father. Zirdana had been handed over to him at the age of seven, as part payment in a financial dispute. She gave birth to the first of her children when she was 11 and was pregnant with her fourth when her husband disappeared and she was accused of killing him. Her three older children were taken from her by her brother-in-law. "When I first came to jail I cried so much blood was coming out of my mouth. My husband's brother told me he would give my children back when I came out of jail but he has become a Talib. Nobody comes to see us in jail. There are a lot of diseases," she said.

Next to her, Dorkhani, 55, sobbed so much that the glint of her tears shone through the mesh of her burqa. Married for four decades to a relatively wealthy man from Nowzad, the couple had fled to Lashkar Gah after a family dispute. When he returned to Nowzad, to try and reclaim his money, he disappeared. "The ones who killed my husband, they have money and they threw me in jail. I am 100 per cent innocent. I have no one, no brother to look after me," she said, explaining that those with cash could buy their freedom.

Last week, in Helmand, the new Women and Children's Justice Shura met and voted in its constitution with the help of advisers from the Afghan Human Rights Committee and support from the Women's Affairs Department, as well as a government legal adviser.

The shura, made up of 20 influential women, mostly teachers, hopes to tackle the inequality of the system by first ensuring that women in the province become aware of their basic right: not to have to endure abuse.

Earlier this year a report by Womankind, Taking Stock: Afghan Women and Girls Seven Years On, revealed that violent attacks against women, usually in a domestic setting, are at epidemic proportions – 87 per cent of women complain of such abuse, and half of it is sexual. More than 60 per cent of marriages are forced and, despite laws banning the practice, 57 per cent of brides are under 16. Many of these girls are offered as restitution for a crime or as debt settlement. Afghanistan is the only country in the world with a higher suicide rate among women than men.

In the UK, the MP Malcolm Bruce, chairman of the House of Commons International Development Committee, warned: "There is a dangerous tendency to accept in Afghanistan practices which would not be countenanced elsewhere, because of 'cultural' differences and local traditions."

The shura is hoping to provide a place where women can report abuse and create a separate centre for women and girls incarcerated for running away. It would be a compromise of custody without the stigma of being thrown in jail.

"They are very aware of the inequality in the system," said Royal Navy Lieutenant Rebecca Parnell, a member of the Cimic, or civil-military co-operation, team. "The most refreshing thing is that there are plans coming from the Department of Women's Affairs. It is not just us pushing our ideas on to them." The military aid team has programmes for monthly health checks and trauma counselling in the prison as well as vocational training in carpet weaving, tailoring, literacy and basic health education.

As she was led away to her jail cell yesterday, Dorkhani lifted her burqa to reveal a sun-battered face streaked with tears and pleading eyes: "Please, please take our words somewhere where people will be kind and help us."

Friday, August 15, 2008

Almond Joy's got nuts, and refrigerant


No really. I had no idea. I have this bad habit of reading the ingredients to the foods I eat, and I always feel like I'm back in my ochem texbook when I come across processed foods. I'm also literally addicted to Wikipedia, and so when I eat something this gross and wiki it, I tend to never eat the object again.
/end rant

Sulfur Dioxide
(some quotes from Wikipedia)


  • Further oxidation of SO2, usually in the presence of a catalyst such as NO2, forms H2SO4, and thus acid rain.

  • Sulfur dioxide is sometimes used as a preservative for dried apricots and other dried fruits due to its antimicrobial properties, it is sometimes called E220 when used in this way. The preservative is used to maintain the appearance of the fruit and prevent rotting. Its presence can give fruit a distinctive chemical taste

  • Sulfur dioxide is also a good reductant. In the presence of water, sulfur dioxide is able to decolorize substances. Specifically it is a useful reducing bleach for papers and delicate materials such as clothes. This bleaching effect normally does not last very long. Oxygen in the atmosphere reoxidizes the reduced dyes, restoring the color.

  • Sulfur dioxide is also used to make sulfuric acid

  • Sulfur dioxide has no role in mammalian biology. Sulfur dioxide blocks nerve signals from the pulmonary stretch receptors (PSR's) and abolishes the Hering-Breuer inflation reflex

  • Being easily condensed and with a high heat of evaporation, sulfur dioxide is a candidate material for refrigerants. Prior to the development of freons, sulfur dioxide was used as a refrigerant in home refrigerators

  • Sulfur dioxide is a versatile inert solvent that has been widely used for dissolving highly oxidizing salts. It is also used occasionally as a source of the sulfonyl group in organic synthesis. Treatment of aryldiazonium salts with sulfur dioxide affords the corresponding aryl sulfonyl chloride.[

  • [edit] Threats to Health
    Sulfur dioxide acts as an acid. Inhalation results in labored breathing, coughing, and/or a sore throat and may cause permanent pulmonary damage. When mixed with water and contacted by skin, frostbite may occur. When it makes contact with eyes, redness and pain will occur

  • and as a side note: sodium metabisulfite was also added to the product t, which when mixed with water turns into more sulfur dioxide, as if the first dose wasn't enough.

And I just ate this sh*t. It was a Almond Joy bar. And that was only ONE ingredient.


Damn... I was just beginning to like that fake coconut taste.


Thursday, August 14, 2008

i'm curious


i thought about it the other day and realized that over all of the meat eating people, we mostly eat female animals. Cows. Chickens. Sheep. Pigs. I dunno about lamb or veal.

The only excpetion I can think of is boar, pheasant and venison and most people don't eat game.

I have no idea why that crossed my mind.

Monday, August 11, 2008

KBR/Haliburton Worker Raped, Locked in Shipping Container

Posted by Cara , Feministe at 12:51 PM on August 8, 2008.

KBR, the defense contractor doing a lot of heavy lifting in the upholding of our occupation of Iraq, has banned the use of personal cell phones by its employees. KBR and its previous parent company Halliburton are notorious for many things. One of those things is the rape and cover up of rape committed by its male employees against its female employees.

How are the two related? Well, the first and most widely-known woman to come forward with an allegation of rape and cover up is Jamie Leigh Jones. Jones was gang raped by her coworkers, then locked inside of a shipping container for days in order to prevent her from reporting the attack. The Justice Department never brought charges against her assailants, and extremely important evidence in the case was "lost" by KBR. But the relevant part is how Jones escaped: through the use of a cell phone. A "sympathetic guard" loaned the phone to her, which she used to call her father in the United States. Her father subsequently called his congressperson, who ended up securing Jones' release. If that "sympathetic guard" (you know, the one who didn't set her free) hadn't handed her that cell phone, god only knows where Jamie Leigh Jones would be today. But it just might not be alive, let alone acting as a major anti-rape and anti-KBR activist.

So. KBR employee is raped by her coworkers and then kidnapped and held prisoner. Employee secures her release through use of a personal cell phone. KBR doesn't really give a shit about any of it. Employee makes a lot of noise about the incident, making KBR look really bad, even if not actually impacting the company financially. KBR bans personal cell phone use.

Now, whether or not Jones' case and the number of similar allegations of rape and cover up that have come to light directly led to the ban of cell phones, we do not know. KBR isn't talking, and only says that the ban is related to "a safety and security concern."

But clearly, the safety and security of its female employees is not a concern. Maybe there was a valid safety and security concern that led to the ban. Or maybe "safety and security concern" means "the safety and security of our government contracts and image." Looking at KBR's long, repulsive history in this area, I tend to lean towards the latter, and I'm far from being the only one.

But let's assume for a moment that KBR's decision to ban cell phones has absolutely nothing to do with Jones' case and others like it. Let's be extraordinarily generous and pretend that their goal is not to prevent more rape victims from reporting the attacks perpetrated against them or speaking to loved ones about their rapes and rapists. Doesn't matter. Even if KBR was not intentionally trying to stifle rape victims and put them in even more danger, I don't give a shit, because that's the end result we're looking at. It will give the large number of victims one less recourse to ensure their safety. It will further isolate them from everyone outside of the company, leaving them with little to no support in a hostile climate. And it will embolden rapists within KBR, as if they needed that extra help. At this point, Jamie Leigh Jones' story is well-known, and one has to assume that this is particularly the case within KBR. What exactly is stopping rapists from trying the whole thing all over again -- now that they know there will be no real consequences for their actions, and even if their were, they're now less likely to get caught in the first place?

If nothing else, best case scenario, this move shows KBR's incredibly callousness towards rape survivors, its indifference if not promotion of its corporate rape culture, and its total obliviousness to the consequences of its own actions.

But KBR long ago gave up its right to be given the benefit of the doubt. So I still think it shows that when it comes to rape cover up, KBR knows what the hell it's doing, and knows that no one will even bother trying to stop them.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

triple fricatives

Fulfilling (my daily) Pharrell Fix

this is actually a dope interview.