Glasses for the Masses

British inventor Josh Silver, a former professor of physics at Oxford University, has come up with a game-changer of a product design with his water-lensed glasses.

Phenomenal. I'd like a pair of diagnostic purposes. Like say, a device where you do this and it tells you what your prescription is. Like a thermometer for your eyes. Course, this will put a lot of over paid jackasses out of work. So don't expect it to fly anytime soon in the states. We still have union to retard our progress.

Fear: Hobbyists Will Create New Life Forms

Amateur biologists are goofing around with genetics in garage-based labs that some fear could unleash new and dangerous life forms.

Oh boy, here we go. Let the intellectual witchhunt begin.

The Company smells it's Doom.

Custom life forms will spell the end of centralized government as we know it.

Take the drug war for example. What happens when someone creates a bug that turns sewage into heroin?

I foresee a short time period where test tubes become illegal as the government uses the only weapon is really has to stave off its own obsolescence. Fear.

This Machine Might Save the World

Two desktop-printer engineers quit their jobs to search for the ultimate source of endless energy: nuclear fusion.

"Somebody described it as a thermonuclear diesel engine," Laberge says

Ha! Awesome.

That's exactly what it is.

But...

There is tremendous resistance from the lab coat crowd to any sort of fusion research thanks to the collective ego blow dealt by the Fleischmann-Pons announcement and constantly having to explain how fusion won't blow up the world or the like. Even this article is falling all over itself to express how little faith it has in the concept.

This comes across as needlessly stuffed shirt. There is a difference between healthy skepticism and prejudice. I see more of the latter frankly in both this article and academia generally.

The scientific community has a long and checked history of elitism. Which is to be expected given the type of time investment required by many scientific pursuits, but much of it is unneeded.

Academia likes to present itself as totally objective yet they argue constantly, and about more than competing theory. Consensus is increasingly hard to come by, and so long as this condition persists, the money will flow in. I don't see this as coincidence.

Also, academia is heavily dependent on government funding, which is in turn heavily dependent on stability of economic conditions. To think that academia is or even can be immune to this pressure is naive. I predict real fusion will be produced in just such a private, and low tech setting, if its founders don't mysteriously and quietly die prior to completion.

Call that paranoia if you will, but ask yourself, what do you think a person is capable of if they stand to lose a billion dollars?

Spend to love

For stores, a very un-merry holiday

Sales during the crucial year-end shopping season evaporated as economic woes trumped gift-buying enthusiasm among consumers.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- The 2008 holiday sales season is one of the worst for retailers in decades, as consumers' concerns about the economy and job losses crushed the typical year-end shopping exuberance.

Good. I'm tired of watching the system squeeze every last dime out of people based on the lie that if you don't spend you don't love. I'll bet this year families got closer than ever on the whole as they were forced to "explain" why they couldn't afford to say what they wanted to say with gifts.

I'll bet hugs and kisses and tearful letters and homemade expressions of affection abounded this year. And we're the better for it.

I'm sure the top one percent still made their dollar and traded cars among themselves, but if we finally learn that we don't have to spend to love, maybe they'll join us in our little boat before too long.

Is Texas Changing Its Mind About the Death Penalty?

Ten men and one woman were sentenced to death in Texas in 2008, according to the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. It was the lowest annual figure since the 1976 reinstatement of the death penalty.

"The need for revenge, for vengeance is being curbed, the appetite is no longer there," contends Robert Hirschorn

We're finally growing up it seems.

Finally, beginning to realize what works and what doesn't.

The inquisition should have taught us that fear of punishment no matter how unimaginably brutal, is not a deterrent to the committed, because no one ever plans to be caught, and worse yet, some simply do not care.

History is full of people, for example, who burned themselves alive to prove a point. You simply cannot attack devotion like that with force or fear. More sophistication is needed. And even we young Americans, not even 300 years old, are beginning to realize that fact.

And I for one am deeply proud, considering how long it took other countries to pick up on it.

In time we will stop killing individually and socially, and then when we wake up from this nightmare, let us hope that our capacity for forgiveness is sufficient to allow us to forgive ourselves.

8 year old girl cannot legally divorce her 58 year old husband…

Saudi court tells girl aged EIGHT she cannot divorce husband who is 50 years her senior

A Saudi court has rejected a plea to divorce an eight-year-old girl married off by her father to a man who is 58, saying the case should wait until the girl reaches puberty.

The divorce plea was filed in August by the girl's divorced mother with a court at Unayzah, 135 miles north of Riyadh just after the marriage contract was signed by the father and the groom.

Lawyer Abdullar Jtili said:"The judge has dismissed the plea, filed by the mother, because she does not have the right to file such a case, and ordered that the plea should be filed by the girl herself when she reaches puberty."

As once can imagine, this has a lot of people upset. But in my opinion that anger is somewhat misplaced and not entirely selfless.

And so I commented on another blog...

Oh please. We put 8 year olds in halter tops, and hot pants that say “juicy” across the seat, and see to it they are preggers or at least deflowered by 15.

I love how judgmental of other cultures we are. We have the highest teen pregnancy rate in the world, the highest prison population of the industrialized world, and we’re hip deep in a pedophile witch hunt.

We don’t care in this country if 8 year old boys are molested by the elderly clergy en mass, but one little foreign girl MIGHT get molested and we lose our minds.

The bottom line is a lot of men read that and got jealous because they want a 16 year old at 40, and this is just a bit much even for them. The Saudi depravity reflects their depravity hence the rage.

If you’re really so pissed, how about we bomb them? Oh wait they can fight back. And they sell us our oil.

In short, put up or shut up.

To which was replied...

Frohergeist

@Brandon M. Sergent -

1.) I don’t put 8 year olds in halter tops and hotpants, nor do I see to it that they’re statutory raped. If you do stuff like that, please stop. Or at least stop projecting it upon others.

2.) I’m assuming you live in sub-Saharan Africa when you say “we”, because they’ve got the highest rate of teen pregnancy in the world. The United States has the highest population percentage in prison; what does that have to do with any aspect of this article? Also, I can’t tell if you’re outraged that there’s a “pedophile witch-hunt” going on.

3.) I care if little boys are being molested by clergy. I’m also allowed to care if “one little foriegn girl” might be molested thru conventions of regional religious doctrine. Once again, plz stop projecting.

4.) Most disturbing projection yet. Is that the bottom line? You really don’t think people can earnestly get upset over tacit governmental approval of (at best) systemic undermining of women’s rights or (at worst) statutory rape? That this is clearly the sole fault of the envy of depraved Western mid-life-crisisers?

5.) What a preposterous false dilemma. And even more projection. “If you do not approve of someone’s actions, destroy them UTTERLY or you are a hyprocrite!” Is that how the world works for you? Utter subservience to your will, or destruction? No other options? Absolutely everything in life is more complicated than “A; if not A, B.”

You’re a psychopath. Not in the flippant, disparaging term; the clinical term.

My complete reply is as follows...

@Frohergeist

"I don’t put 8 year olds in halter tops and hotpants."

I'm pleased that you personally do not engage in this behavior but a quick trip to your local mall or walmart will show that others do. If you do not see this behavior personally in your area, well good for you. In that case I'd suggest you go clothing shopping for an 8 year old girl. It's an eye opening experience for those that have not.

See the rest of my reply at http://newshate.blogspot.com/2008/12/8-year-old-girl-cannot-legally-divorce.html

I will not reply in full here, I doubt the post's author wants a flame war.

"when you say “we”"

I meant, industrialized world, my apologies. Obviously crushed third world nations will have a higher TPR.

"what does that have to do with any aspect of this article?"

I was suggesting that we have little right to be judgmental until we get our own house in order.

"Also, I can’t tell if you’re outraged..."

Yes I am. Pedophilia is a problem we exacerbate for profit. It's a public health issue, not a legal one. Just like the drug war.

"I care if little boys are being molested by clergy."

Good for you. So do I. But I must remind you that you are not the whole of the United States. I'm speaking of the American populace generally. As far as the media goes, attacking the church and its battalion of molesters was a passing fad, at best.

"You really don’t think..."

Of course they can. I'm commenting on why. Things like what the article are speaking of happen all the time, yet this is supposed to be news.

In the face of female circumcision, honor killings, torture, and human right's violations generally in these countries, which magically aren't news anymore, if they ever were, I have to ask, why?

I have a theory...

Because we are a culture Obsessed with underage sex, that's why. If she had been beaten to death with a rock, or had her genitals stitched shut, or both, we'd not be having this conversation, because it would not have been a story.

But because some guy gets to potentially raise her to be a little sex slave, and screw her the instant he feels like it, we're all frothing at the mouth. Color me cynical, but I can't help but think a good chunk of that rage is jealousy.

And no, obviously some are angry for what I would call ethical reasons, such as myself, and perhaps even you. But even those people need to be reminded that this is not an honest reporting with the aim of solving the problem. News is a business. And sex sells. If this really was news to the people merely because its an extreme ethical violation, and not a pedo fantasy come to life, Amnesty International would get more hits than foxnews.com. We control what gets covered. If the demand were there for real news, we'd have it. We don't, so there isn't.

"No other options?"

Setting aside the fact of a probable Tom Clancy style reaction if the 8 year old girl in question was a doe eyed white American, I'll say sure, there are other options. But considering the froth spitting hatred, and armchair torture-expert style, reaction to domestic pedophiles, I'd say bombing the Saudis into radioactive glass seems a rational response by comparison.

My personal suggestion would be an immediate and complete international boycott of all Saudi imports and services spearheaded by the United States domestic economic consequences be damned. I personally choose to be poor and sleep at night, rather than be rich and worry about my soul.

But you and I both know that's not going to happen. America hasn't been something to be proud of in decades, if ever. In my opinion America is one of those looks good on paper not so much in execution kind of things, but I digress.

I believe they could skin a dozen infants in Saudi Arabia and broadcast it live on Al Jazeera and we'd do nothing, we'd demand some sort of gesture, but ultimately we'd forget, and we'd damn sure not let it interfere with out football watching. My suggestion of bombing was primarily designed to make people think "well why don't we bomb them?" in the face of such strong "justification." Hopefully they'd realize, it's because they have our economy grabbing its ankles.

My core point is this; obviously we don't Really care. If we did we'd be doing something about it other than waxing self-righteous on a blog. Hell, look at 911, 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals, and our government invades Iraq, and we let them? Come on.

We can't look up from our collective genitals long enough to care, hence our interest in this case.

Your reaction is case in point. You feel personally insulted by my position, which says more about you than me. Ironic, considering your repeated claims of projection on my part. The point is I don't care about you personally, I only care about the arguments you present, and the ideologies you represent. you on the other hand have no idea what you hate, and so for the moment, it's me.

"You’re a psychopath."

Perhaps. That's not for me to judge is it. Pick a point of my logic, a point you feel is the result of mental defect. I'll show you my thinking.

If the world did judge me, by merely stating it to be the case without evidence, as you have, my response would be along the lines of the following.

"See, I'm not a monster, I'm just ahead of the curve." - The Joker

Introduction

H.R. 6257: Assault Weapons Ban Reauthorization Act of 2008

H.R. 6257: Assault Weapons Ban Reauthorization Act of 2008

Sponsor:
Rep. Mark Kirk [R-IL]

Co-Sponsor:
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen [R-FL]
Rep. Michael Ferguson [R-NJ]
Rep. Christopher Shays [R-CT]
Rep. Michael Castle [R-DE]

What's wrong with this picture?

Republicans sponsoring a draconian gun bill?

Crazy like a fox.

Consider. An historic gun ruling from the SCOTUS on Thursday 26 June 2008 virtually assures that serious challenges to the 2nd amendment are going to be difficult. After all how can a hand gun not be considered an assault weapon since it's designed to kill people, reasoning not withstanding.

Consider. People never pay attention to who sponsors bills.

Consider. The republicans are on the way out. This has been obvious since W got re-elected to anyone with political acumen.

Consider. An extremely common justification given by semi-rational republicans for voting for a fossil and a dimwit. "Obama gonna take my gun!"

Consider. Most voters are one issue voters by necessity given the structure of representative democracy in general. Gun rights are right up there with abortion in this respect.

Consider. Politics doesn't exactly reward the honest.

Consider. Many pro-gun anti-republican types, like myself voted Obama secure in the knowledge that the democrats are not stupid enough to take on an issue as thorny and contentious as gun rights when there is obviously so much more pressing and time critical business. Because they know they'd lose precious time.

My conclusion.

The republicans introduced a nightmarish gun bill they would never actually stand for as a strategic maneuver. The goal being to make the simple associate Obama with draconian gun control so that right wing pundits all over the country can score a huge "see I told you so" and gum up the works enough that the problems stemming from the last 8 years of psychotic republican rule can be blamed on Obama, thus assuring a right wing victory in 2012 as chief among a whole slew of tactical gains.

The best way to defeat this madness would be to alert top democrats, or Obama himself, to this ploy.

Self interest is the greatest motivator.

Insurance, Medicine, Money and God.

Daily Express | Odd News :: Teenager lives 118 days without a heart

TEENAGER LIVES 118 DAYS WITHOUT A HEART
Story Image

Cool, but I wonder how much money persecond that cost.

TWO hearts? I had a gal bladder attack and that cost 900$ just to talk to someone, not so much as an injection. That's a hell of a cover charge.

And then there's this gem.

“I truly believe it’s a miracle,” said her mother, Twolla Anderson.

OMG Bitch! Could it be the result of a billion man hours of medical research? Could it be an organ harvesting and donation system that encompases the entire country? No of course not is was JEEBUS! Ya right, good thing you have science to keep your spawn alive, since odds are judging from their parental stock they're too dimwitted to do it on their own.

But hey then again fish do ok and they don't even have minds, but they do have productive genitals. I suppose it was only a matter of time before a mammal tried that approach.

Yeah next time pray to your imaginary friend instead of taking her to the hospital. And what about all the other kids that didn't get a heart that died this year? Tell me Twolla, what makes your brat so damn special that god himself is gunna suspend the laws of physics via a miricle to see that little D’Zhana pulls through? Why can't he be bother to hand a couple million people some of that fish and bread he's so famous for apparently making?

Beyond all that there's the cost to you and me. What cost? Insurance morons.

I am sick and goddamn tired of hospitals extorting the public and only stepping in when the people are monents from death and then charging millions to bring them back.

I want to know the underlieing cause here. Could this condition have been spotted and prevented with regualr medical care and good nutrition? We'll probabaly never know because unless you make 80k a year you don't get either, and while my reading skill may not be up to snuff I don't see anyone named "Twolla" on the fortune 500 top CEO list.

The problem here (as in may other areas of life in America) is the two party system’s compromising politics causing a blend of socialism and capitalism. The dems on the social side push for insurance coverage for everyone instead of an outright social healthcare system, and the republicans defend insurance companies and hospitals instead of attacking subsidized health insurance as social welfare in disguise.

The result is that while insurance is a socialist element in that it is dividing the cost to the individual among society. The hospitals and insurance companies both, buoyed on regulation compete but not against each other, but against themselves for higher profit margins, not for a bigger customer base, since becoming a hospital or insurance company is so regulated as to be impossible resulting in an oligarchy. All this leads to an upwards spiral where hospitals raise prices because they know that Patients have no choice, and most enough insurance anyway, so if they want to charge a middle class house wife a million for a liver, they can, and do. Then the insurance companies site this absurd cost as an operating expense, get tax write offs raise prices and eventually get government aid. The hospitals know that the government will always see to it that insurance companies at least exist, so there is no pressure to lower prices, and insurance companies know that people can't avoid being sick and the government will insure that there is no competition for medical services due to regulation, so there is no danger of a boycott of hospitals. The only recourse left to the common man is simply ignoring the absurdly high bills altogether, and refusing to pay them on principal, or exercising the dollar vote if you prefer.

But in steps the government once again to make damn sure that cost is passed on to the sick and poor, like always. By allowing the court system to be used as a police backed defacto collection agency with its liens and judgments, eventually prison, and now its tolerance for the hostage situation now developing between the credit ratings bureaus which shouldn’t exist in the first place and the credit for profit system which is equally bloated and corrupt, so they can now prevent you from finding a home or a job if you don't pay up.

What does the Gov get out of all this? Hard working drones unable to protest long hours and rights infringement because none of us can pay for insurance directly, we have to slave away for some corporation, and that means giving up a third of your money off the top to the government.

Your choices? Work and Pay or Die.

It's a protection racket plain and simple. I've said it before and I'll say it again.

Government is mafia given legitimacy by duration.

The Boy Hero and How to Deal With Terrorists

Charged Boy Tallied Spankings - Phoenix News Story - KPHO Phoenix

Charged Boy Tallied Spankings

POSTED: 1:20 pm MST November 26, 2008
UPDATED: 6:04 am MST November 27, 2008
[NEWSVINE: Charged Boy Tallied Spankings] [DELICIOUS: Charged Boy Tallied Spankings] [DIGG: Charged Boy Tallied Spankings] [FACEBOOK: Charged Boy Tallied Spankings] [REDDIT: Charged Boy Tallied Spankings] [RSS] [PRINT: Charged Boy Tallied Spankings] [EMAIL: Charged Boy Tallied Spankings]
ST. JOHNS, Ariz. -- An Arizona boy charged in the shooting deaths of his father and another man kept a ledger of his spankings and told a Child Protective Services worker that when he reached 1,000, that would be his limit, according to a newly released police report.

Good. The boy deserves a medal not a sentence.

I only wish more people who happen to be under the age of 18 would execute their abusive shit for brain excuses for parents.

Yes, I'm 100% serious. Yes I know what I'm saying.

It's quite simple. If you are capable of hitting your own child with the intend to cause pain you deserve death. And if justice were truly served it would be at the hands of your victim.

I don't know how much plainer I can make it.

Say it with me. Children are people. People have rights. One of those rights is reasonable protection from assault.

If that is too complex for you, then you aren't human. You're an abusive alien that has infiltrated our society and taken a child hostage. And as such, I'd happily watch your head explode, like any other terrorist taken care of in good order by a marine or SWAT sniper in order to protect an innocent.

I've said the rest before.

Woman Comparable to Men in Domestic Violence: Stereotypes and their Consequences

Woman Comparable to Men in Domestic Violence: Stereotypes and their Consequences | Brain Blogger

At the end, she got a police officer to volunteer a call to a shelter, posing as a male victim. He called a hotline for a battered womens program and asked about services for men, explaining that he was experiencing violence at the hands of a female. The hotline worker said, “You should be in jail.” The officer restated that he needed help because his wife was violent. The hotline worker hung up on him.

Its nice to see the world finally beginning to catch up with me.

Maslow's War: The Sale of Sex

San Francisco may become safe for prostitutes - CNN.com

San Francisco may become safe for prostitutes

* Story Highlights
* Proposition K, on ballot next month, would decriminalize prostitution
* Proponents say it would free police to focus on other crimes
* Many officials oppose the idea, saying it would make city a haven for prostitutes
* Measure would make it tough to tackle trafficking, police official says

SAN FRANCISCO, California (AP) -- In this live-and-let-live town, where medical marijuana clubs do business next to grocery stores and an annual fair celebrates sadomasochism, prostitutes could soon walk the streets without fear of arrest.

Awesome. If this passes we'll finally begin to get good data on the relationship between sexual denial and apathy. I think Orwell said it best.

Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner
meaning of the Party's sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex
instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party's control
and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more
important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable
because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way
she put it was:

'When you make love you're using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy
and don't give a damn for anything. They can't bear you to feel like that.
They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching
up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour.

I see a day, not long in coming, where Americans of all sort will be able to acquire all of their animal needs at a reasonable cost in a setting as free of harassment as your local cafe. Then we will see a return of the kind of philanthropy that we were once famous for.

When that day comes and we're not at eachother's throats for sex or food or shelter the way we are now you'll see a third Renaissance of human creativity and compassion begin.

Go read this, right now.

America's Most Overrated Product: the Bachelor's Degree - Chronicle.com

I have a hard time telling such people the killer statistic: Among high-school students who graduated in the bottom 40 percent of their classes, and whose first institutions were four-year colleges, two-thirds had not earned diplomas eight and a half years later. That figure is from a study cited by Clifford Adelman, a former research analyst at the U.S. Department of Education and now a senior research associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy. Yet four-year colleges admit and take money from hundreds of thousands of such students each year!

Debtors Prison: USA

Homeowner Joseph Prudente is battling the Beacon Woods Civic Association, which wants him to resod his yard, seen here Friday.

I'd happily do jail time over that, and a living example, I'd have a thousand ears for anything I chose to write on the subject. I'd stay till they repossess the home, and see if they release me when the lawn is no longer mine. I'd halt all attempts to get myself released, no appeals for them to worm out of this trap they set for themselves, I'd force them to go back on their putrid little ruling and THEN once I finally did get out, I'm suing everyone, because after the jail time I'm sure I'd have legal aid our the ass from both public and private sources.

You'd be a Hero in jail to top it off. A walking symbol to most inmates of rebellion, and a walking symbol to most guards of the blue collar stand up for your rights American man's man.

You people need to wake up, seriously. And a situation like this could be the alarm clock for a great many.

Nuclear Deal signed with India.

Bush signs nuclear deal with India - CNN.com

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Bush signed into law the lifting of a ban on nuclear trade with India.

The Senate voted last week to overturn the ban. The House of Representatives later passed the bill without debate.

Excellent use of the fiscal crisis/distraction.

Much like gun control, I'm in favor of nuclear weapon freedom, for many of the same reasons.

I'm fine with everyone owning a handgun and a rifle and even a machine gun, but I don't need everyone's basement looking like a gun museum. Same with nukes, one or two for everyone. The really dangerous weapons don't even need industry to produce anyway.

I think this is a good thing. Besides, on the whole nuclear power is safer than coal because you at least have a chance of safely dealing with its by product, where as you don't with coal.

How big?

Let’s examine the famous Hubble Ultra Deep Field image, the most massive photo ever taken:

Right now, on your computer screen, are approximately 10,000 galaxies.

Each of those galaxies contains anywhere from ten million to one trillion stars.

The average star is roughly a million times the size of Earth.

And yet, with all that junk, the Universe is more than 90 percent empty space.

All of that, in this tiny photo. A photo that took 400 orbits and 800 exposures to take.

And the kicker? The photo covers one thirteen-millionth of the entire night sky.

Cracked Rocks.

Get over yourself.

Worthless