Auditory Imagery

Heh, I have actually found myself saying this aloud in my car as I’ve listened to various stump speeches and etc of late:

 

Complete lack of backbone & leadership

I am so disgusted right now, and ashamed.

Whatever happened to rolling up our sleeves and doing what it takes?

When did we start thinking that breaking our word and hiding behind blame and was the hallmark of success and prosperity?

Poopy news

Well, poo.  I just received my results from the cross-reactivity panel, and I am (over)reactive to just about everything grain-like, & even more .  No quinoa!  No buckwheat!  No hemp!  No potatoes!  No sesame seeds!  Gah!  There be many things in there I be liking and wanting to eat!  A good chunk of my diet was quinoa, buckwheat, sesame and hemp!  Unhappy me at the moment.

Not that I won’t adjust, nor will I suffer over it, it’s just unfortunate for what I’d want.  If the system calms down I can try introducing one at a time for a while and see if the reaction is manageable, but I’d best stay away from ever combining any of them in close succession.  And mostly cut them out.

I was hoping for a non-reactive set of results…

Its triply funny

When Steven Colbert completely loses it over his own joke… especially since he’s usually so well composed and thus it is so rare:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/381282/april-11-2011/pap-smears-at-walgreens

And he doesn’t just smirk, he completely loses it.

As an aside,

I am amused that it has become a hashtag on Twitter already, and

Seriously?  That’s allowed now?  Even owing to that it might have been taken a bit out of context?   Say whatever (lies, damn lies and statistics) and if we get caught we can just claim that we never intended it to be true/honest/real?

That is certainly not how I want my discourse to look or be.

Facepalm

Transocean, the owner of the oil rig that exploded last year in the Gulf of Mexico, thus creating an untamed gusher of oil that spewed gazabillions of oil into the rich waters of the gulf, leading to (along with the toxics used in the cleanup) an ecological catastrophe that will be felt for decades, and killed 11 workers on the rig when it exploded, and caused suffering for many thousands of people on the coast, that same Transocean congratulated itself in a statement for quote “we achieved an exemplary statistical safety record as measured by our total recordable incident rate and total potential severity rate … As measured by these standards, we recorded the best year in safety performance in our company’s history.”  And then they paid out bonuses to execs.

Best year in safety performance indeed.

And “Potential severity rate” — what scale does that thing go up to?

Bullshittery

In the vein of The More You Know and caveat emptor:  up the awareness that there is an amazing amount of greenwashing that is occurring right now on products.  There are no standards for many of the words slapped onto the packaging of products, be it cosmetics, cleaners, various goods and even food.  XKCD, as almost always, has a (near) take on this:  http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/free.png Companies can, and do, throw all sorts of stuff on the label that is either not relevant (asbestos), diversionary (made with real lemons! when the lemons are 2% of the solution and the rest is a petrochemical) or just downright misleading (all natural when it contains any number of the dirty dozen).

Arm yourself and check what’s in it, check what the claim states and see if it bears itself out.  If a label doesn’t mention it, or I can’t figure it out, or it just seems odd, then I will always leave the product behind.  I choose another one that does do what it says it is about, and by doing so let companies know that I will not be bought off by some fancy label or logo that lets them charge more for the same stuff.  Please stop lying.

It bears repeating…

There is no such thing as clean coal.

Period.

Of Importance

Water is of the most fundamental items in the functioning of the entire biosphere.

Integrity and respect for the law is of the most fundamental level of the functioning of a government.

Time to set them both right.

QotD:

“All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers.”   – François Fénelon

Getting my goat

There’s a lot of back and forth going on in the USA right now on the topic of healthcare as a “reform/overhaul bill” is being pursued in the halls of government.  And with all that comes a lot of chatter on the airwaves and in public about it… and much of it is really getting my goat.

Punditry

One thing I am having difficulty being with is when people use wild inaccuracies and untruths in their ‘arguments’ for or against something.  Along with hyperbole, ad hominem statements et al.