ThePete's Soup

Guess I’ll have to order one myself :(

http://www.bbqaddicts.com/bacon-explosion/

via Nasa’s flickr

This image from Cassini, made possible only as Saturn’s north pole emerged from winter darkness, shows new details of a jet stream that follows a hexagon-shaped path and has long puzzled scientists.

Full image and caption | Read more | JPL Homepage

I just love that nobody ever complains about how we don’t spend enough money on learning things. It seems like science and education are always relegated to some sort of cultural ghetto. The universe is incredibly vast and filled with untold mysteries, but we’d rather worry about profits, terrorism and controlling what strangers do in their private lives. Explain how that jetstream around Saturn’s north pole could possibly do that.

Bet you can’t.

There will be two upcoming shows of “We Can Make It: The Songs of Kander and Ebb” at Don’t Tell Mama, February 25th and April 15th, 2010 at 8:30pm. That means pick up your pencils - nay your PENS - and put us in your calendar! I will post a more detailed blog about these events, and in the meantime…

Another annoucement: Marquee Five has been added to the lineup on March 17th at the now hip-hop-happening open mic “Wednesday Night at the Iguana,” hosted by Richard Skipper and Dana Lorge. We will do a few previously heard numbers, perhaps, but more importantly we will sing a special St. Patrick’s Day arrangement by Adam West Hemming.

Mark your calendars, kids! It’s time to see Marquee Five perform live! You’ll be glad you did!!

More info:

http://marqueefive.com

It is our most sincere belief that Dr. Wakefield and parents of children with autism around the world are being subjected to a remarkable media campaign engineered by vaccine manufacturers reporting on the retraction of a paper published in The Lancet in 1998 by Dr. Wakefield and his colleagues. 

Hm… the scientific community or a former Playmate and a guy who used to literally talk out of his ass…

WHO TO BELIEVE?

But seriously, this kind of thing drives me crazy. Two polar opposite POVs. The idiot actors pleading for more studies to be done, mainstream science says “no, shut up. We covered this.” Meanwhile, big pharma looms in the background making us all wonder just how much their powers to spend have warped reality in their favor.

Carrey and McCarthy using their celebrity to confuse the issue is really frustrating, but the scientific community has no reason to not do more studies. I mean, is there a point where you have too much proof? And when it comes to parents, don’t they deserve to have as much evidence as possible that their kids are safe?

And, man, it sure would be nice if we could stop big pharma companies from being “for profit.” Makes no sense at all considering how they have the same rights as humans but are motivated by money, not saving lives.

I know very little about the issue of autism/inoculations beyond the conspiracy stuff. But doing more studies seems reasonable. Maybe Carrey could pay for them?

Days after a Brooklyn cop and a Queens politician accused the police of cooking its crime statistics, a survey of more than one hundred retired NYPD higher-ups showed that cops—who are under constant pressure to produce happy-looking stats—have routinely fabricated or manipulated their data, since the crime analysis system was put into place in 1995. And, the statistics they produce are the very same that Bloomberg quotes when he says the city is safe, and getting safer every year. “

Cops that lie.

Lovely.

And we’re supposed to trust the boys in blue now?

I try to stick to filtered water from the tap, myself. I have a 1-liter Sigg bottle I fill up all the time. The only problem is, it can be a bit too heavy to take with me. Maybe I should invest in the .5-liter Sigg, for travel… either way, this is another great example of our government letting corporations get away with murder.

The broken water mains, gridlocked streets, crumbling dams and levees, and delayed flights that come from failing infrastructure have a negative impact on the checkbook and on the quality of life of each and every American.

I found the above quote on Stew Boyd’s tumblr blog, underpaidgenius and he got it from this editorial at NYTimes.com by Bob Herbert who writes about how our country is falling apart. Here’s a bit more from earlier in Herbert’s piece:

We’ve now lost 8.4 million jobs in this recession, and a vast majority of them are gone for good. The politicians are clambering aboard the jobs bandwagon, belatedly, but very few are telling the truth about the structural employment problems in the U.S. and the extremely heavy lift that is necessary to halt our declining living standards and get us back to an economy that is self-sustaining.

 

We don’t hear a lot that is serious about the sorry state of the nation’s infrastructure or the trade policies that crippled so many American industries or our inability (or unwillingness) to compete effectively with China when it comes to the new world of energy for the 21st century or our abject failure to provide a quality public education for the next generation of American workers, scientists, artists and entrepreneurs.

Herbert makes it out to sound pretty bad, doesn’t he? I’ve been saying for a while now that we’ve outsourced too many jobs and our money is on a one-way trip to Valuelessville. See, the value of our money is based on our country’s ability to create value. Without jobs, there’s no way to create value.

Now Herbert tells us our infrastructure is crumbling and our education system is failing us, as well. In other words, the very tools that allowed us to create jobs (and therefore value) are falling apart.

And he thinks the clock hasn’t run out yet??

Yep! The above pic depicts your happy Japanese “あいパッド” (aipaddo, the closest Japanese gets to pronouncing “iPad”), happy and ready for duty as an absorbent pad for seniors (it’s an adult diaper). But the “i” in the name isn’t there just for show. I’ll let the Asiajin.com post explain how it is:

…a sensor-ready adult absorbent brief product by a company called Awajitec, named “あいパッド,”

…

The diaper, which has 2 lines of aluminium, can be connected by clip with a small sensor unit. When the diaper soaked, the sensor notifies it via radio waves. It eases some burden of family and caretakers who support elderly.

So, they are using the “i” in iPad to mean pretty much the same thing as the “i” in Apple’s iPad, in that it’s a “pad” that is used for communicating. I bet it could even be rigged to send your caregiver an email when your iPad has been, uh, accessed.

Regardless, Apple really should have given a *touch* (HA!) more thought to what they were going to call their new device. Calling it the “iXoon” would have led to fewer distractions… ;)

I just love how happy that old man is having just peed on on an iPad! ;)

Join Jay ThePal and Kay ThePal as they enjoy “Habit Patterns,” a classically classroomy “educational” film that teaches us how pure and perfect anal retentive brunettes are and how useless and horrible sloppy, disorganized blondes are. Will Jay and Kay learn how to get clean and conform to society? Watch to find out!!

…the Obama administration has adopted the Bush policy of targeting selected American citizens for assassination if they are deemed (by the Executive Branch) to be Terrorists. As The Washington Times’ Eli Lake reports, Adm. Dennis Blair was asked about this program at a Congressional hearing yesterday and he acknowledged its existence:

The U.S. intelligence community policy on killing American citizens who have joined al Qaeda requires first obtaining high-level government approval, a senior official disclosed to Congress on Wednesday.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair said in each case a decision to use lethal force against a U.S. citizen must get special permission… .

He also said there are criteria that must be met to authorize the killing of a U.S. citizen that include “whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans. Those are the factors involved.”

Although Blair emphasized that it requires “special permission” before an American citizen can be placed on the assassination list, consider from whom that “permission” is obtained: the President, or someone else under his authority within the Executive Branch. There are no outside checks or limits at all on how these “factors” are weighed.

That was from an article on Salon.com by Glenn Greenwald. Greenwald also points out that the president would have a harder time passing a climate change bill than he would ordering the murder of an American citizen. Greenwald then reminds us that if we trust Obama to not use this power, but we allow it to exist, what’s to stop some less moral, future president from using the power?

Looks to me like it’s a case of “new king, same as the old king.”

This isn’t just my ¥2 this time… :(