I discovered a great channel on YouTube: MenstrualCupInfo.
There are many reasons to switch over to menstrual cups. While the cups themselves are initially higher than traditional menstrual cups (I paid around $40 for my Mooncup), they will last for years, saving you money in the long run. Plus, they help you cut down on your garbage output, and goodness knows the world could do with a little less plastic trash floating around in it.
The human stomach releases more acid when meat is consumed.
Sounds like an adaptation to meat-eating to me…
Many think that global warming is a fraud perpetuated by the gub’mint, the vegans, or just… anybody they don’t like, really, in order to squeeeeeeze more money out of us poor widdle wed-bwooded Amewicans. I beg to differ, because if global warming is a fraud, it’s the worst and most self-defeating fraud EVER.
Shortly after WWII, the US government decided it needed a plan to keep the country from falling into another Great Depression. The solution was to create a consumer culture, a world where new fashions were required every year, technology that went obsolete as soon as it was out of the box, and CD players that lasted only a few months before breaking and requiring a replacement.
Victor Lebrow explained the solution thus:
“Our enormously productive economy … demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption…. we need things consumed, burned up, replaced, and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”
This plan was designed to keep the money flowing, flowing, flowing forevermore.
I’ve heard people claim that global warming is all a scam to get more money. But you know, that just doesn’t make a lot of sense. In fact, global warming is a real wrench in the greasy, smoking engine of consumerism.
For one thing, if CO2 is responsible for global warming, then we should drive less. If we drive less, this means fewer shopping trips at Big Boxmart to buy the latest clothes.
For another, if CO2 is responsible for global warming, this means that we’ve got to stop trashing trees that convert CO2 back into oxygen. This means that we can’t keep plundering the Earth silly for raw materials to make new 6-month CD players.
Obviously, this doesn’t jive well with the government’s plan for an ever-accelerating rate of consumption!
“Duh,” skeptics say, “Big Oil WANTS us to believe in global warming so we have to pay more for gas!”
Nice try, but no cigar. Big Oil pays people to prove that global warming ISN’T happening, or at least prove that if it is, it totally isn’t our fault. We don’t know which is it, because they can’t make up their minds. They don’t care which it is, as long as their hands are whitewashed.
“Global warming was made up by vegans to make us stop eating meat,” some argue. Boy, I wish I could agree with you - I hate giving ammo to dogmatic vegans as much as any red-blooded red meat-eater. But the fact is, scientists have known for decades (LONG before vegetarianism was was cool) that gases like CO2 and methane trap heat, and that it doesn’t take a lot of it to heat the place up enough to cause some major problems. Just look at the temperatures of Venus compared to Mercury. (Mercury is closer to the sun, but Venus, with its all-CO2 atmosphere, is hotter. WAAAAAY hotter.)
The same goes for any argument that points out that people are taking monetary advantage of global warming. We now have cap-and-trade, and then there are all those “green” products. But the fact still remains that scientists have been warning us for DECADES, whereas businesses are JUST NOW getting on the bandwagon. If global warming was invented to sell things, you’d think they’d have started doing it a long time ago.
Is global warming an obstacle to the truth about low-carb getting out? Well, if I were a scientist who knew that adding more CO2 and methane to the atmosphere could screw our planet up royally in the next few decades, I’d feel a little squirmy about suggesting that people eat more meat. On the one hand, we’ve got people who can actually afford to eat meat in the US, but in the other hand we’ve got people in third-world countries who can barely afford to eat at all, and who will be severely affected by climate change. It won’t just be the changing weather that screws them over; it’ll be the wars that break out over resources.
IF they are ignoring studies on low-carb because of this, I won’t say whether they’re right or wrong to do so. I WILL say that it’s one tough call to make.
The REAL conspiracy is the one cooked up after WWII to keep you buying, buying, buying. If that means convincing you that everything is fine in the world and that global warming isn’t real (or if it is, it’s not your fault and there’s nothing you can do about it anyway), so be it.
Skeptics of homeopathy are gathering together to make a demonstration: their plan is to overdose on homeopathic pills to prove that sugar pills that might have a molecule of medicine in them don’t do diddly.
Comments from those upset by this demonstration are lulzy. Some claim that it shows their ignorance because swallowing more pills will have even less effect.
Really? Is that why homeopathic medicines have dire warnings to contact a doctor or poison control center in case of an overdose? Is that why they tell to to take more pills if the effect you’re getting isn’t strong enough? Going by the instructions and warning labels, I think the skeptics’ demonstration is pretty valid.
I don’t see why those who believe in homeopathy are so upset by this, anyway. If homeopathy actually does work, we’ll have a lot of ill skeptics on our hands and you’ll be vindicated. If not… well, then it’s time to swallow the bitter pill of truth and move on.
Apparently, Pat Robertson couldn’t find anything particularly damning to point to as a scapegoat for the Haiti earthquake, because instead of pointing to homosexuals, feminists, abortions, etc., he chose to blame an alleged pact with the devil that took place 200 years ago during the Haiti revolution. The proof, believers claim, is that Haiti has always been a poor nation ever since the revolution.
This is rather sad in light of the fact that it takes a great deal of ignorance to suppose that Haiti’s troubles could only be supernatural. Haiti is on a fault line - on the “ring of fire,” no less. Scientists have known that it was only a matter of time before a major earthquake would strike.
The Haitian Revolution occurred from 1791–1803. Although they succeeded in driving out their oppressors, they were continually beleaguered by the French for years, who continued to extort them. It also didn’t help that the Haitians were uneducated and unskilled ex-slaves. Under these conditions like these, how could you expect a country to take off smoothly?
So what about this pact with Satan? It takes a great deal of imagination to suppose that the prayer believed to be the one Haitians offered to the creator of the universe had anything to do with Satan.
Read the rest of this entry »
Amidst this horrific event, this headline kinda made me giggle. As if the earthquake wasn’t bad enough, the relief efforts have been dubbed “The Disaster of the Century!” (Fortunately, not really.)
Also, please consider using GoodSearch and setting the charity to Doctors Without Borders, or any other charity involved in Haiti’s earthquake relief efforts.
I just found a great video about Henri VIII’s terrifying 5000 calorie-a-day-diet.
Aside from eating an insane amount of food overall, he also, as royalty did in that day, ate insane amounts of white bread and drank sugared wine. No wonder the guy was so fat.
(The other part of his liquid intake comprised of ale, which of course isn’t a very healthy way to go, either.)
Henry VIII also didn’t eat vegetables: the Tudor family didn’t go for that kind of thing, believing they were indigestible.
If Henry VIII had cut out the sugar and white flour and had eaten that nasty peasant food called “vegetables” instead, he probably wouldn’t have been able to stuff himself like he did. Sugar/white flour tends to mess up your appetite, making you feel hungry when you shouldn’t. And not only does it mess up your appetite, it just plain messes you up.
Having watched the first four episodes of V, I feel like writing an entry about it. 
First of all, I will say that the series isn’t too bad. It could be better, but it’s still enjoyable.
Secondly, I must say I’m a bit bemused and disappointed by its pandering to right-wing conspiracy theorists.
We find out that the Visitors (often called “V’s” for short, which sounds retarded - my guess is that the producers decided that the audience was so stupid it couldn’t figure out that V stood for visitor on their own) are responsible for “unnecessary wars” and whatnot. Turns out they’ve been infiltrating our politics for eons, manipulating us to the point we’d be ripe for the picking.
This is where the show panders to those who can’t cope without scapegoats. They can’t grasp that humanity’s problems might have something to do with the fact that humans are rather shortsighted and often stupid creatures, but must instead point the blame at some unseen force manipulating things from behind the scenes.
The show also panders to the anti-vaxxers: we find out that the Visitors are slipping something horrible into our flu vaccine. Oh, yay. (Now, for anyone who actually believes that flu vaccines are all a plot to kill our innocent chilluns, I have a question: if the government really wants to decrease the number of children, why don’t they stop making children tax-deductible? Why don’t they make us pay for our children, like Australia does?)
There are so many cases where the show doesn’t even try to disguise its anti-Obama criticisms, its ridiculous. Universal heathcare? It just means someone’s buttering us up for eating later.
Also, I can’t end this without a paragraph about Tyler. Tyler started off as a good character, but sometimes I think he’s being written as how adults think teenagers act, rather than how they actually act. In the fourth episode, Tyler corners his mother to talk about one of his many problems. Mom’s phone rings, but she decides to be nice and tells Tyler she’ll ignore the phone this once. Tyler tells her to go ahead and answer it, so she does, promising Tyler she’ll get off the phone ASAP. Then, for indiscernible reasons, as soon as she puts the phone to her ear, Tyler bolts out the door, runs tot he Visitors, and complains that he can’t talk to his mother. What the frell?
Even so, the show’s not bad. I just hope it’ll stop pandering to the right-wing conspiracy theorists so much in the future.
I recently encountered a viral video on YouTube that supposedly depicts a glowing cloud above Moscow. The woowoos have claimed it’s everything from a sinister government plot to an alien invasion.
*headdesk*
Okay, time to set things straight. Simply put, there is no glowing cloud. That “glowing” area you see is the sky shining through a circular opening in the clouds:
Unusual? Yes. A product of aliens or a secret government conspiracy? No.
Ever been to the Sims 3 Exchange? Ever tried searching for sims? If you have, you have my condolences.
The Sims 3 Exchange has to have the most failtastic search engine I have ever encountered. Never have I seen a search engine that was so successful at failing to find what you were looking for, despite the fact what you are looking for does, in fact, exist. Instead, it often seems to choose a handful of Sims completely at random, except for the obligatory Twilight sims it throws in for good measure.
For example, I search for the keywords “Sailor Moon.” Now, there is no shortage of Sailor Moon sims on the Exchange. Yet for some reason, I get about a half-dozen sims that most definitely have nothing to do with Sailor Moon, including not one, but TWO Bella Swans.
Oddly enough, a few minutes later I search for “Sailor Moon” again and actually get a few Sailor Moon sims in there. But for some freakish reason, Bella Swan is still the first result.
Now, I search for “Stephen Colbert.” Out of 24 results, I have no Stephen Colberts, but I have two Esme Cullens, a Rosalie Hale, two Bella Swans, two Alice Cullens, several sims with names like Stephenie or Stephans, and a handful with no clear relation to my keywords at all.
Surprisingly, only two out of the twenty four results are related to Twilight when I search for the word “vampire.” Funny, you would think that “vampire” would have more to do with Twilight than “Stephen Colbert,” but apparently not.
Equally surprising, searching for “Final Fantasy” yields results that are actually related to Final Fantasy. I see three Rikkus, a Lightning, a Yuna, and… Bella Swan?!
By now, I should note that going to the second page of search results doesn’t actually work. You don’t get the second page of search results. You get the second page of the latest sims uploaded.
So, let’s refine our search - we’ll search for “Sephiroth.” The only thing I get is a Tifa Lockheart.
Surprisingly, searching for “Tifa Lockheart” actually results in a lot of Tifa Lockhearts, or at least Sims who have “Tifa” in their name somewhere. “Tinkerbell” is also a search that ends up yielding good results - surprise, surprise, no sparkling vampires come up.
“Harry Potter” yields a few Mary Sues plus the ugliest Luna Lovegood you can (but probably don’t want to) imagine. There are no actual Harry Potters, and although there is room on the page for more results, the decent Harry Potter-related sims I found on someone else’s Exchange profile do not appear at all.
Now, with Michael Jackson just having passed away, you would think that searching for Michael Jackson would result in actual Michael Jackson sims. You’d be wrong. The first result is Janet Jackson, a few Sims whose surnames are Jackson or Michaels, but there are no Michael Jacksons to be seen. As usual, there are a handful of Sims who make no sense whatsoever.
At this point, I am becoming increasingly frustrated at the search engine’s constant failures. Of course, I shouldn’t be so surprised; this is EA, after all.
What do you want to bet that JM Pescado could have the dumb thing working in fifteen minutes?