Thursday, December 24, 2009

Finally Darth Vader will print more money so the US of A can continue its wars...

I knew the Wall Street speculators have been always on the Dark Side. But knowing that Darth Vader himself took control of the trading floor is reassuring.



Maybe he can now print all the money the US of A needs before it sinks the World+Dog into another financial crisis.

Or maybe that IS the plan after all....

;-)

FC

Tuesday, December 01, 2009

Comments are often funnier than the story...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/30/solange-magnano-argentina_n_374716.html

Two comments caught my eye:

1. Reader thinks Buenos Aires is in Brazil

--
"Not to rain on the pity parade, but her fixation on having a firm, shakable booty is a symptom of Rio's rapidly-spreading 365/24/7 fixation on Carnival. Everything is connected. At least now it's not only Americans, who are fixated and spend all of their money on beauty treatments."

Another reader´s reply:
"um, lightning joe.....Bu­enos Aires is in Argentina, Rio is in Brazil. They are different countries that speak different languages. Also, South America is still considered America last time I checked, and thus, so are the people."

--

2. Too funny:

---
photo

I regret nothing! Poor Argentinian girls must do what they have to do, to attract rich American politicians! My butt is so firm, St. Peter is bouncing quarters off of it as we speak! Ay, Dios mio!
---

ROF,L...

FC
PS: I´ve just returned on-line after six days without service. Thanks to my cable ISP.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Nine years later, where are the Bush supporters?

About nine years ago, in the Dec. 1, 2000 issue of (print) magazine "Internet World", more precisely page 16, we could read readers´ letters squaring off in support of Al Gore and George W. Bush, both candidates at that year´s presidential election.

First, there was Ken Greenberg, president at the time of Edge Communications Inc.

He made a strong argument for Al Gore, and against GWB:

-----
"George W. Bush is simply the least qualified candidate of my lifetime. Leaving aside Al Gore´s very real role in marshaling Congressional support to fund the Internet, his economic and social policies argue strongly, even overwhelmingly, for his election."

"I find it laughable that so many dot-commers appear to find Bush appealing. Haven´t entrepreneurs done incredibly well under the current Democratic administration (whatever weight you give fiscal policy)? I certainly have."

"Isn´t it clear that a trillion-dollar giveaway and the undermining of Social Security will in fact be ruinous for everyone?"
------

He was, of course, right-on.

But then, the magazine featured a letter from a Duke Walls, president and CEO of "Sabertooth Systems, inc." in support for GWB. He claimed that

---
"A vote for Gore is a vote for dead Internet firms" and that "a vote for Bush is a vote for continued growth and innovation without interference and censorship".
---

So G.W.Bush stole won the election in 2000, and after two G.W. Bush terms, the business of Duke Walls´ firm must have done certainly well, just like the U.S. economy (joke), right? Well, I looked around and there isn´t a Sabertooth Systems Inc. anymore.

The web site at SaberToothSystems.com redirects to a non-existing page at Cology.com. Further googling around reveals a 2005 article showing it was acquired by Cology, a firm dealing with back-end processing of student loans.

And how did the future-reading, Al Gore supported Ken Greenberg fare?. Nine years later, he's still succesfully commanding Edge Communications Inc.

Need I say more about the wisdom and predictive powers of conservatives vs. progressive people?

;-)
FC

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Toxic Sludge is Good for You!

I read at Smartplanet here :

Radioactive waste near New Mexico water supply not a health risk, officials say
http://www.smartplanet.com/business/blog/smart-takes/officials-say-radioactive-waste-near-new-mexico-water-supply-not-a-health-risk/1875/

"Radioactive waste is seeping from mountain burial sites in the canyons of northern New Mexico and moving toward the area’s springs and streams, but officials insist it’s not a health risk."

Heh, that reminds me of a great book that I read more than once and which I keep handy in my bookshelf, whose title inspires this post...


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1567510604?ie=UTF8&tag=mnmsprst-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=1567510604

FC

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Cancer epidemic? You betcha!

The recent death of celebrity Patrick Swayze to cancer brings a good opportunity to think about of what is causing the modern cancer epidemic and what can be done about it.

The video below comes from the excellent, award-winning documentary "The Corporation" by Canadian Mark Achbar, which you can find here.



Also worth reading are Dr. Samuel Epstein´s comments, available in this PDF.

http://www.thecorporation.com//media//Epstein.pdf

Enjoy
FC
PS: VIDEO FIXED. To the anonymous reporter: keep sucking it.

Friday, September 04, 2009

It was about time Palm put an end to Apple´s arrogance

Palm PRE´s software helps it beat iPhone
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/31093797/

Palm Pre beats iPhone 3G S in 2 out of 3 speed tests by CNET
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=20065

I´m anxiously awaiting the GSM version...
FC

Tuesday, September 01, 2009

Brag about your Mozilla / Firefox reported bugs on Wikipedia with my new userbox....

My first Userbox for your Wikipedia user page! Proudly show on your user:page how many Mozilla bugs you've submitted to Bugzilla, and/or how many you've voted on...


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fcassia/Userboxes/

^Instructions on how to easily add this userbox to your Wikipedia user page in the URL above.

Just change user@host for the email address you have used to file bugs at the Mozilla.org bugzilla page....

Enjoy...

FC

Monday, June 29, 2009

Hillary Chickenshit Clinton


Protesters Confront Soldiers After Military Coup in Honduras - NYTimes.com
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/world/americas/30honduras.html?ref=global-home

"In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the last senior
member of the administration to visit Honduras, just three weeks ago,
said that the United States was working toward “full restoration of
democratic order in Honduras.” She said that the situation in Honduras
“has evolved into a coup.” But when pressed by a reporter, she refused to say explicitly that the United States was demanding that Mr. Zelaya be returned to power"

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/chickenshit

On July 2007 Commondreams published this:

Hillary Clinton, Right-wing darling?
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/07/28/2829



Need I say more?. Empires can´t help being empires. They can´t change, it´s in their DNA. It doesn´t matter if the president is a Democrat or a Republican.

It´s like the fable of the scorpion and the frog. And now when Hillary has a chance to side with the people and side with democracy, she stops halfway across. Just because the deposed president wasn´t very warm towards the USA policies or POV.

FC
PS: The great blog BoRev.net has a pool of the "Most Retarded Justification for the Coup in Honduras". Some of the TRUE statements by local politicos as well as some in the US media are really hillarious, or tragic. And whom do we find there? My pet pevee Mary Anastasia O'Grady, the Queen of Freedom, the fighter against all evil populists and leftists in Latin America. Mary Anastasia O'Grady -referred to hereinafter as MAO -for fun's sake-, a former Merrill Lynch employee turned hatchet job hack at the Wall Street Journal.

Her statement? WSJ's MAO describes the military overthrow as all part of a country's democratic system of "checks and balances." PFFFT!!!!!!!!!

Thursday, June 18, 2009

US Republicans to Democrats: "break a leg!!"

It seems to me that a GOP top-secret cabal has hired a vodoo wizard to work on the message "Democrats, break a leg!"



Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was working from home Thursday after fracturing her right elbow during a fall the day before, State Department officials said.
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/06/18/clinton.arm/index.html?eref=rss_latest

Sotomayor breaks ankle on the way to Capitol Hill
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2009/06/08/sotomayor-breaks-ankle-on-her-way-to-capitol-hill/




Saturday, June 13, 2009

The BBC gives Monsanto a little helping hand?

Eco-farmer Jimmy in the streets of London


Most -if not all- of the BBC documentaries and investigative news reports I´ve seen are technically impressive. The guys do know their job, and they hire the best. From a content standpoint they are often progressive: from the war in Iraq, to the situation in Palestine, to Global Warming.

So I was a bit disappointed when I watched the Beeb´s program titled "Jimmy´s GM food fight" part of the otherwise great "BBC Horizon" series which I recommend wholeheartedly (For instance the one titled "The Ghost in your Genes" is great).

Jimmy gives the girls a taste of his sausage...
cooked with regular soybean oil and GM soybean oil


He mentions that one saves the environment, while
the other can give the world+dog enough to eat.
...It really goes downhill from there...

To put it in a few words, the program host starts with a supposed skeptical look at genetically modified crops, but soon (at around minute 12:00) the balance starts titlting towards the pro-GM side. I was actually dismayed when he started saying "we've been tinkering with plants for years" equalling genetic selection with genetic MODIFICATION. And more importantly, ignoring the chemicals that come with it, namely Monsanto´s RoundUp (Glyphosate and add-ons).

In short: overlooked was the chemical industry's big business with pesticides and herbicides. The dangers of Glyphosate are only recently being known. While Glyphosate itself might have low toxicity, the compound as delivered and sprayed over crops contains various toxic chemicals IN ADDITION TO glyphosate itself.

So "RoundUp" contains more than just glyphosate. Plus, "enhancers" are sold and mixed to RoundUp, to make it permeate the plant deeper, and be "more effective"..

A court down here in Argentina has recently banned crop dusters from spraying glyphosate near rural towns, where it affected the health of the local population.

http://bit.ly/glyphosateban-spanish


English version:

Court in Argentina bans crop dusters spraying Monsanto´s Glyphosate over soybean fields near urban areas. - AYN
http://bit.ly/glyphosatebaninargentina-english

More from the wikipedia:

--------
Scientific fraud

On two occasions the United States Environmental Protection Agency has caught scientists deliberately falsifying test results at research laboratories hired by Monsanto to study glyphosate
--
False advertising

In 1996 Monsanto was accused of false and misleading advertising of glyphosate products, prompting a law suit by the New York State attorney general.[13] Environmental and consumer rights campaigners brought a case in France in 2001 for presenting Roundup as biodegradable and claiming that it left the soil clean after use; glyphosate, Roundup's main ingredient, is classed by the European Union as "dangerous for the environment" and "toxic for aquatic organisms". In January 2007, Monsanto was convicted of false advertising
--------
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundup

So as you can see things aren´t as simple as "toying with plants"... and GM crops aren´t as harmless as depicted in this BBC programme, because they aren´t just modified seends, they come with the added chemicals sprayed on them.

Here, an Austrialian study which confirmed Glyphosate´s toxicity to frogs,
http://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/publications/frog-overview.html

Fortunately, an eco-friendly farming UK blog has noticed this little bias in Jimmy´s programme, and is asking people to file a complaint with the BBC.

Let´s hope Europe does not repeat our mistake, and that we can eventually get rid of GMs too.

FC
PS: He came down here and the first part of the programme shows neat images of Argentina's vast GM soybean fields, even from the air.

Thursday, April 30, 2009

Gavin Clarke is an utter moron...

Frankly, I never heard of a Gavin Clarke before today. He seems to be one of the writers @ that OTHER NEWS SITE.

But after reading THIS and THIS and THIS other story... all on the subject of the Oracle-Sun acquisition, and reading his stupid remarks, I conclude the guy has an agenda against Sun or its products.

Not that there's anything wrong with having a personal agenda. I dislike Microsoft with a passion, for instance, for its monopolistic ways. But at least there's some substance to my claims (DOJ trial, UE ruling against MSFT, South Korea's competition commision, etc).

FC

Friday, February 20, 2009

Parasites of the World, unite!

The Bible of Reaganomics-style Crapitalism and Creationism, the often partisan mag Forbes from the namesake Steve Forbes, has an incensing piece where one of its writers laments the downfall of traditional media, to the hands of e-pubs and those pesky bloggers.

"Bloggers are very useful but are essentially parasitic; they seldom produce actual news and are often factually challenged, repeating errors more often than correcting them. That is because there is generally no system of accountability. One second after a blogger gets a thought, it's effectively published, often without the blogger even bothering to do a spell check." says Bruce Bartlett @ Forbes magazine over HERE

FC

Thursday, February 05, 2009

"Responsible" Tories blame irresponsible labour

We were taking bets with my coworkers as to "where the first mass riots" will happen in Yurope due to the Global Economic Mess (TM) until someone said "it already started, yesterday, London".

U.K. Protests at Foreign Contract Workers Spread
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=ax5Mh9vDgyOU&refer=uk

And then I read over here, the "responsible tories" saying:

Tories blame 'irresponsible' Brown for wildcat strikes
http://www.theherald.co.uk/news/news/display.var.2486466.0.Tories_blame_irresponsible_Brown_for_wildcat_strikes.php

"The Tories today blamed Gordon Brown's "irresponsible" comments over British jobs for British workers for the wave of wildcat strikes at industrial sites across the country. Shadow business secretary Kenneth Clarke said however aggrieved people felt, industrial action at power stations and oil refineries at a time of "national crisis" was not the way forward. "We don't want to see riots in Italy about British workers, working in Italy, at a time when British companies are seeking contracts on the continent for their British workers."

But he added: "Understandable worries at the present time have been turned into direct action as a result of the Prime Minister's irresponsible use of the phrase 'British jobs for British workers'."This was populist nonsense at the time he used it and part of some curious Britishness agenda, which he was pursuing for reasons of his own at the time.

"It was more concerned with his job security than anybody else's job security in this country."

PFFT PARP PARP PARP!


Thatcher's Trafalgar Square riots
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/march/31/newsid_2530000/2530763.stm

"Its unpopularity contributed to the downfall of Margaret Thatcher who resigned in November 1990 after 11 years at the helm of British politics."

The Enemy Within: Thatcher's Secret War Against Miners
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1844675084?ie=UTF8&tag=showitem-21&linkCode=as2&camp=1634&creative=6738&creativeASIN=1844675084

How Thatcher tried to dodge bill for policing the miners' strike
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2006/jan/03/uk.conservatives

FC

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Damn you, Facebook

[wrt health: I'm back. Sort of. Let's hope the pills continue working. I have a replacement pack of 20 so with 1 a day I should be OK for the next few weeks]

HERE IS THE NEWS: I finally succumbed (sp?) to the PEER PRESSURE factor and enabled all 20+ outstanding link requests on my FACEBOOK profile.

The original idea I had was to register an account on Facebook just to prevent identity theft, but leave it there, unused.

I was wrong. I spent most of the day yesterday answering invitations of all sorts and updating my profile. There. Done. Now don't expect me to waste any more time with it. I might answer personal messages but I made a resolution not to waste more time seeking groups and the like.

I think that what is currently there reflects my tastes, ideas, and personality quite well, so please everyone STOP BUGGING ME ON Facebook with games, polls, applications and the like. I will continue to add people I know but that's about it.

FC