Monthly Archives: February 2010

Fun time on a Saturday

Seen at the recent CPAC convention.

Photoshopped, naturally, but not far from the truth.

McDonald’s “food”

Let’s take a stroll down nutrition lane. Here are the ingredients that go into a McDonald’s hamburger bun:

Big Mac® Bun:
Enriched flour (bleached wheat flour, malted barley flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid, enzymes), water, high fructose corn syrup, sugar, soybean oil and/or partially hydrogenated soybean oil, contains 2% or less of the following: salt, calcium sulfate, calcium carbonate, wheat gluten, ammonium sulfate, ammonium chloride, dough conditioners (sodium stearoyl lactylate, datem, ascorbic acid, azodicarbonamide, mono- and diglycerides, ethoxylated monoglycerides, monocalcium phosphate, enzymes, guar gum, calcium peroxide, soy flour), calcium propionate and sodium propionate (preservatives), soy lecithin, sesame seed.

Please note that the third largest ingredient (after bleached flour and water) is high-fructose corn syrup, and the fourth is sugar.

Also, note the alphabet-soup of dough extender chemicals. Dough extenders are chemicals that exaggerate the action of yeast on leavening and rob the bread of that yeasty taste that is the hallmark of quality bread.

A few thoughts on sugar

The white powdered stuff you see in  your sugar bowl at home is sucrose, a chemical combination of glucose (the sugar your body uses for energy) and fructose.

The sweetener mixed in soft drinks is known as high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS), a mixture of fructose and glucose. It is cheaper than sucrose and somewhat sweeter as well, but is digestively very similar.

Sucrose breaks down to glucose and fructose due to the digestive enzyme sucrase. Glucose is absorbed directly in the small intestines. Fructose, on the other hand, is unchanged by the digestive process and is taken up by the liver to be metabolized.

In the liver fructose is broken down into fatty acids, triglycerides, and VLDL–the “bad” cholesterol. The liver also metabolizes fructose into uric acid, an abundance of which can cause gout. Every 100 calories of HFCS consumed results in 40 calories of fat stored in the body.

After research, I’ve discovered that there really isn’t anything significantly different metabolically between chowing down on the sugar in the sugar bowl and drinking a cup of HFCS–they both contain similar levels of glucose and fructose.

While sugar is in many foods nowadays, HFCS is nearly everywhere–not just soda, but salad dressings, sauces, condiments, and almost all processed foods–because it’s cheap and can cover up the poor taste and quality of the other (cheap) ingredients.

…and that’s the real evil here.

Terry Pratchett: “My life, my death, my choice”

Sir Terry Pratchett has made me laugh until I cried.

Now’s he’s made me cry until I laughed.

For those of you who know Sir Terry Pratchett and his writing, it came as an indelible shock in 2008 when he announced that he had been diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer’s Disease.

Now he’s announced in this year’s Dimbleby Lecture that he wishes to choose when and how he dies. In the lecture he opines:

“If I knew that I could die at any time I wanted then suddenly every day would be as precious as a million pounds. If I knew that I could die, I would live. My life, my death, my choice.“

And

“It’s that much heralded thing, the quality of life that is important. How you live your life, what you get out of it, what you put into it and what you leave behind after it. We should aim for a good and rich life well lived, and at the end of it, in the comfort of our own home, in the company of those who love us, have a death worth dying for.”

We look forward to many, many more books from you, Sir Terry, and we look forward even more to hearing that you has chosen your moment to make that long-delayed move to Discworld, where you can continue to satirize about the foibles of mankind.

You *really* want to balance the budget?

I’m getting really tired of those political jerkwads who whine about the current budget deficits but still want to spend money to benefit their own agenda.

I’ve got a few suggestions for them.

1) Cut all salaries for all government employees by 20%.

Everyone, from janitors to state legislators to the President. That will save money and thin out the herd that enjoys feeding from the public trough.

2) Raise/cancel caps on property tax rates.

That will raise additional money and show property owners just how much it really costs to run a state. Hey! You want police and fire protection? Now you really have to pay for it.

3) Tax churches, synagogues, and mosques at the same rate other businesses are taxed–a percentage of property value + a tax on all income.

Religious organizations want to play politics? Fine, let them pay their admission price just like everyone else. Hell, revenue from the Catholic Church alone would put a huge dent in the federal budget deficit.

4) Phase out all state and federal farm subsidies everywhere.

Prices will have to go up, and consumers will discover just how expensive decent food really costs. (Most small producers of organic products will also discover that their products would become far more competitively priced.)

5) Mandate that all government budgets that are submitted be balanced.

Always. Without exception. That might mean that suggestions #1-4 above might stand a chance of being implemented.

6) Make lobbying government officials illegal.

No lobbying, for any reason, from anywhere. You might be surprised how much budgets would shrink if this were done.

Valentine’s Day was great, until I read this

As if the anti-choice slackwits aren’t doing enough damage to American lives–

Georgia Right to Life is playing the race card (and the eugenics card and the “rich whitey is out to get you” card, and other false despicabilities) to push their political agenda.

Some misleading “facts” that these skeevy jerks promote:

  • 40% of black pregnancies end in abortion.

Misleading. 40% of all (not just black) pregnancies in the U.S. end in abortion. I don’t see anyone proclaiming the end of the white race because of this rate.

  • Birth control Margaret Sanger formed the “Negro Project” to rid America of “the unfit”.

Lie. Sanger’s project has nothing to do with any current actions and was thorough repudiated by Planned Parenthood decades ago. Margaret Sanger promoted birth control and family planning, but opposed abortion.

  • The American eugenics movement was aimed square at blacks.

Nonsense. The original passive eugenics program was aimed at those with chronic mental illness and repeated criminal activities. It was thoroughly repudiated decades ago and has nothing to do with current abortion rights campaigns. The only groups that promote the use of eugenics in black populations are racist in nature and use “science” to justify their lies. (Here is a Wikipedia entry that uses the term “mud races”.)

A group called the Radiance Foundation, a mover-and-shaker for this pack of detestable lies, uses New Age-y “meet your potential” gibberish and enthusiastic material that exhorts women to “keep their babies”, but actually promotes an anti-choice stance aimed here specifically at black women.

As so many such groups do, they are urging black women to either keep their children (when many black mothers are single and unable to financially support a child) or give them up for adoption (when 3 out of 5 black babies and children in the adoption process never get adopted, something that any adoption agency will tell you).

Science fair projects for the Apocalypse

My Trophy Beloved asked me to post this for her.

This is a science fair for homeschooled kids–the one my children will not be attending. The rules state you have to use a verse of scripture when developing your project, and my boys were just full of ideas.

Here are some they came up with:

1. The verse about how the sons (pl.) of God slept with the daughters of men, creating giants.

The boys thought DNA testing would be interesting to see how many grandchildren God has.

2. “With their own hands compassionate women have cooked their own children, who became their food when my people were destroyed.“

The guys think that it would take an awful lot of babies to keep an adult well-nourished. The project would need to demonstrate the number of calories in a well-fed baby, as well as a malnourished one.

3. The verse which says “Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!“

The boys thought this would make a great physics project, calculating the momentum, force, height etc. needed to dash a baby’s head against the rock and inflicting serious damage.

I guess we’ll be forgoing this science fair. Although good scientific method is most likely nonexistent, I am guessing there will be no lack of pitchforks, torches, or peasants at this do.
:D

–Trophy Beloved, mother of the Four Horsemen

(I would add an additional project to calculate the amount of energy it would take to stop the earth  from rotating (aka Joshua stopping the sun) and what that amount of energy would do to the earth.)

I hope Bank of America gets roasted for this one

Charlie and Maria Cardoso bought a retirement home in the Tampa, Florida, area in 2005. They paid the entire purchase price ($139,000) for the house in cash.

Last July the dumbshits at Tampa’s Bank of America mortgage office foreclosed on it.

BoA scared and ran off the Cardoso’s rental tenant, installed a lockbox, changed the locks, took down the back-yard fence, turned off the utilities (causing frozen water pipes), and destroyed property the Cardosos had stored in the house when the dumbshits looted emptied it.

BoA was supposed to foreclose on a house across the street from the Cardoso house, but some clerk made a mistake on the foreclosure form. Repeated calls to BoA received promises that the the mistake would be rectified, but no corrective action was taken.

A suit has been filed, and the rightful owners are demanding a personal apology. If they’re smart, they will demand that there be 7 figures in that apology.

Acetylene + pure oxygen = chlorine titrated into gene pool

(I’m being lazy today. Here’s a story from one of  the 2010 Darwin Award nominees. Support the DA site–its humor is grim, which is the best kind.)

Every now and then a completely new window into the world opens before our eyes. Here we have rural Dutch families enjoying their traditional winter sport, carbidschieten, or Carbide Shooting. It’s a ridiculously dangerous machine akin to a potato gun, designed to hurl projectiles from the mouth of a metal milk can.

Carbide shooting, that wacky Dutch New Year’s tradition, begins with moistening calcium carbide and placing it in a large milk container. The damp CaCb emits acetylene (ethyne) gas which builds up inside the container. Then a spark is supplied, causing the pressurized gas bomb to blow the lid (or packing) off the milk jug.

Our nominee, a 54-year-old male, was having the time of his life–right up until the moment he poured a container filled with liquid oxygen over a fire to “flare it up” — and the container obligingly exploded.

Can you say “Minority Report”?

(the movie, not the short story by Phillip K. Dick)

The South Carolina government now requires all groups advocating the overthrow of the U.S. government or the South Carolina government by “unlawful means” to register with the state ($5 filing fee, please) or face punishments up to $25,000 and/or 10 years in prison.

Let’s get this straight.

If you form or join a group (domestic or foreign) that wants to foment armed rebellion against the federal government, South Carolina requires you to register the group’s name, the name and address of its leader(s), its members, its bylaws, and its meeting minutes.

Here is the form to fill out.

(BTW, South Carolina is also a state, along with 19 others, that requires drug dealers to report all income or face additional charges and punishments atop of whatever else they are convicted of.)

The Mark of the Beast

According to the biblical book of Revelations, the Mark is the digits ’666′ placed upon the bodies of those who serve the Anti-Christ.

You’ve got to admire those classical-era psilocybin mushroom eaters.

According to members of the Virginia House of Delegates (and a few other skeevy folk), the Mark of the Beast is also implanted microchips.

Delegate Mark Cole (he’s a Republican, natch) claims that his bill, which seeks to criminalize involuntary chip implantation, makes a logical leap worthy of Pat Robertson:

“My understanding — I’m not a theologian — but there’s a prophecy in the Bible that says you’ll have to receive a mark, or you can neither buy nor sell things in end times…some people think these computer chips might be that mark.”

Which people, Mr. Cole? These refugees from rationality? Perhaps these candidates for Darwinist natural selection? Or these morons?

(Little do they know that the real Mark of the Beast is everywhere already. What do you think those UPC barcodes are all about?)