Rabble rabble bitch bitch

Topic: FOOD. Reason: Because. Eyes: Direct them downward.



This is the clearest visual representation I've found that really shows the reason our diets are so well... bad. Also it shows a striking contradiction in our diet availability verses your diet actualities. We've all been hungry, strapped for cash and dreaming of a steamy Mc-Chicken with freakish mushy meat of varying colors covered in pepper, salt and mayo. Its only a fucking dollar! Or a Mc-Double the history of which I will take some time to discuss. The double cheese burger--as you might remember--was formerly a dollar menu item. Two patties of (meat?) with two slices of (cheese?) ketchup, mustard, diced onion and two pickles. Rising costs of bread (nearly 25%), meat (4%), cheese (nearly 7%) saw profits dipping into the red. So the Mc-double was created; taking after its double cheese burger its exactly the same minus one slice of cheese. Apparently this lonely slice is a difference of ruffly 20 cents.


I'm getting off track... here's a link to a study that found portion sizes increasing relative to head size in art from 1000 to 2000. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_med_last_supper_obesity

Sources:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/story?id=5513875&page=1
http://flowingdata.com/2010/03/12/challenge-lets-do-something-with-these-3-d-pyramids/

Also, I'm thinking about boycotting abc news for possibly giving 200,000 to a women charged with murdering her own child in exchange for guaranteed coverage of the court case! WTF ABC!!
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/abc_news_paid_to_florida_mother_MQpfrvOHwUNw0rZBQYSyML

Why are there no bears in Africa?

Bears are on every continent in the world that includes Antarctica! Well there is an exception... there are no bears to be had in Africa. But why!? Bears are extremely adaptable their herbivores so they can eat other critters or plants depending on their mood and availability. They can go into hibernation to span leaner times. They have an extremely keen sense of smell--possibly keener than bloodhounds but I haven't found any reliable evidence. Their varied diet, sense of smell and ability to hibernate makes them extremely adaptable so why none in Africa? Well, the only explanation I can think of is that Africa is a continent of specialist no place for our jack-of-all-trades bear. What do I mean specialist? Think about cheetahs extremely fast and cool as fuck. But they are a specialist they can run really really fast but they are small relatively and only good at catching small quick gazelle. I could go on about how so many of the creatures in Africa evolved to fill a niche but class starts soon. The problem this presents for our bear friend is that if creatures are evolving to fill niches it doesn't leave much real estate for a generalist to move in. Bears rule when their environment demands on-the-fly adaptation but when it takes a specialist to survive bears are not a safe bet.
I am very sad that they are not present in Africa... :(

hmm

I was thinking about communism today and centralized government. I was thinking of comparisons between communism and capitalism. I then thought of a neat photograph of the planet at night. You can see all the light made from the the street lamps, office buildings and cars. So I looked at North Korea (communist/publicly owned means of production) and South Korea (democratic/free market economy) and the difference is staggering.



I cant think of a better visual aid and demonstration of the triumph of capitalism over communism. I mean just look at how bright South Korea is and how dark and dead North Korea is! (If your no good at geography Japan is on the far right and just about touching South Korea. The boarder of South Korea is where the lights end and the darkness of North Korea begins) This difference between the two countries and the brilliant contrast of progress it highlights is almost poetic. You can literally see the difference!

I cannot believe that people actually consider communism/socialism as a practicality when ever practical example has proven it to be a mere novelty of thought.

Also, I cut the little picture there from a map I found on http://www.cojoweb.com/earthlights.html check it out its really cool!

New Years

It's a new year. Time for a cliché reflection of the past. 2009 was an odd year but possibly the best year of my life so far. Me and Jayda have been together for over a year. She has been, undoubtedly, the best influence on me throughout 2009. It’s because of her that I know I should have written "Jayda and I" and how to use commas to insert stuff into my sentences. More importantly than grammatical influences is the impact she has made on my academic outlook in general. Honestly, before I meet her my outlook was grim. I never rejected academics I simply ignored it. Devoting myself to school work meant that I had to devote myself to my future. The future let alone my own future was always a prospect that intimidated me... so I met it with indecisiveness. I touted a philosophy that if I bide my time I will be able to make the right decision for me--a philosophy that became a conviction.

I had never really been praised for anything academically either only challenged. In high school, my math teacher Mrs. Gesterling (sp) called me over to her desk she had one of my exams in front of her. She didn't do the usual teacher pep talk crap instead she did something unexpected: she leveled with me. I didn't do well on the exam but I didn't really try either. She said I could do better and I told her I could but it was all so easy and didn't really seem worth my time. She said: prove it. Get a 100% on all the exams if its so easy. She smiled. She called my bluff she thought that I really couldn't do it even if I wanted to. I had to prove her wrong and I did. I only missed one problem on the final exam. She smiled. I know now she was probably more surprised that I missed that one problem than me acing all the other exams.

Similarly was Mrs. Burns English class I didn't attend the first two weeks of her class. She was known for her short temper and abrasive attitude she furiously dragged me into the hall when I attended. However, once outside the class she again leveled with me and once again I'm not sure what our exchange contained exactly but the game was set just as it had been in math class. I know now she wasn't so much a teacher but a challenger looking for students who would rise to the occasion. I was one of the only students that appreciated her and her class I received a B in the course with approximately 64 absences (she put that in there as a personal stab not as a literal count).

One day in AP world history, my teacher Mr. Mathias (sp) was doing midterm grades. He would ask if you wanted him to say your grades or you could come up and get them when it came to me he asked me to come up. I said no way! He asked if I was sure. Of course I am! I exclaimed. You have a 3 Jack, a 3 percent. You haven't been here for a single quiz, test or exam and you have only turned in one class work assignment and that was the first assignment on the first day. People laughed. But so did I. The last month of school he announced to the class that if I attended every class he would bring donuts into the class. He told me in private that if I made up every single homework assignment, class work, test, quiz and exam and didn't get lower than a C on any of them he would count them for full credit. He gave me the best challenge that I have ever been presented with. I went to work. I completed every single homework raced through ever single class work and poured through every chapter. I crammed every possible scrap of world history into my mind that was allowed. There were two A's, one B and the rest C's and D's on the final exam. I received an A. I passed with a B in the course.

This might sound like I am bragging. But I am not. I'm ashamed of it. Really. Because even though I proved to my teachers that I could I never once proved it to myself. This proof is a debt that I have owed and continued to defer payment on for so long. Interest rates arnt getting any lower you know.

In the words of Jack Johnson:
It's really too bad.
He became a prisoner of his own past.
He stabbed the moment in the back with the brown thumb tack that held up the list of things he got to do.
It's really no good.
He's moving on before he understood.
He shot the future in the foot, with ever step he took.
...
He don't even know where to being.
He looked both ways but he was so afraid.
Digging deeper (into?) the ditch ever chance he missed.
...
Every brick he laid every mistake. They say,
his walls are getting taller his world is getting smaller.

Staple it Together has been a personal anthem of mine: it sums up the mistakes that I have made so far.

I would like to say thank you to Jayda for helping me realize these mistakes. Without her I could very well have maintained the state of denial. Denial of myself, denial of my future and denial of my life. I received Deans list this past spring and pulled a 3.75 this fall. My teachers no longer have to challenge me. Instead they give me the framework in which I eagerly build upon. If she hadn't mysteriously, thankfully, fallen into my life my history teacher would have never wrote "The best, you are an historian" on my paper. I would have never finally dedicated myself to a future as a history professor. I'm done looking both ways and instead of building walls I'm building roads all thanks to Jayda. She has written me and my future an over sized check; the first down payment on the debt I owe myself. I can only imagine how to begin paying the debt I owe her. I truly do not know how to repay her. This tiny blog entry is a start but a meager one at best. So for now all I will say, all i can say, is that that I love you Jayda.

(ps i tired to put a picture of us on the end here but err... i cant do it)

Extremes

Also, I wanted to talk about how in all likelihood this is entirely unlikely. I know Jayda is probably the only one that is ever going to read this. I mean the probability that she reads this is phenomenal. Consider, for instance, that 60% of illiterates in the world are women (which is depressing really). The odds of even being able to read are already against her merely reading this. About 17% of the worlds population speaks English so the odds that she can understand the language is even more dismal. If you take into account that life began about 3 to 4 billion years ago and that modern humans arrived on the scene about 2.5 million years ago and that average species exists for only four million years and only .01 percent of life has persisted to this day (that means 99.99% of all species have gone extinct). The odds we are alive at all is amazing. The odds that me and her be born here and now is astronomical. Considering that we were born at all is a miracle considering that the average human life last for about 650,000 hours. There is even less time available if you want to reproduce. The odds that her and I's ancestors managed to find one another in this short window of time and reproduce is dumbfounding. We are both the beneficiaries of impeccable timing along our entire evolutionary line. Also, if you were condense the entire of human existence into one hour computers and the internet would have arrived in a fraction of the final second. So the fact we have computers to communicate on is again mind-numbingly improbable.
I have no idea why I even bothered to say this lol.

Posting

I don't really have all that much to say. I want to go around this place and get internet wherever I want but I can't. I have been reading a lot more than I ever have before which is a good thing. I like books that have to do with food and foodstuffs. I recently read An Edible History of Humanity and a History of the World in 6 Glasses. I found out why its impolite to ask for sugar and instead you must wait to be offered a spoon or lump of sugar for your tea or coffee. I figured out why Napoleon and Alexander the Great were so successful. I also read a book by Kurt Vonnegut called A Man Without a Country and got a real appreciation for Abraham Lincoln quotes. I read a book called State by State A Panoramic Portrait of America which was really good too. I read a book called Beer in America: The Early Years. I also read a book called Noble Obsession which is about Charles Goodyear. Did you know that Goodyear tires has nothing to do with Charles Goodyear? Its funny because unless Goodyear tires decided to use Goodyear's name none one would even recognize it... Goodyear was undoubtedly obsessed by rubber an obsession that would drive his family into poverty and himself into debtors prison. Debtors prison is a horrible thing, be glad they don't exist in America today. The debtor had to stay in prison for as long as those who were owned wanted to pay the fee required to feed and clothe the poor bastard. An employee once brought a case against his employer for not paying him. He was black so he lost and the employer demanded court fees as well did the court. Having not been PAID by his EMPLOYER he couldn't AFFORD to pay so he was locked up in debtors prison. I think it was for twenty years... I don't think the word "noble" was used appropriately because in hindsight its easy to say what a great man he was. But his family suffered and many of his children died. I think its because they were poor and couldn't give their children what they deserved... The accidental discovery of vulcanization--a term that wasn't actually coined by Goodyear--didn't bring the success Goodyear was hoping for. You might remember hearing about Goodyear dropping a sulfur covered piece of rubber on a stove to find it was impervious to heat or cold. Its odd that this happened by accident because replicating it is extremely difficult even today vulcanizing rubber remains difficult. Anyway those are some books I read in brief.

I was reading the wiki page for a game called S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in this game there is an entity called "C-consciousness." Basically C-consciousness is a "hive mind" or a collection of individual minds thinking as if they were one. This got me thinking, pooling the brain power of many individuals would produce a more intelligent entity, right? Thinking of an ants or bees which consist of thousands of individuals that act together as a single organism. A lone bee is unable to fend for itself without the hive which it depends on for security, food and reproduction. The same goes for ants. Together they are strong but divided they are weak. Could the same principle be applied to intelligence? After all as the saying goes: "two heads are better than one." But conversely a single ant or bee is insignificant and even dispensable to the mass as a whole. Bees for instance die after delivering a sting. They sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the whole. Individuality is second to the swarm. So if a share consciousness did exist would joining this entity strip you of individuality? Thinking of Minority Report a sci-fi flick in which three individual psychics are united in a hive mind to amplify their abilities to see into the future. They use these three to foresee murders before they even take place, making preemptive arrests for "future" murders. The problem is they don't always agree and when one see things differently the other two overrule her (these events are termed "minority reports" which leads to false arrests). Also like an ant or a bee would you become dependent on the union for your own survival? With your individuality--one of the the only things we do have--stripped away could you revert back? I doubt it. Basically if anyone comes around asking you to meld minds be wary.