Sunday, February 25, 2007

How dumb do you have to be?

Ok, first, go read this article: http://news.yahoo.com/s/po/20070223/co_po/polishpresidentgayswouldendhumanrace.

Now, I dunno about anyone else, but it seems to me that the Polish President, and his equally icky twin-brother the Prime Minister, are hot for c*ck. Essentially, his message tells me that, unless we have rules preventing homosexuality, men will completely ignore women (yeah right, like that even COULD happen) and that women will completely ignore men. This would mean that NO heterosexual procreation would happen ANYWHERE in the world and thus our species would end.

It sounds to me like the Polish President WANTS to have sex with men, and men only, but that there are these pesky rules that force him to to use the "punanni" to satisfy his carnal desires. Are you all getting my point? Are you all getting his point?

How much of an idiot do a person have to be in order to be deemed unfit for life? Well, I don't have an answer except that this guy is close in my book.

Does he honestly think that if Poland passed a nondiscrimination or equal protection law (or something akin within their legal system) that ALL the men in Poland (and the world?) would INSTANTLY REJECT WOMEN in favor of men (for sexual purposes)? If he does, he's an undereducated, narrow-minded, short-sighted FOOL. I don't know about the rest of you out there, but I know plenty of straight men. And, with almost no exception, I can't imagine any of them having a thought process like this: "Oh, I'm ALLOWED to f*ck men now? Oh THANK GOD... Hey Susie, pack up your crap and get outta my house, I have guys to get to screwin!"

What a complete MORON!

To top it off, a large percentage of my ancestry is Polish. Not that I speak Polish, or even know much about the culture, but I AM of Polish descent. Makes me, almost, pine for designer gene-replacement therapy!

And now for the science part. Ok, let's suppose for, just a moment, that this blockhead is correct. Let's assume that ALL men in the world would have sex with other men, exclusively (Lol, I WISH!!!!!). Even if that were so, we still have the technology to have babies without having sexual intercourse. We have In-Vitro fertilization. We have the technology to transplant embryos. So, even if men and women never had sex together again, it would be FAR from the end of our species. Human beings have (in general) an innate desire to procreate. For most of us, we are biologically driven to have babies. Yes, in this scenario it would be a bit more difficult, but heck, maybe we could finally control who does and doesn't have babies. I've long advocated for people to be required to have a license to have a baby. Seriously, there are far too many people out there having children who REALLY shouldn't. Clearly Mr. Lech Kaczynski's parents are among them.

To the Polish President, his idiot twin brother, and all the other people in the world who think that somehow same-sex relations will destroy our cultures, societies, institutions, or even the world, NEED to read some scientific literature.

And really, as the President of an entire country, can you HONESTLY say that you don't have more important things to deal with / worry about then homosexuality??!!?!?! No wonder our world is in shambles. You should be worrying about Economics, employment, education, disease, terrorism and other security concerns, building relations with other nations and advancing the position of your people...NOT with whom they choose to fall in love or have sex! Talk about wasting taxpayer money. BUILD A ROAD, IMPROVE YOUR SCHOOLS, INCREASE MEDICAL RESEARCH, ADVANCE NOTIONS OF WORLD PEACE...ie...BE A FRICKIN PRESIDENT!!!!

(yes, these statements apply to my own government as well).

Morons.

"When I was born, I was so ugly that the Doctor took one look at me and slapped my mother!"

--Iton

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

What, what WHAT?!?!

Doesn't it just figure? Michigan's weather has been like a kinked hose this winter. It started off normally, then we became unseasonably warm. So warm in fact that it was RAINING (not snowing or icing) on New Year's Eve. Our cold weather had been held back like the flow of water from a kinked garden hose. Then, a few weeks ago, Mother Nature unkinked the hose. Now we are freezing our patooties off. We got dumped on last night. I don't know the official snow-fall measurements, but my driveway has snow drifts nearly 2 feet deep. YIKES!

What makes this a problem for me is that my snowblower took a crap. You see, my father had bought it, used, a number of years ago. He was a relatively frugal man. Not to say that he was "cheap" but rather not "wasteful."

To my knowledge the thing has never worked 100% correctly. This is my third winter with the snowblower (and this house) all to myself. It was always hard to start (pull-start, no electric starter on this baby). Unfortunately, this year, it won't get started at all.

I had intended to get it serviced earlier in the season. And, in fact, I have a place all lined up only like 2 miles from my house. The problem is that the damn thing is so big that it won't fit in my SUV. I have no way to get it to the service place. I tried to get my brother to help, since he has a pickup truck. You see, he drives 3 hours each way, every other weekend, to pick up and drop off his daughter. What REALLY blows is that he is really only available to help me on Sundays. Nothing that even smells like a snowblower service facility is even OPEN on Sundays.

So, here I sit. I'm a little snowed in (fortunately the SUV has no problem getting through the drifts), my snowblower is dead, help is so near and yet so far, and I feel like a jerk for not clearing the driveway and walkways that lead to my house.

Well, I'm still not sure what to do for this year, but Paco and I have been talking about next year. We are SOOOOO getting a killer replacement for this thing when we move. Mmmm, electric start, headlight, coffee maker, flight attendant, ALL the bells and whistles in a snowblower-overkill extravaganza.

But, for now, I need to strap the dogs to the sled to get the garbage to the curb. ;)

Ho hum, why oh why can't I just win the lottery so that I can buy that little private island that I want? I mean Really! It's ONLY $10 Million (I'm sure I have that in loose coin under the sofa cushion).

"My husband asked me if we had any Cheetos. Like he can't pick up the sofa cushion and look for himself!"

--Iton

Friday, February 02, 2007

Sick Sucks!

Ok, I've had this nasty cold for like a week and a half now. I did make it back to work for this week, but GEEZE. I'm am REALLY tired of hacking up multi-colored phlegm globbers.

How is it that we can put a man on The Moon, robots on Mars, probes in orbit of Saturn & Jupiter, stream TV & Podcasts over the Internet and have cars that (mostly) parallel-park themselves but we can't cure the common cold?

Yes, yes, I know that the cold virus mutates rapidly. Yes, yes I know there is a MAJOR financial incentive for cold-remedy companies to KEEP us getting sick. Yes, yes I've heard that there is a government conspiracy in place to keep us down. But I don't buy any of that.

Someone, somewhere can come up with an algorithm that predicts the mutation of the virus right? We DO have supercomputers that can, I'm told rather accurately, predict the outcomes of a multi-megaton nuclear detonation. How can we NOT be using those resources to quash the common cold? BULLPUCKEY!

We have supercomputer-like distributed computing networks working on similar problems (see Folding @ Home). And I don't have any problem with their work on Cancer, Alzheimer's, "Mad Cow", AIDS, Parkinson's or any other disease. But I think It's time to focus people. Certainly, parallel research can help in a multitude of areas. But maybe it is time to prioritize a bit? I propose the following:

  1. Create a list (database) of all known viral pathogens.
  2. Calculate the impact of each one based on number of unique infections per year, virulence, financial impact of those infections (things like lost productivity, time off work, sanitation, money spent on "remedies," health-care costs, insurance premium impact,...things like that).
  3. Consolidate viral research resources including manpower, computing resources, financial resources, etc.
  4. Develop an oversight committee to organize and direct the research for each virus so that we don't have lots of duplicate (i.e. WASTED) research going on.
  5. Assign at least 50% of ALL the consolidated resources to the TOP virus (as calculated in #2 on this list) until it is wiped out. The remaining 50% of resources could be allocated in more subjective or liberal ways similar to what we have now I guess.
  6. When the TOP virus is wiped out, the list shifts up and the 2nd TOP virus becomes the TOP virus and we repeat Step #5 on this list.
I think we could make some real progress (as human beings, not just Americans) on ticking items off that list. And, as more and more people become less and less sick, our "ability" to move down that list will speed up. I would IMAGINE that the TOP 5 viruses (if calculated today) could be cured within about 15 years (sure that is just a guess, but a pleasant one don't ya think?).

This, I think, would be a boon for humanity. Much more so than the TINY, incremental progress we make on hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of different viruses each year.

What do you think? I would LOVE to have others' input on this issue. If I hear a good idea, I'll amend the STEPS accordingly.


"The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few" (at least when it comes to communicable diseases I think)

-Iton