Over the last while there have been biblical-proportion storms of locusts in areas that are already famine-ridden.
My question is, if locusts are edible (and they are)… instead of spraying them to try to kill them, why aren’t they catching them and eating them?
Yes, the locusts devour everything they can touch, but why not turn that into a positive?
Just a thought.
“There are several factors involved in vaccine rejectionism. Vaccine rejectionists lack even the most basic knowledge about science, immunology, and statistics. They don’t have even rudimentary tools with which to analyze the claims of charlatans. Just like the flat earthers, they are persuaded by what “seems” reasonable to them in their limited experience.”
The first step of propaganda is to dehumanize the enemy.
Each person has their own reason to vaccinate or not, painting them with a wide brush is quite ignorant.
I would have expected better from an educated person; I am rather disappointed.
Why won’t I visit the US?
Well…. they’ll do this to an American, what will they do to a Canadian!?
[Edit] Farking WordPress wouldn’t embed the video, so here’s a link:
Baptist pastor beaten + tazed by Border patrol – 11 stitches
[Edited again on May 13, 2009] The above link goes to a video where he talks about what happened, but as a followup, here’s actual footage (!)
ACTUAL FOOTAGE Pastor Beaten & Tased by Border Patrol & DPS
The sounds he makes while he’s being tased will probably haunt me for a while.
So I was shopping at Superstore, checking out the flowers, when one of the workers there was pulling all the wilted ones off and putting them in trays.
I figured he was going to go water them and put them back. A few minute’s work for a little profit and less turnover, right.
Wrong.
His job was to find the wilting flowers and to throw them out. Yeah, you read that right.
I made the obvious request – can I grab a few?
Nope.
I’d suggest someone needs to talk to the manager over this (I will soon), but knowing corporations as I do… looks like their dumpsters need to be explored.
In the meantime, I’m nauseous thinking about the pure level of mindless WASTE.
So… my mom bought a computer from Free Geek (Vancouver) and asked me along. It’s been a while since I’ve seen my mom that anxious; she almost convinced me to get off on the wrong stop (which would have been QUITE a walk) and was generally fretting and fussing the whole trip.
I, on the other hand, thoroughly enjoyed the adventure. As I get older (I just turned 29 recently) I find I’m getting less and less judgemental about neighbourhoods and people yet becoming more firm in my boundaries.
Anyways, back to the computer. I convinced my mom that she really didn’t NEED to dualboot with XP for at least the next month, and to just use it as is. She’s no stranger to Ubuntu, so I doubt there will be much of a transition period.
The only issues she’s run into were preset settings on the computer – the resolution made her monitor look odd, and the keyboard was set to an odd layout.
I figured out both of these issues for her over the phone – the resolution was just a case of adjusting the monitor so she could see the menus at the top (vertical position) and then setting the resolution to her usual 1024 by whatever.
The keyboard layout was amusing – she had it set to Canada layout, which apparently means French Canadian. She HAD to change it because, apparently, there is no @ symbol in that layout. A simple change to Generic brand and USA layout fixed it easily.
Convincing her to go with the USA identity (even though it was just a keyboard layout) was the hardest part. Our family are old Empire Loyalist stock – we tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to being identified as American.
All the small drama aside, I’m sure she’s enjoying her computer.
Oh, and yes, it’s been a while since I’ve posted. To see what I’ve been up to, check out my amandakerik.stumbleupon.com
I value my privacy quite a bit, so when I figured out how to make Flash ask me for permission to store info, I was quite pleased.
Except today… Today I’m rather annoyed. I was over at Second Life’s site trying to watch tutorials and there were 3, yes three sites asking to store info in Flash.
blip.tv (the video hosting site)
flash.quantserve.com and
tubemogul.com
The last two are trackers – they keep track of who watches what, what the person tends to watch over time, and other stats.
The problem? I had to click [Deny] to their request 3 – 5 times in a row and it was reasking me every 30 seconds.
OY! I’m trying to watch a video here, not engage in a battle of wills. Gah!
The part that annoys me the most? I can’t tell it to never ask again, like I could when blip.tv asked.
It’s not an option.
So I edited my hosts file.
No change in how it behaved (it still tries to annoy me into saying yes).
I went to the site so I could get the option to deny. Yeah, the site’s blocked editing the settings (data storage, access to mics / webcams).
So I guess the question is… how the fuck do I block this when editing my HOSTS file didn’t work!?
My computer, my connection, my choice.
I ran into an interesting snag today: one of my favourite games (Widelands) is installed on my second hard drive but has a save game folder in my home folder.
I didn’t like this (my home folder’s big enough as it is) so I tried to create a folder in Widelands’ folder and then make a (sym)link to it from my home folder.
Operation not Permitted.
No explanation why (that needs to be changed), but a quick Google search found the problem:
My Widelands install (and therefore the temp directory I was going to use for the saved games) is on a FAT formatted drive.
FAT (in whatever incarnation you have – NTFS, FAT32, whatever) doesn’t do (sym)links.
So… short of making the partition the game was on a different format (and wiping it in the meantime)… I moved my Widelands install to my ext3 partition.
Linked and off we go! Easy, once you know the problem.
For whatever reason (long story involving a keyboard not working right) I had assistive technologies installed on my machine – you know, the ones that help the physically / mentally challenged use a computer?
Well, one of them was hindering my ability to use one of my favourite programs: Slow Keys.
If I held down the shift key for more than 8 seconds, it would ask me if I would like to enable Slow Keys.
Unfortunately, this dialog box makes anything you type not work / appear until it’s dealt with.
Annoying? Oh yes, and even more so as it tended to pop up UNDER the main window, so half the time I thought I was lagging / having technical issues.
The solution? To go into the settings for the assistive technologies:
System > Preferences > Keyboard > /Accessability/ > [ ] Accessability Features can be Toggled with Keyboard Shortcuts
I tried Googling it, nothing came close, so here it is.
I’m horrified at seeing a majority deciding to roll back rights for a minority, but I also wonder about the underlying process of marriage itself.
There’s one other ceremony that comes to mind that has similar characteristics: baptism.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but in the past, wasn’t baptism when people officially named their child?
Why don’t we split marriage the same way baptism has been split:
Baptism:
Marriage:
In short: make all marriages into two distinct parts:
Because the separation of church and state is a very important one and the church is fighting very hard to reunite.
So I splurged and bought a couple DVDs today, Monsters, Inc. and Sleeping Beauty.
Monsters, Inc. took a bit of cajoling, but it played until an hour and 20 minutes in (near the end, just as they’re saying goodbye). Then it just… stopped.
From this point on with me tinkering it would sometimes play the beginning, and sometimes wouldn’t, but I couldn’t skip to the end to finish it.
Ok, take the DVD out and put it back in, try again, right? Wrong.
It then complained it couldn’t mount it because there was a COMMA in the name. (No clue why this wasn’t an issue the first time)
That’s right, “Monsters, Inc.” being the disk’s title stopped it from working. I’m still a bit fuzzy on the “mount this DVD in this drive under a new name” thing, so I give up and try to watch Sleeping Beauty.
Ha. Hahhahahaha…. Hahahahahahahahahaaaa. No.
The name ends with an exclamation mark (!) and won’t play. I managed to cajole it once with VLC, and the picture looked like CRAP. DIGITAL CRAP.
No, this isn’t a Linux issue, this is a movie-company-is-stupid issue. Who puts punctuation in the disk’s title? Huh? It’s like sending someone a file called “happy times! 
) ).txt” and wondering why the FUCK it won’t work!!
And the music / movie / gaming companies are wondering why people rip / download / reburn their product.
BECAUSE THE ONLY PEOPLE WHO RUN INTO THESE PROBLEMS ARE THE ONES WHO BUY LEGIT COPIES.
Whatever happened to selling something that’s excellent, and that the ripped / cracked versions can only be inferior to the original?
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