Remarksman

Police officer tasers a 10-year-girl who resisted being taken to a youth center

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:05:43 -0500

Police officer tasers a 10-year-girl who resisted being taken to a youth center:

Welcome to the U. S. of A., kids!

This reader comment is pretty good:

ViolettVerq:

I think not even tasering a FRICKING INFANT will wake up this country of yours with its abusing policemen. First I thought: ‘This story will be it. It will create the wave that the US system needs. Tasering a 10 year-old body and heart cannot, under any circumstances, be appropriate.’

But I don’t think anything will happen. You can taser pregnant women, old grandmas for being too slow, old people in wheelchairs that YELL they have a heart condition, everyone. I cannot comprehend it.

By Joel Pett, via Political Irony

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:52:05 -0500

By Joel Pett, via Political Irony

Another funny Dogboy & Mr. Dan episode from Mark Fiore.

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:13:18 -0500

Another funny Dogboy & Mr. Dan episode from Mark Fiore.

The Lung Flute: A Sort of Gross (But Important) Medical Innovation

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 10:30:52 -0500

The Lung Flute: A Sort of Gross (But Important) Medical Innovation:

The Lung Flute is a simple device that uses sound waves to vibrate wads of mucus in your chest cavity until they rip apart and become more easily cough-up-able.

The idea for the horn came one night in 1985. Hawkins, an acoustics engineer, and his colleagues began brainstorming how they could use sound to mess with various bodily functions. They joked about what frequency a toilet would need to vibrate at to force an uncontrollable bowel movement and, slightly more seriously, a way to dislodge goo in sick people’s lungs. Months later, Hawkins was reminded of that discussion when he learned that chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), a group of lung diseases that includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis, makes breathing tough for 10 million people, and causes 127,000 deaths in the U.S. every year. “It’s the number-four cause of death in the U.S.,” he says. “I thought, ‘Yeah, I should do something about this.’ ”

Today, doctors in Japan use the $40 Lung Flute as a tool to collect sputum from patients suspected of carrying tuberculosis, and in Europe and Canada it’s used to help test phlegm for lung cancer. Clinical trials in the U.S. have shown that it is at least as effective as current COPD treatments. At press time, Hawkins expected the device to receive FDA approval any day, and says the reusable device could also provide home relief for patients with cystic fibrosis, influenza and asthma.

Really cool! But what do you want to bet that what is $40 in Japan costs $250 in US hospitals?

Afghaniscam

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 20:42:32 -0500

Afghaniscam:

The president’s brother, Ahmed Wali Karzai, reportedly on the CIA payroll, is also, as it’s politely put in the press, a “suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade.” Ahmad Rateb Popal, the president’s cousin and another figure long linked to the drug trade, runs a local security company protecting American supply convoys that, according to Aram Roston of the Nation magazine, is involved in an industry-wide protection scam, using American Army money to pay off the Taliban not to attack. In addition, American arms and ammunition are clearly ending up in Taliban hands. The recent presidential election was a spectacle of fraud; the Afghan Army, despite years of training, may hardly exist (as Ann Jones reported for this site in September); the ill-paid, ill-trained Afghan police are known to operate on the principle of corruption; and a surprisingly small percentage of foreign reconstruction funds actually makes it out of the pockets of big private contractors and western specialists, as well as security firms, and into Afghan hands.

Your "Representatives" in Congress

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:36:00 -0500

Your "Representatives" in Congress:

Ever wondered why our country’s laws so often favor the rich over middle and working-class people? Consider this: Last week, the Center for Responsive Politics released its latest survey of congressional financial disclosure forms. Of the 535 voting members of Congress, over 44 percent of—237 to be exact—are millionaires.

So next time that the Congress does something that seems outrageously biased in favor of rich people—say, slashing top income tax rates or spending $440 billion over 10 years to cut estate taxes on one quarter of one percent of Americans—remember who members of Congress are really helping: themselves.

Yet another argument for election reform.

"What we know about eating animals is that we don’t want to know."

Tue, 10 Nov 2009 14:34:06 -0500

“What we know about eating animals is that we don’t want to know.”

- The New Yorker: Should you eat meat? (via marco) (via lukhnos)

An interesting exploration of the philosophies of eating or not eating meat, vegan-ism, and treatment of animals.

"George Orwell talked about how the modern airplane in warfare was going to be one of the best things..."

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 15:42:13 -0500

“George Orwell talked about how the modern airplane in warfare was going to be one of the best things that could ever happen, because now people who sent their armies off to war and hid in the capitals would no longer be able to hide, because modern warfare would be fought by airplanes, which means their cities would be bombed as well, and that would reduce the incentive to war.
But we [the U.S.A.] only attack countries that can’t actually inflict that kind of a damage on us.”

- Glenn Greenwald discussing the U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan on Bill Moyers Journal

This is an exceptional segment of the Journal.

A five-minute clip of The Daily Show from two years ago (and...

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:51:00 -0500

A five-minute clip of The Daily Show from two years ago (and still no progress) via Mother Jones quoting a blog at the Economist about the ridiculous opposition to the Cape Wind project:

There’s a modestly sympathetic way to read this kind of resistance, and it has to do with the way that environmentalism straddles different strands of American romanticism, which can sometimes conflict with each other. Historical preservationism and the romantic mythologising of indigenous cultures have both played valuable roles in American culture, and they grow from the same “On Walden Pond” roots as environmentalism itself. And that’s all fine and good; but CO2 is at 370 ppm and rising. Enough is enough. If we are to have any hope of reducing carbon emissions, we are going to have to change our energy infrastructure. That requires some modicum of willingness to tolerate public action that affects one’s own lifestyle. If we can’t even get an offshore wind-farm project running, after eight years, because of a bunch of wealthy, self-indulgent whiners, there is absolutely no hope for reducing carbon emissions, and the heirs of those privileged preservationists will be able to watch the sun rise over the pristine Atlantic waters covering what used to be Nantucket Island.

Interesting four minute video from This American Life looks at...

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 13:24:36 -0500

Interesting four minute video from This American Life looks at how having a camera in your hand and feeling that you need to “document” an event changes people’s reactions.

This is via Paul Carr’s article at TechCrunch: NSFW: After Fort Hood, another example of how ‘citizen journalists’ can’t handle the truth, which follows his article NSFW: Weezer, plane crashes and everything else that’s worrying about the real-time web.

The articles are both somewhat lengthy but worth reading as Carr thinks through how social web sites have created a pervasive attitude that if you don’t post some photos and tweets from some interesting event that occurs in your life, then “it didn’t happen.” This attitude has extended to “citizen journalism,” where people witnessing or experiencing some calamity react by pulling out their camera phone, not to dial 911, but to snap a few awesome photos to post on their web page. As Carr concludes in the Fort Hood article:

And that’s precisely the problem: none of us think we’re being selfish or egotistic when we tweet something, or post a video on YouTube or check-in using someone’s address on Foursquare. It’s just what we do now, no matter whether we’re heading out for dinner or witnessing a massacre on an Army base. Like Lord of the Flies, or the Stanford Prison Experiment, as long as we’re all losing our perspective at the same time – which, as a generation growing up with social media we are – then we don’t realise that our humanity is leaking away until its too late.

Is Congress Creating Another Housing Bubble?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:20:03 -0500

Is Congress Creating Another Housing Bubble?:

Though the deeply divided Congress can’t seem to agree on much these days, the House and the Senate did manage to come together this week, with nearly unanimous votes, to extend an $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit. But among economists of various political persuasions there’s widespread agreement on the Obama-backed bill: it’s horrible policy that could wind up prolonging, if not worsening, the housing crisis.

So why is a policy that diverse experts think is a bad idea so popular in Washington?

“Never underestimate the massive amount of political pull that the real estate industry and the homebuilders have,” Calabria says. The real estate industry gave $136 million to federal candidates during the 2008 election cycle, putting it fourth overall in terms of campaign contributions. The industry also spent nearly $750 million lobbying the federal government over the past two decades, $81 million of that in 2008 alone.

Clunker pickups traded for new pickups

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 12:16:56 -0500

Clunker pickups traded for new pickups:

The most common deals under the government’s $3 billion Cash for Clunkers program, aimed at putting more fuel-efficient cars on the road, replaced old Ford or Chevrolet pickups with new ones that got only marginally better gas mileage, according to an analysis of new federal data by The Associated Press.

The single most common swap - which occurred more than 8,200 times - involved Ford F150 pickup owners who took advantage of a government rebate to trade their old trucks for new Ford F150s. They were 17 times more likely to buy a new F150 than, say, a Toyota Prius. The fuel economy for the new trucks ranged from 15 mpg to 17 mpg based on engine size and other factors, an improvement of just 1 mpg to 3 mpg over the [so-called] clunkers.

[…]The most common truck-for-truck and truck-for-SUV deals totaled at least $911 million.

Just in case you thought a billion of your tax dollars [of the several billion making up the Cash For Clunkers program] were being used to reduce emissions and oil consumption, now you know how it actually played out.

The Secret of Liquid Smoke

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:58:05 -0500

The Secret of Liquid Smoke:

The secret: It’s not the creepy chemical additive you thought.

You can be forgiven for wrongfully accusing liquid smoke of nefarious fakey toxic chemicalness. Even chemists have been confused on this one. Back in June, Slashfood interviewed NYU chemistry professor Kent Kirshenbaum, who—like you, me, Lynne Rossetto Kasper and everyone we know—had believed the worst about this cheap, sketchy sounding liquid.

Unlike the rest of us, however, Kirshenbaum actually went out and studied liquid smoke. He found that, despite its synthetic 1950’s aura, the stuff is perfectly natural.

I was always worried that I actually like Liquid Smoke… I guess it’s OK!

After the Game: What Happens to the Losing Team's Swag?

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 11:07:58 -0500

After the Game: What Happens to the Losing Team's Swag?:

Somebody is going to lose the World Series. It’s true. I have heard this is how these things work. But, when the inevitable happens, where do all their commemorative hats, T-shirts, shoelaces, giant foam hands, etc. go? After all, nobody knows which team will win. To meet the instant, post-game demand, manufacturers have all that championship memorabilia—for both teams—made up and sitting in a warehouse before the final game is even a twinkle in an announcer’s eye.

If you guessed that it ends up in a dump, you’d be wrong. Mental_floss investigated and found the World Vision, an international Christian charity, gets the losing gear from baseball, football and basketball.

And the manufacturer gets a tax break for the donation. Knowing the way that large corporations work, I’m sure T-shirts for the losing team are valued at $30 for tax purposes just like the winning ones are — I guess the IRS doesn’t know which team won.

Via The Big Picture

Mon, 02 Nov 2009 10:46:58 -0500

Via The Big Picture

Goat rentals for clearing brush

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:47:24 -0400

Goat rentals for clearing brush:

GOOD reports on the Seattle-based Rent-a-Ruminant organization that hires out goats to people who want to clear brush on their property.
[R]ather than spending tons of money and time on diesel-powered machines, filing the proper permits, and administering dangerous herbicides, the Seattle-based Rent-a-Ruminant organization will loan your a team of 100 goats for all your brush-clearing needs—all at a very modest rates. As Serious Eats explains, the benefits of goats are numerous: they eat just about anything, they can work on uneven ground, you don’t need permits to use them, and they can clear a quarter-acre in about three days.

Humor for the day: Click here or on the image for a sarcastic...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:31:50 -0400

Humor for the day: Click here or on the image for a sarcastic take on the unrealistic photo enhancements that seem to be a staple of crime shows and movies.

Albert Wept

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:36:17 -0400

Albert Wept:

Baby Einstein Co. - maker of “educational” DVDs whose founder was officially recognized by George W. Bush during his 2007 State Of The Union address - issues a massive recall spurred by charges of false advertising. Nell Minow explains:
The academic studies show that what infants learn from watching a family member once takes them four times as long to absorb in a DVD. And the very act of watching a DVD with the pulsing refresh rate of the screen can be at the same time soporific and stimulating, making it more difficult for them to get restful sleep. The only thing they learn from these DVDs is how to watch television.

Confirms another long-time suspicion.

Acoustic Kitty

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 10:50:29 -0400

Acoustic Kitty:

bestofwikipedia:

Acoustic Kitty was a CIA project in the 1960s attempting to use cats in spy missions. A battery and a microphone were implanted into a cat and an antenna into its tail. Due to problems with distraction, the cat’s sense of hunger had to be addressed in another operation. Surgical and training expenses are thought to have amounted to over $20 million. The first cat mission was eavesdropping on two men in a park. The cat was released nearby, but was hit and killed by a taxi almost immediately. (via Kaylie)

The “Your Tax Dollars At Work” entry for today.

If you like Queen, this is a parody of Bohemian Rhapsody done...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:21:43 -0400

If you like Queen, this is a parody of Bohemian Rhapsody done with really high production quality. It’s got a political/election message for Brits, but is still pretty funny for us Yanks.
Via The Big Picture