The Cog of Society

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 02:22:41 -0500

I don’t have kids myself, so I don’t know what it’s like to have kids. I found...

Tue, 09 Nov 2010 01:44:03 -0500

I don’t have kids myself, so I don’t know what it’s like to have kids. I found this interesting though.

How come you love being a parent if you’re hating it so much of the time?

This article, ‘All Joy And No Fun – Why Parents Hate Parenting’ from The New York Magazine is essential reading. I won’t say anything more yet, except how on-the-money this quote was:

(Or, as a fellow psychologist told Gilbert when he finally got around to having a child: “They’re a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to shit.”)

The Tech Companies That Helped Fight Proposition 8

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 02:35:51 -0400

mapboy:

The graphic lists tech companies that contributed to the recent overturning of proposition 8. Click here to read the full story and to view a larger image.

This is totally you Mapboy! Tell me heatherWhy do you never...

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 03:36:14 -0400

This is totally you Mapboy!

Tell me heather
Why do you never answer the phone?
When it rings, does it sing “caller unknown”?
Telling you to run away and hide
To early in the day for talking
I got a feeling you’re busy painting
Children in death and decay

Heather, do you ever answer the phone?
Is it me, or does it seem you left it at home
Telling me you went to get provisions
Maybe off to find new scissors
Maybe you’re busy taking pictures
Up in the cemetery

Oh..ohoh

Telling you to run away and hide
To early in the day for talking
I got a feeling you’re busy painting
Children in death and decay
Maybe you went to get provisions
Or off to find new scissors
Maybe you’re busy taking pictures
Up in the cemetery

mapboy: pyrrhosrepublic: friendlyatheist: We suck « Why...

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:35:53 -0400

mapboy:

pyrrhosrepublic:

friendlyatheist:

We suck « Why Evolution Is True

Sad. The state of education in the US is deplorable thanks to faith based inanity like creationism and intelligent design.

Our science education is sorely lacking in the US. (And I don’t think religion is solely to blame either.)

You’re right, not only religion, but teachers, parents and the lack of funding for the educational system add to the sad state of science education in this country.

mapboy: Homer as Altair? It’s okay to break the 3 tenants of...

Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:34:10 -0400

mapboy:

Homer as Altair? It’s okay to break the 3 tenants of the assassin’s creed If donuts are involved. Mmmm…Donuts.

Image by Makotron

Congo Marks 50 Years Of Being 'Free'

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 22:26:32 -0400

Congo Marks 50 Years Of Being 'Free':

mapboy:

This is a recently aired NPR story covering the Democratic Republic of Congo, marking 50 years of freedom. The country is still marred with brutal violence and bloodshed that spares no one…sometimes hitting close to home as i’ve learned.

Fifty years ago last week, the Democratic Republic of Congo broke free from Belgian colonial rule, but the half-century mark comes with mixed emotions as the country’s independence has yet to truly free the nation from devastating blood shed and a broken economy. Host Michel Martin reflects on the 50 years of Congo’s independence with human rights attorney and leader of TransAfrica Forum Nicole Lee, and Emira Woods, a foreign policy expert for the Institute for Policy Studies.

Click here to listen

It is a shame, but one must also realize the Congo government should also do something to decrease the violence as well. How has it affected you?

God of War trailer…indie version….not the one...

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 02:55:58 -0400

God of War trailer…indie version….not the one Hollywood has planned. Based on the popular video game ‘God of War’. I found it hilarious.

Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 02:22:01 -0400

Nigeria's agony dwarfs the Gulf oil spill:

mapboy:

Why is this part of the world ignored so much. It’s really sad that disasters like these aren’t reported enough around the world. Not only the media, but many so called environmentalist as well. While the article is heavily biased towards making big oil look evil, which they are, some of the fault lies on the African government as well. They tap into the oil lines causing leaks and ruptures. Greedy corporations and greedy governments. What I see is environmental devastation that no one seems to do anything about.

We reached the edge of the oil spill near the Nigerian village of Otuegwe after a long hike through cassava plantations. Ahead of us lay swamp. We waded into the warm tropical water and began swimming, cameras and notebooks held above our heads. We could smell the oil long before we saw it – the stench of garage forecourts and rotting vegetation hanging thickly in the air.

The farther we travelled, the more nauseous it became. Soon we were swimming in pools of light Nigerian crude, the best-quality oil in the world. One of the many hundreds of 40-year-old pipelines that crisscross the Niger delta had corroded and spewed oil for several months.

Forest and farmland were now covered in a sheen of greasy oil. Drinking wells were polluted and people were distraught. No one knew how much oil had leaked. “We lost our nets, huts and fishing pots,” said Chief Promise, village leader of Otuegwe and our guide. “This is where we fished and farmed. We have lost our forest. We told Shell of the spill within days, but they did nothing for six months.”

That was the Niger delta a few years ago, where, according to Nigerian academics, writers and environment groups, oil companies have acted with such impunity and recklessness that much of the region has been devastated by leaks.

In fact, more oil is spilled from the delta’s network of terminals, pipes, pumping stations and oil platforms every year than has been lost in the Gulf of Mexico, the site of a major ecological catastrophe caused by oil that has poured from a leak triggered by the explosion that wrecked BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig last month.

That disaster, which claimed the lives of 11 rig workers, has made headlines round the world. By contrast, little information has emerged about the damage inflicted on the Niger delta. Yet the destruction there provides us with a far more accurate picture of the price we have to pay for drilling oil today.

On 1 May this year a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline in the state of Akwa Ibom spilled more than a million gallons into the delta over seven days before the leak was stopped. Local people demonstrated against the company but say they were attacked by security guards. Community leaders are now demanding $1bn in compensation for the illness and loss of livelihood they suffered. Few expect they will succeed. In the meantime, thick balls of tar are being washed up along the coast. Click here to continue.

It’s a shame that people don’t pay much attention to this region of the world. You are right, both sides are to blame. It’s a sad situation. It’s nice to see at least some one is paying attention.

mapboy: caramelbaloney: feminismisforlovers: I’m a stencil!...

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 02:16:58 -0400

mapboy:

caramelbaloney:

feminismisforlovers:

I’m a stencil! Use me as a template! Then email feminismisforlovers and tell us alllllll about it.

Look up the size of whatever sticker you’re using, and have at it.

Sticker stencil, check. Now to find a lover…

mapboy: caramelbaloney: jasencomstock: wontonburritomeals: “I...

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 02:15:24 -0400

mapboy:

caramelbaloney:

jasencomstock:

wontonburritomeals:

“I wish they taught shopping in school.”
“Let’s bake some cookies for the boys.”
“Don’t ask me - I’m just a girl (giggle).”
“Now let’s forget our troubles with a big bowl of strawberry ice cream!”
“Thinking too much gives you wrinkles.”
“My name is Stacy, but you can call me (wolf whistle).”

Oh Malibu Stacy. How I envy you sometimes.

One of my favorite episodes—

It’s not funny, Bart. Millions of girls will grow up thinking that this is the right way to act - that they can never be more than vacuous ninnies whose only goal is to look pretty, land a rich husband, and spend all day on the phone with their equally vacuous friends talking about how damn terrific it is to look pretty and have a rich husband!

Talking Malibu Stacy was a parody of the very real Teen Talk Barbie, who debuted in the early 90s with phrases such as, “I love shopping!” and “Will we ever have enough clothes?” along with the later removed “Math class is tough!” Of course, Barbie has been iconic, and the episode ended with a ravenous public that gobbled up the talking Malibu Stacy instead of the more intelligent Lionheart Lisa:

“‘When I get married, I’m keeping my own name!’….Hmmm, that should be, ‘If I choose to get married…’”

40-Foot Optimus Prime Transforms Beijing Skyline

Sun, 18 Jul 2010 02:12:50 -0400

40-Foot Optimus Prime Transforms Beijing Skyline:

mapboy:

Robot one-upmanship is happening at an alarming pace in East Asia as the Chinese have unveiled a giantOptimus Prime in Beijing, no doubt to counter giant robots recently built by the Japanese. Is a clash of the robo-titans imminent?

The Transformers icon stands nearly 40 feet tall and weighs 6 tons. Fittingly, the head Autobot was fashioned out of recycled car parts such as engines and tires. It took five truckloads of parts to put Prime together.

The colossus dwarfs puny humans at the new Green Dream Park, located northwest of Beijing’s “Bird’s Nest” National Stadium used for the 2008 Olympic Games. Opening Friday, the park has environment-themed exhibits such as a super-sized reclining sofa made of recycled paper and designed to get Chinese to think green.

No doubt Prime, once junkyard detritus, fits right in. But come on, China! Do you really think you’ve fooled us with that one? It’s clear you’ve continued to recklessly develop giant robot technology since we learned about your Nanjing-based project to build a full-size Transformer back in 2007.

Optimus is optimal for one thing only—countering the giant cartoon robot threat from Japan. I’m talking the giantGundam that was built in Tokyo last year, as well as the giant Gigantor erected in Kobe. Both behemoths are a full 20 feet taller than Prime, and when Gundam returns this month in Shizuoka City he’ll be armed with a beam saber. That means business.

The Gender Pay Gap, by State

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 05:23:00 -0400

The Gender Pay Gap, by State:

Ran across this data. There seems to be some holes in the data, but still interesting.

Click here to interact with the map

The gender pay gap for full-time workers is smallest in the nation’s capital, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

For all full-time wage and salary workers across the country, women’s median weekly wages were 80.2 percent of men’s last year. But there is considerable variation among the states.

The map above shows median usual weekly earnings for women as a percent of those for men, for all full-time wage and salary workers in 2009.

As you can see, in the District of Columbia, the median weekly wage of full-time women workers is 96.5 percent of that for their male counterparts, far and away the most parity in the country. Coming in second is California, where women who work full-time earn 88.7 percent of what men make.

At the other end is Louisiana, where, among full-time workers, women earn 65 percent of what men bring in.

Once again, these numbers do not control for the types of jobs that men versus women go into. Additionally, as we explored on Friday, the picture might look very different if we were looking only at part-time jobs, wherewomen tend to earn more than men.

postapocalyptia: somelightning: A Tour Of Detroit’s Ghetto...

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:41:39 -0400

postapocalyptia:

somelightning:

A Tour Of Detroit’s Ghetto (via camosilver)

looks like fallout

God Hates Nerds

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:37:45 -0400

God Hates Nerds:

mapboy:

Okay, this is probably going to make me late for my flight, but I ran across this just as I was going to shut down and I had to post it. Is this not one of the silliest things you’ve ever heard of?

via Gizmodo:

It seems that the members of the Topeka, Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church aren’t very happy about the San Diego Comic-Con. According to them, it’s a gathering of lost souls who are obsessively worshipping false idols like Batman:

Are you kidding?! If these people would spend even some of the energy that they spend on these comic books, reading the Bible, well no high hopes here. They have turned comic book characters into idols, and worship them they do! Isaiah 2:8 Their land also is full of idols; they worship the work of their own hands, that which their own fingers have made: 9 And the mean man boweth down, and the great man humbleth himself: therefore forgive them not. It is time to put away the silly vanities and turn to God like you mean it. The destruction of this nation is imminent - so start calling on Batman and Superman now, see if they can pull you from the mess that you have created with all your silly idolatry.

Members of the church intend on staging a 45-minute protest during one of the least busy days of the convention in order to get everyone back on the right track.

I hope I don’t run into these people next week

Your Antivirus Hates You

Fri, 16 Jul 2010 15:36:07 -0400

mapboy:

Via The Dog House Diaries:

Antivirus…don’t hate me.

Lloyd's Of London warns businesses to prepare for peak oil

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 13:51:42 -0400

Lloyd's Of London warns businesses to prepare for peak oil:

mapboy:

The Lloyd’s of London are warning businesses about investing in oil for the long term. This is good news for alternative fuel supporters. As we all know, oil is not a finite resource and we will eventually run out of.

One of the City’s most respected institutions has warned of “catastrophic consequences” for businesses that fail to prepare for a world of increasing oil scarcity and a lower carbon economy.

The Lloyd’s insurance market and the highly regarded Royal Institute of International Affairs, known as Chatham House, says Britain needs to be ready for “peak oil” and disrupted energy supplies at a time of soaring fuel demand in China and India, constraints on production caused by theBP oil spill and political moves to cut CO2 to halt global warming.

“Companies which are able to take advantage of this new energy reality will increase both their resilience and competitiveness. Failure to do so could lead to expensive and potentially catastrophic consequences,” says the Lloyd’s and Chatham House report “Sustainable energy security: strategic risks and opportunities for business”.

The insurance market has a major interest in preparedness to counterclimate change because of the fear of rising insurance claims related to property damage and business disruption. The review is groundbreaking because it comes from the heart of the City and contains the kind of dire warnings that are more associated with environmental groups or others accused by critics of resorting to hype. It takes a pot shot at the International Energy Agency which has been under fire for apparently under-estimating the threats, noting: “IEA expectations [on crude output] over the last decade have generally gone unmet.”

The report the world is heading for a global oil supply crunch and high prices owing to insufficient investment in oil production plus a rebound in global demand following recession. It repeats warning from Professor Paul Stevens, a former economist from Dundee University, at an earlier Chatham House conference that lack of oil by 2013 could force the price of crude above $200 (£130) a barrel.

It also quotes from a US department of energy report highlighting the economic chaos that would result from declining oil production as global demand continued to rise, recommending a crash programme to overhaul the transport system. “Even before we reach peak oil,” says the Lloyd’s report, “we could witness an oil supply crunch because of increased Asian demand. Major new investment in energy takes 10-15 years from the initial investment to first production, and to date we have not seen the amount of new projects that would supply the projected increase in demand.”

And while the world is gradually moving to new kinds of clean energy technologies the insurance market warns that there could be shortages of earth metals and other raw materials needed to help them thrive.

Lloyd’s also calls on manufacturers, retailers and the wider business community to reassess global supply chains and their just-in time models because the “current system is increasingly vulnerable to disruption.”

The report says government needs to do much more to bring additional price stability and transparency if the global carbon market is to become a reality.

Richard Ward, chief executive of Lloyd’s, said the failure of theCopenhagen climate change talks last December has helped lull many business leaders into a false sense of security about the challenges ahead. “We are in a period akin to a phony war. We keep hearing of difficulties to come, but with oil, gas and coal still broadly accessible – and largely capable of being distributed where they are needed – the bad times have not yet hit … all businesses … will be affected by energy supplies which are less reliable and more expensive.”

• This article was amended on 12 July 2010. The original referred to Chatham House as being the Institute of Strategic Studies. It is the Royal Institute of International Affairs.

Isn’t it a little late in the game for this?

Stingrays injure dozens at La Jolla Shores

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 12:59:53 -0400

My first post was going to be more interesting than this, but I couldn’t help this one. I was just in the water at this very beach!!

SAN DIEGO (CNS) - Stingrays injured dozens of beachgoers in the surf along La Jolla Shores and the Torrey Pines area today, sending two of them to hospitals, authorities reported.

Thirty-eight of the painful stings were reported through the day, with a rash of them coming in the mid-afternoon, San Diego lifeguard Lt. Nick Lerma said.

At one point, there were so many victims being treated at the same time that lifeguards called in paramedics to provide back-up.

Medics transported two patients — a 16-year-old boy and a 21-year-old woman, both of whom reported having trouble breathing after getting stabbed by rays’ barbed tails — to emergency rooms and treated the other victims at the waterfront.

The number of strikes was unusual, though not unprecedented, Lerma said.

“It’s not unheard of, but it doesn’t happen every day, for sure,” he said. “It’s certainly the most for this year.”

To avoid getting stung by a ray, swimmers and surfers are advised to shuffle their feet through the sand while walking in the surf instead of taking normal up-and-down steps, particularly if there have been recent reports of the flat-bodied, long-tailed venomous fish in the area.

There are more than 5,000 stingray attacks reported every year in the United States, the vast majority of which are non-fatal.