For no apparent reason, really, I've began moving this blog, HellBroadCast, to Wordpress. In the transition, the name of the blog has also changed.
HellBroadCast will henceforth be known as Hellipsis. The new blog is available at http://hellipsis.wordpress.com.
The RSS feed address has also changed, and will (very soon) be at http://hellipsis.wordpress.com/feed/
See you there for more social and political stupidity!
"The Bush Administration said Tuesday it will fight to keep meatpackers from testing all their animals for mad cow disease."
Um, what?
So, the U.S. Government is willingly and publicly hindering, even banning, the testing of cows for a disease which is accountable for over 150 deaths, mostly in Britain?
Yes, that mad cow disease. The same one that forced British officials to slaughter and burn numerous cows in fear of human casulties. The same disease that practically halted all exports of British beef, notably to France.
So not exactly the bovine version of the common cold.
With a disease such as mad cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), one would assume that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) would be rigorously testing American cows for the disease, right?
Wrong. The USDA only tests a mere 1 percent of slaughtered cows for the disease (by comparison, Japan tests 100% of its cattle). Did I happen to mention that the disease may be fatal to humans who consume tainted beef, or to those who handle the tainted beef? Surely the low percentage of testing is an indication of no worry of BSE in America, a mere precaution?
Wrong again. There have been three confirmed cases of BSE withing the United States; a cow imported from Canada to Washington state (2003), a cow born in Texas (2005), and an Alabama cow(2006).
Then what on earth could be the reasoning behind the Bush Administration's fight to keep the cows untested? Money, plain and simple.
A beef produces in Kansas, Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, wanted to test all its cows, using the same test that the USDA relies on. Great! Don't you want your beef tested for a potentially fatal disease?
The Bush Administration and large meat companies don't want your steak tested. Were the beef producer in Kansas to be allowed to test its meat and advertise is as safe, the large meat companies would have to follow suit, performing expensive tests on their much much larger herds.
In addition, according to the USDA, which regulates the testing, widespread testing could lead to a false positive that would harm the meat industry.
Um, Washington state, Texas, Alabama...?
So a false positive may hurt the meat industry, but a positive hit doesn't? I don't understand... Japan is the number one importer of U.S. beef, and after the 2003 finding of BSE in America, Japan seized imports of U.S. beef for two years, until giving in to political pressure from the U.S..
Is the USDA thinking that a mere 3 cases of BSE within the continental United States (compared to over 180,000 cases in the United Kingdom) is not substantial enough to warrant the initiation of necessary precautions to counter even the possibility of an outbreak of BSE in the American meat industry? An outbreak, mind you, that would cost the American meat industry substantially more than the testing of cows for the disease. This is America we're talking about, the land of lawsuits. Upon the first death of a meateater, and subsequent lawsuit, due to variant Creuztfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), a fatal disease in humans which BSE is noted to cause in humans, the American meat industry stands to lose quite a bit of money and business. There has already been one death linked to BSE-related vCJD in the United States, but that victim had acquired the disease upon living or visiting the United Kingdom. As a simpler description, vCJD is a brain-wasting disease, and a nasty one at that.
To add to the head-scratching here, keep in mind that in March 2007, a federal judge ruled that such tests must be allowed. The law was to take effect a few days ago, on June 1st, but the USDA appealed.
Is the Bush Administration and the USDA looking out for your best interest and health, or are they leaning towards the companies, the money contributors?
Read more about bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mad_cow_disease
Sources:
Daily Kos http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/5/30/143539/136
.commonsense http://commonsense.ourfuture.org/e_coli_conservatism_19_ne_plus_ultra
International Herald Tribune http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/05/29/america/NA-GEN-US-Mad-Cow.php
2007 is the year of social change in Finland.
Smokers: have you ever sat at a bar with a bunch of friends, beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other? Of course you have. It seems so natural to have something in each hand, doesn't it?
Some places around the world have already banned smoking in bars and such, notably Ireland, a country known for its pub culture. Finland is now on that list, effective June 1st, 2007.
That's why I'm sitting at a bar right now, chain smoking for the last few hours before midnight, when the comes into effect. Foolish? Yes. Addicted? Yes.
More than a physical addiction, the new law destroys a part of my social interaction. Beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other. Spending hours at a bar with friends, playing cards, smoking, drinking, getting up only to get more to drink or to go to the bathroom. No more.
Once the day changes into Friday June 1st at midnight, things change. To be precise, the law states that:
-Smoking is banned in all licensed premises (bars, restaurants, cafes, clubs, etc...);
-The law affects all licensed premises, regardless of size of type of license;
-Smoking within such establishments is only allowed if the said establishment has built a smoking "box", an enclosed, well ventilated room, for the sole purpose of being a room in which customers can smoke;
-The smoking room is off-limits to all drink and food, as well as all other kinds of entertainment;
-Workers are not allowed into the box, except in emergencies (fire, medical assistance to customer), or for security reasons (fight erupts in box, or customer is consuming alcohol or food in the smoking box;
-Cleaners are only allowed into the box after it has been thoroughly ventilated;
-The law does not apply to terraces or patios of establishments, but owners and workers of said establishments must make sure that no second-hand smoke enters the establishment through open windows or doors, or ventilation ducts.
The purpose of this law is to protect restaurant and bar workers from being exposed to second-hand smoke at work. The law also protects non-smoking customers from the same exposure.
70 establishments have filed for a two-year transfer period to the smoking ban, whilst a mere 20 establishments have filed for the permit to build the smoking room. The two-year transfer period is only granted to establishments which fill the requirements of the law, such as having a low level of nicotine and other chemicals in the air, hand in hand with proper ventilation, in accordance with city building laws and health laws.
It's an established fact that smoking increases the risk of cancer. Common knowledge.
Now that countries are rushing to enact anti-smoking laws, it's ironic timing for the IARC, a part of the World Health Organization to release a study stating that alcohol is a category 1 cancer risk substance. (Read the study at http://www.iarc.fr/ENG/Press_Releases/pr175a.html). Great timing...
So, how will this affect the Finns? Remember that we're big drinkers, and bars are a packed on the weekends, as well as on wednesdays.
Here's what I see happening: Bars and clubs will lose business initially. Smokers will move their drinking to their homes, as well as parks and forests. Supermarkets and breweries will see their profits rise from the sale of alcohol. Bars will start to increase the comfortability of terraces, a huge venue of profit for any bar with one. As terraces are always packed during the summer months, bars will look to increasing them in capacity and entertainment. Small neighbourhood bars will start to face bankruptcy. Going clubbing will be chaos. (If you have to leave your jacket at the cloakroom during the colder months, and you can only smoke outside, how is that supposed to work out?)
Although the smoking ban makes life a little more difficult for smokers, eventually the whole bar life should become more enjoyable for all, as bars will have to come up with ingenious ways of drawing in the missing customers.
Personally, as a smoker, I half welcome this new law for health reasons, half denounce it as government interference into personal life choices of people.
Then again, I'm leaning towards the positive look on the issue... One, it'll save me money. Less smoking, less drinking. Two, quitting smoking will become easier. Three, new possibilities. And finally, for now, my social repertoire will expand beyond sitting at bars, drinking and playing cards...
A free table on the smoking side at a bar is usually the number one requirement for me entering the establishment. Now, with this new law, I'll be able to go to bars I've never gone to before, because they didn't have a smoking side, or no space at such area. Things will be different now.
It'll be interesting to see in this country which will come out on top: the bar atmosphere or the smoking. On one hand, smokers can now abide by the new law and conform to not smoking in the bar, or they'll stay at home, buying their beer from the supermarkets.
As irony, now that consumption of store-purchased alcohol will be on the rise, especially that of beer, the price of beer will go up soon, and the sale of alcohol in quantity will cease (no more 12packs... See my earlier post about the new alcohol laws in Finland...)
So, how will this really affect us? That remains to be seen... This will be a summer of packed terraces and empty bars... Which makes this summer interesting, seeing as the terraces are always full every summer. Maybe the terrace season will expand to cover the entire year, including the rainy fall days and the -30 degree winter days... Heated, covered terraces in December, complete with live music? Who knows? Maybe my promise of quitting smoking by the year's end will actually happen...
In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) turned away willing volunteer workers.
The (botched) rescue operation managed by FEMA exposed the inadequasies of the agency. Lesson learned?
On Friday, May 4, an F5 tornado wiped the town of Greensburg, Kansas, almost entirely off the map.
Naturally, FEMA arrived at the scene of the disaster, to take control of the situation. So did willing volunteers, ready to assist in the rescue and recovery operation. So, had FEMA learned from Katrina? Hardly.
FEMA demanded that Greensburg needed to be "secured" before the area could be opened to real recovery efforts.
As hundreds of volunteers waited for over a week to be allowed to assist at the disaster area, hundreds of police from dozens of Kansas jurisdictions entered the city to establish a virtual police state.
In the immediate rescue and recovery, FEMA and local police worked to find survivors and the dead, as well as all and any firearms in the city.
Take into account that this is central Kansas, a region with extremely high legal gun ownership. Of the over 350 firearms confiscated by police immediately after the storm, only a third have been returned to their owners, leaving the firepower squarely in control of the state. And the Second Amendment is supposed to allow people to carry arms, protecting themselves from the government...
FEMA's mission was to safeguard the property of businesses in the area (I can see it now: bureaucrats in suits and National Guardsmen standing next to a pile of rubble, scratching their heads) and offer "low interest" loans to property owners affected. The National Guard was on hand as well to act as the enforcement mechanism for FEMA, while occasionally hauling debris and garbage out of the city.
FEMA eventually let the rescue volunteers into the town, all the while keeping a close eye and a tight leash on them.
So yet again, FEMA botched a rescue operation with its ineptitude. The most mind-boggling stupidity from FEMA came in the distribution of information to the affected residents. After a week at the scene, all that FEMA could offer them was a packet of information. The packet, however, had to be mailed to the recipients, and they had no mailing address, let alone a mailbox...
So, in short:
-A massive tornado wipes out your home and town;
-The government sends in the Federal Emergency Management Agency, to provide relief and assistance;
-Hundreds of volunteers offer their assistance;
-The rescue and recovery work begins immediately, and the rebuilding gets underway as soon as the danger is over and the rubble cleared.
Looks good in writing, doesn't it? Let's look at what happened instead:
-A massive tornado wipes out your home and town;
-The government sends in a headless chicken, to provide relief and assistance;
-Hundreds of volunteers offer their assistance;
-FEMA rejects the offers of help, asking instead for money;
-Local law enforcement and the National Guard gather up all firearms they can find;
-After a week or so since the tornado visited town, FEMA, after a long period of silence, mails you an information package;
-The package never reaches you, as the mailman is searching the fields in the next county, looking for your mailbox;
-Finally, the volunteers are let in, yet aren't really allowed to do much, and are closely supervised;
-Your town is a pile of rubble, and you now live in a mold-infested trailer, courtesy of FEMA (if they have any to spare, seeing as most of them are in the South, populated by the former citizens of New Orleans). Maybe you get a tent;
-The government grants you a "low interest" loan, when you have just lost everything. Hence, the government is making money off of your loss, all the while making your financial and personal recovery slower. This way the government gets you at your weakest and makes you pay more interest on the loan as it takes you longer to get back on your feet;
-After a short while, you're on your own, rebuilding with the help of the volunteers who were kept away from you in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. FEMA, local authorities, the National Guard, and the Government have forgotten you...
How many mishandled rescue and recovery missions can FEMA be allowed to maintain like this? Why can't willing volunteers be allowed to assist when they are needed the most?
Hurricane Season is just around the corner...
Sources:
http://www.homelandstupidity.us/2007/05/18/after-tornado-fema-disarms-town-turns-away-help/trackback/
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/120276.html
America's fight with the illegal immigrant problem continues. On one hand, the illegals could be granted amnesty, led on the path to citizenship, or they could all be deported to their individual county of origin. A new study suggests a third way. Execution.
Marty Kaplan at The Huffington Post reports on a new study by The Institute for Human Dignity, a Washington-based research center (not associated with the Institute for Human Dignity). The report, titled 'A Modest Proposal', suggests that executing illegal immigrants would have a significantly positive input on the American economy.
Providing amnesty for the estimated 12 million illegal immigrants would cost billions of dollars in lost jobs for American citizens, the study found. Which in itself isn't a big shocker, as thousands of American jobs are already being moved out of the country in search of cheap labor. With amnesty for illegals, those jobs would also be lost within the country.
With time, the hiring of cheap, legal, labor within America would cease to be profitable, and you'd see former illegals complaining that they are losing their jobs to their cousins and brothers back home in Mexico, who'll do the job for less.
Would that make the former illegals, now citizens or prospective citizens, want to run back home to more jobs? 12 million new workers in America would raise the level of unemployment, forcing some of the workers to leave their new home to fly back to where they came from for the job they just had.
Executions, on the other game, would create am estimated 1.2 million new jobs in the penal sector, as well as reducing the tax burden on Americans who provide schooling and other services for there former aliens.
The figure of 1.2 million new jobs does not take into account the additional stimulus to the news and entertainment sector. We'd be talking executions no primetime television, sponsored by the leading tobacco companies as well as funeral home operators. Maybe even Taco Bell...
Read the original post from Marty Kaplan at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/marty-kaplan/kill-illegals-study_b_48788.html
Note: You might also be interested in Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal" from 1729, an educational tale of how the poor children of Ireland could seize to be a burden to their parents and become beneficial to the community. The story suggests that the parents should eat their own children...
Here's a few laughs at the expense of the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), courtesy of Schneier On Security (http://www.schneier.com/blog/).
TSA Cartoon:
http://www.clarionledger.com/misc/blogs/mramsey/uploaded_images/bilde-2-780665.jpg
Saturday Night Live TSA skit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykzqFz_nHZE
Tuesday, May 29th, 2007, 4pm.
30.4 degrees Celcius in the shade.
Location: Espoo, Finland.
No, this is not a joke.
This is global warming.
It is NEVER this hot in May in Finland. And not just hot. It's really humid too. The weather forecast for this week is rain and thunder, between 12 and 23 degrees centigrade. Every day. Instead, I'm sweating like a pig on a large open flame.
We're used to two kinds of summer here in Finland: wet and cold, or hot and dry. Usually both during the same summer months.
This year, the summer started early. It feels like the hottest days of summer. In May. The only exception is the unforeseen humidity. The unbearable humidity. We're used to dry heat.
As for the rain and thunder, the forecast wasn't completely off the mark. True, on mention of the burning sun and sweltering heat, but there's pain almost every day. Yet, it's not the summer rain that we're used to. It's tropical.
Take the last few days for example. It has been unbearably humid since about Friday. Yet sunny and warm every day.
Truth be told, the weather has been quite peculiar for the last week or so.
Friday evening and night was really misty in Espoo.
Saturday it rained in the morning, while late evening brought with it a severe thunderstorm that cut power and TV transmissions around Finland. Initially, it was thunder without rain. Then came the rain, pouring down on us. Hard. During the day was sunny.
Sunday was hot, with a cool breeze at most times. The papers were predicting that the heat (helle in Finnish...) was coming soon. More rain.
Monday was another got day, hitting some 27ish degrees at best. The late afternoon brought a few surprises with it. A rolling clap thunder which lasted some 10 seconds. Then five minutes of silence from above. Then another rolling clap of thunder, accompanied with 5 minutes of rain. Naturally, we we're outside at Seurasaari at the time, looking for squirrels to feed. After the rain, the rest of the day was nice and sunny, slightly cloudy. Ok weather for sitting at a terrace drinking a beer.
Today, Tuesday has been tropical. The kind of weather when you'd rather sit inside at home or an air-conditioned bar than be outside, with the exception of being at the beach...
The summer has started with a bang, a flash of heat that doesn't seem to go away. And it's only the end of May. Warn your grandparents, it's going to be a hot summer. In the mean time, it's time to bring out the shorts and bikinis, and enjoy this unusual weather.
Don't forget the suntan lotion!
(My prediction for the summer, all over Europe: death from heat exhaustion. The summer of 2003 was hot, and thousands of old people perished, especially in France. No need to travel to the tropics, because the tropics are coming to us this summer. And America, prepare for Katrina The Sequel... This might really be the summer when everyone realizes that global warming is not a myth...)
There haven't been any updates or new posts recently on my blogs, due to techical difficulties. Namely, I can't fully access the internet through my phone because the screen is messed up and I can't see what I'm doing. The reason I'm not using a computer is because I don't have one. My cell phone is my computer, and a crappy one at that too...
I do most of my blogging from my phone, only using a computer to do finishing touches to the posts, whenever I can. Thanks to Opera Mini and RSS feeds, I'm able to follow the news all the time, yet recently it's been difficult to do so as my phone is slowly but surely breathing it's last breaths.
Things will change soon, as I'm finally getting a new phone, the Nokia N95, sometime next week. Hopefully. Well, according to Nokia, it's not a cell phone. It's a multimedia computer. Which is just fine with me, because for me my phone is my computer. And this phone has it all.
So, my blogging will continue at the beginning of May. Stay tuned...
Health warning labels, much like those on cigarette packs in various countries around the world, may eventually be attached to advertisements for flights or holidays that include air travel, to remind passengers of the global warming crisis.
A leading British think-tank, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), suggested over the Easter holidays that such warnings would make people think twice about the impact their holiday has on the environment.
According to the IPPR, "the evidence that aviation damages the atmosphere is just as clear as the evidence that smoking kills...we know that smokers notice health warnings on cigarettes, and we have to tackle our addiction to flying in the same way."
True, smokers notice the warning labels, initially finding them annoying, then getting accustomed to them. They really have little effect on a smoker. Sure, it 'might' deter a few people from starting to smoke in the first place, but for people who have smoked for some time, they have little effect. (Some cigarette packs in Finland state "Smoking is addictive. Don't start", which is a bit too late for the majority of smokers who see the warning. In addition, some of the duty-free cigarette cartons on sale around Europe are contradicting. At a duty-free shop on a cruise ship from Finland to Sweden, I say two different makes of cigarettes, next to each other, one saying "Smoking Can Kill", while the other said "Smoking Kills".)
The warning labels on holiday ads will have a similar, yet profoundly lesser of an effect on flyers. With smoking, you have a choice of smoking or not smoking. With flying, there are instances when you have really have little choice.
Smoking is (usually) a personal choice, whereas flying is at times a necessity, or atleast an cheaper and easier alternative to expensive and slower means of travel, such as cars, buses and boats.
While it's well known that smoking has ill effects on a smoker's health, and health warning labels may be in the right place on cigarette packs, slapping a warning label on ads for holidays seems to be slight overkill.
If the only reason for these warnings is merely to raise public consciousness about the correlation between flying and global warning, a little sticker on a large poster of bikini-clad girls on a beach in Tahiti will not be noticed by most people.
It seems that this whole issue of warning labels on ads for holidays is just a continuation of the global warning awareness craze that seems to be gripping the western world right now. (Now we just need people to get with the program and actually start doing something about the issue, more than just banning incandescent light bulbs and plastic grocery bags...)
If this health-conscious and global warming-scared society really wants to get real on the health warning labels, why not slap those things on everything that actually is bad for humans and the environment. How's about these ideas?:
CARS: "Driving fast might cause you to wrap your car around a tree." (Placed on the inside of the front windshield.)
GUNS: "Guns don't kill people, people kill people. With guns. And bullets. So guns are bad."
KNIVES: "Caution: Inserting the sharp end in another human being might be fatal."
ALCOHOL: "Drinking alcohol may cause you do something stupidly fatal." (Actually, a law requiring health warning labels on all alcoholic beverages will come into effect in Finland by January 2008. Check out this blog post for more info on the issue)
RAZOR BLADES: "Shaving too close to the jugular is not suggested. Also, do not digest."
PLAYING CARDS: "Gambling May Damage Your Bank Account."
DONKEYS: "More people are killed annually by donkeys than die in airplane crashes."
The point here is that slapping a sticker/label on something detrimental to one's health is not always the best way to go about saving humanity. Are we just waiting for a warning ticket to show up plastered on the side of the 747 you were supposed to fly to Tahiti with? Slapping a sticker on harmful items doesn't save the world...
Source:
UK policy body wants health warnings on flights - Yahoo! News
The U.S. Gulf Coast could be facing Katrina-esque Hurricanes this coming Hurricane Season, which lasts from June to November.
Although the 2006 season was distinctly milder than previously predicted, the coming 2007 season could threaten the Gulf with several high intensity storms.
Even a single high intensity storm hitting the areas affected by Hurricane Katrina, which is still rebuilding after almost two years Katrina, could have devastating effects, reaching beyond the damage brought on by the 2005 storm season.
Although this year's predictions suggest fewer storms than during the active 2005 season, the forecast for the region will pack a punch. In other words, fewer storms but stronger in intensity.
British forecasting group Tropical Storm Risk predicted up to four "intense" hurricanes during the 2007 season.
Hurricane Katrina killed about 1,500 people along the Gulf Coast in 2005, displaced tens of thousands more and caused billions of dollars in damage.
The issue that could strike every American, as well as the rest of the world, is that if the U.S. Gulf Coast is hit again by severe storms, they could once again disrupt oil and natural gas operations along the Gulf, driving up energy prices for consumers.
U.S. gasoline prices reached a record high of $3.057 per gallon after Katrina.
Aside from the Gulf Coast, AccuWeather also predicted that the U.S. Northeast would likely be a target for strong storms for the next 10 years.
With several months left before the start of this year's hurricane season, it's about time the Bush Administration listens to the warnings and gets to work preparing for the coming hurricanes.
The aftermath of (as well as the preparation for) Hurricane Katrina showed the inefficiency of the Bush Administration and FEMA to deal with impending natural disasters.
Truth of the matter is, the American people are at a greater risk from the forces of nature than from anything terrorists can throw at the United States.
New Orleans and other affected places are still in shatters, the population still spread around the States, with little incentive from the Government to return home and start their lives over. If any of Hurricane Katrina's relatives decide to visit New Orleans this summer, and the Bush Administration hasn't learnt it's lessons, heads will roll. And it won't only be some pencil pushers at FEMA this time, but rather in the White House. Time will tell...
I'll leave you with a quote from Joe Bastardi, chief hurricane forecaster for AccuWeather.com:
"We are living in a time of climatic hardship. We're in a cycle where weather extremes are more the norm and not the exception."
Sources:
Strong hurricanes to hit U.S. Gulf in 07: AccuWeather - Yahoo! News
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070327/ts_nm/usa_weather_forecast_accuweather_dc
