I'm not gonna unless you make me

Coke and Pepsi will discontinue the use of 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI) in their beverage manufacturing due to the likelihood of it causing cancer.  Did the two soda giants discontinue this practice after they found out that it is a potential cancer causing agent?  Of course not.  They discontinued to practice after California decided to add 4-MEI to their carcinogens list forcing the companies to either get rid of the ingredient or facing the possibility of having to put cancer warning labels on their bottles.  Well, I guess as long as it happens right? 

(Touch Me)

courtesy of BBC News

Kite flying isn't what it used to be

From the good people at prisonplanet.com comes this story about military intervention at a kite festival this past weekend in Austin.

"Uniformed troops from the Texas State Guard were used for the purposes of crowd control during the Zilker Kite Festival in Austin this past weekend, with video showing the troops ordering parents and children to board school buses at the end of the event.
Disturbing footage of the troops controlling the movement of attendees was filmed by Infowars reporters, in addition to a police helicopter circling above. However, the website of the Zilker Kite Festival attempted to downplay the Guard’s involvement as if it was completely normal."

Quite an interesting story.  Military folks are rounding up women and children and busing putting them out of town.   A little unsettling sure but this is not one of those read the headlines tells you the story type thing.  So, this Kite Festival thing is a small and volunteer group that has this festival once a year that is big as heck and need help to oversee it.  Now, you’ve got three options.  Have more people in your kite club which obviously isn’t going to happen. Two, you could HIRE cops to come out and help just let’s be clear, not many cops are just going to volunteer their time at a stupid kite thing knowing they could get 40 dollars an hour at the grocery store.  So #3, national guard people volunteer their time (and are allowed to do this by their superiors cause they are in kind of uniform so I'm sure they need approval) to come and to help out crowd control and crowd wrangle.  Well if you do not have A or B option, then C seems like a reasonable and responsible decision to make to ensure that your crowd of people keep in line.  Now, in the time I come from back before 2001, we could have an event like this and not need security.  We just kind of understood that we were going to a kite event and to chill the fuck out for a few hours and not try to stab anyone around.  Is there a rhyme or reason for that?  Sure, but those reasons number in the hundreds of thousands depending on what human being is experiencing something at some specific time.  We no longer live our lives inside a 15 mile radius.  Every human being truly has an impact on each and every other one.  The slave labor in Siberia (Touch Me).  The suicide workers at Foxconn (find the net story somewhere down below).    It all matters.  My point here is, keep reporting things, Alex Jones but Alex Jones readers and listeners, calm it down and gather a little back story knowledge before you go too crazy.   When we don’t call out the National Guard, no one knows what will happen (Touch Me).

Maps are so lovely

Who wants a map of all the US military bases in the middle east?  How about just those military bases that surround Iran then. Done.

Someone should compile these

With the news that we have already lost 20 percent of the live information created on social media sites for the Libya uprising, (normally you would Touch Me but damn if I can't find this link but unlike some websites who put up broken links pretending like it is a link to a real source when it wasn't, I swear I read it somewhere recently.  how about just stroll through disinfo.com for a few pages.  Sounds like something they would be into and if not, you are still going to see some great stories) it is time for us to really start logging and cataloging information so that when The Man takes things down, we will still have it.  I suggest we start with someone starting a blog maybe that compiles the last paragraph of each news article that might carry a deeper meaning than the headline grabbing topic at the topic.  We could, for instance, start with this little diddy about the invasion of female suicide bombers being dispatched from Yemen (Touch Me).  The article paints the horror story idea that Yemenize (?) females are being sent around the globe (on planes of course) to blow some poor unsuspecting rich country peoples sky high.  Terror Terror Terror.  Red Alert.  What the article also holds is some very peculiar information about another popular "suicide bomber".  Do you remember the Christmas day bomber, Umar Abdulmutallab?  Oh, what a bastard for messing up the birth of our Lord (Touch Me).  Well, some people at the scene, Kurt and Lori Haskell, said that they saw the terrorist before boarding the plane and he wasn't alone (Touch Me) (I don't care it is a wiki link or not. it has sources, use them).  Of course, this was ridiculous and outlandish and all the other words one can lob at another person to ensure everyone thinks they are crazy.  Well, maybe not so crazy after all because at the end of the Female bomber's article is one little throw away paragraph that makes the situation some kinds of murky (Touch Me) (Page 2 last paragraph). Why toss that in there, just hiding there at the bottom?  I know I read to the bottom of every article (insert sarcastic sound here).  
Federal agents also tell ABCNews.com they are attempting to identify a man who passengers said helped Abdulmutallab change planes for Detroit when he landed in Amsterdam from Lagos, Nigeria.
Authorities had initially discounted the passenger accounts, but the agents say there is a growing belief the man have played a role to make sure Abdulmutallab "did not get cold feet."

Things to learn things to wipe from your memory

English scientists claim to have discovered how tigers and other animals got their stripes (Touch Me).  It seems a 60 year old study done by researcher Alan Turing showed in his paper The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis that animal's stripes and spots are caused by the interaction of a pair of chemicals named "morphogens".  
Anyone want some lab meat (Touch Me).  Dutch scientists are using stem cells to create strips of muscle tissue that they hope will be able to grow lab hamburger meat by the end of the year.  Well, that is, if 2012 hasn't swallowed us whole by then.
Let's rebuild a boat (Touch Me).  Archaeologists in Egypt have begun the process of restoring a really old (they say 4500 year old) boat housed in the Pyramid complex.  This is one of two boats found in the area directly beside one of the pyramids.  Some say the boats were placed by the temples (not tombs) to give the dead a way to travel around in the afterlife.  Now, the boat, once completed, will bring lots of tourist eyes to see and continue the tradition of iffy historical data that we all have come to know and love. 
How about a fun little graph about prices and have they have increased since 2000 (Touch Me).  That will sure lift your spirits.  I really like the college one.  That makes complete sense.  Wink Wink.

Sometimes, I feel this way

links today courtesy of The London Telegraph, BBC News, The AP, and Business Insider

I love tandems

And boy do I have a team for you today.  A few weeks back, a suspicious package arrived at the United Nations in New York.  Come to find out, said package contained two 30 pound bundles of cocaine (Touch Me).  Now that is some kind of diplomatic love.  The package was said to be designed like a diplomatic pouch but apparently, "terrorists" can't do everything right as the package looked amateurish at best (Touch Me).  So, what would one drug story be without the other.  Yesterday, Lebanon officials seized suspicious cargo upon its arrival at the Beirut airport (Touch Me).  The package contained a large cache of american dollars (see China, someone still uses our currency), guns, special passports, and credit cards (that were assumed not to be from a college student that signed up for every credit card offer they got in the mail).  The packages came in as several chests and were delivered by airmail from the United States and Brazil.  Included was also a list of of Lebanon citizens as well as people from the Salafi extremist group.  Well, I guess when TSA runs off all the airline passengers, there will still be a need for some things to fly the friendly skies.  

photo courtesy of makes me laugh

links courtesy of standard.net and newsrescue.com

Urgh You

It's a finger, not a penis and oh by the way, a penis isn't that bad either.  Body parts.  Body parts.  You make them carry your own personal demon meanings.  You stop that and fingers can go back to being just fingers.  And in case you were wondering if a digit can really be that offense, how about go over to flipthatbird and suck it the fuck up.