The Diary of A Simple Man

Politics.
( Politics. Do not click if the topic bothers you. )

A scientist has discovered a way to put animals and possibly people into suspended animation with a poison gas:

http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/10/09/cheating.death.suspended.animation/index.html

This stuff just amazes me. Too bad it almost always turns out to be impractical or impossible to develop.

...died early this morning. I'm terribly sorry to see him go. As I wrote on Askville:

He exemplified the ideal of noblesse oblige. Born with everything - incredible wealth, looks, charm - he could have spent his life enjoying himself without a thought for anyone else. Instead, he spent his life working to improve the lot of those less fortunate than he. But actually, I think he enjoyed that far more than he would have enjoyed a lifetime of selfish pleasures.

I saw him once; didn't get to meet him, but I saw him about 16-17 years ago at Boston's World Trade Center. I was very surprised. He wasn't the fat, red-faced caricature I'd come to expect from depictions in the press. In fact, he seemed far younger than I'd expected, and was a surprisingly handsome fellow.

I wish we had more Senators like him - even one would be good. He was my Senator for many years.

I suppose it was inevitable, but right-wingers are already screeching about Chappaquiddick. Bastards. I notice they never whispered a word against Laura Bush, who had a very similar event in her young life.

So I was completely offline between Tuesday morning and Sunday night. Not only did I not have net access, I didn't even have access to a television; my parents don't get a strong enough signal in Maine to receive the new digital broadcasts, so they've gone from having six channels to none.

Apart from Sarah Palin resigning for some reason and the Washington Post having some sort of sleazy scandal with lobbyists, what else did I miss?

David Carradine died in Bangkok yesterday. Apparently he hung himself.

By all accounts he was a very strange person, but I enjoyed his work in Kung Fu and Death Race 2000, among other things.

I'm tired.

I'm tired of writing about this. I'm tired of thinking about it. But every time I read a story about it, I get outraged.

So when Congresswoman Jean Schmidt (R-PA) wrote an opinion piece for a Turkish website, supporting denial of the Armenian Genocide but adding that "I pray for the ethnic Armenians who lost their lives...", I felt that I had to respond. I suspect that my comment will not be approved by the Turkish editors, so here it is.

---

Keep your prayers, Congresswoman Schmidt. They're an insult to the dead.

I suppose it should shock me that someone sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States is unable or unwilling to understand that if you cover up a crime, you only encourage future criminals - as Hitler made all too clear when he said "Who today remembers the extermination of the Armenians?". But I'm sorry to say that I'm not at all surprised. There are far too many in Congress like Congresswoman Schmidt, people who'd sell their own mothers for a campaign contribution.

It's people like her who have brought the United States to its current desperate state.

---

By the way, this is the same Congresswoman Schmidt who made a bit of a stir on the floor of the House by saying about wounded veteran John Murtha "Cowards cut and run, Marines never do".

Another point that infuriated me: there was a good piece over at the Huffington Post about the Genocide. But there was a Google ad at the bottom of that page for Genocide denial by the Turkish Coalition of America. The irony is killing me. Commercials for Genocide denial?!?

If the Holocaust had happened today, Nuremburg wouldn't have happened. Instead the Germans would have spent a lot of money, and whores like Jean Schmidt and - I fear - Obama would eagerly line up at the trough, happily denying that anything ever happened anywhere.

According to an article in the Washington Post today, scientists expect to be able to regrow parts of teeth relatively soon.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/04/AR2009010401941_pf.html

Rudy Ray Moore, AKA the "Dolemite" died today. I wonder, has anyone else on my flist ever heard of him?

I noticed this a while ago. Apparently lots of people have missed it. But some time in the last several months, groceries started shrinking - a lot.

All sorts of groceries. But I guess it's not surprising that I first noticed that ice cream had shrunk. Maybe you remember: when you buy ice cream in the supermarket, the usual sizes are a half gallon or a pint. But when I routinely checked the label of a carton of Bryer's ice cream, I was amazed to see that it was only 1.5 quarts - it had been shrunk by a full 25%! And the price definitely hadn't gone down. I did a little research, and EVERY ice cream manufacturer has magically reduced their ice cream packages from 2 quarts to 1.5!

Incidentally, the package had been re-designed to make it look bigger than it was; it looked a lot like the old version, but the sides were sloping more. I think that difference caught my attention somehow, which is why I looked at the label. I've also noticed that whereas the cartons were almost always full of ice cream in the past, the ice cream is much looser now, if that makes any sense. There's consistently more air around the sides.

Lots of other products have silently started shrinking, too.The Consumerist calls it "the grocery shrink ray".

Apparently one typical tip-off is when the packaging is redesigned. They may claim that the new package is more environmentally friendly and easier to ship - but the odds are that it also contains 10% or so less product. In some cases, the price for the new package is actually higher than the old, more generous one! But usually it's just the same. Chips, juice, toilet paper...anything which isn't sold by a unit of weight or volume is subject to shrinkage. They can't pull this stunt with gallons of milk or with store-packaged meat, since that's sold by the pound. But in some cases, larger packages are being replaced with subtly smaller ones. For example, the Jimmy Dean sausage roll which was normally 16 oz. is now 12 oz.

Obviously manufacturers are counting on the vast majority of consumers being too stupid or apathetic to notice the change. That's a bet they'll probably win. The question is, how far can they push this particular technique before consumers notice and get angry? My guess is that they're studying this issue carefully, and that before they reduce packages to the point that people notice, they'll do a price hike - probably en masse, so they can all claim that it's a necessary response to the economy.

Incidentally, I don't dispute their right to pass on increased production costs to their customers (because I know that at least one person on my flist will make that very point). What I object to is this sleazy, underhanded repackaging scheme. A half-gallon of ice cream has been just that for decades. Tricking people into thinking they're buying a half-gallon when they're not is simply unethical.

Oh, it's also worth pointing out that these changes also screw up recipes. Many recipes call for a certain standard amount of an ingredient, such as a 6-oz. can of tomatoes (or something; I'm just making up the numbers, okay?). And now that no package exists in that size, the cook is faced with either buying TWO packages and wasting part of one, or trying to reduce the rest of the recipe - which can be difficult, since the amount of reduction isn't always easy to translate into other sizes (i.e. it may be 3 out of 14 oz., for example).

I also read over on the Consumerist that milk is often turning out to be sour as soon as it's bought, or very soon thereafter - this is apparently a lot more common than it used to be. That may be because manufacturers are selling milk that they would normally have thrown away. Or perhaps milk-truck drivers are turning off their refrigeration to save gas. Apparently this hasn't been a problem with organic milk, although much of this is anecdotal. I wouldn't have notice that particular problem anyway, since we always buy our milk straight from the nearby Wright's Dairy Farm. Their milk isn't trucked anywhere! :D

Belmont and Newton (both in Massachusetts) have just withdrawn from the ADL's "No Place For Hate" campaign, because of the ADL's continuing stance on the Armenian Genocide. The ADL was finally forced to recognize the Genocide and re-hire their regional director, but they still oppose the bills in Congress which would recognize the Genocide.

Belmont and Newton Also Withdraw From the ADL's No Place for Hate

Sigh. I'd love to discuss this over in the Armenian community, but I'm still not a member - despite three attempts to join and attempts to directly contact both of the moderators.

I wonder what the hell is going on with that community?