News update

In other news, the Giants have won the World Series. Frankly, I stopped caring once the Reds and Tigers were out, and the Yankees had lost. Nothing personal against the Yankees, I just think you're one step above the University of Michigan. Congrats to the Yankees.



My fantasy football team continues to roll on a recovery graph from the courses of Brett Favre in the beginning of the season. Sure, he was setting records every day he played but at some time isn't it worth getting out before you're just a broken dream instead of a legend?

Google Buzz... I knew I didn't like it, and I was irritated as anyone when it was automatically put into my Google account without me knowing how to use it over control what it did. Let alone the fact that it popped up every 5 minutes to tell me about its new-found self-importance. Good riddance. $8.5 million is nothing to Google.

Today is a big day in the world of politics. As the United States pulls another no-show on voting (a privilege that many people would die or are dying to have and protect), a huge chunk of our nation's government is up for election. The results tonight will have a significant impact on our future so vote. Otherwise, don't complain.

Meanwhile, the U.K and France are working out a deal for their mutual protection. I think this is really good for 2 such small countries. Except, how did it get worked out that France would be the location given for weapon testing? I don't dare speculate that they might've gotten the short straw by a bit?

And in Tanzania, an albino was elected to parliament. I doubt this would be a big deal if witches weren't hoping they could've had his body parts for their dark work.

Charlie Sheen's getting divorced again. I can't say I blame her for anything other than the stupidity to get married in the first place.

And my finale for today is the couple that sold Obama's letter to them. I can't say I blame them but man, if I got a letter from the President, I would keep it if I possibly could. It must've been awesome to get that in the mail.

Randoms

To entertain you on the randomness of my mind, I'll take you through these as I read them this morning. I'm trying to lift my brain out of the dump after I ran out of time on another biochem quiz.

My igoogle today thought it was top priority to tell me about a nuclear submarine running aground in Scotland. Oddly enough, the HMS Astute's crew didn't seem to realize they were in shallow water. If you scroll down to the first video you can listen to some entertaining Scottish accent as the guy describes what "ee's seein' outsigh 'is 'ouse".


I figured I'd be putting together a blog this morning so I signed in and scrolled my Dashboard. Unfortunately nobody else seemed determined to waste their time last night so I was short on blogs to read and switched to recommended blogs of the day. That's when I stumbled upon this delicious looking apple cake recipe. I don't even like cake but this looks like the texture won't be similar and I think I could eat this for dessert and breakfast on the following day.

Facebook was also empty and boring. Pretty much the only posts were about people's night out last night and since I already heard enough gossip about people's nights out last night in biochem this morning I was pretty burned out on it. Instead I scrolled through BBC news and read all about how the French snuck in and broke the protest at one of the refineries because they were all shut down at this point. It's inconceivable to me that all these people are complaining about having to work a couple of extra years. And then the guy goes on to talk about this being a democracy and it's failing. Well, I don't know the last time France really looked like a democracy. Don't fool yourselves folks. And who ever heard about fairness towards strikers. Honestly, you're trying to put a country on its knees, who's got a right to talk about fairness here?

Then I noticed a soccer section and the World Cup in me flared up for just a minute. Ireland isn't the only place people get killed over soccer, I guess they had some issues in Italy this past week with overzealous fans. It makes the Crew sound even more boring than they already seem. And all over a 0-0 draw? It's Liverpool for goodness sakes people, not like a Man Utd at Barcelona.

I had some more controversial news as well, but it's best you read for yourself about how the US is spending their deficit to try and buy out their friends overseas.

BBC compilation

The news today is a pretty wild assortment on my Mozilla BBC feed. Everything from French oil blockades to prisoners in Iran who will be tried for espionage after they allegedly crossed the border whilst hiking in Iraq. Why were they hiking in Iraq in the first place? It's amazing how much comes up in a week that I never would hear about on my local news or CNN.

Drug war news in Mexico continue with the capture of the largest stash of marijuana yet confiscated in Mexico. Again I uphold that if we just legalized and then taxed it, prohibiting its use in vehicles or on the job, the capitalist market in the US would solve this problem on its own.

Also, there is a gene identified that allegedly contributes to faster drunkenness. My bet is that they found it in Asia, but what's more important is that they think it could be a possible preventative drug in the future to help people react badly to alcohol and thus prevent alcoholism. Crazy stuff and I think it's kinda like Scotland's proposed ban on smoking in cars. Isn't enough, enough? To me, a ban on smoking in cars would be a serious breach of freedom of choice but I also don't live in Scotland. I do think that's something we're headed to as we try to socialize medicine. Socialized medicine will turn our medical treatment into a kind of technology warranty. If you don't take care of things in proper order and let specific people help you then the warranty or in this case your medical coverage is void. We can't expect to be allowed to make our own choices if socialized medicine comes to pass because people will be furious about being taxed to pay for someone else's poor life choices.

All for now, I'm headed off to lunch.

France reads

Just a little side-note from yesterday. More people in France read my blog yesterday than people here. I have no idea what that should mean to me but apparently I captured someone's attention.

Anyhow, for today I'll start with Pakistan. I'll admit that as soon as I saw the headline I knew what my position on the issue would be. I don't blame Pakistan for blocking convoys after 3 of their people were killed. I'd be very frustrated to be shot down by what you thought was your own ally and then to be told that they did it intentionally is even more aggravating. However, they should not then have gone on to say that their people were shooting at the NATO chopper. Hello? If you admit to shooting at a friendly vehicle, you can't really expect the right to give them grief for shooting your men, right? The whole thing gets even more ridiculous when it says that they were shooting at the helicopter to tell it that it was in their territory.

On a complete sidenote, this picture was in the Pakistan article and even though it has nothing to do with that article, someone was probably just bragging about catching a rocket on film. I'd probably use the picture too.



And if this other guy who is running for the Chicago mayoral position doesn't look like the Grinch, I don't know who does.



Finally today (yeah, sorry about the short day) is the key to long life from the World's oldest twins. I'll buy it, they seem pretty happy, and who doesn't want to drink whiskey?

Roma and BP

"Dags? You like dags?" "Sure I do, but I like caravans more." If you can't name the movie, you should watch it. Snatch is great scrubby British movie with good humour, cheap actors and a stupid plot line. Yet, it has its own good lines primarily because there is some realism to the movie characters. Anyhow, if you have't seen, you should, and then you'll have a different picture in your mind when you read this post.

The Roma (gypsies) are being given the boot from France now and there is debate as to whether or not this is legal. I also saw some reading on their story when I was in Cork where they complained about the abuse of the "wanderers". These people are despised and kicked out of everywhere and they just can't seem to catch a break. Think what you will because I will not judge or make comparisons to other recent culture-related issues similar to this. What's really important here is just to watch and see how this all pans out with France and EU. I'm against these people getting singled out and kicked out of the country, but if the government wants to do it legally according to the EU, then who's to stop them?

Before we move on to BP, I just want to give props to Obama for his take on the Iranian human rights abuse. Now if he can just not back down, that'd be even better.

BP. Well, there were 2 stories floating around the BBC today, of contrasting types of morals exhibited by the huge oil company. First, they have allegedly pulled the political string and requested the release of a Libyan terrorist in order to promote their oil "exploration" efforts in Libya. Nice job guys, we'll see how that turns out.

Secondly, they have appointed a new safety division in their worldwide corporation which will supposedly have large amounts of power. In my opinion, safety inspections and regulations only work as well as they are enforced and audited. Hopefully they put people in this "powerful" division that can really get the job done and prevent more employee accidents and deaths while also preserving what's left of the Gulf Coast and other parts of our world.

Screwed up

Sure, we're all a bit messed up inside, but this is one of those things that just takes the cake.

And for those history nerds among us... Churchill's false teeth?