Working in Montréal today --Christmas Miracles

Hi folks,

I will be working in Montréal today.  Today, December 19 and a mere 6 days till Christmas.  I think a good time to pass on some revelations of some true Christmas miracles, 8000 actually!

Recently uncovered by the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health conducted by the University of North Carolina and published in the British Medical Journal (they like to keep up on what's happening in the colonies, even the ones that broke away) is that the U.S. reports that around .5% of their births to young women are.. absolute MIRACLES, virgin births.

Say what?  oh yes.  Now I remember from chats with my dad and from grade 7 sex-ed that in order to make a gal preggo one needs to have some spermatozoa fertilize an egg.  There is an extremely easy way to accomplish this and does not require extra equipment, special training, nor Devine intervention.. yep, teenagers having intercourse.  no not debate and discourse, but rather, the fun kind.

And yet the respondents to the aforementioned study seemed content to answer that they were virgins and also with some regularity, pregnant or had been pregnant.

Hmmm...  how about this, 30% of those virgin birth mothers reported also that they had taken chastity pledges.  Ever hear the axiom that there are three kinds of lies, lies, damned lies, and statistics?

How could it be that 8000 young women with an average age of 19 actually expect the survey takers that they had all become pregnant without the requisite activity?  I can understand the young gal getting all twisted in lies trying to explain to her parents that she didn't have sex and yet they notice that she's waddling around and eating pickles with her ice cream, but this was an anonymous survey.

Were they lying to themselves?  Could it be that these 8000 women have never been taught how their bodies work and that like the gal on Seinfeld actually think that one can get an STD and get knocked up from riding on a tractor in a bikini?

Damn.  I have nowhere to go with this and the flight is on its descent into Montréal..

Um.. the virgin birth respondents were more likely to have parents that were more likely that the non-virgin birth respondents to indicate that they did not themselves know enough about sex and birth control to speak to their daughters about the subject.

So, perhaps not a set of 8000 true Christmas miracles just 8000 examples of how ignorance is not bliss.

Have a great day.

Working in Ottawa today --Now with 7x more bioavailability!

Working in Ottawa today --7x more bioavailability

Good morning folks,

It will be working in Ottawa today.

I don't recall getting any feedback from any of you that tried constructing the homemade Geiger Counter (http://pulp.puckett.ca/2010/01/not-working-in-ottawa-today-homemade.html) from almost 4 years ago, but you may want to refresh your self on the theories.  You see, this is the IRRADIATION special.

Oooh.. Scary.. IRRADIATION.  Yeh.. No.  Not so scary.   Let me share how we got here this morning.  I recently purchased an herbal anti-inflammatory.  It features BCM-95 and 7x MORE bioavailability, also featuring Boswella and .. Olive-leaf! I must say that if it works half as well as the designer of the label thinks it will.. shoulder problems will disappear in no time :)

I am sooooo happy that it has 7x BIOAVAILABILITY!  I was reading the label some more this morning and it states that it is NOT IRRADIATED! I thought Excellent!  It is safe for my cat.  If I had one.

huh?  Safe for a nonexistent cat?  That's rather non-sequitur Uncle Daniel.

Well. Maybe, but what I immediately thought about was Australia.  Need more?  Ok.  In Australia just like just about everywhere else on the planet, food processors has been using food irradiation to make food safer, stay spoilage free and pest free longer.  This is done by subjecting the food with X-rays.  The X-rays cause ionizing radiation damage (Two cell nuclei talking.. Damn, I just lost an electron.  Are you positive?) to some of the DNA and RNA in both the food, food borne bacteria and any pervasive pests, this prevents or slows down reproduction of pests, further ripening and spoilage.

Ok.  Sounds like a good thing yes?  Yes, you would think but detractors say they don't want to eat radioactive food.  They also say that it creates nuclear waste stock piling problems, ground water radiation contamination and masks unhealthy conditions in meat processing plants.

um..  No.  First of all X-rays are generated by firing electrons at a tungsten rod.  You don't need uranium, cesium, cobalt or plutonium and making X-rays does not create radiative waste water.  Not every use of the word RADIOACTIVE means an impending meltdown and China Syndrome.  Masking unhealthy conditions.. sure, just like cooking does?

Subjective food to X-rays also does not magically make the food radioactive and now capable of emitting Alpha, Beta, Gamma or X-ray radiation.  That only happens in comic books.  (Seehttp://pulp.puckett.ca/2012/07/working-in-montreal-today-boson-buddies.html for a briefing on cartoon physics).

Uh.. Australia?

Yes yes , I'm getting there.  Back in 2008 about 40 cats does or were euthanized after experiencing paralysis after eating a particular brand of cat food.  No one was sure what happened to the cats, but a few cat food company scientists (makes for a funny business card) speculated that elevated levels of irradiation caused a vitamin A deficiency in the food, thereby causing paralysis in the cats.  This was however just mere speculation and no causal connection, nor any repeatable experiments were made.  BUT..In a nice bit of reactionary legislation, no cat food may be irradiated in Australia.  The dog food which is irradiated has labels to specifically not feed it to cats.  I don't know if steaks bought at the butcher shop for humans have the same label.

..

Still have a few minutes.. Do you recall my rant (I think that was the trifecta of bullshit rant) regarding Canada Post back in August? (http://pulp.puckett.ca/2013/08/working-in-ottawa-today-keynesian.html). I was particularly irritated with Canada Post failing to fund its pension obligations and instead pushed the debt into the future.

That future is here.  Failing like only a monopoly can, Canada Post has announced that stamps will go up by 1/3 and in exchange for higher prices.. door to door delivery will be stopped.  PM Stephen Harper applauded the move and his Transport Minister Lisa Raitt said that Canadians are sending fewer letters than ever before.   Of course that is also bullshit.  While there was certainly a spike in mailing in 2007 and 2008 with around 11.5 billion pieces, today's level of mailing at close to 10 billion pieces is about the same as 2003, I don't know when she meant by ever before.

....

Do we have time for one more?  How about that sign language interpreter at Nelson Mandela's funeral service..  seems that no one could understand a single word that he bluffed his way through.  Seems by all accounts an absolute fraud, he used a bunch of nonsensical clapping and hand gestures that have never been seen before.

I personally liked it when during U.S. President Obama's speech the imposter showed us the church and its steeple and opened the doors and showed all of the people, weeee!

That's it for me folks, Have a great day and beware of faux science, faux economics and faux interpreters.

Working in Montréal today --Free the NY chimp!

Good morning folks,

I will be working in Montréal today.

A society can be measured by how it treats its weakest members..   Fyodor Dostoyevsky?  Mahatma Gandhi? Oh wait, when Gandhi said it he said how the society treats its animals and when Dostoyevsky said it he said it about how society treats its prisoners.

So in New York a suit has been filed seeking to have a particular chimpanzee released from its small cage it what has been described as horrible, isolated conditions.  The prisoner chimp.

I am all for this.  I have no wish for any animal to be treated poorly.

Oh but wait...

The filing attorney and his clients an animal rights group is seeking not only the release of the chimp, but also for the New York courts to recognize scientific evidence of emotional and cognitive abilities in chimpanzees and to grant the animals “legal personhood” so that they are ensured better treatment.

This is where the needle skips back across the record so we can hear that again..  gzzzzzt.

"Legal personhood". You have got to be sh:tting me.  Legal Personhood??!?  Does the filing legal beagle know what that means?  Before I continue the beration and belittling of the filing counsel's case I will mention that if he wishes to use my Dostoyevsky / Gandhi juxtaposition of Jesus' how you treat the least of my brethren verses in his opening remarks he may, he has my release.  just sayin'.

There are three 'personhoods' under the law.  Moral, legal and constitutional. They may be confusing Moral Personhood with Legal Personhood, beats me. let's examine. A Moral Person is that being capable of knowing the difference between good and evil and is capable of making judgments based on this knowledge and therefore be held held responsible for those judgements.

No.. That's not right either, since a chimpanzee is NOT capable of knowing the difference between good and evil, a chimp is simply by all observations the Id.

Sidebar.  The Id, the selfish beast within the mind, concerned with solely satisfying the pleasure sensors. The Ego strives to satisfy the Id's desires through interactions with reality, and the Super Ego tempers the whole process with a moral compass.  There, one need not take out student loans and spend 3 years pursuing a Psych degree, this is all you need to know.  That and  all women have Johnson envy and all men have castration anxiety.. (!) In other context, Rob 'crack smoking, kittie eating' Ford is the Id, his brother Doug 'the enabler' Ford is the Ego and City 'gonna strip them powers' Council the Super Ego.

And we are back.

So Moral Personhood does not fit the chimpanzee, how about Legal Personhood?

A legal person is an entity that is recognized and protected under common law or statutory law. A legal person is an entity (human, corp, govt) that can, under common law or statutory law, hold and sell property, and sue or be sued.

Does the lawyer and the animal rights group suggest that If I were the recipient of a flying turd tossed by some impudent chimp that I could sue the chimp?  Or that that same chimp could enter into a contract to buy my car and rent a garage?

I think we can agree that the chimpanzee lacks the cognitive abilities to enter into a contract  and lacks the moral compass to honour it.

Cruising at 31,000 feet here and it's pretty choppy up here, and I am running out of time, what's left.. constitutional person.  That is the status of a human being or legal entity with some or all constitutional rights.   Since we are talking about a U.S. legal question, let's examine the U.S. Constitution.  How about the first words.. We the people.  ah screw it, let's jump to the best part..  the second amendment and the right to bear arms.

Remember Charlton 'you can have my gun when you can pry it from my cold, dead hands' Heston in the '68 Planet of the Apes?  Yes, that's right, it wasn't good for the humans when the apes had guns.
Right, Charlton not Charleston.  Thanks for the spellcheck Sherri :)

Let's wrap this up, a chimp knows neither right nor wrong, can't be trusted to enter into contracts and should not be armed.

If the petitioning party is actually concerned with the welfare of this particular chimp then it should explore its options under animal cruelty laws.

For other pulps about our primate cousins..

Ethical dilemma: punching out a monkey. http://pulp.puckett.ca/2011/02/working-in-toronto-today-what-if-monkey.html

Scientific dilemma: how to fling a monkey into space. http://pulp.puckett.ca/2013/01/working-in-montreal-today-compressed.html

Have a great day, enjoy your opposable thumbs.