Category: Current Events

Every couple of years you seem to get some yahoo who claims to have found something or other in an unopened can of soda. This has happened with Mountain Dew, but what’s disturbing is Pepsi’s defense:

“the mouse would have dissolved in the soda had it been in the can from the time of its bottling until the day the plaintiff drank it,” according to theRecord. (It would have become a “jelly-like substance,” according to Pepsi, adds LegalNewsline.)

Follow through to get the link. It’s not all that surprising, really. Mountain Dew contains a lot of citric acid. That’s why the Pepsi guy was quoted as saying “our product is essentially a can of battery acid.” Do the Dew!

If you’re thinking of switching to Coke products, well, Coke contains a lot of phosphoric acid, which is arguably worse for you than citric acid.

We started the day with the opening of presents. I got a lot more clothes that I needed, and Bitter got a ceramic knife set, a knife block, and a few videos. Then it was time to celebrate Christmas with gunfire. Jason and I headed to the club (my the club), along with his dad, to test fire his CNC milled AR pistol. It was found to be rather sensitive to ammunition, in that it fed well with hot 5.56, but not so wonderfully with .223 reloads. But it definitely worked pretty well once we got the ammo figured out. I’ll have video later.

Dave Hardy made a recent trip to the National Archives in Washington D.C. to do some research, and uncovered a previously unpublished hand-written letter from Abraham Lincoln. This is extremely cool, but I have to admit to being unable to read the letter. Sometime in elementary school, I can remember being forced to adopt handwriting, and by Junior High, teachers abandoned this crusade, and let students write however they were comfortable. I’ve always preferred printing to handwriting, so that’s what I went back to. I admit to being unable to read all but the most modern handwriting.

Bitter and I recently had a laugh when she challenged me to write out a love letter to her in longhand, and I was utterly unable to do it. I spend so much time typing these days that I can barely print legibly, let along write anything, other than my signature, out longhand.

I feel handwriting will be a lost art in a generation or so. How long before you have to seek out experts to translate a letter like Dave has brought into the digital age? How long, in an age of digital signatures, will kids even be able to write their own name out longhand? How long before we go back to illiterate times when “making your mark” was enough?

Speaking of dead skills, how many people alive can still understand shorthand? Although, like most people who were raised pre-texting/pre-IMing era, I lament the younger generations use of texting speak, I can’t help but think it’s just a variant on an old historical habit.

Good Riddance. And now, this tribute:

UPDATE: Ironically on the same day Vaclav Havel died.

What are you doing to celebrate?

I think I’ll put on a bottle of wine to chill for tonight. I realize that the 21st amendment isn’t part of the original 10, but those first 10 are worthy of a toast.

Continue reading “Happy Bill of Rights Day!”

The Mythbusters screwed up in a big way. It’s one of those things that’s funny since no one got hurt, but that could have very very easily been a different story, given what a cannonball is capable of doing. I’m sure the Alameda County sheriff’s office is pretty spooked too, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t let them do projectile experiments there anymore.

Personally, if it were me, I’d be happy to settle with Discovery Networks in exchange for them fixing what they broke, and letting me be on a Mythbusters show :)

Clayton exposes a scheme to allow more tech workers from countries such as India and China to obtain permanent residence in the United States. He notes:

Of course, the problem that the tech companies are trying to solve is “a lack of access to highly-skilled workers.”  Wow.  You would never know that America is awash in software and electrical engineers who are out of work, working part-time, or making a fraction of what they did several years ago.  And so we need to simplify the process of bringing in low-paid workers from other countries?

I am making about 35% less than I was making in my previous job, so I am sympathetic to the notion that salaries are taking a beating. But I still support making it easier for the best and brightest from other countries to come here and make the United States their home. I’d much rather have those individuals here, where they will have very similar cost of living situations to myself, than to be competing against them living in their home countries, where the cost of living is a pittance compared to here.

With technology increasingly blurring national borders, I think having the talent where, where they at least have to complete on the same cost of living, cost of doing business playing field, is inherently more advantageous than having them competing against us from home.

Lots of controversy over the use of pepper spray on protesters, including controversy that led to the UC Davis Police Officers, seen in this incident here, being suspended for what looks to be fairly standard police use of spray:

I’m not going to jump on this particular condemnation bandwagon. If you have a bunch of people blocking access to a public resource, or occupying private property, who refuse to move, the use of force by the police to get them to move is both legally and morally justified. In that situation you have two choices, you can either remove them by forcibly removing them through physical force, which is statistically much more likely to cause lasting injuries, or to use pain compliance.

Pepper spray is highly irritating, but once decontaminated, there are not really lasting effects. It is a compliance tool. If you had a bunch of people blocking access to your house, would you not use force to remove them? In this case the protesters knew what was going to happen if they didn’t move, and volunteered to pay the price.

I’m glad I’m not the only one that’s noticed: