New budget proposal for NASA

Seriously. What is their purpose? That agency is the ultimate example of the human pursuit of knowledge at all costs and for its own ends.

A $19 billion dollar budget, and going back to the moon.

"why eating ground beef is still a gamble"

What? Jelly beans, cookies and mustard make a fine stew...


From a New York Times article on E. coli, one of those things we all like to think will be someone else's problem. Fact is, as long as you are eating meat, and especially cows, you don't have a whole lot of control over whether or not you get it.

Meat companies and grocers have been barred from selling ground beef tainted by the virulent strain of E. coli known as O157:H7 since 1994, after an outbreak at Jack in the Box restaurants left four children dead. Yet tens of thousands of people are still sickened annually by this pathogen, federal health officials estimate, with hamburger being the biggest culprit. Ground beef has been blamed for 16 outbreaks in the last three years alone, including the one that left Ms. Smith paralyzed from the waist down. This summer, contamination led to the recall of beef from nearly 3,000 grocers in 41 states...

Ground beef is usually not simply a chunk of meat run through a grinder. Instead, records and interviews show, a single portion of hamburger meat is often an amalgam of various grades of meat from different parts of cows and even from different slaughterhouses. These cuts of meat are particularly vulnerable to E. coli contamination, food experts and officials say. Despite this, there is no federal requirement for grinders to test their ingredients for the pathogen.

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria...

Many big slaughterhouses will sell only to grinders who agree not to test their shipments for E. coli, according to officials at two large grinding companies...

As with other slaughterhouses, the potential for contamination is present every step of the way, according to workers and federal inspectors. The cattle often arrive with smears of feedlot feces that harbor the E. coli pathogen, and the hide must be removed carefully to keep it off the meat. This is especially critical for trimmings sliced from the outer surface of the carcass.

Federal inspectors based at the plant are supposed to monitor the hide removal, but much can go wrong. Workers slicing away the hide can inadvertently spread feces to the meat, and large clamps that hold the hide during processing sometimes slip and smear the meat with feces, the workers and inspectors say...

Cargill’s final source was a supplier that turns fatty trimmings into what it calls “fine lean textured beef.” The company, Beef Products Inc., said it bought meat that averages between 50 percent and 70 percent fat, including “any small pieces of fat derived from the normal breakdown of the beef carcass.” It warms the trimmings, removes the fat in a centrifuge and treats the remaining product with ammonia to kill E. coli.

With seven million pounds produced each week, the company’s product is widely used in hamburger meat sold by grocers and fast-food restaurants and served in the federal school lunch program...

Ground beef sold by most grocers is made from a blend of ingredients, industry officials said. Agriculture Department regulations also allow hamburger meat labeled ground chuck or sirloin to contain trimmings from those parts of the cow...

As it fed ingredients into its grinders, Cargill watched for some unwanted elements. Using metal detectors, workers snagged stray nails and metal hooks that could damage the grinders, then warned suppliers to make sure it did not happen again...

Nails. Seriously, I don't even know why there would be nails in any kind of meat. What the fuck? How would that ever happen?

Here's a solution - stop eating cows. It's simple to understand: E. coli comes from a cow's digestive tract (as well as other less commonly eaten animals, like sheep, deer, goats and elk). If you don't eat the cow, you probably won't get it. I guess it's worth the risk though. Tastes good, yeah?

Aside from all that, how can you call this shit (meat is gross enough, I am specifically referring to the particle burger you probably don't realize exists) food? Sure, people eat it, but not everything you hear is music. A lot of it's just noise.

Again, and finally, treated with ammonia. And then you eat it. Just wow.

Lock and Key - Pull up the Floorboards

This was the record I listened to today that I was into more than expected. This shit is GOOD. And I don't feel like they ever really got recognition. Definitely not a known band. This is the kind of record where I think, "Man, this band should be fairly popular. What happened?"

Lock and Key, they were from Massachusetts. I did a show for them once. They seemed like alright guys. They played well, they were tight. I think I bought the CD just to support them cause they were on tour. Over the years, I've really come to appreciate it.

Sure, it sounds like Hot Water Music. But I don't like Hot Water Music all that much. So then it's similar, but not a copy. Influenced? Absolutely. Ripping off? No, Lock and Key were doing more than that. It's definitely heavier, at times poppier, yet also with tinges of bleakness; there is a certain dark sentiment to this.

You can tell that a lot went into these songs. There's real feeling at hand when I listen to this record, in both the vocals and music. Not just some simple bang it out in five minutes kind of stuff.

One of the best records Deep Elm ever put out, along with some Appleseed Cast and Latterman records. Download it here.

Snapcase - Progression through Unlearning

I listened to this record yesterday, and boy was it a good time. A lot of times, you listen to things you like, and you think, "This is good. This is real good." But with Progression through Unlearning, I said, "Fuck, this is so awesome, why has it been so long since I've listened to it?"

Heavy as hell, and at least as intelligent. Very creative, like nothing else going on at the time, or since. I believe that Refused took a lot from this band, and this record in particular. There are many similarities between it and The Shape of Punk to Come.

A lot of people will tell you that Lookinglasself is where it's at. Others will say Designs for Automotion. Really though, Progression through Unlearning is the shit.

Click to download, if you so desire.

Fucked

Fucked fucked fucked. We are. Yes, in the doomed sense, but also in the senses of priorities and way of thinking.

NASA's much-hyped mission to hurl a spacecraft into the moon turned out some worthwhile data after all, scientists said.

New images show a mile-high plume of lunar debris from the Cabeus crater shortly after the space agency's Centaur rocket struck Oct. 9.

"We were blown away by the data returned," Anthony Colaprete, the mission's chief scientist, said in a report Friday from the Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif., which managed the launch. "The team is working hard on the analysis, and the data appear to be of very high quality."

In media coverage before the impact, many observers said they were disappointed at the lack of spectacle.

But scientists said the mission was carried out for "a scientific purpose, not to put on a fireworks display for the public," said space consultant Alan Stern, a former NASA associate administrator for science.

By creating the debris cloud, scientists were able to use the $79-million Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite to sample and study the dust. The LCROSS itself crashed into the same crater four minutes after the Centaur's impact, right on schedule, while its companion spacecraft, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, was flying in lunar orbit 50 miles above the site to gather still more data...

Finding significant amounts of water on the moon would be a major discovery, making eventual colonization easier than it would be if settlers had to transport water from Earth.

Ah yes, fucking wonderful. Crash $79 million into the moon, deliberately. Makes a lot of sense, when you think about it. Everything around here is about taken care of, so why not?

Colonization, golly gee. Can't wait for that one. We've done so well by this planet, the universe has surely earned more of us.

David Lee Roth/Van Halen

Yup. Remembered this today. Hell yes.

Check the vocal track from Running with the Devil.

Can't be real, huh? It is.

They look like Zeppelin at their lowest, which is actually Aerosmith, and Kiss.

Sick bass line, bro.

Fire

Fred Phelps' (of god hates fags fame) people are coming to where I go to school. I don't really know why. Well I know what they are doing, but I don't really get it. I guess god hates Jews too.

I'm not offended by the fact that they are coming to the school I attend. That's irrelevant. It's just that I've been reminded of these people and what they believe and do after a long period of not giving them much thought.

Fuck these people, fuck every one of them. Fuck their religion, fuck their church (Westboro Baptist, from Kansas, just like Operation Rescue), fuck their families, fuck their Walmart lives.

They protested Matthew Shepard's funeral. Because he was gay. He had it coming, they are glad he is dead, and he is in their hell, they say. They protested his funeral, in front of his family. Yup.

Fuck people's liberal attitudes towards them. Sure, people are pissed, but they're going to hold a counter-protest. Oooh. Not that. That's what they want. They want attention. They live on it. They want people to yell at them and tell them they are wrong and how they are not welcome wherever they may be; it only emboldens them. These people thrive on the attention, however negative it may seem. They are sick.

Their sickness is not the type that can be adequately addressed through speech, the written word, or visual mediums. No, these people will only understand violence. That is their language. It is the unofficial language of America, for sure, and they have wholeheartedly embraced it.

As such, the people from the Westboro Baptist Church need to be addressed in the language they understand. Violence, self-defense, keeping the streets safe, keeping them clean, however you choose to construe it.

Are these people "the problem"? No. They are but a grotesque manifestation of the horrors of humanity and the belief system of this society. At the same time, they are a legitimate danger that needs to be addressed, and it will not happen through marches, holding signs, or yelling at them.

People like this need to be afraid to leave their homes. They operate with no fear. Hate groups in this country virtually need never fear retribution, and of course the fact that many politicians support them, whether explicitly or implicitly, and a good number of pigs populate their ranks goes a long way to see to this. They hide behind constitutional rights and the fact that no one legitimately fights them. People have fucking COUNTER-PROTESTS. Seriously? That's what's up? Damn.

"We have the right to say what we want," they say. Sure. But then the people to whom you are saying it have a right to defend themselves against you and your dirty work enforcers when you threaten them, whether the threat be implied or overt. If what you are saying has a history of concomitant violence (lynching black people, killing doctors, beating queer people), then you need to be kept in check and people have every fucking right to do this, through whatever means necessary. People need to realize that. No one needs to lay down and let these people run all over the rights that we all have to be safe. That is a much higher priority than free speech.

Protest and counter-protest are not the same. Their protest = profound bigotry, threatening language, inciting hate, giving strength to the people who go out and perform the actions that their words describe. Counter-protest = telling them that they are wrong. We need more than this. When they have what they are saying and doing coming back to them in kind, then we will see how strongly they still feel the need to say what they want.

White supremacy/master race

This is how we do it. Two related, yet different ways we show all those leftovers of the world how much better, smarter, and just all around sicker we are. If these two don't convince you, then the crowd in the first video will. Fact.

Right on, white people.

Pigs for Christ, against women

Fucking brilliant quote from this former pig who runs an anti-choice organization in Las Vegas:

Three months later, Operation Rescue, the umbrella anti-abortion group, arrived in Las Vegas, where Mr. Gallagher was a police officer. He refused to arrest protesters, and when his sergeant suspended him, he joined the “rescuers.”

“I learned something that changed my life,” Mr. Gallagher said. “It wasn’t civil disobedience; it was biblical obedience.”

Thanks pig. Your trenchant insight has shown the issue so clearly. Biblical obedience. What other choice do you have, really. It has to be the truth, because it does. Get it? Sure, the bible came around a few thousand years ago, and yeah, the current human species had been around for about five hundred thousand years at that point, but that's irrelevant. The Lord God Jesus (The LGJ) was really busy for all that time, and was having a hard time finding a lady until Mary came along. You think he would have made her earlier, but again, he was busy. He's The LGJ.

The quote is from a broader story on the more in your face types of woman hating anti-choice people and all their very creative signs and stickers.

Operation Rescue - "I had to borrow money just to send you this letter..."

I hope it's true. Troy Newman, the group's president, claims Operation Rescue is fucking broke:

"We're now so broke (as the saying goes), we can't even pay attention," Newman wrote.

Newman told The Associated Press in an interview after the mailing that the group has only four paid employees left, compared to nine a year ago. The group typically has an annual budget of $600,000, but donations this year have been down 30 percent to 40 percent. Newman, who earns $60,000 annually, said he hasn't been paid in two months.

"You see, this summer has been brutal for Operation Rescue," Newman wrote. "Not only did George Tiller's death throw everybody in the pro-life movement for a loop (and especially us), but the economic crisis our nation is suffering has brought our financial support to nearly a halt."

I'm sure, that in addition to the economic recession, Troy Newman sees a moral one, demonstrated by his group's financial difficulties.

Whether the organization is penniless or not, I'm not sure how much real difference it makes. I'm not very up on the coat hanger or nothing scene, so I don't know how many serious anti-choice groups are out there these days. I know Operation Rescue was THE one for a while, and I figured they still were. Randall Terry is still doing some bullshit, I'm sure.

Whatever the case, it makes me feel good to see people like this crawl. Fuck every one of them. Fuck every person who has ever donated to them.

I have these visions where Troy Newman, Randall Terry, Cheryl Sullenger (Operation Rescue "Senior Policy Advisor" and would-be clinic bomber) and whatever other malicious parasites live atop the heap of woman-hating zeal become so poor and crazy from their tunnel-vision lifestyles that they are homeless. Their homelessness is of the variety where they are street people; they have to live off of the fat of society. One night, drunkenly dumpster diving (they have long since strayed from the flock), they find some decent scraps of meat, still warm. You gotta take what you can get when you are in this position. As they walk off, joyously feasting upon their finds, they realize they've been eating fetuses.

I would like to credit Bad Religion with Operation Rescue's organizational destitution.

Lol @ "Elderly Pro-life Activist Attacked, Injured in Flagstaff"

Fuck Johnny Wallace. Didn't get shot, but I'm glad he caught a beatdown, and DELIGHTED that it was from two women. Fucking awesome.

As usual, he's not "pro-life", he's anti choice. Here is a motherfucker standing around trying just as hard as can be to also be a Christ Warrior and prohibit women from controlling their bodies, their futures and their lives. Progress through intimidation, right Johnny? Ok, so that's offensive enough. He deserves a kicking just for that.

BUT, here's the best part. As Operation Rescue tells it, Johnny simply "held two non-graphic, text-only signs protesting abortion..." One of them was some standard shit about dead babies, while the other read “Abortion kills more black Americans in four days than the Klan killed in 150 years." HOLY SHIT. Again, WOW. Johnny would have caught a lot more than a beatdown in a lot of places. He's lucky he was in Flagstaff. Incredible, thinking it's reasonable to compare the Klan and abortion. It's not really a comparison though; what he's saying is the black women are worse than the Klan. Black women kill more black people than the Klan.

On one hand, we have a terrorist organization (actual terrorists, as in maintaining power and accomplishing goals through extreme violence and, you know, terror) fighting to keep hatred alive and black people scared, impoverished and "in their places." They have maintained a reign of terror since shortly after the Civil War. They are alive and well today. Lynchings, beatings, shootings, burnings (of people), arson, bombings, stabbings, and whatever other kinds of physical violence of which one can conceive. If you can think of it, they've done it. And they still will do it. Black people in this situation are, unfortunately, subjects. When you are being beaten by a gang of men based on your skin, you have lost virtually all power to act effectively.

Abortion - a woman deciding she does not want to have a child at this time. No terror, no hatred, no one being dragged to death by horse. Black women are actors here. They are exercising agency. They are making decisions over their lives.

Holy shit. After writing that out, clearly, they are very similar, if not indiscernible from one another. I just realized how very wrong I am. I used to think abortions should be mandatory for all pregnant women everywhere, back last minute when I was pro abortion, but Jimmy's sign showed me that no one should ever have an abortion anywhere ever cause God.