Electric Cares?

Everyone should watch this film, everyone should take notice that the electric car was very nearly something that took off and that we're not talking about something from the 70s or 80s, this was all happening four or five years ago.

Who Killed the Electric Car?

One of the things that struck me most about the film was the way that people thought that the Electric Car's limited range was a huge problem. People were actually saying this with a straight face. EVERY CAR HAS A LIMITED RANGE!!! Your petrol tank can only be filled so much and when it runs out you need to go to a petrol station. Ed Begley Jr. put it well when he said that "The Electric Car is not for everyone, given the limited range it can only meet the needs of 90% of the population!" Everyone should know that the electric car is not a joke, it's not something that is on the horizon... it exists now and whilst ethanol and hydrogen are years off and have huge problems, electricity comes out of everyone's wall right now!

Bushisms

1 Bureau of Economic Analysis

2 Department of Treasury

3 Congressional Budget Office

4 Bureau of Labor Statistics

5 United States Census Bureau

6 United States Census Bureau

7 Kaiser Study of Employer Health Care Benefits

8 United States Census Bureau

9 Energy Information Administration

10 Higher Education Coordinating Board of Washington State

11 Bureau of Economic Analysis

12 Insurance Information Institute

13 United States Census Bureau

14 OANDA.com: The Currency Website

15 Speaker of the House Fact Sheet, 11/29/07

16 Energy Information Administration

17 Testimony of Andrew Kohut; President, Pew Research Center; 3/17/07

Diamond Boycott

I've read some terrible things about diamonds really... virtually none of the diamonds that are sold in this country are conflict free or are not from areas that have problems with child labour, anti-union activities, abuse of women and other horrible stuff.
So yeah, check this page out.
Diamond Boycott

Cancer cured?

Scientists cure cancer, but no one takes notice
By: David McRaney
Posted: 1/23/07

EDITORS NOTE:

"Since the original publication of this article we have been inundated with responses from the public at all walks of life. It is important to note that research is ongoing with DCA, and not everyone is convinced it will turn out to be a miracle drug. There have been many therapies that were promising in vitro and in animal models that did not work for one reason or another in humans. To provide false hope is not our intention. There is a lot of information on DCA available on the web, and this column is but one opinion on the topic. We hope you will do your own research into the situation. So, we have added links to resources at the end of this column. If you are arriving here form a linking website like Fark, then those links will not appear because they tend to grab only the text. For those visitors, here is a link to the original research: www.depmed.ualberta.ca/dca

END NOTE

Scientists may have cured cancer last week.

Yep.

So, why haven't the media picked up on it?

Here's the deal. Researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada found a cheap and easy to produce drug that kills almost all cancers. The drug is dichloroacetate, and since it is already used to treat metabolic disorders, we know it should be no problem to use it for other purposes.

Doesn't this sound like the kind of news you see on the front page of every paper?

The drug also has no patent, which means it could be produced for bargain basement prices in comparison to what drug companies research and develop.

Scientists tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body where it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but left healthy cells alone. Rats plump with tumors shrank when they were fed water supplemented with DCA.

Again, this seems like it should be at the top of the nightly news, right?

Cancer cells don't use the little power stations found in most human cells - the mitochondria. Instead, they use glycolysis, which is less effective and more wasteful.

Doctors have long believed the reason for this is because the mitochondria were damaged somehow. But, it turns out the mitochondria were just dormant, and DCA starts them back up again.

The side effect of this is it also reactivates a process called apoptosis. You see, mitochondria contain an all-too-important self-destruct button that can't be pressed in cancer cells. Without it, tumors grow larger as cells refuse to be extinguished. Fully functioning mitochondria, thanks to DCA, can once again die.

With glycolysis turned off, the body produces less lactic acid, so the bad tissue around cancer cells doesn't break down and seed new tumors.

Here's the big catch. Pharmaceutical companies probably won't invest in research into DCA because they won't profit from it. It's easy to make, unpatented and could be added to drinking water. Imagine, Gatorade with cancer control.

So, the groundwork will have to be done at universities and independently funded laboratories. But, how are they supposed to drum up support if the media aren't even talking about it?

All I can do is write this and hope Google News picks it up. In the meantime, tell everyone you know and do your own research."

Original article at: Cancer Cured

A plea to New Labour

The only reason I vote Labour in the General Elections is because I think it's vitally important not to let Cardiff North fall back into the hands of the Tories and because Julie Morgan seems like a genuinely trustworthy and honest politician. That being said, if the Tories were not as likely as they are to take the seat back I honestly can't say I'd vote Labour despite nostalgia for the party and admiration for what it used to stand for.
Please don't let the Tories lead the issue on the NHS as it is clearly an area in which Labour should naturally be able to take the high ground. The cuts that it suffered under the Tories were grave indeed but Labour have had more than long enough to rectify the situation. Instead of doing this, Labour seem to have more concerned with crusading into the middle east and cosying up to the United States. Whilst Saddam and the Taliban were clearly a problem that the World needed to deal with, it just strikes me that perhaps the money could have been better spent at home whilst international diplomatic efforts were given the time they needed.
In essence, hospital closures, trained doctors and nurses unable to find work and second-rate hospital food are PR issues that Labour need to take hold of and sort out. Education may be important to people with families but everybody gets ill in their lives and so I honestly can't see why things aren't being prioritised or getting better. Health care should be at the top of the agenda.

Scarypost

The following is a posting from the Scaryduck website which I recently found as a link from the Biffovision website. I've read pretty much all the archives from Scaryduck and everything from Biffovision and would certainly recommend both blogs to everyone everywhere.

So anyway... I'm not sure if I should be posting content from Scaryduck on my blog but I'm hoping the fact that I referenced it that at least I won't fail the year for plagarising or get sued... or something.
Despite this worry, the following really struck a chord with my feelings on British telly and articulates my feelings much better than I could.
Long live the BBC!!
-------------------

"The BBC is a national treasure. A national treasure that some, however, would like to see killed off, hobbled, or locked quietly in a back room where nobody can hear the screams as it has its heart ripped out.

For example, Conservative MP and culture spokeman John Whittingdale would like to see the Beeb’s awesome website more-or-less closed down along with a whole swathe of its digital services, because, as a free-market Conservative, it's doing a job that commercial organisations ought to be doing. Someone tell him the internet money-making bubble burst years ago... From the other side of the house, sour-faced culture secretary Tessa Jowell has been making unpleasant noises regarding the BBC’s forthcoming charter renewal over the Corporation’s failure to kow-tow to the government line during and after the Iraqi War. As the old saying goes, if the BBC is upsetting politicians from all sides, it must be doing something right.

As far as I’m concerned, the honourable gentleman, as a free-market Conservative is talking a big pile of bollocks to keep his chum Mr Murdoch happy. It was one of Rupert Murdoch’s henchmen, Tony Ball, of that top quality broadcaster Sky Television who suggested that the BBC should be forced to sell off its most successful shows and formats. To Sky Television, for example. And when the laughing finally died down, with the majority of the audience suspecting they’d stumbled into an Edinburgh Festival fringe production by mistake, BBC Director General Greg Dyke got up and announced that the Corporation would be making the BBC’s creative archive available to download. For free. Now that’s Public Service Broadcasting, Mr Ball. May I respectfully suggest that you go go away, sit and swivel?

“But if you don’t pay the licence fee you go to prison!” wail opponents of the BBC. “Not fair! Why do we pay for digital services when we don’t/won’t receive them?”. The same argument was heard over thirty years ago from black&white 525 line viewers when 625-line colour transmissions started. And many people who object to the licence fee are more than happy to pay thirty-eight quid a month to watch Sky, who have the cheek to force viewers watch sixteen minutes of advertisements an hour, more than any other network in the country. You don’t go to prison for watching TV, you get fined for not buying the receiver licence that is obligatory by law. Watching TV is a luxury - if you can afford a screen, you can afford to pay for the programmes being made. After all, every time you buy a product advertised on ITV, you are paying for further episodes of Heartbeat and keeping Davina MacColl on our screens. You bastards.

The BBC makes mistakes. It makes bad programmes *cough* Eldorado *cough*. They keep giving work to Dale Winton. Sometimes its news stories aren’t as fair and unbiased as the government would want them to be. But bloody hell, public service broadcasting is about making mistakes, taking risks and courting unpopularity. It’s not for some here today, and dare I say, gone tomorrow government minister, or even less so, some transient opposition spokesman to threaten freedom of speech with the lowest common denominator of the so-called free market. While the BBC gives a balanced meal, the alternative on offer is a pot noodle.

Politicians hate the kind of public broadcasting written into the BBC’s charter, and for one very big reason: control. While in many other countries, the “state broadcaster” is very much in the pocket of the government of the day, the BBC remains outside government control. Out of reach, asking difficult questions, not towing the party line. Commerical broadcasters in the UK are different. Unable to broadcast anything that may lose advertisers, all it takes is a few quiet words with a few well-connected men of industry, and Trevor McDonut’s incisive documentary “Tony Blair: Son of Satan” will never see the light of day. “Death on the Rock” marked ITV’s high water mark in current affairs journalism, a programme that reportedly had Thatcher spitting nails. Nowadays, it’s “Club Reps” and very little else.

What do you get for your money? Ten quid a month gets you BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, BBC Parliament (which fulfills the Beeb’s public service remit to the full insofar that absolutely nobody watches it), News24, two kids' channels, five national radio stations, digital radio, local radio, a monster of a website, news reporters and stringers in every corner of the globe providing the kind of coverage that other organisations can only dream of. You also get the world's most listened to international broadcaster paid for out of your taxes, so you'd hardly notice, and the Tories and NewsCorp still think the BBC is bad value for money.

Did I say bad value for money? I meant "an untouchable competitor they'd be happy to see disposed of". The BBC has survived spat with successive governments - Churchill, Thatcher, Blair - but the corporation has survived. Killing it off to enrich predatory multinationals, or simply because “free-market conservatism” doesn’t like paying for something with is actually *good* would simply be a national outrage. An advertisng-supported BBC would kill off objective reporting and programme making, and ITV, C4 and Five chiefs know damn well it would also kill them stone dead as their income would plummet. Dare I suggest there are those waiting in the wings for exactly that scenario to play out, or is my tin-foil helmet slipping? Do you really want an ITV owned entirely by a Carlton/Granada conglomerate, with the only alternative being the “Fair and Balanced” Sky? I’d rather gouge my eyeballs out with a spoon and eat them with chilli sauce. In the long run, we can just do away with programming altogether and just have channels that show nothing but adverts. You think I'm joking, right?

And frankly, I don’t think I’d be able to find a job anywhere else.

Feel free to disagree with me. Everybody else does."
------------------------

Great eh?

Just dropping by....

So I've been backing up some stuff I don't want to lose... yeah it's one of those days... I'm bored and I've got a pile of blank DVDs knocking around. In searching my hard drives for stuff I want to copy I came across this image whilst stumbling like crazy and discovering one of those 'make a silly motivational poster' type pages... so I did... and I thought I'd share it with you...
I hope those of you who know me will still smile as much as I do when I see this picture.

If God really has blessed America then I'm glad I don't believe in him... or America.

I just stumbled onto a website showing a picture of Hillary Clinton at one of her rallies for support of the Democratic nomination. Now I don't really now anything about her politics other than the fact that she's a Democrat in America but that's all I really need to know. What I mean is that her politics is about as radical as a short-back and sides (I don't know where that came from).

Anyway, the picture had her stood next to a crowd of people who seemed to be her supporters and one of them was wearing a Che t-shirt (you know the kind). Underneath the picture are a load of brain-dead Americans self-righteously condemning Communism and in the same breath accusing her of having politics that are little 'better' than Communism.

If people really think that Hillary Clinton is a Communist (or not far off) then they need to come up for a new term for actual communists... no wait... they just use a variety of insults (like leftist, pinko or liberal...ha!). It's a shame that most people who think they hate Communism know nothing about it beyond the failed and admittedly unpleasant examples of governments who purport to hold Communist beliefs.

If you're an out and out Capitalist then fine, you can rail against Communism all you want... it just strikes me as daft that people who are relatively poor by American standards and might actually benefit from a little Social Democracy in action like decent health care, would rather vote for the status-quo at best (Iron Maiden at worst tee-hee). But no, most people haven't seen past the 'S' word which is just as bad as Communism right? America is a nation obsessed with labels and can't see past the negative connotations they've been taught to accept.
Which leads nicely to my next thought, anyone who wears a Che t-shirt and supports mainstream American politics isn't a Communist just like anyone who wants to make abortion illegal and thinks executing criminals is fine is not pro-life.

So there.

Incidentally, I've just finished reading 'The God Delusion' by Richard Dawkins and it's going on my list of books that have changed my life. For a book of it's kind it was such a page-turner... I couldn't put it down! There were some sections that were better than others but I have to say that any shred of superstitiousness that I once indulged in has gone. I'll still call myself an Agnostic but only in the sense that I'm awaiting proof one way or the other and the existence of God is very highly improbable. Just like a left-wing president.

Also, I've read a few hilariously satirical articles on This website and would highly recommend it to anyone who likes to laugh at the current state of US politics (lest they end up crying).