Why I want an egg substitute, I want a product which is not an egg. Not a real egg product. Not an egg at all, please.
Just, like, why?
[Via BoingBoing]
This story is around two weeks old, but it was only brought to my attention today.
Controversial law firm ACS:Law has been in the news before. They were sending letters to people claiming they had illegally downloaded music and requesting a settlement of £495 – or, a court battle. A few people went to court, but of course most people didn’t bother and just paid up, knowing that going to court would cost them far more than the £495 even if they won.
But a few companies recently have started doing something slightly different – sending people letters claiming they’ve illegally downloaded pornographic material and requesting five-hundred pounds or so. Either pay up, or take us to court.
Take us to court and tell the world that you download porn. Who is going to do that?
You know what this is? It’s extortion. It’s blackmail. Period. Under any definition, this is blackmail. Telling a person to give you £500 or you’ll tell the world they download illegal porn – without any proof. That is blackmail. If the police want to collect evidence and charge you with a crime, then great. But, random law firms claiming you’ve done something without evidence and demanding money or they’ll reveal your secret? That’s bad.
This is an outrage, in fact. There should be laws against this. In fact, there are laws against this. Blackmail is illegal. Apparently, law doesn’t apply to law firms. Naturally, being a people which doesn’t care about our civil liberties one bit, the UK will just be quiet and take it. So, carry on, slaves.
INGEN, ahoy!
Sure, not everyone has seen or read Jurassic Park. Not everyone knows what Dr Grant and Dr Sattler went through. But, I think we should consider it a little more.
You see, a few scientists at Japan’s Kyoto University have set themselves a task which they are fairly certain they will achieve: to clone an ice age mammoth – within the next five years.
Don’t you remember what happened to Dr Arnold and Mr Gennaro? They died.
I give it one year before the mammoths randomly switch genders and start breeding. I give it one month after that before they take over downtown Tokyo.
They say it’s safe. Perfectly safe is it, scientists? I’ve a feeling that in 6 years from now, “I’ll be accepting your apology”.
In the words of Dr Malcolm: “your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should”…
746 years ago today the first elected English Parliament held its first meeting. Since then, it’s become a parliament of Great Britain, too. Also, someone tried to blow the building up on fireworks night. And that really is about all that’s happened. It’s a place laden with ancient, pointless, time wasting traditions and is in dire need of an overhaul.
Immediately, each MP is given a place to hang their coat (seems fairly sensible)… and a place to hang their sword. Yes, sword. Last time I checked, carrying a sword in public was illegal – even for MPs. Do we really need somewhere to store our sword?
Also, let’s look at voting. Voting involves walking to a Yes room or a No room. Walking. They then file out of the rooms while being counted. The Green Party estimated that switching to a simple electronic voting system rather than the “walking method” would save one and a half hours of MP’s time each week (equivalent to £30,000 in wages over a year).
There also isn’t a way to abstain from voting. MPs often decide to abstain from a vote if they feel they don’t know enough about it to make a decision or if they have a vested interest in the topic (such as a vote on land-fill taxes when their family owns a land-fill company) and have promised their constituents they won’t vote. They only way to abstain is to walk to the No room, get yourself counted and then run to the Yes room so that you get counted twice and your votes cancel each other out. This sounds so ridiculous that their efforts are often misndestood and they are accused of not being able to make their minds up. Simply recording a abstention would be much better. It seems like a crazy system.
Each vote takes around 15 minutes to complete and are done at random times throughout the day, leaving MPs running around Westminster from their offices to voting to the chambers whenever the “voting bell” rings. Compare this to the European Parliament, where all votes are done at the end of the day, at set times and by simply pushing a button. This time saves could be spent reading legalisation or meeting constituents (which is what they are supposed to do).
In the European Parliament, MEPs are also able to easily submit a paragraph explaining why they voted as they did, which is placed on the EU website for people to read. I think this is a great idea – but no such system exists in the UK.
There are also areas of general inefficiency and silliness.
Take, for example, the recently elected Green MP Caroline Lucas. When she was elected, it took over a month for parliament to find her an office. During this time, she used various cafés as her office. I can’t possibly imagine what the problem could have been. They didn’t add new MPs this election. The number that left was equal to the number that came in. And yet, it was a problem for the innifiecent Commons.
Also, speaking in the House of Commons. At the moment, if an MP wishes to speak in a debate, they must send a letter to the Speaker asking to have time to speak. The Speaker and his aides then read the leaders and decide (supposedly without bias) who will get to speak. MPs don’t get to know this list, so they are left sitting in the House for up to five hours waiting to see if their name will be called. This is insane. The list should be provided ASAP, so they can plan their time better. Also, the Speaker shouldn’t decide – the selection should be random.
Next, Private Member Bills (PMBs). These are Bills submitted by elected MPs which are not in the government cabinet (i.e., back benchers) and can be about anything. They are heard in House on a Friday. Friday is the day when most MPs go back to their constituencies to meet with people and hold meetings. However, for PMBs to be voted on, there need to be one hundred MPs present – but there very rarely are one hundred there on a Friday, making the whole process pointless. PMBs should be moved to mid-week, or else they’d might as well not exist at all.
One such disgusting example, is the recent effort by backbench Tory MPs to stop the PMB to improve livestock laws in the UK (known as the Sustainable Livestock Bill – a bill which should have passed). The Tory MPs systematically delayed the Bill as long as possible. One of them even got up and read out a poem. I kid you not. By the time they had delayed it, the House was near empty after most MPs had to leave to make constituency meetings. And, even worse, this reckless, undemocratic act of poetry reading to stifle debate is perfectly allowed.
I could go on. But, I’ll stop here. A quick Google search will shine some light on the subject. Parliamentary reform, I think, would be a wonderful thing. It would make government more efficient and give MPs more time to do their work.
As long as we don’t take their swords, of course.
Today, Gizmodo posted an article with the following infographic showing the uses of cows and proclaiming to all vegetarians and vegans that there is no escape from cows and no such thing as a vegan.
This is wrong for many reasons.
First: many of these are completely wrong. I have counted that well over half are no longer used (with many of them not being used in the last 100 years). This makes the overall number much lower, and therefore the infographic wrong and misleading.
Second: even with the remaining products, and assuming that a vegan does not seek out alternatives, a vegan would still be killing considerably less animals by not eating them. Food is by far the biggest reason animals are killed. If there were no demand for meat, these by products would not exist (because substitutes are available for all of them). Therefore, pursuing veganism is the way to stop these animals from dying.
Third: even if all of these products were avoided, animals would still die, because a few small animals (such as mice) are killed during the harvest of vegetables. Every vegan knows this, and accepts it as a consequence of being vegan. However, still far less animals are killed on a vegan diet.
Fourth: veganism is a choice to use as little animal products as is humanly possible. As I’ve laid out in these three points above, it really is possible to be vegan.
One more thing. On their Twitter account linking to this article, Gizmodo said ‘Sorry Vegans! Well, not really.’ Now, I don’t really see why they’re doing this. When so many people complain that vegans are judgemental and don’t respect their decision to eat meat, Gizmodo seems to be not respecting out decision to be vegan. Sigh.
I really don’t know what the article is trying to prove. If it’s saying that it’s impossible to be vegan: it’s failed. If it’s saying you shouldn’t be vegan: it’s failed.
Both Google and Apple had technology fails at their recent keynotes. Google couldn’t get their Bluetooth keyboard to work and Apple had a problem with wifi. Both companies handled it very differently and both are perfect metaphors for Apple and Google.
Google Google tried to fix their problem, with presenters on stage debugging whilst another stalled for time. In the end, they shakily asked “Umm, could you turn of your wifi, umm, please?”. They completely forgot about their audience, approaching this like a technology problem.
Apple Steve’s page wouldn’t load over wifi and, rather than get upset, he simply moved on. Later, he presented his audience with a clear choice: “We have two choices. I have more demos to show you. We either turn [your wifi base stations] off, or I show you the demos. Which do you want?” He was in perfect control and, because it’s Steve, everyone kindly obliged without a grumble.
There’s the difference, Google made itself look like a company that only understands technology and can’t reason with people, whereas Apple showed an understanding of Humanity. Frankly, after the constant abuse Google threw at Apple during their keynote, it wouldn’t surprise me if the whole Apple fail was fabricated so that Apple could show how awesome they are. But then, I am just an Apple fanboy.