French Fries Cause Cancer

Ah, as if life weren’t difficult enough, now the simple pleasure of eating fattening, starchy French fries is put to the task. As this article shows, there is a potentially carcinogenic chemical created as starchy food gets cooked at high heat. Luckily, what the article doesn’t mention is that the anti-carcinogenic qualities of tomatoes are increased as they are cooked and processed. So always eat ketchup with your fries. Nature provides.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:02 PM, 26 April 2002 | Comments (0)

Holy Shit

It is wonderful to know that not only does my personal philosophy doom me to eternal damnation, but so does my computer. In this extraordinarily amusing article (Note: the original page is down as of 27 Apr 02. This link is a Text only copy I made, violating the spirit, if not the meat, of several copyright laws.), the good Dr. Richard Paley discovers the connection between Apple Computers and the satanic belief in Evolution. That link, of course, is Darwin.

Darwin, as most know the word, is the name of the scientist behind all our modern troubles thanks to the godless, secular education system that teaches our children about the satanic belief in Evolution. Darwin is also the core operating system in Mac OS X. Now Apple didn’t actually name that operating system Darwin, since its name is derived from the fact that it evolved off an older system called BSD, but that is something that Dr. Paley easily glosses over. Darwin, the operating system, is open-source, meaning that many programmers add to the development of the system, and that everyone can use these developments in their own ways, since no one actually owns it. Open-source, according to Dr. Paley, “is just another name for Communism.”

Communism. Satanic Communism. Right.

And Apple Computer is obviously tempting us to follow the path to destruction. The damned logo is a bitten apple, of which Dr. Paley knowingly winks to us, “Most Bible scholars think that it was more likely a fig..., but popular culture holds that it was an apple and it is this popular culture that the forces of Satan are trying to sway.” Dare I tell the good doctor that up to a couple of years ago the Apple logo was the colors of the rainbow, which are the same colors on the banners of godless homosexuals? He missed that one, but not the “secret code” to change permissions on files in order to read and write to them, where one opens up the Terminal application and types “chmod 666.”

Nevermind, please, that this is a Unix command that is 25 years old, and represents the permission for owner, group, and everyone to read and write to the file. Very few times would anyone ever have to do this, preferring to set permissions to 655, which would only give the owner of the file the permission to change it. Still, allowing anyone access to change a file is also Communism, so I guess his point is still valid.

Now it is easy to make the leap of logic, since Apple is by nature “anti-Christian and cultish..., is it any wonder that they have decided to base their newest operating system on Darwinism? This just reaffirms the position that Darwinism is... spread through propaganda and subliminal trickery, not a science as its brainwashed followers would have us believe.”

Oh, Jesus. I’m brainwashed because I agree with a testable theory of science? I should have known. Come to think of it, I did have some doubts about Evolution back in high school until I started working for the school newspaper. That was when I first started following the dark path of desktop publishing on the Macintosh.

OS X, like every Unix system before uses processes called daemons, “ which is how Pagans write ‘demon,’ in case you were wondering. If I ever thought that Unix geeks were just too clever for themselves by putting inside-jokes and puns within their programs, I have just been fooling myself. The creators of Unix were Pagans and Idolaters. The heathens behind Darwin, the operating system, even came up with a little pagan logo “no doubt to influence children.... They’re not doing a very good job keeping their ties to the forces of darkness a secret, are they?”

Finally, the good doctor tells us, “The first personal computer sold by Apple was priced by Steve Jobs and his hippy friend Steve Wozniak at $666. Need we say more?” His clever use of the royal pronoun highlights the moral high ground that he and his fellow Christians can take. The actual price of the first Apple was $666.66, which has a couple of too many decimal places to fit in with the numerological equivalent of Emperor Nero’s name, but we can clearly see that this number was chosen for nefarious reasons.

I am so terribly lucky that Dr. Paley showed me the deep and diabolical link between Darwin and Darwin. Without him I might still believe that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution was sound science, and that any reference to him, which I previously took as appealing to the logical and scientific amongst us, actually leads to hell, or at least to my damned computer.

Update 05 May 02: Many folks are claiming that the essay that my response was based on was a hoax. It may be less than serious, and there is no doubt that Dr. Richard Paley was a figment of the actual authors imagination, but the arguments presented ring true. I’ve heard these arguments about evolution (but not Apple embracing the dark side!) when I was living in Florida. And I believe the author was not poking fun at Christianity as many have opined. The original pages have been taken down, and I do not know if the truth will ever be revealed because no one has come forward to admit writing them. I maintain the complete text of the article on my site, rather than the original web link, and I invite you to judge the veracity, not of the argument, but of the belief that lay behind it.

Update 05 May 02: Many folks are claiming that the essay that my response was based on was a hoax. It may be less than serious, and there is no doubt that Dr. Richard Paley was a figment of the actual authors imagination, but the arguments presented ring true. I’ve heard these arguments about evolution (but not Apple embracing the dark side!) when I was living in Florida. And I believe the author was not poking fun at Christianity as many have opined. The original pages have been taken down, and I do not know if the truth will ever be revealed because no one has come forward to admit writing them. I maintain the complete text of the article on my site, rather than the original web link, and I invite you to judge the veracity, not of the argument, but of the belief that lay behind it.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:11 AM, 23 April 2002 | Comments (4)

We Hold These Truths to Be Inevident

We’ve all come to accept certain clichés as truth: A cat always lands on its feet; There is nothing new under the sun; The media is slanted to the left. Our minds are given to knee-jerk prejudices that are easy to skim over. In this way, we can accept certain ideas without really bothering to process the huge amount of data involved to actually come to a conclusion that would usually be far less conclusive and not as easy to explain, as inWe’ve all come to accept certain clichés as truth: A cat always lands on its feet; There is nothing new under the sun; The media is slanted to the left. Our minds are given to knee-jerk prejudices that are easy to skim over. In this way, we can accept certain ideas without really bothering to process the huge amount of data involved to actually come to a conclusion that would usually be far less conclusive and not as easy to explain, as in: Cats mostly land on their feet when they have a large enough distance to fall so they can turn their bodies in the proper position. Now our pat logic is given to equivocation, and suddenly nothing is black or white. No one wants to live that way.

This is the only logic I can come up with for the tremendous amount of negative press that Israel has been getting lately. There is some sort of inherent support for the underdog built with in us, and, no doubt, a small shake of anti-Semitism. (As an aside, Palestinians are Semitic, too, but most American’s don’t recognize that fact.) I understand the David vs. Goliath mentality. Those poor oppressed Palestinians have to fight the big, bad Israeli army with 30 year-old weapons and 3 billion year-old rocks. I, too, usually root for the underdog, except when it comes to the Yankees, but the vilification of Israel is absurd.

An article that captures the extremely complicated nature of what is going on in the region is here , at Alternet.org. The fact that this article even exists on Alternet is quite a surprise to me, since out of the 25 or so opinion pieces that the site has on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, all but 3 are outright anti-Israeli, and the other two are more along the lines of “I’m trying to keep this fair, but those Israelis have tanks, and that is just not fair.”

Here are some assumptions about this conflict that are just plain wrong:

The Israelis are imperialist, trying to kick out the Palestinians in giant land grabs.

Wrong. Admittedly, the Zionist movement certainly lends itself to imperialism, but the creation of Israel as a nation was more or less compromises by other imperialist states that just didn’t want Jewish refugees continually pouring into their countries. The British, in fact, promised the dual creation of Palestine and Israel, at the same time, but only got as far as moderately securing Israel and left the region to its perpetual chaos.

The Israelis treat the Palestinians poorly, pushing them to refugee camps and ghettoes.

Incorrect, and insidious. This has been popular lately to bandy about, because it assumes the Jews are doing to the Palestinians what the Germans did to Jews. But it is horribly wrong. In Israel itself, 20% of the population is Arab. These Arabs can vote, they enjoy the highest longevity and literacy rates within the region, and they are not forced to live in any certain area. So what is the difference between the Israeli Arabs and the Palestinian Arabs? The Palestinian Arabs insist on living in a Muslim state. Would Israel allow these Palestinians to live in Israel proper? Yes, Israel has one of the most liberal immigration laws in the world.

The Israelis are blocking the creation of an independent Palestinian state.

Nope. The Israelis don’t want the Palestinians to be well armed and have strong opinions about this sensitive area. There is also quite a squabble on where the capitals of Israel and Palestine would be, since both want Jerusalem. But all in all, Israel has been pushing the creation of the Palestine. Of course, there are a lot of niggling details that the Israeli government can’t agree on as a whole. The left and the right political spectrums are divided by these details. And yet, Israel has always made concessions to the Palestinian demands on the new state. It is the PLO, however, that nixes these deals, because they will not make concessions. They will not agree to reductions in weapons or dividing Jerusalem.

A further argument against the Israelis is that they have no right to the land, since the Palestinians have been there for centuries, but this is not entirely correct. The Jewish state has expanded in population considerably since the creation of Israel, but Jews were always there, as were Arabs. The codifying of Israel into a nation only displaced Arabs that were unwilling to live under a Jewish government. These Arabs initially emigrated to other Arab nations, but these nations kicked them out. These other nations forced the creation of the refugee camps, and these nations also immediately invaded Israel. When Israel beat them back, it took the disputed lands as buffer zones. I’d like to point out that Texas did something similar to the Mexican, and yet very few Mexicans are blowing themselves up in Huston Taco Bells, in naive protest for their ancestral lands.

This issue is tremendously complicated, and I do not intend to be anti-Palestinian. My sincere hope is that the creation of Palestine will bring a modicum of sanity to the area, but I don’t believe it will, because the issues at hand are never about the people who have to live through it. There is no difference between the teenagers dying in Tel Aviv by suicide bombers and the teenagers who are the bombers. They’re all being lied to by someone. But the idea that Israel is a monster in a region of poor innocents is something that would make Goering smile. It is a propaganda masterpiece that American’s are swallowing willingly.

I just can’t figure out why.

Posted by Jonathan at 06:15 PM, 22 April 2002 | Comments (0)

An ounce of lead is worth a pound of cure

The War on Drug claims another innocent victim. According to this article, from Newsday, (Click to read in new window. Warning: pop-up ads.), a 20 year-old man was killed, by accident, during a raid that recovered “eight ounces to a pound” of marijuana. The accident occurred when one elite police officer tripped over a tree root into another officer holding a semi-automatic pointed towards the victim.

The article continues with the police claiming that the victim did not lay down on the ground with arms outstretched, as police instructed. Can we safely assume that the officer would still be pointing his gun at the victim even after he was on the ground? If so, then the feeble attempts to spin this as the victim’s fault are not only groundless, but they are purposefully misleading. No weapons or drugs were found on the victim afterwards. He was merely an casualty of unfortunate circumstance.

Eight ounces to one pound of pot. Eight elite Emergency Service officers. One clumsy accident. One innocent victim.

Lest anyone think that I am bashing the cops, I am not. I do not blame the police, in this particular case. It is the insanely dangerous and stupid laws that are in place that create these types of all too typical situations. Now I can no longer claim in good faith that pot never killed anybody. When lawmakers assume we are all criminals, then anyone can pay the ultimate price for so-called justice.

Posted by Jonathan at 12:51 PM, 21 April 2002 | Comments (2)

Red Skies and Flawed Logic

There is a kind of mysterious fun to not be up on current events whilst being in the midst of them. I imagine that many people go through life not really aware of the events around them, and yesterday, I was one of those people. Towards the afternoon, the distinct odor of burning wood wafted into the building where I was working. It was strong enough to warrant a check on my part around the grounds of the building, but ubiquitous enough not to give me an idea on the general direction of the source. So after a few minutes, I determined that wherever and whatever the source of the burning was, it didn’t put anything in my vicinity in danger.

I left work at about 8:30 in the evening. I’ve been quite tired, because, as previously noted in this blog, I’m totally off in my sleeping patterns, so the hazy, blurry red moon I attributed to my tired eyes, rather than a natural phenomenon. The thick layer of particulates on my car, I attributed to pollen that must be coming from the blossoming tree that I parked under. It was so thick that I couldn’t see out my windshield without washing it first.

Yeah, sometimes I’m not too quick.

Finally, I was driving home and a major road way was blocked off. Still nothing is coming together in my head, and I curse my bad luck as I make an alternate route to Erick and Michele’s house. When I get there, I ask them to turn on the local traffic station to see what the trouble was on the parkway. Turns out that brush fires were so bad in the area that there was no visibility on the Sunken Meadow, and it had been closed for much of the day. Brush fires?

Hmm..., I thought to myself, that would explain the lingering smell, the red sky, and the thick layer of non-pollinated soot on my car. Combine that with all the snippets of stories I’ve heard about the brush fires we’ve had on the island, because of the dry conditions and sudden heat wave, and my steel-trap mind puts it all together.

Still and all, while always being in areas that would suffer from the occasional major fire, I’ve never actually been within five miles of a hot zone. These were always things that happened on the East End, while living on the island, or things that happened on the West Coast, when living in Florida. My prejudice was in assuming that it the brush fires must have been further away, surely not in my suburbia. It did make for a eerily beautiful sky, and despite it’s power to obfuscate, it helped clear my mind.

Posted by Jonathan at 08:48 AM, 18 April 2002 | Comments (0)

In case you were wondering

I’ve discovered a couple of things these past few days: OS X is a pretty decent operating system; my optical mouse works just fine on a bed; sleep doesn’t come easily to drifters; and cats make very nice company, despite all the hair in that ends up in my keyboard.

Posted by Jonathan at 05:10 AM, 13 April 2002 | Comments (0)

We apologize for the inconvenience

I wish there was something I could say that would approximate the turmoil that is going on right now, but I can’t really. Never a terrific displayer of emotions, I’m coasting by on a feeling of apathy and numbness. It will hit. The emotions will come. But not yet.

I miss Vicky, but not the way I should. I’m socially retarded, and all my relationships must be held at arm’s length. Please don’t get too close to me, because I will push you away.

So until I have something more to say, this won’t be the hottest blog on the ’Net, for sure.

Posted by Jonathan at 02:55 AM, 11 April 2002 | Comments (0)