OT: The News Thread

[mbow30]

Re: OT - The News Thread

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100128/od_nm/us_argentina_pork

Porking in Argentina

BUENOS AIRES (Reuters) – Argentina's president recommended pork as an alternative to Viagra Wednesday, saying she spent a satisfying weekend with her husband after eating barbecued pork.

"I've just been told something I didn't know; that eating pork improves your sex life ... I'd say it's a lot nicer to eat a bit of grilled pork than take Viagra," President Cristina Fernandez said to leaders of the pig farming industry.

She said she recently ate pork and "things went very well that weekend, so it could well be true."

Argentines are the world's biggest per capita consumers of beef, but the government has sought to promote pork as an alternative in recent years due to rising steak prices and as a way to diversify the meat industry.

"Trying it doesn't cost anything, so let's give it a go," Fernandez said in the televised speech.

 

[Artnes]

Re: OT - The News Thread

So does eating a lot of watermelon apparently.

http://media.www.thebatt.com/media/storage/paper657/news/2009/02/13/News/Watermelon.May.Increase.Sex.Drive-3629314.shtml

Watermelons have naturally occurring nutrients that can produce healthy reactions in the body. One of those nutrients is citrulline, which is converted to arginine through reactions initiated by enzymes. Arginine is a compound known to improve blood circulation throughout the entire body.

"The citrulline-arginine relationship helps heart health, the immune system and may prove to be very helpful for those who suffer from obesity and type two diabetes," Patil said. "Arginine boosts nitric oxide, which relaxes blood vessels, the same basic effect that Viagra has, to treat erectile dysfunction and maybe even prevent it."

 

[JaysCyYoung]

Re: OT - The News Thread

The planet as a rock spinning round the sun could survive plenty. I'm not worried about that. I'm worried about it surviving as a place we can live in. That we can end pretty easily.

We've already made large portions of the world uninhabitable with desertification, strip mining, smelting, etc.

Or for the ultimate proof that humans can create chemical reactions which would make the world utterly uninhabitable to humans:

I was considering posting the following on this page beforehand but didn't have an appropriate segue, but your post gives me a proper one. Take a look at the recession of the Aral Sea in the former Soviet Union states of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. It was once the fourth-largest inland saline lake in the world up until the late 1980s, but the implementation of various irrigation projects and damning of the lake to divert water to help produce cotton crops in the Karakum Desert has led to its virtually extinction in under twenty years. These pictures say it all really. It's almost inconceiveable how large the lake used to be compared to its present state.

While I have no doubt that the impact of man-made contributions to global warming have been vastly over-estimated (the world is in fact immersed in a cool period relative to its climatic history), there is no doubt that we have an indisputable capacity as a species to completely alter our surrounding environment in a way that no other group on this planet possesses. It's encouraging to see that, partisan-ship aside, there are groups and lobbyists that are interested enough in the future well-being of humanity to come and the welfare of those of us presently on the planet to take measures to ensure our continued survival. Hopefully we make it.

 

[SundinsTooth]

Re: OT - The News Thread

You wouldn't want to live anywhere near that place.....the pollution in that "soil" is ridiculous.

 

[theREALkoreaboy]

Re: OT - The News Thread

blame communism. this was a big communist-era experiment in central planning to make the region a major cotton producer, and look what happened.

you see, scratch underneath the surface of most major problems and lefties are usually to blame!

 

[MindzEye]

Re: OT - The News Thread

yes...because Communism has always been superior to Capitalism at the development of capital projects....

Is this where I show pictures of Amazon deforestation, or will you just, as I do, work off of the assumption that you're wrong, and shut up?

 

[MindzEye]

Re: OT - The News Thread

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601039&sid=aaIuE.W8RAuU

Jan. 29 (Bloomberg) -- The idea of secret banking cabals that control the country and global economy are a given among conspiracy theorists who stockpile ammo, bottled water and peanut butter. After this week’s congressional hearing into the bailout of American International Group Inc., you have to wonder if those folks are crazy after all.

Wednesday’s hearing described a secretive group deploying billions of dollars to favored banks, operating with little oversight by the public or elected officials.

We’re talking about the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, whose role as the most influential part of the federal-reserve system -- apart from the matter of AIG’s bailout -- deserves further congressional scrutiny.

The New York Fed is in the hot seat for its decision in November 2008 to buy out, for about $30 billion, insurance contracts AIG sold on toxic debt securities to banks, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Merrill Lynch & Co., Societe Generale and Deutsche Bank AG, among others. That decision, critics say, amounted to a back-door bailout for the banks, which received 100 cents on the dollar for contracts that would have been worth far less had AIG been allowed to fail.

That move came a few weeks after the Federal Reserve and Treasury Department propped up AIG in the wake of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.’s own mid-September bankruptcy filing.

Saving the System

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was head of the New York Fed at the time of the AIG moves. He maintained during Wednesday’s hearing that the New York bank had to buy the insurance contracts, known as credit default swaps, to keep AIG from failing, which would have threatened the financial system.

The hearing before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform also focused on what many in Congress believe was the New York Fed’s subsequent attempt to cover up buyout details and who benefited.

By pursuing this line of inquiry, the hearing revealed some of the inner workings of the New York Fed and the outsized role it plays in banking. This insight is especially valuable given that the New York Fed is a quasi-governmental institution that isn’t subject to citizen intrusions such as freedom of information requests, unlike the Federal Reserve.

 

[vermettefan]

Re: OT - The News Thread

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBuG2TdgMn0"]YouTube- President Obama Full Q&A[/ame]

 

[MindzEye]

Re: OT - The News Thread

Awesome video...watched most of it earlier.

 

[theREALkoreaboy]

Re: OT - The News Thread

yes...because Communism has always been superior to Capitalism at the development of capital projects....

Is this where I show pictures of Amazon deforestation, or will you just, as I do, work off of the assumption that you're wrong, and shut up?

yes of course. because we all know how the americans and capitalism are responsible for brazil cutting down its rainforest.

are the americans to blame for the common cold too?

 

[MindzEye]

Re: OT - The News Thread

As usual you're swinging your arms at phantoms.

I can understand if it was a long post...but seriously, 2 lines, and you somehow didn't notice that the word "America" wasn't mentioned anywhere within?

Yet you turned my comment into blind anti Americanism....bravo. It takes an incredible amount of balls to have so little shame.

Capitalism though (which is neither an American invention, nor exclusive to America) is most definitely a major, major factor in Amazon deforestation with numerous MNC's doing, and profiting from the work being done there, and numerous for profit, privately owned cattle farms keeping the forest from reclaiming the deforested portions.

 

[theREALkoreaboy]

Re: OT - The News Thread

most of the rainforest that is being cut down is being cut down by local farmers, the brazilian gov't, or subsistence slash-and-burn types.

 

[MindzEye]

Re: OT - The News Thread

Local farmers who grow things like soya beans that are shipped to be used as feed for chickens owned by corporate farms with exclusive contracts with MNC's like McDonald's.

One brief example

It's Capitalism doing it's thing. Not sure why you're arguing this....hell, I live here:

*Note that in the picture above, the truck being loaded in the foreground has tires that measure 18 feet off of the ground....so the hydraulic shovel next to it is quite massive...just wanted to give some scale to the picture

It's a massive capitalist circle jerk up here....the destructive power of capitalism is greater than that of communism...in roughly equal relation as it's power of creation is to communism's

Without raping the planet though, we currently know of no way to create.

 

[theREALkoreaboy]

Re: OT - The News Thread

did you drive anywhere today, ME? are you making your LIVING off of that up there, ME? if you answered "yes" to either of those questions, you need to shut your hypocritical piehole.

 

[MindzEye]

Re: OT - The News Thread

did you drive anywhere today, ME? are you making your LIVING off of that up there, ME? if you answered "yes" to either of those questions, you need to shut your hypocritical piehole.

First of all, go **** yourself and take your absolutist garbage "logic" with you.

I try time and time again to have rational conversation with you and time and time again you prove that you lack the intellect necessary to engage in anything put finger pointing and attempted holier than thou one upsmanship.

If I do anything other than jerk off at the alter of right wing capitalist thought, I've done something hypocritical in your eyes by not moving into the ****ing woods and living off of the land.

Can I not accept that we do significant damage to the planet, and do my part to live a reasonably balanced life and minimize my own impact on it?

Apparently having a conscience requires me to either exclude myself from society, or be a hypocrite. Frankly, your false dichotomy is complete horseshit logic.

Your inability to grasp even the slightest bit of nuance or depth is ****ing sad.

On the bright side, I'm absolutely ****ing thrilled that you and I don't agree on much....for reasons that are crystal clear to most observers here.

 

[theREALkoreaboy]

Re: OT - The News Thread

i take it from that diatribe that:

1) yes, you drove somewhere today, and
2) yes, you make your living engaging in a monstrous capitalist activity

there's nothing "absolutist" in what i said. it is hypocritical to continuously slam and demonize the society you live in while simultaneously enjoying its benefits.

 

[Altair]

Re: OT - The News Thread

i take it from that diatribe that:

1) yes, you drove somewhere today, and
2) yes, you make your living engaging in a monstrous capitalist activity

there's nothing "absolutist" in what i said. it is hypocritical to continuously slam and demonize the society you live in while simultaneously enjoying its benefits.

since when is wanting improvements and change being a hypocrite?

you, as a teacher for example, would like better and more up to date books for example. would using the books at hand make you a hypocrite?

you really need to work on your reasoning

 

[johnunit]

Re: OT - The News Thread

Koreaboy, you have ZERO higher-ground as far as accusing people of being hypocritical in their choice of job and lifestyle considering you're an extreme right-winger who is an ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE FOR A GOVERNMENT UNION.


Think about that for a second. You live in Ottawa and are a union rep and a civil servant, yet you still have the ****ing gall to insult someone else for having a job not in line with their political views?

 

[SundinsTooth]

Re: OT - The News Thread

Koreaboy, you have ZERO higher-ground as far as accusing people of being hypocritical in their choice of job and lifestyle considering you're an extreme right-winger who is an ELECTED REPRESENTATIVE FOR A GOVERNMENT UNION.


Think about that for a second. You live in Ottawa and are a union rep and a civil servant, yet you still have the ****ing gall to insult someone else for having a job not in line with their political views?

+1. KB, you really lack self-awareness. Lighten up man, see life for what it is.

 

[SundinsTooth]

Re: OT - The News Thread

yes...because Communism has always been superior to Capitalism at the development of capital projects....

Is this where I show pictures of Amazon deforestation, or will you just, as I do, work off of the assumption that you're wrong, and shut up?

Just show pics of American rivers on fire....I think it was the Cuyahoga they had to reverse course to keep toxic pollution out of the Great Lakes.....the river would burn down bridges! Or the zinc plants near Donora, Pennsylvania....smog destroyed acres of vegetation around that place and killed dozens of people and devastated lungs and hearts of its citizens.

Love Canal.....

The Dust Bowl.....lack of crop rotation and over farming....

Ash slurry released...

Black Mesa strip mining.....

Bhopal Disaster, which resulted in arrest warrants for the CEO of the American company.....8,000 dead.....