As a Charter Member of the Canadian Vast-Right Wing Conspiracy, Toronto Chapter, let me express my shock and horror at being discovered. Yes, me and the PM go way back. Oh, how we used to laugh away the nights, with talk of throwing widows and orphans into the cold winter night. That’s Social Darwinism, baby! Then we used to slap some waitresses around, because that’s what us right wing guys do. I used to sell bumpstickers that said “Scrooge was Right!” My winter coat is made of adorable puppy fur. The Prime Minister has a matching coat I gave him for Christmas.
Everytime Stephen Harper slashes a social program he laughs manically. I’ve seen him do it. He signs the Orders in Council with the blood of orphans. He says orphan blood flows more smoothly than that of children who are loved. Laureen Harper is not a real blond, it’s a wig. Part of an elaborate disguise to hide her actual Cruella de Vil looks. There is a hidden agenda and you clever folks have figured it all out.
The typical voter is just too dumb to understand the vast and subtle complexity of our plot. It’s rather clever. You see Stephie — as his friends call him — has for the last three years tried to lull Canadians to sleep, except you vigilant chaps. Way back in 2004-5 the federal government’s expenditures stood at $210.5 billion. Under two years of brilliant neo-con rule the expenditures reached $232.8 billion for 2007-8. By 2009-10 expenditures are projected to reach $258.6 billion. Hold on, you say, those are substantial increases? Exactly! By increasing government spending the Conservatives have convinced Canadians they are nice and friendly quasi-socialists. But just wait for that majority government! They’ll start cutting like there is no tomorrow, and for you Left-wing chaps that’s about right.
Publius, “News Alert: Stephen Harper Has a Hidden Agenda”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2009-07-29
July 30, 2009
QotD: Conspiracy unmasked!
Organic food shock: no better than non-organic
This is another one of those “someone paid money to conduct the study?” studies. Organic food has been a boon to certain producers, but it doesn’t provide the kind of benefits most purchasers expect:
But organic is certainly more expensive. A new study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition finds:
On the basis of a systematic review of studies of satisfactory quality, there is no evidence of a difference in nutrient quality between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs. The small differences in nutrient content detected are biologically plausible and mostly relate to differences in production methods.
The study was commissioned by Britain’s Food Standards Agency.
I’ve been skeptical about the claims for “organic” products for quite some time. Similarly, I’m not convinced that there’s any great value in the “biodynamic” model for wine. My strong suspicion is that the same general quality of wine would be produced without all the new age woo-woo mystic crap, because the vineyard owner or manager is paying closer attention to the vines. That, IMO, is the key.
Another argument against “intelligent design”
Actually, ten arguments:
1 Sea mammal blowhole. Any animal that spends appreciable time in the ocean should be able to extract oxygen from water via gills. Enlarging the lungs and moving a nostril to the back of the head is a poor work-around.
2 Hyena clitoris. When engorged, this “pseudopenis,” which doubles as the birth canal, becomes so hard it can crush babies to death during exit.
3 Kangaroo teat. In order to nurse, the just-born joey, a frail and squishy jellybean, must clamber up Mom’s torso and into her pouch for a nipple.
Latest threat to world civilization
OMG! Everybody panic!
It’s bad enough that the iPhone can, according to Apple itself, be used to crash cell towers, but apparently they can be very easily hijacked, too:
If you receive a text message on your iPhone any time after Thursday afternoon containing only a single square character, Charlie Miller would suggest you turn the device off. Quickly.
That small cipher will likely be your only warning that someone has taken advantage of a bug that Miller and his fellow cybersecurity researcher Collin Mulliner plan to publicize Thursday at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas. Using a flaw they’ve found in the iPhone’s handling of text messages, the researchers say they’ll demonstrate how to send a series of mostly invisible SMS bursts that can give a hacker complete power over any of the smart phone’s functions. That includes dialing the phone, visiting Web sites, turning on the device’s camera and microphone and, most importantly, sending more text messages to further propagate a mass-gadget hijacking.
The researchers say they’ve notified Apple about the vulnerability, but that Apple had not provided a fix.
Everybody sing: “It’s the end of the world as we know it, it’s the end of the world as we know it . . .”
Update, 31 July: Apple has announced that it will be releasing a fix to this problem on August 1st.
Update, the second, 31 July: The folks on the Apple-iPhone mailing list say the fix has escaped and is now available through iTunes. I’ll be downloading the update as soon as I get home . . .
