There never seems a lack of businesses out to take advantage of human insecurities. Men, Women, Teens and Children are constantly bombarded by industries out to feed on our “individually presumed” human foibles. But women seem to bear the brunt of the fads that induce commercialized attacks aimed at creating personal feelings of inadequacy. Most industries are relatively harmless other than they fleece the apprehensive women out of exorbitant amounts of money for overpriced cosmetic products. But one particularly troublesome industry has taken it past selling glamour products. They are selling Glamour Body-Sculpting. The last several decades the Cosmetic Surgery Industry has taken advantage of a modern culture obsessed with a Hollyweird Barbie Doll image for women. Though I am not a fan of the industry, I will admit that there are many times when cosmetic surgery is a positive procedure. Some of it is beneficial or basically harmless. It might be to help medically correct a genetic or birth defect or harmless vanity like a nose job or a face-lift. But too often it is narcissistic and fad driven like breast augmentations. The latest Cosmetic Surgery fad, elective genitoplasty, has drawn the ire of the British Medical Journal. And rightfully so! The Medical community should be ashamed of themselves in participating in this current fad, which is little more than profiteering from the needless butchery of a woman’s body. There is rarely a medical reason for this type of surgery. The trend is not regarding a medical need but about media driven Barbie Doll body sculpting. Maybe I am getting old (I am still trying to understand the tattoo/piercing craze) – but this fast growing procedure when used for medically unnecessary reasons, strikes me as a dubious medical practice designed to prey on a minority of easily influenced insecure individuals.
Monthly Archives: May 2007
Medical Scoundrels – Fleecing the Sheep
More Contaminated Imports?
It has just been weeks since contaminated dog food imported from China sent a scare across many countries. The BBC (on 05/07) reported Panama and the Dominican Republic were reporting that diethylene glycol has been found in imported toothpaste from China. This has thrown up a red flag necessitating closer US inspection of Chinese Imports again, as China is one of the biggest exporters of toothpaste to the USA. The BBC article also reported that a similar problem last year caused several people in Panama to die from cough medicine imported from China contaminated with the same substance. According to the article the former head of China’s FDA is facing charges of accepting bribes and allowing the approval of medicine that had not been properly tested. What Next? Maybe I better check my chocolate!
School Systems to Parents – WE Decide Whose Ideas Live or Die!
Another questionable situation at a public school forces parents to ask themselves what is going on at my children’s school? It seems the last several year that schools and teachers with sexual and social personal agendas seem to be force feeding their curriculum to the children of our nation, without parental notification or consultation concerning content. In the most recent of those a Boulder Colorado school held a conference in which one of the guest speakers, Joel Becker, was quoted in the Denver Post (article by John Ingold) as saying: “”I’m going to encourage you to have sex, and I’m going to encourage you to use drugs appropriately.” This and other questionable statements promoting sexual experimentation and emphatically encouraging children as young as twelve to masturbate were made by Becker to a group of young high school teens, whom were required by the school to attend the conference. A concerned parent read some excerpts of the speakers’ dialogue at the school board and was told by the board that it was too graphic to be read at the boards meeting. Oh, excuse me it is all right for a twelve or fourteen year old to hear the dialogue, but inappropriate for discussion afterwards with the adults responsible for enabling the messages transmission to a group of kids!!! Much like the incident a few weeks ago where it was learned that two young kids had engaged in sexual intercourse in an Indiana classroom during class, the school system is trying to sweep the incident out of the public view. They are standing by the conference and the speakers but stating they will look into the incident. In basic administrative language that means – leave us alone – it is our rationale that is important and we decide whose ideas live and die!!! The school systems have adopted the policy of We will teach your children what We deem is morally and socially correct, your thoughts are not important. What is your school teaching your children? Do you know or do you just assume they are instructing in an appropriate manner?
Over on “Through the Magnifying Glass” there is a link to a partial of the session’s text for those looking for more information about the session.
No Way to Treat a Lady, Someones Mother or Sister or Friend
I had not planned on posting anything this soon but as I was traveling the Internet I came across a story on the Kamangir blog that I thought deserved referencing. It seems that women in Iran are experiencing a crackdown from the tyrannical Iranian government claiming the women are immodestly dressed. Their big crime is that they are removing their veils when the local police start harassing them over their attire. Their reward for this has been a series of brutal beatings. I am including links to Kamangir’s stories, which include photos of the women in question. The short posts and pictures on the link site express the whole brutal story better than I ever could.
Kamangir Police Brutality link 1
Illegal Immigrants Endangering our Families Health
I, like many others, have been patiently watching our bipartisan do-nothing USA government scalawags and scoundrels pay lip service to the current illegal immigration problems. But the Congress, Senate and the Executive Branch keep playing kick the can while avoiding fixing the issue. And when it seems they have a solution – the solution begins fall apart at the seams. Perhaps it is time that the legal citizens of this country started to force the issue. My first two thoughts are self-explanatory. One step could be to take to the streets in mass protest displaying the anger of the legal citizens. Plus also everyone could flood the mail and e-mail of the various politicians whom are all dragging their feet hoping the public will just forget the problem. And a third idea: considering our government’s current passion of passing laws to force us to design our health habits contoured to their will, perhaps it is time to take it to the court systems.
The government has seen fit to start passing laws like seat-belts, motorcycle helmets, anti-smoking, restricting trans fat laws etc. that are designed to increase public health and make public and private locations a safe environment. Next factor in a point brought out by a Lou Dobbs report that pointed out that illegal immigrants are not screened for communicable diseases, as are legal immigrants. Now my readings suggest his final totals are probably off, but the premise is correct. A high number of the Illegals are bringing dangerous diseases into this country. Illegal immigrants are bringing into the country a resurgence of diseases we had previously had under control. Diseases like TB, leprosy and other high-risk and highly communicable diseases are coming into this country in large numbers because the illegal immigrants have not been properly treated for these high-risk agents. These high-risk people would normally have been turned away through the legal immigration system until they could be proven cured. Yet while our government is passing laws restricting our personal habits to secure our health they are in turn passing a law that will allow our families increased exposure to these high-risk agents by legalizing the carriers that have crossed into the country illegally. And the companies that hire these high-risk carriers are also putting other legal workers and their families at risk to exposure. Plus they are also putting our very food supplies at risk of contamination. The same could be said about the current NAFTA agreements that will allow truckers from high-risk countries carrying food across the border into each individual state instead of them being stopped at the border to unload the cargo. If we can sue companies for exposing us to second hand smoke and trans fats then we should also be allowed to sue them for hiring workers that are exposing our families to this increase in deadly diseases. And since the scalawags and scoundrels in our government has already decided that it is legal for them to control our habits and make laws that concern health control issues then we should be able to take them to court for passing a law that will expose us to deadly strains of diseases that we have spent decades in this country to lessen exposure and eradicate. If they are going to play with out health and well being in other areas then they have no right to expose us and sell us out to secure a few votes in the next election. They should be forced in a court of law to do the right thing and eject people not here legally to protect our health.
Dr. Frankenstein – Everything Old is New Again
Perhaps one of mankind’s more ghoulish subjects was contained in a fictional book in the Mary Shelly classic “Frankenstein”. The book actually displayed a lot of conversational issues. Some of the subjects dealt with the theater of human depravity. One of those was the old practice of selling and purchasing human body parts. There was such an early practice, and it is said that the grave robbers and cadaver collectors were sometimes known to shop for the much desired fresher corpses by creating an imminent demise for unlucky living victims. And there were doctors, scientists and other individuals, like the Dr. Frankenstein character in the Shelly book, that were willing to overlook the cadaver collectors and their methods of body procurement to further their own personal objectives. And though we like to assume that human culture is a lot more civilized than we were in the less advanced and earlier stages of civilization, every once in a while some of life’s sequences of events tend to point out that we are not as enlightened as we like to think we are.
It was just back in 2002 when some particularly gruesome details about a Georgia funeral home became shocking news. Hundreds of bodies that loved ones had paid funeral services for and the remains were supposed to have been cremated had just been dumped by the funeral home in a remote location. The operator plead guilty and is now serving his sentence. Depraved, yes, but not as depraved as the next stories.
In a more recent look into the dark side of human depravity several funeral home operators in New York have been charged with raiding bodies, that were brought to them for cremation, in order to procure skin, bone and other reusable cadaver parts to sell to a biomedical company. This has supposedly taken place over several years and has made millions of dollars for the funeral homes involved. This case has just reached the indictment stage and so far all have plead not guilty.
And a third case, I first read on a blog, is perhaps the most reprehensible of all – if true. As with any blog (China View is said to be connected to some of the political prisoners in question) you never know just how much is true and how much is creative juxtaposition and supposition. But the blog, and other sources I have read, claim that China has been executing political prisoner for harvesting body parts and needed organs for transplants and possibly for selling to other markets, including in the US and Canada. Considering the accused and that I have read the accusation from other different sources it tends to give enough credibility that it should merit in depth research by World Watch Dog Organizations. Yet though I have read sources outside the US approach the subject – in the US, so far I have not seen any air time offered up on the subject by US media sources, and I watch and read a lot of different media resources.
It seems the further we advance both socially and scientifically our old ghoulish tendencies still live and still continue to display their ugly face and the tar pits of human depravity we seem unable to pull ourselves away from. And it seems that the Dr. Frankenstein successors still roam the Earth looking to purchase what they cannot get through normal resources. And, perhaps, if there is enough profit or motive we all still look the other way.
Fading Memories?
A little something different today: One of the things I love about the Internet are the links posted by people on their sites. They can lead you around the world to places and things you might never have seen. And they can lead you to places and things that you did not want to know existed. Some links are educational – some are entertainment – many are little more than garbage. But every once in awhile you come across a link, which at least in your mind, is like striking a layer of gold. So today, rather than my normal bluster, I offer up the following links to a site called Scrapbookpages. It is a site that posts information about history and acts/promotes as a travel guide. I am posting a few links from within the site. This is not one of the harsher sites I have visited, but please be warned that some information and photos contained on these links, may be difficult viewing – as the links I am posting deal with the darker sides of human history. But when dealing with history and historic sites some things should never be forgotten.
Nightmarish Visions devoid of Lilacs and Roses
Every now and then I read a science article that leaves me disturbed about the scientific endeavor. One of latest articles I have been following is such a project. As a kid and following my entry into adulthood (many friends and family may argue I have not yet reached that point of existence emotionally and mentally, to them I say Plbtttttt, up your nose with a rubber hose!) I was always fascinated by the Start Trek series. The series postulates many scientific expositions some of which have already been birthed or are in the early stages of evolution. One of those speculated engineering visions was the cloaking device used by some alien races as a way of hiding their spacecraft from their opponents. Of course speculation about cloaking devices was not new to Star Trek. From our early stages of life we have devised ways to camouflage our scent, ourselves and even our equipment from our prey and the hunters that prey on us. The submarine was/is one of the great examples of how skillfully camouflaged pieces of military equipment could/can create fear and devastation on your opponent. The search for ways to camouflage has even created a mythic story suggesting that in an experiment attempted by the US Navy to camouflage a naval destroyer back in 1943 they created a passage through a time barrier. Starting with the Roswell incident in 1947, then Project Rainbow and on though to the present many different UFO stories have grown out of what is suggested as the US Air Force experimenting with stealth aircraft in the New Mexico wasteland. Through the last few months a new science story keeps showing up about the latest attempts to create a more advance version of “cloaking” machines. In an article on physorg.com: theoretically a group of scientists have created an “invisibility cloak” that can hide objects by bending the electromagnetic radiation used by vision, radar and microwaves. They theorize that the cloaking materials will soon be realistic for flying and military craft and that in a few years it should also be adaptable to humans. Now the idea of a Klingon ship decloaking and surprising their enemy makes for great Science Fiction movies. But the reality that such technology possibly is close at hand leaves me pondering: are we not once again running before we can walk. The arrival of this technology could create an even more terrifying time period than the Worldwide affects of the Cold War between the US and USSR. No matter how you look at it the only realistic applications of this technology will be usable for the military and intelligence agencies. Once such technology was perfected the possible military aspects are ominous. Forget the idea of cloaking a Jet Fighter. Once perfected you could cloak an ICBM. Once perfected you and your enemy could launch undetectable space weapons that floats over each other’s heads. Once perfected you could cloak a human that could enter your residence without worry of detection. That would be right up the alley of criminals and many of the worldwide intelligence services. Worse yet – the consequences once this type of technology gets into the hands of zealot organizations like Al Qaeda and Hamas. My personal hope is that such technology is much further away than the article suggests. But the persistence to have the technology is there and like any Military focused Pandora’s Box the better advantage goes to those that have it first than those that get it last. I have often heard it said that science is a two edge sword: it can make our lives more comfortable and/or it can leave it more perilous. From this technology I only foresee nightmares filled with terror – not sweet dreams of walking among lilacs and roses.
Now that I got that off my chest — Have a Happy Mothers Day everyone!
“As God is my witness, I thought Turkeys could fly”
quote from The Big Guy in “WKRP in Cincinatti “
Paris Hilton – Bad Girl in Need of Direction
If ever there was a celebrity that deserved their punishment I feel it is Paris Hilton. She just does not want to understand why she is not above the law. Her current actions seem to flaunt the law and place herself above the law of the land. Nor am I impressed by her driving etiquette in general. As I was watching a previous film clip of Hilton taking off in a vehicle she was driving – she was busy talking on her cell phone, laughing and jerking around in her seat while pulling out on to a street. She seemed too busy to be distracted by the normal processes involved in driving a motor vehicle. Combine this with her current charges it does not comfort me knowing she is on the road. In my opinion she needs to serve the maximum sentence that the judge handed down. Perhaps (even though I doubt it) it would help her pull her head out of her posterior. However her serving full sentence is unlikely to happen according to a recent article. The overcrowded L.A. jail situation almost assures her a reduced sentence even if she loses the appeal her lawyers have presented. Considering that the courts are just punishing her for her lack of compliance with her earlier plea instead of the total circumstances of her offense, she is getting off easy. Yet she and her mother seem shocked that she will have to spend time in jail. I suppose this should not shock me as from my readings her mother has pushed her into the limelight from a very young age. According to an article I read, Paris’ mom (as her grandmother had evidently pushed Paris’ mom before) has been pushing her into the wild side of life from an early age. Evidently she was even in favor and proud of the sex tape Paris made that was posted on the Internet. Supposedly Paris’ grandmother had enrolled Paris’ mom into sex lessons at the age of sixteen. If so that is somewhat bizarre behavior in my beliefs. This young woman Obviously needs life lessons and directions she is not getting from her parents before she gets in to some serious trouble that her money cannot get her out of.
Baa Baa Blacksheep Have You Any Wool
It seems our Governor is out to fleece his sheep and all the rest of us at the same time. He is still trying to find ways to payoff all his campaign promises. It is not enough that he is trying to make it legal to sell driving permits to illegal aliens to raise Campaign Promise Pocket money. Nope he also wants to increase our taxes by pretending that by using a Gross Receipts Tax he is not really raising the taxes on the people. It is a tax that he needs to help payoff his campaign promises. Of course the individuals that will have to pay for his reelection campaign promises will be us, the residents of the State of Illinois. The latest Blagodabitch statement promoting the tax is so brazenly propaganda that it should awaken the mindless sheep that keep punching a ballot to elect him: “I will not raise taxes on people. I won’t do it today. I won’t do it tomorrow. I won’t do it next week, next month, next year, I believe it’s wrong and this is not an issue I’m prepared to horse trade” (thank you Sam I am we now know you won’t eat green eggs and ham) leaves me wondering if the man is delusional or just another snake-oil salesman giving his phony pitch. First problem is every time you raise taxes on a business you take the chance the company will take flight for a friendlier environment. But take that part out of the equation and just consider the previous Blago statement saying he will not raise taxes on the people. Assume the company figures it is still to their advantage to stay and operate in the State of Illinois. The tax will raise their cost of doing business. That increase in tax cost has to be made-up somewhere. So the company will increase the price of it’s goods and pass that cost on to the businesses or customers that purchase their product. It is just another way of saying VAT tax where the tax cost pyramids along the line towards the final cost to the consumer. So the consumer may not see the extra tax but he is paying it exponentially as the cost is raised for each institution between the manufacturer and the consumer. The politician’s wet dream, a tax on tax on taxes only limited by the amount of middlemen in between its beginning and its final destination. And who pays the total added tax at the end, us, the consumer. And what Blagodabitch is actually saying to the citizens of this state is that “you are a flock of mindless sheep that I can fleece for personal and political gain.”
