Lunatic Ravings

I'm prone to regular sinus infections. Over time, I've come up with a regimen for fighting them off quickly. At the first sign of an impending illness, I:

1. Medicate with everything: decongestant, antihistamine, anti-inflammatory, cough medicine, and expectorant -- whether I need them or not
2. Drink lots of water
3. Get lots of sleep
4. Modify my diet: extra garlic, no sugar

Yesterday I found out that I've been doing the "no sugar" bit for all the wrong reasons. I'd been told that viruses can only eat sugar, and so cutting sugar from my diet would starve them off. Turns out that's not the case, for embarrassingly obvious reasons: viruses don't eat, they just hijack your cells' machinery to duplicate themselves. They use whatever your normal cells eat.

That led me to a modification that (in this single incidence and without double-blind or verifiable evidence) finally kicked my current virus out of my system.

Wandering about in the junkyard, looking for parts for the Metro, I came across this interesting Sharpie paint job.

(original)

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I also found a '99 LSi Metro 4-cylinder engine. I'd tell the forum, but they've banned me for posting a link to girls in bikinis... on a thread titled, "Global Naked Chicks". Go figure.

Doesn't look like mine at all! (original)

Election day is here! Well, primary election day. I keep a log of politicians and their votes throughout the year, and when any election rolls around, I actually know what they've been up to. But I also keep every item they mail to me. I can compare their claims from year to year, validate them against my notes, and keep track of their desperation -- as measured in negative ads.

Sometimes their mailing literature is the only thing I have to help make my decision.

I've read enough of this stuff to see the patterns. There are always vague promises ("I'll represent you!"), nebulous qualifications ("I support family values!"), sweeping goals ("I want to fix the economy!") and ambiguous accusations ("My opponent is a Washington insider who only represents special interests!"). It's as if nobody wants to say anything specific.

I try to completely ignore the attacks and negativity. I recognize the indeterminate claims for what they are: meaningless. I want to know specifically what you intend to do to fulfill your duties and achieve your goals.

Here's an example of what I'm up against. Here's the stack of literature I've received this season:

Everything: 5 deep or more (big)

And here's the literature that made a specific claim:

Useful literature: 1 deep (big)

Yup.

While the claim itself was verifiable, the justifications he added to this claim were... well, not so much. Still, out of that giant pile, one decent mailer.

There was one other useful bit:

Backfire! (big)

Perhaps I'm asking too much, but I actually want my politicians to be people who can recognize the good in their opposition and their policies. I want somebody who can compromise, somebody who's willing to listen. This little bit of name-calling had the opposite of its intended effect. Thanks, Sandy Adams! I now have a reason to vote for John Mica!

Good luck in your own voting endeavors. I hope you can find the specific information you need to support a decision based on your goals, your vision, and your convictions.

There's an article at MetaPixel explaining a Federal court's decision that citizens can film police officers.

I have long believed that filming police officers and other authorities is legal. Considering how easily authority gets out of hand, I could make a case for it being a citizen's duty to watch the police.

The only other problem is how long this took. The original filming was in October, 2007; the lawsuit just settled was filed in February, 2010. That's more than a year to admit that watching the watchers is not criminal.

And it's not really even over yet. They've only settled that filming doesn't expose an officer to harassment, nor causes him to be personally liable for reasonably performing his public duties. The police can still appeal on other grounds.

I was recently exposed to another stupid political commercial, this one ridiculing the government spending $500,000 to "see how sick shrimp performed on a treadmill". I've seen a lot of knee-jerk reaction on this, but I'm not the kind to react without investigation.

Here's what I found.