Friday, January 22, 2010

Crystal Cave

I had no idea such an amazing place like this existed on Earth. WOW!

Animal Farm Friday - Fat Cat

In honor of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of the Fat Cats, allowing corporations to pump unlimited amounts of cash into our political system, I present to you this:



It's not funny, nor is the Supreme court ruling.

Unit 731 - Japanese worse than Nazis

I think I could have gone my whole life without knowing this, and it would have been for the better. No wonder the Chinese and Koreans hate the Japanese so much!

From brainz.org:

While the Nazis were doing their horrific work in Germany, the Japanese outdid them in mainland Asia, undertaking a regime of ruthless experimentation the likes of which are too disturbing to imagine. Everyone knows about Nazi experimentation, but the story of Unit 731 is far less known, and all the more horrific for it. Unit 731 was a research base in Northeast China, and the home of more than 10,000 deaths by experiment. The patients were vivisected without anesthesia after infection with diseases; pregnant women were vivisected and the fetus removed; limbs amputated to study blood loss; said limbs re-attached to the opposite side of the body; extremities were frozen by repeated immersion in water while left in icy conditions, then amputated or thawed to study gangrene; prisoners had their stomachs removed, and their esophagus attached to their intestine directly; live humans were used to test grenades at various ranges and positions; flamethrowers; chemical and biological agents including plague, cholera, smallpox, botulism, syphilis and gonorrhea; being hung upside down until they choked to death; air injected into their arteries to cause embolism; horse urine injected in their kidneys; deprived of food and water till death; placed in high pressure chambers till death; being exposed to extreme cold; burned to see how well they could survive different degrees of burns; spun until death on a centrifuge; animal blood injections; lethal radiation doses; injected with sea water to see if it could be substituted for saline; and buried alive. A laundry list of human atrocities.

While many of the Nazi doctors were at least brought to justice for their crimes, Unit 731 merely disbanded and General MacArthur gave immunity to its doctors in exchange for information on biological warfare, and the majority got off scott free. However, Russia brought war crimes proceedings against a number of the perpetrators, and sentenced them to hard labor in Siberia. I can't help but think they got off light.

Juxtaposed against the Japanese whalers, and the Japanese that slaughter the Taiji dolphins, I am liking the Japanese less and less every day. I know it's wrong to generalize in such a way, but it's hard not to.



That's one way to prove a point...

As a rationalist, I like the idea of proving the falsehoods of homeopathic medicine, but this seems like an extreme way to do it.

In what is being billed as "rationalism's Kool-Aid moment", a mass "overdose" is being planned next week in protest at the marketing of homoeopathic medicines.

More than 300 people who style themselves as "homoeopathy sceptics" will each swallow an entire bottle of homoeopathic pills in protest at the continued marketing of homoeopathic medicines by Boots, the high street chemist chain.

The protest is due to take place at 10.23am on Saturday 30 January. It is organised by the "10.23 Group", who take their name from Avogadro's constant, which they claim proves that homoeopathy cannot work.

I can't wait to see what happens on January 31.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

DODT17

http://i.imgur.com/Y6Su9.gif

The Known Universe - Video

This video by the American Museum of Natural History is one of the more fascinating and beautiful examples of the known universe I've seen. (In an exhibit at the actual museum in NYC, there's an even more incredible video, but that has to be experienced in person!)