This is from back in the day when “Real People” actually looked like real people. Is it just me or are we becoming more plastic looking as the gene pool evolves ? Anyway enjoy this, it put a smile on my face and restored my faith in humanity for another day.

Occasionally you come across something on youtube that you really want to stick on your iPod. Or maybe you come across a video that you just know isn’t going to remain on-line for too long. There are plenty of methods and tools out there to pull down the content and convert it to whatever format you want, but this is by far the handiest method I’ve come across.

You basically just copy and paste the url into the text entry box at the top of the page (not limited to youtube videos), select whether you want it for your ipod, computer or phone, and it does the rest. This makes downloading content a lot more accessible to a lot of people, I can only guess Google or Adobe will find a way to prevent it working either legally or technically, so enjoy it while you can.

This is in relation to Franks post below, re Capitalism. You can apply this to one of many food types produced but one that mystifies me is a sweetener called ‘High Fructose Corn Syrup’ (HFCS). HFCS was developed in Japan (circa 1970’s) and adopted by the Corn Belt of the USA as a stable and cheap method of obtaining sweetener. It is more complicated to make than cane or beet sugar, but is cheaper in overall end-cost and easier to manipulate, transport etc.

I got to wondering why, when I pick up something produced in Europe you rarely saw HFCS on the label and it seems that every food stuff you pick up and read from the States has HFCS?

Well after a bit of digging I found out that in the EU, HFCS is very rarely used as an ingredient because the price of natural sugar is at market level. So cheap natural sugar in the EU is supported and encouraged. It seems to me that the strong Farmers Union in the USA have lobbied to have HFCS used in food production rather than change or adopt other sugar types due to economics. Now I know the reason why so much of the food from the States has HFCS and apparently these companies are now trying to relabel HFCS as a natural sweetener!! Reasoning, it comes from corn. But if you actually look into how HFCS is made it is far, far from natural and totally genetically modified. HFCS is linked to under development of children, obesity, diabetes and coronary disease.

People now complain that natural food has become more expensive. Isn’t it funny how in a few short years convenience food has flipped from a luxury to cheap stable? But once again it is simple economics, supply and demand. All done for the corporate greed, due to an invented and facilitated need for the convenience of living the fast life. When you shirk your responsibility for the food you eat, and pass it on to a corporation, what do you expect. Inadvertantly for some of us our jobs are related to fat cats like these. But when I go home, I eat my own food and support the farmer as much a possible. You can’t avoid these things all the time and it seems everything will kill you these days. But watch out for HFCS kids, because even in the States it’s not allowed in baby food. Now what does that tell you!

This is my first post on current affairs. I was going to post in under ‘Film & TV’ but I decided that probably undermined the importance of the message of this piece by Robert Newman who, according to Wikipedia, is a comedian and writer with a social conscience.

I’d never heard of him before I stumbled across this Google video of his entitled ‘Robert Newman’s History of Oil’. It’s well worth a watch, puts a lot of current world affairs in perspective in a humourous and entertaining fashion.

I have to admit, I sometimes wished it was a bit slicker, sometimes wished that he didn’t milk the gags, sometimes wished that the gags took me by surprise more often - but I watched it right to the end all the same.

When I did some searching for his stuff I found that he has done quite a bit of stuff on the BBC and wrote this article for the Guardian on Climate Change which had some lovely quotes:

Capitalism is not sustainable by its very nature. It is predicated on infinitely expanding markets, faster consumption and bigger production in a finite planet. [...] The corporation will outflank every puny law and regulation that seeks to constrain its profitability. It therefore stands in the way of the functioning democracy needed to tackle climate change. Only by breaking up corporate power and bringing it under social control will we be able to overcome the global environmental crisis.

I like him already.

Presenting serious issues in a humourous fashion is a great way to get a message out. I have to admit that I don’t know a huge amount about peak oil issues, or climate change, but it sure seems like the tide is turning and the public are starting to get worried about such little items… but what are we actually doing about any of it?

It’s fashionable among a lot of us now to discuss odd weather patterns as the result of global warming, it’s now even fashionable for many to admit that the US invaded Iraq for Oil, but what are we doing?

I know I’m not doing anything. Except maybe not driving, which doesn’t count because I get taxis everywhere anyway.

Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the c*nts, the dogs, the filth, the shit. Here is a man who stood up. To get himself a cheese sandwich before the food runs out.

At least I watched the video…

When I first saw this engrossing documentary, I was struck by the tragic figure of Fred A. Leuchter Jr. A sad, almost comedic, character who started out as an engineer, before revolutionising the state of execution equipment in the states and finally losing everything after becoming something of a posterboy for holocaust revisionists. On the face of it, obviously, he does sound abhorrent but he comes across so inoffensive, that it becomes very hard to correlate the man with the deeds. Thanks to Smashing Telly and GoogleVideo.