Watch Your Soy Milk

I don't use soy milk as I am a cow juice guy but I have a lot of friends that do. If you use soy milk and especially the Silk brand you should be aware of something that you might not have noticed. Dean Foods the owner of Silk has pulled a typical big ag dirty trick.

Until early 2009, Silk brand soy milk was made using organic soybeans. But earlier this year, Dean Foods (owner of the Silk brand) quietly switched to conventional soybeans, which are often grown with pesticides. But they kept the same UPC barcodes on their products, and they kept the product label virtually the same, only replacing the word "organic" with "natural" in a way that was barely noticeable. They also kept the price the same, charging consumers "organic" prices for a product that was now suddenly made with conventionally-grown soybeans.

Many retailers and consumers never noticed the bait-and-switch tactic, so they kept buying Silk, thinking it was still organic. The shift on the product label from "organic" to "natural" wasn't well understood by consumers, either. Many consumers continue to think that the term "natural" is basically the same as "organic," when in fact they are almost opposites. The term "natural" is entirely unregulated, and almost anything can be claimed to be "natural" even when it's sprayed with pesticides or treated with other chemicals.

Positive News on TASER Use

Finally we are starting to see some sanity evolve in the use of  TASERS by police. The 9th Circuit issued what looks like a landmark ruling on the use of TASERS. The unbridled use of these weapons is getting worse everyday and for less and less of a reason.

A federal appeals court on Monday issued one of the most comprehensive rulings yet limiting police use of Tasers against low-level offenders who seem to pose little threat and may be mentally ill.

In a case out of San Diego County, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals criticized an officer who, without warning, shot an emotionally troubled man with a Taser when he was unarmed, yards away, and neither fleeing nor advancing on the officer.

[...]

As lawsuits have proliferated against police and Taser International, which manufactures the weapons, the nation's appellate courts have been trying to define what constitutes appropriate Taser use.

The San Diego County case is the latest ruling to address the issue.

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit affirmed the trial judge's ruling on Monday, concluding that the level of force used by the officer was excessive.

McPherson could have waited for backup or tried to talk the man down, the judges said. If Bryan was mentally ill, as the officer contended, then there was even more reason to use "less intrusive means," the judges said.

"Officer McPherson's desire to quickly and decisively end an unusual and tense situation is understandable," Judge Kim McLane Wardlaw wrote for the court. "His chosen method for doing so violated Bryan's constitutional right to be free from excessive force."

Some lawyers called it a landmark decision.

Eugene Iredale, a San Diego lawyer who argued the case, said it was one of the clearest and most complete statements yet from an appellate court about the limits of Taser use.

He said after Monday's decision that courts will consider all circumstances, including whether someone poses a threat, has committed a serious crime or is mentally troubled.

"In an era where everybody understands 'don't tase me, bro,' courts are going to look more closely at the use of Tasers, and they're going to try to deter the promiscuous oversue of that tool," he said.

[...]

"Certainly the officer should be able to articulate the reason the force (was used), and a mere resistance to comply may not be enough," said Sheriff John McGinness.

The sooner police understand that they can use a TASER under very strict rules and not just to make their jobs easier the better off we will be. Police have a tough job but taking the easy way out with such a dangerous device is not the answer. It's a brutal weapon and it kills. This is going to battled around in the courts for a while yet but at least we are seeing some movement in the right direction.

Reasons To Have A Suet Feeder in Winter

Here are just a few of the reasons to keep a suet feeder filled in the wintertime. What you don't see here are Red Bellied, Downy, and Red Headed woodpeckers who come regularly. At times there are as many as 6 or 7 Eastern Bluebirds waiting to feed. The little Hairy woodpecker is a constant visitor between bluebird swarms. As usual you can click on the image to make it full screen.

2010 Might be Better

In my Internet wanderings this morning it appears that the Democrats may actually have a better 2010 than I previously thought. If they can avoid their typical attack of political timidity and insane 'hunt for bipartisan love' that normally affects them in election years then the GOP is going to make it a good year judging from the insanity that was spewed this weekend. It was full of weirdly twisted logic, fractured history and outright lies and is a sure indication that the Republicans are suffering from a serious lack of ideas and organization and very much 'not ready for prime time'. Here is just some of the seriously strange stuff that came out of GOP pie holes...
According to Mary Matalin. Shrub inherited 9/11 from Bill Clinton and the employment numbers actually improved in his first year. The first assertion is insane and the second is an outright lie.
Good old political has been Newt Gingrich was on fire this weekend and was in his usual excellent crap slinging form. Among other things he insisted that President Obama has refused to work with the Republicans this year and what's more the GOP should respond with a 'positive alternative vision' which would be to run on repealing health care reform. That's a sure winner if I ever saw one.
Mitch McConnell, not to be outdone by a has been like Newt, insisted that the GOP was right to oppose President Obama on every issue and especially health care reform which meant that they were being bipartisan. You figure it out.
Last but not least, Jim DeMint declared health care reform unconstitutional but won't commit to filing a lawsuit against it.

If the Repubs think running on a platform of repealing health reform, even the seriously flawed reform that is likely to come out of reconciliation, then they are more deluded than I thought. People want constructive ideas and want positive change. If the Dems can do more in the next 12 months  with respect to enacting progressive legislation then they will continue to hold sway.

Avatar Is Worth a View

Madam and I went to see Avatar yesterday but just the 2D version as I refused to pay $11.50 for a matinee 3D seat. If you are a SciFi geek like me it is way cool. Pretty standard and predictable plot but the visuals and imagination involved in making the flick are not to be believed. I definitely got absorbed into the fantasy world of Pandora and the characterizations of its inhabitants. The movie was perfect for a tree hugging SciFi geek like me and even Madam thought it was worth seeing. There is definitely a liberal, tree hugging message underlying the movie so I can understand why the wing nuts are going crazy over it.

Lightning is Your Real Enemy

With latest failed attempt at blowing up an airplane covering all the news and creating the usual hysteria in the bedwetting crowd all I can say is I am glad I am no longer in the weekly get on the airplane crowd. It was bad enough before with the shoes and liquid craziness but they are going to go to even more extremes since the Christmas day episode. The funny/weird thing is that none of the crotch grabbers getting their shorts all twisted up over this latest failed attempt stop and actually analyze the reality of what the 'threat' really is around air travel.  Take a deep breath folks and get a grip.

Nate Silver does the numbers on terrorist attacks.

Over the past decade, there have been, by my count, six attempted terrorist incidents on board a commercial airliner than landed in or departed from the United States: the four planes that were hijacked on 9/11, the shoe bomber incident in December 2001, and the NWA flight 253 incident on Christmas…

Over the past decade, according to BTS [the Bureau of Transportation Statistics], there have been 99,320,309 commercial airline departures that either originated or landed within the United States. Dividing by six, we get one terrorist incident per 16,553,385 departures.

These departures flew a collective 69,415,786,000 miles. That means there has been one terrorist incident per 11,569,297,667 miles flown. This distance is equivalent to 1,459,664 trips around the diameter of the Earth, 24,218 round trips to the Moon, or two round trips to Neptune…

There were a total of 674 passengers, not counting crew or the terrorists themselves, on the flights on which these incidents occurred. By contrast, there have been 7,015,630,000 passenger enplanements over the past decade. Therefore, the odds of being on given departure which is the subject of a terrorist incident have been 1 in 10,408,947 over the past decade. By contrast, the odds of being struck by lightning in a given year are about 1 in 500,000. This means that you could board 20 flights per year and still be less likely to be the subject of an attempted terrorist attack than to be struck by lightning.

h/t to Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice.

Boxing Day

I hope everyone had a nice Christmas and that Santa was kind. Madam and I had a nice afternoon with minimonk and her gaggle of hounds. Mr. minimonk was still trying to shake a bad cold but did a great job on some very nice rib eye's in spite of it.  Nice meal and shared time with plenty of dog petting. Today is Boxing Day when the contents of the alms box are distributed by the nobles to their serfs.  Cold day here in Atlanta and still very damp from all the rain so not much going on outdoors. I imagine Madam will fly into de-decorating with a vengeance so I will probably get pulled into the effort.
If you are traveling do so with care as roads in lots of the country are bad news. If you are going by plane expect some increased hassles due to the terrorist attempt in Detroit.
If you are not traveling try not to clean up all the Christmas goodies in one day.

OK it's Officially The Christmas Season

The big double batch of Chex Party Mix (Nut&Bolts in my family) is in the big Tupperware container so we can declare it 'officially Christmas'. I usually do a lot more baking for the holidays but it just didn't happen this year but the 'Party Mix' is a must have. Mine is always 'kicked up' a notch since I increase the seasoning and butter by about 50% and also add a wee bit of cayenne pepper.
We are going to Minimonks for Christmas Day (she is on duty for Christmas Eve) and rumor has it that we are going to have steak on the grill. There was talk of going to see Avatar as well but the first showing is not until 3pm on Christmas Day so that will just have to wait for another day. Now if the 'frog strangling' rain predicted for tonight and tomorrow morning will clear out of the way in time we are go for Christmas.

All you guys have a Merry Christmas and a safe one to boot. Careful about how much brandy gets into the egg nog and all that.

Down the Bunny Hole

Well the Senate passed its version of health care reform. Its a very bad bill on balance but all I can say is that there is a chance it canned be improved in reconciliation. Let's hope so. Until we do know what is in a bill that the President signs I can't get too excited. My gut feeling is that the millions the lobbyists from the the private health care industry spent did the job and we got a pig in a poke. I am disappointed that there is no real competition for private health insurance created and I think this is going to add to the strength and entrenchment of for profit health care. A lot of people are going to find paying for crap insurance a real irritant...especially yours truly. Once the reconciliation is complete and the President signs something we'll get a chance to see how far into Wonderland we have been taken by the pawns of big insurance and big Pharma.

In A Nutshell

Frederick at MCCS1997 is back and with a new look. He posted this cartoon this morning linking from PZMyers. It was so 'on point' that I had to shamelessly copy it. Welcome back Frederick...missed your contributions to the dialogue.

As PZMyers says ' Isn’t this what the global warming debate is actually all about?'

Who Did I Vote For?

There is a 'must read' today at Huff Po by Drew Westen, the political psychologist/neuroscientist, that is probably going to get a lot of people cranky today but it is the most accurate assessment I have seen to date on what has happened to 'Change We Can Believe In'.

This is a brutal, but accurate, assessment of the Obama presidency so far. It's a bit long but if you are like me you will have some 'Ah ha' moments and recognize some of what you have been thinking for the last few months but couldn't put into words. The article in annoying because it is spot on.

Somehow the president has managed to turn a base of new and progressive voters he himself energized like no one else could in 2008 into the likely stay-at-home voters of 2010, souring an entire generation of young people to the political process. It isn't hard for them to see that the winners seem to be the same no matter who the voters select (Wall Street, big oil, big Pharma, the insurance industry). In fact, the president's leadership style, combined with the Democratic Congress's penchant for making its sausage in public and producing new and usually more tasteless recipes every day, has had a very high toll far from the left: smack in the center of the political spectrum.

What's costing the president and courting danger for Democrats in 2010 isn't a question of left or right, because the president has accomplished the remarkable feat of both demoralizing the base and completely turning off voters in the center. If this were an ideological issue, that would not be the case. He would be holding either the middle or the left, not losing both.

What's costing the president are three things: a laissez faire style of leadership that appears weak and removed to everyday Americans, a failure to articulate and defend any coherent ideological position on virtually anything, and a widespread perception that he cares more about special interests like bank, credit card, oil and coal, and health and pharmaceutical companies than he does about the people they are shafting.

The problem is not that his record is being distorted. It's that all three have more than a grain of truth. And I say this not as one of those pesky "leftists." I say this as someone who has spent much of the last three years studying what moves voters in the middle, the Undecideds who will hear whichever side speaks to them with moral clarity.

I guess the big question is...What can we do to change it and can we?

Here's to Carl Sagan

A stunning image has been captured by the newest camera on the Hubble telescope and released by NASA.  The photo is the deepest ever taken of space.  In the image, thousands of galaxies dot the blackness in an almost incomprehensibly enormous cluster.  Some of the galaxies, each containing billions of stars and planets, are nearly as old as the Big Bang itself. Click on it to embiggen.

Since today is also the winter solstice Donna has a photo of a Tutulemma: Solar Eclipse Analemma that is seriously cool.

Happy Winter Solstice

Today marks the winter solstice, the shortest day and the longest night of the year. The precise moment of the winter solstice is 12:47 p.m. EST, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory . At that moment the Earth's axial tilt puts it the farthest from the sun.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the winter solstice occurs when the sun is directly over the Tropic of Capricorn, which is located at the latitude of 23.5 degrees south of the equator.

Happy first day of winter and all that stuff. Bryan at Why Now? also reminds us to put out the turnips as it is also Hogswatch.

updated to correct the spelling of Hogswatch. 

Stupid

I just spent the entire afternoon struggling to get a new comment system running because Steve at YDD said that he had received an email from Haloscan saying that they were to start charging 10 bucks a month starting Jan 2. I can't afford that so I decided to shift over to Disqus because it reportedly could import my old comments.

I just read the actual info on the  Echo site (the new brand for Haloscan) and it is only 12 bucks a year. I can afford that.

Anyhow....system is back to normal so ignore all that crap about Haloscan off and stuff. Everything should be back to the way it was.

Sheesh a wasted afternoon.

Disqus Comments Are Up and Running

Ok the new commenting system is up and running. The access is a little different and I have the ability to add facebook and some other things like twitter to the mix right now you either have to log in as quest and type in your stuff or create an ID on Disqus or use an OpenID or yahoo log in. I wasn't successful importing any of the old comments yet but I am still working on it. We'll see.

Let me know if this is going to work or would you rather see the blogger native comments.

Testing Disgus comments

Testing the Disqus commenting system

test

test

Haloscan Comments Off

I have turned off the Haloscan comment system. I think I have enabled the Blogger system but we will see when I post this.

Update: Still trying.

Comment Hell?

According to Steve over at YDD the Haloscan commenting system will be discontinued on Boxing Day.

Haloscan has powered the comments on this blog almost since its inception in 2004.

Although I haven't received one yet, apparently emails are going out announcing the cancellation of the service and the impending loss of all comments unless you either a) download them for posterity; or b) upgrade to Echo, Haloscan's subscription-based successor. I really appreciate the notification in a prompt and timely manner.

Well, that's not happening. I really don't get enough comments to justify what a pay service demands($10/month), which would be something like charging me 50 cents a comment. Even though Haloscan was the only game in town back in 2004, that's not the case anymore: in addition to Blogger's native comment system, there's also Intense Debate, Disqus, and I'm sure plenty of other free services that will work for this tiny little blog. My big concern is losing all the great input from you guys since the beginning....yeah even you David!

So, at some point in the very near future, commenting on this blog will change. I'm looking at Disqus as it appears that they have some method of rescuing the old comments from Haloscan and it seems like a pretty robust system and it is free (for now). Meanwhile, Haloscan lets users export comments in something called CAIF (Common Announcement Interchange Format) and I have done this for all 8,000 comments made on the site since the beginning up until yesterday.

So if you come in here in the next couple of days and it is totally fried and comments don't work or they do and are completely different then you know why. The first step will be to disable Haloscan and revert to the native Blogger I guess but until I get into the conversion I really don't know. I know just enough about HTML to be dangerous so who knows what will happen.

No Snow --Thank Goodness

Thank goodness the snow is well north of us here in Atlanta. I just talked to my Mom in far Western Virginia (Narrows) and they already have a foot and a half and it is still coming down hard.

Madam and I have a dinner party for some friends tonight and snow would have been a real pain. I don't care to cook all day and have no one show up. We are just a little cold and damp from all of the rain yesterday.
The menu for tonight is butterflied and rolled pork loin stuffed with a saute of leeks and fennel. Roasted butternut squash with honey and cumin, haricot vert, fresh rolls and a French apple tart for dessert. California (Fetzer) Gewurztraminer is the wine selected. Should be nice for a cold fall night.

Oh! the recipe for the pork loin can be found here... it's from Ina Garten.