Aisle 10 . Net

diamond rings

Filed under: Random Thoughts

This makes me laugh because:

• Its common knowledge (or at least I knew. the history channel told me)
• No one really cares
• People like status symbols. They always have, and always will

1. You’ve Been Psychologically Conditioned To Want a Diamond
The diamond engagement ring is a 63-year-old invention of N.W.Ayer advertising agency. The De Beers diamond cartel contracted N.W.Ayer to create a demand for what are, essentially, useless hunks of rock.

2. Diamonds are Priced Well Above Their Value
The De Beers cartel has systematically held diamond prices at levels far greater than their abundance would generate under anything even remotely resembling perfect competition. All diamonds not already under its control are bought by the cartel, and then the De Beers cartel carefully managed world diamond supply in order to keep prices steadily high.

3. Diamonds Have No Resale or Investment Value
Any diamond that you buy or receive will indeed be yours forever: De Beers’ advertising deliberately brain-washed women not to sell; the steady price is a tool to prevent speculation in diamonds; and no dealer will buy a diamond from you. You can only sell it at a diamond purchasing center or a pawn shop where you will receive a tiny fraction of its original “value.”

4. Diamond Miners are Disproportionately Exposed to HIV/AIDS
Many diamond mining camps enforce all-male, no-family rules. Men contract HIV/AIDS from camp sex-workers, while women married to miners have no access to employment, no income outside of their husbands and no bargaining power for negotiating safe sex, and thus are at extremely high risk of contracting HIV.

5. Open-Pit Diamond Mines Pose Environmental Threats
Diamond mines are open pits where salts, heavy minerals, organisms, oil, and chemicals from mining equipment freely leach into ground-water, endangering people in nearby mining camps and villages, as well as downstream plants and animals.

6. Diamond Mine-Owners Violate Indigenous People’s Rights
Diamond mines in Australia, Canada, India and many countries in Africa are situated on lands traditionally associated with indigenous peoples. Many of these communities have been displaced, while others remain, often at great cost to their health, livelihoods and traditional cultures.

7. Slave Laborers Cut and Polish Diamonds
More than one-half of the world’s diamonds are processed in India where many of the cutters and polishers are bonded child laborers. Bonded children work to pay off the debts of their relatives, often unsuccessfully. When they reach adulthood their debt is passed on to their younger siblings or to their own children.

8. Conflict Diamonds Fund Civil Wars in Africa
There is no reliable way to insure that your diamond was not mined or stolen by government or rebel military forces in order to finance civil conflict. Conflict diamonds are traded either for guns or for cash to pay and feed soldiers.

9. Diamond Wars are Fought Using Child Warriors
Many diamond producing governments and rebel forces use children as soldiers, laborers in military camps, and sex slaves. Child soldiers are given drugs to overcome their fear and reluctance to participate in atrocities.

10. Small Arms Trade is Intimately Related to Diamond Smuggling
Illicit diamonds inflame the clandestine trade of small arms. There are 500 billion small arms in the world today which are used to kill 500,000 people annually, the vast majority of whom are non-combatants.

I didn’t write any of this. It was all from an article on fguide.org

I don’t have to wear a coat if I don’t want to.

Filed under: Random Thoughts

Quite often I don’t wear a coat when I am outside. Most of the time it is because I am either going from a building to my car, or my car to a building. Very rarely am I randomly walking around outside.

Anyway, many people say “put a coat on! you’re going to catch a cold!” I tried saying that doesn’t make sense, but it’s not like I have any credibility behind me that would back up my statement.

Not like Yahoo! knows any better than I do, but either way, its one more drop in the ‘ol bucket.

read this little Q&A:

You’re all dirty filthy bastards

thank god for googles cache

Filed under: Random Thoughts

I was talking with darren the other day about how it sucks that my entire blog got erased during the server crash. Everything I wrote from like october 2004 until the crash was completely gone. It was my own fault for not keeping backups, but anyway

I figured some site somewhere had to have cached all of my stuff, because you cant get rid of anything on the internet. It is always floating around somewhere. I could have sworn I looked through google before, but after darren mentioned it to me again, I did a good search and managed to dig up 150-200 some odd blog entries I had made.

I tried automating the whole process of retrieving them from googles cache, but i was a little to aggressive and google banned my work from using google after I tried it. Then I left pretending nothing happened.

I am sure no one cares, and most of the posts were crappy and useless, but there were a bunch I liked and didn’t want to lose. So, now that I have all that I could get from google, I am going to be slowly back posting them in this blog.

Whoopty doo

Evolution talk at the VFW

Filed under: Random Thoughts

Apparantly you don’t need to be old, or a veteran, or have been in a foreign war to go to the bar in the VFW, but in any event, to clear up any confusion from last night. There are 4 racial classifications for us human folks.

Mongoloid
Caucasoid
Australoid
Negroid

Apparantly Capoid “sometimes” is used, which I don’t quite understand.
But, Amanda was right. Mongoloid was/is a term used to describe people with Down Syndrome, but is considered offensive and is “no longer used that way”.

Mongoloid is mainly used to describe the majority of people in Asia. According to Wikipedia, that includes the people of North,East,Southeast,Central, and West Asia. Apparantly West Asians don’t get to be included

Thats the history lesson for today

Appalachia loves Lens Crafters

Filed under: Random Thoughts

I was in LensCrafters the other day, and the salesperson for some reason started talking endlessly about how we shouldn’t throw out any of our old or outdated glasses because the people of Appalachia have never had glasses and Lens Crafters…the good samaritans that they are, send the glasses (along with optomotrists or something) to Appalachia, and try to find someone that is close to as blind as you were, then they get your crappy scratched glasses, and get to see somewhat clearly now.

For some reason the whole story made me think of the episode of Seinfeld where Elaine is helping her old boss get rid of the muffin bottoms from the “Top of the morning to you!” store by donating them by the trash bag full to homeless shelters, and some lady from the homeless shelters comes by and yells at them for giving them muffins without the tops, and yells about who would want muffins without a top.

Either way, donating the glasses is definately a much better idea than just tossing them, but I cant help but picture some Alpacian (is that what they are called) fella getting his set of glasses…being able to see things so much clearer now…..

and then saying Fucking assholes! who sends a pair of glasses with a huge scratch in the middle!

The Venga Bus is coming

Filed under: Random Thoughts

Friday night was the big Bustonian party bus trip with John, Janelle, Cheryl, Stephanie, her boyfriend, and like 15-20 of his crazy rowdy friends.

When we got to Cheryls, we found out someone broke into the bus and stole the kick-ass stereo system it had, so…in a pinch, the driver brought like a $40 boom box to hold us over. It sucked so bad it had to be passed around the bus periodically so everyone could hear music. But, everyone in good cheer, and being WELL STOCKED with beer, we made the best of it and partied on. So while drinking it up, we headed on to the Harp, which as I may have mentioned before, is a fun place. The Zoo was playing there again, and like every time I have gone to the Harp, I ran into “Katie the bartender” again (see previous posts) and am supposed to call her (again), apparantly this time I am supposed to leave a number for her to call me back at if she doesn’t answer. What ever happened to caller ID?
I would say up until this point, I drank at least 2 beers (and 1/8 a bottle of Disarrano) on the bus, plus a beer, a jack and coke, and a shot (which Cheryl kindly bought me).

Anyway, after drinking more, we left, and drank more on the bus, and headed off to club #2…The Big Easy. This is when stuff starts to get hazy. From what I remember..
I got myself another jack and coke, gulped that down, and then decided that the coke part was trying to ruin my night and then asked for just a glass of jack. The hero of a bartender gave me basically a full glass (with ice in it) of straight jack, and then the fun really began. This was my first time in The Big Easy, and the place reminds me of a fancy southern ballroom (even though I have never been to one, or probably seen one) and there are parts along the dance floor where the floor steps up a level, like where the bar is, and the entrances and bathroom and such. By now I was quite drunk, and I would say I fell on those frigging steps a good 10 times. Right into people, I am suprised I didn’t get killed.

Then the dancing began. Apparantly Cheryl really likes to grind, and me being really drunk, figured what the hell, I know how to do that! Fun Fun times. Then later I need to go to the bathroom, and probably in a real slurred voice, told John to not only hold my drink for me, but to also “make sure noone takes it” you know how those greedy drink stealing bastards are!

He tastes it to see what the hell I was drinking, realizes its straight whisky, and decides its time to cut me off, and at least half my drink out, then hands it to me. Of course I had no clue, so I finished that off, and it was time to go.

Now things are really getting hazy.

We go outside, and are in the little Alley type thing The Big Easy is along, and we decide to get pizza from some pizza place that was apparantly there. I devoured 1 slice, then got Cheryl one since she didn’t have any money on her. From what I heard, she dropped it on the ground, we both dove for it, and proceeded to basically wrestle over it on the cold, wet, dirty, snow covered ground. It wasn’t even a whole slice, she had already almost finished it. I have a vague memory though of at least getting a bite out of it. So then Cheryl and I set out to try to find where the damn bus was. It was was like drizzling out, and was pretty damn cold, but we ventured on down the street to find it, We never did, Cheryl was freezing, and soaked, and was crying (from what I remember) so I let her wear the long sleeve dress shirt type thing I had on. Which meant I was now in just a t-shirt. I don’t remember being cold or anything, but apparantly people where saying I must be really wasted, because I looked like a happy camper.

While we were trying to find this bus, apparantly a bunch (or all) of Stephs boyfriends friends got in a big fight (with who? I don’t know. It might have been each other) and the police came, and broke it up, but apparantly noone was arrested, then we found the bus driver, who apparantly was actually in the bar (thats a scary thought) and back on the bus we go.

Now I am really drunk, which usually leads to sleepy time for Mike, and that I did. Apparantly I feel asleep with my legs way out in the aisle, and John woke me up and told me if I am going to sleep, i need to go lay down on the seat on the back of the bus, so I go back there, fall back asleep, and shortly after, apparantly the bus went over a big bump, and according to John, I flew up in the air, still laying down and asleep with my shirt as a pillow, landed on the ground, still in the same position, and continued to sleep.

The ground was soaking wet, in water, beer, and who knows what else (later on, piss too apparantly, but that was after I was awake).

By now, the bus driver hated us all, some of the people on the bus were yelling out the window, one kid pulled his pants down, shoved his dick out the window, and pissed down the street as the bus was driving. Another one tossed a glass bottle out the window at a car, which then followed us, made the bus pull over, got on the bus, and wanted to fight everyone.
These were all from Stephs boyfriends winner group of friends (not all of them sucked though)

The bus driver apparantly really wanted to make his nights worth of money, since he is payed by the hour, and basically refused to drive us home until the time was up, despite the fact that Steph kept trying to make him just bring us home.

Although I don’t remember a bit of this, this girl I met for the first time at Cheryls halloween party, who had also been on the bus, came back and was talking to us, and was all angry claiming none of us liked her, and was mad at me because I didnt remember who she was (from my halloween pictures you can see in the halloween post in october)

For the record. I thought she was one of the coolest people at the halloween party. She was drinking from a metal goblet! nothing is better than that. She is hot too, and she had been talking to me. Its a winning combination. Hell, if she didn’t have a boyfriend, I would be asking her out (another rejection is always fun).

I went up to the front of the bus to talk to her (probably because I was yelled at) and somehow ended up holding that crappy boom box. This shithead sitting across from me, one of Stephs boyfriends friends. Said something to me. I wish I remebered what the hell it was, but apparantly it was fighting words (at least in my book) I think he was starting shit and saying something about how I better not put the boom box down or something. Whatever it was, I was pissed. I walked away to the back of the bus, go over to John, and just keep saying, I was being the bigger man, I just walked away….I just walked away. John looks over to see what I am talking about, and the shithead is laughing and pointing at me to his friend. I think they were planning something. So at that point, John, being the good friend that he is. walks up to them and starts yelling at them. A fight almost breaks out, the bus pulls over again, and the bus driver tells us that if one more person stands up or does anything, he is dropping us all off right there.

So now angry Mike comes out. He hasn’t been around in a while. But he was out and pissed. I had my mothers digital camera on me, which I didn’t want to break, so I started taking out all my belongings and handing the to Janelle. I had it all planned out. The second we got off the bus, this kid is dead. I was down to my t-shirt, and my empty pants. and I sat there for a good 20 minutes (it might have been 5 for all I remember) with the look of death on my face staring at this kid. Stephs boyfriend came over a couple times to get me to chill out, and so did some other kid, but for some reason I was real unhappy. Oddly enough, I have NO IDEA at all what the kid had even said to me. Noone does. The bus finally gets to Cheryls house, and I am ready for go time. But the kids got off the bus and quickly walked away to Cheryls house, and we just headed home. Luckily John stopped drinking hours earlier, or else I would be sleeping with those kids.

All and all it was a fun time. And for those of you that just came for the pictures (too bad I got drunk too fast to keep taking pictures) I purposely put them at the end of this post so that you would have to go through all of my ramblings. Sucks to be you huh?

Here they are: The Party Bus Pictures

Folding Proteins

Filed under: Random Thoughts

I used to run the Folding@home project on my computer, and I decided to start it back up again.

What is it?

What are proteins and why do they “fold”? Proteins are biology’s workhorses — its “nanomachines.” Before proteins can carry out their biochemical function, they remarkably assemble themselves, or “fold.” The process of protein folding, while critical and fundamental to virtually all of biology, remains a mystery. Moreover, perhaps not surprisingly, when proteins do not fold correctly (i.e. “misfold”), there can be serious effects, including many well known diseases, such as Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s disease.

in some little way you can help possibly find a cure for various diseases.
You can download the program here

and if you want, when you install the program and it asks for a
team to join, use mine, which is:
Team Name: aisle10.net
Team ID: 12749

The program runs in the background on your computer, and when your not doing anything (like at night and such) it puts your computer to work, then it sends the results to stanford where the results are used for research