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Look, I know it’s generally considered rude to ask people to Digg your own blog…but this is for a greater cause!  To keep Cocaine Energy Drink legal!

Please, in addition to sending your protests to Redux, digg the original Save Cocaine entry to help spread the word!  If you don’t have a Digg.com account, it’s easy to sign up.  Please, guys, the makers of Cocaine are just normal people who had a good idea, and now the government wants to shut them down.  Save them if you can!  Help the cause of free speech, free capitalism, and all that is free in the world!  Save Cocaine!
http://digg.com/politics/Please_Save_Cocaine

Sometimes I get angry with the FDA…I have a generally negative attitude towards the FDA…The FDA sucks monkey nuts, I can’t believe they’re wasting so much money debating stupid, pointless, RIDICULOUS things like this, when they have MARIJUANA laws to overturn, which are causing almost a million innocents to suffer yearly, and to make addictive manufactured drugs illegal!!! Chocolate? Honestly, who will benefit from allowing companies to LIE on their packaging? The companies! No American! HOW DARE THEY SPEND AMERICAN TAX DOLLARS ON SOMETHING LIKE THIS????

“The federal Food and Drug Administration is proposing to redefine the very essence of chocolate and to allow big manufacturers such as Hershey to sell a bar devoid of a key ingredient - cocoa butter. The butter’s natural texture could be replaced with inferior alternatives, such as vegetable fats. And consumers would never know. Chocolatier Gary Guittard said it best: “No one can afford to sit back and eat bonbons while America’s great passion for chocolate is threatened.”

“For every defender of traditional chocolate, there are powerful proponents who want to replace cocoa butter with vegetable oil: the Chocolate Manufacturers Association, the Grocery Manufacturers Association and the Snack Food Association. These industry titans have filed a “citizens petition” to the FDA, as the Los Angeles Times recently reported, as if there were some groundswell in society to water down chocolate.

“At the moment, chocolate requires two basic ingredients - cocoa and cocoa butter. Cocoa provides much of the flavor; cocoa butter, the texture. So if, say, Hershey wanted to make a chocolate bar without cocoa butter, it can under today’s rules. The product has to be labeled “chocolate flavored” (for it still has the cocoa in it) rather than “chocolate.” That gives the consumer a signal that something less than chocolate lies beneath the wrapping. To help defend chocolate, visit www.dontmesswithourchocolate.com and learn how to submit feedback to the FDA. ”

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their bill the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.

So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite happy with the arrangement, until on day, the owner threw them a curve. “Since you are all such good customers,” he said, “I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer by $20.”Drinks for the ten now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes so the first four men were unaffected. They would still drink for free. But what about the other six men - the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 windfall so that everyone would get his ‘fair share?’ They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer. So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce
each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.

And so:
The fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings).
The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33%savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28%savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 (22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.

“I only got a dollar out of the $20,”declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10!”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I!”

“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.

The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists and college professors, is how our tax system works. The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction. Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy, and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

David R. Kamerschen, Ph.D.
Professor of Economics
University of Georgia

Last night was the 3rd annual Telos Awards…and certainly the best yet. It’s a competition my high school puts on - awards for good movies, although this year they offered a few awards in visual art as well as audio composition and unmade screenplays. I was invited as a finalist, though they refused to tell me exactly which entry was a finalist. As such, I could only assume that it was the one I’d put effort into (the rest were simply entered on a whim) — Blood Bath. That’s the project myself and two friends have been working hard on for a total of 475 hours (that’s 81 hours of work per minute of animation) and had absolutely no question we would win Telos for.

That project, however, was not the winner; indeed, it wasn’t even nominated. It’s tough to say why not, because I personally think the final product was very nice (not to say we couldn’t have done better) and infinitely superior to a couple of the other entries which were picked as finalists. Alas, that is not my place — the judges did what they did, and we’ll have another shot next year.

At that point none of my projects had been announced in any categories, and the two categories that remained were the ones that Telos is all about - films - the big shuh-bam, the main prize. Best Film and Best Comedic Film. As all of my entries were either 2D animations or 2D artwork, I began to suspect that I had received the invitation erroneously. There was a time of suspense, one might say, while “Cheno” (Mike Chenoweth, Professor of Film) explained the prizes and some other things.

Then something rather unexpected happened - the Best Comedic Film category, like the others, had three nominations. Each and every one of the nominations was some short cartoon I’d produced and entered with low expectations. I won the second most important of the categories, by default. No one else entered! I really can’t believe this. The prize for that award was some $500 software called Vegas+DVD (Windows software, but I can easily sell it and buy Final Cut Studio 2, which will be coming out in a few months). Not to mention the cool trophy (pictured twice). I would feel much more deserving of this trophy had my cartoon won, but the prize for that category was software valued at $150, and that would have had to be split between three of us. This winning entry (Wally the Water Droplet) was all my own, so monetarily speaking it’s the best outcome of Telos this year.

Truth be told though, my mind was elsewhere during the entire assembly. Sure, I was excited for it, it was after all supposed to be the fruition of 475 hours of work…and I was trying hard to be as excited about it as I might have been had it taken place a week ago. Be it good or bad, that just wasn’t going to happen, as my mind was determined to think about a certain girl.

Her name’s Rhebecca and she’s way out of my league; in fact, she’s about as far out of my league as you can get. My league is that of overweight nerds who aren’t funny and don’t have much to offer (the lowest league). Her league is that of professional model/actresses who are amazingly beautiful and always “taken” (perhaps the highest league). Personally I don’t care much for the league system, but of course that’s easy for me to say

When I asked her out earlier this week, I did so more to find out how she would say no than anything else. But then there’s always (at least for me) that glimmer of chance that maybe she’d say yes. So my first question was, “hey Rhebecca, are you going out with anyone right now?” and the answer didn’t surprise me at first. With a smile, of course, “I am”. A few seconds later, or minutes as it seemed to me, came “not.” She wasn’t taken! Well, that still didn’t mean much without the follow up. “I was wondering if you’d consider going out with me some time…”

We all know what should have happened, assuming the rules of the league system. Either she would smile and laugh a little, and say “no thanks”, or perhaps outright grimace at the thought and maybe even slap me. Our school’s a fairly nice community, so I sure didn’t expect the latter. We’re not that far away from Earth, though, so I was prepared for ridicule. “Sure, I’d love to, where do you want to go?”

WHAT?! No. No way. I wasn’t prepared for this one. “Uhh..well, I didn’t really have a specific place in mind, but…” YOU DORK! You just screwed it all up! She said yes, you moron, and you don’t know where you’re going? Now she’ll grimace, now she’ll say “no thanks”. But it didn’t come…instead, one of the cutest laughs I can remember hearing, and “Okay, well just let me know where and we’ll go!” And then she hugged me! She hugged a fat nerd! It was awesome! And then she walked off.

I called her that evening to tell her what the date was, and make sure it was something she wanted to do. Then the next day, we saw each other, but she said nothing. I guess that’s my initiative, but every time I say anything to her it takes courage. I thought it was just my own fault until just before Telos. She’s active in the student body, and was there giving out raffle tickets to everyone as they came in. I was with my friends (the ones who I worked on Blood Bath with) Skaven and Bigtree. As we entered, she said hi to Bigtree, and took no notice of me. That stung.

I have no idea what it meant — most likely, she just didn’t see me — but it made my mind even more active than it had been for the last two days. What does that mean? Does she still want to go on the date? Is this normal before a first date? Is this just how it works, and I don’t know because the only thing I know about traditional dating is what I see on TV? It was all I could think about for the whole of the Telos Awards (and continuing through now). After Telos I decided to be proactive. I didn’t want to have a date with an amazing girl that I didn’t even feel comfortable talking with.

I approached her, and it took as much (or more) of me as it had when I first asked her out…this time I had more of the classic stutter than before. “Rhebecca, I was wondering if maybe I could call you some time over the weekend, you know, to, you know, just talk. Unless, I mean, not if you don’t want to, but…”

“Yeah, that’d be great!”

“Oh okay, cool, well, are you sure it’s cool, because I don’t want to bore you or…”

“No, that sounds fine!”

“Okay, great, cool, well, I’ll talk to you later then…”

“Okay, bye Jt!”

I have to put the exclamation point on everything she says, because she’s so happy, and so nice, and everything she says sounds exciting.

Still I wonder what “that sounds fine” means. Still I am curious whether it’s a pity date or something like that. Still I wish to know if she just said yes to all of this because she’s a really nice person and doesn’t want to say no. But still I possess that crazy bit of hope that she actually does like something about me, and that what I think of her now is true and she’s a very good person, and maybe…maybe…this could be something.

I’m not sure if my readers have been in such a situation before, or know what this is like. Either way you probably didn’t want to read all that, but I’ve been wanting to write it out. I’m sorry you had to sit through it. Wouldn’t it be ironic if she reads my blog?

I would really appreciate if you would Digg this blog entry. I am very interested in seeing Cocaine Energy Drink survive!  Please help that cause by Digging!  Thanks!

Cocaine Press
April 14th, 2007

To: All
Fr: Cocaine Energy Drink
Su: Save Cocaine Energy Drink; or not

We need your help!

If you want to save Cocaine Energy Drink, please send an email to savecocaine@ced2U.com telling us that you know our drink is not a drug and that you know that it is not intended to get you high (which it is not). It is an energy drink like all of the other energy drinks.

If you want to keep Cocaine Energy Drink on the market we need your support.

Please take note that the phrase “The Legal Alternative” is used to convey the message that our energy drink is an alternative way to be “cool” without having to do illegal drugs or get high. We do not advocate drug use; that would not be responsible.

If you do not want to keep Cocaine Energy Drink on the market send us an email too. We have always been fair; having posted both bad press and good press (among other things) on our website. All emails will be read and considered.

Thank you for your attention.

Regards,

Jamey Kirby
Senior Partner/Founder
Redux beverages, LLC
www.drinkcocaine.com

I received this letter via email minutes ago. I responded readily, and as you can see, blogged about it. This is one of those times I really wish I had more blog readers, because this message needs to get out. Here is my response:

Cocaine is most certainly not a drug. It doesn’t get you high, so how in the world could it be intended to get you high? It would be an utter failure if that was its agenda…Cocaine is not a drug, it is simply the best energy drink on the market with a clever name. If Cocaine is put out of business, I will lose the last bit of faith I had that America could possibly be a free country.

If you respond, I’d love to hear what you had to say to the makers of Cocaine, so if you don’t mind sharing please post the message as a comment here.

I’m sure you all noticed the change over on the left of the site (the sidebar).  I did change a few things around.  I’m not sure if you noticed, but a while back my PexagonTech affiliate banner went down.  They accused me of trying to get “backdoor sales”, but I explained to them that I had attempted no such feat.  They made me start a new probation account.  It’s taken me this long to lose the laziness and get moving on that.

But while I was messing around with the sidebar, I realized that I don’t list the categories anywhere on the whole site, except a sort of list on the About page (which doesn’t even link).  Mostly, I just set up redirecting pages…a roundabout way of doing things.  So I cleaned up a bit of the code while I was at it, and we end up with this.  If anyone has any suggestions please use the Contact page and get in touch with me, or just comment on this post.

I don’t know how many of you have seen the link to Kalin’s site, A Drug Dealer’s Blog, but you should check it out some time - he’s got some worthy opinions and information.  Kalin and I have been having an ongoing debate on a few different topics, and I’ve gotten to a point where I can’t stand commenting my replies on his blog since they are so long and Kalin’s WordPress setup for whatever reason doesn’t break paragraphs up in the response.  Thus, I will post my reply here, and it might not make complete sense to all of you unless you read the beginnings of our debates here, here, and here.  Without further ado, here is my latest response:

Here’s first and foremost: No one has the right to kill of a child, period.  You don’t have the right to kill your kid because you can’t support her/him at age 2 or 4 or 7, so why at age 0?  I do, however, understand that this is my opinion and seen as extreme by a lot of people.  If abortion is going to be legal, then there has to be one key, unquestionable freedom: both parents must agree to an abortion before it happens.

I understand that means there would be cases where the father never shows back up.  He’s a complete asshole, and he should be punished severely if found, but tragedies happen in life.  I’m sorry you have to go through the “great pains of childbearing”, I really do feel bad for you, but you shouldn’t have shagged in the first place if you weren’t prepared for the possibility.  This isn’t a sexist view, that’s just how the anatomy works: the woman has more to fear from pregnancy than a man, in general.  I’m sorry it works that way, but if it were flipped around, I would demand the same freedom for women…and I feel no more remorse for man-whores who suffer through STDs.

This would need to be incorporated into the consent to sexual activity laws.  When a female consents to sex with a male, they are agreeing that they will bear any child resulting from said activity, which can be terminated only by consent of both parties.  I don’t see it as the man having to “veto” an abortion.  I see it as, no abortions allowed unless both parties agree.

This does cause problems when the guy runs away, but once the baby’s born, the woman can run away just as easily.  There’s not a whole lot that can be done about it.  Once again it comes down to this: when you commit the act, are you ready for all of the possible consequences?  If not, you shouldn’t do it.  I don’t think that the media or society in general advocates making an informed decision, I think the attitude is far, far too “if it feels good, do it.”

I don’t think there are many people who have “no real problem with children growing up without families”.  It’s just a matter of them choosing their priorities — theirs is to fight for the rights of unborn children, and while they will almost certainly want children to grow up well also, it isn’t their calling.  Just like for me, I really would love to see a whole lot of things changed in the U.S. government, and I might blog about those things from time to time, but my real focus in life is legalization of marijuana.  I know this example is different in that legalizing marijuana would have no negative consequence, while keeping abortion illegal has the unfortunate consequence of a lot of orphans.  My point still stands.

Additionally, I would MUCH rather see children grow up without families or be neglected than not grow up at all.  A lot of these children can grow up to do amazing things for society, and their rough childhood can create something.  I’m not saying that growing up alone is something we should encourage, we should certainly work to avoid it, but it can have positive effects in cases.

As to your argument about emotional damage caused to the child: almost every friend of mine was an accident.  I don’t know if this reflects the nation and world in general or not, but I can say this: my friends aren’t emotionally scarred from it, and neither am I.  It tends to be the people who weren’t an accident that sympathize with those who are, as if it was a horrible trauma.  It’s not, it doesn’t matter because for the most part (at least in the area and admittedly narrow array of people I have access to) parents love their children, and it doesn’t matter what happened in the past.  The same would be the case with “abortion veto.”

By the same token, the child would have every right to be angry at the parent that wanted an abortion, and I would hope that a parent in such a situation would feel TERRIBLE and absolutely LOATHE their former self, because now that the child is grown and you see him living, breathing, reacting to you and the things you say, you realize that all of this could have been stamped out before she/he was as big as your hand.

I think ALL of this is really simply solved: abortion is illegal.  Period.  You know before you do it that you don’t have an abortion option if something goes wrong with the condom.  You know what you MIGHT have to deal with.  Just like when you get in a car, you know there is a chance you could be T-Boned and put in the hospital, be paralyzed…there isn’t a way out of that.  Childbearing isn’t even remotely that bad,

My comparison was in response to yours: you said that the chance of getting pregnant was like the chance of getting in a car crash and dying.  My response is that, no, you are far more likely to get pregnant than to die in a car wreck.  My analogy was not stating that you would get pregnant every time…I wasn’t very clear, re-reading back over that, so sorry about that.  But you did get at the crux of it with your explanation that there are more pregnancies with less sex than there are crashes with more car driving.

I have heard statistics all over the place about how effective condoms are…never as much as 98% though.  But the truth is you can’t put a statistic on that.  It really depends, quite frankly, how hard you shag.  And the drugs that claim to prevent pregnancy depend on your body working like everyone else’s (or at least the people they tested it on to get their accuracy statistics…that would be an interesting job), but there’s no way to know that for sure.

I’m not sure where they got those statistics you found, because I’ve never heard of those people before.  Therefore, their surveys don’t span very far…it’s a VERY small group of people using condoms perfectly, in ideal situations…that doesn’t say ANYTHING about the matter.  I like statistics to back things up sometimes, but you have to understand, there’s NO SUCH THING as “statistics” really…they are always based on very small groups.  I think this matter is too large to trust to 100 couples who got questioned, out of 300,000 people in America and 6,300,000,000 billion in the world.

Want to talk statistics?  Your surveys covered 0.00000016% of the world’s population..  So before you say that 0.02% is small, ponder that one for a moment.

You are correct when it comes to only having limited precautions behind the wheel.  You’re completely correct, I think the only thing you can do is to not get in in the first place. *wink*

Here’s why you should wait for marriage for sex: First, the sex actually means something, rather than just physical pleasure.  It means a lot more to give your new husband or wife a brand new pair of shoes than a pair of shoes that’s been worn by the whole football team.

You’re missing the point here.  I never said a marriage certificate was important at all.  What’s important is the promise that there’s no one else, forever, “until death do us part”.  Love has no correlation to sex, other than that you should absolutely love someone before you have sex with them.  But that’s not to say you should have sex with everyone you haver love, because I agree it is quite possible to be in love with  more than one person in a life time.

In fact that’s exactly what I’m getting at.  You have to be careful with sex because it is so possible to love SO many people, yet sex is not for the people you love, it’s for the one person.

And you understand my frustration in talking about people who think that getting married will further their love.  This is how I feel about sex.  Both marriage and sex are NOT for people to expand their love, or to “make love” (that’s a misnomer if there ever was one).  They are for people who already REALLY, REALLY love each other, to the core, not just who they are right at this moment, but who they ARE.  They are both sacred.

And, no, I do not see ex-girlfriends and boyfriends as a bad thing, and that is not the problem here at all, nor does it have anything to do with what we’re talking about here.  I am actually ADVOCATING ex-boyfriends and girlfriends here…you wait until the right one comes along.  The only thing I see a problem with is having had SEX with ex-boyfriends or girlfriends, because they really aren’t your ex-boyfriend or girlfriend anymore.  They are your ex-husband or wife in reality.  And ex-husband or wife IS a bad thing.

My worry is the opposite of what yours was.  I worry that no woman will want me if I AM looking to eventually marry.  And I think the idea that marriage isn’t the goal can be dangerous.  You never have a family.  You never have someone who you can speak with, and who knows your life history, and knows you maybe better than you know yourself.  I think that is absolutely vital to a person.  Moreover, there have been many philosophers who suggested that the primary goal in a person’s life, believe it or not, is to create a child.  If you’re hopping from person to person, using as many birth control items as you can, you might never get that.  That means that when you die, your line is done.  Your DNA is wiped from the planet.  Forever.  It’s quite tragic.

On most of the details I agree with you.  You shouldn’t marry someone for any reason other than that you absolutely love their soul with all of yours.  And that is the person that your virginity was made for.  Divorce is not something that occurs when people go into a marriage with that mindset.  As for divorce showing the world that you don’t really know what you want, well, I think that’s an ironic statement.

I’ve been negative about Apple in the last couple of posts, but they certainly do a lot of things that I like. The latest of these is a patent they have reportedly registered (thanks enGadget). Apple has been knocked on for the lack of a “real” right click, but if you ask me, what they’ve got is superior to the common PC mouse, and I like the right clicker on the Mighty Mouse quite well.

The exciting thing about this patent design is the replacement they have for the scroll ball. The ball was a little weird for me, but I got used to it and I love it. However, the patent shows touch-sensitivity in that area! Like the touchpad of a laptop - except just for scrolling. I think it sounds amazing.

What’s even better is the speculations that you will be able to perform different movements with your fingers and bind actions to them….if I understand this correctly that means I could draw an X with my forefinger and have it launch Firefox (or whatever I wanted it to launch). This would be an amazing feature. I also venture to guess that Apple plans on incorporating their oh-so-precious multitouch, which they announced with the iPhone. I guess we’ll see.

It doesn’t seem right writing two negative posts about Apple in a row, but they’ve been working hard to earn it recently. Apperantly apple has announced that they will be delaying the release of OSX 10.5 until October (thanks enGadget) because they have focused on the iPhone instead. Most Apple fans were expecting the announcement before WWDC in June, and it certainly rubs us all the wrong way to postpone it beyond that. And although there’s no question in my mind that OS X 10.4 is already superior to Windows Vista, but this still sort of throws out their whole marketing campaign about how long it took Microsoft to launch Vista.

More importantly, Apple could have made a huge gain from this. Right now, a lot of people are pissed at Microsoft over Vista. People are starting to realize there’s nothing new about it except the interface (in other words, everyone has to re-learn how to use their computer, but nothing got better). Nobody’s happy about the poor application and hardware support of Vista, even though it will certainly get better in the future. Even worse, Microsoft recently announced that they’ll be pulling XP off the shelves, FORCING the Vista upgrade for all new computers. Microsoft will also be weakened when Billy Boy’s time is over and new leadership comes in; there will inherently be some reshuffling. Bottom line is, this is the PRIME opportunity for Apple to launch their new OS, explain how simple it is to use, launch a massive marketing campaign! It took very little time for Windows to overtake Apple back in the day, so am I crazy to think that Apple seriously has a shot at taking back the industry that’s rightfully theirs? Unfortunately, it looks like they don’t want it back.

Another important thing is tending to their current users. I am looking forward to the iPhone, but the truth is I’m in the minority. Most people are never going to pay so much for a cell phone, and even if money isn’t an object, people are scared about the phone being completely touchscreen based. Of course they’ll sell some to a few hardcore Apple fans, but even the Apple-lovers I know are miffed by the price, and won’t be making the purchase.

The other side of the coin: just about every Apple fan I know would pre-order 10.5 as soon as they could. People are excited about it, and $130 is not too bad for most Mac users to begin with. It’s a huge money maker, even if not one person decides to upgrade to 10.5 rather than downgrade to Vista.

Apple has their priorities all wrong. I’m angry at them, but more than anything I’m just deeply saddened that they could make such a dumb decision. I want Apple to lead Microsoft…but it will never happen with decisions like these. I really hope they have something up their sleeve, because they absolutely must capitalize on the Vista catastrophe.

I don’t know a more complicated, ridiculous, low-power program in the world. I would literally rather use Windows Movie Maker for crapping stuff out. Supposedly iDVD is simple…maybe for people who don’t mind using one of the very few templates iDVD comes with. For the rest of us, there is NO WORKING WITH iDVD! You try to move something, it bounces right back to where it frickin started. There is ABSOLUTELY NO WAY to move ANYTHING around!!!! There is no way to do ANYTHING!!! I HATE iDVD WITH A PASSION!!!!

It’s ridiculous because DVD Studio Pro is an amazing program that I love. But I don’t have $1200 lying around.

It was a STUPID decision for Apple to make iDVD in the first place, and it was a STUPID decision to put all their editing programs (Final Cut, DVD Studio, Soundtrack, Motion, etc) into one stupid expensive ridiculous package.