Young Fat and Fabulous... or...

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/SciTech/20100729/young-fat-fabulous-100729/


Ok so as I said on facebook, this one might generate some hate towards me. There are a couple things to remember before going into this:

1) I dont hate plus sized girls/people.
2) This blog is actually about something. Take it at face value and dont read into it.
3) Umm... i think that's it actually. And yes, please feel free to respond.

Basically the story above is discussing how there is clothing made for plus sized girls. Totally fine. Bigger people need bigger clothes, the market exists, so make it. But i'm worried that articles like these are relaying a dangerous message.

As I see it (and please correct me if i'm wrong) there are two types of plus sized people. There are people with legitimate medical problems (thyroid issues, glandular, disabled, etc) and there are people who are lazy and eat horribly (and i guess there's a hybrid as well, someone with a mild medical problem who eats sorta-bad).

The first group of people aren't who I'm going to concentrate on here. It's still important to eat as well as you can and exercise and etc, and some of you do and it's very hard to manage. Please don't ever feel negative about this as sometimes you just can't control this.

This is about the second group. North America (specifically the USA more than Canada) is basically considered a Haven for "fat people" the world over, and is a giant joke. Even people that go to the States from Canada come back and one of the things they take away from their trip is "it's a fat Country" (thats a quote from a friend of mine who recently came back).


So lets come right out and say it... it's not ok to be fat! And this isn't just a Kris opinion either, this is a pretty common opinion in many important facets of society, like Doctors and health professionals, schools, etc. Now here's where some of the distinctions are in this post.

I'm not talking about people who are a bit over weight. No one's perfect right?

So... I always put in both sides of the coin in my arguments, so time for the flip.

Recent studies have shown that eating for some people is literally as addictive as herroine. The brain produces simular reactions in some people while eating as it produces while shooting herroine. Their bodies even produce withdrawl reactions when food taken from them. For someone like this eating healthier and eating less is no longer a matter of "just do it" but it's now a situation where they need help to in many cases.


Here's my main issue. It seems that being overweight these days is becoming a social norm, acceptable, and in some rare cases encouraged! (See Maury Povich and the woman TRYING to become the worlds largest). Overweight people are a drag on the medical system as they typically get sicker more often (heart attacks, breathing issues, sleep apnea, etc.). Stories like these almost seem to be trying to tell people "you're overweight? dont worry about getting healthy again, just think about how good we can make you look in these new pants!!" which is a horrible message to be sending people. Is this just a matter of because it's food that causes the issue it's acceptable? If it is about an addictive nature does that mean we should start showing drug addicts and alcoholics how it's ok to be like that?

In closing, if you are one of these plus sized people and i've insulted you, I really am sorry. The intent or what I've written today is meant to show this is something we need to change, and not in a way that seems to be happening. I know it's hard, and I do sympathize as I know people who struggle with their weight.

Let me know what you think. Obviously I dont think i'm wrong, but if you do, let me know, and tell me why.

Just ask yourself this. Would you rather work hard and be healthy? Or dont and risk dying young?

The G8/G20 summit cost - Canada vs US

This is going to be a very VERY short blog posting, but I would like to ask a quick question.

Firstly, i'm not a person who complains about politics a lot. Ohhhh! I'll talk about why in a blog soon and get some opinions about that.

Anyways, not into politics, but I'm really dissapointed in how Canada budgeted the G8 Summit costs. In a news article I read:

News agency Ria Novosti notes that the 2009 U.S. G20 summit cost US$18 million, while Canada's pricetag for the meetings was well over $1.1 billion.
"Thus Canada will spend 51 times more than the US did just a year ago to protect G8 leaders from Canadians," the agency writes.


So my questions... why? Why did our government feel the need to spend this kind of money. Why did we decide that we needed to spend well over a Billion dollars more than the states did just last year? Do you not realize what you could have done with that money? How many lives you could have saved, hungry mouths you could have fed, scholarships you could have set up? The economic stimulus you could have created with that money, hell even put it into Canada's small but decent space program, scientific research.

Question for people that read this. Why? Does anyone have the SLIGHTEST idea why we wasted an extra billion dollars on something the states was able to do with 1/51 less money?

So a swiss man walks into a train station...

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20100625/singapore-caning-sentence-100625/

Thanks Oliver Fricker for the story, I'm now going to ridicule you.

So a swiss man walks into a train station... sounds like the beginning of a bad joke, and in part it kind of is. This man goes to Singapore with a friend and proceeds to vandalise a subway car. Here are a few snippets from the news article I need to post before proceeding.

"Singapore sentenced a Swiss man to three strokes of a cane and five months in prison..."

"...reinforcing the city-state's reputation for severely punishing minor crimes. "

"He feels the sentence is too high, and so do I," Kang told reporters."


Ok so my big problem with this situation is this. We have a guy that goes to a country. He either did 1 of 2 REALLY stupid things. He didn't check to see what the punishment for breaking a law like this is before performing the crime, OR he knew that Singapore is extremely hard on crime and decided to do it anyways.

Now my assumption in this situation is that we're dealing with the latter portion of this. He knew the country was hard of criminals, and just thought he'd ninja-grafiti a subway car and not get caught. But since he did, now he's whining that the laws are too strict and wants leniency.

No. This is ridiculous. First of all, you committed a crime, something which you knew was a crime, as I'm pretty sure there's no where on the planet that this would actually be legal. Second of all you did it in a country that's know for it's strict penaties on crime. Not only known for being strict, they're also knows for flipping other countries the bird when they ask them to play nice.

Singapore is it's own country, with it's own political system, and it's own set of laws. We should either respect how they handle affairs within their country, or dont visit. Another fairly obvious option would be if you dont want to get in trouble, dont break the law.

In closing, I completely agree with the punishment, those are their laws. The country worked hard to get where they are, so if you go and visit them, show them the respect they deserve.

What does law and punishment even mean?

Hi, I'm *insert criminal name here*. I have committed a crime. The court system has declared me guilty of, lets say assault. They have deemed that an appropriate punishment for this crime is 8 months in prison, community service. During my incarceration I have been told I need to take anger management classes to control my violent tendencies and see a counselor.

6 months later I have been released on good behavior. The counselor says I am able to control myself better now. I am a model citizen, caring, responsible. Yet there are still people who believe I am a bad person, deserving to stay in prison, rot, or maybe even die.

The Justice system has been designed so that a certain punishment fits a certain crime. If I speed I get a ticket. If I punch you in the nose, I get an assault charge and community service. If I sell drugs I go to jail for a year, rape or murder your friend I go to jail for life. So why when people are done their terms do people still think poorly of them? How can you tell the difference between the good and the bad?


Karla Homolka. Oh Noes!! Kris is going to say something horrible now!!!

Ok so Karla Homolka did a lot of horrible things... no one denies this. Did she deserve the death penalty for it? I don't know enough about what happened to say either way, but she probably did. But I do have a problem with what the government is doing about her right now.

The government, by proxy of a judge, sentenced this woman to a punishment that "fit the crime"... atleast that's the idea behind the whole system right? So when she tried to get a pardon why does the government freak out? Because the public wants it? So if the government didn't believe her punishment was enough, why did they let her out?

Now please don't confuse this statement with me saying I believe she should be let off and allowed to do as she pleases. But really, why shouldn't she? She was in jail for the amount of time the government said was an appropriate punishment for her crime. This doesn't just go for her, it goes for every criminal that has this happen to them. If you're going to give these people special "fuck you" privileges, maybe the system doesn't work. Maybe you fucked up in the first place and you didn't give these criminals the appropriate punishment, not enough jail time, etc etc etc.

So my question to all the people that read my blog is this. What's wrong with this picture?
Are we not penalizing criminals enough?
Are we not rehabilitating them enough?
Are we being too hard of them?

And finally... what's more broken? The Criminals we incarcerate, the Justice system that can't seem to get it right, or Society for not seeing any of this for its truth?

Why aliens would only be a threat if they were dicks...

So with Hawkings releasing recently about why we shouldn't broadcast our presense, I felt the need the weigh in on this topic. You know, because a part of me thinks I know more about Stephen-the-man-Hawkings right?

Really the only reason aliens would be a threat is because they were dicks. BUT, this is actually pretty viable. Lets look at some of the reasons we've seen in the past as to why aliens have come to be a problem.

1) Colonization
Other than being jerks this is actually somewhat of a valid threat, which is why i'm touching on it first. An overful planet of oxygen breathing life forms then starts to spread out looking for habitable planets. This is definitely a possibility. But there are a LOT of holes in this idea.
a) The air we breathe consists of 0.03% Carbon Dioxide, 0.93% argon, 20.95% oxygen and 78.09% Nitrogen. Followed by trace amount of all other kinds of fun stuff. Too much oxygen would be lethal to humans as i'm sure it would be to aliens if there was too much or not enough. At different atmospheric pressures the percentages of there different airs we need change to allow them to absorb into our system. There's a LOT of factors that make the air we breathe specific to earth life.
b) Gravity is a bitch! So is air pressure. If any of these are off by even say... 50% higher? That's a HUGE different, and not difficult to have happen on a planetary level.
c) Pre-existing life could be lethal. If a planet is perfect for human life, what does that mean? It means there's already life on the planet. This isn't a "maybe" scenario either. Our planet filtered itself because of the life in it, plants slowly filtering the air, evolving it to evolve. What if one of the microbes on the planet we go to think certain parts of our brain taste like candy, or LOVE bonding to the cells of our lungs? yup, D...E...D... ded.

2) Gold!
Ok the most people probably dont get the reference because the movie was sooooooooooo bad. In Battlefield Earth the race of giant aliens (played by Scientologists) wants earth gold.
So imagine this scenario if you will. You're a gold farmer... you're positive there's 20 pounds of gold 100 feet deep, so you get your shovel out and start shoveling. At the 10 foot mark, you slam into a gold vein containing tens of thousands of pounds of gold... but nope, you completely ignore it because you want the 20 pounds of gold much further down. That giant vein of gold you first hit is known as the Kuiper Belt. It's a giant asteroid field orbiting the solar system slightly past Pluto. It's full, FULL of asteroids that have all the metals you can possibly imagine. There are also giant chunks of methane and ammonia which can be used as fuels, water for drinking etc etc. Also, to reach the Kuiper belt, you have to fly past the Oort cloud, which is, again, a MASSIVE space of asteroids. Now yes, the Oort cloud has never been directly observed, but mehh, lets pretend.

3) The hassle vs the technology.
There are only like... 3 ways an alien civilization could get here, and only one of those ways in which things would really be an issue.
a) FTL (faster than light travel)
b) spacial travel (worm holes, teleportation, etc)
c) Generation ships
FTL ships I dont think would be a bother. Oh there's a planet, oh there's life on it, the next habitable planet on sensors is 3 days that way... off we go.
Spacial travel same thing, they'd just warp to the next place on the map.
Generation ships might be anxious. But even then, a generation ship that makes it all the way here without killing one another, i would think, would be a tight knit community. This, to me, would be a situation of a group of people who have strong loving ties, some would want to stay (assuming our gravity, air pressure and composition, and microbes wouldn't be letal to them) some would ask for help and leave.

In the end, I could easily see civilizations living in places like the kuiper belt. Effectively umlimited resources, you could spread out as far as you wanted. The technology that a civilization would attain by this time I would think would allow for super fast terraforming so like... Come here, terraform Mars, and we have buddies we can borrow sugar from.

Like I said, the only people that would have any reason to be a threat would be a civilization full of dicks. This being said though, a civiliation that does have the technology to make it all the way here wouldn't be defeated by a high pitched country folk song, or water, or anything really. We would just either wake up one day and they'd have won, or we wouldn't wake up.

So to Hawkings, I do agree. The risk of total anhilation, although seemingly low, isn't worth that risk. It's a shame though, first contact with a species of good willed people who just want to know they're not alone in the universe, would be spectacular.

I'd like a Seal sandwich... and can you club that for me?

You know, because when you club a sandwich you get tomato and lettuce and... yeah i'm going to hell...

Ok so this is the primary focus of todays Blog, which was going to start out to be just sealing, but will now be primarily about protestors. And I promise i'll enrage someone soon so keep reading.

This year there is a quota of 330,000 seals to be killed. Sealing-protestors (and not all) dont want any killed.

But this is a debate right? There are pro and cons, reasons why they should and shouldn't be killed. That's how a debate is supposed to go. Measure the pro's and the con's, and meticulously determine which is the right step to take. But the sealing-protestors dont see why it's needed, they just see white snuggly soft seals on their snow white snow with hellish red blood spilled everywhere. And baby seals are totally super cute for the record.

Now this isn't just a jab at sealing-protestors either... it's a jab at all protestors. Abortion protestors for example, stating their causes for pro-life... by blowing up clinics and killing people (again, not all do this). When they're told that there isn't even brain activity until th 4th tri-mester their main argument is "you're killing the potential of life". So does this mean you're abhorently against condoms and masturbating? Becuase you're killing the potential?

Now not all protesting is bad either. Infact I'd probably say that all non-violent, well thought out protesting is good. To be so passionate about something that you would dedicate so much time and energy into it, in some cases dedicating your very life to it is amazing, and quite honestly something I've never had the grace to experience. An old old friend, next door neighbour is very much like this. She has so much passion, so much drive. I might not agree with her all the time, but she does it in a way that actually makes her credible and that people would listen to what she says.

Ok so why is sealing good? Well for starters, the basic need to hunt seals stems directly from man. We both have a common food source, fish. Salmon to be specific if i remember correctly. So what happens if we just leave the seals alone? Well, the 330,000 seals that are alive eat more fish, depleting our own food source. They reproduce, next year there's more, etc etc etc. It's at a point that the seals would actually eat themselves out of food. Not to mention they would eat a lot of food that people would also eat. And a large percentage of the world depends on the food from these areas. Not to mention the food that we actually get from the seals.

However...

Running up to a seal, smashing it's skull, taking it on the boat while it's still alive, skinning it alive, and throwing it's still moving body into the freezing water so it can freeze to death while it drowns is absolutely horrendous. Realistically speaking how sealing should work is simular to how other slaughter-type areas are "supposed" to work. And I say "supposed" because we all know the actual conditions of some of these chicken coops and cattle farms.

If we're going to keep doing this (which really we have to) it should be done humainly and as pain free as possible. We should use all the seal meat, there should be VERY strict guidelines to how this works. Spiked clubs though? Really come on!

Stopping all sealing is impossible the way things are now. You'll never get the government to do it. So the faster you realize this, the faster you can make the changes that actually can (and should) happen.

A Final Message:
To the protestors. Your passion is admirable, and your drive is inspiring, but you need to use enough thought to realize which battles can be won, and which ones can't. There are a lot of people that do this already, but there are alot (like PETA) who dont, and just attack anyone who does something even remotely wrong. Take this fantastic drive that you have and start using it towards actual achievable goals. If you do this, the good and amazing changes you could do would be world changing. Yes we know you want more, and there's nothing wrong with you message, but when it comes to the fight, fight for what you can change, and change it what you will see.

Stupidity breeds stupidity

So to start off with, this blog isn't going to be as long as I would normally like something about this to be. Why you might ask? Because if I go too out of control my head will explode after attempting to clean the earth of the plague know as "the dumb".

So lets start with point one. The Law.
WAY TOO BROAD! So i'm going to give some good examples of things just to get the ball rolling, and then your brain can fill in the rest.

So here's a good example of stupidity. Saw a post recently about someone talking about jay walking and how they do it all the time. This actually I think is fine if you're a smart individual (the person who jay walks I do believe is smart).

Laws are basically created for 3 reasons.
1) To protect nice people from bad people.
2) To protect stupid people.
3) To make money.

Protecting nice people from bad people is a given. Making money is kinda show by stuff like... in canada the fastest speed you can travel is 110km/h, but there isn't even a car made today that can't go faster than that... because like... if you can't give people tickets for speeding, the cops bring in a LOT LESS money.

Protecting stupid people. When that person made the post about jay walking, someone actually commented "this law didn't exist with horse and buggies, why does it need to now?" REALLY? whens the last time you saw a steady group of horses travelling at 100km/h? Like, this is ridiculous. Laws like no jaywalking are made to protect people too stupid to see the actual dangers that exist in society. Smart people know to look both ways, make sure it's safe, and cross. If a cop sees something like this and you're being safe about it, great! But for everyone that's careful about it, there's someone else that tries to run across Deerfoot during rushhour, or bolting across the street and cars are slamming on their brakes. People die from jaywalking all the time remember... because they're too stupid to look both ways, hence the need for the law. Laws like no texting and driving is a good example too. People need to learn to use their brains more.

It's like warning labels. There was a food processor a while back that actually had a warning on it to not insert your penis into it. why did this warning label exist? Because someone actually did it and the company that made them added it to prevent a lawsuit. Oh and dont even GET ME STARTED about law suits! Suing a company for making your coffee actually hot? Suing a home owner because you broke your leg when you slipped on some ice when running away from them because you were caught robbing their house? The Legal system enables criminals to be criminals, and protects stupid people so much that it shows them they dont need to actually think and use their brains, because if something is made so that a 3yr old can't understand it, just sue. *thumbs up* pricks...



Point number two: Fox News.

What in the hell is this crap? (as you can see i'm getting agitated already, hehehe). This is a station that has just about as much merit as the National Enquirer. A News organization is supposed to be something that directs people to what the actual news is. When you give a half assed story, and then have some moronic Idiot like Nancy Grace or that other douche-canoe Bill Reiley ranting for 20 minutes about their own moronic half assed opinion that all it does it feed the fire of baseline human stupidity for the inbred clowns from the southern states who actually eat this crap like sugar coated cheerios laced with speed, all you're doing is forcing idiot behaviour and thoughts into the general populous. These are people that have pushed their own opinions onto the public mind so hard and so harshly that people have killed themselves, and they're too ignorant and self absorbed to realize it. The Darwin awards exist for a reason and I hope very much that these two manage to win themselves this award. Unfortunately since the law tends to protect stupid people...



Point number three: The internet

This one is pretty self explanatory. If you want to see a group of people that are just completely stupid, just read the comments section of any news site. It's full of people so obsessed with blowing out their own opinions that they simply dont want to even attempt to understand what the actual point is. If this isn't the fact with some of these people their ridiculous opinions are actually real, making me shocked to the point of wondering how these people have survived into adulthood remember simple concepts like eating during the day. It's a good thing that breathing is an bodliy, involuntary act otherwise these people would have suffocated a LONG time ago.

I wish I had some examples of this, but seriously it's not needed. Go to www.ctv.ca and check out the comments section of any news article that's been around long enough for a good spread of comments if you want to see what i'm talking about.


I'm going to leave it here. Feel free to input in any way you'd like. I'd really like to have some people give their opinions on some of these things.

Give me your thoughts!