Does anyone else think its scary to know there are over 200 petrochemicals in the average American?

Boycott Big Oil? Prepare to give up your lifestyle – Yahoo! News

Ready to park the car and take up bike-riding or walking? Well, your bike and your sneakers have petroleum products in them. And sure, you can curb energy use by shutting off the AC, but the electric fans you switch to have plastic from oil and gas in them. And the insulation to keep your home cool, also started as oil and gas. Without all that, you’ll sweat and it’ll be all too noticeable because deodorant comes from oil and gas too.

You can’t even escape petroleum products with a nice cool fast-food milkshake — which probably has a petrochemical-based thickener.

Oil is everywhere. It’s in carpeting, furniture, computers and clothing. It’s in the most personal of products like toothpaste, shaving cream, lipstick and vitamin capsules. Petrochemicals are the glue of our modern lives and even in glue, too.

Because of that, petrochemicals are in our blood.

When the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tested humans for environmental chemicals and metals, it recorded 212 different compounds. More than 180 of them are products that started as natural gas or oil.

“It’s the material basis of our society essentially,” said Michael Wilson, a research scientist at the University of California Berkeley. “This is the Petrochemical Age.”

Louisiana State University environmental sciences professor Ed Overton, who works with the government on oil spill chemistry, said: “There’s nothing that we do on a daily basis that isn’t touched by petrochemicals.”

When in the movie “The Graduate” young Benjamin is given advice about the future, it comes in one word: plastics. About 93 percent of American plastics start with natural gas or oil.

“Just about anything that’s not iron or steel or metal of some sort has some petrochemical component. And that’s just because of what we’ve been able to do with it,” said West Virginia University chemistry professor Dady Dadyburjor.

Nothing shows how pervasive and malleable petrochemicals are better than shampoo, said Kevin Swift, director of economics and statistics for the American Chemistry Council, the chemical industry’s trade association. The bottle is plastic. The cap is plastic. The seal and the label, too. The ink comes from petrochemicals and even the glue that holds the label to the bottle comes from oil or gas.

“The shampoo — it’s all derived from petrochemicals,” Swift said. “A bottle of shampoo is about 100 percent chemistry.”

Just add a bit of natural fragrance.

Many of my friends and family will ask me how I can make a video like this and my answer would be that although I must be fucked up to make the video the most heinous things about it is the fact Jesus let it happen!!

WWJD? Some will take this to mean What would Jesus do? I wonder something different. What was Jesus doing? I mean was he too busy to notice these children suffering or was there some justification to the death of innocent children?

See the reason I ask is because it baffles my mind that the Lord and Creator would not only allow something like this but he seemingly endorses it with the fact it happens so often.

What benevolent God allows his children to suffer in such a way? What kind of people follow this kind of leader? WWJD? What was Jesus doing while these children suffered?

EDIT:
I just want to add that I love you and Jesus as much as I love everyone. It’s not about not believing but about not understanding. Can someone please explain why children must suffer the worst things imaginable?

Hard times spreading just like the flu
Watch out homeboy, don’t let it catch you
P-p-prices go up, don’t let your pocket go down
When you got short money you’re stuck on the ground
Turn around, get ready, keep your eye on the prize
And be on point for the future shock

маси

That’s the intro for “Hard Times” by Run DMC from way back in 1984. I remember listening to the album shortly after it was released and I did so daily for quite some time actually. Living in Key West or Stock Island actually, I grew up listening to many of the original rap hits with my teenage friends like Dominic and Keith who were both into music in their youth and had parents who afforded them nice things like new record players and lots of records. We listened to all sorts of raw lyrics and our parents never knew what our innocent minds had been exposed to. We lived in key West, a unique paradise devoid of racism, intense peer pressure and many of the social traps that children face today but lots of us were not as wealthy as some of our neighbors and I often wondered how that happened. What kind of secret knowledge did these people possess that allowed them to become so rich and happy? I thought rich people of Key West always looked happy with all their cool new stuff like big fast boats and fancy homes and when we tagged along with them I always wondered if me or my family would ever have so many nice things and so much happiness. We were always happy enough with what we had so they must be that much more happy with all the extra things they had, right?

I now know that money does not afford a person happiness but it can make happy people more comfortable and it’s nice not being poor. I’m content with the idea I may never be wealthy but I do well enough and I keep working at it for the sake of my family and my own well being. I always remember asking myself if there were some way out of the difficult financial times faced by so many people I knew and I remember thinking that surely this was a temporary or unique situation. It could not be that people were poor all of the time and eventually a person or even a family could bring themselves out of it.

How naive a child I was and how fanciful those dreams were when I thought about my Utopian life in that perfect place free of troubles and worry? Looking back now it would seem my dreams are shattered or at least in a shambles when you consider that the closest thing to them has been realized in a 3D movie. I must have spent over $60 for tickets and popcorn to watch Avatar in 3D twice because it was so close to my childhood dreams except of course for the 10 foot tall blue creatures and floating mountains in an alien world. My utopia was right here on earth and I just had to find it, or so at least that was how the dream went.

Approaching what must be 25 years now of seeking the truth to it all I have come to realize the truth is we are in sad shape as a species and humans across the globe are soon to face the most difficult times in our history. Ever since the cold war days of apocalyptic movies like Red Dawn and Mad Max and my first full read of the Bible and understanding of the gruesome ending that so many of my fellow sinners will face under Gods wrath I have wondered if the world was coming to an end or if there was some other explanation for the madness that played out on the daily news. I mean things just seem to be getting worse and worse for everyone but the very wealthy and we are poisoning everything from water and air to our own genetic code with the chemicals and toxic lifestyles we live and the only thing most people seem to care about is themselves.

I know that in time Mother Earth will be just fine no matter how sickened she is by the prescience of us disgusting humans and the horrid waste and pollution we produce with total disregard for anyone or anything around us in the name of vanity and greed. Whatever we do Earth can heal and move on and if anything is known it is that “Genesis” can and does occur and that life will continue if not for us then for some other more adaptive or maybe plain lucky species. Maybe some other world, one free of humans, can be a Utopia but I think we humans are hell bent on destroying ourselves and everything around us in the process.

For all our intellect, education and understanding we must be the dumbest of all the animals. For being such social creatures by nature we have an outrageous number of social limitations which hold us back as a species with issues like race, religion, wealth and even sexual orientation taking precedence over the fact we are all human and members of the same family. Those of us with dreams of equality and stability for all humanity who still think we have a chance at all should seek medical attention and/or psychiatric care because you are crazy and most likely ill of mind. It is obvious we have never been more separated by church and state and race and education and wealth and so many other huge obstacles than we are right now today.

Some will call me crazy but I think we have been screwed by nature. I know it sounds weird but it’s true. I believe we were doomed to fail as a species by the very nature of our success as a species. Charles Darwin’s survival of the fittest theory has survived now for quite some time and at no time in history has it ever been more believable then now. Looking at the current status of our evolution it is obvious we are devolving and falling backwards as a species through the degradation of society and our lack of compassion for our fellow humans.

Our evolutionary drive to live no matter what, that survival of the fittest mentality that made us the ruler over all other species, has evolved into a sickness called greed which is destroying all the social gains made since the time when cavemen roamed the earth and bashed each other to death with rocks and sticks over food and water. Greed is so powerful that it has stunted or even warped our social evolution and driven us into complete madness. Humans have never been so savage as they are today and the severity and heinous nature of our actions has never been more disgusting. There is no need for me to list the many horrible things that we do to each other but the crimes against children are the most disgusting. Why must we prey on children? How is that any supreme being would allow it’s creation to destroy itself and prey upon the most innocent of all?

We live in a world controlled by a select few who have the secret knowledge which brings them wealth and power. A world where the struggle for life is about building something for someone else with the hopes you can live on the scraps they toss you for a majority of the people and the minority are doing all they can to keep it that way. The gap between the have and the have nots has become a chasm that most families will never cross as the rich have gotten richer and the poor have never been so damn poor.

America has entered what will be no doubt be an even “Greater Depression” than the one my grandmother lived though with one glaring difference. In the 30′s American families came together and took care of each other in hard times and in the first decade of the new millennium we are more likely to have an experience like Hurricane Katrina or even Haiti where total chaos and social meltdown takes place immediately after the system fails. There will be no coming together of the people in the hard times we face. Those days are gone and those people have been replaced with a new generation of less able and less caring people. We have never been more dependent upon government and the people that control us than we are right now and it gets worse and worse with each new generation.

We are well conditioned consumers with total disregard for anything other than our own immediate personal gratification. Our lack of concern and understanding for the repercussions of our actions is sickening and with every second we do more harm than good in the world. We have now gone so low as to have the concern that human traffickers are stealing babies from an earthquake stricken disaster zone in Haiti and selling them off as slaves and prostitutes.

Can you name any other animal that is so cruel and sadistic as we are? Is money so important to us that we have to sell children into these horrors?

I feel sick. I think I need some ganja to heal my pains. I may have to move to California to do so but I can finally smoke herb in America and not face federal prosecution for it. It’s a watershed moment in the fight to legalize marijuana and I for one and excited for the future when we can toke on the White House lawn!!

in reference to:

“Thirteen years after California voters made the Golden State the first in the nation to legalize medical marijuana, the country’s top law enforcement official told U.S. drug agents to stop raiding medical marijuana gardens and busting patients who have medical prescriptions for pot.In a sweeping directive, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder told federal authorities it’s not a wise use of their time to go after people who use or provide medical marijuana in strict compliance with state law. Since California passed the groundbreaking Proposition 215 in 1996, 13 other states have passed similar laws.”
- California medical pot community celebrates move to back off federal enforcement – San Jose Mercury News (view on Google Sidewiki)

A school of fish swims over a bed of sea fans on the Negril Reef

Here is an underwater photograph of a green sea sponge on the reef off of Negril Beach.

Everyone has an opinion on Microsoft software but I must be honest to tell you that I’m impressed with how well the speech application works. I look forward to using this new speech recognition software to conduct more of my writing business so that I can spare my hands the cramps and endless pain of typing with my fingers. It looks like I will be speaking to my computer more often.

For those of you who have Microsoft vista I suggest you take a look at just how easy it is to set up this intuitive software simplify your online life as well. If I could just get this thing to write HTML code my life would be so much easier offer now have to take the fact that it’ll crank out a couple hundred words in under a minute.

It’s a straight forward no bullshit assessment of our current economic condition and a viable solution to California’s budget crisis. The time is now to embrace the decriminalization of marijuana and move past the “War on Drugs”. Have we not had enough war in this lifetime? Smoke a fricking joint and relax for the sake of our economy

Smoke This Recession / It’s simple: First we tax the booze. Then we legalize the pot. Done.

Really now, could there be a better time to decriminalize/fully legalize pot? Or, more fully, to decriminalize pot, and then spread respectable pot shops and vending machines and dispensaries far and wide, instill quality control and decent oversight and then tax the living hell out of the glorious, stress-reducing goodness, as we stop wasting billions fighting its grand ubiquity and instead sink into profitable pools of warm, hazy progress? Don’t you already know the answer?