Tin Roof Blowdown

Sometimes it's difficult going to a Polling Station and marking an 'X' in a box but truly knowing that democracy is already dead and the Imperialists have already won carried forth on a palanquin of lies. 

How so many people can be deluded into thinking that being ruled by an unelected body in Brussels is a good thing I'll never know but I know this:

Within the next century the pseudo-democratic European Union will collapse in blood and flames like so many European empires before it.

Expect an update tomorrow sometime.

This is a small and probably pointless blog entry but I wanted to talk about something that pisses me off, a pet peeve if you will.

Watching people at traffic lights or specifically crosswalks as I think Americans call them (Someone want to clarify that for me?) I tend to notice people will repeatedly bush the button again and again and again... and bloody again. Why!?

There seems to be this popular idea that repeatedly pushing the button will cause the lights to change fast. This is complete and utter tosh! No matter how many times you push that button the lights will not change faster.

Traffic light systems are integrated and the majority of them run on time sequences. As in a set amount of time passes before a light goes from green to red. When you press that button the pedestrian lights are entered into the sequence and a countdown begins. After that first push you cannot alter the countdown in any fashion.

If the lights are taking forever to change it is because someone programmed the time sequences to take that long.

Newer traffic light systems are more dynamic and use a range of sensors to monitor traffic flow and will adjust their time sequences accordingly. Again repeatedly pressing that button will not hasten your journey across the road.

I know it's petty to get riled up about such silly things but it never hurts to learn about everyday things we take for granted and if someone walks away from reading this and doesn't repeatedly push that button then I'm happy.

Life is full of options, yes? Let me provide you a scenario. You have 10 million euro (Substitute dollars, pounds, whatever) and you have two options to spend.

1. You can spend said money on a national cervical cancer vaccination program which is a huge benefit to the healthcare of women in your country.

2. You can spend said amount on a 7km bicycle path in your nations capital. An expensive option for a bicycle path that doesn't go that far at all but it's green...

If you're me then the no-brainer option is the cervical cancer vaccination. It's needed, it's massively beneficial and anything this helpful that combats cancer is surely worth the cost?

Well if you're the Minister for Health, Mary Hearny, or Minister for Transport, Michael Martin, of the Republic of Ireland then during this summer you would've shelved a €10,000,000 cervical cancer vaccination program and then earlier this month announced a 7km bicycle path costing €10,000,000.

How they can spend that much money on 7 kilometers is beyond me. How they can spend that much money on a bicycle path that benefits few compared to the vaccination program which benefits nearly every woman in the country is well and truly beyond me.

I haven't blogged in a while and this will probably be short but I find it important. So take a look at this:

This is what I got when I tried to go to the PirateBay today. I have never, ever seen this before. I think my freedoms just got violently raped. Thankfully there's always isoHunt.com. At least for now. Does it bother anyone else that ISP's have the powers to do this?

As Humans we're quite used to being top of the food chain and as such holding a position of dominance over many animals. Cows for example are used worldwide both as a source of meat and milk. Other animals we've developed an kinship with, animals such as dogs and cats spring to mind.

But what happens when the animals we consider pets, family members and even friends become livestock for unscrupulous individuals? We get what is known as a Puppy Mill. Puppy Mill farms are composed of hundreds of cages with maybe 3, 4 or 5 dogs per cage. Most of the dogs are breeding stock, female dogs forced to have a dozen litters before their bodies can no longer function that way. Then they're usually killed. The puppies from the litters will spend their early lives in these cages, devoid of Human contact and proper medical care these dogs develop social, psychological and medical issues but that matters little to the Miller. The puppies that aren't kept for breeding are sold off the pet stores or even sold online.

Pet stores will willingly do business with these Millers and that's one of the horrid tragedies of this. They know the plight of these dogs but they'll still sell them. Many of these dogs are sold ill and die within a few weeks.

In the U.S puppy mills are regulated by the government but the laws are so damn flimsy that Millers can get any with most anything. Rusted cages, low food rations, dogs living in their own faeces, these things happen far to often but the government does little to stop it. Only the beleaguered rescue shelters can do anything and that in itself is little. They're often so under resourced that many dogs are unfortunately put down and robbed of any life.

As far as I'm concerned this is one of the lowest, most horrible of things that we as a species have done. It's something that needs to be stopped all across the world. Internment camps, concentration camps, gulags, all things that Humans have and still encounter through the years. Camps were people are treated as cattle, camps that we in modern society find disgusting and wrong. Is it any less wrong when the same is forced upon dogs?

Many people would say no. Many people would say dogs are just animals so what does it matter. Well in the end Humans are just animals too and I'm one animal who doesn't like to see the cruelty and disgusting conditions of Puppy Mills.

So what can people do? Don't buy puppies from pet stores. Go down to your local shelter and save a puppy. Support legislation to ban puppy mills and support the shelters too.