Bridalplasty Wins A Gold Star

America, the land of opportunity, freedom and...free plastic surgery? Well, only if you defeat your rival brides-to-be on public TV! Keeping the same body you got engaged with is for losers! For teaching us this, the show Bridalplasty wins a Gold Star straight from my heart.

Bridalplasty also wins because it encourages women to run with syringes and uses the phrase "injectable party!" That sounds fun for all the wrong reasons.

Major Kudos to Modern Lady for effectively mocking this show. I can't give any better feedback than what she says here:


Cosmetic surgery compared to an angel's voice? Great, now I have to worry about this movie becoming a reality, too.

RIP Net Neutrality

The tiered web access deal being plotted by Verizon and Google is bad news for all internet users.

Yes, of course it's bad news for the freedom loving hippies who will complain about the loss of net neutrality and the fact that their web content is now being censored.

But, did you know its also bad news for God-loving Americans? Three years ago, Associated Press showed that similar web filtering was used by Comcast to BLOCK ACCESS TO THE BIBLE online.

Well, I guess we can always look to the upcoming Free Internet to save us all. Oh wait, the FCC decided to block that too. Despite support from over 70,000 people and "300 local, state and federal officials from all 50 states," the FCC decided granting ad-supported free Wireless internet to the public was "not the best policy outcome." What could be a better policy outcome? Well, right now the FCC is planning to auction this extra bandwith (known as the AWS-3 bandwith) to already existing service providers to "bring additional spectrum to market so the wireless ecosystem can continue to provide our consumers with the most innovative industry in the world."

Now I'm not really sure but I thought the words auction, market, consumer and industry were not supposed to be what motivates a federal agency. But maybe the concept of public good is something that will die out along with the uncensored internet.

Americans Low On Science, High on God

Fox News Bill O'Reilly doesn't know where ocean tides come from. Last night, he stated that God must exist because, "Tide goes in, tide goes out. Never a miscommunication. You can't explain that!"

Stephen Colbert takes the time to mock and refute this in his video here:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Bill O'Reilly Proves God's Existence - Neil deGrasse Tyson
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog> Video Archive

Stephen also takes the time to teach us where ocean tides actually DO come from (AKA the Moon's gravity). Which is good because, how many Americans actually know where tides DO come from? If Bill O Reily can claim that "YOU can't explain that" it means that he thinks most Americans really don't know anything about gravity or the moon AND that he can use that ignorance to his advantage. I learned all that moon/tide nonsense in 7th-grade science, so I'm kind of scared to think that this knowledge is utterly absent from a large percent of our country.

Well, I guess you really have two kinds of Americans here. Ones who know science, and ones who have blissful ignorance tied to faith in God. Certainly Bill O'Reily is leading Americans to become the later, but he isn't alone with states like Indiana and Texas changing their school policies to include more censorship, and more focus on the benefits of God.

But hey, isn't faith better than a little useless science trivia? I may know where the tides come from, but how has that really improved my life?

Problems with TSA Body Scanners

Unless you like the idea of showing your junk to the US Government every time you fly, you're probably unhappy with the new "Naked Body Scanners" and "Enhanced" pat downs. Or maybe you have no idea what I'm talking about. Either way, you should read this:

1. The backscatter x-ray technology used by the US produces a detailed, graphic outline of your body parts. A less invasive option would have been the ProVision ATD radio scanners used in Amsterdamn, which do not produce images of passenger bodies, only items found on the body. Why don't we use these now? Well, TSA Administrator John Pistole's answer is that

"these “blob” machines, as opposed to the “naked” machines, are the “next generation” of screening technology. His concern, he said, is that “there are currently a high rate of false positives on that technology, so we’re working through that.”"

I would take a false positive over my naked body being printed in an image any day. But at least the images aren't being saved, right? Think again...

2. All US scanners machines have the capacity to save your body scans and some of them ALREADY HAVE. Last August, a Florida courthouse using the machines admitted to saving "tens of thousands of images recorded with a millimeter wave system." But don't worry, TSA spokeswoman Sari Koshetz assures us that "the agency's scanners are delivered to airports with the image recording functions turned off." And since turning that function on would be against the rules, its not like anyone would ever do that.

Well, at least all these scans are going to keep us safe, right? Sorry, wrong again..

3. The new body scanners let many dangerous objects through. Adam Savage of Mythbusters recently passed through with 2 12-inch STEEL RAZORBLADES in his jacket pocket. The scanners also miss any items below the skin or in body cavities, and cannot detect "plastics or ceramics used in bomb-making."

So, if body scanners can't protect us, what should we do? Should we submit everyone to an enhanced pat down and cavity search? That doesn't sound very fun or time-effective. Instead, FOX NEWS has an idea: profiling. "We have limited resources; why don't we use them on the 19-year-old Yemeni exchange student and not the 90-year-old grandmother or the nun who's been at the same convent for 50 years?" Hmmmm. This does seem like a time-saver, and you know who else uses this strategy? Israeli Airports.

Trees, Now With the Power of GMO!

Are you a fan of trees? Then you'll love these new super-trees being developed at Berkeley and Oak Ridge National Laboratories.

Called the "organic enemy" of global warming, these new trees act like mini carbon vaults, sucking up huge amounts of carbon from the air and then sending it down to the soil, never to see the light of day again. So, if carbon is the criminal causing global warming, these super-trees are the global policemen who will catch and imprison that carbon, thereby allowing humans to frolic freely and burn as much fossil fuels as we want!

Meanwhile, the soil under these GMO trees will become filled with carbon, which will stay there "for centuries." A small amount of carbon is already naturally present in soil, and is good for plant growth. Could too much carbon in the soil become toxic? No one knows yet, but if that happens we can just invent a super Potato-Bug to eat up all the carbon in the soil!