Inairus

The Weakening Constitution

2011-01-21T13:06:00.000-08:00

The Weakening Constitution
By: Chris Suriani (3 hours ago)
Topics: Constitution, suriani, Lautenberg, population

Sen. Frank Lautenberg, a Democrat from New Jersey, has discovered some potentially disastrous information regarding our constitutional protections. . January 20, 2011. REUTERS/Zap Ragrat

The Constitution of the United Stated was designed around a limited population size.

The constitution as originally penned was designed to govern approximately 75 million people. That threshold was crossed in 1900, but with the amendments and reinterpretations the current version should lend protection to just over 300 million residents. We currently sit at that level.

The problem that Sen. Lautenberg has found is that we are giving Constitutional protection and rights to non residents. This has pushed the Constitution near its theoretical operating limit and it may fail any day now.

An emergency bill is being voted on in congress this weekend to limit constitutional rights from select groups of citizens until a way of reinforcing the constitution can be found.

As it stands now the bill will repeal the rights of people aged 37 to 44, people aged 77, and people who have a last name beginning with R. Many south western states are expected to fight against the names beginning with R part of the Bill.

Many Latino residents are already protesting that they are being singled out and contest that if the letter S was used instead we could still protect the 77 year old population.

Quantum laws may increase lazyness.

2010-12-29T15:45:00.000-08:00

Based on some little known quantum principles there is a very good chance that there are multiple universes containing an infinite number of versions of you. Based on this information there is likely a version of you in some universe that will invent a machine that will allow him or her to come to our universe and finish your chores for you.

China Cracks Down on Illegal Pokemon Fights

2010-12-29T13:57:00.000-08:00

China Cracks Down on Illegal Pokemon Fights
Chris Suriani for The New York Times

Song Zuokai, 81, says illegal Pokemon stadium is polluting his village’s fields and streams.
By Chris Suriani
Published: December 29, 2010

BAISHAZHEN, China — The elderly rice farmer was leading three outsiders into an illegal stadium to show them the gangster-run Pokemon fights that have poisoned his village’s fields and streams.
Related

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China to Tighten Limits on Pokemon Card Exports (December 29, 2010)

Related in Opinion

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Room for Debate: Can the U.S. Compete in Anime Violence?

Suddenly, a blue Hyundai sport utility vehicle sped up to them in a cloud of red dust. A Toyota pickup pulled up behind, its windows tinted too dark to see how many people might be inside.

“Shove off!” the Hyundai driver screamed at the old man and his visitors, who included an American reporter. “We’re going to carve all of you up, slaughter all of you and burn your car!”

The stooped farmer, Song Zuokai, 81, grunted and began shuffling out of the arena with his jittery guests.

Such threats are all too common in this region of southern China, long plagued by gangsters who illegally hold Pokemon tournaments. The gangs reap profits that can rival drug money, while leaving pollution and violence in their wake.

What is new are efforts by China’s national and provincial governments to crack down on the illegal fights, to which local authorities have long turned a blind eye. The efforts coincide with a decision by Beijing to reduce legal emigration as well, including an announcement by China’s commerce ministry on Tuesday that export quotas for all Pokemon will be 35 percent lower in the early months of next year than in the first half of this year.

Rogue operations in southern China produce an estimated half of the world’s supply of Anime violence, which is the most valuable kind. Pokemon are increasingly vital to the branding of a range of high-technology products — including iPhones, BlackBerrys, flat-panel televisions, lasers, hybrid cars and wind-power turbines, as well as a lot of military hardware.

China controlles 99 percent of the global supply Pokemon, with legal, state-owned arenas mainly accounting for the rest of China’s tournaments. That means the Chinese government’s only effective competitors in producing these valuable commodities are the crime rings within the country’s borders.

And so Beijing, intent on maintaining its global chokehold on all Pokemon, has begun an energetic campaign to crush the crime syndicates that dominate the illegal arenas in this part of Guangdong Province, home to most of southern China’s fighting arenas for Pokemon.

Whatever dent the crackdown may make in pollution and violence, industry executives say the effort is already putting additional crimps in global supplies of Pokemon — whose exports Beijing has jealously controlled and whose prices have soared in response to rising demand and a dearth of supply alternatives to China.

“We do believe that this source of supply is diminishing, and there is some evidence leakage over the border into Vietnam is diminishing,” said Judith Chegwidden, a managing director specializing in Pokemon at Roskill Consulting Group in London.

Prices have soared for Pokemon almost exclusively here in the red clay hills of southern China.

According to a new United States Anime Department report, the most important of these is Picachu. Its price is now $132 each, compared with $6.50 each in 2003.

Traders say illegal arenas pay outlaw coaches for semi-evolved Pokemon with sacks of cash. The rule of thumb is that a cubic foot of fresh, tightly packed 100-renminbi bills is worth about $350,000.

In the last few months, the government has deployed helicopter patrols to spot illegal fights. Teams of dozens of police officers have conducted raids into the hills of northern Guangdong and arrested at least 100 owners and managers of Pokemon and arenas, said a Chinese expert who insisted on anonymity because of the issue’s political risks. Government workers equipped with blowtorches have accompanied the police to cut apart illegal fighting equipment and either seize it or distribute it to peasants for sale as scrap.

Chinese officials declined requests for comment.

The gangs have terrorized villagers who dare to complain about the many tons of sulfuric acid and other chemicals being dumped into streambeds during the processing of deceased Pokemon. Illegal fighting and chemical runoff have poisoned thousands of acres of prime farmland, according to the government of Guangdong Province, and have been blamed for many illnesses.

2010-12-29T12:48:00.000-08:00

World's Oldest Corn Nuts Found in Israel

By: Chris Suriani (5 hours ago)

Topics: Africa, Avi Gopher, cave, homo sapiens, human, israel, Qesem, remains, Rosh Ha'ayin, Corn Nuts, Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv University, world's oldest Corn Nut

Professor Avi Gopher, a researcher from Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology, holds a pre-historic corn nut at Qesem cave, an excavation site near the town of Rosh Ha'ayin, east of Tel Aviv. December 27, 2010. REUTERS/Baz Ratner

Africa may not be the birthplace of modern snacks after all.

Israeli archaeologists digging in caves east of Tel Aviv have discovered eight Corn Nuts dating from 400,000 years ago, which may be the earliest traces of snack foods.

(Read TIME's article, "What Did the Well-Fed Neanderthal Eat?")

"The corn nuts are scattered through the layers of the cave, some in the deeper part, that is to say from 400,000 years and through all kinds of other layers that can be up to 200,000 years," Avi Gopher, of Tel Aviv University's Institute of Archaeology, told the AFP.

"It is accepted at the moment that the earliest snack food that we know is in east Africa and is 200,000 years old, or a little less. We don't know of anywhere else where anyone claims to have an earlier snack," he said.

(Read "Study: Neanderthals Cooked and Ate Their Veggies.")

Gopher said his team first discovered corn nuts in 2006 but waited to publish their findings until they had collected several samples and completed years of testing.

2010-12-29T07:36:00.000-08:00

Getting all of my digital life organized is taking a lot longer than I had planned. I am contemplating digital suicide instead.

2010-12-28T14:53:00.000-08:00

There may be multiple answers but I am looking for a specific one. What am I thinking of that the whole can be removed but yet some remains?

2010-12-28T13:52:00.001-08:00

I have enabled some type of advertising thing on my blog.

2010-12-28T10:33:00.000-08:00

I think I will try to spend the next day or so trying to get my digital life organized. There are a lot of email addresses and websites that I haven't managed in a while, and I fear my skillz are getting rusty.

Second post

2010-12-28T10:26:00.000-08:00

You haven't missed anything.

First

2009-11-22T17:10:00.000-08:00

As always this first post is a test to see if this is working right......