Time for random link-quoting!
Mar. 8th, 2004 07:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conulyAnd a question. Usually, when I hit tab, I go to another link or box or something, but today, for some reason, it's just switching whatever window I'm in. Why?
Anyway, link number one! No matter how hard we fight, it may be quite a while before the tide turns in the U.S. By that time, my children may be adults – ill-educated adults with poor job prospects, no health care, and no options left but to be drafted in to some corporatist jihad. I wanted another future for them – the kind that America no longer chooses to offer its children. And I wanted my own taxes to go for something other than the further enrichment of oligarchs.
We're well aware that Canada may not be the perfect safe haven. An economic disaster in the US would certainly hurt it, badly. But it has resources to draw on, too. First, it's not quite as dependent on the US as many think, because its financial and cultural links to both Europe and Asia are much stronger than America's. If bad times come, this widespread connection to the community of nations – the connections Shrub has so thoughtlessly severed for America – will do much to soften the blow.
Second, Canada is still the leading supplier of things that America (and the world) will continue to need through any crisis, including energy, oil, timber, and fresh water.
Third, Canada's social values are very different. While Americans seem bent on turning on each other with bared teeth these days, my new neighbors impress me daily with their gentle strength and thoughtful intelligence. Canadians are raised from birth to take care of each other, keep the peace, and value order and teamwork. Much more than Americans, I trust them to make humane choices in the face of hard times.
Nice and melodramatic, though even I, the infamous pessimist cynic don't think things are that bad yet. Bad enough to consider moving, but not so much that I'm dying of fear just now. Still, something to think about.
Link two An award-winning documentary called "Super Size Me" has heaped on more unwanted publicity for McDonald's. The documentary, which chronicles the deterioration of filmmaker Morgan Spurlock's health during a monthlong experiment eating nothing but McDonald's food, won a directing prize at the Sundance Film Festival and is set for wide release this spring.
Riker said the phasing out of super-sizing has "nothing to do with that (film) whatsoever."
The company earlier issued a statement calling the documentary "a super-sized distortion of the quality, choice and variety available at McDonald's." It says the film is not about McDonald's but about Spurlock's decision to act irresponsibly by eating 5,000 calories a day -- "a gimmick to make a film."
Bitter, much? What makes me laugh is that they used to just have regular, medium, and supersize. Then they renamed the supersize to be "large" and added a new size. So they aren't going to be much healthier than they were just a few years ago, we're right back where we started. If they were REALLY concerned, they'd reduce the sizes of all their options.
Link three They have been called assassins and parasites. They receive hate mail from the proponents of a variety of popular psychotherapies. The president-elect of the American Psychological Association has accused them of being overly devoted to the scientific method.
But the ire of their colleagues has not prevented a small, loosely organized band of academic psychologists from rooting out and publicly debunking mental health practices that they view as faddish, unproved or in some cases potentially harmful.
Some skeptics are too skeptic, but I don't see how one can be "overly devoted to the scientific method". Can somebody please explain that to me?
Link four We are all born liking a sweet taste, perhaps to stimulate a desire for breast milk, which is naturally sweet, or ripe edible fruit. These foods are excellent sources of nutrients that support growth and good health. Indeed, as the American Dietetic Association points out in a new position paper on sweeteners, "By increasing palatability of nutrient-dense foods/beverages, sweeteners can promote diet healthfulness."
For example, for a child who refuses to drink milk, the addition of sweet chocolate powder can enhance consumption of this health-promoting food.
The first paragraph is good, though one could reasonably argue that by adding sweeteners you're making it harder to appreciate the food the way it is. However, since when is milk a healthpromoting food? What? It's completely artificial to our diets! And it's a very bad source of calcium, as well as full of hormones we don't need, fats we don't need, and so on. Gah! Product placement is teh suxx0rs.
Anyway, that's all. I was bored. Have fun.
Anyway, link number one! No matter how hard we fight, it may be quite a while before the tide turns in the U.S. By that time, my children may be adults – ill-educated adults with poor job prospects, no health care, and no options left but to be drafted in to some corporatist jihad. I wanted another future for them – the kind that America no longer chooses to offer its children. And I wanted my own taxes to go for something other than the further enrichment of oligarchs.
We're well aware that Canada may not be the perfect safe haven. An economic disaster in the US would certainly hurt it, badly. But it has resources to draw on, too. First, it's not quite as dependent on the US as many think, because its financial and cultural links to both Europe and Asia are much stronger than America's. If bad times come, this widespread connection to the community of nations – the connections Shrub has so thoughtlessly severed for America – will do much to soften the blow.
Second, Canada is still the leading supplier of things that America (and the world) will continue to need through any crisis, including energy, oil, timber, and fresh water.
Third, Canada's social values are very different. While Americans seem bent on turning on each other with bared teeth these days, my new neighbors impress me daily with their gentle strength and thoughtful intelligence. Canadians are raised from birth to take care of each other, keep the peace, and value order and teamwork. Much more than Americans, I trust them to make humane choices in the face of hard times.
Nice and melodramatic, though even I, the infamous pessimist cynic don't think things are that bad yet. Bad enough to consider moving, but not so much that I'm dying of fear just now. Still, something to think about.
Link two An award-winning documentary called "Super Size Me" has heaped on more unwanted publicity for McDonald's. The documentary, which chronicles the deterioration of filmmaker Morgan Spurlock's health during a monthlong experiment eating nothing but McDonald's food, won a directing prize at the Sundance Film Festival and is set for wide release this spring.
Riker said the phasing out of super-sizing has "nothing to do with that (film) whatsoever."
The company earlier issued a statement calling the documentary "a super-sized distortion of the quality, choice and variety available at McDonald's." It says the film is not about McDonald's but about Spurlock's decision to act irresponsibly by eating 5,000 calories a day -- "a gimmick to make a film."
Bitter, much? What makes me laugh is that they used to just have regular, medium, and supersize. Then they renamed the supersize to be "large" and added a new size. So they aren't going to be much healthier than they were just a few years ago, we're right back where we started. If they were REALLY concerned, they'd reduce the sizes of all their options.
Link three They have been called assassins and parasites. They receive hate mail from the proponents of a variety of popular psychotherapies. The president-elect of the American Psychological Association has accused them of being overly devoted to the scientific method.
But the ire of their colleagues has not prevented a small, loosely organized band of academic psychologists from rooting out and publicly debunking mental health practices that they view as faddish, unproved or in some cases potentially harmful.
Some skeptics are too skeptic, but I don't see how one can be "overly devoted to the scientific method". Can somebody please explain that to me?
Link four We are all born liking a sweet taste, perhaps to stimulate a desire for breast milk, which is naturally sweet, or ripe edible fruit. These foods are excellent sources of nutrients that support growth and good health. Indeed, as the American Dietetic Association points out in a new position paper on sweeteners, "By increasing palatability of nutrient-dense foods/beverages, sweeteners can promote diet healthfulness."
For example, for a child who refuses to drink milk, the addition of sweet chocolate powder can enhance consumption of this health-promoting food.
The first paragraph is good, though one could reasonably argue that by adding sweeteners you're making it harder to appreciate the food the way it is. However, since when is milk a healthpromoting food? What? It's completely artificial to our diets! And it's a very bad source of calcium, as well as full of hormones we don't need, fats we don't need, and so on. Gah! Product placement is teh suxx0rs.
Anyway, that's all. I was bored. Have fun.
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no subject
Date: 2004-03-08 09:06 pm (UTC)Anyway, I doubt it's the shift or the control key anyway because if there were a problem with either of those it would be apparent with normal text you are entering coming out as all capital (shift) or being interpreted as keyboard shortcuts. I'm not sure what the alt key normally does if you continue to type characters while it is depressed.
You can test to see if something is up with the alt key by pressing the F4 button while a window of a program you don't care about is open. If it closes, your alt key is depressed, even if it's not.
Other than that, I don't know why tab would change your active window... :)
no subject
Date: 2004-03-08 10:27 pm (UTC)