ATF seizes airsoft guns

The ATF now has the audacity to begin confiscating airsoft guns that are shipped to the country.
Because according to their genius Special Agent Kelvin Crenshaw said the toys can be easily retro-fitted into dangerous weapons. He even has the audacity to say"With minimal work it could be converted to a machine gun,". This is the most idiotic claim ever. Airsoft guns fire soft plastic pellets via air. They do not use firing pins , so cannot be modified to fire live ammo. Airsoft gun's chambers could not fit a live cartridge because IT IS CHAMBERED TO FIT PLASTIC PELLETS! Instead of wasting our tax dollars confiscating toy guns why doesn't OUR beloved government get its act together and hunt these Jihadist extremists instead of screwing with law abiding citizens. The dastardly ATF confiscated an entire shipment of airsoft of a shop owner on the West coast. Some say that this was done by the government to begin cracking down on our gun culture and kids that start out learning marksmanship skills will eventually graduate to live firearms. Perhaps it bothers the government that people play wargames with them and learn and develop tactics. It is ironic that this is occurring in conjunction with the closure of gun shows around the country. On a lighter side, when this ATF agent went on TV holding the confiscated toy gun, he could not figure out on how to correctly rock the external magazine into the toy gun. I just wonder where this insanity will stop.




http://www.koinlocal6.com/content/news/topstories/story/ATF-seizes-30-toy-guns-infuriating-local-business/vUVs2QUCAUuZWeRrqgIQaA.cspx

The Planetary Skin Institute

Today, I learned of a creepy new project that is sponsored by NASA and Cisco, the planetary skin institute. This project is designed to monitor, measure and manage environments that range from rural to urban. In other words this project enables governments the ability to accurately track carbon levels throughout the world via interconnecting sensors that monitor people and machines . This whole project was created on false premise of global warming. This is scary because it gives these carbon fanatics that are proposing carbon taxes the tools they need to implement their agenda. I am ashamed at both NASA and Cisco for giving these lobbyist the capabilities to achieve their fanatical goals.




http://www.planetaryskin.org/home

Paranormal activity movie

On Thursday evening I saw the movie, Paranormal activity with friends. The movie was like a cross breed between Syfi channel's Ghost hunters and the movie the Entity. The movie ,which is based on a true story is about a couple , who were plagued by the presence of a negative entity (a demon), who had been pestering the woman since childhood and had followed her to her and her boyfriends new house. The boyfriend had a firewire enabled camcorder that was constantly running to document the activities of the entity. The movie itself did not use the actual footage, but there was an acknowledgment to the families and to a Californian police department, so the movie was inspired by the footage that was actually caught. The occurrences and actions become more intense as the movie progressed and the boyfriend aquiring a Ouija board provoked the beast.Despite consulting a paranormal specialist, who only specialized in human based entities, who was freaked out by the house recommended a demonologist , who they were never able to get in contact with. The movie remained eerie to the end when the woman became possessed and killed her boyfriend. After the movie I came to a few realizations. There have been actually several cases of similar incidents and some of the better known ones have occurred in California. This made me think of the faces of death documentaries , which among other things showed footage of police raiding makeshift Satanic temples in California and the horrors that were discovered. This begs the question is there a correlation between cultists and paranormal events?

This correlation has been addressed in fantasy games such as Warhammer 40k, which pits the Imperium of man against numerous races of aliens and demons as well as fallen men who have offered their fealty to the dark gods. In one story , the battle of Vogen, cultists plan a revolt against the imperial government and populace on the planet of Vogen and summon demons and the help of Chaos space marines to help in their revolution. At first imperial loyalists are severely outnumbered but imperial reinforcements with inclusion of the imperial guard ( genetically unmodified human soliders who kind of resemble starship troopers) and superhuman genetically altered space marines (the futurustic equivalent of knights) arrive and begin to cleanse the world of the cultist scum , which in turn cause the demonic entities to faze out of this plane of reality back into the warp. In other words, it was argued that their power became weak when none one was devoted to them. While this is just fantasy, it does make a good point, are these negative entities empowered by cultists who devote themselves to the forces of darkness?

This brings up another point, where is fine line of acceptability in the first amendment for religion? I have brought this point up in the past for conversation with friends. Some of my friends who are semi-christian/neo-pagan reason that just as long as the religion does not compromise the safety of the citizens it would be acceptable. One thing is for sure, even free societies needs defined limits , especially when all religions are basically put on the same pedestal of validity in the eyes of the U.S. government.

This movie also made me realize that there are still a ton of things that we have still learn about our planet and the universe for that matter and life and death itself. Denying that unusual events occur around us will not make them stop.

H.B. 45 and SB2099

I went on my reenactment group's forum today and discovered a disturbing message about proposed bills H.B. 45 and SB-2099. At first I thought it was just more anti-gun legislation that was proposed for the state of Illinois (most of the group members live in Illinois and thus are constantly keeping an eye out for fanatical legislation. Thank God I live in Indiana). However, I noticed this time it referred to the Federal Senate. It appears that this administration's cronies are at it again. H.B. 45 if passed will require citizens, who exercise their second amendment rights to have a license regardless of the type of firearm that is owned. SB02-99 would require citizens to declare their firearms on our tax forms for next year and may require fingerprints and a $50
tax per firearm. History has shown that big governments( USSR , Nazi Germany, etc) that impose strict gun control usually commit horrendous acts soon after, I wonder what this regime is up to?


http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-45&tab=summary

Happy Midsummer Eve

Tommorow is a holiday that pre-dates Chrisitanity itself; Midsummer, the celebration of the summer solstice. From Ireland to the Ukraine and Scandanavia to Greece as well as here in the New world people will celebrate this holiday with drinking(of course) and bon fires. In some countries people attempt to jump over these bon fires. Perhaps one day it will gain more popularity locally.

College students and rising levels of Depression

I stumbled across an article from http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090521/ap_on_re_us/us_college_poll_depression that depression is setting in on college students throughout the country. The article blamed the bad economy ,grades, school work, money and relationships for this escalation. According to the article at some Universities this has lead to higher suicide rates and other harmful activities.

I have to refute some of these causes because some are given with the territory. College students will always have school work and grades to deal with and a little bit of stress and concern over these will motivate students to do better. I admit it does get somewhat stressful at the end of the semester when all remaining school work and finals come due but its nothing a little time management and a divide and conquer mentality cannot handle. After you kill off the remaining assignments and finals one by one all that is left to do is wait for the results.

Relationships

I agree that trying to create or maintain relationships with significant others can be depressing/demoralizing ,but again this is nothing new and comes with the territory. I have heard numerous students and faculty admit that women on campus can be crappy, its just a fact of life. I remember after one demoralizing failure my junior year, besides gaining the ability to legally consume my favorite beverage which hails from my European heritage and access to 21 + gentlemen's clubs(which both helped considerably minimize the sting of failure) I over the next few months with the aid of movies such as Conan the Barbarian, 300, The enemy below, and the PC game Rome Total war was able to realize full blown defiance was a great way to counteract any crappiness that anyone or situation including the wonderful women on campus could muster at me. If women on campus were going to be crappy then the hell with them I will pursue women off campus.


Money

I have been working since I started college, while the off campus job is not as good as the jobs I have had on campus, it provides a means to save a little and supply oneself with the capital to finance recreational activities and hobbies. Working low wage jobs are better than not working at all. Sucking up any extra hours and possible overtime could get one a fatter paycheck.


The crappy economy

This is the only one that effects us all. Many who have graduated have not landed jobs that pertain to their majors due to our wonderful economy . I bumped into someone from high school who said everyone he knows who graduated is sitting at home doing nothing. I admit this could be somewhat depressing but instead of doing nothing one could turn misfortune into opportunity by going to graduate school, which I did anyways with the helpful advice of a Mentor at the University.

As stated earlier lower paying jobs are better than none and they could provide one with the capital to engage in recreational activities and hobbies. Between going to graduate school, working, and partaking in recreational activities and hobbies(all avenues in themselves to shout one's defiance at the bad economy and any other problems) , one could easily keep their mind off the rigors of the economy and other problems. There is no need to get depressed, just get defiant!

Dinosaurs and Birds

Last night on the Science channel there was a segment on Genetics and Dinosaurs. There have been fossils discovered that when broken, contain soft tissue that is well preserved as well as on a cellular level. Researchers are now trying to extract DNA from these soft tissues to map out the Gnome of these extinct organisms.

The next half of the segment went into detail on how similar birds are to Orthopods (predatory dinosaurs such as raptors). What is really surprising is the Genes of that of birds are strikingly similar to that of dinosaurs and it has been discovered that birds genes turn off their dinosaur traits as the embryos develop. One set of researchers discovered that chicken embryos contain 8 to 13 vertebrae in the tail bone but as the embryo develops it shrinks to a few. Knowing this , some researchers have modified the genes of some chicken eggs early in development via adding proteins and certain viruses to prevent the embryos genes from shortening its initially long tail bone. Because of these modifications the embryos grew with a longer tail. Researchers in different areas of the country have done the similar experiments with other features of birds during develop such as finding the genes that remove the teeth that embryos initially have and modifying those genes, genes that give birds feathers instead of scales, and the genes that give birds wings instead of arms. This reverse engineering of bird genes will eventually give rise to protodinosaurs. As Jack Horner pointed out an Emu is already the size of raptor , these genetic modifications could help it turn into one.


I think this is really cool, genetic engineering like this with the continued advancement of genetic technologies could give researchers the ability to produce other extinct animals by reverse engineering the genes of animals that are related to the extinct creatures. Imagine the possibilities.