I live in the confluence of the chaotic and the ordered.

I would say more, but it would need a book, so I will leave it at merely I have many thoughts to express, but I lack both the time and the words to express them.

Technorati Tags: personal

Sometimes, the spam is quite amusing when it is put into your own personal context. Recently, I have been getting several obviously spam emails with the subject line “Sex-addicts in your area”.

Given my “area” is in France right now, and the email is in English, it is somewhat difficult to see how they might have a clue about anyone in my area, sex-addicts or not…

Of course, I have no idea what the spam I’ve been getting that is written in kanji (aka Japanese characters) says.

Technorati Tags: humor, random thoughts

…we get what we have voted for:

Evil is a chain. Did any one person do N.O.? It’s a chain. People vote for a corrupt leader. A corrupt leader puts unqualified cronies in high places and when those cronies fuck up… Evil gets done.
   -Bill Maher

Thanks to a link chain starting from The Moderate Voice to Crooks and Liars.

Technorati Tags: commentary, opinion, some thoughts

I was just watching an online slide show that was briefly interrupted by an advertisement. The last photo shown before the ad was of a fireman in New Orleans carrying an old woman out of the flooded area where she had spent days trapped in her house.

The ad - a travel agency promoting inexpensive vacation trips to New York, Miami, and New Orleans.

Technorati Tags: commentary, opinion, random thoughts

Dr. Stephen Taylor discusses the irony of using aconstitutional methods to mandate teaching about the United States Constitution on Constitution Day.

UPDATE: Dr. Taylor adds some additional clarification to the rough draft of his thoughts.

Technorati Tags: recommended reading, weblogs

This exemplifies why I am so concerned about the future and the role that the Chinese government will play in it. Too many corporations are too focused on the profit potential they see in the country, not realizing that the “market” they see there is illusory.

The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners

Ian Cobain and Adam Luck
Tuesday September 13, 2005
The Guardian

A Chinese cosmetics company is using skin harvested from the corpses of executed convicts to develop beauty products for sale in Europe, an investigation by the Guardian has discovered.

Agents for the firm have told would-be customers it is developing collagen for lip and wrinkle treatments from skin taken from prisoners after they have been shot. The agents say some of the company’s products have been exported to the UK, and that the use of skin from condemned convicts is “traditional” and nothing to “make such a big fuss about”.

—

When formally approached by the Guardian, the agent denied the company was using skin harvested from executed prisoners. However, he had already admitted it was doing precisely this during a number of conversations with a researcher posing as a Hong Kong businessman. The Press Complaints Commission’s code of practice permits subterfuge if there is no other means of investigating a matter of public interest.

The agent told the researcher: “A lot of the research is still carried out in the traditional manner using skin from the executed prisoner and aborted foetus.” This material, he said, was being bought from “bio tech” companies based in the northern province of Heilongjiang, and was being developed elsewhere in China.

He suggested that the use of skin and other tissues harvested from executed prisoners was not uncommon. “In China it is considered very normal and I was very shocked that western countries can make such a big fuss about this,” he said. Speaking from his office in northern China, he added: “The government has put some pressure on all the medical facilities to keep this type of work in low profile.”

The article quoted above was written in the cotext of the origin of materials used in various medical applications for healing or beauty enhancing. It underlines a larger issue, the fundamental cultural differences that if ignored, will come back to our harm.

More on this later.

Technorati Tags: China, ethics, culture, some thoughts