Vampires and Vampirism

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I was a huge Buffy the Vampire Slayer fan (still am) and sometimes on the newsgroups or other sites there have been speculation about the creation of vampires, and this is my pseudoscientific explanation.

(Okay, for some reason, when some people see the word 'pseudoscietific' they seem to think it means 'kind of scientific' and therefore - is real, legitimate science. But 'pseudo' means "false."

Pseudoscience is false science!)

Vampirism is caused by a virus, and for a lack of a better name, I call it the 'vampovirus'. These vampoviruses are very weak and are easily killed by the white blood cells we have coursing through our veins.

Most of the time a vampire sucks out enough blood to satisfy his hunger, which also kills the person, but any vampoviruses he leaves behind are easily killed by the white cells.

But what if he/she happens to suck out so much blood that there aren't enough white cells to kill the invading vampoviruses? Three of four days later the vampoviruses have reproduced enough of themselves that a new vampire is created (and that is why so many of them have to dig themselves out of their graves).

But - when vampires DO want to sire someone, they suck out most of the blood, then they let the person drink some of their blood in order to flood the body with vampoviruses (but not knowing about vampoviruses, they don't know why it works, just that it does).

And when they do, there are now more vampoviruses flooding the body than the white cells can kill. And in just a few hours -- another vampire.

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Rick Santorum and Birth Control

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I recently heard that Rick Santorum wanted to do away with all birth control / contraception.

(There are no links here to his specific statements, but you only have to Google "Santorum birth control" to see for yourself.)

So, if that is the case, then he MUST be an advocate for abortion:

People are going to have sex, there is no way they won't (and even HE must realize this). And without birth control, eventually most women will get pregnant whether they want to or not. And those that don't want to be pregnant for whatever reason (economic, rape, incest, etc.) will get an abortion, legal or illegal.

So, repeating the third paragraph, if Rick Santorum is so against birth control, then he HAS to be advocating abortion!

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Daylight Savings Time

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Well, once again we are subjected to setting our clocks ahead one hour.

I don't like it, and it's not so bad.

What I hate the most is that it's now dark when I drive to work (around 6:30) and it it SO hard to see the kids walking to the bus stops to wait for the school buses to come. It just doesn't make sense to start DST so early!

But I guess having the extra hour of daylight in the afternoon isn't so bad. But I don't see how that saves us energy. In the summer it is hotter and people are turning on the AC later in the day and having to run them later in the evening.

Also - we have lawn-watering restrictions. And we are told not to water between 10 am and 4 pm because that is the hottest time of day. but when we move the clocks ahead one hour that means the hottest time of day is now between 11 am and 5 pm. But they never say to change the time to water the grass!

And one more thing - "they" say when we change the time we lose an hour of sleep, which is WRONG (even you move your clock ahead before you go to sleep then get up at the same time you will still get the same number of hours of sleep).

Let's say you always go to bed at 10 pm and get up at 6 am, which means you sleep 8 hours and are awake for 16. So now you go to bed at 10 pm, get up at 6 and then set your clocks ahead one hour to 7, but you still go to bed at 10 pm that night.

You are now awake for 15 hours, so you have lost one hour of being awake, not an hour of sleep. (Of course just the opposite happens when you change back to EST in October - you add one hour of awake time.)

The only way you would lose an hour's sleep is if you went to sleep at the same time you always do, your alarm clock reset itself from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m., and your alarm went off at its normal time.

But in case you are wondering why you feel so groggy despite all of the above, you are STILL getting up an hour earlier than you normally do.

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How to Control Gasoline Prices

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I keep hearing about how the oil speculators cause the prices of oil/gasoline to go up or down, but the way I see it, the oil companies (Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron, etc.) are the ones who pump out the oil, refine it, and deliver it to retailers, so THEY are the ones who control the price of gas.

So -- if the government REALLY wants to help the consumers they should tell these oil companies that they will immediately cut the price of gasoline delivered to retailers by at least $1 per gallon. And if they don't then they will be fined $1,000,000 PER DAY.

And if, after 30 days they haven't complied, then all the executives of these companies - the presidents, all the VPs, the CEOs, the CFOs, the COOs and all board members will be arrested and will stay in jail, and the fines will increase to $2,000,000 per day, until they do.

Also -- if the retailers don't follow suit and decrease their prices by the same amount, they will be fined $1,000 per day for 30 days, then the owners will be arrested and the fine will increase to $10,000 per day until THEY do.

So what if the oil companies don't make the $38,000,000,000 in profits like they did in 2011? I don't think they will suffer (and I'm quite sure the execs can afford the gas prices they jack up).

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Rest in Eternal Peace, Beautiful Whitney!

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Saturday we got the horrific news that Whitney Houston was found dead in a bathtub in a hotel room. And the rumors are saying that she died of an alcohol and Xanax overdose. Which may or may not be true, but as far as I'm concerned she started dying the day she hooked up with Bobby Brown!

To my knowledge, there were NEVER any reports of her having problems with drugs and alcohol until they got together.

I've been told that she should have been more responsible for her life, but when you're around drugs 24-7-52, and the one who is supposed to love and protect you feeds the shit to you, it's virtually impossible not to indulge.

And as far as I'm concerned, the only good thing that came out of their relationship was her daughter, Bobbi.

Whitney was a beautiful person, with an amazing voice. And it's a god damned shame she died so needlessly, and so young!!

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42" Sanyo Plasma TV - Part 2

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So far I've mostly gotten used to my new TV, but I was having problems with some of the video connections (I found out that Video Input #3 has to have 5 [ FIVE! ] video jacks plugged in so there would be more than just a grainy black and white picture).

So, while talking to the Sanyo tech, I was complaining about the sorry quality of the speakers, and he agreed that with such small speakers, sound quality suffered.

So why in the hell are there so many settings? -- Standard, Dynamic, Mild, Auto, and Manual. And in the Manual setup you have bass, treble, dynamic bass, and four equalizer frequencies. That's crazy!

There should be jacks not only to plug into a home theater system, but for external speakers as well.

But there aren't.

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42" Sanyo Plasma TV

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I finally broke down and bought a big screen TV even though my 10 year old Sharp 27" TV still had a great picture. But Wal-Mart had it on sale for $398, and I figured that was the cheapest one I could find without going to a pawn shop. I see where all plasmas are getting cheaper all the time; trying to get rid of the inventory no doubt.

And for the most part, I'm pretty happy with it so far. But there are a few things I'm not real crazy about.

The speakers don't seem to be very good. No matter how I adjust them, or go with the default settings, they just don't sound -- great. I would think that they would sound excellent, but they don't. Maybe Sanyo figured that whoever bought the TV would have a home theater system and wouldn't be using the built in speakers. I do have a HTS (but the middle speaker does't work anymore, and it's not the speaker itself, the system is just old). And it sounds good, but I don't want to use it all of the time.

Another thing I've noticed, which no one bothered to tell me, is that depending on the channel I'm watching, the picture quality varies from very good to kind of bad. The local channels seem to have very intense color saturation and it seems like there is just too much yellow. But if I adjust the color for those three stations, the others suffer.

One big selling point for plasma TVs is that the blacks are very black, which they are. But the whites are light gray, especially when most of the screen is white. I'm still tweaking the color balance, so maybe more blue and less green might help.

And I've noticed that some movies take up 75% to 80% of the screen, top to bottom, and some only 50%. All are 100% side to side.

But all in all, so far I guess I'm pretty happy with it. I really wanted an LCD or LED TV, but for the price I'm sure once I get used to it, it will be fine.

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