Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Things You Should Know About The Crisis In Egypt, Microsoft Registers HaloKinect.com Domain, Fish And Wildlife Plan Threatens Cats' Live, Teens Hospitalized After Pot Cookies Come To School, Recipe Included!, Red Font Movie Titles, Swiftor Disgusted By Dead Space 2

Hello everyone, I hope you students out there had a good snow day. Bunch of slackers if you ask me. Today I did an interview with Toronto's folk/black metal band Bolero as well as this daily blog, which is down below, so start reading!

Things You Should Know About The Crisis In Egypt
http://www.thesmokingjacket.com/lifestyle/stuff-you-should-know-the-crisis-in-egypt

I admit I haven't been reading up on this at all. I knew about it but sometimes if a story is out for too long before I catch glimpse of it, I'd rather just read through the quick details. So here is ten important facts to remember about Egypt. Number one fact is that Egypt is that the country is technically a republic. Hosni Mubarak was vice president in 1981, when his boss man Anwar El-Sadat was assassinated. Contrary to popular belief, Mubarak didn't just self-acclaim himself an "evil dictator for life," he actually won four elections by popular vote in a row. Until 2005, it was illegal for anyone to run against the Egyptian present and even then it was not advised to run against him because the elections were rigged. Someone had the guts to try to run against Mubarak and the man was sentenced to five years hard labor. American is technically on his side as well. Mubarak's predecessor had switched Egypt's allegiance to the United States from the USSR in 1972. The United States have been giving Egypt an estimated $2.2 billion a year since 1972 and half of that money goes into their military. Gamal Mubarak has been assuming presidency since 2000 and started making economic announcements in 2009. Wikileaks is what started it and here is how:

Wikileaks released cables exposing corruption in the Tunisian government.
Tunisians read the cables, got pissed and got their protest on.
It worked! Tunisian dictator for life fled with a butt load of gold on January 14, 2011.
Egyptian neighbors thought they could duplicate Tunisia’s neat disappearing despot trick and started their own on January 25, 2011.

Tens of thousands of protesters gathered in Cairo last Tuesday and used the Internet to spread the word about the protest. This is why the government decided to shut down all except for one service provider by Friday. 8-12% of the population were back online the next day. For those without it, European activists are show how offering access to dial-up to the ones left with Internet. By Sunday night, the death count was one hundred and two thousand injured, Protesters are clashing with police, who are the president's personal security forces, who seem to be holding back and gearing up for a power transfer. As per usual, protester and rioter groups are always filled with looters trying to steal whatever they can get their hands on. At the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, activists wrapped themselves around the building to protect their cultural heritage. One looter almost made of with actual mummy heads before the activists used stolen police batons to stop them. President Obama has been really cautious with his words because he's for democracy, but he's been funding a dictatorship because the United States needs an ally in the Middle East, and finally because he doesn't want Iran raging war in North Africa. The next regime is settled and the opposition is Mohamed Elaradei, a Nobel Peace Price winner. The interesting thing about this next in line is that the opposition groups came together to negotiate who was going to be their leader and they picked ElBaradei. He has degree in law, has worked with the United Nations, has been the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency and has gone on record stating, “Israel would be utterly crazy to attack Iran.” The man
who President Mubarak actually named his probable successor and current vice president is Omar Suleiman. Omar is a lifelong military man, which means the neutral army would follow him
if succeeds Mubarak. He is also close friends with Mubarak, which is hard for the people of Egypt to swallow a president similar to Mubarak. Overall I think that the United States is to blame here for giving Egypt $2.2 billion a year for the past thirty-eight years.

Microsoft Registers HaloKinect.com Domain
http://www.xbox360achievements.org/news/news-7445-Microsoft-Registers-HaloKinect-com-Domain.html

Microsoft have registered the domain HaloKinet.com and it is bringing wonder, will there be a Kinect-powered Halo in the future? It may or may not happen but all I know for sure is that this proves that they are planning something big at Microsoft. This is was Kinect's Creative Direct, Kudo Tsunoda said at last year's Gamescom about how first-person shooters would work on Kinect: "Hypothetically, just as a design person, if I was going to try and think of a way of doing a first-person shooter, you could get up and hold a gun up with your fingers, aim by pointing around, move by actually moving in and out with the gun as you're aiming, getting strafing on your shoulders, getting head-tracking with your head, using your front hand to shoot the gun and throwing grenades by performing an overarm action. That would be one way you could do a first-person shooter, which I just made up on the spot." Who knows but maybe it will look like this screenshot below!


Fish And Wildlife Plan Threatens Cats' Lives
http://www.care2.com/causes/animal-welfare/blog/dangerous-us-fish-wildlife-plan-targets-cats-in-the-florida-keys/


the dangerous plan that weighs the lives of some species against other in the Florida Keys. This plan will consequently send cats to their deaths. The FWS's draft environmental assessment was wrote to intend the protection of locally threatened and endangered wildlife species. They misguidedly target cats by misinterpreting and ignoring scientific research, disregarding the Trap-Neuter-Return for stray cats, and failing to address the human threat to these endangered species. The FWS report has mislead the public as while it dismisses a "lethal control" option for the cats, the plan recommends the
trapping and removal of the cats to a local shelter. The shelter's policy is to kill all feral cats who enter. While this plan appears to only require the "removal" of feral cats, the true plan is to kill them. Thus the FWS's plan to consider Trap-Neuter-Return has failed. In rejecting the Trap-Neuter-Return plan, the FWS misinterpreted and totally disregarded research relevant to this case. Their draft assessment draws on publications that are biased and flawed and ignores other peer-reviewed field studies to prove the TNR plans effectiveness all over the country. One of these studies was conducted by Doctor Julie Levy of University of Florida, which followed a long-term TNR program and results show that the colony population decrease by sixty-six per cent over a ten year span. The FWS also sinngle out PETA's irrational opposition to TNR as representative of the animal protection community. TNR is a plan that is accepted nationally, widespread, and a life-saving practice which is supported by many major organizations such as Alley Cat Allies, ASPCA, and Best Friends Animal Society, as well as over twenty-five-hundred thousand other nonprofit organizations. The FWS is also not educated on the failure and costly consequences of previous catch and kill effort. Four years ago, the FWS entered into a $50 000 trap and kill contract in the Florida Keys, in which only
thirteen cats were trapped and at least five of them were owned. The ORCat TNR program at Ocean Reff in Key Largo has been organizing a TNR program for years. Twenty years ago there were over 2 000 cats, today there is only 350 left in the Florida Keys. This is an eighty per cent decline in population. I find it stupid that the FWS is blaming cats for species being endangered, have they even addressed the human impact? Cats should not have to die over this, the FWS is being ridiculous.


Teens Hospitalized After Pot Cookies Come To School, Recipe Included!
http://blogs.browardpalmbeach.com/cleanplatecharlie/2011/02/teens_hospitalized_after_pot_c.php
http://www.nbcmiami.com/news/local-beat/Two-Teens-Hospitalized-After-Eating-Weed-Filled-Treats-at-School-114803629.html

A South Plantation High is that of a mellow half-indica, half-sativa buzz. Usually a wake and bake gives you a high until lunch time, unless you eat the weed. Brian Hamacher and Todd Wright of www.nbcmiami.com had a good contact high, they say. They say two students from the high school got a little too high from a pair of pot-laced cookies. They were sent to the hospital for treatment. They fifteen and sixteen year olds ad a bad reaction. The boys split a single chocolate chip cookie, but that wasn't enough to cause a stomach ache, so he went to the school's clinic and explained what they ate. They were taken to Plantation General Hospital. This is the recipe in which got them high, which makes a batch of twenty cookies:

Ingredients
1/2 cup pot-butter
1 1/3 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
1 (12 ounce) package (2 cups) of chocolate morsels

Steps
1 ) Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2) Mix (by hand) the butter, sugars, and egg into a large bowl.
3) Combine the baking soda, salt, and flour.
4) Slowly add the flour mixture to the butter mixture and stir by hand.
5) Shape the dough into 1-inch balls and place them two inches apart on a greased cookie sheet
6) Stir in the chocolate morsels.
7) Bake for 10-12 minutes or until light brown.
8) Hungry? Let cool for 3 or 4 minutes and grub.


That's it for today, I hope you enjoyed. Here is a funny picture showing that most movies with red font for the title fail and a video of a Internet community gamer who shows his reaction to one of Dead Space 2's gruesome scenes.

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