Old School.....arcade games

I just came across a disc that I thought I had lost.  It contains what I consider a priceless assortment of files. I thought maybe some of you could appreciate the memories they brought back. I’m gonna post some of my favorites along with comment, facts or tips.  I’ll explain exactly what it was I found at the end of the blog.

Phoenix- Just fun. During the game three birds will attack all in a line. Let those birds fly all the way to the bottom and start to fly back up. As they are flying up, shoot all three in a row real quick (2 or 3 seconds) and you will get 200, 000 points instead of 200.

Tapper- Funniest part of the game- The customers were all dicks and the little move the bar tender does when he loses a beer -
There were three versions of Tapper released: Root Beer, Budweiser, and Sun- tary (UK).
The main character in the game (as well as the guy in Domino Man and one of the lumberjacks in Timber) is based on a Marvin Glass employee named Mike Ferris who had the same mustache and bald head and wore a red T-shirt all the time. This game was play tested in a Chicago-area Rush Street bar called the Snuggery with much positive feedback. Digitized belches were going to be used in the game, but they never made it into the final version.

They called it SUPER PAC-MAN for a reason.

Klax- It was written in just a few weeks on Escape From the Planet of the Robot Monsters hardware. But it  was so good it seemed  like it should have taken years. Unique puzzle game.

Millipede It’s  the kick-ass continuation of centipede. If “Continue Game” is turned on, you can keep continuing at a higher level each time. However, you must gain at least one extra man in each continued game to continue that game. This process stops when you reach the 300, 000 point mark. At this point, no matter how high your score gets (i.e. 400, 000, 500, 000 etc.), you will NOT be able to continue your game at a higher score.

Joust- I will kick your ass at this game, yes I am talking to you.
Early machines had a bug that allowed players to rack up millions of points by standing on the middle plat- form and killing pterodactyls endlessly, or until they got tired and gave up.
Another bug that became a “cut -throat” feature was the ability to belly-flop and squeeze between tight gaps in staggered platforms.

Ghosts and Goblins- One game I could never make it to the end of. I’m still bothered by that fact to this day
Weapon trick – After having defeated a level boss(es), the knight can fire two or three “invisible shots”; if the man is facing the right border of the screen while doing so, the shots will reappear in the following stage. This can be exploited to kill some of the skulls at beginning of level six

Gaplus-They were not called stages…they were called parsecs…awesome

Dig-Dug- Probably played this more than any other video game other than Joust. It was fun to blow those little things up

Food Fight was designed for Atari by General Computing as part of a lawsuit settlement for an illegal speedup kit for Missile Command, in which they affixed their copyright. This was one of two games; Quantum was the other.
Inspired by the food fight scene in National Lampoon’s Animal House.

 

Championship Sprint Amazing because 4 people could play AT THE SAME TIME!

 

Crossbow The creepy sound effects are what made the game and the way your people melted when they got hit only made it more fun.

 

Galaga 88 My favorite of the Galaga series

Centipede-Cool cause you used a roller ball to control it. The first coin-op game designed by a woman. A grasshopper was in the original design, but was later removed from the game. 

 

Choplifter-Sometimes you would accidentally (on purpose shoot the guys you were trying to rescue and they made a funny little shriek. Must have played this one a million times. In the early stages, try to fly as low as possible – this way the fighters will not shoot you, and you are low enough to shoot the ground targets without being shot. Since this only works when you’re in the air, and not when you’re on the ground, it only works well on levels 1 and 3.

 

Crystal Castles- One of the first “3-d” video games I ever played. Originally called Toperoids, this game was originally a 3D Asteroids variant, in which asteroids and other objects fell from the sky, endangering the player. The enemies coming down from the top of the screen was an artifact from the original concept.

 

Crazy Climber- With the crazy 2 joystick controls. In the second building: when you arrive at the electrical sign, choose the left path. Then put yourself under the electrical wire (rightmost window of the left path) but keep both joysticks pressed. After a few seconds your climber will become red with white hair and electricity won’t have effect on it.

 

“Bubbles was an attempt to come up with a non-violent, clean game, ” (no pun intended) says programmer John Kotlarik.

 

Burger Time Those little eggs still piss me off.
The original Data East version hardware had a cassette module so games could be converted easily and quickly. Unfortunately, the cassettes were prone to breakage, and the systems were quickly junked. When Bally Midway licensed the game from DECO, they replaced the hardware with a dedicated hardware system.

Carnival- This was another one of my favorite bowling alley arcade games.

Berzerk was originally designed for the 6809E CPU, until it was discovered that the processor didn’t work properly. The board was then redone to run on a Z80. The speech was done using LPC coding, which cost $1, 000 per word to compress at that time. The game also originally had a monochrome monitor; when Defender was released in color, the company re-considered their display approach and re-designed the display using a color overlay board.
Evil Otto was named for Dave Otto, who worked for Dave Nutting’s Arcade Engineering group as R & D director at the time Alan McNeil did. Each Berzerk unit was “autographed” by the designer.
Mr. Peter Bukowski was the first person to die playing a video game, when he died of a heart attack playing Berzerk at  the “Friar Tuck Game Room” in Calumet City, Illinois.
An interesting quirk: The space between your man’s head and body is not technically part of your man, so that shots that pass through this area (your “neck”) will not kill you. 

Zookeeper- Round and round you go trying to keep the animals from escaping…round and round and round

Sinistar- The thing I remember about this game is when Sinistar  came after you…you were fucked, fast and hard.

There is a project called MAME.

MAME stands for Multiple Arcade Machine Emulator. When used in conjunction with images of the original arcade game’s ROM and disk data, MAME attempts to reproduce that game as faithfully as possible on a more modern general-purpose computer. MAME can currently emulate several thousand different classic arcade video games from the late 1970s through the modern era.

The ROMS are available on the net and some have been released for public use. Be careful cause possession of ROMS you don’t have a legal right to is piracy just like any other software. Just cause it’s old and cheesy doesn’t make it free to use. MAME is not difficult to configure with the ability to make basic video adjustments you can set it up.

I’m not sure how many games MAME supports now but years ago when I was messing with emulators there were over 3000 different variations of arcade games supported so go get yourself a computer joystick and take a trip down memory lane.

 

 

 

Old School.....arcade games

Stupid And The Daily Beast

OR…you could watch FOX News

In this wonderful age of technology it is possible to share your insightful wisdom with the entire planet with just a few clicks. Got some good relationship advice? Want to help people avoid making the same ignorant mistakes you did? Know a funny story that may brighten someone’s day? You can make sure countless people can have the opportunity to soak in the positive and helpful contribution you provide.

Wanna misrepresent someone’s position, accuse them of being a rapist, or just help promote bullshit gossip because you are too stupid to read and unable to comprehend anything even if you could? Unfortunately you can share that with people just as easy. As a bonus you will be acting as a kind of  sexual organ that helps breed stupidity my fucking the minds of people who read your words. Reproduction!

The Daily Beast offered the following headline on Sept 10th-

Richard Dawkins: Pedophilia’s OK

it links to a Salon article by KATIE MCDONOUGH titled-

Richard Dawkins defends “mild pedophilia,” says it does not cause “lasting harm”

I’m not sure why Katie picked the title she did or why The Daily Beast decided to ramp it up even more but it would be nice if they would knock it the fuck off already. Isn’t Dawkins name enough of a draw? Even include the word “pedophilia” if you must but leave out the misleading parts, they aren’t doing you or anyone else any favors.

Despite the fact that Katie probably thinks she has an opinion that is bulletproof and can not be called into question that is seldom the case and when you are going to chain a ball of pedophilia to someones leg you should be sure you can do it with facts and an unbiased view.

If you read the article Richard Dawkins says

I look back a few decades to my childhood and see things like caning, like mild pedophilia, and can’t find it in me to condemn it by the same standards as I or anyone would today,”

He makes it pretty clear his current position is to condemn those behaviors. His defends people’s past ignorance of those behaviors. I wonder if Katie has a problem with the pictures of slave owners on our currency.  Shouldn’t we be pissed at people who owned slaves in the past? Are we crazy or something?! We put their faces on our money?!  Katie get on this right away please and when you are done there we have about a zillion parents who need to be condemned for spanking their children. To think I haven’t even held my parents accountable for all those spankings!  After that we need to go after the public school systems for allowing corporal punishment all those years. It’s like we are supporting child abuse by not shutting those sick bastards down.

Good thing we are born knowing this is harmful

Now that I think about it my parents used to allow my little sister and me to ride in the back of our pickup truck all the time WITH NO SEAT BELTS! Wait a minute….that truck didn’t even have seat belts in the cab! Put the auto industry on the list too.

deep breath…10..9….8…7…6…5…4..3….2…1..ok

People did stupid shit in the past.   I know it is hard to understand but they sometimes didn’t know any better are we going to condemn them for their ignorance? We learn things as individuals and we learn things as a society. If we hold everyone accountable for past  behaviors we now find unacceptable that is going to have some serious effects on how we portray many people currently held in high regard.

Katie also provides another quote-

As noted by the Religion News Service, Peter Watt, director of child protection at the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, called Dawkins’ defense of sexual assault “a terrible slight” to victims of such abuse.

“Mr. Dawkins seems to think that because a crime was committed a long time ago we should judge it in a different way,” Watt continued. “But we know that the victims of sexual abuse suffer the same effects whether it was 50 years ago or yesterday.”

Don’t we have manslaughter or negligent homicide laws? Why is it we have those laws? Why don’t we just lump any killing of a human by another human as straight murder? Because intent matters. The knowledge of how an act will effect another person, the acceptance of behaviors by society, or the motivation all matter.

 We didn’t even have any real studies on child molestation until the 1920s. We didn’t pass the  Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act until 1974. No one knew what kind of damage could be done until we learned from studying the effects.

in 1986 Congress passed the Child Abuse Victims’ Rights Act. Why do you think it took so long to pass an act on behalf of children? Was there a large portion of the population that was interested in allowing children to continue being abused? No, we were stupid and we lagged. Even today I hear about laws being passed and think “What the hell? We didn’t already tell people that wasn’t okay?”

It really doesn’t seem to matter if we think a behavior should have obviously been considered wrong since the beginning of time, many many times this hasn’t been the case. (see; hindsight 20/20)

I know some things people have considered acceptable in the past are horrible and harmful. No one is denying that, Richard Dawkins included. Richard was speaking about his own experiences and observations. Just as we should accept when victims tell us about how they have been negatively effected we should also accept when victims talk about not feeling harmed without accusing them of slighting others. Do we want people to start telling lies? Should Richard say he was caused long-lasting harm because if he tells the truth it means others are lying?

I’m shocked at the number of skeptics who can’t apply logic evenly or follow their thoughts to the conclusion when that logic is applied. Yes there are terrible, terrible things that happen in the world. Some of those things were allowed because of ignorance. You can do your part by minimizing the amount of ignorance not spreading it or worse yet growing it yourself. You know better.

Stupid And The Daily Beast

Rules are Hard

 

 

PZ Myers is in the process of learning another life lesson-

New commenting rules

Admin, Bloggeryby PZ Myers

What are they?

The ongoing meltdown in Thunderdome and the departure of Chris tell me we’ve got something that needs to be fixed. I don’t quite know how to fix everything, so let’s crowdsource it — you people leave comments here telling me what rules you think might work to get the knifey-bitey-smashy atmosphere to lighten up a little. Just a little.

In other words- You guys have pretty much taken over my blog and I don’t have the slightest idea how to regain control without it looking like the Jamestown Massacre.

I don’t know about the rest of you but I have mixed feelings when I watch PZ go through this type of thing. On one hand it is amusing to see someone who deserves it realize they have made a mistake and have no way to resolve it. Another part of me feels relieved that PZ may finally stop a behavior that has been damaging to others not to mention his own dignity.   Then another part of me can’t help but wonder- How a man with his education, age, who has raised children can be so completely fuck dumb as to not see this problem coming or maybe take steps to stop it from occurring at all? It’s amazing.

Not only does PZ find himself held hostage by his commenters but he can’t think of a way to get control back so he asks……the people who are causing the problem. Suddenly PZ can’t figure out how to ban people? He can’t figure out what he accepts as proper/improper behavior? Who the fuck owns his blog anyways? An even better question is- Who does he allow to dictate what he considers acceptable behavior on his blog? He can’t figure it out himself? I’m guessing the minute he makes some rules and enforces those rules he is going to see his little horde dissipate because they won’t be able to handle rules. Maybe PZ realizes this also. Another perk of asking the crowd is that anyone who complains later can’t blame PZ, he didn’t make the rules. You readers made the rules so you can just live with ‘em!

I suppose this is another instance where we should be relieved that PZ isn’t in a formal leadership position anywhere. I can see him telling a rioting crowd to come up with some ideas on how to better control itself

If PZ Myers wants a couple of suggestions that will get his comment section back in line with sanity I’ve got a couple.

1) No personal attacks/namecalling

2) limit comments to 3-5 per member per blog post. If there is a topic that has proven to encourage a interesting conversation then make an exception.

BONUS

(3) Grow a spine and treat people equally

These first two alone would get things under control in no time IF they were enforced. Despite PZ realizing there might be a problem with his comment section he is still light years away from understanding how or why he has this problem in the first place. Part of the reason for that is- It’s his own fault . He is to blame and he created the problem. Now that he created it and encouraged the behavior he now wants to stop, he can’t figure out on his own how to do it.

The world sure is a challenging place for PZ Myers isn’t it? It sure looks that way, poor fella.

Rules are Hard

Richard Carrier: Inept Idiot or Ignorant Simpleton?

This train wreck brought to you by…

Richard Carrier has had aspired to have one of his letters to Penthouse printed for years. As of late he has become frustrated with the ongoing rejections he has received. Since Dick can’t get Penthouse to print him his posted this- Michael Shermer: Rapist or Sleaze?

Here is one portion-

Scenario A: You finally get to meet a big celebrity, for the first time, someone you really love and admire, and you’re at a party having drinks together, sitting at a table. He shows a lot of interest in you, asks you lots of questions, listens intently. Your conversation is so animated, in fact, his focus on you so engaging, that you don’t even notice that he keeps filling your wine glass, and you don’t realize how much you’ve had.

Then you start to feel you must have drunk too much, your vision is blurring and you feel a little dizzy. He shows concern, and offers to take you to your room. You get up and almost fall, you are having difficulty keeping upright. He supports you, and in his arms walks you to the elevator, and your room. You are really out of it and at this point can barely think straight and can’t navigate on your own. You have difficulty walking. At first you aren’t even sure it was your room he took you to.

He gets you to the bed and your head is swimming. You’re struggling not to pass out. You can’t speak coherently. He starts kissing and fondling you, then undressing you, then…everything else. You are too drunk to resist. And you are too surprised to speak. You just think to yourself, in a bit of shock… Oh. Okay. So this is happening. You never asked for it, and he never asked you if you did. It wasn’t even a subject you’d ever discussed or hinted at. And once it’s begun you aren’t sure how to stop it. You aren’t even thinking clearly enough to reason that out. You say something, but your speech is so slurred even you aren’t sure what you said. And before you get any idea of what to do, it’s over, and he leaves.

You lay there in the bed, stunned. The shock of what happened has sobered you up a little. You feel violated. You gather yourself up. You start crying. You finally get your head together and stumble out to report what just happened, visibly shaken as many witnesses can verify.

Why Dick feels like he needs to present this example, I don’t know. Does pretending something actually happened make it more true? Sure this kind of thing has happened but what does Richard Carrier’s imagined version have to do with actual events? An example maybe? An example of how Richard Carrier imagines something he never witnessed happened? The best reason I can come up with is his bitterness over the Penthouse rejection letters. Or maybe he is trying to jump on the same conjecture train PZ Myers had been riding up and down the rails.

 

Before I get too far ahead let’s look at some of Dick’s points, such as-

We should know the difference between anonymous authorship and unnamed sources

I agree, yes we should know the difference. Most people do. The problem here is lots of people do not trust PZ Myers cause he has taken his credibility and used it like a roll of toilet paper. He wipes his ass with it and then expects us to take it from him and say it smells like roses. It doesn’t smell like roses and I seriously doubt it ever will. If Dick Carrier can take toilet paper PZ has used, hold it to his nose, take a whiff of it, and have the same sensation as bringing his wife flowers on Valentines Day that’s nice for him. Most of what PZ says that isn’t directly related to his profession lacks credibility. I’m not saying everything he says is a lie but he has made mistakes when making claims about people’s actions, their character, and words in the past. PZ has never even shown an ability to acknowledge when he is wrong. Anyone who says that PZ has proven to be trustworthy and/or a reliable source in the past is clearly biased, tragically uninformed,  or just plain stupid. I’m sorry but there really is no other explanation.

Dick goes on-

We should also know the difference between criminal and civil standards of judgment; and between investigations and findings reached in a court to enforce public laws, and investigations and findings reached in private companies (for-profit and nonprofit, schools and hospitals, hotels and bars, banks and grocery stores) to enforce their own private conduct policies (e.g., you don’t have to be convicted in court to be banned from a campus for violating a school conduct policy, nor do you have to break any law for that, either).

First of all PZ Myers blog is not a civil court, a company, a school, or any other organization that has any standing. FTB is a bunch of people who know how to hit buttons on a keyboard. I guess Dick is okay with any group of people making any claim they think is credible about anyone as long as they say it is true. There is no need to hear all sides or get any details. There is no need to question or get the opinion of people who have no bias and are not involved in the matter. What  the hell do we even need lawyers for?  Someone says they were victimized, the accuser is known by a biologist with a popular blog, some other people say they have heard the same gossip,  the accused is guilty, case closed.

Does Dick think that the same method used by PZ to accuse Shermer is also used by companies and schools across the country to decide if someone was actually stealing  or if they actually cheated on a test? Well if that is true he should get out of the house more often. Sure an accusation can begin an investigation but it should be reported to responsible people who can check into it’s validity before punishing the accused. No every instance does not have to be decided in a courthouse but most reputable organizations follow a process that is similar to the one used by the court system because it is a good model. For Dick to gloss over that fact gives the impression he omitting important aspects in order to better support his bias.

Richard Carrier (Dick for short) then goes through and shares his fantasies about Michael Shermer’s sexual experiences.(see above) I think it’s safe to say that Dick Carrier has no idea if what he is writing is even remotely close to the truth. Unless he can travel back in time and make himself invisible so he can witness the events he wasn’t there so it all comes down to- A bunch of shit. Dick can write fictional stories. We can put him up there with other fictional writers like say…. L Ron Hubbard. Very impressive but not useful.

 

Dick continues on-

 But the preponderance of evidence (a civil court burden, whereby a claim need only have a better than 50% chance of being true, so even just a 50.1% chance of being true would win a case) is enough for me to conclude that the general picture is probably true: Shermer pursues sex with women a lot, both one-night stands and ongoing affairs, and he has often enough done so without telling his wife or his various girlfriends. His recent attempt to compel PZ Myers to retract his report of what a witness told him appeared to deny even this (that Shermer has lots of consensual trysts and affairs), which I think is disingenuous at this point.

At this point I think it is fair to ask Dick to make up his mind. Is he going to treat this as if PZ’s blog is a court of law (civil or otherwise) or is he going to claim that accepted legal procedures do not apply because it is not a court? You can’t have it both ways Dick. If we are to consider the comparison used above then it is important to note that in a civil case ALL SIDES OF THE ISSUE ARE HEARD BEFORE ANY JUDGEMENT.

How hard is it to understand? Richard Carrier is educated isn’t he? He is supposed to be intelligent. I’m sorry but this application of logic when it fits what you want to believe is exactly like the behavior of religious people. In their day to day life they apply a certain logic to everything they do because if they didn’t it would be almost impossible to function. When they consider religion a entirely different set of rules come into play because religion is different and isn’t subject to the kind of logic that allows you to function and stay alive in the world you actually live in.  Richard Carrier, PZ Myers, and all the other people who are using this emotional and/or flawed formula are doing the same thing.

I don’t know what the fuck has happened to Dick and PZ and all the other morons who want to try and convince us there is a public process which has no connection to the court system and it should be used to pronounce judgement on people accused of improper behavior or crimes. Sure there is a court of public opinion but people should be responsible when voicing their opinion.

Popular public personalities/figures should be aware that their opinion carries weight. When Jenny Mcarthy said

 The idea that vaccines are a primary cause of autism is not as crackpot as some might wish.

I would assume she thought she was telling the truth. She was incorrect though, the idea was based on completely useless or just plain made-up data. The doctor who had said there was a link was a crackpot. Jenny had given him credibility and we all know the damage that has been done due to her irresponsible behavior. She said it in an attempt to protect children much in the way PZ, Dick and others are claiming to be protecting women from rape. But at what cost? No matter how they want to twist and turn and selectively use examples the bottom line is they are accusing a man of breaking a serious law and they have portrayed him as guilty by way of hearsay, without allowing him to answer his accuser. In fact without allowing him to answer at all. Now that the accusation and presumption of guilt have been made he can not answer without legal council. He would be an idiot to do so, especially considering the types of buffoons he is dealing with here. We all want to know the truth but PZ the Clown has made that even more difficult by acting like a twit.

I’d really like anyone who also chooses to ride the PZ Myers conjecture express to imagine if it was them. Imagine if this was the typical process we used to find innocence /guilt. Even the court of public opinion doles out punishment. Punishment should be deserved. Whether it is deserved should depend  on fair unbiased people learning as much factual information about the issue as possible and listening to all sides in order to form and educated opinion about the how events occurred.

There is a big red flag here. This red flag has popped up time and time again when you read some posts at FTB. There is no link to an opposite point of view. If the writers were honest, thought they had a sound argument, and respected their readers enough to allow them to come to their own conclusions after hearing all sides, then they would give the reader a way to find that information. Whenever you don’t find a link to the original information or the opposing view being criticized, unless it is unavailable, then that is a red flag. This is an important point. There is usually a reason the other side isn’t being represented in some form and that reason is almost never good.

Richard Carrier: Inept Idiot or Ignorant Simpleton?

Divide and Conquer?

   I keep thinking PZ Myers will get it. One morning he will wake up, look in the mirror and have a sudden epiphany. He will finally realize that he doesn’t know everything and it’s been obvious to everyone the entire time. The hypocrisy he has displayed will give him a feeling of embarrassment that washes over him as if he had jumped into a pool of ice water. The character assassinations he has been guilty of will give him the same feeling of regret one would have after waking up naked on a park bench after a night of drinking. The name calling would cause him to imagine his dignity falling out of his body onto the floor wiggling around as if a pair of hands were grasping it and choking it to death until it withered into what resembled a dried up leaf and blew away. All the lies, bullshit, and excuses that seemed so clever at the time now are now revealed to him for what they really were, childish attempts to cover up behavior that should have been unthinkable. Suddenly he sees through the eyes of all the reasonable, rational people of the world and comes to the conclusion it is far past the time to shut the fuck up.

I couldn’t be more mistaken. Instead he offers this-This is not an update

Remember when Dick Carrier called for people to pick which side they wanted to be on? You were either A+ or you were less than A+. Dick stopped just short of calling for fighting in the streets. It took an overwhelming rejection of Dick and his dickish ideas on a youtube video of him at the 2013 American Atheist convention to drive the point home. It wasn’t easy to convince Dick he could be wrong. It is possible he is still convinced it’s all a bad dream and is just playing along until he wakes up and gets a chance to kick some non A+ ass.

Despite the public voting down the A+ rhetoric and ignoring calls to actively divide the atheist/skeptic community the first time around, PZ thinks it’s a good idea to make that call once again. Let me make sure you all understand what my point is- PZ Myers is actively calling for people to choose sides on a issue that has become the biggest dividing force among atheist/skeptic activists. Does anyone think this is a good suggestion? What kind of example are we if we can’t get along?

What rational, sane person would do this? What intelligent, educated adult makes such a childish public demand of people? In case PZ doesn’t know it there were already enough sides before he tried to force his ideology on all of us and condemn anyone who doesn’t agree completely with whatever he tells them to.

Sexual harassment? PZ says it is bad, bad, bad! The predatory habits of old white men must be stopped! They are running rampant and harassing women constantly! Oh, unless they do this…this is okay as long as your name is PZ.

Less For More, More Often

Twinkies are back. I like twinkies, a lot of the bad things you hear about the snack are bullshit or no worse than any other food product. The one thing I’d like to address is the difference in the old snack and its reincarnation, size. The new twinkies are slightly smaller. It should be noted that the size change isn’t something the current makers of twinkies came up with. The size change was actually made before Hostess went out of business the first time. It was an attempt to save on costs. The attempt was too little too late. That is not always the case and this type of business practice has become all the rage.

Ice cream makers re-defining the measurement of their product quietly. The candy bar makers making that candy bar just a bit thinner or maybe just the chocolate covering. Adding air to a product and pronouncing it “dreamy” or “delightfully light”  all the while the ruse is on. The only thing that has changed is your willingness to pay for empty space.

Paying for stuff filled with “air”? Sucker.

When is the last time you saw a product announce it was cutting its size and it’s price? That would at least be honest. It’s the sneaky factor that worries me. Everybody and their parent company are trying to pull a fast one on us just to make more money.

Tropicana was one company thinking of the customer. When there was a big freeze and it effected orange crops. They tried to think of a way to keep the freeze from having an impact on their customers. The solution they came up with was to drop the size of the container by 5oz from 64oz to 59oz.  That way the price per ounce went up but nobody was effected because what you don’t know can’t hurt you , right?

You’re gonna pay extra and like it. Get it?

Pre-mixed anti-freeze, but there is no mention the mix consists of anti-freeze and ….water. The price? Sometimes even more that you would pay for anti-freeze without that hard to get extra water they add.

When you sell a million of something all you have to do is cut a little to make a lot. Sometimes companies are bulking up the packaging to make it appear like you are getting the same amount of product or even more when that isn’t the case. Revlon is pulling this trick with it’s lipgloss. Revlon decided to bulk up packaging for Superlustrous glosses but you are actually getting less product.  The new version only has .13 ounces, while the old version had .20 ounces. Guess what? Priced the same.

Jif peanut butter just reduced their 18oz jar by 11% no notice, nothing. They are counting on you being distracted or just dumb. This plan is working wonderfully so far and it is spreading like wildfire.

If that isn’t enough  Angel Soft was bragging on it’s packaging it contains “70% more.” Then the next packaging design dropped the 70% claim and added a more subtle change from 400sq ft to 354sq ft  while keeping the price the same.

Is it a problem? Here are some more products  that have been downsizing on the downlow. Oreos, Dawn soap, Dial soap, Bounty, Pampers, Gillette Fusion, Hefty, Kleenex *

I’m not sure how we stop it but if you contact the companies who are trying to quietly pick our pockets some will send you coupons as a sort of “we’re sorry”. It will also let them know we are paying attention and don’t like being taken advantage of.

Here are links to a couple companies to file a complaint about this downsizing trend.

Kleenex

Kraft/Nabisco

 

 

*source http://incredibleshrinkinggroceries.com/

Other links-

Consumerist

Consumerworld

Less For More, More Often

Porn be gone!

Baptist preacher Jay Dennis of the First Baptist Church at the Mall in Lakeland, Florida wants to stop porn. It’s worse than crack cocaine he says. He says it’s been called the new bubonic plague. Maybe a little dramatic considering without treatment, the bubonic plague kills about two thirds of infected humans within 4 days. In the 14th century it killed an estimated 25 million people, or 30–60% of the European population. We would be in serious trouble if jay was right about the plague thing.

I went and checked out The First Baptist Church at the Mall  and it is legit. Jay Dennis even mentions atheists in one of his posts “I am Intolerant of the ACLU and Atheist Groups who tout First Amendment Rights yet attempt to shut down any praying in government or education, want to remove Christmas from our vocabulary in the public sector, and won’t rest until they remove every cross from any public place”  ( I contacted him about this already)

Jay is currently taking on porn. He claims it is the #1 issue effecting men in the Christian church. He says 80% of men in the church are struggling with porn on some level. To battle this evil which must involve Satan somehow. Jay has started Join 1 Million Men.

Join 1 Million Men is “a daily process of surrendering to the holy spirit” and some other stuff and biblical truth. Jay doesn’t care if you have to “destroy your personal computer” you need to get porn out of your life because it causes men to become useless masturbating bums who don’t go to work and need to touch their penis just like a crack head needs a rock.

Jay is asking men to take the pledge to remove porn from their lives from now until they go to heaven. I guess if you go to hell you are out of luck but if you go to heaven that’s the end of the pledge and you’ll be watching the archangel banging the hell (so to speak) out of some naughty nurses before you know it!

According to the anti-porn crusader the chances your son has seen some porn is nearly 100%.  Satan uses porn as a tool ( get it?) to do evil stuff to your children and distract them from the usual stuff 10 year old boys do, like masturbation. Hey that doesn’t make any…..whatever.    The catch is you have to be a boy 10 years old or over to join in the pledge so all you 6-9 years old boys get your porn in while you can cause before you know it you will be limited to watching naked characters on the cartoon network. At least until you get to heaven, then it’s “Debbie Does The Last Supper” every Friday night for eternity.

I checked out “the wall” where men can sign and pledge to remove all the porn from their lives. So far a little over 500 men have made the pledge to smash their computers if needed to keep from watching porn. I guess that’s a lot. It’s more than I expected to see.

Think of how happy this guy would be watching porn. Maybe there is a problem

While there is a certain percentage of the population that claim to have an addiction to porn so serious that it negatively effects their lives I don’t understand the need to remove it totally from everyone’s life. There are 10x as many people who watch porn and have no problem.

I  started thinking – Jay seems to be in denial of is a lot of women watch porn too. What about them? Jay also doesn’t consider the number of couples who may have saved their marriage by making porn part of their sexual routine. He is out to remove it altogether. Well my questions were soon answered. There is a wall for women too. The wall for women is not to pledge that they wont look at porn it is a pledge to help stop men from watching porn. Maybe he figures if the men get rid of it the women will have to obey. There is one tiny problem. Only 168 women have committed to stopping the men from looking at porn vs 500+ men who said they would remove it from their lives. I see a possible conflict arising from this whole thing.

Another  thing Jay never mentions is those damn Mormons. Those perverts watch more online porn than any other state in the USA according to the last poll I saw on the subject. Does he have plans to deal with them in the future?

I’ll give jay credit, he does seem to be taking a hardline on this, he isn’t gonna go soft on porn. Even if he has to bang on and look behind every green door in his city, he will be grabbing people’s knockers and having a three-way with couples across his town to spread his news. He will go down every alley, even if he makes himself look like a boob in the process. Jay knows in the end he can hold his head erect and know that when it came to porn he rubbed it out as hard and fast as he could.

He even has a booklet called “The Hardcore Battle Plan” that comes in one version for men and one for women.

Here is Jay’s video promoting his Join 1 Million Men crusade.

Introduction from New Hope Publishers on Vimeo.

 

I’d also like to offer my help to Jay Dennis by offering to take any porn his followers want to get rid of and making sure they never see it again. Who says I never rise to the occasion?

Porn be gone!

Small Battle Won

 

Closed- No apologies will be issued

   While talking with Ally Fogg from FTB this past week I brought up the dungeon. The dungeon was a page where PZ Myers would list the people he had banned from his blog in a strange childlike manner. It was like   looking at the notches on a belt. For every character assassination there was a name and the manner in which their character has been killed with libel by PZ.  Ally claimed no knowledge of it and after the conversation I wondered what the dungeon looked like since PZ was banning anyone who was associated with the slymepit and he claimed I had created more than 30 fake accounts then there should be quite a list. At least 30 names supposedly on account of me alone.

When I went to look….the dungeon was gone. How could this be? I wondered how, what , why? Could it be that PZ had finally seen the light and recognized his behavior was juvenile and unfair? Could we count on PZ to focus on real issues instead of the regular trashing of someone based on some paranoid delusion in PZ’s head?  Then I found this. It’s a post from June 10th 2013 called No More Mr. Nice Guy. (allow me to suggest PZ get someone to write his titles for him cause they usually make no sense)

After reading the post I was a little let-down. PZ never mentions how his dungeon may have been unfair  or a bad idea.

He says

So yes, I’m fed up and I’ll be taking stronger action against these trolls and other assholes. But that does not in any way imply that I’m silencing disagreement…but that’s the message the trolls and assholes want to send out, to foment more harassment.I don’t ban that many people, and those that I do kick out, I try to be open about it, listing their names on the Dungeon page. Which leads to the other lie: that I’m unusually censorious. It turns out that being transparent about necessary banning actions, while just about every other goddamn blog out there just invisibly disappears objectionable junk, leads these phonies to make up more lies about policies here.

So I’m also changing something else. The Dungeon is gone. From now on, if you’re a jerk, you just get zapped and disappear forever, with no documentation, just like it’s done on the blogs of the assholes who accuse me of banning people for disagreeing with me.

It’ll save me a little work, too.

It’s kinda strange cause the people PZ disagrees with are often referred to as “assholes”, “jerks” or “slymers” which are all also the same terms he uses when talking about the people he has banned. I wonder, could this be the cause of some of the confusion PZ claims there is among critics of his policies?  I think so. PZ needs to be more clear or admit that as soon as someone doesn’t choose to see things his way in what he considers a proper amount of time they are told to shut up. If that instruction is not followed then they are banned. PZ doesn’t ban you for disagreeing, he bans you for not shutting up about your disagreement and for not changing your mind to agree with him. (note: you can also be banned for saying uncomplimentary things about his “horde”)

PZ also says he will be taking “stronger action” against the trolls and assholes. I don’t know what action he is planning on taking since there really is very little he can do about people who are posting comments unless he starts to approve comments.

Now if we could get PZ Myers on board the “No personal attacks” train then we will be on our way to a more peaceful interaction between not just skeptics and atheists but with believers too. I think a good way to ease into that would be for PZ to start better controlling his comment section. In the past he has bragged about how tough his horde is when in actuality they are just mean and intent on hurting people.Very little of their content is valid counter arguments, it is mostly personal insults, playground caliber name calling and threats. The number of people who seem to use PZ’s comment section as a way to vent frustrations is disturbing.

After all is said and done even with PZ making a clear attempt pretend this is all just because he choose to do it and the motivation was all the lies being told about him…it is a win.

PZ did something right by taking the dungeon page down and I will give him credit for that. It’s still too bad it wasn’t done because PZ recognized it was unfair and wrong but at least he has been stopped from continuously misrepresenting people. Pressure from others was also a factor so there is hope.

Not only that but it saves me a little work too.

Side-note: People can quit assuming I am somehow ‘obsessed’ with PZ too since it took a month for me to notice he posted about the removal I obviously don’t pay nearly the attention he claims I do. Sorry PZ, wrong about me again buddy, keep trying.

 

 

Small Battle Won

Oh-boycott

In case you haven’t heard enough of Rebecca Watson telling you what to do she is at it again here. She is pissed that a white male is allowed to have a voice. Even though he spoke about a legitimate issue involving feminism. It wasn’t what she wanted to talk about and most importantly  it wasn’t said by the gender she wanted to see/hear talking about it. How can anyone call themselves a skeptic and be so obviously biased? Follow that with the fact she is so ignorant of her own bias she parades it around screaming and pointing at it without even realizing it.

The Center For Inquiry issued a statement that supported Ron Lindsay and it is straight to the point. Rebecca can’t understand how it is possible to make a point by being clear and leaving out any rhetoric. She thinks that you need to draw things out , you need to insult people, build some resentment. Rebecca prefers to be vague so people might take your point the wrong way and then you can slam them and tell them how stupid they are. She likes to make it sound like people who disagree with her believe in the exact opposite. Kinda like the way religious people will reply to someone who says they don’t believe in god. “Oh your one of them satanists then huh?”  because simple people need to think in simple terms. If you don’t like steak you are a vegetarian. You don’t drink? You are a recovering alcoholic. You aren’t a feminist? You hate women. See? Simple. To consider there are many different perspectives or maybe there is more than one way to solve a problem is too much trouble. You can’t judge people if you are trying to understand where they are coming from. Besides, where is the drama in that ? I imagine Rebecca would have liked to see CFI  reply with a statement that looked more like this-

Rebecca Watson’s Center for Inquiry Board of Directors Statement on the CEO and the Rebecca Watson Women in Secularism 2 Conference

The mission of the Rebecca Watson Center for Inquiry is to foster a secular feminist society based on Rebecca Watson, science, freedom of inquisition , Rebecca Watson, and feminist values.

The Rebecca Watson Center for Inquiry, unincluding its CEO whether he likes it or not, is dedicated to advancing the status of Rebecca Watson, women and promoting Rebecca Watson’s issues, and this was the motivation for Rebecca Watson’s sponsorship of the two Rebecca Watson Women in Secularism conferences. The CFI Board & Rebecca Watson wishes to express its unhappiness with all men especially white men except PZ MYERS (cause he is the one man who ‘gets us’ ) at the recent Women in Secularism Conference 2.

Rebecca Watson & CFI believes in respectful debate and dialogue in other places maybe but not here. We appreciate worship Rebecca Watson and the many insights and varied opinions communicated to us by her. Going forward, Rebecca Watson will endeavor to work with all elements of the secular movement to force our her values on them and strengthen our solidarity as we struggle together for full equality and then some for only women around the world.

But…that didn’t happen. So now she is calling for a boycott of CFI. She is not going to do anymore to support them especially because they haven’t invited her to. Rebecca here is a little something you should know. You can’t quit a job after you get fired. Maybe keep that in mind if you ever get a job. Unless you have one now , I’m not sure cause you never seem to talk much about any actual work you’ve done.

Maybe you could get a job looking after  PZ’s  ‘horde’. you know cleaning out the cages and putting the hose on ‘em every so often. Patting them on the head whenever some son of a bitch doesn’t give them a trigger warning and they melt down. ….just a thought.

Rebecca goes on to cry about the harassment she keeps getting and finally we see an example of the extreme hatred

How could anyone dare suggest Rebecca lives in another universe? Is there no end to the vile behavior Rebecca must endure?!  If this is the current level of ‘hate’ she is getting and it still is too much I hope she stays away from playgrounds and catholic schools cause the shit that goes on in those places is off the hook!

I’d like to hear, just once,  Rebecca make a plea to people asking for them to try and find common ground or to be less confrontational. What would have happened if Rebecca would have released her own statement a while back. Maybe something like this -

“Look, I can see there is a huge problem that seems to be doing harm to atheists and skeptics. I’m outspoken and I can see how I could have maybe just a little contributed to this problem. I’d like to help fix it by making some things clear- I’d like to tell all the people who are making actual threats towards me- I’m calling the cops. Those of you who are all talk – STFU cause I don’t give a shit. Every single shit message you send gets deleted, your time wasted. Thanks for spending some of your limited time on earth  thinking of me, I’m flattered. To all the reasonable people including the ones who disagree- Let’s focus on the things we agree on and by working together maybe we will come to understand where each of us is coming from. We are going to have arguments and fights but let’s realize when we have taken it to the point where no one benefits  except the people we both disagree with and that means we all lose.

Or we can just build a list of people/groups who don’t do what we want and withdraw support until we are only supporting skepticism by donating time to…well there isn’t anyone who does things exactly like we would do them ourselves so where does that leave us?

Rebecca, thanks for all you work to help make the world a place where skeptics don’t tolerate opposing opinions and no one supports rational thought and drama is favored over rational debate. Your contribution is noted.

Oh-boycott