Most of my spam for the past few weeks has been about the following three things:
The second is puzzling. But I really don't understand the third. Would would anyone think the lure of "amazing woodworking projects" would be strong enough to get people to click spam links?
Take that, nanny state!
O. Hai,* and I. B. Hakkenshit
Received 12th December 2011, Accepted 21st January 2012. First published on the web 23rd February 2012
A novel and straightforward synthesis of pseudoephidrine from readily available N-methylamphetamine is presented. This practical synthesis is expected to be a disruptive technology replacing the need to find an open pharmacy.
Pseudoephedrine, active ingredient of Sudafed®, has long been the most popular nasal decongestant in the United States due to its effectiveness and relatively mild side effects [1]. In recent years it has become increasingly difficult to obtain psuedoephedine in many states because of its use as a precursor for the illegal drug N-methylamphetamine (also known under various names including crystal meth, meth, ice,etc.)[1,2]. While in the past many stores were able to sell pseudoephedrine, new laws in the United States have restricted sales to pharmacies, with the medicine kept behind the counter. The pharmacies require signatures and examination of government issued ID in order to purchase pseudoephedrine. Because the hours of availability of such pharmacies are often limited, it would be of great interest to have a simple synthesis of pseudoephedrine from reagents which can be more readily procured.
A quick search of several neighborhoods of the United States revealed that while pseudoephedrine is difficult to obtain, N-methylamphetamine can be procured at almost anytime on short notice and in quantities sufficient for synthesis of useful amounts of the desired material. Moreover,according to government maintained statistics, N-methylmphetamine is becoming an increasingly attractive starting material for pseudoephedrine, as the availability of N-methylmphetamine has remained high while prices have dropped and purity has increased [2]. We present here a convenient series of transformations using reagents which can be found in most well stocked organic chemistry laboratories to produce psuedoephedrine from N-methylamphetamine.
Science is leading the way to a better tomorrow. Thank you, Messrs Hai and Hakkenshit!
The New York Times is talking about Santorum's criticism of a speech John F. Kennedy gave in 1960. About that speech, the NYT helpfully mentions:
Kennedy, then a presidential candidate, gave the speech to quiet claims that he would answer to the Vatican because he was a Roman Catholic.
But what doesn't the NYT tell us? The NYT doesn't tell us what Kennedy actually said. There are no actual quotes from Kennedy or from the speech in question - there is the paraphrase above and this paraphrase:
[Santorum] described how he had become sickened after reading John F. Kennedy’s 1960 speech calling for the rigid separation of religion and politics.
There are a dozen quotes from Santorum. A couple from Romney. None from Kennedy. Nor is there a discussion of the context of Kennedy's speech. Nor is there a link to the actual text of Kennedy's speech.
So, readers are left to either wonder what JFK actually said, or to take Santorum's word for it. The NYT isn't going to tell you if Santorum is telling the truth because as we know, that's not their job. But I would've thought a reasonable summary of JFK's speech would be required for a proper "he said/he said" story. Guess not. Two pages of Santorum quotes, barely two sentences of badly-paraphrased JFK. This is a actually a "he said he said" story.
So what did JFK say? Here's the speech itself. He says he wants a strict separation between Church and State because he was being accused, as the first Catholic candidate, as being possibly under the control of the Vatican. And this speech was a response to those critics. Kennedy says:
I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute--where no Catholic prelate would tell the President (should he be Catholic) how to act, and no Protestant minister would tell his parishioners for whom to vote--where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference--and where no man is denied public office merely because his religion differs from the President who might appoint him or the people who might elect him.
I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish--where no public official either requests or accepts instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source--where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials--and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.
He's telling his critics that their religion would be safe if he won the Presidency because he doesn't think the government has any business interfering in religion. But the NYT doesn't want us to know that.
Some say the Earth is round, but others disagree. We'll cover the controversy later on MSNBC!
MSNBC.com reports that some members of the Dutch government are upset at how that piece of shit Santorum lied about euthanasia in the Netherlands.
“They have voluntary euthanasia in the Netherlands, but half the people who are euthanized every year, and it’s 10 percent of all deaths, half of those people are euthanized involuntarily in hospitals, because they are older and sick,” Santorum said. “So elderly people in the Netherlands don’t go to the hospital. They go to another country. Because they’re afraid because of budget purposes they will not come out of that hospital if they go in with sickness.”
On Thursday, Dutch Member of Parliament Frans Timmermans, a leading member of the opposition left-leaning Labor Party in The Hague, blasted his government’s silence.
He wrote in a post on his Facebook page that he wanted Foreign Minister Uri Rosenthal to rebuke Santorum for his “scandalous accusations,” The Times reported.
“This cannot be allowed to rest,” he wrote, according to The Times.
And how does MSNBC handle this? By refusing to look up the facts themselves! Instead, they left that to Factcheck.org.
FactCheck.org, a nonpartisan project that monitors the factual accuracy of what is said by U.S. politicians, said Santorum “grossly mischaracterized” euthanasia practices in the Netherlands.
It said the former Pennsylvania senator overstated the rate of euthanasia. Government statistics show euthanasia is climbing but represented only 2.3 percent of all deaths in the Netherlands in 2010, it said.
FactCheck.org said Santorum’s claims that the elderly are being killed against their will and wear “do not euthanize me” bracelets are false.
Dutch euthanasia review boards found nine cases in 2010 where doctors “had not acted in accordance with the due care criteria,” mostly for how the procedure was performed — not because it was against anyone’s will, FactCheck.org said. It added that the Dutch government and medical association say no such “Don’t euthanize me” bracelets exist.
A perfect little "he said, she they said" story: just the way our cowardly spineless press likes em. MSNBC gets to avoid appearing partisan by never directly challenging the words of a Republican. They just play neutral observer, even-handedly giving each side of the story a chance to state their case. They don't even bother to tell you which side they suspect might be right. They just report the controversy and let readers figure it out for themselves. Bunch of fucking cowards.
If they would just point out when people are flat-out lying about easily-verifiable facts, there would be no need for anything like Factcheck.org, and the country would a whole lot smarter. Hell, politicians and their supporters might even get used to the idea that they can't lie about simple facts. And then the media could go back to sleep for a few years.
Rich politically-connected man wants to run a media outlet ?
Quick, somebody tell Rev Moon to call Roger Ailes with this huge scoop! His boss will surely want to know about this!
Big scammers have little scammers,
Upon their backs to bite 'em,
And little scammers have lesser scammers,
and so, ad infinitum.
