February 24, 2009
Paul Calcagno
In the early 20th century, the “Robber Barons” controlled American industry. Twelve to fourteen hour work days were prevalent. Low wages were the norm and overtime pay was unheard of. When workers tried to unite and speak up for themselves through unions, factory owners hired thugs to bust the unions while the police and the government turned a blind eye.
Workers, many of them men trying to support families on meager wages, were killed and no one ever went to jail. Except, union members. After years of suppression, workers finally got their right to join a union and get the benefits that made life the “American Dream”.
Before you go and berate the unions, think about the overtime check you get. Unions got you that. Think about the 40 hour work week you enjoy while out on the lake in your boat. unions got you that. Think about how safe you are in the work place. Unions got you that. Notice, there are no children on the shop floor. Yes, unions got you that also.
Before people were allowed to unionize, children, as young as 12, worked along side adults in sweat shop conditions,six days a week, twelve to fourteen hours a day for wages that could barely support a family of three.
Deaths on the job were common. Injured workers were fired. I won’t even discuss the corrupt company stores that deducted ridiculous amounts of money for rancid food and cheap products.
Unions changed all of that. Unions gave supressed workers dignity as well as safe working conditions and fair wages. So when I here people spouting off about how unions have hurt America, I ask them how many hours a week they work, hew many days a week, and do they get sick pay and/ or vacation pay.
The biggest problem in America on this subject is the lack of education and misinformation. Too many people listen to the propaganda of the rich employers that care only for massive profits and not about the worker or his conditions.
America woks best when we say UNION, YES!!!
Paul Calcagno
IATSE Local423
Minor readability fixes are mine.
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Politics and Issues, Quotes | Tagged: economy, gm, politics, Quotes, uaw, union, unions | 
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Posted by Abyssal
February 19, 2009
Have you ever noticed that whenever you watch a news story about a five year old girl getting abducted, raped and then disposed of, someone in the room says something like “That’s an awful pretty girl for her to be raped and killed like that.” What the fuck?!
What does her appearance even matter? She was fucking raped and mutilated! How, in a sane world would the subject of her physical appearance even come up? Would the brutal rape-murder of an ugly child be less of a travesty?
I have a confession. I uttered “that phrase” myself not so long ago. Hearing that all-too-common reaction from my own lips made me really think about its implications. For one, it seems to be uniquely confined to female victims. You’ll never hear a guy say “Oh, Adam Walsh was such a pretty little boy for him to be killed like that!” The avoidance of the word “pretty” when discussing male victims of the same sort of crimes is revealing about what people mean in applying it to female victims.
When people talk about how pretty some murdered girl was, they don’t mean “pretty” in the sublime abstract way that nebulae or the Ode to Joy are beautiful, if they were referring to an aesthetic philosophical abstraction there’d be no reason for gender specificity.
Instead people seem to be voicing an otherwise unspoken understanding in our culture that women’s primary value is to serve as objects of lust for men. The reflexive action we all seem to have in the face of these horrors is a perverse sort of mourning. Our culture’s knee-jerk reaction is not sympathy for the suffering of a fellow human being or our society’s loss at them being taken forcefully taken from us.
Instead, the loss is of a “pretty girl,” which is to say, one that looks like she will grow up to be sexually desirable. I invite you to reflect on the implications this has for our culture and our selves. Guys, have you been seeing or treating women as objects? Ladies, have you been exploiting your objectification for social or material gain? Parents, how do you feel about knowing that if your child was stolen from you the first thing people would mourn is her potential desirablity?
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Current Events, Politics and Issues | Tagged: anthony, casey, casey antony, caylee, caylee anthony, Crime, culture, equality, feminism, girls, liberal, liberalism, murder, politics, Sex, women | 
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Posted by Abyssal
February 19, 2009
A recent article at Creation Ministries International uses scare tactics to intimidate people into accepting a literalist biblical worldview. The author says that evolution offers “no purpose, no hope” and warns us that like the victims of the brushfires or 9-11, “none of us know our appointed time and [...] we all, therefore, need to be saved.” Then takes a random jab at Global Warming in the conclusion for some reason.
More than 200 people died in this event and to use this for emotional manipulation and scare-mongering is beyond sickening. Screw religion.
1 Comment | Creation and Evolution | Tagged: Evolution, Creation, Science, pseudoscience, atheism, skepticism, scepticism, religion, evil | Permalink
Posted by Abyssal
February 10, 2009
There are over 1,200 kinds of dinosaurs and most are known rather poorly, so it’s no big surprise that many of their articles are stubs on Wikipedia. These stubs encompass so many very different animals that it has occurred to editors several times that maybe “Dinosaur stubs” is too broad a category, and it should be broken down into the three broadest categories of dinosaurs: theropods, sauropodomorphs, and ornithischians.
Somebody had already started the theropod stub category, so I took it upon myself to create the others. While I was in the process of sorting dinosaur stubs into their new categories, I find that the template has been altered with a message saying that it was being considered for deletion. WTF?
So I go to the Stub-types-for-deletion. The guy says the main reason it’s been nominated for deletion is that it wasn’t created through the proper channels. But what does that matter if the categories were needed anyway? Then he says that they shouldn’t be created because they were rejected before. But that was several years ago. Then he says that there wouldn’t be enough articles. Then I quote policy to show that there would be plenty enough to justify the creation of new stub categories. Then he says that stub categories need regular categories, too. So I make one.
Then I say maybe, since it was just us talking about this, we should wait for someone else to add to the discussion. I stopped adding stubs to the categories so as to avoid being obnoxious and because it was looking like there was a good possibility that my work was going to be deleted anyway. A few weeks and nobody bothers to comment. The nominator’s deletion proposal has gotten no support.
And now today I go to Wikipedia and find that one of the stub types has been deleted. The reasons being that it was “misformed,” although in what way was not made clear, and because… it had too few members. I guess the logic is something like this:
1.) Interrupt someone while they’re working and threaten to delete their stuff.
2.) Ignore them as they debunk every criticism you’ve leveled against them.
3.) Notice that because you interrupted them they weren’t able to finish.
4.) We need to delete this unfinished crap!
It’s no wonder so many people leave in disgust. -_-
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Internet, Wikipedia | Tagged: Internet, Life, Wikipedia | 
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Posted by Abyssal
