Although it looks like a rockstar tour bus, this is one of at least 40 mobile execution vehicles that China uses for capital punishment. Just like a blood bank bus or MRI trailer brings a scarce resource to a remote community, death vans tour the Chinese countryside executing criminals.

Whether you agree with capital punishment or not, China is good at it. They should be, they do it more than all other countries combined. The question is: do they do it ethically?

China doesn’t disclose how many executions it performs each year, but Amnesty International estimates at least 1718 were conducted in 2008. Another group believes the number could be as high as 4,000 per year now and 8,000 when it was at its peak.

China is trying to reduce the number of executions it carries out. In 2006, Chinese law dictated sixty-eight offenses, including tax evasion, that were punishable by death. Earlier this year, tax fraud and some other non-violent crimes were removed from the death penalty list. Since 2007, all execution orders are reviewed by the high court to help ensure ethical reasoning.

A lethal injection, made from the same ingredients used in the United States, is administered in the back of the death van. The execution is broadcast live to local authorities who verify the execution is carried out legally.

But, some agencies have raised questions about what happens to the bodies after the execution. The government has indicated the bodies are taken directly to the crematorium. However, some people have complained that the bodies are not available to be viewed before they are cremated. This has sparked rumors that organs from the bodies could be sold on the black market. The Ministry of Health has tried to crack down on this by tightening controls over organ transplants. However, Amnesty International in Hong Kong claims they have evidence suggesting the Chinese police, courts and hospitals participate in the organ trade.

Historically, gunshots have been the most popular method of capital punishment in China. They’re cheap, quick and don’t require a lot of expertise to perform. The gunshot executions are still used, but they’re being replaced by lethal injection. They’re not performed by a firing squad like some other countries, they are performed by one shooter.

Some people wish the government continued to use guns since lethal injections are expensive. The lethal cocktails costs about $125 and a trip to the execution chamber can cost local authorities as much as $250. The death vans were created to help reduce the cost of lethal injections; instead of sending all the criminals to the cities, the death vans come to them.

Ironically, one of the companies that makes these killing machines also makes bulletproof vehicles that help others escape death.

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Source: NY Times, USA Today, AFP/Google

Photo: Jinguan Group

No matter which mobile phone carrier you use, you’ll eventually drop a call with somebody. Even if you don’t have a cellphone, you still have to deal with dropped calls when you’re talking with people who do.

Sometimes you both try to call each other at the same time and get each other’s voicemail. Other times, you try to call the other person and they’re still talking away, oblivious to the fact that the call was dropped.

Rule #1: Whoever initiated the call, initiates the call back after a dropped call.

To some, this rule is obvious. But, it needs to be stated to remove any confusion and prevent the double voicemail dilemma.

Rule #2: Whoever was listening when the call was dropped, remembers the last sentence the other person said.

This is less obvious, but since the listener is the only one who knows exactly when the call was dropped; they need to remember the last sentence or at least the topic — this may be the same person who needs to call the other person back.

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Photo: addicted eyes (cc)

The thirty mile zone (aka “TMZ” or “studio zone”) is the approximately thirty mile area in Southern California where America’s movie industry is based. However, New Jersey was the center of film in America before Hollywood.

Thomas Edison owned a majority of the patents on motion picture cameras and through these patents, he tightly controlled who could make films. In 1908, he formed the Motion Picture Patents Company, a licensing trust that included other important motion picture patent holders, including Eastman Kodak, who sold the only film stock that film makers could legally purchase.

The patents allowed the group to use law enforcement to prevent unauthorized use of their cameras, film, projectors or any variation of this equipment that included features that infringed on their patents. In some cases they hired thugs to do the enforcement.

Understandably, these tight restrictions stifled inovation and crippled the film industry.

Independent filmmakers fled to Hollywood. The physical distance from the Edison Trust made it easy to work on their films without the tight control and patent enforcement.

The reliable sunshine and temperature also made Hollywood a more suitable place to make films year-round.

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Sources: filmbug, wikipedia (motion picture patents company)

Photo: Heather Culligan (cc)

The internet is a great place to catch TV shows and clips that you or your PVR missed.

Unfortunately, a lot of websites only allow their video content to be viewed in their service area. Some content is only available directly from cable distributor or certain directtv packages. It’s not because they’re mean, it’s for legal and cost savings reasons.

That’s right, it’s expensive to stream video over the internet to thousands or hundreds of thousands of people in a reliable way. You need a lot of servers and bandwidth, both of which are expensive, especially in large quantities. If a broadcaster only services one country, they’re not likely going to speed money to reach customers outside of their service area, although they may allow it if there are no legal restrictions and the advertisers are willing to pay to reach those users.

Secondly, they may not be legally allowed to broadcast outside of their broadcast area. Broadcasters buy distribution rights for the shows and other content that they air. These distribution rights are usually sold by country. That means a broadcaster who airs a show in the US is not allowed to distribute that show over the internet to another country since they have not bought the distribution rights required to broadcast in that country. In fact, another broadcaster in that country likely has paid for the rights to broadcast that same show there.

There are also legal agreements with members of various guilds and unions that may prevent content from being distributed in certain areas or for a finite time after the original air date.

Broadcasters can identify which country you’re in when you access their website. They use various methods to determine your location, but the most popular is something called Geo-IP look up. Basically, when you navigate to their website, the network address of your computer is sent to the web server. They can look up that address in a database to see the country that address is registered to. This method is accurate most of the time and in some cases they can actually narrow down the part the city that you live in.

Although there may be legal and ethical issues with it, there are ways to circumvent some of the methods that are used, potentially allowing you to view content from outside their intended region of distribution. These methods may be illegal in your country, so verify the legality of doing this before attempting them.

I think there is at least one ethical use for circumventing regional lockouts. For example, I was in Canada a couple weeks ago and I wanted to catch up on one of my favorite shows. I normally watch the show on network TV and all of the advertising is relevant to me. I wasn’t able to watch videos on the broadcaster’s website from Canada, so I employed the following method to make it work:

1. Install this Firefox plugin: http://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/967 (requires Firefox browser)
2. In Firefox, Go to “tools” > “modify headers”
3. From the drop down box on the left select add
4. Then enter: “X-Forwarded-For” in the first input box without the quotation marks
5. Enter one of the following IP addresses in the second input box without the quotation marks (choose the country where the content is accessible from)
   USA – 12.13.14.15
   Canada – 207.245.252.27
   UK – 193.35.131.194
6. Leave the last input box empty, save the filter, and enable it (should look like this: http://imgur.com/Feb4.png )
7. Click the “Configuration” button on the bottom right then proceed to check the “always on” button.
8. Close the Modify Headers box, restart the Firefox browser and visit the intended website.

I should note some websites that the above method does not work for:

• cbs.com
• cwtv.com (the CW)
• hulu.com
• sho.com (showtime)
• tnt.tv

There are at least four times that many sites that DO work, although I’d rather not single them out for legal reasons. There are also a few other methods, but this is by far the easiest to setup and use. If you have IP addresses for other countries, let me know and I’ll add them.

Also, it takes a lot of people and money to make these great shows, be sure to support them by purchasing them when they come out on disc and renting them from iTunes, Netflix, etc.

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Sources: Hulu, Spike

Ever since I can remember, “Don’t Drink and Drive” has been drilled into my head.

But, the range of acceptable blood alcohol content varies from 0.01% in Albania, Guyana and a few other countries, to 0.08% in Canada, Ireland, Italy, United Kingdom, United States and many others.

It’s obviously dangerous to be drunk while driving. But, it’s arguable when alcohol consumption becomes dangerous.

Some countries have lower limits for drivers who are new or have other special circumstances and more strict penalties for blood alcohol readings at other levels above the legal limit. In some cases: state and provincial laws are more strict than federal laws or county and city laws are more strict than state and provincial laws.

Countries, such as Brazil and the Czech Republic, have a zero tolerance policy for blood alcohol content. In those countries, and a few others, you cannot have alcohol in your bloodstream when you drive.  Other countries, permit up to 0.08% blood alcohol content.

I couldn’t find a country with more internal disagreement than the United States. In most states, it is illegal to have a blood alcohol level higher than 0.08%. The rules are even more strict for drivers under the age of 21. In most states, you can’t have open containers in the passenger compartment of a vehicle — that is a container where the seal has been broken.

Conversely, there are a number of states where passengers are allowed to consume alcohol while the vehicle is moving. These states are Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Mississippi, Missouri, Virginia, and West Virginia. Actually, Mississippi allows drivers to consume alcohol as long as they do not exceed the blood alcohol limit of 0.08%.

States that do not conform to federal open container laws are financially penalized. But, that doesn’t stop them, in fact, drive thru restaurants in some states serve alcoholic beverages too.

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Sources: Wikipedia (US Open Container Laws, Drunk Driving by Country), Open Container Laws, The Monitor, State Line

Relevant:

An alcohol abuse program makes use of various methods, all designed to help an alcohol abuser get the all that drinking off his system.

The laws and store policies around the products that require ID and the ones that don’t, are sometimes confusing.

I was in Target a while back and bought a can of compressed air to clean my dusty laptop. I was surprised when they asked for ID at the checkout.

Apparently some people like to get high from the propellant in canned air. It’s unfortunate, these are not recreational drugs, these are asphyxiates that displace the oxygen in the air, reducing the oxygen that reaches your brain and eventually causes death. The solution is to require ID for purchase, although even a 42 year old man died from “huffing” canned air.

Even when you’re using these products as intended, you should avoid inhaling the fumes and ensure adequate ventilation.

I was at Target a few weeks later, looking for ramekins to make Crème brûlée. I also needed a butane blowtorch to caramelize the top of the custard. It turns out that you can buy butane torches and fuel without ID. Thinking back to my teenage years, a blowtorch would have been much more fun than a can of air.

But, cooking wine has the most interesting story.

It ranges from 10%-13% alcohol and anybody can buy cooking wine at the grocery store. They even sell it in grocery stores in “dry” areas, where no alcoholic drinks are sold. In fact, Safeway requires ID to buy cough syrup, but not for cooking wine. Some cough syrup, such as NyQuil, contains alcohol. Other cough and cold medications contain a drug known as Dextromethorphan, which is a dissociative psychedelic drug.

My friend Molly told me about this cooking wine loophole and gave me a sample of the product. If you’ve ever tasted cooking wine on it’s own, you’ll understand why anyone is allowed to buy it. Nobody would ever consume it on its own, it’s simply awful.

Wine that is sold as “cooking wine” is usually grape or rice wine. It is then adulterated with salt, which makes it less suitable for cooking and even more undrinkable. If you’re making a recipe that calls for wine, use wine that you’d actually drink and use a wine that pairs well with the food you’re cooking.

Cooking wine has a lot of salt for coloring and as a preservative. Because cooking wine is consumed very slowly, the salt prevents acedic acid from forming and turning it into wine vinegar.

Oh, and if you’re going to make Crème brûlée, my friend Mike showed me that you should skip the butane and go with propane — it has a wider flame that heats more evenly, which gives much better results and in less time.

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Sources: Wikipedia (Cooking Wine, Difluoroethane, Dextromethorphan), MSDS, Cooking Wine Without ID (1, 2), Dry Counties, NyQuil

Photo: anitasarkeesian (cc)

Now, when you buy something labeled “pure”, you expect it to match the definition of pure, “unmodified by an admixture; simple or homogeneous.” But, that’s not what you get with pure vanilla extract.

In the United States, the FDA requires Pure Vanilla Extract to contain alcohol if it’s going to be called “pure.” Specifically, it must contain at least 35% alcohol and 13.35 ounces of vanilla bean per gallon.

It turns out this is not a rip off, alcohol actually helps extract the flavor from the vanilla beans. Not only that, vanilla extract gets better with age, maturing in about 2 years.

Alcohol free versions are available, but will not be labeled as “pure.”

Broken Secrets | Written By: Chad Upton

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Sources: dictionary.com, wikipedia, FDA, Arizona Vanilla

Photo: Jocelyn | McAuliflower (cc)

Whether you support government regulated health care or not, there is a good chance it will soon be an option for most Americans (the bill still has a number of steps before it is official). In the meantime, let’s have a look at the impact of health care reform on two other states.

Depending on where you get the numbers from, 85-89% of Americans have health insurance.

Before 1975, 70% of Hawaiians had health insurance, which made it the highest insured state at the time. On January 1, 1975 the Hawaii Prepaid Health Care Art was passed, bringing the state to 92% coverage.

In Massachusetts, the introduction of State health care raised the insurance rate to approx 94% of residents in 2006. The following year, it went up to 97%. In the next two years it dropped a point and Massachusetts now has the lowest number of uninsured residents at 4.1%.

The Hawaiian and Massachusetts systems are quite different from each other. One of the key differences is who pays for it.  In the Hawaiian system, employers are required to provided health insurance to employees who work more than 20 hours per week.

In Massachusetts, citizens are required to pay for their own insurance, although there are exemptions for some people, such as low income residents. Massachusetts employers are required to make a fair contribution to employee health care, not exceeding $295 per employee per year. The money paid by employers goes into a central fund which provides care for low-income and other qualified residents.

Massachusetts’ system has been very successful at improving the number of residents that have coverage while spending from the health safety net fund dropped 38% as more people became insured. Perhaps a downside was that it was too successful too quickly; there have been complaints that the health care infrastructure and staff are overwhelmed with business and wait times have increased.

The Hawaiian system has been very successful at increasing overall coverage while reducing spending and hospital visits due in part to heavy emphasis on preventive care.

There is a lot of confusion about what is actually in this new federal bill. If you want a better understanding of it, you can read a one page overview or the complete bill at the White House website: click here

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Written By: Chad Upton

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Sources: Hawaiian Health Care, Massachusetts Health Care, Keith Hennessey (Bush Economic Adviser), The White House

I think the idea of roadkill sounds strange to most people, but a recent poll at DeerAndDeerHunting.com shows that 19 of the 40 participants have eaten roadkill and another 9 wouldn’t hesitate when the buck drops. I’m sure that number would be much lower on any other website, but that’s not the point. I just heard about this last week, and there is a logical reason for this: there may be $500 worth of meat on a dead deer, and that doesn’t change whether you took it down with a Beretta rifle or a Beretta GT.

State laws differ on this issue. For example: in Texas, it is illegal to posses roadkill, but not in many other states. Generally, you need a permit for this and need to follow the procedure for your area. If you’re interested, check with the game warden (or State Police) near you before attempting to take any roadkill and see if they have a list you can be added to. You also want to do some research on this since you may not want to consume this meat in all cases; although, it might still be OK for your dog.

BrokenSecrets.com

Sources: NewEngland.com Officer.com GunBroker.com FreeRepublic.com DeerAndDeerHunting.com Dogster.com

Photo Credit: Jelene (Creative Commons)