The Saviour of the Earth

To the right we have a picture of Nobel Peace Prize winner, former Vice President Al Gore doing some work in his Tennessee home (according to the caption that accompanies this picture on the Time Web site ). What do you see wrong with this picture?

Here is a man that is screaming that the inhabitants of the earth are wasting its resources and will be the cause of its demise. Leading by example, we see here that Mr. Gore is undoubtedly using some kind of electrified overhead lighting (from the shadowing near his desk). Mr. Gore has not one, but amazingly THREE very large computer screens, has the very nice flat screen tv on, and is surrounded by piles and piles and reams and reams of paper.

Gee, how many trees had to die in order for him to print or purchase that much paper product? Wouldn't those trees have contributed to the making of oxygen? Does he REALLY need those three humungous computer screens? Why is the TV on if he's not watching it? He's got some pretty nice ambient lighting going on from outside, why not shut off the overhead lights?

By the way, nice fake gigantic tree frog on the wall, hey Al, did you really need that little decoration or perhaps could you have forgone that little decorative piece so that the factory that's polluting the streams and lakes with toxic wastes and sucking all of our precious electricity while stomping a carbon footprint the size of Antarctica wouldn't have to operate?

eh?

My Weekly Rant List

Throughout the week while I’m stuck writing boring technical documents and listening to CNN I write a list of topics that really irk me with the intent of writing pages and pages of ranting (complete with footnotes and URL references). By the time I get home, work has sucked the life blood from me and there’s no rant to be had.

Since I’m off on fridays I’ll start a weekly rant, where there is no guarantee that it will be a long rant, nor even a good rant... just a rant, but at least you’ll know what has tortured me this past week.

Diversity:
We’re suppose to accept everyone’s race, religion, cultures, etc., well that is until their race, religion, culture, etc., offends someone with some power... like women.

Case in point, the father that strangle his daughter for not wearing a headscarf. Fine, its not a mainstream belief that its fine and dandy to murder your kids if they don’t follow your faith, but there are sects out there that do believe that its ok to do that. There are beliefs out there that says if the husband dies, the wife (still alive) has to plop her butt down right next to him while they burn his body. We have traditions that make women walk behind their husbands, doesn’t allow them to go out alone, to drive, that make them get their neck stretched or wear HUGE earring things, bind their feet and that whole female circumcise thing. All of that shouldn’t be tolerated. Why?

Isn’t diversity all about tolerance? Accepting beliefs different than your own, except we hear all sorts of screaming and gnashing of teeth when those beliefs go against women. Men get circumcised every freaking day and nobody has really started a whole movement to stop that. Nobody says how horrible and disfiguring that is, but there are groups and activists against female circumcising.

Tolerance is tolerance, and if you want us to be tolerant of race, religion, and culture then it should be all cultures and all things... not pick and choose. If it is pick and choose then don’t point your finger at me and call me a racists and not diverse because I don’t like curry (it gives me gas).

World War II vet gets $725 in back pay
This was a curiosity of reporting to me. Fox reported that a WW II vet was wrongly accused of stringing up an Italian prisoner of war and was imprisoned for some time and got a dishonorable discharge. The Department of Defense reviewed his case after a book was written about the incident and the DoD gave him $725 (his pay while he had been imprisoned) and honorable discharge. Ok. Turn to CNN who not only reported this as a racist incident, but figured out for its audience what $725 was worth in today’s money, how much $725 would have netted the guy in a retirement account (which weren’t around back then, but hey, what’s a little detail like that), and what the DoD SHOULD have done instead of what it actually did. What happened to reporting the who, what, where, when, and how of a story? Kudos to Fox for reporting, and WTF CNN for your commentary, which you should have prefaced by saying it was a commentary.

Forbes Most Influential Baby List
I see that Forbes has gone the way of the National Enquirer and other tabloids. Thankfully I now know that celebrity infants control the world, which explains why lately all I want to do is crap my pants and cry at the stupidity that surrounds me.

Kanye West’s Mom
According to the 911 call, she reportedly threw up black stuff before she stopped breathing. I’m going to guess that during the tummy tuck they perforated a bowel or stomach and she was bleeding internally and that’s her cause of death. Not a rant, just wanted to get my ghoul pool guess out there.

Global Warming is a Bunch of Crap
Its not just me anymore! A whole slew of influential scientists are now saying its a bunch of crap, but the other scientists kicked them out and won’t let them play anymore because the scientists that agree with Al Gore are getting government money hand over fist and if the general public finds out that this whole global warming scam isn’t true, they won’t get any more money. Don’t believe me? Just wait until they start taxing your pretend carbon footprint, and hey... did you catch that little bill that just passed into law saying you have to now buy those “environmentally good” lightbulbs and not the regular lightbulbs. How much does a regular bulb cost compared to those others... yeah, they’ll get you one way or another.

Survivor
I don’t watch it, because its a show that rewards people for being back stabbing, lying scum, but I caught a news story about how a losing contestant claimed to have been given a really crappy janitor job on her return to her job after the show... so the shows producers gave her a butt load of money. Except she lied, never happened, she still has the same job she had before the show. There’s talk about getting the money back but hey, why should they? It just proves that they taught her well on the show, and lets hope our children follow the lead of these amazing survivors.

Don’t Use That Shampoo!
I saw some tips on how to conserve energy while staying at a hotel. Turn off the lights and heat/air when you leave the room, and don’t use the hotel supplied little bottles of shampoo. Ok, fine, how about you stop providing that crap and make the room a lot cheaper then. I’ll bring my own shampoo and creme rinse, but knock off $20 from my bill. Have you noticed the trend in “conservation” where we’re asked to go without, and yet still pay for what we use to be able to use? Global warming = money making scam! Just mark my words.

Taxing High Fructose
San Francisco’s mayor wants to tax high fructose drinks because they cause the epidemic of obesity in our nation. Once again, making laws and taxing things to keep the stupid from hurting themselves. Who really pays for these things? Yes, EVERYONE including those who don’t glug down a gallon of the crap and weigh 500 pounds. High fructose doesn’t cause obesity... stupid people who drink it by the gallon causes obesity. If they’re so concerned by obesity, maybe we should be taxed by the pound!

Coming to a Theater Near You
Is there a new law that says that every year there must be a movie on Queen Elizabeth? I’m holding out for Elizabeth II, Electric Boogaloo.

Ch-Ch-Ch-Chia
I’ve just about had it this year with the Chia Pet commercials. Thankfully they are only sold around Christmas for some reason and not all year long. This year we also get the Chia Herb Garden and Chia Cat grass. I bet you didn’t know that you can actually eat the chia plant that sprouts, its suppose to be high in Omega 3 and other nutrients, so go ahead and graze. Next year is the Chia private parts.

Another wonderful gift this holiday season is the Healthcare gift card. Nothing says “I know you’re poor and can’t afford to get those nasty teeth fixed” like a healthcare gift card... for those who have everything except that new kidney.

Loved one got their stoma? Well then how about a nice gas card as a gift! Nothing says festive like a Citgo card. I’m sure they’ve been looking through that speedy cup window at that ice scraper they’ve always wanted but couldn’t afford. Send the very best when something decent isn’t enough.

Solar Arrays In Space

As usual I'm listening to the news at work and was distracted from my very interesting technical writing crap by a scientist who is proposing that the solution to the energy crisis, and for ridding the U.S. of its dependence on foreign oil is to build solar arrays in space.

I'll pause here while you laugh hysterically and wipe the tears of mirth from your eyes like I did when I heard this load of crap.

Solar arrays in space? Yes, this scientist says that we can simply build solar arrays in space where there is no night, those arrays will just sit up there and collect energy from the sun and beam it down to the earth to some sort of energy collection device.

Um... wasn't that something I read in I, Robot? Wasn't that the "god" the robots were defending in space? Are we now pulling "solutions" from science fiction books written in the 1950's? What next? We breed tiny people with furry feet to live in holes in the ground?

Ok, so maybe having solar arrays in space is a possibility, but just WHO is going to build that? Its not like we can depend on our rocket scientists here in the U.S. to build those. They can't even fuel up a shuttle without messing something up, and we send that outdated sucker into space with a tool kit full of duct tape and spackle to fix the holes in it from lift off. Lets not forget that little glitch in math that had the Mars probe bashing itself to death on the planet. Yeah, they're great candidates to build the solar array.

I'm sure this little announcement had nothing to do with Al "Mr. Largest Head In the World" Gore's acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize for his Academy Award Winning Slide show of doom. Yeah, that's a nice little medal you got there Mr. Gore, but nobody seems to talk about the gazillion dollar prize money you also get with that.

These wonderful, and truly mind boggling expensive "solutions" to a problem that nobody has yet to actually provide tangible, plausible evidence is yet another way for rich people to get richer. We poor, hardworking tax payers will, in the end, get screwed by all of these companies popping up to "solve" global warming by creating new and expensive things that make our earth better, when they do nothing of the sort. Its only a matter of time before we're taxed on our carbon footprint (a measurement that's made up by whoever can profit the most out of it), and we're paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the ultimate eco friendly futuristic mode of transportation (a new invention where one sits on a seat and pedals a vehicle that has two rubber wheels).

People! The earth has a fever... bend over and take it.

Recycling: Not My Problem

A recent article on CNN reports that computers turned in for recycling are being shipped to other countries where the process to retrieve usable parts is more dangerous to the environment than just throwing the stuff in a dump.

“Experts” now tell us that we need to research the companies where we donate, toss, throw, dump our electronics to make sure they are not shipping overseas or disposing of them improperly. Um, screw that.

My local dump now has containers for people to throw their used computer gear. I happen to have a ton of used, old, doesn’t work computer gear clogging up my back room. The moment I found out I could take it there, I started loading that crap up (gutting the parts out first, like hard drives) and hauling it to the dump. What do they do with it? I don’t know and I don’t care because once its in their pile, I could care less. What I do care about is that its no longer stacked in my back room collecting dust. I’m certainly not going to spend the time researching what they’re doing with it, because I’m sure that they’ll say one thing, it’ll be another, and no amount of research on my part will reveal the true, evil nature of their disposal. Frankly, I could care less if they pile it into someone else’s house, I just want it gone and how they do that is frankly none of my concern.

This all goes toward proving my theory that this global warming/recycling crap is just a way for companies to make more money on the “Save the world” hype. I’m sure companies just jumped on this whole recycle computer thing popped up and I’m sure that with this article, other companies will pop up that will vow and swear to get rid of your computer gear in a safe and earth friendly way... for a fee. Yeah, bite me.

I’ll continue taking my computer crap to the dump, and let whoever has it then deal with it. Not my problem anymore. Don’t tell me to recycle and then when I do, tell me that I have to recycle a certain way. Set up the proper infrastructure and do it the right way but don’t try to put the onus on me to make sure my antiquated X86 gets recycled properly.