Little Things Mean a Lot

Have you ever noticed the odd pricing when you go to buy gas? They use a tactic much like stores that price an item at 99 cents. They think they are fooling us by not pricing it at $1. I don't know about you, but for me, I'm rarely fooled by it. If I see $1.99, I read that as $2, not $1.

However, the gas stations are a bit more clever. Any price you see always has a little 9 after it. What is that? It's 9/10 of one cent. Quick, reach into your pocket and grab a 9/10 cent coin. Got it? Of course not. There is no such thing. It's a game where they hide one cent of the cost of a gallon.

Who cares. It doesn't make any difference. After all, it's an amount of money so small there is not even a coin small enough to pay it.

But what is the cumulative effect? According to the Department of Energy, the daily use of gasoline nationwide in 2005, the last year for which there are statistics posted, was 3,784,734,000. If every one of those gallons sold had that extra 9/10 cent tacked on to it, that is a total of $34,062,606. That is $34 million per day hidden in plane sight. That's over $12 billion a year.

I is amazing how something so insignificant to us can have such a huge cumulative effect. Little things really do mean a lot.

Luck of the Enterprise

I wish I had the luck of the U.S.S. Enterprise.

No matter what the danger, they escape it, usually by one of the following methods:

1. They figure out some clever 11th hour (for dramatic effect) solution. There is generally some technical jargon to help dismiss any lingering implausibility.

2. There was some unfortunate ship in the same situation earlier that they are now able to learn from and avoid repeating the mistake that they were seconds away from repeating. (It is very important that if there is ever a lesson to be learned, that it is learned by the ship immediately preceding the Enterprise. The Enterprise is never to be the guinea pig ship. If they were in the situation, they would get out by other means, see item #1)

3. The Enterprise is completely destroyed. Not to worry, there is some temporal anomaly, quantum string, or other fill-in-the-technical-blank effect that alters history so the destruction never really happened.

Commander Riker once commented "Luck. It protects small children, fools, and ships named Enterprise." How true.

I love Star Trek, but it may be a touch formulaic. It seems that in the end, the only thing that can destroy the Enterprise is ratings.

To Kill a (Mocking) Bear

A mother polar bear abandoned its cub and the zoo stepped in to take care of it. Now there are calls by an animal rights activist, Frank Albrecht, to kill the bear. They think it is "unnatural" for the cub to be raised by humans. In nature, they say, it would have died.

It can be helpful to try to figure out a person's world view to understand things that seem incomprehensible (e.g. how can an animal rights activist be calling for killing an animal?). The answer as best as I can figure it out, is that he believes that "nature" is "god". Therefore, whatever nature does is good. Inversely, whatever man does to change the natural order is bad.

This is exactly the opposite conclusion that flows from a Christian world view. Christianity recognizes the fallen nature of the world and calls us to action to change it in positive ways, such as showing compassion to an abandoned polar bear cub.

The animal rights activist would seem to be more of a "nature's rights" activist. He seems to believe that helping the polar bear is actively working against the perfect will of nature. It's a perfectly logical extension of animal rights blather which seeks to set straight the perceived bad influence of man. But usually man's interference is blamed with the death of an animal. In this case, the crime is rescuing an animal from certain death.

If that's a crime, I sure am glad I don't serve his god.

What do Republicans Stand For?

It is two years away from the next Presidential election and many Republicans are rushing to tell us why Giuliani would be such a great President, despite the fact that he is pro-abortion, pro-gay rights, anti-gun -- you know the sort of things Republicans are known for.

It is one thing to hold you nose at election time and vote for the lousy candidate who managed to bubble to the top. But it's an entirely different thing to be one of the bubbles pushing a lousy candidate.

At this point, the field should be wide-open. We have the opportunity to pick someone that represents our ideals, not someone who stands against some of the more important ones. But based on polls of lousy #1 vs. Hillary, lousy #2 vs. Hillary, and so on, Republicans seem to be ready to crown Giuliani before any real contest, because he's the statistical best chance at power.

It seems every election cycle always comes down to a choice of power or principle. The sad thing is, this time around, it seems the choice is far to easy for a lot of people I hoped might have known better.