Chew on This

In April, Prince William broke up with Kate Middleton. Some have speculated that the split had something to do with Kate's mother chewing gum in the presence of royalty. Apparently it is considered distasteful, a sign of rebellion, and generally not appropriate around the Royal's.

Here's what I find inappropriate: setting yourself above others and judging someone for something as trivial as chewing gum.

It makes me proud to be part of a country that threw off arrogant royalty and judges people on their own merits rather than the purity of their blood.

Let's rejoice that the King is dead. And if you want to double your pleasure, chew on this.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em

I don't smoke. But if you do, smoke away, while I complain about the freedom-hating anti-smoking crowd. I think I'll call them Smokeophobes. They want to tell everyone else what to do.

Their most prominent message venue is a never-ending series of "Truth" commercials. One of the main messages of these commercials is: "Big Tobacco" is evil and tobacco executives are evil. They aren't really telling us anything new; they are just deamonizing people. Why are they so concerned about something that really is none of their business?

One of their recent commercials starts out "As long ago as 1969, a tobacco company executive..." then talks about some product-placement in the Muppet Movie, from over 25 years ago! It's like condemning people for slavery by saying "As long ago as 1850..." How about some relavant timely issues?

It bothers me that it has become politically correct to treat smokers as second-class citizens. And I find it especially ironic that the Smokeophobes are largely liberals (a generalization on my part topped only by the generalizations they make of tobacco executives), the same people who believe that abortion is a protected moral right. It's okay to kill a child in your body, but your lungs are sacred!

It is also particularly rude that their web site, clearly shown on the commercial is "Whudafxup". Very classy. I guess that tells us the caliber of people standing in moral judgment over anyone lighting up.

I can be rude and deamonizing too. Here's an idea for a commercial: Whudafxup with those stupid glasses? They were in style as long ago as 1969.

Loose Lips

Shock jock radio jerks are in danger of killing free speech for people who actually have something to say. Immediately on the tails of Imus's firing, a scandal erupted involving Opie and Anthony. Personally, I've never had much use for insulting juvenile humor. And since I'm too cheap to pay for satellite radio anyway, I've never heard Opie and Anthony's show. I heard the news reports. Their show had some crude comments demeaning Laura Bush, Condi Rice, and the Queen of England (she was visiting at the time). Apparently they didn't even say it; they just laughed at it.

In any case, I don't really care what they said. I find it very sad that people turn to this sort of thing as entertainment. But then again, I love South Park, so there's no accounting for taste.

The problem is by pushing the limits they are making an opening for others to be silenced as well. There are many conservative commentators that believe there is an effort by liberals to use this "He said ____! Fire him!" routine to silence conservative radio -- a medium not adequately controlled by the fair-minded gatekeepers that control everything else that makes it into public discourse.

Free speech is about the freedom to express ideas, especially political ideas. That is, in fact, the reason it appears in the Bill of Rights. By abusing the idea with worthless blather, the lowbrow attempts at humor could erode the free expression of real ideas. People's failing to exercise self-restraint often results in restraint being imposed from the outside, becoming an encumbrance on us all.

Farewell or Good Riddance

Jerry Falwell died today. WorldNetDaily reported Anti-Falwell venom flows on blogs. Everyone dies, both conservative and liberal. The difference is that conservatives tend to see death as a sombre experience that deserves some reverence, even if you didn't like the guy. Liberals often seem to see death as just another political event. They gloat. They cheer. They don't express sorrow. After all, it's just a person, not a baby seal or a spotted owl.

I think the difference is one of world view. Conservatives, often Christians, see death as the end of the person's chance to yield to God. Yielded or not, the chance is gone. Because of that, they will morn for a passed friend, but celebrate his move into eternity if he was a fellow believer. An enemy, perhaps passing to an eternity of suffering, is morned as well. It is a heavy weight to imagine the judgement for the person. And even if the persons passing may be welcomed at political level, conservatives will rarely ever voice such a sentiment; they express sorrow.

Liberals (the Godless) don't care about the eternal soul of the deceased -- they don't think their is one! The only thing that matters is how does the person's death affect THEM. If it was a friend, they will be sad; if it was an enemy -- like Falwell -- they will jump for joy. In either case, it is entirely self-serving. What good would it do to worry about the dead, they view death as the end.

Children 'bad for planet'

There was a story today out of Australia entitled Children 'bad for planet'. It does a great job at illustrating how much a person's world view affects what they do, and what they try to force others to do.

The Bible says "be fruitful and multiply". It speaks of children as being a blessing from God. These and other statements no doubt have something to do with the "family values" thinking of Christians. Children are valued. Life is valued. Christians fight to protect life.

This guy wants to eliminate it. He basically blames families with more than two children for destroying the planet. His position give scientific "justification" that would lead to conclude such things as:

• Abortion is good. It's environmentally sound! You can eliminate those little carbon-producing machines before they even leave a footprint!
  
• Not having a child is morally equivalent to recycling a plastic bag.
• People in developed countries (i.e. the evil western ones) are to blame for everything, even though he admits that most of the children that will be born will be in developing countries.

I think the way for us to survive is to work hard developing technologies that enable MORE people to have the kind of great lives we have in western industrialized societies. The ingenuity that invents machines that cause pollution problems is the same ingenuity that can clean it up -- and has! The developed countries of the world are the clean ones. If you want to see real pollution, go to an undeveloped or developing country.

If this guy is right and there is global warming that is caused by the carbon footprint of evil children, the likely solution to the problem will come from some young scientist or engineer that he would rather see not born. And chances are nearly 100% that such a child would be born in an evil industrialized country, not to a carbon-neutral tribe in the amazon.

A Tree Falling in a Forest

1. Why do a write a blog if no one reads it?
2. If I knew no one would ever read it, would I still continue making entries?
3. Who am I talking to?

Answers:
1. Ego, practice writing, practice working out expressing my thoughts (it's one thing to think you have all the answers, it's quite a different when you have to write coherently enough to encourage others to adopt that same opinion!)

2. Yes. For reasons stated in #1

3. Presumably myself. If you read this, add a comment so I find out. While I would continue writing anyway, ego is one of my reasons. Your response will help boost mine. So drop me a line and tell me how my blog has changed your life.

Keep Your "Keep the Change"

I am convinced that the average person has no understanding whatsoever of finances. One contemporary point of evidence is a program offered by Bank of America called "Keep the Change".

"Keep the Change" is a program which is billed as a savings plan. The basic idea is that every time you make a purchase with their debit card, the program "saves" the change of your purchase by rounding up to the next dollar. For example, if you make a purchase for $1.25, the 75 cents "change" is "saved".

At first it sounds like you get something for nothing. In fact, I had to listen to the commercial a couple of times before it made sense. As it turns out, the reason why I didn't understand it is because I found it difficult to believe that the truth was as stupid as it first sounded.

But alas, it is that stupid. When you make that $1.25 purchase, $2 is taken from your checking account. $1.25 goes to pay for the purchase; the remaining 75 cents is transferred to your savings account. This is what passes for a savings plan in a consumer society. It's all your money, they just move pennies from one account to another.

The truly sinister part of the plan is that it creates a mindset that spending results in saving. Spending and saving are, in fact, opposites. One depletes your bank account, the other adds to it. By tying the two together, it plants the idea in people's minds that they are doing something good for their bank account by spending from it. While it may help rationalize a questionable purchase, it will do little to save any real money. The most that can be saved is 99 cents on a purchase, no matter how much money you blow. While I have no statistics (Dammit Jim, I'm an engineer, not a statistician!) I bet the net result for a lot of people is that they spend more money. No matter how many pennies move into your savings account, if you spend more money, you are NOT saving.

I have a savings plan too. What it lacks in marketing zing it makes up for in it's simplicity: Put money in your savings account. Don't spend it.

(Read here for more details on the program. It is very slightly better than I described. Very slightly)

The Right to be Heard

Most people have no idea what a "right" really is. This can be seen from time to time, usually when someone is claiming a right.

One of those misunderstood rights is the right of free speech. This is quite possibly the most bastardized of the rights enshrined in the Bill of Rights. There is much to be said on the topic, but I will concentrate on just one small aspect in this post.

There is a phrase that I hear people use: the "right to be heard". It is often used as a rallying cry on behalf of a minority voice, a person cast as being repressed. The most amazing place I have seen this used is in the proceedings of the Supreme Court of Florida. In their decision to make Gore President, they wrote, among other impeachable nonsense, about "...the right to speak, but more importantly the right to be heard."

A right is something you already have at the outset. You cannot get a right, only lose one. Your right can be ignored or usurped by others who violate your right. For someone to violate your right to speak, they would have to silence you or at least to prevent others from hearing you.

But the concept of a right to be heard is utter nonsense. You could violate someone's right to be heard simply by not listening to them. You would violate NBC's right to be heard by flipping to ABC. You would violate the rights of a babbling madman on a street corner if you ignore him and walk on by. You would be violating my right by not reading this blog. And considering very few people ever see anything written here, a lot of people are violating my rights!

The very phrase attempts to grant a right to someone that imposes an encumbrance upon everyone else to fulfill the "right". If everyone has a right to be heard, enforcing that right would force you to listen.

There can be no such thing as a "right to be heard", Craig wrote into the eternal oblivion of a hundred million other never-read blog entries.