I should be posting a response to Guy La Roche. But my response is already over a couple of pages long. When I get to that length, I like to sit on it a bit before I post it. I don’t mind making a fool out of myself on a short post. But I hate Click Here to continue reading.
From the field of entertainment:
The day after Columbine, I was interviewed… The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. “Wouldn’t you say,” she asked, “that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?” No, I said, I wouldn’t say that… The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her […]
I knew olive oil was versatile, but who would have thought it could serve as furniture polish?
Find out how to make furniture polish from olive oil here at WikHow.
I confess to still being a little concerned about the olive oil polish going rancid on the furniture. But the multitude of uses for olive oil does […]
Piling on top of Sony’s many sins, it seems that the Sony VAIO customer service is abysmal. It furthur demonstrates that Sony is not a customer oriented company, and that has practical implications.
Google has just added a feature to Google Maps that improves it to the point were I don’t think the competition has much of a chance unless they follow suit. You can now alter your driving directions with a simple click and drag interface!
Read the article on The Register Here
This from a blog called Live a Life Worthy…..
So Jeremiah went over the things that they are suppose to do in a fire…the basics that you learn in kindergarten but they were never taught it. One of the things was, “Stay and hold the door open while all your kids get out of the class then follow them” one of the teachers said, “Honestly, if there is a fire…I’m going to leave my kids and get out of the school” my mom and I just looked at each other thinking, how can this teacher leave thirty 2nd graders and run out the door. My mom turned the teacher next to her and said, “Would she really do that??” and she said, “Of course, she is much more important than the children, she has a husband and a family”
Live a Life Worthy is written by missionary lady who teaches in northern Iraq (though the above was actually written by one of her friends). I quote the above section because I think it provides an interesting insight into the Iraqi culture.
In America everyone would have proclaimed that would have done their up most to take care of the kids first. When push comes to shove, that might not always be the case, but we all feel obliged to pretend. In Iraq, that pretense is apparently not necessary.
I don’t know that this should really be taken as an example of the relative moral quality of Kurds vs Americans though. I just bet that there are different things that Kurds feel obliged to live up to. For example, if you posed a scenario were you had state how much hospitality to give a wandering stranger, I think you would find that the Kurds would profess to more “moral” where as the Americans would come off as more selfish.
That is just a guess though. I have only ever met one Kurd in my life and he got busted for drug dealing.
This week’s essay of the week aggravates me and inspires me at the same time. It aggravates me because it takes a promising idea and does not do it justice. But it inspires me because it has gotten me thinking about why I don’t think this essay handles the subject properly and how I would do it differently.
And what is the subject of this aggregating and inspiring essay? Properly speaking it is death and the foundation of society. But in one the first ways in which the essay goes wrong the author of the essay (Joseph Bottum) elects to call the essay Death & Politics. He thus gives a rather mundane gloss to a serious issue.
Flaws aside, the inspiring aspects of this essay make it worth putting up with the aggravation that it contains.
Much of the US is operating under drought conditions as this story from USA Today demonstrates. This drought is afflicting parts of the country that are not use to prolonged dry spells. From the USA Today article…
This drought has been particularly harsh in three regions: the Southwest, the Southeast and northern Minnesota.
Severe dryness across California and Arizona has spread into 11 other Western states. On the Colorado River, the water supply for 30 million people in seven states and Mexico, the Lake Powell and Lake Mead reservoirs are only half full and unlikely to recover for years. In Los Angeles County, on track for a record dry year with 21% of normal rain downtown since last summer, fire officials are threatening to cancel Fourth of July fireworks if conditions worsen. On Wednesday, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa urged residents to voluntarily cut water use 10%, the city’s first such call since the 1990s.
In Minnesota, which is in its worst drought since 1976, the situation is improving slowly, although a wildfire last month burned dozens of houses and 115 square miles in the northeastern part of the state.
The Southeast, unaccustomed to prolonged dry spells, may be suffering the most. In eight states from Mississippi to the Carolinas and down through Florida, lakes are shrinking, crops are withering, well levels are falling and there are new limits on water use. “We need 40-50 inches of rainfall to get out of the drought,” says Carol Ann Wehle of the South Florida Water Management District.
Despite a recent storm, water hasn’t flowed in Florida’s Kissimmee River, which feeds Lake Okeechobee, in 212 days. The district has imposed its strictest water-use limits ever in 13 counties, cutting home watering to once a week and commercial use by 45%.
Of course, this is adding fuel to people’s global warming concerns. But to my mind, the really scary thing is how much worse this could get using only the historical record as a guide. As The Weather Guys point out in their blog….
But as bad as this drought is, it can’t hold a candle to the disastrous Dust Bowl of the 1930s. For example, in July 1934, an incredible 63 percent of the USA was considered to be severely to extremely dry, compared to just 18 percent this April, according to the National Climatic Data Center.
Just because we live in a traditionally wet area, does not mean we should assume that we are safe from really bad droughts. And I count the dry summers that we have suffered from in the past as being really bad droughts.
Most people don’t realize how many people risk their lives on a daily basis just so that people will not be inconvenienced. Electrical transmission capacity in the US is so tight that a lot of people would be seriously inconvenienced if lines were taken down for maintenance. That means some people have to work on high voltage lines while they are live.
This video gives you an idea of how they go about it.
This week’s essay is from the New York Times. We can’t get any lower then that can we? But in certain mental states, we like a good sappy story that celebrates the irrationality that makes life worth living. And the essay from the New York Times on a adoptive mother’s irrational love certainly celebrates that.
For comparisons sake, you should also read this story so you understand how rational people act. The comparison and contrast provides a good example of the deficiencies of rational thinking.