Author: Jon

OPEC cutting oil production

OPEC to cut 1M bpd oil supply, says OPEC delegate – Oct. 5, 2006

Wow, what a shock.  OPEC is acting to protect their interests.  I haven’t seen a backlash against this yet (And maybe I’m just not paying attention), but the first time I hear someone complain about gas prices because of this, I’m going to smack them.  Let’s see . . . many of these countries get a huge amount of their revenue from the sale of oil.  Oil prices are dropping.  Basic economics says to cut back on the supply to keep the prices up.

It’s nothing personal against the United States.  Well, maybe it is to some extent, but not really.  It’s just business.

Anyway, I want to see gas prices hit $10 a gallon.  Maybe $20.  How long before we’re all driving cars powered by hydrogen fuel cells, or biodiesel hybrids, when it costs $900 to fill up your Escalade?  For the record, I drive a Mazda 3.  I get between 23 and 32 miles per gallon, depending on traffic and amount of highway driving.

Time again for the flu shot controversy

I was listening to NPR this morning, and they were talking about the difficulty we’ve had in distributing flu shots.  The CDC says that 75% of the country should have a flu shot.  Surveys say that 50% are planning to.  But how about the vaccines?  The NPR story didn’t give all the details, but they did say that doctors give out 70% of the vaccines.  But often big companies like WalMart get more of the vaccines.  NPR didn’t come out and say it, but I suspect this is because the drug companies make more money when they sell to big pharmacies.  I doubt that WalMart pays more than the doctors do, but Walmart is also in the position to buy millions of dollars worth, and pledge to buy millions more of other drugs on the condition that they get the flu vaccines.

Anyway, my point here is that these drug companies are, in effect, deciding who gets a flu vaccine.  Never mind that we should have enough for every human being in the country, if not the planet, just because it’s the right thing to do.  Let’s pretend for a minute that there’s a legitimate reason we can’t produce enough that doesn’t involve profitability.  Who, then, should decide where those vaccines should go?  And now we’re back into the argument over health care.  Can we assign responsibility to the government to ensure that the country is as healthy as possible?  Does every American deserve health care?  The answers are “I hope so” and “yes”.

When it comes to health, no one should ever be denied because it’s not profitable.  I don’t know how to overcome the problems with “free” health care.  I don’t know how to minimize abuse of the system.  But we have to figure it out.

I think I need to re-read Fahrenheit 451

Boing Boing: Man demands that book about book-burning be banned — during Banned Books Week

“It’s just all kinds of filth,” said Alton Verm, adding that he had not read Fahrenheit 451.

This, kids, it’s what’s called “lazy-ass blogging”, where you not only get a story from another (better known) blog, but you even steal the quote they highlight.  I’m not even quoting BoingBoing, I’m quoting the quote they quoted.  Awesome.

I read the book years ago, and I don’t remember liking it all that much.  I think I might have been too young.  It was certainly in high school, and maybe early high school.  So I think I should try it again.  I’m prettys sure my mom, seeing that I was reading just about anything you put in front of me, bought me copies of 1984, Animal Farm, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451 at the same time.  If you have not read these books, I want you to go RIGHT NOW to the library, the bookstore, Amazon, or wherever you get your literature, and get these books.  Read them.  If you have children over 14, they should be reading them, too.

In fact, you should read them together.  You don’t have to read aloud, you can both have your own copy, but read and talk about them with your kids. Or you read them first, if you’re afraid some parts are inappropriate for your kids.  That way you can be prepared when your kids ask you about those parts.

Think this cant happen to us?

Treehugger

Still, with an estimated nine years of landfill space left, councils throughout the UK are faced with a tough decision about what to do with the UK’s waste

Okay, I know England has much less space than we do. But I’ll bet that fifty years ago they didn’t think they’d be running out of landfill space. It’ll happen here, eventually. I know I’ve been making a conscious effort to throw less away. I’ve been trying to recycle more, and half the food I eat is fresh vegetables, so anything that I don’t eat goes down the disposal. But we Americans throw tons and tons of stuff away all the time, and it’s going to come back to haunt us eventually. You know you saw the Simpsons episode where they had to move Springfield because there was too much trash. Sure, it was funny. But it won’t be nearly as funny when it happens somewhere near you.

FBI cant find evidence of broken laws

Foley case, a legal ‘gray area’ – Today – MSNBC.com

One federal law enforcement official said the FBI reviewed some Foley-related e-mail in July but concluded that no federal law had been violated.

Are you kidding me? With all the ridiculous crap that we aren’t allowed to do, like photograph a building in DC or bring a bottle of water on a plane, you expect me to believe that telling a sixteen-year-old boy that you’d like to take his clothes off doesn’t violate any federal law?

When they write laws to protect children from MySpace or maybe seeing a naked person on TV, did they just forget to write the laws to protect children from actually being molested? I don’t have kids yet, but I’m pretty sure I can speak for most parents when I say that I’d rather a child watch an hour long TV show of naked people screaming profanity than get one single instant message from a congressman asking for sex. Am I being ridiculous?

We need to prosecute this guy, and then we need to get him some help.

Why arent we talking about sending him to jail?

CNN.com – Attorney: Clergyman molested Foley as teen – Oct 3, 2006

You know, even if Mark Foley’s lawyer is telling the truth, and Foley was both molested as a child and never actually had any sort of sex with any underage boys, Foley still needs to go to jail. Unless he can prove, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that every single time he said or did anything innapropriate to or with an underage boy, he was completely trashed. Then I’m okay with alcohol treatment.

Where are the Florida police? Shouldn’t someone have arrested him by now for soliciting sex from a minor or something like that? You can’t tell me that they haven’t already published enough to get a warrant and arrest him. Are we not arresting him because he’s in alcohol treatment? If I go rob a bank and then join AA, is that cool with everyone?

We seem to be focusing a lot on Hastert, and whether or not he should resign. I mean, there was an article at the National Review Online calling for him to resign. He probably should. At the very least, he wasn’t paying enought attention.

But that’s really not the point.  The point is that Mark Foley broke the law, and he needs to be prosecuted.  He probably needs some help, too.  His lawyer seems to want to dismiss this by saying that Foley’s gay.  That’s fine, but there’s a huge difference between “Foley is gay” and “Foley tries to have sex with teenage boys”.

Electronic poll books in Tuesday test

Electronic poll books in Tuesday test

State election officials and the manufacturer of the machines, Diebold Inc., will conduct the test from 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. at the BWI Airport Marriott Hotel.

Any of you in Maryland anywhere near BWI should go take part in this test today.  I suggest reading up on how to hack a Diebold machine so you can try and do it while you’re voting.  Anyone who reads Techdirt (Or, for that matter, anyone paying attention to any election in the last few years) knows that Diebold has made a lot of machines that don’t work very well, has been extremely resistant to allowing any kind of testing, and has ignored repeated assertions that the machines are insecure.

To all of you who find a Diebold machine in front of you on election day – refuse to vote on it.  If we make enough noise, maybe we can actually have an election that is efficient, accurate, and verifiable.  Note well, though, that I can not be held responsible if you protest too loudly and are arrested.  That’s all you.

A whole bunch of complainers

VentBox

I got a link from a new complaint blog this afternoon, and I thought I’d return the favor.  Apparently there’s a whole complaint blog community out there that I haven’t made myself a part of.  I may have to change that.

Now, do I post this tagged with a “complaint” category because it’s on the subject of complaining, even though it isn’t really a complaint?  I think I will.