Addiction Management

If I hadn't bled all over my kitchen over the weekend I would have assumed there was liquid caffeine running through my veins, so I have no room to mock anyone for their addiction to legally-attainable substances*.

I am very good at making sure I have access to adequate coffee/soda supplies in my apartment/cubicle/road trips, and Excedrin to keep the headaches away should I fail. Folgers singles--the coffee snob shudders, but you throw some milk and sugar in there, and Thanksgiving morning at a house with no coffeemaker becomes bearable, while you try to convince someone to go to Dunkin Donuts and get you some brewed coffee. :)

I realize this is junkie behavior.

But I would never go outside in -20°F weather with no socks looking for a fix (warning: gory medical photos). Hell, I've got wool socks over my cotton socks and my waterproof insulated boots just to dig out my car and go grocery shopping when it's +20°F.

Do you file this under "global warming is deadly!" or "tobacco use is deadly!"??

No word on whether this dumbass has medical insurance, but since they didn't leave him to die on the street he must (if President Obama isn't lying to me...hah!); in the brave new world of government healthcare I'm sure he'll pay a bigger penalty for smoking than he will be for being stupid. Fat people--well, you don't deserve surgery unrelated to your condition, because of your "lifestyle choices." Snowboarders--that knee replacement is no problem!

But mostly I'm annoyed with the tone of the article. We're supposed to feel sorry for him, he almost died, he might lose toes...he's an idiot. The idiot supply in this country is in no danger of drying up.

It's a good cautionary tale--wear socks in January, nothing good happens when you go out after midnight--but I think they're missing a bigger picture here. There's no more personal responsibility/adulthood anymore. A 27-year-old man is a kid who needs our sympathy because no one reminded him to put on socks before he went outside in the snow. Seriously!? And this gets him on TV?

If he gets a book deal, it's safe to say western civilization is dead.

Alright, I need more coffee.

(I will say that once I got past the "poor kid" crap, I did find learning about how they treat frostbite/hypothermia, in case I'm stupid enough to go out on the NY Thruway between now and the end of Lake Effect Snow Season, and two pairs of socks aren't enough.)

* I do not believe hardcore junkies or even teenagers shooting up heroin for the first time are going to read a government pamphlet, even if it's yellow. Although I guess I'm mocking the "wanna make a difference without doing any real work" nanny crowd more than the users here, aren't I?

No blood for Gaia!

Sliced a dime-sized patch of skin off my right index finger this morning trying to wash out a Campbell's soup can. I thought it would make a decent (FREE!) container to hold fabric-dyeing spoons separate from spoons I use for food (this is crucial; dyes are 'non-toxic' but that doesn't mean 'edible'). Bled through two fabric bandages and ruined my plans to spend the day with my hands in buckets of salty water.

Attention brainwashed hippies who lack critical thinking skills: this is why I don't wash my garbage to recycle it. It's not worth the pain and suffering. No blood for Gaia! Not to mention conservation of our precious freshwater supplies...I have no idea why people who refuse to shower because hygiene hurts the planet insist we should waste water in this fashion.

OTOH, if you don't mind bleeding to death to save the planet, YOU can wash and recycle my garbage.

(I decided to house my fabric-dyeing spoons in...a plastic grocery bag. Lacks the aesthetic appeal of the soup can, but I should have gone for safety in the first place.)

Hrm.

I've been wondering if Gaia would get jealous of Barack Obama when brain-dead sheeple started worshipping him instead of her...and today she rumbled.

So many people have been so brainwashed, and kept so ignorant about science, by the end of tomorrow I expect to hear or read that the earthquake was caused by Global Warming (man-made, of course!) more than once.

(Quasi-related article on "intellectual curiosity" in education. If desire to learn was a requisite for college admission, the textiles lab I taught--to textiles majors, mind you--would have had five students.)

Someone ask Cory Mason if he's ever heard of "Maryland"

Saw this today:

The plan would be funded with a 1% income tax increase on individuals making $1 million or more, which would generate about $145 million, bill sponsor state Rep. Cory Mason (D-Racine) said Tuesday. A bill pending in Congress would provide at least $135 million in matching funds, he said.

Leaving aside my general disgust that people in 49 other states are expected to pay for Wisconsin welfare programs (it's a corollary to my disgust that people in 49 other states paid for New York's cash-for-welfare-mothers scheme), a tax on millionaires? Is Madison a Parkers Brothers board game? Are you freaking kidding me?!

Maryland has already tried this, with predictable results:

One-third of the millionaires have disappeared from Maryland tax rolls. In 2008 roughly 3,000 million-dollar income tax returns were filed by the end of April. This year there were 2,000, which the state comptroller's office concedes is a "substantial decline." On those missing returns, the government collects 6.25% of nothing. Instead of the state coffers gaining the extra $106 million the politicians predicted, millionaires paid $100 million less in taxes than they did last year -- even at higher rates

.

I don't know if it's fair to expect a state legislator to be familiar with everything U.S. Supreme Court justices have written--I had to do a search on "laboratories of democracy" to learn the quote was Louis Brandeis*--but surely they should be at least vaguely aware of both the concept of federalism and of national headlines just a few months ago about how their idea failed spectacularly in another state. Especially if we mere migrant workers can keep up...


* "It is one of the happy incidents of the federal system that a single courageous state may, if its citizens choose, serve as a laboratory; and try novel social and economic experiments without risk to the rest of the country."

Idiots.

Yesterday I saw this bit about a baggage cart operator falling down on the job. I've been thinking about it at work today while I try to make sense of the math involved in predicting runway incursions. I had a professor back at engineering school who told us not to bother making every design completely idiot-proof, because nature is constantly designing bigger idiots.

I'm also mulling over the clip I accidentally heard this morning of Obama speaking at ASU, exhorting students not to pursue their own dreams of success if they involve a nice house, a respected occupation, producing goods or services that improve the lives of others, or enough money to take care of yourself instead of waiting for the government to do it, but instead to pursue his dream of them becoming servants of the state.

But...what if my professor is correct, and no matter how clever President Camacho* there thinks his system is, there are enough idiots out there to screw it all up?

We're probably all doomed, since the vast majority of idiots are eager to fuck themselves over doing his bidding, but maybe there's a little tiny nanovolt LED of hope.

* Everytime he takes a podium, he gives the audience a hearty "fuck you." Best analogy yet.

Torture...

Who believes any of those children actually want to meet Joe Biden? Seriously?

I'm skipping the monthly lecture to the serfs--technical difficulties, mein Führer, the rabbit ears seem to have been disconnected...

Kathy Shaidle: "Difference between Obama blathering on and on, and waterboarding, is that waterboarding gave us important information..."

Don't they sell razor blades or rope in Canada?

A man suspected of stealing a plane from Canada, flying erratically over three states and attracting U.S. fighter escorts told authorities he was trying to commit suicide, a Missouri state trooper said Tuesday morning.

Call me a bitch, but I have no sympathy for drama queens who endanger innocent bystanders in their suicides. You want to die? Stay home and die, and let the rest of us get on with our lives.

I wonder how the WI National Guard decided he wasn't a viable threat...

Human Achievement Hour Tonight!

I like this approach to rebutting the morons who think watching their TV in the dark for an hour "makes a difference."

You want to make a difference in energy-consumption, eco-whackos? Turn it all off and leave it off. Especially your computers, modems, routers, servers... You'll save all kinds of energy! Do it!

I also like this approach. Wish I knew more about power transmission.... But I'll be striking my blow for human freedom and achievement by refusing to modify my usual Saturday evening activities. It will have exactly the same effect on the climate as celebrities eating specially-arranged candle-lit dinners: none whatsoever.

PSA

Don't forget! Hour of Power is this Saturday!



Graphic from The PeoplesCube, who recycle their tips from last year. Tim Blair has a roundup of world events: "For some reason, Chicago’s South Side isn’t often mentioned in Earth Hour previews."

Don't forget to call the pizza guy before the Hour begins. May as well make your meaningless hypocritical gesture in comfort. I guess that's why they do it close to an equinox and not in the dead of summer/winter...wait, you don't have to turn off your air conditioner, just your lights. Hell, this year you don't even have to make the supreme sacrifice of turning off your computer. Don't forget to tell your Facebook friends you're sitting in the dark by yourself because you care!

I'll be ironing some fabric while watching a DVD (which is probably what I'd be doing anyway), and baking cookies (with evil non-locally-grown chocolate!). I could drive around the east side noticing that none of the yuppie-hippie types have shut off their outdoor security lighting, but then I wouldn't get fresh cookies. My priorities are in order.

This stem cell thing

I have been offline being interviewed on the wrong side of the Cheddar Curtain (no worries, all my expertise is in functions this company outsources to India *mmmph*), so I haven't been following it, but in half an hour of catching up with personal journals, I am depressed by all the ignorant, small-minded, mean-spirited bigots who are taking Obama's executive order as an opportunity to bash Sarah Palin (she's going to drag us back to the "12th century" on a snowmachine, dontchaknow) in specific and Christians in general.

I can't make the font big enough for the WTF.

I also note none of these people have contributed a thin dime of their own money to embryo-destroying stem cell research (much less their own zygotes). So I'm not impressed by their level of commitment any more than their logic (Barry && embryos != "stupid asshole Godbag" rant).

And Congress/Obama just spent a trillion dollars we don't have on misguided crap a couple weeks ago--is there really a pressing need to spend billions more we don't have on additional misguided crap?! Really?!? Even if I didn't think experimenting on embryos was creepy, and was willfully ignorant of adult stem cells are being used in actual effective applications, I'd think the executive order was a bad idea .

(I need better friends, I think is the lesson here.)

The flip side of furries.

Cats don't actually do this, which may be a sign of superior intelligence, at least compared to a subset of humans in Western Society.

Ask-imam.com (the online fatwa resource!) is choking on searches; askimam.org returns 0 records for "furry". I would love to be in a room when someone works up the nerve to ask if it's halal, as long as you don't wear a dog suit...

Is there any aspect of life Democrats don't want the government to control?

W. Va. Lawmaker--party affiliation actually given in the news report!--wants to ban Barbie.

I've read enough feminist "research" about Barbie and I'm profoundly indifferent. I didn't get one until I was eight. Most of her clothes were made out of double-knit polyester scraps by a lady in a nursing home, and she spent most of her time roller-skating, so I missed the whole consumerism angle as well as the feminine beauty skills girls are supposed to learn from dolls.

I also had space Legos. Much more fun.

I don't recall getting any "body image" messages from the doll, possibly because I was getting them daily from my mother and my peers, who spent as much time belittling my "intellectual development" as they did telling me my hair and body were wrong and ugly.

I realize that the experiences of normal women are probably different.

That said, I'm fascinated in this concept that people with children are so stupid they need Democrat lawmakers to make every decision for them. If you don't want your daughter to have a Barbie, don't buy one (hey, that's what mainstream feminists used to say about abortion, back when they wanted it to be "safe and rare"...). If you can't figure that out, you ARE too stupid to raise your own kids.

I want to believe Americans aren't that stupid, but I keep seeing proof to the contrary.