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This weekend I saw No Impact Man, which I recommend.  I thought it was very interesting and I learned quite a few things from it that I didn’t know about.   One of these things is that the meat industry is a larger cause of greenhouse gases (global warming) than all the cars, planes, and ships in the world, combined.  Most of this is from the farming of cows.

In response, I’m further reducing my beef intake by 50%, going from eating a burger/beef product once a week, to once every other week.  That puts me down to 25 burgers/beef bowls per year.  That sounds appropriate anyway as beef is not healthy.

Check this out if you want your mind blown by more crazy stats about livestock and the environment, such as:

If all the grain currently fed to livestock in the U.S. was consumed directly by people, the number who could be fed is nearly 800 million.

I’m happy that the plans for the US European missile shield have been scrapped.  Most of Europe doesn’t want it and we don’t need to further sour relations with Russia or start another arms race.  If Europe wants a missile defense shield, it can build it.  I never liked this idea.  This is actually the type of stuff Bush Jr. ran against in 2000.

I talk about this a lot in real life.  I always get sad when I see the automated check-outs in supermarkets/stores show up, or the APC automated package sending system at the post office so you don’t have to talk with/get to know your postal workers or supermarket clerks, or the Chipotle iPhone app so you don’t have to interact with people to order your food, or the death of the arcades so we can stop meeting new friends there and instead all escape and play video games in our own sheltered homes with either nobody or the friends we already know.  There’s so much technology out there trying to eliminate interaction with other people.  It’s quite saddening to me.

In my life I’ve had a nice friendship with a postal clerk, met a cool friend or two at the arcade, enjoyed pleasant relationships with my supermarket clerks, and I tell ya, I’ve had some absolutely wonderful and stimulating conversations with strangers in line at the post office.  I’ve even gotten a call or two from friends to report a date/great sexual encounter with someone they’d met in line at the post office just a couple days prior.  Surely all kinds of great friendships, relationships, and families have started there.  The APC is ruining people’s lives.  All this automated/do-it-at-home stuff is, and I don’t think most people even realize it.  Oh my god, don’t get me started on online classes.  Do you know how many people meet their significant other in a college class!?  Which college class was your significant other in?  Hopefully not the one that you took online instead. *sigh*  Why are so many so intent on creating ways to avoid other people?  Has society become so misanthropic?  I guess a lot of it is that damn capitalism.  Eliminate a job, save a buck, who cares about the fabric of society, look at this: $$$!

Anyway, I was agreeing whole-heartedly with Jackson Lee, a North Carolina man who told his story of starting his own record store/bike repair shop, when I was listening to one of my favorite shows, The Story, on public radio tonight.  I clipped the part:

…is very shitty.  No public option, yet still $800 billion, and doesn’t even require health insurance companies to not discriminate based on pre-existing conditions until 2013, after the next Presidential election.  Gee I wonder why that is, not hoping and praying by you corporate assholes that some republican somehow wins?  You guys make me sick.  You blue-dogs make me sick too.  I hope this shit goes down in flames.

Why do we have to have THE health care bill?  Can’t we take a more modular approach to this?  For example, even the republicans are willing to make insurance companies take anybody regardless of pre-existing condition and not allow a limit on how much they will cover financially (lifetime limit).  So why can’t we pass a number of smaller bills.  Get that one through first, few will disagree, it’ll pass tomorrow and could be effective immediately.  That’d already be a really good improvement.  There could be a different regulation bill, records-keeping bill, etc.  Pass what can pass.  If we don’t have enough votes in the Senate for a public option, well, what can you really do unfortunately (except pass it in reconciliation).

Maybe just make these changes that we can now, and if the public likes what Obama/dems are doing, we have more Senate seats we could pick up in 2010/2012, maybe if we get 63 or 64 dems in the Senate, then we can create a public health option.  I’m not sure why it has to be all-at-once, all-or-nothing.  Fear of no opportunity in the future and make something half-assed anyway(?) instead of confidence that people will like what we do and reward us?

I don’t know, I’m not a capitol hill expert, but it seems to me the way to really regulate healthcare would be to constantly be looking at it and working on it, not do something once every quarter-century and then let the private industry react, curcumvent, and fester on it’s own until it becomes shitty again.

is being built!!… in China :|  COME ON AMERICA!!!, we can’t just depend on Google for everything.  Remember when we used to be cutting edge? *sigh*

Anyway, it’ll cost China $5 billion.  /me gets out his pencil and puts on his elementary-school-student math hat:  Now, $5 billion to power 3 million homes.  That’s about $1.7 billion for one million homes.  America has about 110 million homes.  110 times 1.7 billion equals $187 billion…

…so, that would cost us $187 billion to do for all our homes.  The war in Iraq wasted $700 billion.  So, if we spent only 25% of that money on solar power here in the US, we’d have every single home powered for free.  Figure we use more electricity than the average Chinese home, and that construction costs are higher here, maybe that’ll push it to 50% or 75% of the cost of the Iraq war?  Hell, take that other 25% and start powering apartments and businesses since we’re done with homes, and since we’re still spending money on Iraq, maybe by the time that’s all done and paid for we could have had free infinite power for the entire country.  Are we running out of money to power everything in my math here?  Hmmm.. I have those Afghanistan war costs somewhere here…

Oh and by the way, this would reduce our carbon footprint by about a gazillion times!  Maybe we could all have electric cars, and never have to pay for the energy to run them - even less pollution!  You might not even mind paying extra for them, because you’d NEVER EVER HAVE TO BUY ENERGY TO USE THEM!!  The lord and earth would love it and say

Finally, they’ve not only seen the light, but they’ve used it!

The second coming of Jesus Christ might even occur due to such delight.  He might be like “Whattup, I know some of you thought I was supposed to come back when stuff was real bad or whatever, but meh, I had to use it now instead cause I just had to personally give props.  Word!” *poof*

But NO, we couldn’t possibly spend that much money on that!!  Are you crazy?

*rolls eyes*

I have a feeling that “we couldn’t even possibly spend that much money on it” even if there were no war.

Anyway go ahead China, let the clowning begin.  I’ve got my smile on and my eyes closed, ready for that pie in the face…

Kanye,

You are the biggest douchebag there fucking is.  You make it an embarrassment to be a fan of yours.  I had a backlogged post to finish about high regards for your 808’s & Hearthbreak album - deleted.  I was even going to buy that one and maybe future good ones, but fuck that, I am going to continue pirating your shit for the rest of my life.  I don’t even want to go to your concert anymore.  Lady Gaga should drop out of it too.

WTF were you thinking?  How could you do that to somebody, especially her in this situation.  I guess you just fucking shut off your hearing completely as to what the person is even saying up there because you’re just thinking about what stupid shit YOU’RE about to do, and it is some stupid shit.  You’re such a jackass.

Even the President thinks so, ouch.

I wanna get this bike, and then I wanna have this dog ride around in the back with me.

Oh for the love of God.  Save watching this video for when you are already in a bad mood or sad.  Viewer discretion advised.

Via TreeHugger.

Right-wingers are up in arms over the President addressing America’s children in a back-to-school video.  They think he’s going to indoctrinate them into socialism (even communism according to some freaks), and some of these parents are having their kids not go to school that day.

My take on this is: if a sitting president has a positive approval rating, it shouldn’t really be a big deal.

Actual indoctrination of children that goes on all the time:

1. Making them say a pledge of allegiance starting before they can even write, when they don’t know what the hell it means.
2. Forcing a religion onto a child.

In case you haven’t seen this, check it out:

They also have a map there of the area required to power the whole world by wind.

Oh, the Lord must be pissed.