“Citizens for Fire Safety” Answers Threat from “Citizens for Fire Recklessness”

The Citizens for Fire Safety has blanketed Maryland with scary flyers calling Maryland legislative bill HB1 “A Deadly Mistake” - “Help stop the bill that will ban material used to make flame resistant products. Call your state Senator!”

Undoubtedly, there are a lot of “Citizens for Fire Recklessness” groups that are mad now…

Strangely, the Maryland State Fireman’s Assocation supports SB1:

The Citizens for Fire Safety have not returned phone calls or e-mails as we have requested them to do to validate their existence or claims. Lobbyists have been hired by this group to contact as many fire service personnel as possible to assist in the defeat of this bill. We are not sure if they have given a complete and accurate set of facts with their requests.

PLEASE!!! If you have been contacted by this group, call us and get the true facts from people you know and can trust to be there tomorrow. Be sure you know the FULL STORY before you make your decision to call your legislators.

Which likely leads one to believe that Citizen for Fire Safety is really just Manufacturers of Chemical Crap with a website.

20 Things You Have to Believe to be a Republican

This has been posted in numerous places online, but I thought I’d continue the virus (Source):

1. Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you’re a conservative radio host. Then it’s an illness and you need our prayers for your recovery.

2. The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing U.N. resolutions against Iraq.

3. Government should relax regulation of Big Business and Big Money but crack down on individuals who use marijuana to relieve the pain of illness.

4. “Standing Tall for America” means firing your workers and moving their jobs to India.

5. A woman can’t be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multinational corporations can make decisions affecting all humankind without regulation.

6. Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

7. The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans’ benefits and combat pay.

8. Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you someday run for governor of California as a Republican.

9. If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won’t have sex.

10. A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our longtime allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

11. HMOs and insurance companies have the interest of the public at heart.

12. Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

13. Global warming and tobacco’s link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

14. Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush’s daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a “we can’t find Bin Laden” diversion.

15. A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense. A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is a solid defense policy.

16. Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

17. The public has a right to know about Hillary’s cattle trades, but George Bush’s driving record is none of our business.

18. You support states’ rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have a right to adopt.

19. What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the 1980s is irrelevant.

20. Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist; but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

[Update 1/5/08: It's pretty sweet when your blog has thousands of hits, not because of something intelligent you wrote (if I've in fact done that), but because of humerous crap that you passed along.]

“They Tried to Teach My Baby Science”

From the Onion…

Does your Toyota Prius subsidize my Chevy Tahoe?

This isn’t exactly news, since I’ve seen the idea published before, but it surely bares repeating…here’s the logic:

1. In the United States, all car companies have to achieve a “fleet” miles-per-gallon average for vehicles weighing less than 8,500 pounds, called the Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standards. For reference, the Chevy Tahoe is less than 8,500 lbs, while the Ford Excursion is not.

2. Cars and trucks are treated separately and have different standards - 27.5 mpg for cars and 20.7 for “trucks.” Trucks are defined as anything where the seats can be folded or removed to create a flat cargo space, so a minivan and some station wagons are actually trucks. The truck standard is going up over the next few years to 23.5 mpg by 2010 (Source).

3. If you buy a more efficient car or truck that exceeds the standard, it saves you some money (bravo) and personal carbon dioxide emissions (hurrah), but it also helps the manufacturer sell a less-efficient car without penalty, i.e. not global carbon dioxide emissions. CAFE is a “teeter-totter” policy - they have to meet an average and anything above the average helps anything below the average. So at a societal level, your choice doesn’t save any gas to the world, just you personally, since the less efficient car will make-up for what you save. Ultimately this was a political compromise so that it was a company-wide average and not a prescription for each car.

4. So to answer the question, your Toyota Prius does not subsidize my Chevy Tahoe (I don’t actually own one) because cars and trucks are treated separately and only within the same company. Almost all (if not all) of Toyota’s cars exceed the standard already so your Prius doesn’t really subsidize their other cars to much extent. But your Chevy Aveo does subsidize a Chevy Corvette, and so on.

But wait, there’s more!

5. Auto manufacturers get a CAFE credit of 1.25 if the vehicle is “alternative-fuel capable.” As far as I can tell, a 20 mpg gas-only car is rated at 25 mpg as an E85-gas car (a 1.25 credit). (There are some natural gas vehicles, but this largely means E85 vehicles, of which there are millions.) Honestly, this is a big loophole because although they make the E85 cars, they have done relatively little to make sure there is E85 fuel available for them to use. Some say the loophole should just be cut off, but that would largely strand the only alternative to gasoline available to retail consumers. Minnesota has over 300 E85 stations (www.cleanairchoice.org) and it’s an interesting market experiment to try to sell something other than gas to the average person. A better alternative would be for the auto manufacturers to get the credit, only after they can verify that fuel has been offset. This would obviously be complicated. Related to alternative fuel vehicles, hybrid vehicles don’t qualify under the definition, so the manufacturers don’t get extra mileage credit for their use (just the actual mileage rating).

And one more time!

6. The Toyota Prius is the poster-child for fuel activism right? But here’s an interesting conundrum…Society saves more gas by someone making the choice of a slightly more efficient SUV or minivan than they do a really more efficient Prius. Here’s how…The average consumer driving a Prius at 50 mpg isn’t likely to switch from a Tahoe at 15 mpg. More than likely, the new Prius owner drove a Camry, Corolla, Civic, etc at 30 mpg average. Similarly, the Tahoe driver isn’t jumping the SUV ship. But getting that Tahoe driver into a more efficient SUV, or making SUVs into hybrid vehicles, is just as good as making small cars into hybrid vehicles. Watching the math…

10,000 miles of driving per year

Civic @ 30 mpg to a new Prius @ 45 mpg (+15 mpg) saves 111 gallons of gas per year

Minivan @ 20 mpg to a more efficient minivan@ 25 mpg (+5 mpg) saves 100 gallons of gas per year

The lesson? We need to focus on bringing up the inefficient rear as much or more than we work on pushing the high mileage edge.

DC Signs - Women and Children Love Coal

The “Coalition for Affordable and Reliable Energy” (CARE), a coal lobby marketing firm, has decided that laptop discoveries about coal will incite women to spontaneously shriek out loud about “American Energy”.

No spontaneous support shrieks have been reported on the Washington DC metro, where the advertisement is running. Our good friends at CARE are keeping the “coal is exciting-and-good-for-you” marketing campaign going by targeting kids in Phase 2…

…no running in the halls! Your coal will still be there after recess.

Apparently kids also love coal because it’s “American Energy” (it also comes with “American Mercury,” “American Soot,” “American Carbon Dioxide” and “American Mountain Top Mining”). No word on whether Joe Camel is willing add a side of mercury to the cigarette tars or join forces with Lumpy Carbon, the mascot in waiting.

There is a lot of support for “American Energy” these days, including “American Energy Independence,” “American Energy Security,” and my favorite, “Americans for American Energy” (as opposed to Russians?!). The biggest “American Energy” front runners are wind energy, biofuels, and coal. No word yet on whether the European wind energy industry is thinking of changing their name in light of this development.

Minnesota energy historians (of which there are a lot in DC) may remember a similar “energy-excitement” marketing genre from the Padilla Speer Beardsley marketing firm (lesser known as Vanilla Pears and Birdseed), which was hired by the MN Department of Agriculture for their 2004 MN State Fair booth, which featured renewable energy.

Nothing says environmental stereotype like white people in birkenstocks (and that lady second from the right is really whooping more than shrieking). And no marketing campaign is cheaper than when you gather everyone in the office for a photo. No word on whether the Dept of Ag feels shorted that they weren’t in the picture.

Contrast that with the opposite trend for this Latin American wind energy campaign.

Now we’re talking enthusiasm. There’s a wind turbine. There’s a guy. Wind energy.

Details of the emerging energy marketing genre wars are unknown at this time, but will no doubt be vetted in future advertisements at other random locations where people are fairly oblivious to the point.

Global Rich List

There are a lot of websites out there with various gimmics and information, but every so often one is interesting enough to pass along…the Global Rich List tries to put affluence into perspective, because guess what? The American experience is unique and almost everyone else doesn’t live like us.

Make $10,000/yr (minimum wage)? You’re in the top 13% richest people!

Make $50,000? You’re in the top 1% of richest people. That means you’re in the top 60,000,000 people in the world, which also means that there are more than 5.4 billion people poorer than you are. (Frankly this seems a little bit off and further research tends to show that this is an overestimation, i.e. it’s not quite that high.) But none-the-less, I think the point is still trending to be valid…even a relatively small salary by Western standards is still a lot compared to everyone else.

Science and Political Monkeys

Politicians love science; until it tells them something they don’t like. Then they call for “sound science,” which is a buzz word for “delayed science,” “biased science,” “non-science,” and “silent science.” UCS has begun documenting the blatant pattern of the Bush administration’s adherence to these latter kinds of science. Examples:

• Delayed a report showing that vehicle fuel efficiency had long been declining until after Congress passed the 2005 Energy Bill - Bush hates foreign oil but not enough to really do anything about it!

• Manipulated reports on climate change by striking out scientific information from reports - Pesky scientific statements be damned!\

• Pressured scientists to manipulate results on mercury - Drink up! Mercury is okay.

Click on the periodic table above to see the documentation, which is a part of their scientific integrity program.

Sesame Street Terror Alert

 

Current Terror Alert Level:

 

Courtesy: GeekandProud.net

Conservative Dreams

In an amazing confluence of events, everything conservatives have claimed came true today…

1. Arizona Farmers Flush with White People Hoping to Pick Fruit (USAToday)

2. Christians Thrown off US Airways Flight, Can’t Find Flight Home (MPR)

3. DNA Evidence Puts Every Criminal Behind Bars (USAToday)

4. Scientists Concede that Evolution a Big Sham (NYTimes)

5. Jews, Muslims, Hindus, and Atheists Agree to celebrate “Christmas” (UC Davis)

6. Iraq War Achieves Every Goal Possible (ICC)

7. Peace is the Sign of the Devil (USAToday)

How to Get a “Top Post” on WordPress

(Image: North Carolina State library.)

First, find something funny on the web, perhaps “The top 10 unintentionally worst company URLs” and recycle it four months later. Ha ha, you sell pens? www.penisland.com! Need a therapist? www.therapistfinder.com!

Second, put a post on your blog making it seem like you made it up: “Top 10 Worst Domain Names” (and spell “worst” wrong in the URL)

Third, sit back and enjoy the fun. Make sure to delete anyone’s comments on your blog that call you on it.

Fourth, later when people call you on it, add a thanks to Johnny for the email (because he’s a really good source), and when that doesn’t work, later still get really angry and claim you didn’t plagiarize (you did), rather than actually just doing a quick google search, finding the source, and linking to it so that all the dorks like me shut-up. How hard would it be to fix it rather than dropping a few f-bombs?

Are their consequences for plagiarism on the internet? Not really, other than idiots pointing it out to you.

The source of our annoyance? That some of us are trying to create original content for people and then Johnny’s random email shoots to the top of the WordPress popularity.

What does that say about us? Most likely, we’re all writing really boring things and need to stick to writing about sex.

UPDATE:

Hot phrases to increase your blog popularity…

BRITNEY SPEARS’ CROTCH PICS!

LOSE 10 POUNDS IN 5 WEEKS, GUARANTEED!

TOMKAT BABY PICS!

SEX!  NUDE!  HOT!