Irresponsible (Awesome) Weekend Plans

I love my life! Only it leaves precious little time for studying, which may prove to be a problem come Monday.

Thursday:
Class
Teatime - free food and good company
Throw a frisbee around outside the IRC
Run for 45 min
Eat dinner/study for a tiny bit w/ Jamelle
Visit Grey's Anatomy for free food and get sucked into two hours of Guitar Hero (I'm so irresponsible)...
More studying?

Friday:
Class
Work
The Week that Was
Watson Suite Reunion
Soccer game?
Perhaps studying, but that seems exceedingly unlikely. More plausibly, hanging out with awesome IRC people.

Saturday:
Farmer's Market?
Vegetarian Festival
Jeff Soc Tailgate
Random movies are most likely, although perhaps studying (yeah right)

Sunday:
Run
Study like whoa

Global Warming Pt 1

The Disgruntled Chemist, on talking about Global Warming, makes an excellent point here:

"One more thing: perhaps there are some of you sitting there now saying "this guy's an alarmist! No way will it be this bad". Well, maybe you're right. But think about this: on almost every issue, the scientific community has one outlook and the general public has another. On almost every issue (GM crops and microwave ovens come to mind), the scientists are less alarmed about potential problems than are the public. In the case of global warming, the people who most closely study the situation are the most alarmed, and the public is telling them not to worry. Why is that? It's because the government tells us not to worry about it, without giving one shred of scientific evidence to back themselves up. Well, I'll go with the evidence, and with the scientific community. If that makes me sound alarmist to you, then maybe I am. And maybe you should be alarmed too."

I may have said this before, but this is a freaking excellent point. On all of these other issues, the scientists aren't alarmed. We don't cry wolf. The public may be alarmed, but scientists are still looking at the evidence.

But for Global Warming, scientists are very alarmed. Shouldn't this signify something to you?? Let's make a diagram:

Scientists think something will have mostly positive consequences (i.e. microwave ovens) -----> Public doesn't care.

Scientists think something new won't have positive or negative consequences (will just be a new tool, such as perhaps GMOs) -----> Public freaks out and decides all consequences will be bad.

Scientists think something will have potentially devastating consequences -----> Shouldn't the public be running for the hills?

Or is there no correlation here?

It was only a matter of time

Giant ads set for world's busiest runways

Waa, ads in one of the last ad-free spaces. How appalling.

Come On, Guys, Free Speech is Still OK

F**k Bush! (like this is really news)

Why is his resignation neccessary here? Why is it that, if someone spouts an opinion in a paper that the majority doesn't like, we suddenly get all of this clamoring for that person to resign from their post? Limiting what people are allowed to say simply because we don't like what they're saying is censorship. Soon we'll be editing old movies to remove people's cigarettes (:-P) and shortening Hamlet to a 10 word soliloquy simply because someone thinks it contains subversive material.

To be clear, if someone wrote an article stating F**k Gore! or F**k Obama! instead, I think I would be more angry about this. Still, they have a right to express this sentiment. It endangers no one (except, apparently, the writer themselves) and so, while offensive, it should be ALLOWED.

Transparency, Please

I'm convinced. We need transparency today, in every endeavor possible. Only when there is transparency in the government will people discover, and change, the corruption inherent in that institution. Only when people can, say, see into the CAFOs (concentrated animal feeding operations) and kill floors will the meat industry change itself into something less inherently cruel, and based less mindlessly on the bottom line.

I don't see a future in which no one eats meat. However, I do see a future where everyone is forced to think about where their food comes from. We're increasingly entering into an age in which ignorance is not an excuse, nor a viable defense. Many people now have the ability (financially and otherwise) to take accountability for their decisions. You can afford the farmer's market tomatoes; you can splurge on the free-range eggs. You can find out all the information you need to make a moral (?) decision. So, Homework Assignment: Think about where your food comes from.

More From "The Omnivore's Dilemma"

To Do, Someday:

Work out true economic price of a grass fed cow versus a corn fed cow, to soil, oil, public health, the public purse.

Charged to the taxpayer (in the form of subsidies)
the health care system (in the form of food-bone illnesses and obesity)
and the environment (in the form of pollution)
not to mention the welfare of the workers in the feedlot and the slaughterhouse, and the welfare of the animals themselves.

vs: consistency, mechanization, predictablility, interchangeability, and economies of scale.

Floating on a sinking sea of petroleum?

The food industry burns nearly a fifth of all the petroleum consumed in the United States (about as much as automobiles do).

Today it takes between seven and ten calories of fossil fuel energy to deliver one calorie of food energy to an American plate.

Growing food organically uses about a third less fossil fuel than growing it conventionally; yet only a fifth of the total energy used to feed us is consumed on the farm; the rest is spent processing the food and moving it around.

I don't understand Republicans

Here's why:

I was talking to some the other evening, and they seem to have such contradictory beliefs:

1. GPS watches and Ipod trackers are bad - some skeez could potentially hack his way onto the internet and find exactly where you were running - how bad is that????

2. I fully support the Patriot act. Umm, so it's ok if people in the government are all up in your business? But the moment it's an individual, that's a bad thing.

First Rebuttals:
a. There are individuals in the government. Like the ones that leaked the identity of the CIA agent in the Middle East and essentially forced her into early retirement.
b. This point is just me shaking my head in dismay. I don't know. Are Republicans just not private people? Do they not care if their private business remains their own private business? Myself, I don't think it's anyone's business at all what I do in my spare time. What I spend money on. What I do in my own home. Is this distrust in big government something that separates Democrats from Republicans? Because I thought it was the other way around, that Democrats trusted in big government. I don't know.

"He still believes in his heart that people are honest and good," the former manager said about Kenny. "And he's wrong."

Oh Shit

Shit! Was that wise????