MAGIC         PORK

I didn’t see this until after the election. Would have been better to have posted it earlier due to the thousands of people from Nevada that read my blog and count on me for my wisdom and sage advice.

It’s a video explaining what voting yes on Nevada’s Question 7 would mean. That’s the ballot initiative that would have legalized marijuana. Highly regulated, but legalized nonetheless. Well it was voted down, 56% to 44%. I think all drugs should be legalized but even if you don’t have as libertarian of a viewpoint as me, I just think legalizing marijuana is a no-brainer. If nicotine and alcohol are legal, it just makes no sense to be throwing people in jail over marijuana.

I tried to embed the YouTube video onto the page, but I have to do some fancy stuff to get it working with a WordPress blog so forget it. That YouTube site’s probably not going to be around much longer anyway. What’s that? 1.65 BILLION???!! Sigh.

Here’s the video

Here’s an article on CNN.com about how California is suing automakers for contributing to global warming. Sometimes I think I should just become a Republican, because stuff like this pisses me off.

I don’t belong to any political party, but I vote Democrat because I’m big on the whole civil liberties thing (in case you never noticed the ACLU link on the right) and not big on religion in our government (in case you never noticed the Americans United for Separation of Church & State link on the right) and in both regards Democrats tend to be better than Republicans, which isn’t saying much. But then some Democrats go & do something like this and I find myself ranting against them. If Republicans would just get out of bed with the religious right, I might start voting for them.

Look, let’s set aside the whole question of how much cars are contributing to global warming and assume for the sake of argument that they’re the worst threat to humanity ever. Did the automakers lie about the emissions of the vehicles they sold? No. Did they put a gun to the heads of people and force them to purchase the vehicles? No. Did they put a gun to the heads of the vehicle owners and force them to drive them the number of miles that they drove them? No.

Take another look at the picture in that article. Look very closely and you’ll see something startling. There’s a person in each of those cars. I know, shocking right? There’s actually a person making a choice to drive the car. Perhaps that person could have chosen to use public transportation, or live closer to where he works so he could walk or bicycle, or carpool with someone. Perhaps none of those are an option and he really needs to drive his own car. Then what you’re basically saying is that the automobile is one of the lynchpins of American society. It’s necessary and without it, we wouldn’t succeed. And to thank them for providing us with this crucial instrument, we’re going to sue them. (Yes, I’ve read some Ayn Rand. How did you guess?)

Let’s use a different example. People are killed every day in this country by guns. Do we sue the gun manufacturers? Well people have tried, but that’s ridiculous. There are legitimate uses for guns besides murder, so when someone uses a gun for that purpose, they are held accountable for their actions.

Another example, which much of my audience may relate to better. A file-sharing service is invented. People use that service to illegally share copies of software and music. But that service could also be used to share files that are legal to copy. It is not the fault of the file-sharing service, it is the fault of the person using it. (Some of the file-sharing services advertised themselves as a place where you could conduct illegal activity, so that gets into tricky territory, but let’s assume we’re talking about a service that didn’t so advertise themselves. It would similarly be tricky if a gun company advertised that you could more effectively kill your cheating wife with their products.)

So… if car emissions really are the huge threat that California believes them to be… sue the people driving the cars so damn much. Well of course that’s crazy, you can’t sue the people of California and I don’t believe you should. So you should just sue the automakers because you can? I’m a firm believer that the ends don’t justify the means. If the only way you can achieve your goal is to sue a company that is producing a product with legitimate uses, then too bad. It’s called a free nation.

Besides, it’s not the only way. You could fine people for driving their cars too much. Make it part of the inspection process to check the mileage and make sure it’s under a certain amount. I most definitely am NOT suggesting that, just saying it would be possible and that suing the manufacturer is not the only thing you could do. And yes I’m aware garages would be bribed like crazy to look the other way, same as they’re bribed now to allow cars to pass that shouldn’t. Not really the point of this post. But of course even if a politician felt inclined to do that, it would be career suicide to pass a law like that, so he wouldn’t.

Here’s another idea: Let’s sue McDonald’s for making people fat. Oh wait, they already tried that.

I flew this last weekend with the new “no liquids” rule in effect.  I was expecting big hassles but for whatever reason, everything was a breeze, both departing and returning.  Must be I just flew at times when it wasn’t busy.  I had no lines at check-in or security, got my baggage quickly, and my flights were actually about 5 minutes early.

Anyway, I see that they’re running the Sierra Mist airport screening ads again.  I’m not the only one to notice of course because I see others have blogged about it already.  But that won’t stop me from mentioning it too.  The ad I’m talking about is the one where Kathy Griffin plays an airport screener who takes Michael Ian Black’s Sierra Mist away from him.  You can watch the ad here:

 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5074243333008673242

At the time it originally aired (the Superbowl) it was funny because of course they wouldn’t need to take a Sierra Mist away.  (Also because Griffin & Black are funny.)  Now that ad is funny for different reasons. For the record, I’ve never tasted Sierra Mist and I haven’t received any money to mention Sierra Mist multiple times by name.  But as I’ve explained previously with Gillette, I have no problems with selling out.

Speaking of airport screening ads, I remember an ad for a radio station.  I don’t remember what station but it was some local ad in either Rochester or Syracuse that used to run years ago.  There were two female screeners and they kept making some man take off more & more of his clothes until he finally walked through wearing just his underwear and they both leered at his backside and smiled at each other.  Take note advertisers: People in power forcing others to strip for their pleasure - not so funny.  That would never get on the air if the roles were reversed.  Then again, maybe someday we’ll see people stripping down to their underwear at airports.

I thought after my post about global warming, I’d avoid the more controversial issues for a while. But I couldn’t let this one go. Today I saw this CNN article about a new report by the Surgeon General. According to the article, he says “Exposure to secondhand smoke remains an alarming public health hazard” and “Nonsmokers need protection through the restriction of smoking in public places and workplaces”.

Later in the article, it mentions that this report “isn’t a new study but a compilation of the best research on secondhand smoke”. No, it isn’t a compilation of the best research because the best research is a 39-year study of 35,561 people who never smoked and had a spouse that smoked. And guess what the conclusion was?

The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed.

And remember, that study looked at people that lived with smokers, and therefore spent a lot of time indoors with them. But we can ignore that study because it was obviously funded by the Big Tobacco… wait, what’s that? It was funded by the American Cancer Society? Oh.

But, you’re probably saying, what about all the studies that say the opposite? The Surgeon General obviously is basing his conclusion on something. Yes, the problem is a great deal of the reports you see are based on an EPA report from 1993 that has been thoroughly discredited. In court even. But people keep on quoting from it, either because it suits their cause, or they just don’t realize it.

See this guy’s site for more details about the EPA study. He discusses the study and shows some quotations from the judge’s 92-page decision. But if you don’t feel like reading it, the basic idea is that the EPA:

• Selectively eliminated studies (such as the one mentioned above) from its report that didn’t agree with its conclusion, which it had already decided on ahead of time.
• Manipulated the statistics when they still didn’t get the conclusion they expected, decreasing the confidence level down to 90% instead of 95% to try to show a greater relative risk.
• Still only got a relative risk of 1.19, which is not statistically significant, yet they used this to claim that secondhand smoke causes cancer.

Pen & Teller did an episode of their show Bullshit that debunked the whole “secondhand smoke causes cancer” thing too. It was done around the time they had banned indoor smoking in New York City. Now it’s banned for the entire state. I’m a non-smoker. I love being able to go out and not have to breathe in smoke and not reek of smoke when I get home. But that would just be too bad for me.

What it comes down to is this: Yes, cigarettes cause cancer. But as with any carcinogen, you have to consider the dosage. Just because smoking causes cancer, it doesn’t mean secondhand smoke does.

So I’m sure you’ve all heard about the riots and protests over some cartoon published in Denmark that depicted Muhammad with a bomb for a turban. I’m still having trouble getting my mind around the fact that this is all because of some stupid cartoon. The news articles I read on the subject didn’t show the offending cartoon. One of them said it was “out of respect for Islam” (translation: “we don’t want them to come after us too”). How can we have a true discussion of this cartoon if we don’t actually see it?

But I’m not going to criticize them too much for that, because I’m sure as hell not going to show it. All I need is some extremist Muslim to see my site with the cartoon of Muhammad right underneath a giant piece o’ pork. No thanks. But do a Google Images search for “Muhammed danish cartoon” and you should find it.

I saw the cartoon and I’m not even sure what the artist intended. Was he making some ridiculous statement that all Muslims are terrorists? That was my initial reaction and it seems to be how most people are interpreting it. But after thinking about it some more, I’m not sure. Was he possibly saying that these terrorists are hijacking the religion and claiming ownership over its interpretation - using the religion as a weapon and a means for delivering their violent message? Or was he simply commenting on the state of the Middle East: the Muslim world is like a bomb about to go off? If anyone has any links to articles where they actually discuss what the cartoon might have meant, or the artist himself talks about it, I’d welcome that in the comments section.

Maybe it is just some stupid, bigoted cartoon, like the way Asians and blacks used to be depicted in Warner Bros. cartoons. Whether it’s offensive or not, I was happy to hear the Danish prime minister refused to apologize. The government didn’t publish that, an independent newspaper did. If the newspaper wishes to apologize, then fine, but it simply doesn’t make sense for the government to apologize for something it had no hand in. What would they be apologizing for - allowing free speech??

It’s also good to hear that President Bush expressed our support for Denmark. Can you believe that the first mention of Bush on my site was a positive one? Who’d have predicted that? Bush supporters cherish it, because it won’t happen often.