Parents would have to volunteer at schools, under proposed legislation

A bill introduced in the Ohio legislature would require parents to donate at least 13 hours of time to their school district each year or pay the price. And, if parents failed to pay up, the fine could be deducted from their state income tax refunds.

School districts would report parents who didn’t volunteer to the Ohio Department of Education.

I’d like to say I have no words for something this stupid, but anyone who knows me knows I’m rarely without an opinion, even for this.

I can’t imagine the kind of moron who takes the statistics that support the idea that involved parents’ children do better in schools and extrapolates it to an idea forcing parents to be involved… with everyone else’s kids.  At best, one could make the argument that parents, by procreating, are tacitly agreeing to be involved with their own children.  But making a parent volunteer for all the other children, rather than letting a parent choose the manner and time in which they, you know, get involved with their child’s education?  That’s fucked.

And then you’d likely get someone like me who can do the math.  Let’s see… paying $100 to get out of 13 hours forced labor with a bunch of other kids towards whom I have no obligations?  Well, I make more than 4 times the equivalent hourly wage ($7.69 an hour), so I can’t say I’d suffer too much heartburn or guilt paying the fine each year and actually working those hours at a job that pays me more than $400 for 13 hours of my time, meanwhile spending time with my own children when and how I see fit.  I’d make sure my kids understood exactly why I made that choice, too.  Helping them to understand the value, both monetary and otherwise, of their time can’t be overestimated.

The idiots in charge could, I suppose, increase the fine to an amount that would remove the incentive to pay it and move on, but then they’d be overwhelmed with cries that this was unfair to poor families who can’t provide either money OR time because they’re busy working multiple minimum wage jobs to survive, and are less likely to have employers who’ll let them leave early for volunteer work.  (Actually, it’s likely that argument will come around anyway, if anyone starts taking this bill seriously.)

Come to think of it, if I was a teacher, I wouldn’t want my classroom flooded with “volunteers” who have no motivation other than escaping a $100 fine.  It’s no stretch to imagine some or even most wouldn’t be terribly motivated to actually do any good during those 13 hours, and many of them would ultimately have to be rubber-roomed so they could put in their 13 hours while simultaneously staying out of my way.

No wonder “bureaucrat” is an insult.

I wrote some months ago about the impending start of the phase-out of the incandescent bulb.

It’s here. In addition to massive biofuels subsidies, ridiculous fuel efficiency standards for automobiles, and other steaming, wafting piles of scientific nonsense:

One portion of the bill sets new efficiency standards for appliances and will make the incandescent bulb—invented two centuries ago and improved and commercialized by Edison in the 1880s—virtually extinct by the middle of the next decade. The bill will phase out conventional incandescents, starting in 2012, with 100-watt bulbs, ultimately ceding the lighting market to more efficient compact fluorescent bulbs and light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

Nobody’s Business brings us, from the Chicago PD’s own website, their newest flier outlining how to spot potential terrorists. Among the “suspicious” behaviors?

Physical Surveillance (note taking, binocular use, cameras, video, maps)

Glad they cleared that up. Now I can clear all those pesky tourists from around my office with a quick 911 phone call.

Presence of individuals who do not appear to belong in workplaces, business establishments, or near key facilities

So, the odd guy who managed to gain entry to our office and didn’t know who he was looking for? Terrorist. Not to mention the homeless, the crack dealers, and other suspicious individuals who hang out downtown and don’t belong to any business establishment—they’re all terrorists, too.

Mapping out routes, playing out scenarios, monitoring key facilities, timing traffic lights

Gasp! I should be reporting myself! And all that public role playing I had planned for my future sex life is now off-limits, too. Damn.

Stockpiling suspicious materials or abandoning potential containers for explosives (e.g., vehicles, suitcases, etc)

I’ve been known to park my car and (horror!) walk away. So does everyone else I know who owns a vehicle. How would anyone know we’re planning to return?

Van Bakel sums it up nicely:

If terrorists do their dirty work by spreading, well, terror, what should we call public servants who promote fear and unhinged suspicions by telling the public to report note takers, binoculars users, camera enthusiasts, map owners, and motorists who time traffic lights?

I’m so glad the Chicago PD has so simplified the definition of terrorist to include, well, pretty much everyone I see. Takes the guesswork out of it.

Generally I keep my musings much more local. It takes more than I have to get torqued over issues of foreign/international consquence. But I have a couple of thoughts on President Pervez Musharraf’s imposition of emergency rule (read: imposition of dictatorship) and the suspension of law in Pakistan.

First, why can’t our own leadership see that attempting to spread democracy in the middle east is a whac-a-mole game we’ll never win? Just when we’d been patting ourselves on the back having Pakistan even marginally on our side, its governing leadership does an about-face and pops up as one more non-democratic society that, inevitably, someone in power in the US is going to insist we squash in the name of saving them from themselves. We’ll waste even more lives and resources trying to fight the hydra of undemocratic thinking that is the middle east. Fuck pride - why can’t they just admit that it’s a lost cause and stop pissing away our military and our money by spreading them thinner and thinner over that sand pit?

Second, for those of us who’ve noticed Bush quietly move the chess pieces into place for exactly the same scenario, it’s a struggle not to feel a bit alarmed as events unfolding so far away might later unfold here. (And please note, even if this doesn’t come to pass under Bush, our next President will have exactly the same bloated powers, courtesy of the predecessor. That the powers might be wielded by The Other Party doesn’t make me feel any warmer or fuzzier.)

It’s shit like this that makes me doubt any hope for humanity.

Iowa Family Finds Snake Head in Can of Beans

An Iowa family filed a lawsuit seeking damages over a snake head they claim to have found in a can of green beans.

Amy Schneider said she found the head when she opened the can of green beans on March 24, 2006. It was about the size of a golf ball, she said.

“It was … yuck, it was really yuck,” she said. “It was gross.”

She said Lakeside Foods offered her some coupons when she complained.

It doesn’t appear she actually ate any of the can’s contents. And she deserves something more than coupons… why? Ms. Schneider, at BEST you can claim you’re out perhaps a dollar for that can of green beans, plus perhaps a dollar for every other can of green beans in your pantry you now can’t bring yourself to eat, and THAT’S being generous. But suing for mental anguish because you saw a snake head?

Grow the fuck up, you pantywaist.

Why on earth do I continue to be surprised at government idiocy? You’d think that by now, I’d have long since accepted the fact that stupidity has no bounds… that we have, indeed, invented a better idiot at every junction in social evolution.

As I was driving home yesterday, someone tossed a rock (or something heavy–I never found it) off a freeway overpass and smashed my moon roof. Fortunately I had the sun shade closed, so there were no injuries.

Knowing my insurance would ask, I reported it to the state patrol. And even now, I’m astounded at the level of warped thinking that led to the response I got. First, they didn’t get back to me for 20 minutes, ensuring that whoever threw the rock was long gone. And then they drop the bomb on me–if they file a report, it’ll go down as a collision on MY driving record.

Unreal.

Looks like their response to crime and thugs is to turn downtown into Stormtrooper Central. I hadn’t noticed it today, given that my mind is on other things, but I’ll be keeping watch over the next few weeks. I carry my camera with me at all times, so if I get any interesting pictures, I’ll post them.

Busy downtown corner is a “hot spot” for crime

It just takes police too long to respond, he said. Even for something serious like Monday’s shooting, it takes police too many precious minutes to get to the scene, he said.

Pan said he met with an officer about a month ago, but he doesn’t feel like there’s much they can do — they’re too understaffed — and the city can’t afford the number of officers it would take.

(emphasis mine)

I have a bit of an interest in all this for multiple reasons, not the least of which is that I work a block from the McDonald’s where the shooting took place, and it didn’t occur, as most incidents around here do, late at night or on a weekend. It happened at 4:30 in the afternoon on a weekday, a time when I might conceivably be out on the mean streets, as it were.

But I just have to say this: fuck you, Seattle PD. Spare me this “we need more police!” bullshit. You have apparently inexhaustible resources to place police to catch drivers who inadvertently venture onto 3rd Avenue when it’s closed to any traffic but buses. You have plenty of bicycle cops who have nothing better to do than hand out $60 tickets for jaywalking. Why? Because those activities generate revenue. Dealing with violent and property crimes cuts into your precious operating budget with absolutely no financial return, and we can’t have that, now can we? Plus, how would those poor officers meet their quotas for ticket-writing?

Not that I want to see more jackbooted thugs around here. It was bad enough when my employer decided to cooperate with your drug task force by allowing you to use some of our window offices to spy on the drug dealers below. And every fucking one of your officers did nothing but scowl at us as we went about our business in our own office space.

Just stop blowing smoke up my ass about needing to hire more officers, and the ensuing money crunch associated with hiring them. You HAVE the officers. You’ve just chosen to dedicate them to more lucrative pursuits.

Rather than creating incentives to switch to the more energy-efficient compact fluorescent bulbs (CFLs) now common on the market, governments around the globe are adopting various timetables to phase out or ban the incandescent light bulb.

I’m not entirely sold on the case against the incandescent bulb. Yes, they’re energy hogs, with a mere 5% of the energy they consume emitted as light and the rest wasted as heat. (Okay, sometimes that heat isn’t wasted; reptile tanks usually make use of it.) I could conceivably realize some savings in my electricity bill by switching to CFLs entirely.

And I have, to a degree. My outdoor bulbs would burn out once a month because of broken filaments caused by the vibrations from regular training flights conducted by the nearby air force base. Tired of wandering around the house to change bulbs, I switched all my outdoor lights to CFLs, which have no filament to break. And the woman who fixed up my house before I purchased it did install some fixtures that take nothing but energy savers. Other fixtures will take either, and as the incandescent bulbs burn out, I replace them with fluorescent ones.

But (you just knew there was a “but” coming, didn’t you?) I haven’t made the switch completely, and it’s not for a lack of effort. Not every lamp in my house is accepting of the newfangled CFLs. I have two lovely lamps in my living room, each of which takes two bulbs, that stubbornly refuse to play nice with the new ones. I have two halogen desk lamps that also won’t make the switch. CFLs aren’t generally dimmer switch-friendly. I haven’t tried CFLs in my motion sensor lights, but then again, I haven’t seen a flood light or a small candelabra light that isn’t incandescent. When I start having to consider replacing multiple lamps and light fixtures as well as the bulbs in them, the meager cost savings in energy flies right out the open window.

New fixtures? Strike 1 against the CFLs.

CFLs have hefty transaction costs, even when all your lamps and fixtures play nice with them. Right off the bat, they’re damn expensive to purchase. I can buy 8 incandescent bulbs for less than the price of one CFL. And they’re not easily disposed of. You can’t just throw them in the trash–they require hazardous material disposal because of the 5 milligrams of mercury in each bulb. Some hardware stores have take-back programs for CFLs, and in many places, the local dump will take them, but either way, that’s an extra errand for me because I can’t just drop it in the trash or recycling bin and be done with it. If every household were using CFLs, trash hauling companies might begin accepting them at the curb, but I wouldn’t count on it.

And where does that mercury end up? Some studies suggest that despite their mercury content, CFLs would net a decrease in mercury released to the environment because (in theory) fewer coal-fired power plants would be operating, therefore releasing less mercury. Sorry, but I’m not buying it. Because power plants are quasi-governmental, there’s no way they’d be allowed to close solely because of lower energy use. And it doesn’t factor in the amount of extra mercury ending up in the environment because many folks are ignorant of the fact that CFLs can’t be disposed of like regular bulbs, or the danger to your household should one break before you’ve disposed of it.

Mercury hazards and an extra errand just for disposal? Strike 2.

Lastly, color me skeptical that anyone is likely to realize lower electricity rates from energy conservation. Energy rates aren’t subject to the laws of supply and demand, largely because of *gasp!* government interference. Local monopolies dominate the market. If I want electricity, I either hook up to the sole local provider, or I sit at home reading by candle light. I can’t do business other energy company whose practices and rates I find more reasonable. If use and demand fall, rates still increase. As an example, during a particularly dry 2001, Seattle Public Utilities strongly campaigned and encouraged folks to use less water. The public responded favorably by significantly cutting consumption. And at the end of it all, what did SPU do? Because so little water was used compared to projections (which are synonymous with budgets), SPU lost money and needed to raise water rates. I suspect any drastic reduction in energy use would net the same reward. And what incentive does any public utility have to keep energy rates low? When was the last time you’ve seen one petition the public utilities board for a rate decrease?

And not only that, I’m willing to bet the energy savings is a farce similar to the lies that brought us low-flow toilets. Toilet flushing in America is completely insignificant when you consider water consumed by agricultural and industrial uses. Nothing. We could all start doing our business in the woods behind the house, and statistically speaking, water usage wouldn’t go down at all. I suspect, though I have no evidence, that energy wasted by incandescent bulb usage is much the same–an insignificant blip next to energy spent by industry and air conditioning. Why bother with all this if our net gain as a nation is using 0.001% less energy than we did before?

Liars dangling the carrot of lower energy bills and energy consumption? Strike 3–YOU’RE OUT!

So, with the prospect of a phase out of the incandescent bulb looming, I’m doing the only thing I can–hoarding incandescents. It’s incredibly ironic that congresscritters spend so much time talking about creating incentives to become more environmentally conscious, yet the incentive they’re creating now has driven me to do exactly the thing they don’t want me to do–buy incandescent bulbs, in larger quantities than I would otherwise buy. If those idiotic fucks in Washington think I’m going to replace all my unacceptable lamps and light fixtures or spend serious cash having them retrofitted to accept CFLs because “incandescent bulbs are bad, mkay?”, they can kiss my ass.

I’ve deliberately held off on commenting on the Virginia Tech shootings, mostly because the incident’s relation to gun control (both current and future), has been aptly covered by bloggers far more talented than me. I particularly enjoyed LawDog’s commentary on the fact that not only are we denying people the most effective weapons for self defense, but the very mind-set required for it. Excellent point, that.

But what really has me irritated in this and other deadly attacks is the time and energy devoted to public wallowing. People who can be linked to the victims only in some Six-Degrees-of-Kevin-Bacon way are plastered by photojournalists on every television, newspaper, and website, sobbing uncontrollably in shameful displays of psychologically conditioned sorrow. They’re rewarded by writers who quote them extensively, telling us all how they’ll NEVER be the same, never feel safe, never get past their grief. Strangers leave mountains of candles and teddy bears and flowers and signs as some sick, clichéd memorial. Students across the nation are encouraged to visit with grief counselors and hold vigils and talk about their feelings. What an effective way to trivialize the dead.

And next year, on April 16th, we’ll be inundated with the same vomitous bullshit all over again. Reopening wounds. Reminding the victims’ families of their absence (as if they need it). Public wailing and gnashing of teeth. Grief counselors. Vigils.

The media have conditioned this ridiculous over-the-top response to tragedy in much the same way faith healers condition their followers to fall down during the laying on of hands. Followers see that everyone else falls down, so they fall down when their turn to be healed comes. We see the overwhelming public grief, and we’re convinced that we must be hard-hearted and unhuman if we aren’t as incapacitated by undiluted grief as all these other folks. And when we’ve been summarily duped by our emotions, we’re paralized by inaction.

T.G. Browning of the Revised Devil’s Dictionary, writes:

It’s a peculiar, self-absorbed kind of mental masturbation to stand out in a courtyard with a bunch of people you don’t know, holding a candlelight vigil for the slain students of Virginia Tech. None of the people there know any of the slain personally. The odds are extremely good that not one bloody person in such a crowd knows anyone who actually knows any of the murdered students. The odds are darn good that only a handful of people, at most, know anyone who knows anyone who is acquainted with the dead. If you’re a betting person, it a good bet that no one there, does….

If there is one thing about the VT massacre that should stand out and be talked about, it’s this: There was one person there who knew tragedy first hand, having survived a true holocaust: Liviu Librescu, the teacher who was killed protecting his students’ backs, giving them time to escape. Like the passengers who prevented the terrorists from crashing their plane into their target, Librescu knew what he truly valued, in his case the students who depended upon him and looked to him for knowledge and leadership.

I can’t see that teaching kids to manufacture grief is likely to produce many Liviu Librescu. Nor is it likely that fear will. There are, after all, all too many reasons to fear as it is. Don’t weep for strangers for the sole purpose of grieving. Unless of course, you think reality shows on TV have any basis in reality whatsoever. If that’s the case, weep on, my friend, great times will surely be yours.

Very few people are taking the time, like lewlew and her husband, to talk to their kids about formulating a plan to deal with violence BEFORE it happens. To think about potential havens, possible weapons for defense, what scenarios might make hiding or playing dead more viable than fighting back. No, most folks are still so paralized by grief (and will remain so) that little will be learned from any of this. And that, to me, is the most offensive waste.

If you really want to honor the dead, shed a few tears if you must, but above all, utilize their deaths as a learning experience rather than a grief competition.