don’t panic

You would think that with all the bad publicity that unsolicited email (SPAM) has received, that people would have gotten wise and stopped purchasing things from shady no-name entities on the net. But I guess not, because I still receive several dozen spam messages a day, and those are the ones that manage to get through two layers of filters. And if it didn’t work, the people sending spam wouldn’t do it, because while it may be relatively cheap, it’s not free to send, especially when you’re talking in the millions of messages a day.

So where are all those idiots still buying grey market merchandise online? I don’t think I even know anyone that stupid personally. I hope that eventually (maybe with the next generation of netkids) the general public will be “informed” enough to make spam a non-issue. Of course, we may very well find out some day that all that spam was actually coming from under-the-table spin-off companies set up by the makers of anti-spam products.

My friend Bruce wrote about Bio-oil yesterday and mentioned the “c” word… Conservation that is. Of gasoline.

But this is something that I can’t see happening in America. At least not until it really hurts.

If gas were 5 bucks a gallon, sure, people would conserve… but until then, we are spoiled, rich Americans who can afford to drive huge, gas-guzzling SUV’s and oversized trucks. I drive a Honda Civic mind you. Not the best milage (still over 30 mpg on a car that’s 20 years old – not bad) but I only need to fill my tank once a month. If I could afford it, I would go Hybrid in a second.

I’d love to tinker with a hybrid and some solar panels to see if I could squeeze another 5-10 mpg out of that sucker. Or better yet, design a hybrid with enough battery life so that the thing charges in the parking lot while you work and then gets you home on solar alone.

Car makers really need to start producing vehicles that match our usage patterns, rather than our “image”. Think about it. At least out here in SoCal, most people drive their cars in bright, hot sun. And unfortunately, a great many of us are doing so for 30-90 minutes twice a day at 20 mph. Traffic. Design a car that can get you from point A to point B in heavy traffic using nothing but solar on the roof and you would have a HUGE seller in LA and San Diego for sure. Even a hybrid with a “traffic mode” would be awesome.

Or how about a solar assisted cart type car for non-highway street use by at-home parents who just need to get to the store and back?

Or solar UPS trucks… lots of surface space on the top. Short hops at minimal speed. Sounds perfect. Or the USPS! Those trucks spend half their time sitting in the sunny street while the carrier makes their rounds anyway.

But alas, it’s going to have to hurt before anyone seriously considers these options. And unfortunately, our president is dead set on “cheap oil” and [ulp!] hydrogen. Maybe he failed basic chemistry, but where in the world does he think he’s going to get all that hydrogen? Going to make it with electricity are you? And you get that from burning what?

How can someone who has already admitted to a crime and was found with overwhelming evidence against them, including pictures of them actually perpetrating a crime, plead not guilty?

What’s wrong with our judicial system when a criminal can flaunt their crimes and then say, “no, not me man”? It angers me in the extreme to see this kind of exploitation, because you just know that this guy is hoping that some lawyer or police specialist will slip up and make some tiny mistake that will result in a mistrial. There needs to be some form of added punishment for those that choose to claim innocence after having admitted guilt, or even admitting guilt (finally) after having claimed innocence.

We have one of the best and worst legal system in the world. It’s all about loop-holes and having the money to hire someone to find them. There is no real justice. We order someone be killed for a crime, but then worry about whether or not how they die is humane. I find it interesting that God has chosen the all or nothing form of law. Either you are with sin and die in torment, or you are innocent and live in paradise. There are no grey areas, no loop-holes to exploit, no penance (sorry, Benedict) that we can do to work off minor infractions. There are no minor infractions. The advantage to this form of law is that it works great as a deterrent. The disadvantage is that without redemption, it would basically be God and an empty Earth… But then, there is ONE loop-hole.

God can overlook the law for a child.

I never believed that Bush was sincere about his big green energy initiatives he talked about in his State of the Union speech, but you really have to wonder about an administration that spouts how much it’s doing for the planet while at the very same time it reams it with a 9 billion dollar tax loophole for big oil.

Read it and weep.

So in a recent CNN article regarding Katrina fallout I read –

“In response to the August 28-29 videotapes, the White House said the briefings represented only a snapshot of what went on behind the scenes before the storm struck. Bush, the White House said, was fully engaged in emergency preparations.”

Hmmm… Which begs me to consider that once again, either the Bush administration is lying, or they are incompetent. There are no other choices. Katrina was a disaster not just natural, but governmentally as well. Our government blew it at every level, which can happen. But not with something that was so well predicted, tracked and experienced hundreds of times before. Something like the bombing of the World Trade towers probably wasn’t preventable or predictable. Now, yes. Then, no. But there have been hundreds of hurricanes in recorded history. We have some of the most advanced tracking equipment in the world, and we knew without a doubt that Katrina was going to be a big and very dangerous hurricane weeks before it actually made landfall.

Saying, even insisting that you were involved and prepared doesn’t make it so. Nor does it change the fact that our administration is STILL trying to pass the buck. God forbid that our country under this president should ever experience an event of national significance like a flu epidemic, because they don’t have a clue. And worse, they don’t even know that they don’t have a clue.