Crazy stories listening to Fox News today.
Parents are lobbying teachers to use purple pens to correct papers because their red pens are traumatizing. (As usual, Fox is months behind and factually skewed (dated 2004-08-23) on this story concerning the replacement pen color.) What exactly is it that’s traumatic about red pens? Perhaps if your homework/tests weren’t crud, you wouldn’t suffer the trauma. Maybe the trauma is caused by dreading the poor performance associated with seeing red marks on returned papers, and so after purple pens are in use for a while, parents will lobby teachers for a different color, since purple will have become traumatic, too.
Pat an I had a brief discussion last night about frivolous lawsuits and how they’re wrecking the price of media (like music and movies). There was a story on Fox News about a book a guy had written chronicling several suits that might not have made it past common sense - let alone a preliminary hearing - if people still had any common sense. For example…
A guy goes drinking, and walks home in the deep snow. Well, he passes out en route and falls onto a snow bank. Someone passing by sees him and calls the police to inform them that this guy needs help, but the passerby doesn’t wait around for the police. So when the police show up at the location, they can’t find the guy in the snow bank. The drunk guy eventually wakes up with frostbite, and loses a limb or something, and he sues the passerby for not waiting around for the cops - and wins!
Another die dies of a heart attack, and his wife and daughter sue the man’s doctor because the doctor didn’t prevent his heart attack. The doctor knew that the man was overweight, had high blood-pressure, and high cholesterol, and had warned him to change his habits or else he would have a heart attack. Because he didn’t do anything to prevent it (I guess the warning doesn’t count) the widow was awarded a large settlement.
A silly segment I heard yesterday on Day Side (it’s on when I’m out to lunch) had the host, Linda Vester, talking to a guy from the CDC about the incident with the flu virus that was accidentally sent out as a test sample to labs around the world. She kept pressing him about certain issues that were simply not pertinent. For example, he mentioned in the beginning of his interview that it’s important that viral labs are routinely tested (hence the need for these test kits) in the case of a biological terrorism threat. She just latched on to this, asking questions about how this incident might have been related to terrorism. There’s nothing like nudging sensationalism over the line. So after he politely shuts her down on that avenue and she persists with the urgency of getting these samples destroyed, he tells her that these kits were originally sent back in November, so the need for urgency is long past.
The kicker, though, is when she thanks him and returns to read a breaker from the teleprompter before the commercial which essetially reads, “Scientists race against time to destroy samples of a deadly flu virus.” Um, didn’t the CDC guy just say that this happened months ago? Weren’t you listening to the answers to your questions? Duh.
President Bush was on live this afternoon talking about his Social Security issue. I wish he’d stop talking about it and start doing something about it. It’s getting tiresome. Perhaps he could take a brief break from Social Security and talk about, oh, I don’t know, freakin’ gas prices. They’re going to hit $3 per gallon at the pump in the States by summer.
You kids from overseas may not realize how much our country depends on cheap, cheap oil. In Europe (this is my theory - so feel free to bash if you know better), there are two advantages. First, everything is closer together. Over here, I have to drive everywhere to get anywhere. Second, in the States, there is no public transportation worth talking about unless you live in a city. And even that transportation is often not worth talking about. For example, public transit in Philly scares me. The train is ok, but I fear the bus.
If I have to fill my car’s tank every week (I do), then I’m spending about $25 per week on gas. If the price goes up a dollar, I’m spending about $37 per week on gas. Berta’s car takes almost twice the amount of gas mine does during the same time span. I don’t know what public transit is like where you are, but is it as cheap as $7 per day for a round trip to work, groceries, and modest entertainment? Note that there isn’t public transit here even if it is cheaper.
So, yeah, a gas fix would be nice. All we have to do right now is re-fill the country’s reserves. Then we have leverage against price control from whom we import crude oil. And while we get that brief hiatus, everyone can buy an American-made electric, hybrid, or fuel-cell car. As soon as zoning clears, I’m going to put up a windmill in my back yard to charge up my forthcoming three-wheeled commuter cart.
Otherwise, it’s me lugging the mountain bike up the big hill to get to work.
