Saturday, August 11, 2007

Organize Now?


A group of bloggers has decided that they need to organize and form a union, a union of bloggers, that will help them receive health insurance, conduct collective bargaining, or even set professional standards. The first thing that came to my mind when I heard this was: Whiskey-Tango-Foxtrot? (That’s WTF? for those unfamiliar with the NATO alphabet.)
In order for labor to unionize, they have to have something to unionize against, like, say, oh, I don’t know, MANAGEMENT maybe? The purpose of a union is to bargain collectively with those who employ you. Who employs you as a blogger? Most likely nobody. This idea makes absolutely zero logical or economic sense, which is why it is no surprise that it originated with the left side of the blogosphere. The right side of the blogosphere recognizes this idea for the joke that it is.
So I ask again, who would you organize against? Advertisers? They may pay some websites to run their ads, but that is purely voluntary on their part. They pay for their ads based solely on what they are willing to pay and what they feel that ad placement is worth. If you push them too far by trying to force them pay more than they are willing to, they will simply quit the arrangement and find someone who doesn’t reside in an orange padded room.
Maybe they’ll unionize against the government, demanding free healthcare in exchange for their efforts. This isn’t much of a stretch, seeing as they’re already demanding government subsidized healthcare anyway. It might actually even work, considering Uncle Sucker’s track record of giving in to the demands of society’s lunatic fringe groups. More likely, though, it’ll be just another dumb idea that goes nowhere.
So what will this theoretical union do if its demands aren’t met? Strike? Refuse to produce an never ending stream of bizarre and stupid posts about how Bush=Hitler, and how all the Jews who worked in the World Trade Center called in sick on 9/11 on direct orders from the evil Jewish Neo-Conservative Cabal led by Paul Wolfowitz, who reports directly to Tel Aviv? Good riddance, I hope they strike for the next millennia.
Even if they did manage to get it going, I wouldn’t join, and not just because I’d blow the entrance exam by not wearing a jacket whose sleeves lace up in the back. No, we here at Castro Burn in Hell have no need for such subsidies, thanks to all the funding we receive from Israel, the Gun Lobby, Big Oil, and Big Tobacco. We’re doing just fine, thank you very much.

Friday, August 10, 2007

Pointless Ponderings And Useless Wisdom

Have you ever wondered why Ron Paul always gets like 40%-50% of the vote in online presidential polls, but when it comes to the actual real life polls, he comes in with like 0.01%?

Me neither.

Talk About A Delayed Reaction


It looks like Y2K has had an impact after all, albeit a little later than expected. NASA has just revealed that due to a Y2K bug in the algorithms used to calculate global temperatures over the past century, the data output from those models, the very data that environmentalists have been using to beat us over the head about how we’re killing the planet, is incorrect. The problem has been corrected, and the resulting data has been silently released by NASA. Why silently? Because of the negative impact the corrected data would have on the Global Warming™ Hysteria Movement. Although the differences are not major, they could have a profound PR impact.
Some of the interesting changes: 1998 is no longer the “hottest year on record.” That honor now goes to 1934. In fact, it turns out that 5 of the 10 hottest days of the year all occur before World War II, which actually makes sense statistically. WWII occurred about halfway through the last century, so it would make sense for half of the 10 hottest days of the year to occur in the first half of the century, and the other five to occur in the second half. I’m no statistician, but that seems like a fairly normal random distribution. Whereas if Global Warming™ were actually happening, you would expect to see most or all of the 10 clustered in the latter part of the century. Clearly, there is a tremendous amount of uncertainty here, but lets just go ahead and wreck our entire economy because of a theory we can neither prove nor disprove. That sounds like a rational idea.

Thursday, August 9, 2007

The Weather For The Next Ten Years Will Be…

Hot! Hot! Hot!
Whatever.
According to a recent report by some group of people who should have learned better by now, Global Warming™ is predicted to accelerate after 2009, with at least half of the following decade’s years to be among the warmest on record. Much like the 2006 hurricane season was to be one of the worst on record. Seriously, these jackasses can’t even get the weather right 24 hours in advance, do they really think we should trust them to get it right 10 years in advance? Do they think we're that stupid? Or are they just that stupid that they actually believe their own hype?
Just the other day, there was a news article about how with Global Warming™, there would be increased earthquakes, increased volcanic activity, dogs and cats living together. Mass hysteria! On what did they base this idea? The fact that during several periods in the Earth’s past when temperatures were warmer, there was greater seismic activity. Luckily, they’ve yet to blame mankind for those temperature increases. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before some partially educated fool comes out of some unjustifiably prestigious university and announces that they’ve found conclusive evidence that the increased CO2 emissions produced by SUVs is responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. They almost have to at this point, in order to maintain their credibility. If the temperature of the planet has gone up and down many times over the course the last few billion years, even without the presence of human civilization, then why would this current supposed increase in temperature have anything to do with us either?

It’s because capitalism is unfair to socialists, apparently.

Pointless Ponderings And Useless Wisdom

I once met a man who swore up and down that JFK was still alive, that he had survived the assassination attempt, and was still in hiding. The man would carry around a picture of JFK wherever he went. I asked him “If you think he’s still alive, why do you carry that picture with you?” He said, “Cause someday I’m gonna find that SOB, and then I’m gonna put him down for good!”
He was a pretty cool guy.

Moving Forward

What’s the deal with states constantly moving their primaries earlier and earlier? I can sort of understand California wanting to move its primary ahead, seeing as how it was originally so late in the season that by the time it’s primary was held, the result was mostly irrelevant. Unfortunately, as soon as California moved it’s primary date up, everyone else had to follow suit, so that now, everything is bunched up at the beginning of the year. And now we have South Carolina moving it's primary date up to January 19th. If this sort of thing keeps up, well be holding primaries for the 2016 Presidential election during the 2012 Presidential campaign.
The real source of all this is that New Hampshire has a law on it’s books that says that they must be the first state in the nation to hold a primary each season. So when other states start moving their primaries up, New Hampshire is required by state law to move theirs up so that they’re still first.
So how do we solve this problem? I say the simple solution is to kick New Hampshire out of the Union. What purpose do they serve, anyway? The only thing they have worth exporting to other states is snow, and we can always get that from Maine. Sure, Bob Newhart won’t be happy that his Inn is no long a part of the union, but he’s an old man, and won’t be able to put up much of a fight.

Now that I think about it, I think Newhart was actually set in Vermont, not New Hampshire. So I guess Bob can stay. I’m not sure how this discussion of the primary system devolved into beating up on Bob Newhart, but, whatever.