Starbucks

Starbucks Closing All Stores for 3 Hours Tuesday Afternoon for Barista Re-training.

Meanwhile, zombie-like hordes of caffeine addicts pound at the doors screaming "grande non-fat mocha!"

Meetup Groups

Morgan is going to a Puggle Party today. I joined a puggle-owners group on Meetup.com in an effort to meet new people.

The puggle group was the only one in which I was really interested. A lot of the other groups focused around politics, which I find interesting, but can't really see myself joining a group where that's the main topic. I'd rather join a group where our main interest is unicorns and politics can be discussed on the side, particularly regarding its effect on unicorn rights, etc.

The group I thought the most amusing was "Fascism in America." I can't help but think this group would quickly turn into a whine-fest led by people who feel that their personal liberties can't be infringed upon in anyway.

"I got ticketed for parking in a no-parking zone by my fascist local government!"

"The newspaper wouldn't publish my 1500-word essay comparing Bush to Dracula - they are such fascists."

"My mom says I have to be home by 9:00 - what a fascist!"

Yeah, that would get old after a while.

Morgan after a Bath

Tuesday Night Time-Waster!

Net Disastor lets your wreck havoc on unsuspecting websites! Fun!

Whole Foods

Lest my last post make you think I'm completely heartless when it comes to the environment and animals and naive Cambridge hippies, I wanted to assure you that I'm really not. I appreciate initiatives that raise awareness and help create clean air standards and nature reserves.

However, I think many issues are better dealt with by the people as consumers rather that the government, because government is alway very heavy-handed and tend to make problems bigger.

For example, I had a friend who told me he thought factory-farming was bad, and there should be laws banning it. I agreed with him that factory farming was pretty bad, but said he needed to look into the issue a little deeper before choosing to legislate the problem away. Factory farming exists because it efficient, and animals are fattened up and slaughtered very cheaply, which means poor families shopping at Wal-Mart can afford to buy more meat. Pass a law that takes that away, you can cause the factory farms drop business because of extra costs associated with raising animals free-farm, creating a shortage in the available meat supply, thus making it cost more to get.

I believe a better solution is supporting companies like Whole Foods. At their website I discovered they have "Animal Compassion Standards" and only purchase their meat from farmers who meet their standards. I think this is a great way to deal with this problem. And as more consumers support Whole Foods because of their practices, other food producers will start changing their practices to in order to compete. The more competition, the lower prices will be. This process is slower, because changes take time, but in the end it is much better for society then the government passing some sweeping law.

We already see this happening in the "green" movement that's occurring right now. Everywhere I look I see companies promoting how environmentally friendly they are.

Maybe I'm being a naive capitalist, but I really believe we have a lot of power to create change just by choosing wisely to whom we give our money.

Global Warming

Boston is having one of it's snowiest seasons in recent records. By now, most of us are pretty tired of cold feet and wet gloves, but one advantage I have discovered is that it's been too cold for the Greenpeace acolytes to stand around Central Square and harass me about global warming.

I got into an argument with one once, and during the course of it I mentioned how just 30 years ago the big climate crisis was global cooling. He informed me that global cooling was a part of global warming and that "it's like Robert Frost poem, Fire and Ice, you know?"

I blinked at him a couple times, because, not being a poetry buff, I didn't know. I then countered that it seems silly to claim that the world heating up would simultaneously cause it to cool down.

He then asked me if I saw Al Gore's new movie.

"You mean his glorified power point presentation? Why yes, I had."

Not only have I seen An Inconvenient Truth, but nearly ten years before I read Gore's book, Earth in Balance.

I didn't want to, but my mom made me because she thinks silly things like "knowing both sides of a debate" is important.

I wasn't convinced, particularly when I noticed that his graphs showed that carbon levels rose after temperatures rose. This was so contrary to what he was claiming that I even showed the graph to my mom to make sure I was reading it right.

So imagine my delight stumbling across this John Stossel report on Gore's latest creation.




I just wish I knew about this when I was debating with Greenpeace. After all, if I can watch An Inconvenient Truth, surely he could spare eight minutes and watch a video.

Gross

And yet I'm fascinated: Scientists find really old lice on mummies.