Plug for my aunt

My aunt's doing her bit to get a handle on emissions, and is now at a company that sells hardware for your car, so you can improve your fuel efficiency and reduce emissions. Apparently, you can even use these on your existing hybrid to make it an uber-hybrid.

Products are here. They are all of the Electronic Fuel Injection Enhancment family. Information on them are here.

Is that a Tesla in your pocket?

Condi recently rode in the Tesla, a 100% electric vehicle that outperforms most cars on the road today and boasts a decent driving range on a single charge (about 200 miles). I think the driver is telling her, "you like that vibrating seat? It's powered by the gleam of your smile, hot stuff. Whaddya say we lay into the lithium capacitors and get you some ungassed glow, girl?"

Right now it costs just below $100k, so it's a little pricey. Regardless, it goes to show petrol addicts like GM, Daimler-Chrysler, and Ford that the technology does exist to make cool cars that are solid performers.

Tesla isn't the first fully electric vehicle, you know. The EV1 was leased to a small group of folks. The car did amazingly well, but strangely enough all the cars were recalled and destroyed. General Motors developed the car and managed the leasing program. When pressed for a reason why they were cancelling the lease program and recalling the vehicles, they stated that they could not sell enough of the cars to make the venture profitable. A questionable fire safety issue was used to legitimize the recall.

uh...hello...Prius cars being more valuable after they drive off the dealership?

Check out the video of Rice touring with the Tesla.

Is Al Gore the new Bill Graham?

He used to be called the "dull" one. Now he's nominated for an Oscar for his documentary, at which nay-sayers (read: people who still think the Earth is flat) scoffed at his "facts" and "scientific evidence". He's also recently announced the July-launching campaign: Save Our Selves — The Campaign for a Climate in Crisis. The concert is set up like Live Aid, and according to the AP, is being euphemistically referred to as "Earth Aid". It's got a stellar list of performers...although so far I haven't seen the Dixie Chicks listed, which would be cool given their take on Dubya.

Yes, this is the same Al Gore who was the U.S. VP for 8 years. Not "Bore", as we used to call him. This guy's got stupid crazy charisma now because it seems like he's really finally doing what he cares about, and couldn't do before as a candidate for the White House. Why? Because he would've scared off the conservative vote with his ridiculous and Satanic comments about this great God-fearing nation of carbon emitters. "HE WANTED TO TAKE AWAY MY GOD-GIVEN SUV (read: 2007 Earth Destroyer)! HE'S A COMMIE PINKO TERRORIST!", they'd say. Then they'd burn their daughters at the stake for doing calculus and smack their wives around, "cuz, they were gittin' uppity".

More than 100 performers are scheduled to appear at the July concerts, including Melissa Etheridge (whose song in "An Inconvenient Truth" is nominated for an Oscar as well), the Foo Fighters, Lenny Kravitz, Sheryl Crow, John Mayer, Duran Duran, Korn, Pharrell, the Black Eyed Peas, Akon, Enrique Iglesias, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw.

Can't you just see Akon smackin' that a-- for global warming awareness?

Relatedly, and I'll be the first to admit I don't have any data on this, so I'm going straight from the gut on this one (did you know there are more nerve endings in your gut than in your head? Look it up, people), I'm postulating that American children's medical needs are the root cause of the failure of the auto industry. Just allow me some room to drift here...it's all tied up in a neat little package for you:

• Cause A: Kids need good medical attention to become happy healthy members of society;
• Cause B: Medical insurance is expensive to pay for out of one's pocket, and employment that provides subsidized healthcare benefits is the ideal solution;
• Factor A: American car manufacturers produce gas-guzzling vehicles that are of shoddy construction and which pollute the environment and keep us fixed on the sweet tit of foreign oil;
• Primary Effect: Kids get sick from breathing in the crap (this is a scientific term) in the air;
• Secondary Effect: Parents go to work to provide for their families/children illnesses brought on by said crap;
• Tertiary Effect (as related by Factor A): American car manufacturers try to cut costs by reducing healthcare benefits for workers or closing plants altogether (here's where carbon emission pollution and healthcare costs implode upon each other);
• Quaternary Effect: Parents lose their jobs and lose healthcare benefits, thus reducing their socio-economic viability in this country, thus reducing the amount of quality medical care their children can receive;
• Quinary Effect: Children of these parents turn into adults and require even more medical coverage in order to combat health problems that could've been addressed during common preventative doctor visits, of which costs would've been subsidized by the auto maker.

I'm still working on the details, but this is the general gist: get rid of American children and replace them with robots powered by Dick Cheney's evil, soul-sucking smile.

Note that this cause-effect model is intertwined with the issue of carbon emission pollution of which the primary effect is global warming, which effects polar ice caps, which...eh...you get the picture.

Father proves that evolution hasn't reached all homo sapiens

Now this may be a touchy subject, but I'm just going to have to jump right in to this one.

You've heard about global warming, right? Little thing about pollutive emissions trapping solar energy within the biosphere, thus raising surface temperature of the globe? OK. Good. Apparently, Frosty Hardison, a father of 7 residing in the suburbs or Seattle, WA doesn't believe that humans are the cause. The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is "one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day.

[crickets....]

Any of you ever go to Sunday School or see a religious-based horror film? If not, Judgement Day is the day when God takes the great big escalator down from the sky and swoops all the righteous into his bosom, then sweeps all the trash into the fiery pits of Hell where the devil will poke the non-believers (yes, even tribal rainforest people who've never been exposed to the Word of the Lord) in the ass with his pitchfork that he also uses to toss the hay around...which should actually be burning up on contact in Hell, but I digress.

This father didn't want his daughter to watch "An Inconvenient Truth" in school because he felt it's liberal junk, and feels that people (namely Merkins [read "Americans"]) aren't the cause of global warming.

Huh?

What?

The snow melting on the mountains of Mt. Kilimanjaro? The melting of ice shelves at the poles? Correlate this to carbon that we, as a global community are emitting? Consider these points and know that it's a fact that Frosty (not for long!) Hardison drives his Hummer from the mailbox to his front door.

[ok, I can't back up this last one on paper]

No, apparently humans haven't done anything to affect global warming. God is just turning up the temperature of the oven to cook all our little faces into poached treats for his angels on which to snack.

The school board has been doing a bang up job at managing the public frustration at the board's decision to force the teacher to not show the film because she didn't follow proper guidelines (getting permission slips, showing alternative views, etc). Excerpts from an article on sfgate describe the situation:

"I am here to foster healing in our community," [school board member David Larson] said, while noting with sadness that "civility and honest discourse are dying in our country."
What the school board had really intended to do, Larson and school board members insisted, was not to stop schools from teaching the science of global warming, but merely to follow long-standing school board rules that require students to be exposed to "other perspectives" when they view a film like "An Inconvenient Truth."

So they want to be able to provide a "balanced" view of global warming, however, views characterized as balanced weren't articulated. Um...that's because everyone with two double AAs in their brain unit knows that there isn't an alternative and valid [read "scientifically sound"] viewpoint for global warming. The world is heating up because of all the toxic poop-vapors we're putting out into the atmosphere.

The article goes onto say:

Before the board meeting started Tuesday night, several residents buttonholed Larson and asked him if there should be a "balanced" presentation of the Nazi Holocaust, because there are many who deny that it occurred.

"The Holocaust happened," Larson said. "We have evidence and photos. The difference between the Holocaust and the global warming is we don't have photos of what will happen 50 years from now."

Sitting in on this conversation was Walls, the seventh-grade science teacher whose class includes Frosty Hardison's daughter.
"We do have photos of snow melting off Kilimanjaro," Walls, the science teacher who was to show the film, said hopefully.

Un. Be. Leeve. A. Bull. This is just my opinion, but if you were really a Christian wouldn't you be less concerned about whether a documentary is shown in your kid's school and more concerned about your responsibility to the Earth, the home that God gave you?

THIS JUST IN! Frosty postulates that he and his 7 children will all live to be somewhere between 500 and 950 years old, just like Noah! Except of course, they'll be living on an ark and will need to wear sunblock 5000 indoors.