Friday, March 11, 2011

Spring forward, bitches.

It's time for our annual tribute to the inadequacies of the Bush administration. As a result of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, it's time to move our clocks ahead one hour. It was the best idea that George W. Bush could come up with in an effort to combat the rising price of oil. Go figure.
Here we are, 6 years later, and oil is still rising. Nice fix, George.
In addition to the extra hour of daylight (unless you get out of bed an hour earlier) the Energy Policy Act of 2005 gave incentives to companies to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico. I think that worked out great.
Meanwhile, we have more Daylight Savings Time than we have Standard Time. How does that make it standard? Why not just leave the clock the way it is and we'll deal with the so-called extra hour of darkness between November 15 and March 15. How bad could that be?
What are we saving, exactly?

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Be the fountain, not the drain.

The Internet is a wonderful thing, but it is also a source of consumer fraud and scam.
I remember when personal computers (what do they compute, by the way?) started to become consumer items. The so-called experts wondered if the advent of the computer would be the eventual ruination of society. Jobs would be lost to computers and our economic structure would be ruined by computers. Computers, they said, would simplify society to the point of making people obsolete.
So they thought. What they failed to realize was that the introduction of computers would lead to a Worldwide connection that would be called the Internet. The Internet would connect society in such a way as to make humans not obsolete, but necessary.
They would be necessary because in the world-connected Internet, there would open a new way for humans to make money off of other unsuspecting humans, and nothing is more appealing to humans than scamming other humans.
The Internet made it possible to send large amounts of spurious offers to large numbers of people for free.
And that's a win-win for everybody, isn't it? Those of you who said that computers would take jobs away from people and ruin commerce are spitting in your sinks now, eh? Little did you know that it would open up a cottage industry of people who sit around in their pajamas conjuring up e-mail's encouraging unsuspecting recipients to give out their personal banking information so that the deposed Shah of Uzbekistan can retain his throne and return to power. And you can help.
So, go ahead. Live the dream.