The Weak In Rock

We were watching TV the other night and had a collective giggle fit over an ad for Kinoki footpads - the pads that claim to leach toxic chemicals out of your body through your feet while you sleep.

To me it wasn’t funny because I couldn’t imagine anyone dumb enough to think these things actually work, let alone do much of anything at all. At the tender age of 41 I know all too well that there are not only lots of people out there stupid enough to buy this sort of snake oil, but that there are enough of them to justify spending thousands of dollars on a network TV ad spot in order to alert these ignorant masses of where to call to order these inane gauze pads with adhesive around the edges.

No, it was funny to me because were I to think up such huxterish flim flam there’s no way I’d let the dopes who bought my snake oil get off so easy. In my book, if you’re a tragic nitwit you ought to really suffer for your nitwittery. Sticking pads on your feet ultimately just wastes a little of your time. If I were to sell a detox product it would come in the form of either a rectal or nasal tampon.

The chuckles from the rectal tampon are obvious. The nasal one would take some salesmanship. I’d design the product so that in order for the user to get the promised benefit, he or she would have to wear a pair of - let’s call them nasal pods - my nasal pods for 24 hours. After that you’d have health and happiness for all the rest of your days. And your coworkers and family would get some therapeutic gut busting laughs out of watching you walk around all day with two strings hanging out of your nose.

Thanks again to Boing Boing for the link.

Technorati Tags: Kinoki footpads, flim flam, nasal tampon

I’ve been saying for a long time that the British have had a much more enlightened conception of Al Qaeda than the US. Well, now it’s official.

“The words ‘war on terror’ will no longer be used by the British government to describe attacks on the public, the country’s chief prosecutor said Dec. 27.

“Sir Ken Macdonald said terrorist fanatics were not soldiers fighting a war but simply members of an aimless ‘death cult.’”

The story goes on to say, in reference to the most recent terrorist activity in the UK:

“’The people who were murdered on July 7 were not the victims of war. The men who killed them were not soldiers,’ Macdonald said. ‘They were fantasists, narcissists, murderers and criminals and need to be responded to in that way.’”

Yup. That’s it. The folks who flew planes into the World Trade Center in NY on 9/11/01 were criminals, not soldiers. You cannot fight criminals with an army. You fight them with law enforcement - investigation, evidence gathering, arrests, prosecution and incarceration. And by calling these people what they are - fanatics, narcissists, murderers and criminals - you give them their proper status. By referring to them in any sort of context of warfare you elevate their importance in the world and dignify what they’re doing.

Maybe someone in the Democrats’ camp will pick this one up and run with it. We can only hope.

Technorati Tags: the British, Al Qaeda

Ok, this will give you an idea of how my brain works – I read this article about scientists putting enteric bacteria from kangaroos into the intestines of cows to try to reduce the amount of methane cows fart into the atmosphere and I immediately started visualizing this as the beginning of some dystopian sci-fi classic.

The movie trailer would go like this:

“They were trying to save the world”

[shot of scientists in generic biology lab]

“To protect the environment”

[cut to cows in a meadow]

“But something went wrong…horribly wrong…”

[ominous music – cut to scenes of people running screaming in the streets – zoom in on the face of a horrified woman as she says]

“Oh my God!!”

[cut to black]

“Kangacows – coming to theaters this summer”

I know. I’m a sick man.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.

Technorati Tags: kangaroos, cows, methane, fart, dystopian sci-fi

New year’s resolutions mostly don’t do me much good.  I’ve managed to keep what I think are a grand total of 2 of them in my lifetime.  However, one that I kept was my resolution to ride a century in 2007, so I might as well have one this year too.

I’m going to write more than I did last year.  This blog dropped off the face of the earth in the latter third of 2007 due to a change in jobs and me spending a lot more time playing music than I have in a really, really long while.  I have a few fans out there (and a few is all we can really hope for) and doing this is good for me, so while I’m not setting any specific goals I do plan to post here more often and write more often in general.

Happy new year everyone.  Let’s hope it’s a good one.

Here’s one skill that seems to have slipped out of the grasp of most folks these days – telling the difference from something that is a big deal and something that is not a big deal.

On the whole you could probably wrap this one up under the heading of a general loss of the art of critical thinking. Whether you realize it or not, they did used to teach this in school, and not just universities. Nope, they snuck it into all the basics in junior high and high school. While I’m willing to believe that this is no longer being done, and that would account for the inability of younger adults to think critically, I’m at a bit of a loss to explain why people of my own generation and older seem to no longer be able to tell their proverbial asses from proverbial holes in the ground.

Let’s take today’s big news story for example – Oil prices hit $100 a barrel. In my office they’ve got flat screen TV’s up all over the place, all of them tuned to one cable news channel or another. Walking down the hallways today you’d have thought the sky had literally fallen. The pundits weren’t punditing about anything other than this historic oil price milestone. I’ve got one word – bullshit.

In 1978 oil hit $84 a barrel. Adjusting that price for inflation to today’s dollar and that means 1978 oil cost around $270 per barrel in 2008 money. This is not to say that we shouldn’t be concerned about the growing demand for oil that coincides with the continued dwindling of oil reserves worldwide. But it does mean that all this wringing of hands and panic is based entirely on thoughtless, emotional behavior. Think, people, think. Numbers too big? Ok, try this set instead – regular gas at my local station costs about $3.45 per gallon. If you adjust that for inflation back to a 1978 price then we’re effectively paying $1.07 per gallon for gas at my local station. Pardon me and my poor memory, but that seems to be pretty much the same price we were paying in 1978. Gas prices haven’t gone up, friends and neighbors. The value has dropped out of your dollars. And honestly, you should be much, much more concerned about that in the overall big picture.

Technorati Tags: critical thinking, 1978, 2008, Gas prices