Why Is It That No Matter Where You Live The People In Your Neighborhood Are The Stupidest People On The Planet?

Case 1:
It has been snowing off and on for several days now.  Kind of a nuisance, as we seldom know the night before if the kids will be in school, if we'll have to go to work the next morning, if we should really make that emergency run before the snow starts to the supermarket to buy bread and milk and toilet paper and other so-called 'essentials'.  But we live on a cul-de-sac, which I guess is some ancient French name for a road that does not "go through" anywhere and, conversely, ends in a circle.  Got it?  One way in, and one way out.  And the road is not very wide, I'd say maybe about 3 car widths.  So inevitably some of my my genius neighbors park their cars on the street and leave them there before the snow storm.  And when the snow begins, and continues and continues and continues, and the snowplows come to our neighborhood to clear our road, well, they can't do such a great job.  They must slalom around the cars that the idiots decided to leave on the road.  I cannot wait, and I will truly rejoice, when a plow takes out one of these cars, and I will take a day off of work to go to court to defend the plow driver by saying that, yes indeed, the cars should not have been parked on the relatively narrow street before a snowstorm and that they should have instead been parked in the idiot's driveway (yes, we all have driveways capable of holding up to 6 cars ... yes, 6 cars).

Finally someone else gets it ...

Well, almost.  Let me explain:

In yesterday's Wall Street Journal a guy named Matt Ridley wrote an article titled "Who to Blame for Natural Disasters".  Ultimately he basically says that if prosperity, the big key word in his article, were to spread throughout the entire world, as it has not yet done, most people who currently die from natural disasters would instead end up alive.  Says he:

In short, prosperity buys survival. (The shocking thing about Hurricane Katrina was not that it killed so many people but that it did so in such a prosperous country.) ...

... Suppose world per-capita income were to octuple in the next 90 years, as it did, roughly, in the last 90. So long as countries like Haiti get their share of this prosperity, we can expect most of the world to become as nearly disaster-proof as the rich West is today: through building standards, warning systems, health and emergency services, and technology.

This, he says, is borne out by the actual statistics of wealth and technology over the last almost-century.  But this is not what I am interested in ... that in which I am interested??  Whatever ...

I am interested much more in his opening paragraph:

God says "No"?????

So I was watching the Graham Norton Show the other night and rapper/actor/whatever 50 Cent was one of his guests.  I was about turn turn it off (just my instinctive reaction to rappers) but I happened to hear Mr. Cent talking about his childhood.  His mom was 15 when he was born.  He was born in the midst of urban blight (my words, not his), and he somehow left the world of inner city drug dealing behind.  So he is actually a success story (not to mention that he evidently had bought into the Vitamin Water company (huh, there is a picture of Mr. Cent right on their homepage) pretty early and made a handy profit when it was bought by Pepsico, to the tune of $100M or so according to Mr. Norton).  I was evidently just a day late in being able to hear this conversation again on Mr. Norton's show's webpage, as they removed the video replay of it just today, unfortunately.  But at some point in the conversation the talk turned briefly to praying, or something like that.  Now I'm not much into praying ... pause while my wife laughs her head off ... OK ... but Mr. Cent said something that I thought was actually kinda profound.  He said (I can't quote it exactly, as I missed the on-line replay, but this is close enough):

"If you pray to God and he don't answer you, then his answer is No."

I thought, surprisingly, that this appeared to actually have some merit.  It seems reasonable.

So does anyone get an answer when they pray?  (There's something I'd like to see)  And, assuming not, why do all of these silly people keep praying?

This guy is good

IllDoctrine.com.

I just happened to fall into this guy's website, sort of a verbal blog site.  Ranting and raving --- one of my favorite pasttimes (DON'T GET MY WIFE STARTED!!!) --- and in a very intelligent way.  I am NOT a fan, in any way, shape or form, of hip-hop music or culture or anything related to hip-hop, but this guy, who is evidently a hip-hop DJ-type [from the site: creator of the hip hop music blog and founder of New York's longest running hip-hop radio show, WBAI's Underground Railroad] is just plain good.  I love this crap!

In particular, I just have to say "Poor poor Michael Steele".  I love (at about the :30 second mark) that he is "well-meaning and sincere and charmingly oblivious to the reality that his party doesn't really respect him all that much and they only gave him his job as a cynical ploy to pretend they're down with black people."  Now THAT is a great quote.  And probably quite true.

Vindications on the dollar!!!

I am vindicated!!!

[vindicated = "to uphold or justify by argument or evidence: to vindicate a claim"]

Coincidentally, in yesterday's Wall Street Journal front page was an article titled "Miles for Nothing: How the Government Helped Frequent Fliers Make a Mint".  The subject of the article is irrelevant for this blog (but interesting nonetheless).  What is important is the vindication of my blog/rant on pennies and dollars the other day, when I said that coin money lasts far longer in circulation than does paper money.  At the time (3 days ago) I didn't know how long either lasted, but I did know that metal outlasts paper by a longshot.  My vindication:

"Dollar coins save the country money because they can last 30 years or more and can be recycled, the Mint says. A paper dollar in circulation lasts only about 21 months, says the U.S. Bureau of Engraving and Printing."

WOOHOO!!!

Um ... I guess that's all.

The penny (and the dollar too)

Long ago I remember hearing that da Gubment wanted to do away with both the penny and the paper dollar.  Why?  They are both a waste.  The penny is virtually worthless these days, and it costs a whole lot more to make each penny than each of those pennies is worth,  The paper dollar, after having gone through a cost-benefit analysis, turns out to also have a very low rating; studies have shown that paper dollars in circulation last only a small fraction of the time that metal coins last.  After that, the paper dollar must be taken out of circulation, having gotten too beaten up to even be recognized as a dollar.  Plus, I think I remember hearing that manufacturing metal coins is cheaper than printing paper currency.  So why are we still using these?