(Visit Cracked.com to read the rest of this very enlightening article)

I actually find it particularly repugnant that the CEO of Cardo systems claims in this video that they didn’t intend to scare people with this bullshit marketing campaign.

They wanted to sell more bluetooth headsets, so suggesting that using a cell phone close to your head could pop brain cells like popcorn kernels would scare people into buying his product. Making people LAUGH? Not so much.

As a matter of fact, I would tend to believe that the people who were genuinely frightened by these videos would resent the company for creating that fear, and AVOID buying their products because they’d been lied to.

But maybe that’s just me.

According to the U.S. Dept. of Justice Fact Sheet #FS-200127, bullying is is repeated acts over time that involves a real or perceived imbalance of power with the more powerful child or group attacking those who are less powerful. Webster’s definition is quite ambiguous and generic, but other definitions say “repeated aggressive behavior in order to intentionally hurt another person, physically or mentally” or “an individual behaving in a certain way to gain power over another person”.

Nowhere does it say bullying is a disagreement between peers on more or less equal footing.

Nowhere does it say that it is when a person of authority – be it a teacher, law enforcement, or website owner – reacts to someone’s bad behaviour with reasonable consequences such as detention, arrest or sanctions.

Because of the media coverage of some high-profile cases, “bullying” has become a hot word. The problem is, now it is suddenly being used and abused by people to attempt to worm out of the natural consequences of their actions.

And, let’s make it clear: if you verbally abuse someone or do something nasty to them, their response CANNOT be bullying. YOU STARTED IT.

I’m getting sick and tired of people claiming they are being bullied when they behave badly and get caught. That’s BULLSHIT.

If AIG had failed, it could have taken down a substantial portion of the banking system with it. The reason AIG is having so much trouble is because of a very small number of its own employees and a SUBSTANTIAL number of corrupt mortgage brokers who deceived them. When the U.S. housing market began to flail around like a steerage passenger on Titanic, it was not the banks who took the first ballshots – it was the companies that insured the mortgages like AIG.

Anyone who knows me knows I am NOT a fan of corporations or financial institutions… especially insurers. But for some, companies like AIG are the only way they can get started in the housing market. These are not people who cannot AFFORD a house or to keep one, these are simply people who cannot come up with a lump sum like $25K to $100K in cash to put down when buying a home. If you are a part of the middle class, I’ll bet you did not put $100K down when you bought your first home. In this day and age, with just average houses running in the half-a-million-dollar range in many areas, this is the amount of cash you would have to have in hand as a down payment to buy a home without coverage from AIG or another similar entity.

No, they don’t do it out of the goodness of their hearts – under normal circumstances the failure rate in mortgages is VERY low, and these companies realize a SUBSTANTIAL profit because the premiums they collect more than offset the payouts they used to have to make.

Greed changed all that – and it was not the greed of AIG – it was the greed of a relatively small number of morally bankrupt, corrupt, or stupid brokers and bankers trying to squeeze more profits out of a mortgage market that had become saturated by the fact that everyone who could afford a mortgage pretty much already had one, and the ageing population of boomers who were moving OUT of the mortgage market as they sold their large homes and began living off the proceeds from their equity. Those people who took that money are long gone, like the con man who flimflams you and disappears with your cash never to be seen again before you realize what has happened.

In 2008, AIG had something like 116,000 employees. The bonus figure paid out by AIG has been revised today to come to a total of $218 million dollars. They received something like $180 billion dollars in bailout funds. Those sound like HUGE numbers but let’s put this in perspective:

• $218,000,000 out of $180,000,000,000 is 0.12% of the total of bailout funds they received. That’s POINT ONE TWO – barely over a 10th of a percent
• the bonuses, divided over all the employees of the company, amount to $1879.31 per employee.
• The billions of dollars of aid money went to pay off the mortgage insurance claims of THOUSANDS of financial institutions, NOT AIG employees
• When I was 19, I worked as a salaried manager at McDonalds. This was in the 1980s. My bonus for HALF that year would have been about $2200 (if I had not left the company)

Large corporations that handle substantial sums of money give their employees bonuses for a VERY good reason: if you spent all day, every day at work handling huge sums of money in transactions while you struggled to keep your 1982 Dodge Omni on the road and feed your kids, you’d be quite tempted to find a way to skim a little something-something for yourself out of the till so you weren’t quite so destitute. Bonuses are a way to motivate employees and keep them from resenting all that money passing them by. By all accounts, 2/3 of the bonus money is not, in fact, going to the richest, highest-paid employees of AIG who would have had a part in making decisions contributing to the financial meltdown – they are being paid to those regular, average employees who are in the EXACT same boat as everyone else in these recessionary times.

Today, I am reading about protesters going to the homes – THE HOMES – of AIG executives to protest the bonuses. I am reading stories of AIG employees living in fear because of the reactions of the masses to all this half-baked sensationalist reporting. People who helped people get homes now live in fear because all they did was DO THEIR JOBS!

So, before you pull some FUCKNUT move and beat up your neighbour because he works for AIG, or go attack someone’s house because you are envious of the fact that they make more money than you, or tweet your outrage and get involved in the great debate on Twitter, consider this:

Assuming that you don’t operate the deep fryer or flip burgers or dig ditches, you probably received some kind of bonus last year. Call it a Christmas bonus, call it an incentive, call it a perquisite (“perk”) of whatever job you do. How much was it? More than $1000? Did you need it? Have you EVER received a “little extra” financial benefit because YOU did your job properly?

Are you now going to give it back to prove you aren’t a fucking hypocrite?

(Name Removed to protect the Stupid) (Simcoe Composite School) wrote at 11:23pm yesterday

Here’s an idea to think about. If some sort of law was made saying that buy (sic), 2010, everybody in the world either has to get an electric car or GO GREEN and change their Gas engine to run on canola oil. This way nobody needs to worry about gas prices, am I right?? Now obviously I can see that that is thinking BIG. But just think about all the other things that have happened by regular everyday people. Like people on facebook for example. And with electric cars or running on Canola Oil we won’t have to worry about people idling their cars all the time. So that would possibly slow done (sic) our arch nemesis known as GLOBAL WARMING!!!! Its (sic) our future and we should do something about it if we wanna live to watch our grandchildren grow up. We need more people in this group to (sic). Everybody send out invites. (: We need to stop this gas bullshit because if someone doesn’t we would eventually be looking gas prices as high as 2 dollars. Maybe higher and that would really suck!!!

The Angry PolarBear wrote in response at 1:08am

Brilliant (unnamed moron)! Cause, Canola Oil only costs about $2 a litre which would solve the problem of $1.20/litre gasoline and $1.30/litre diesel! Oh, and of course, Canola Oil does not in fact BURN, it only emits magical gases like butterfly farts in defiance of all physical laws of the planet. You wouldn’t expect something BURNED in a COMBUSTION engine to make CO2 or anything.

And we won’t even worry about how using all the farmland to grow Canola beans for oil to run engines will disrupt the food supply, because we can spin the butterfly farts into manna noodles and honey and solve the hunger crisis at the same time! YAY!

Way to think BIG! Only you forgot the THINK part!

Seriously?

This is what our schools produce nowadays?

REALLY? WTF!?!

Thanks, Al Gore!

Well it applies to this Gasout/fuel boycott bullshit as well. In this case, the waste is one of time.

Temporary fuel BOYCOTTS will not help. Why? Because you CAN’T have the impact you think you have. If you truly simply stop driving for a few days, and could convince thousands of other drivers to do the same and join you in not burning fuel at all for a few days (fuel that you otherwise WOULD Have burned) you could reduce income marginally for a few days. The key word there is MARGINALLY – and no corporation is really going to care about that. The impact you have would be far greater on your local “fuel guy” if he is a franchisée, because he is the guy who needs people to come to his station so he can feed his family. So, if you want to send a message to the little guy, and give a guy who has little control over the price of fuel a good pummelling in the pocketbook, don’t burn gas for a few days. It’s a big waste of time, but as with most slacktivism, it will make you FEEL like you are doing something!

Lately there have been a lot of rumblings from the same typical group of morons wanting to boycott fuel for the Victoria Day weekend. What a FARCE! People open their cottages, and people get out for the first real long weekend of the summer season. They go out in their boats, and on their motorcycles, and their 4-wheelers. They aren’t going to skip that this year with the winter we had, so you are going to get very little response. IF someone “participates”, all they are going to do is buy gas in advance of the weekend, and that doesn’t change a damn thing except the day the company sold the fuel.

The only way to truly make an impact is to reduce consumption EVERY DAY, and work with others to help them do so, too. That means you have to stop wasting gas, and work at being efficient. That’s going to be very painful for some, because automobiles are ingrained in our culture as the basis of freedom.

How do you send a message about gas prices?

1. Call your MP and tell them to stop sending all the Canadian oil in Alberta to the US to profit American corporations and service Canadians first. DEMAND that Canadians come first – we have more than enough oil for our own needs. We need to start ACTING like an oil superpower for the short time we have that status.
2. Drive less, all the time. Car pool if you can, roll all your errands into one trip, take public transit, walk or ride a bike for short trips. Get a more efficient vehicle.
3. Learn to drive as efficiently as possible (see hypermiling.com)
4. Make investments with the money you SAVE by doing the above in companies pursuing alternative energy – just make sure they are bona-fide improvements, and not simply more-of-the-same (like hybrids – a RIDICULOUS attempt by the auto industry to prolong the inevitable demise of the gasoline engine). We need extreme efficiency and renewable resources – currently biofuels USE more energy than they produce and are devastating food markets worldwide.

If everyone works at this, it lowers demand, and will lower prices or at least slow down the rise of prices. Think about it – if there is a 20 year supply of oil left in the world, and we can use 25% less, it instantly becomes a 25 year supply – more time to develop alternatives!

“Gasouts” and boycotts are a waste of time and energy, and generally are just another way for people to pat themselves on the back for doing nothing.

Fact: most of what you could do – even if EVERYONE did it – would not make any difference in the realm of “Global Warming” because ultimately Mother Earth and her relationship to the solar system has more to say about it than you do. Earth regulates herself, and trying to screw with that usually does more harm than good.

That is not to say that I don’t think people should treat the planet better. But, honestly, does ruining the economy of any nation to “stop global warming” – be it our advanced industrialized countries or Third-world ones – qualify as anything OTHER than plain stupid? (You do need to keep in mind that there are environmental extremists out there who would happily make the human race extinct in order to “preserve the environment” – and this agenda is beginning to creep closer and closer to the mainstream…)

I usually score “OK” on those quizzes, but never get a spectacular score because they never take into account the MOST important factor in these things: TIME. Just because you suddenly had an environmental epiphany when you watched that Al Gore movie doesn’t mean you did not do more harm to the environment before you clued in than you can solve by changing now. Sorry, folks, you ALREADY screwed it up. It’s like expanding foam, you can’t put it back in the can. So now I am going to get all Holier-than-thou because I am sick of having people act that way toward me.

It is time to toot my own horn a little here, because I am sure there are lots of readers (oh yeah, like I have READERS) who think I am advocating you DON’T do anything when I call things BS, and that is not true. My position is that you should have been doing it all along!!! I ALWAYS say “Stop wasting shit!!!” I have always said, “Don’t buy offsets, INVEST in companies making or researching new technologies.” Remember that companies selling “offsets” are not accountable for what they do with your money, but as an INVESTOR you are a shareholder and they are accountable to you. Even so, the message that comes across and is remembered, the one that gets people all worked up, is when I say the “Climate Crisis is bullshit” – and that leads them to ignore everything else because I am a ‘crackpot’. No, sorry, not a crackpot… I am just not a SHEEP.

We can’t afford a lot, so we can’t (and don’t) buy a lot of the “environmentally-friendly” products that are priced higher than others. Most of the extra you pay goes into the marketing of them more than the production or research, anyway, so even if we had the cash I doubt it would go toward such products. In this house, we must live efficiently and frugally in order to have what we have. My Mac computer, which I got for $200, took about 6 weeks of planning and squeezing the budget to buy and had to be paid for with smaller broken-up payments instead of a lump sum. I have never (even when I was healthy) had the resources to just throw money at a problem to try and make it go away, and that has forced me to think long and hard about every situation and every item over the years. I don’t pretend that I do some things ONLY for environmental reasons, sometimes I do them because they make long-term financial sense, too. That is exactly how governments need to deal with these issues on the large scale, as well. It is often CHEAPER to do it in an environmentally-friendly way because there is less waste.
I have been an environmental advocate for a long time. By long time, I mean since I was very young: 30-odd years or more. And here is what I have done over that time:

• I have always loved cars, but I have done my best to balance what I could afford with efficiency in my vehicles. Every vehicle I have ever owned has had 6 or fewer cylinders (except maybe one we owned in Cape Breton for a month when we could find nothing else). When we needed a family vehicle that could get through snow in the country, instead of buying a huge 8-cylinder 4×4 we bought a much lighter S10 Blazer. It was no Prius, to be sure, but it wasn’t a Suburban either. I have always bought a vehicle that met my needs at the time most efficiently.
• I really enjoyed driving, and sometimes I did it just for pleasure when I was younger. Kind of wasteful, I imagine, but I didn’t do it all the time. We will still sometimes go out for a family drive every now and then, without a specific destination in mind. Other than those occasions, every trip out has to have a good reason. All trips that can be combined into one are combined, and a lot of meticulous planning goes into our monthly travels to the grocery stores and medical appointments. It is not good for me physically to do this these days, but I will NOT make half a dozen inefficient runs to places if I can make 1 trip and combine all the errands.
• When I was healthy and the weather was good, I did most of my grocery shopping and the like by bicycle. I had saddle bags, a book rack, and a backpack to carry things. I didn’t drive if I could bike. If I didn’t need to get there fast, I would walk. That’s changed now because my health situation is different, but that’s how I did things then.
• Before recycling was available, I got on my parent’s case constantly about throwing away items that could be taken someplace for recycling. As a result, they bundled newspapers and conserved things they otherwise would have tossed into landfill. When the voluntary recycling programs started, we were among the first on our street to have a blue box out all the time. My parents, being Baby-Boomers, were very much of that throw-it-away-and-forget-it-existed mentality, and I hope I had SOME influence on changing their behaviour, even if just for a little while.
• I have recycled, frequently at my own inconvenience. When I lived in places that did not have blue-box collection I have stored recyclables and taken them to be recycled at any outlet that would accept them (of course, I was not making special trips out just for this, as I mentioned above). I carry bottles and cans home from the park or conservation area to blue-box them if there is only a garbage can there. I NEVER litter.
• Every place I could manage to do it, including some of the apartments (and I have spent a LOT of time living in different apartments) I have lived in, I have composted everything that is compostable, and used the compost to grow stuff in pots or my garden. In my life I may have put one or two bags of leaves out to the street just because I didn’t have anywhere else to put them – if even that many.
• When I had a dog, I used a composter for the dog poop as well. This is different from the regular composter, but it was worth the investment, in my opinion. Poop gets broken down by the special enzymes you put in the composter. No run-off, no hauling costs to take it to a landfill, no contamination.
• Since the day I got my first apartment, I have used efficient compact-fluorescent lighting. They cost more than $9 a bulb back in 1986, but I have used them everywhere that didn’t require a dimmer or other specific property of a different kind of light bulb. That’s 22+ years that I have been using less electricity and therefore generating less waste and pollution by power plants.
• I have always owned the most efficient appliances I could afford. That does not mean that everything was “EnerGuide EnergyStar Uber-efficient”, but it means that I always chose what I could to make a difference. When I owned a house, I bought a used stove but I bought a new, efficient fridge, because that is what runs all the time. We use a toaster oven and microwave as much as possible because they are more efficient.
• I have always used timers and so on to turn up and down the thermostat (except for this rental house we are in now) or lights. The house I owned in the early 90s had motion sensing lights, timed fixtures and appliances, a set-back automatic thermostat on the furnace, and even though I had no central air I ALSO had a plug-in thermostat/timer for the window-unit air conditioner.
• I have NEVER set a house thermostat over 20° Celsius for heating. I have never set it below about 24° for cooling. “If you are cold, put on a sweater” rings through our house all winter long.
• If there is a choice between an item with excess packaging and an item without, I buy the one without. We buy many things in bulk to reduce waste. If an item has ridiculously excessive packaging, I often write to the manufacturer to suggest they waste less. We always remember that the first R in Reduce, Reuse and Recycle is REDUCE.
• We use reusable shopping bags and minimize the use of plastic bags. We don’t use wrapping paper except on RARE occasions where there is almost no acceptable way around it, eschewing it for reusable gift bags, boxes, and so on. Every bag or package that can be reused is reused again and again until it wears out. We always remember that the second R in Reduce, Reuse and Recycle is REUSE.

I just realized I could probably go on forever – there is so much more I could add.

I always, and have always, balanced the value of what I do on all levels, environmentally and financially. I didn’t just START because of Al Gore – reading his biography, I think I was probably concerned about the environment before he even clued in that an environmental movement existed (he participated in congressional hearings in the late 1970s, and I started before I was 10). I didn’t change my behaviour because ‘the world is going to end’. I didn’t change my behaviour just because I had kids – I was doing as much as I could do back before I ever thought I would have kids.

I am going to leave you with one final thing. I have a dream house. I have planned it out, on paper in the past, on the computer, and in other ways. At one time I had made 3-D models of it. My wife and I have discussed it many times since we met. Is my dream house a mansion? No. However, it is built out of renewable, environmentally friendly materials with highly efficient insulation. It will be self-sufficient, harvesting wind energy and solar energy for electricity, as well as solar heating for hot water and use a substantial number of passive-solar features. It will have a turf roof, a central masonry stove and heat-sink to distribute heat evenly and efficiently. It will have some in-floor hot water heating. It will make highly efficient use of gray-water to recycle water for toilets, and it will have a cistern and a water tower for collecting water for gardening and non-drinking purposes as well. In the last 5 years, I have changed my plans from using dirty storage batteries filled with harmful chemicals and heavy metals to using hydrogen storage and a hydrogen fuel cell for electrical reserves, since that has become an option. My home, if I can ever afford it, will NOT be some wasteful, chemical-filled cookie-cutter real estate agent’s million-dollar wet-dream “Executive Home” built in a subdivision. It will be one that can exist independent of the electrical grid, using wireless communications for connectivity to the outside world, and it will be quietly tucked away someplace where there won’t be a huge need for “impressing the neighbours”-type appearances. No matter what it ends up looking like, it will be beautiful to me, because it really will be a “green” home.

I started planning this home a long time ago, and no part of it is designed to prevent “Global Warming”. The plan existed before the manufactured climate-crisis. I have ALWAYS tried to live green.

Can YOU say the same, Mr(or Ms) I-Just-Bought-A-Hybrid-So-I-Am-Green?

These same people continue to leave their thermostat at 24 in the winter and 20 in the summer, running their home HVAC systems ragged, producing “greenhouse gases” virtually every minute of every day. These same people will use said hybrid vehicle (very few of which actually make any significant reduction in auto emissions) to run to the store “for 2 minutes” to get a pack of smokes or to go out for lunch at work, rather than walking or brown-bagging it.

Then they’ll buy some “carbon offsets” from some dubious company with no enforced standards with regard to how they spend the money, and sleep the sleep of the just at night, as though they saved the world by throwing money at the problem and never once inconveniencing themselves. Isn’t THAT an inconvenient truth?

Well, here’s the thing. The way to make sure the world has a future is sustainability. It doesn’t involve “buying offsets”. Purchasing shares in companies that are doing research to improve green energy production like solar, wind and geothermal technology WOULD be a worthwhile way of spending that money. Then if you lose it, so what? It was your “offset”, and if you DON’T lose it you have a chance to make money while making a difference.

I am getting away from what I wanted to say, though. The scientists and Al Gore wanna-bes who are flogging the global-catastrophe scenario aspect of anthropogenic global warming will use the old confound with bullshit routine to tell you how we are causing global warming by showing you huge, complicated mathematical formulae, so that you just feel stupid and stop asking questions. They don’t bother to tell you that if ANY number in their formula happens to be wrong, the entire conclusion is wrong – and fail to inform you that a substantial portion of these conclusive, iron-clad proofs are actually based on guesses and completely unproven assumptions. If you visit the websites of these anthropogenic global warming proponents, you will even find sections where they tell YOU how to argue with someone who does not agree with their viewpoint – but rarely do they tell you the whole truth. They indoctrinate you to their point of view without giving you all the facts (or rather explaining their lack of factual data). I visit these pages regularly, open minded, waiting to be convinced. Those who know me know I am not stupid. I understand what they are saying quite well, maybe too well. And – that’s why I remain unconvinced.

You MUST remember is that in every field, including science, there are people who graduated at the bottom of their class. There are people who simply went through classes and memorized everything (as our educational system encourages) and scored average grades based on that, without truly understanding the material. And you should know that these people constitute MORE THAN HALF of the scientific community at large. For every Mozart, there are a dozen Salieri, and a hundred Milli Vanillis.

Sure, there are some really smart, truly brilliant scientists out there. But – they are the minority. The rest are little more than average to above average people with sufficient discipline (or money) to get through the material and score the 60-80% minimum required of their course work. True genius is rare. Less than 2% of the population is at a genius-level intellect, and even if MORE geniuses go into science than other fields (which, in my experience, is NOT necessarily the case in environmental or climate science), maybe 5% of scientists are geniuses. The rest? Not significantly smarter than any other college graduate. Not really smarter than you. And, not differently from you – if someone perceived as “smarter” says something, they tend to lean toward believing it – even to want to PROVE it for themselves. Just to fit in, and not look stupid. It’s like the herd-animal response… we just call it “consensus”. Just like the IPCC. Just like Al Gore. Al Gore, who was right smack in the middle of his graduating class, 25th out of 51. Al Gore’s IQ results? In the low 130s. That ain’t genius, folks – that’s just modestly above average. “Moderately gifted”, they call it. For brevity’s sake, we won’t examine too closely how IQ tests were administered to upper middle class, wealthy Caucasians in the 60s right now…right?

I am going to simplify it for everyone. From the genius to average to those fringing on that IQ score of 80, below which they are categorized in the Borderline Mental Retardation range.

Take a large glass of tap water. A tall one. About 2 cups of water, 500ml or so. Now, find the BIGGEST single grain of salt you can find. It must be one grain. A REALLY big single crystal. Ideally, it would weight around .14 milligrams. Drop it in.

Is it salt water? How significantly have the chemical properties of that water changed? Can you taste salt? If someone handed it to you, would you know salt had been put in the glass in any way? What do you think? Will it still make ice cubes?

Assuming that every single piece of data collected about atmospheric carbon dioxide since the late 19th century is accurate – we won’t even debate the accuracy of anything from that time frame, we will simply conclude it is 100% correct, that is how much carbon dioxide was in the atmosphere of planet Earth at that time. That’s how Al Gore’s “hockey stick” graph shows it.

Now, find another grain of salt. This time, a normal, average-sized grain. And, here’s the tricky part – cut it in half. Now put it in that same glass of water.

How much has changed? How much have you altered the properties of that water? Will it conduct electricity better? Will it now freeze at a lower temperature?

That’s how much CO2 that we’ve added to the atmosphere since the late 19th century. And this is assuming that all of the records are 100%, ironclad correct based on the data of the “OMG, The World Is Ending” folks. I am conceding the point that their collected data is accurate for the purposes of this point, even though it most likely is not.

They love to throw around BIG numbers, BILLIONS of tonnes of “greenhouse gas”, 150% more CO2 in the atmosphere, and so on. But they never bother to tell you that in the HUGE volume of the atmosphere of planet Earth, that on a planetary scale, these volumes are not even equivalent to a fraction of a grain of salt in a glass of water.

So, please, save the Earth. Stop polluting. Stop WASTING. Live efficiently, and live sustainably!

But when it comes to Al Gore’s “end of the world”, you can take that with a grain of salt.

*UPDATE June 29th 2008*

I just deleted a comment that someone made, because they did not provide a working email address when they posted, however I will address their “reasonable” response:

Carbon is NOT a toxic heavy metal. It is not an atmospheric contaminant. Mercury is, and is harmful in small amounts.

When adding mercury to water or the atmosphere you are adding something that does not naturally occur in that state, has toxic properties, and PROVEN harful effects. Carbon is part of the atmosphere, CO2 levels in the atmosphere have been historically higher and the planet amazingly survived, and the percentage of carbon altered by parts per billion does not alter the heat-holding capacity of the atmosphere.

But, of course, as usual with the brainwashed “global warming” crowd, you fall back on hyperbole and hysteria when your beliefs are challenged. Hey – who else does that? Oh yeah – people who believe in RELIGION over science.

The main problem for me these days is how utterly gullible people are about what is “environmentally friendly”. They don’t really do any checking up on the claims of greedy companies – they simply buy into whatever the hype of the day is, and begin participating in whatever practice is the flavour du jour even if it is complete slacktivism.

One place I could rant about is Hybrid cars, but I am not going to bother when the show Bullshit! has done a far more complete job than I can do here. Suffice to say, hybrids are actually mind-bogglingly wasteful in most ways, gaining only slightly in the area of mileage while requiring many toxic substances in order to manufacture their batteries and systems. It is TRENDY to drive a hybrid, so it is the car of choice for slacktivists – but someone who truly cares about the environment is going to find the most efficient conventional car they can buy, plan their trips to avoid waste, drive sensibly without mashing the gas or the brake, and sometimes forgo the car when they can ride their bike or walk. A Mercedes smart achieves far better mileage than most hybrids and has a very efficient conventional engine. And don’t feed me a line about how it is too small – by the time you put the damn batteries in a hybrid, you’ve sucked up the better part of the space you gained by driving that bigger piece of shit. The RIDICULOUS Chevy Malibu Hybrid gives well under a 10% gain in mileage over its conventional counterpart, while requiring numerous additional hazardous elements in its manufacture – and still gets the same or worse mileage than similar non-hybrid models from Honda, Hyundai and Toyota, and scores a 6 out of 10 from the EPA for the amount of air pollution it creates! This is not a cleaner, more efficient vehicle, but it represents the “latest technology” GM offers. Oh – and don’t even get me STARTED on the scarcity of lithium for the best battery technology we’ve come up with to day…

So, to sum up so far: in my view, if you drive a hybrid, you’re nothing more (and nothing less) than a pretentious, pack-following idiotic douchebag. Yes, Ed Begley, I’m looking at you, too – the solar panels don’t save you from the ridicule.

But that wasn’t what I was REALLY annoyed at. Oh, no, not by a long shot. What was it, you ask, gentle reader (assuming you don’t drive a hybrid and are already so hacked off at me you want to burn down my house)?

Timers.

Timers are great for some things when it comes to improving efficiency. A timer that turns down your thermostat at night or when you are not home is a fantastic idea, and saves a vast sum of energy. Timers which shut off your oven when the food is done cooking or turn out the lights when they are not needed – great idea! They actually serve a purpose.

What has me pissed off as hell is advertising I have been watching lately telling people to put timers on things like their stereo system or their microwave oven, because they “draw a little bit of power all the time” and it is not efficient. Those timers I will refer to, from now on, as FUCKING TIMERS.

Well, lets start with the obvious: WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU THINK POWERS THE FUCKING TIMER? TICKY-TOCKY FAIRIES? LITTLE GNOMES THAT SNEAK IN THE HOUSE AND WIND IT ALL NIGHT LONG? Cheese and fucking CRACKERS!!! The amount of power needed to keep the clock set on your microwave or the stations preset in the stereo, or the television stations programmed to your cable company is not that significantly different from the amount of power needed to run the FUCKING TIMER.

On top of that – where do you think these fucking timers come from? Do you think they plant little seeds on the shelves in the Wal-Mart or Canadian Tire store, and by morning they are grown and available for sale, springing forth fully-formed like Venus arises from the sea in Botticelli’s masterpiece?

No… those little pieces of plastic and metal have to be assembled in a factory. A factory which has to have the raw materials mined from the ground and shipped to it, and which then has to use energy to power their lights and machines to make the fucking timer, and then to package and ship them to the warehouse of the retailer, which then has to ship them to the store. How much damn energy do you think this takes, let’s say, on a PER FUCKING TIMER basis? I suppose you also eat organic produce they have to SHIP IN from Chile because organic is more “environmentally friendly”, don’t you, dumbass?

Sorry, but unless you are turning off your hot water heater overnight when you are not using it, you aren’t saving enough energy to justify those fucking timers. You just aren’t. If you are that worried about the trickle of power that maintains your electronic stuff – UNPLUG THE GOD-DAMN THINGS. Put it on a power bar and turn it off when you are not using it. Pull the fuse, open the circuit breaker, whatever floats your boat – but don’t put it on some FUCKING TIMER and then sneer superciliously at your “environmentally unfriendly” acquaintances that don’t.

There are sensible ways to save power. Efficient lighting turned on only when needed, high-efficiency appliances, and just (yes, here it comes again) NOT WASTING SHIT are only a few.

Padding the pockets of some greedy company which has hornswoggled some amoeba-minded government bureaucrat into making commercials to promote this idiotic practice is NOT on the short list.