Christmas Thoughts 2009

So, an... interesting holiday season is almost gone... some random stuff, then.

First, my awesome sister-in-law Liz made me the coolest Christmas present ever: a very good replica of Jayne Cobb's orange and yellow poofball hat from Firefly. If you don't know Firefly, it is quite possibly the greatest television show of all time, and definitely the best show to not make it past one season (stupid Fox... first Futurama, then Firefly, now Dollhouse... lame!). Borrow it on DVD from a friend (I don't think all 14 episodes are on Hulu anymore but it's worth checking), and then watch the movie, Serenity. It's well worth your time. Serenity also works fine if you don't watch the series first, but it's even better if you have. Meanwhile, some context for the hat:

Jayne being hired by the Serenity crew (one of my favorite scenes from the show):

Jayne gets a gift from his mom in the mail:

And some artwork from DeviantART of Jayne looking threatening in his hat:

And now mine, home-made by my sister-in-law Liz. They even put it in a white box with fake straw and a note with roughly the same wordage as the one Jayne got:
And, finally, a picture of me failing to look as menacing as Jayne in the hat:

How's it sit? Pretty cunning, don't ya think?

Another random Christmas thought... usually I like to watch The Nightmare Before Christmas as a Christmas tradition. This year I watched It's a Wonderful Life with Jimmy Stewart at my parents' house. It really is a good movie until it starts snowing again (if you've seen it, you know what I'm talking about). If you haven't seen it, I recommend it. It is much better than I remember from last time I saw it forever ago, very well done for all its tackyness at the beginning and end.

But it brings up an interesting problem... in the movie, the angel assigned to help the main character has to do this good deed to "earn his wings". However, the movie also states "every time a bell rings, an angel gets his wings". Well, how does that work? Do you do a good deed, then wait for a bell to ring? Are there enough angels that this really works for every bell ring? Or, when a bell rings, if not enough angels have done good deeds, does an angel compulsively do a spontaneous good deed? Or if there aren't enough angels with good deeds under their belt, and someone tries to ring a bell, does it go silent? What if we run out of angels? Now I have a headache. Thank you, Jimmy Stewart.

Another Semester Done

As I've somewhat vaguely alluded to by the title of this post, I just finished another semester. Academically it was one of the easiest semesters I've had, but overall one of the most difficult and stressful ever (there may or may not be more on that at a future date). A few things of note, I picked up a new musical instrument this semester and performed my first concert (with the BYU-Idaho Symphony Band) on the euphonium, which looks you can see on the left (also, I may do more with pictures than center them from now on, who knows!). "Euphonium" is from Greek, meaning "good sound", which it certainly has, but Trombone is still more fun and no matter how many instruments I learn I will always be first and foremost a Trombone player. Also, Trombone is the only instrument that gets to be capitalized like a proper noun. The concert was fun, and I got to play some of the most challenging music I've ever played on an instrument I've now only played for a semester (though to be fair, I knew the fingerings from a summer with a drum and bugle corps back in 2000, right out of high school, but that's all the experience I brought into this). Next semester, hopefully, I will be in both the symphony orchestra and band on campus.

Also of note, I am now a semester behind posting field camp stuff! I need to get on that, since I've finished my compilation of all 17 students worth of mapping. The geology is suspect, but it's fun to see it all come together, and I'll post it when I get to it. I also plan to post a very cool physics project I did with a couple other geology students for the most useless physics lab class ever.

And now a bit of bragging... my science writing class turned out great this semester, and I got perfect scores on not just one, but two major assignments, both of which the professor plans to use as student examples for future semesters. Part of that may well be that I chose a unique topic, with which you may be familiar if you follow this blogs: "They" want to take away your hot dogs!

Remember, I had an interesting "debate" with another geology student over this supposed conspiracy theory. Well, I did some research, found quite a few sources, and decided to use it as the topic for my persuasive policy paper. Our professor had us actually address our paper to a real policymaker and send it to them, so my letter (which you can download here) has been mailed to the Secretary of Agriculture, and I fully expect not to hear back. But if I do, you'll be sure to read about it here!

That was one perfect score. The other was our "web writing revision", for which we were to take our persuasive paper and adapt it for online consumption, since that's where most reading happens these days. So guess what? I've got another blog now! Unlike this blog, which receives regular, I mean sporadic, updates, this blog is basically "finished". I may add a news link section, but if you want to see a perfect scoring website based on hot dogs and featuring Adam Sandler and Chris Farley at the end, check out Death and Hot Dogs. The name is a play on the two certainties in life: death and taxes. I wanted to call it "Keep Your Hands Off My Wiener!", but decided a bit more professional a title would be better in this case.

Anyway... that's my update for now. One quick note to anyone attending or planning to attend BYU-Idaho: TAKE AS MANY RELIGION CLASSES AS YOU CAN FROM RANDY HAYES! After many semesters of frustration with religion classes I'm required to take but do nothing for me, my last one finally is a winner. Aside from my geology professors, Bro. Hayes is hands-down the best teacher I've ever had, and there wasn't a single day I attended his class that I didn't hear something I needed to hear. His ability to fit the Old Testament into the big picture of history is amazing, and the guy is absolutely hilarious. From three years of dreading another hour wasted in a useless religion class, from the first day my religion class became my number one favorite class of the semester. Just in case I haven't made it clear: Take your religion classes from Randy Hayes whenever possible!

That is all.

The Sleeping Giant Sleeps Again

I got caught up in schoolwork and missed posting on Pearl Harbor Day, but I'm going to post anyway a few hours late. I only have a couple quick thoughts, but highly encourage you to re-visit my post from last year, in remembrance of December 7th, and if nothing else just look at the photos and remember (you don't have to have been alive for the bombing to "remember" it... I wasn't, certainly).

On Friday, November 27th, I attended my grandmother's funeral in Riverside, California. I won't write about that in this post other than to mention that my grandfather who survives her is one of the few remaining WWII veterans, having served in the Marine Corps on Guam, Guadalcanal, Okinawa and Iwo Jima and received four Purple Hearts during the war. It is said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and I'm afraid it is true. The press tries hard to downplay and forget 9/11, and soon I fear that December 7th and September 11th will both just be dates in books that students memorize for a test and don't learn from.

The famous line from Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, "I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve" may or may not ever really have been uttered, but its truth was apparent in the complete and total defeat of Japan in World War II. We were filled with resolve, and did all that was necessary to bring a stop to the ability of Imperial Japan to wage oppressive war on the world, and succeeded in spite of their attempt to take us out of the war before we had even joined it. We brought them down completely, and in its place today we have a strong friend and ally, who never again will be a force of evil in the world.

The sleeping giant was again awakened on September 11th, 2001, when terrorists waged war against a completely civilian target and killed thousands of innocent Americans. This time Americas resolve was brief, and if not for strong and determined leadership at the very top, the attack would have carried no consequences for the enemy. However, with a more difficult to define enemy, this war could not be fought on the same terms as World War II. But we have fought it successfully for nearly eight years anyway. Until now.

I won't go into any specifics on Obama's Afghanistan speech, because it has been hashed to death already everywhere, and I don't have the patience to address anything this man is doing to this country. Just think about this: What would the world be like today if, after a wearying and costly campaign of island-hopping in the Pacific, America's leaders had decided that their political careers would be more secure if they had suddenly announced that all troops would be coming home in the next year or two, leaving Japan's war machine wounded but intact? Is there any chance Japan would suddenly have implemented a timetable for withdrawal of their troops in China, who every month of the war killed 100,000 to 200,000 Chinese civilians? Will Al-Qaeda at some point resolve by vote that the war against western civilization is unjust and illegal?

If we don't fight this war completely and totally, it will only result in a less stable middle-east than we began with, and one with greater resolve to destroy America. Is it any wonder Iraqi civilians weren't happy to see us come to liberate them, when the job wasn't finished the last time? The only major drawback to term limits is that it makes other countries justifiably wary to conduct foreign relations with us. How would you feel making a controversial treaty with a country that might change its mind in four years? And if that treaty meant committing military troops to a risky theater of war?

The American giant has decided it's time to go back to sleep, while his enemies are being filled with resolve and courage that if they just wait long enough, their foes will give up. Thank you, Obama, for ending George Bush's "illegal" war, and making the world a safer place for everyone. Also, that last bit was sarcasm.

Velociraptors Are Serious Business

Back in April I wrote a post on Velociraptor Awareness Day to spread word on the increasing danger of velociraptors. I have recently come across a very funny web comic, called xkcd. The author of this web comic (a physicist and former NASA contractor) shares my velociraptor paranoia, and has made raptors the subject of a few of his web comics, which I will share here:

I have decided this is the best web comic ever. Of course, it was already pretty popular before I discovered it, but hey. Here are a couple more I thought were particularly good:

If you've never seen this comic before, I highly encourage you to check it out. I'm not going to embed any more, but here are some links to a few more of my favorites:

Sympathy Tips for Physicists

Movie Narrative Charts

Extrapolating

Alternate Currency (This one is for anyone who has ever used the Romney Computer Lab)

The End Is Not for Awhile

Holy Ghost

Impostor (The Sociology frame is my favorite)

Macgyver Gets Lazy

Babies

Zealous Autoconfig

Nerd Sniping

Brick Archway

Action Movies

Highway Engineer Pranks

Right-Hand Rule

Ninja Turtles

Guitar Hero

Love

Hitler

Okay, that's more than enough. Trust me, there were a lot more I wanted to link to, but it's near overkill already. Enjoy!

Madagascar: Another Place I'd Like to Visit

If anyone thinks the only place I ever want to visit is Iceland, well, you are so wrong. So very, very wrong. Iceland is just number one on the list. While surfing the internets the other day I came across some amazing pictures of some limestone in Madagascar that looks like the ruins of an ancient city, and Madagascar is now officially on my list of places I'd like to see. I can only embed one picture here, but it is spectacular:

The whole set can be found in a photo album on National Geographic's website, and I highly encourage you to take a look. You don't have to be a geologist to appreciate these. Also, this might be the worst place in the world to fall out of an airplane, even with a parachute. Maybe especially with a parachute.

If you do happen to be interested in the geology, here's an article about how these form, with a very well-done diagram.

Don't Times Me, Bro!

I just want to take a little time to share an experience that has gotten me thinking of a few grammar mistakes that make me cringe. A week or so ago in GIS class we were learning how to manipulate rasters. You don't need to know what that means; all you need to know is that rasters can in some ways be treated like numbers, and two rasters can be added together, subtracted from one another, multiplied together, or divided by each other. With this in mind, you'd expect that when accessing a list of operations available to manipulate rasters, you'd see "Add", "Subtract", "Multiply", and "Divide" in the list. You'd be wrong. What you'd find instead are "Plus", "Minus", "Times", and "Divide". Even worse, the progress window will say something like "Performing Minus on raster blah blah blah."

This sort of talk is annoying enough when it comes from junior high kids, but it really gets to me finding it in a professional program. Any time I hear someone say "You're supposed to times those numbers together", I just want to grab them by the collar, shake them violently, and say "It's multiply, you idiot, MULTIPLY!" You see, you can multiply numbers, but you can't times them. Saying "four times five" means you have the quantity five, but you have it four times over. "Four times five" is the same as "four multiplied by five", but there's no such thing as "four timesed by five". You have no idea how hard it is even to write it wrong.

So that's one thing. My other biggest grammar pet peeve is the misuse of "you and I". I'm pretty sure this started out a generation or so ago, with far too many kids saying "Billy and me are going to the playground", and their parents/teachers appropriately correcting them, saying "You mean 'Billy and I' are going." These kids grew up thinking that "him and me" was never appropriate, and that "he and I" was always appropriate.

Unfortunately, this has led to a whole generation, my generation, saying things like "Mrs. Williams gave Sarah and I a Wal-Mart gift card for our anniversary." This is very wrong, and I cringe every time I hear an example of it. The correct way is "gave Sarah and me". How can you tell when to use which? It's easy. Just think the sentence as if it only applied to yourself. In this example, that means saying "Mrs. Williams gave I a gift card." Does that sound right? Only if you're a Rastafarian. "Mrs. Williams gave me a gift card" does sound right, so me works. On the other hand, does "Me got a gift card from Mrs. Williams" sound right? Only if you're a caveman. "I got a gift card" sounds much better. It all depends on who is doing the action, and whom the action is being performed toward. (See what I did there? I did a dangling participle! No, they're not incorrect.) So, to review, you can say "She and I received a package in the mail", or you can say "A package came for her and me." In the first sentence, "She and I" are acting, and in the second, the package is doing the acting (grammatically speaking).

Another that deserves a paragraph or two: "less" vs. "fewer". I often hear people say things such as "There sure are a lot less people here this time than last time!" Interestingly, I don't think I've ever heard anyone misuse "fewer". "Less" is used if the subject of measurement is continuous, such as a volume of water. You'd never say "There's fewer water in the lake this year." You'd say "There's less water in the lake." "Fewer" is used for discontinuous data, like people. I've rarely seen a fraction of a person; usually they come whole. So to return to the first example, you fix that by saying "There sure are a lot fewer people here this time than last time!" Much better.

One more major, major irritant: "would of". I think this comes from hearing people contract "would have" to "would've", and writing it down the way it sounds. Hearing it is bad enough, but seeing it typed makes my brain want to leap out of my skull and hide under a desk. You'd think that once a person types that, they'd think to themselves, "Hmm. Would of... the 'would of what'? What is a 'would', and what might it be of? I thought it should be 'would have'." Then, of course, it would click, and they'd understand. Apparently this doesn't happen very often, though.

Those are my four biggest grammar pet peeves, especially in speech. There are plenty of other irritants, such as "effect" vs. "affect", proper apostrophe use (it's vs. its, using an apostrophe for a plural such as "egg's", etc.), confusing homonyms (there vs. their vs. they're, to vs. two vs. too, etc.), and using adjectives in place of adverbs ("don't take it personal" vs. "don't take it personally")... you get the idea. Oh, "If only I would have known" is incorrect, while "If only I had known" is okay.

Oh, yeah, and while "irregardless" is actually a word, it doesn't mean what people who use it think. It has both a negative prefix and a negative suffix, which cancel each other out. Basically, it means "without irregard", which is the same thing as regarding something. It is always used when the speaker really means to simply say "regardless". One of these days I will manage to use "irregardless to" in a sentence to mean "in regard to", and it will be awesome.

Anyway, I would blame elementary school teachers for this whole issue, but then I realize that they made it through college making these mistakes and are now passing them on to children. So instead, I blame elementary education programs at universities. It is at that level that change can be effected.*

Okay, I'm done being a grammar Nazi now.

*If you think I just used "effect" wrong... think again. It's a verb in that sentence, not a noun. How do you "affect change"? Make it a different kind of change? Melt pennies into copper slag?

My Dream Car

Some friends of mine were watching clips from Top Gear in the computer lab today, which made me think of my all-time favorite episode of this show, where Jeremy Clarkson drives the world's smallest production car, the Peel P50, to work. And at work. In the office. If you have nine minutes and want a good laugh, this video is well worth the time. If you want it in high quality, click on it to see it at YouTube.

50 of these were sold, and about 20 are left. I want one.

Funny Stuff

I don't know about you, but I could use a good laugh right now. So here's some funny stuff I've found recently.

First off, I recently found a blog in the tradition of the FAIL Blog, called People of Wal-Mart. Basically, the idea is that people see funny people in Wal-Mart, cars in the parking lot, or general funny/weird stuff at Wal-Mart, they take a picture, and submit it to the blog. It can be hit or miss, but now and then something truly bizarre and hilarious shows up. Here are a couple of my favorite examples:

Okay... there's something personally funny about this last one. I haven't posted anything about my geology field camp class yet (I'll fix that soon, I promise!), but here's a photo of me pretending I can slackline after a hard day of hiking and mapping:

Okay, I'm scared now....

The next funny thing is this music video I found. Any of you who know me personally or have read more than a few posts on this blog know that I have a thing for Icelandic music. Okay... I'm obsessed with it. Björk, Emíliana Torrini, múm, Ólafur Arnalds, GusGus, Sigur Rós... I can't get enough. But! It's not all good, and this is an example (though my wife claims she likes this one). I dare you to watch it all the way to the end. This video is for serious. Also, it was made in 2003, despite looking like it was made in the 70s and the music sounding like the worst of 90s white rap. The group is Quarashi, and the song is called Orð Morð. My favorite is the old guy in sunglasses that sings the chorus. If you watch to the end you get a good laugh at the drummer, but at least watch a minute; you have to see this to believe it:

You watched it, you can't unwatch it!

Last thing. Early last month I posted photos of my beard in a post called Pogonology. When I was on my internship, a friend told me of a website called Beards.org, and suggested I submit my beard. I did, and nothing happened. Yesterday I got an email saying sorry for the delay, asking what kind of school doesn't allow beards ("I have to assume that you are out of high school by now!"), and that my beard was now added to the gallery. So check out my now world-famous beard, and then go look at some of the others there. There are some really good ones!

Okay, that is all for now.

Adults Are Just Obsolete Children and the Hell with Them

The title of this post is a quote by Theodor Seuss Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, about writing for adults. Yesterday was the 18th anniversary of Dr. Seuss' death, and I figured I'd make note of it. I grew up reading The Cat in the Hat, Green Eggs and Ham, Yertle the Turtle, There's a Wocket in My Pocket!, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and other classics.

I don't have a lot to say on the subject, but I thought I'd share this video from Saturday Night Live shortly after his death. Sadly I can't embed the video here, but it is well worth one and a half minutes of your time to enjoy Jesse Jackson reading from Green Eggs and Ham as if it were a religious sermon. Yes, it's really him, and it is very funny.

By the way, if anyone tries to tell you that you're supposed to pronounce Seuss as if it rhymed with "Joyce", tell them they're dumb. The "Seuss" in "Theodore Seuss Geisel" is indeed pronounced "Soyce", but the "Seuss" in "Dr. Seuss" is supposed to be "Soos", to rhyme with "Mother Goose". The anglicization is correct in this case. Now you can annoy the rare person who might correct you on that by being nerdier than them!

Bilgeous Bogwallow

Just a quick post to prove this blog is still alive. I am very busy with school, and since I am a glutton for punishment I decided it would be a good idea to volunteer to compile all the field camp maps into one map to present at the Rocky Mountain Rendezvous.

This year I am taking second semester chemistry, Applied GIS, Old Testament, a physics lab that is insultingly dull (think sixth grade physics) and a technical writing class as well as participating in the Trombone master class again. This semester will either force me to learn to manage my time efficiently or kill me. Or both.

I may post more on some classes later if there is anything worth posting, but for now I will just share an assignment from my technical writing class. Today in class we split into groups to practice writing effective paragraph transitions. To do this, Professor Williams had each group take a paragraph he'd written that began a ridiculously silly story and each member of the group was to come up with a paragraph, in turn, that continued the story. I typed it all up as we went. The next step was to improve the transitions between paragraphs, the challenge being that each paragraph had a different author. Our final result was more ridiculous than even I could have predicted. It is bad. Hilariously bad. Maybe you won't think so, but I think so. I actually contributed two paragraphs to the story. Here it is in its entirety, with the first paragraph being provided by Professor Williams, and my two paragraphs in orange:

Bilgeous Bogwallow was a very pretty little girl with an unfortunate name. Her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Bogwallow, felt there was something poetic about the way it sounded when spoken aloud, which is why they settled on “Bilgeous” in the first place. “It trips nicely off the tongue,” her father said when Bilgeous first started to complain. “No Bogwallow could ask for better.” Bilgeous, who had endured an endless stream of taunting and ridicule since the day she entered kindergarten, couldn’t have disagreed more. One afternoon, as a crowd of third-graders chanting “Bilgeous Bogwallow boils bunions” pelted her with clumps of dirt and grass, Bilgeous decided that it was time for a change.

Bilgeous’ face flushed red with hatred as the chants grew louder. Bilgeous decided she didn’t like the way Jimmy looked. She thought Jimmy looked like a frog, and to the children’s surprise, he began to grow green. It started with his hair and spread down his face. Warts sprung up all over his skin.

As his dramatic transformation drew to a close, the crowd began to realize what had happened, and came out of their stunned silence. “She turned him into a newt!” Cried a student. Before long the other children had tackled Bilgeous to the ground, and were yelling accusations of witchcraft and devilry, attracting the attention of a nearby teacher, who came over to see what the ruckus was about. The teacher could not have known what she was in for.

To the surprise of everyone, Harry Potter came flying in on his Nimbus 2000 and turned the boy back to a normal boy. He told Bilgeous that she shouldn’t use magic in such a way. Then Harry told Bilgeous that she should come to Hogwart’s School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to learn true magic. From nowhere, Draco Malfoy appeared and returned Jimmy to his newtish form, prompting a duel between Harry and Draco over Bilgeous and Jimmy.

Dumbledore appeared with a loud crack, broke up the fight, and confiscated Draco’s and Malfoy’s powers for having used them inappropriately. He then called everyone’s parents and told them of this dreadful event. Then Dumbledore changed Bilgeous’ name to Minerva McGonnagal, so she would never be made fun of again.

Unexpectedly, Minerva decided with her newfound powers Bilgeous was a fine name after all, and hurled a powerful curse at the school which promptly disappeared, leaving nothing but a crater. From then on, Bilgeous was known as a hero for ending the tyranny of school forever!

So there you have it. Yes, most of the characters from Harry Potter make appearances. No, this does not fit the Harry Potter canon, nor is it endorsed in any way by J.K. Rowling. I hope you enjoyed it, and if you didn't, well, you read it, you can't unread it!

Save the Hot Dogs

School is about to start again. Even though it's technically only been six weeks since I was in class, that didn't feel much like school since the class was Field Camp, and the classroom was several locations in Idaho and Wyoming, where we camped and made geologic maps. If I weren't too lazy to keep this blog constantly up to date, the entry on Field Camp would have come a month ago, but I am and it didn't. You'll have to deal with it being out of order chronologically. Deal with it.

That being said, though the first day of the semester is Thursday, for a few of us it started last Monday. If you are one of my nearly half a dozen loyal readers, you will remember a post from last year about a field trip I took prior to the semester's start. I took that same field trip this year, but as a TA instead of a student. So this year, I got to visit the same places and see the same views, but instead of paying the tuition and being graded on my notes and quizzes, I got paid to go. All I had to do was drive, cook, and answer geology-related questions from the students. Not a bad deal.

The trip was a lot of fun. There were twelve students in total, six in my van, including my younger brother who is also a geology major. Since it is the same trip as last year, I will only cover a couple highlights. We missed out on Mammoth Hot Springs in Yellowstone due to road construction, meaning we had to detour through the park to get to our first real stop. We saw buffalo on the road. I took pictures, but I had to take them with my brother's camera since mine drowned. I'll upload them to a follow-up post later.

The most memorable night was Tuesday night, when we camped at Boysen Lake near Riverton, WY. It started with a student reciting the entire plot of Avatar, and ended with everyone getting soaked. Also, it was chili night, but that's not important. The weather was clear enough every night that many of us, myself included, slept out under the stars. This class had used this campsite every year for five years, but this year camped at the other end because our usual spot was in use. Turns out this end has sprinklers. We didn't worry, though, since the camp host said the first of them went off at 10am, and we camped away from those. I set up my sleeping bag and blankets on a nice, comfortable picnic table, read for a bit, then went to sleep listening to my iPod.

At 1:15am, the sprinklers came on. I jumped up, grabbed my bedding, and took it to the dry road. Then I realized my iPod was under the picnic table, getting soaked. I ran back and rescued it (it is fine), and then helped move the two tents that were getting pummeled by sprinklers. The next morning we asked the camp host why it happened, and apparently a ranger had done maintenance on the system and accidentally set the sprinklers for am instead of pm. Oops. Still, it makes me wonder whose bright idea is it to have sprinklers at a campsite anyway. Sure, it was very green, but they were watering mostly weeds. Plus, even if they come on in the afternoon, what if you wanted to camp there for a week? You'll still get soaked unless you strike camp every day. Not the greatest idea ever.

Also, I lost my pillowcase.

There was another memorable moment, this time happening in the van I was driving. This one involves politics, and to those of you who get bored with this subject, please know that it is more important than it ever was, and the facts related in this discussion may be surprising to you.

There is a student in the class who is very intelligent, very funny, a great guy, but also very liberal, and he rode in the back of my van. My brother knew how this guy was with politics, having attempted a debate with him before, but I only knew he was left-leaning. A few of us got into a discussion of socialism, global warming, and health care, talking about the ridiculous things Congress is trying to shove down our throats. All through the discussion, my brother was bracing himself for the explosion he knew was coming.

The trigger was hot dogs. When I made the claim that there are political forces who want to ban hot dogs, a previously silent voice suddenly boomed out from the back of the van, "Excuse me, but that is the biggest load of bullshit I have ever heard!"

"What?" I said.

"They want to ban hot dogs? Where do you get your sources, the YouTube comments? Did you find this out at imafreakingidiotretardedconsipiracytheorist.com?" said this student, who continued in this same vein with hardly a breath for several minutes as I tried to interject reasonable arguments with real sources into the debate. The rest of the van was laughing very hard at this unexpected outburst of entertainment. The student kept saying things like "Who is this 'they'? Is there a secret panel of government officials who say 'let's take away hot dogs'? Do the hot dog gnomes come into your house at night and steal your beef franks?" (He didn't really say that last one, but it's on par with the other comments.) The best part came as I was trying to explain who "they" is, and finally as he asked again "who is this they?" my brother and I in unison said "CONGRESS!"

It's true. For serious. The student tried to point out how ridiculous this claim is, and I have to agree with him. It is ridiculous. I never thought I'd come to a point where I would ever with a straight face be able to utter the phrase "Congress wants to ban your hot dogs". In fact, at this point in American history, it is my opinion that the most patriotic thing you can do for your country is hoard up a stash of ammunition, incandescent light bulbs, and hot dogs. And I'm not even joking.

Real quick here, for those of you who don't believe me, here are the facts. There is a lobbyist group called The Cancer Project who has a press release with the following headline: "Doctors Seek to Ban Hot Dogs and Similar Meats from School Lunches; Federal Petition for Rulemaking Filed with USDA Just Before National School Lunch Week". So there's a major lobbyist group trying to get the USDA to ban hot dogs, citing studies that say it increases your chances of colorectal cancer (that's butt cancer, if you didn't know). One of the doctors involved in the petition says that "This would be a valuable first step toward encouraging the elimination of processed meat from the diet of all consumers."

What? I'm a consumer! He wants to tell me I can't eat hot dogs or bologna anymore? What right does he have? Sure, it's not the healthiest thing, but whose right is it to say I'm not allowed to eat it? For any given food, processed or otherwise, there are dozens of studies that say it will kill you next week, and dozens more that say it helps prevent something else that will kill you. For example, apparently the blue dye in M&Ms can help with spinal cord injuries!

In my opinion, it makes no sense to vilify the diet and lifestyle of Americans as getting worse and worse when contrary to what you'd expect if that were true life expectancies are getting better and infant mortality is down. I think that means we're doing something right. So eating a hot dog per day makes you a bit more likely to develop colorectal cancer. What about the benefits? Could it be that the nutritional benefits for people who can only afford processed meat outweigh the risks, especially considering that they can't often afford quality meat?

It's the same with fruit. I don't have the reference on-hand, but I read it in a brilliant book called "The Skeptical Environmentalist" by Bjørn Lomborg, with dozens of scientific references. I highly recommend giving this book a look if you care about environmental issues. The claims are that eating fruit sprayed with pesticides increases the risk of cancer. It turns out that the increased risk of cancer is completely overshadowed by the benefits of affordable fruit for all Americans, who without pesticide-sprayed fruit would be at higher risk for not having fruit at all. That's right, the pesticides increase the risk of cancer negligibly, while the fruit itself helps prevent it quite a bit. Pesticides make the fruit more affordable, and therefore accessible, and therefore reduce the risk of cancer. Incidentally, organic food is actually no healthier than non-organic food. It's a scam.

Banning hot dogs is just the start, though. If they can ban or tax one unhealthy food, why not others? How about soda? Oh, right, they've tried that. New York Governor David Patterson recently proposed an 18% tax on soda, which fortunately was dropped. Congress right now is considering a tax on sugary drinks to pay for the health care plan. Supposedly this will discourage unhealthy habits and reduce health care costs as well, just like eliminating smoking was supposed to do these last few decades. Well, we've cut smoking in half, and have costs gone down? No.

As soon as Congress can decide what is and isn't a healthy diet, and ban or tax what they find inappropriate, our freedom to choose what we eat is gone. That is one of the most sinister things about the health care bill being discussed in Congress right now. It's not about health care, it's about control. A tax on hot dogs, soda, processed cheese, fast food, you name it, along with mandated exercise, is where this particular bit of the bill is headed. In fact, they want to tax you just for being fat. Yes, I have sources. Here's one, here's another one, and here's yet another one. Even beyond this, if certain diets are punished by Big Government, maybe other lifestyle choices will be, too. This is just the beginning.

Give me hot dogs, or give me death!

100th Post

Guess what? As of this posting, I have written in my blog 100 times. Funny how this comes in the middle of me hardly posting anything at all... I don't really have any special or amazing Earthshaking topic to write about. I figured instead, considering that my audience of loyal followers has drastically increased since I started blogging last year (increased by several hundred percent if you look at it one way, increased from one to three or four if you look at it another way), I will highlight a few of my favorite posts over the last year and a half. Since every single post is brilliant and worth re-reading multiple times, I will have to be very choosy to select only a few to highlight.

So where do I begin? Google Analytics says that my extra-important post about Velociraptor Awareness Day has recently surpassed my post about the threat imposed on mankind by Polar Bears as my most visited post. Both are masterpieces of online journalism if I may say so myself. Also popular are my report on the Apocalyptica concert my wife and I attended, and the one about the health benefits of rhinotillexomania (eating boogers), even though I only mention eating boogers at the end of the post. In fact, this one gets Googled quite a bit, and it's funny to see how many ways people search for it. I bet most of those people leave as soon as they see I start by talking about the Olympics and Hiroshima.

But what are my favorite posts? Other than all of them, here is a top ten best ever posts in my blog, chosen by me, in reverse chronological order:

Pogonology (8/5/2009): Probably my most (as in only) anticipated blog post ever. Photos of my beard from a couple years ago, photos of my extremely huge five-month beard from this year, and interesting photos of me taking it off in stages. My favorite is the Ambrose Burnside look. As a bonus, more pictures of beards I admire than anyone ever asked for!

Live Free or Die Harder with a Vengeance (5/4/2009): This one mostly makes this list because of how proud I am that I came up with such a clever title for the post, meshing together the names of all four Die Hard movies. I justify putting it in this list because it's an excellent (I say) review of four very good movies.

Velociraptor Awareness Day (4/18/2009): This was just way too fun, and it's fun to see people Google image searching "velociraptor" and ending up here, because I did that search to find those images and put the best ones in this post. I still recommend doing an assessment of your Velociraptor attack preparedness, and joining the Velociraptor Awareness Coalition (VAC) on Facebook. You can never be too prepared.

Apocalyptica (10/26/2008): This is by far the coolest concert I've ever been to, not that I've been to a whole lot of this type of concert. These guys are one of my top five favorite bands of all time, and put on an awesome show, running around on stage with electric cellos, head banging with long hair to speed metal music played on cello. I never thought I could temporarily lose some of my hearing because of cellos, but it's possible. If you don't know these guys, watch some of the YouTube videos in the post (some may be taken off YouTube by now, who knows), and if you do know them, you will still enjoy watching.

Polar Bears: Number One Threat to America! (8/23/2008): This is one of my pet peeve topics, Global Warming. It is one of the four main ways socialists are trying to take over America (the other ways are through government health care, the minimum wage, and the judicial system, though I'm sure there are more ways as well). The science has been pushed aside and drowned in politics, and the issue has been obfuscated to death. It is not, and never has been, about saving the Earth (which does not need saving and we couldn't if we needed to), but about power and control through the redistribution of wealth, and this power is gained by spreading fear and misinformation. This post is still relevant a year later, and will be for years to come, and it was also fun to write. This is a very important issue for every American to be educated on. I like all my political posts, but I try to space them out so this doesn't turn into a purely political blog, and I decided only to put a couple of those posts in my top ten list.

Peace through Superior Firepower (8/6/2008): Another important issue that people tend to be ignorant of. People like to say how horrible it was that we nuked Japan, not knowing how many millions of innocent lives were saved by ending that war as soon as possible with the complete unconditional surrender of Japan being the only viable option. Negotiation only works when you have something to back up your words. "Speak softly and carry a big stick." Or, as the villain in National Treasure says (roughly paraphrased), "the thing about bluffing is that sometimes you have to be holding all the cards." Saddam Hussein made a bad move bluffing to the world that he had weapons of mass destruction stockpiled when he didn't... it led to the toppling of his evil government and his death (better late than never). The world can only be stable if America is holding all the cards, i.e. has all the weapons.

Good Books and Bad Books (8/2/2008): Another great controversial post, about a topic I absolutely hate but can't get away from: Twilight (I like to pronounce it twih-ligt, like Dwigt). I really, really hate these books. They're not just annoying, they are detrimental to society. I am not happy about the fact that all four books are in my house on my bookshelf, but there's nothing I can do about it. I did, believe it or not, watch the movie, but I haven't reviewed it yet. It wasn't so bad, but is still not the amazing better-than-Harry-Potter thing that everyone says it is (that's what brought it to my attention, is that unforgivable comparison). I'm sure I'll have to see New Moon, but at least I don't have to read any more of the books. I may write more on this in the near future, since I have comments on the movie that I think are interesting and relevant to movie critiquing in general. Meanwhile, I will continue to boycott these books (not ban them, I am against banning these things on principle).

Fun with Global Warming (6/29/2008): This isn't the heavy political post you might think it is, though there's a bit of important social commentary that goes along with it. This is actually a humor post. It's a bunch of unintentionally funny statements from college students who, frighteningly enough, will be future elementary school teachers. This is worth a read if you want a good laugh. I actually have a new batch of these coming in the near future. I think so, anyway...

Why Is It So Cool to Hate Wal-Mart? (6/18/2009) and follow-up (6/19/2008): Another one of my pet peeve topics, the blaming of big, successful corporations for all of America's problems rather than giving them the credit they deserve for making our economy go. I hate hearing good companies made into scapegoats. Wal-Mart, Halliburton, McDonald's, every big oil company ever, etc. Without these companies our economy would grind to a halt, but successes like these threaten the dependence of us common folk on Big Government, the true source of all our problems.

Iceland (5/22/2008), More Iceland (6/19/2008), and More Photos of Iceland (10/11/2008): I am obsessed with Iceland. I will visit there someday. I love the music, I love the geology, and I love the scenery. Björk, Emilíana Torrini, Sigur Rós, múm, GusGus, and Ólafur Arnalds are all from there, just to name a few amazing musicians. These are quick reads, because all you really have to do is look at the pictures. You won't regret it. I'll probably find more photos of Iceland in the future.

So what is in store for this blog in the near future? Will I succeed in reviving it from its moribund state? I think so. I have many old posts to follow up on with new exciting things to say, and I have several dozen movies I want to talk about. I've also been very frustrated with the prospect of writing a political post, since things are moving along so fast and the destruction of this country by the most America-hating President we've ever had (i.e. the first one, who still hasn't proven he's even a citizen of the country he is governing) is just depressing to think about. I don't know where to start! This health care fight is the most important war our country has ever fought, and we are fighting our own President. We really may become the American Socialist Republic very soon unless Obama's inevitable overreaching happens soon enough. Enough of that... I'll save it for a future post.

Don't worry, if all goes well this blog will be alive and well very soon!