A personal gripe

Here is a personal gripe of my own that is not news related. I attend a local two year college that shall remain nameless. They offer an excellent tool that allows me to sign up for classes online without driving to the campus, hunting a parking space, and standing in line for hours. Sounds good huh? Well it SUCKS!!! Their system continuously tells me that I have not completed a prerequisite class. By the way did I mention this prerequisite class is an intro class I took five years ago and pretty much keeps me from joining ANY class at this point because it is required for practically every higher level class! Well I guess I need to get off this keyboard and go to the damn campus and get this cleared up. Talk to you later and keep Ranting!

Wait till you hear this one!

I got a new dirt bag on my list! Here in Arkansas where I live there are reports coming out about a car insurance scam ring that has finally been busted. These guys where going out and intentionally causing accidents by pulling out in front of people, "swoop and squatting", and other reckless driving. There are two reasons why this has really pissed me off though. The first was that we have a guy here named DuShun Scarbrough who just happens to be the executive director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Commission here in Arkansas. Okay big deal he just got the job back on March 5 of this year and maybe they just didn't research this guys driving records, I can believe that, I mean honestly who needs to have their driving records checked unless they are actually driving for their jobs. This is also not an attack against the King Commision they probably do good work, I don't know that because I don't know much about them. What burns me is that this guy was involved two accidents where he himself was doing the driving and "misrepresented"(the word used by the offial complaints lodged by the state Department of Insurance) the facts of the accidents to get more money from the insurance companies involved. He also was involved in three other accidents where he was a passenger in the cars involved. Oh by the way the accidents where he was a passenger? His cousins, the alledged masterminds of the group, were the drivers. What burns me about this guy though is that he has not been arrested and denies any wrong doing. Maybe if he has nothing to hide he should think about providing his medical records for the accidents he was involved in, huh? You know what burns me tho most about this though? The one thing that really just pisses me off! I only just heard about this story yesterday (Dec. 10th) during a local newsbreak on my local NPR station. Oh and by the freaking way this story has been around since April 30th!!! Why am I just now hearing about this crap?!?! The news story I found to research this post can be found by clicking HERE and was posted by Michael R. Wickline at the nwanews.com site.

Have you heard about this idiot who tried to extort $500 from a Pizza Hut? What the hell was he thinking? The idiot sent cell phone photos of his car's to the store manager of the Pizza Hut. Apparently the local cops were able to pull some CSI TV magic voodoo on the pictures and zoom in on the license plates to find out who this idiot was. I wonder if the computer tech who did all this magic to the pictures got paid well. It had to have been magic because I have yet to see a decent cell phone photo that would be clear enough to read a license plate. The bad part is, the cops spent all this time trying to zoom in on the license plates when all they really needed to do was call back the number of the pictures came from and arrange a pickup. Seriously, how else did this man plan to make the exchange if not in person. By the light of this idiot was a former employee of the restaurant he called. Wouldn't it have been obvious who had the signs based on the information that he'd left with signs and didn't bring them back before he left employment there. I'll know who the bigger idiot is, the dumbass who tried to extort Pizza Hut, the cops going the long way around to find this guy, or the store manager for not realizing who in the hell it was in the first place. You can read the full story here.

Python Fatally shot

According to an AP story a Michigan State trooper fatally shot a Burmese python. What the hell? Last time I looked Burmese pythons were not indigenous to Michigan! Authorities seem to think that it was a pet that either escaped its owner or was deliberately released because of its size. Well duh!!! My bet would be on the fact that it was deliberately released, because it seems to be becoming more and more common that people are buying reptiles as pets, and not realizing how large some of them become. Seriously, a quick look over at the Wikipedia entry for Burmese pythons, which can be found here, states that they can grow up to 7 m or 23 feet long! Are you dumb enough to buy an exotic animal with out doing even a small amount of research. You can read the entire AP story by clicking here.

CSI is dead!!!

It's official that the CBS crime drama CSI is over. Sometime in early 2009 William Petersen will appear in his last regularly occurring episode of the hit crime drama CSI. The producers of CSI have decided to bring in Laurence Fishburne as a new regularly occurring character, who is currently only codenamed "The Professor". I honestly do not think that the show can survive without William Petersen. If I remember correctly, the episodes where the character Grissom was on hiatus were the lowest rated episodes of the hit show ever. Laurence Fishburne's character will be a college lecturer and former pathologist who tries to find out why people commit the acts of violence that they do. You can read more on this story by clicking here.

A sad weekend for entertainment

This weekend was a sad one for black Americans, with the passing of two great actors. Saturday August the 9th comedian and actor Bernie Mac died. Many people know "the Mac man" as a comedian and actor but he also did public service announcements for the American Library Association's Save America's Libraries campaign. These PSA mostly aired only in on talk radio stations. You can read more about Bernie Mac over at his Wikipedia page here.

Also this weekend Isaac Hayes passed on August 10. Isaac of course is most famous for his role as Chef on the Comedy Central animated show South Park. One thing a lot of people might not know is that he is the first black Academy award winner for a non-acting category. You can find out more about Isaac Hayes by reading his Wikipedia entry here.

Ethanol - Savior of our future or killer of older cars?

Over at Boating Life I found this interesting article entitled "Deathanol" which points out some interesting facts about ethanol. Did you know that ethanol can absorb water from the air? This water, then lowers the performance of your gasoline powered engine. When used in older vehicles ethanol's, solvent capabilities will loosen rust, sludge and other contaminants in your tank hopefully just plugging your fuel filter, but possibly causing major carburetor or fuel injector problems. The expert interviewed for the article recommends that in vehicles that are seldom used, such as RVs, boats or ATVs you should use a non-alcohol-based fuel stabilizer. I don't know about you, but now I think I should check the fuel filter on my older truck, because I have noticed slightly lower performance since my local gas station started using 10% ethanol. Just a little heads up from your friendly neighborhood Ranter.

Apologies

Howdy, I really should apologize for my recent absence but work and other real-life responsibilities have gotten in the way temporarily. I plan to start keeping a regular schedule of a least Monday, Wednesday and Friday updates.

Why Social Security is broken!!

You know what, I think I may have found the problem with Social Security. I think there may be too many people out there taking Social Security payments that don't actually need them. According to David A. Lieb, an Associated Press writer, in his article you can find here, presidential candidate and current Senator from Arizona John McCain is currently receiving an average of $1929.75 a month in Social Security payments. WTF?!? This man is a United States senator, getting paid $169,300 a year not to mention the returns on his investments retirement savings etc. that the totals a yearly income for 2007 of $405,409, again I say WTF? Obviously this man does not need an extra $2000 a month so why is he taking Social Security payments? My parents are currently receiving approximately $1300 a month combined and neither of them work. Social Security was designed to help people that do not receive any kind of pension or retirement from their employer, so why are people like John McCain even eligible? This is probably yet another example that we see more often than not in federal government of "the left-hand not knowing what the right hands doing". Seriously, do you think that if I made over $400,000 last year and tried to claim Social Security benefits do you think they would give them to me? I don't I don't want to seem like I am just picking on John McCain. But he is the only Social Security recipient I have this kind of data for. But just imagine how many other people out there are receiving $1000, $2000 in Social Security benefits, while still making $100,000, $200,000, or even more a year! Maybe Senator John McCain should remove himself from the Social Security rolls and leave that two grand a month to someone who actually needs it. BTW, Cindy McCain, Senator John McCain's wife, filed a tax return reporting a total income of $6 million last year. Just because they file their tax returns separately does not necessarily mean they are not sharing their incomes as household community property. I think John McCain should start Social Security reform at home by removing himself from the system. Just a little more food for thought from your friendly neighborhood Ranter.

What on earth is going on with Google Trends?

What on earth is going on with Google Trends? I decided to try Google Trends to find a nice blog topic. Yes I know that only basing my posts on popular web searches could be construed as unfair. But if you look at the screenshot below you will see using Google Trends for this purpose is kind of useless.



I mean seriously have that many people searched for Leon Czolgosz within the last hour? For those of you who don't even know who Leon is, he is the man who assassinated President William McKinley. If you want to know more about Leon go ahead and click here to get to his Wikipedia page. Enough about Leon, seriously, how does Google Trends compile the data? Sometimes you have to wonder what kind of voodoo magic goes on behind the scenes at Google. Did every summer school kid in the world suddenly have to do a report on William McKinley or Leon Czolgosz? Oh well. Maybe I should just do a post on Leon myself...

Oil prices are falling! Oil prices are falling!

Check out this AP story written by Business Writer Tim Paradis. Oil prices are continuing to fall for a third straight day. Consumption of oil based products is lower and is probably also being affected by selloffs by speculators trying to reap the largest profits before the price falls to far. In my opinion, oil prices will continue to fall and if we are all lucky some of those speculators will lose a lot of money. Don't get me wrong. I don't want your average man to lose a lot of money, but some of those speculators do this all the time and deserve to take a fall. Unfortunately, we will not see a drop in prices at the pump for some time but there will be relief in the future, THAT at least is something to look forward to.

PETA Sucks!!!

You know what, PETA sucks! I will not even try to get in to all the reasons that I don't like PETA. I would just like to refer you to a website that you might not have heard of called PETA Kills Animals. I will tell you my one personal PETA story. A few years ago at a local branch of PETA decided to protest at a KFC. Obviously they were not allowed on the property. So, they used a parking lot across the street. As much as I may not like them I recognize their God-given and US government protected right to protest. But please answer this one question, why would a group who calls themselves. The People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals bring out an elephant, which everyone already knows has fairly tender feet and parade around on a hot blacktop asphalt parking lot in August in Arkansas, where the temperatures reach 105° in the shade. And by the way they did not provided with sufficient water, either. Just more food for thought.

The California Wildfires and How to Stop Them

Today I want to tackle the California wildfires. I believe the current cost of fighting the wildfires in California is currently estimated at $100 million. One estimate for fighting the wildfires last year was over $1 billion. And now Governor Schwarzenegger wants to start charging the average homeowner $12 a year or to pay for emergency services? What the hell? Aren't emergency services provided by the funds received through various taxes already levied against residents? I have a great idea, why not invest in a seawater desalination plant and use irrigation pipelines to irrigate the countryside. It does not take a genius to see that wet foliage is harder to burn then dry foliage. I mean come on, this year's wildfires were started by a lightning strike! I'm not stupid, I understand that this plan would be extremely expensive, possibly into the billions. But look at the massive amount of money that has been spent in just the past five years on fighting wildfires. The plan also has the added benefit of providing fresh drinking water to areas that are drought prone to begin with. A simple desalination plant, run 365 days a year would provide too much water for simple irrigation and the surplus could easily be used in areas like Los Angeles, which almost every year, have to deal with water shortages. Wake up California. I understand that not every single person in California is a movie star with millions of dollars to spend. A lot of my family lives in a small town known as Brentwood in California and they are not rich and neither are their neighbors. But I do know for a fact there are enough people with exorbitant amounts of money that could donate to help bring this plan to fruition. And for you global warming people out there imagine how much cleaner the air quality in California would be with all of those green plants growing instead of burning. Oh and by the way, all of that burning vegetation is generating uncounted tons of carbon that is being released directly into the atmosphere. There is some food for thought!

Charity, what it is and isn't

Have you heard about Hannah Salwen yet? This girl, while having a very touching sentiment, must be extremely confused. Hannah after seeing a homeless man sitting on a curb came to the conclusion as many of us do that "there but for the grace of God go I". So having analyzed her and her family's life, Hannah came to the realization that they had things fairly well and maybe they could do with a few less things in their life. So Hannah and her family decided that they would sell their approximately $1.8 million house and donate half of the profit to charity. This is all well and good, and anybody in their position would probably do the same. I do not have a problem with these good people selling a home that was much too large for them anyway and donating the money to charity. The problem I have is where they want to send the money. They want to give the money to the Hunger Project where it will end up in Ghana. I sympathize wholly with anyone who wants to help the poor people in Ghana. But shouldn't we be focusing on the problems here at home first. This homeless man that Hannah saw on the side of the road that started the entire "movement" for lack of a better word will not see any benefit from the sale of this house. Now we move from the gripe to the praise.
Have you heard about this guy named Troy Landwehr? Probably not. He is another one of those artists who like to perform public stunts. But this man chooses to be patriotic, and to help the needy. Troy chose to carve a 1 ton replica of John Trumbull's painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. The Cheez-It company commissioned the carving to celebrate US Independence Day. The carving will travel for a few days, while it finishes aging, and then will be taken back to Wisconsin to be donated to food pantries. A good corporate citizen and a good artist have teamed up for what is honestly yes, a publicity stunt, but also an act of kindness and charity.

Oil prices, and what's wrong with them!

You want to know what's wrong with oil prices today. I'll tell you. For the last couple of years there have been numerous infomercials and regular television commercials advertising how to make lots of money in the oil futures market. These commercials almost always included a so-called expert telling you that oil prices were at all time lows and that these prices would only go up. Ask any economist, and they will tell you that buying stocks or futures instantly raises the prices of those stocks or futures. The only people that are getting rich from these oil prices are the ones that were running the infomercials, because not only did you have to send them money to learn how to buy the oil futures with their "exclusive system." But you know, they also owned plenty of oil futures of their own that were purchased when the price was $40 or $50 a barrel. Now that oil prices are over $140 a barrel these scum are now selling off their futures slowly to keep the price up, but still make a profit. All of these experts that are citing oil speculation as the reason for high oil prices are actually right but they are constantly shot down by people who would like to think that we do not have enough oil supply and that only increasing supply will ease the price increases.