SavantGo

An inspiring story about Macharia Yuot. Considering the life-threatening circumstances of his youth, his incredible walk across Africa as one of the “Lost Boys of the Sudan,” and his settlement in the Philadelphia area, Macharia Yuot sincerely believes that anything is possible in life

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There has not been a lot of reasoned thought about many environmental issues. We all want the environment to be better and we all don’t want to be seen as wasting natural resources, but what about the consequences? The latest environmentalist movement is to stop using crude oil. That is a nice goal, albeit an unrealistic one. We keep hearing about how easy it would be with fuel cells coming, electric cars and the like. That is a great political point, but it really is not going to work. Lets assume for example that every car made tomorrow was a fuel cell or electric vehicle. What would that do to our overall oil usage? 

This is where it gets interesting. If we took every gasoline and diesel vehicle off the road tommorrow our oil usage would decline by exactly 0%

How can that be? The answer is that gasoline is only about half of what we use oil for. Gasoline would actually become a waste product to be disposed of under this scenario. How we would handle that environmental nightmare is another issue altogether, but we will leave that out for now.

The big secret the environmentalists don’t tell you is all of the other products made from a barrel of oil is amazing. Can every product be redesigned so that we can quit using oil altogether? Possibly, but at a great cost to the consumer to do so. This is the thing that no one considers when discussing oil usage.

Just some of the amazing list of products made from or with crude oil are:

Antihistamines, Antiseptics, Artificial Hearts, Aspirin, Audiocassettes, Baby Strollers, Balloons, Bandages, Blenders, Cameras, Candles, CD Players, Clothing, Compact Discs, Computers, Containers, Crayons, Credit Cards, Dentures, Deodorant, Diapers, Digital Clocks, Dinnerware, DVDs, Dyes, Eyeglass Frames, Fertilizers, Food Preservatives, Food Storage Bags, Footballs, Foul Weather Gear, Furniture, Garbage Bags, Glue, Golf Balls, Hair Dryers, Hang Gliders, Heart Valve Replacements, House Paint, Infant Seats, Ink, Insecticides, Life Jackets, Lipstick, Luggage, Medical Equipment, Nylon Rope, Pacemakers, Pantyhose, Patio Screens, Perfumes, Photographic Film, Photographs, Piano Keys, Roller Blades, Roofing, Safety Glass, Shampoo, Shaving Cream, Shower Curtains, Slippers, Soft Contact Lenses, Sunglasses, Surfboards, Surgical Equipment, Syringes, Telephones, Tents, Toothpaste, Toys, Umbrellas, Vitamin Capsules

Now I don’t think that American’s are ready to give up their DVD’s and  artificial hearts just yet, not to mention their heating oil and kerosene lamps for camping, so the same amount of crude oil will have to be processed to make all of the other products.

This leaves us with a byproduct of gasoline. What will we do with all of the gasoline waste? I know we can bury it, no that wont work that would be way to bad for the environment. How about if we burn it in big fires? No, that wouldnt be a good idea.

I know we can make a way to burn it to get rid of it and put something on it to harness the energy and maybe try a scrubber, something like a catalytic converter on the energy producing device and use it to power something.

Something like…..

A car

Note:

The breakdown of a barrel of oil is as follows all measurements are in gallons. 

Gasoline 19.4
Distillate Fuel Oil 10.5 (Includes both home heating oil and diesel fuel)
Kerosene-Type Jet Fuel 4.1
Coke 2.2
Residual Fuel Oil 1.7 (Heavy oils used as fuels in industry, marine transportation, and for electric power generation)
Liquefied Refinery Gases 1.5
Still Gas 1.8
Asphalt and Road Oil 1.4
Raw Material for Petrochemicals 1.1
Lubricants 0.4
Kerosene 0.2
Other 0.4

A few weeks ago we talked about the case against Michael Vick. Since then, sports in general have suffered through some of the worst scandals in the shortest time. Point shaving, dog fighting, blood doping, its an epidemic at this point and its time someone does something. The solution? Easy legalize everything.

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A few weeks ago we talked about the case against Michael Vick. Since then, sports in general have suffered through some of the worst scandals in the shortest time. Point shaving, dog fighting, blood doping, its an epidemic at this point and its time someone does something. The solution? Easy legalize everything.

read more | digg story

Sure, it’s an ad, but if you are going to be subjected to ads, they should all be like this one. Presenting the Bomchickawahwahs from Axe. We are ready to buy this fake groups DVD’s

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In a world full of video games one could easily wonder why anyone would need a new model. Sometimes it seems that the graphics can not get any sharper, the sounds any fuller, and the game play any more realistic. Perhaps that reality is one of the reasons that, in 2001, the brain trust at Nintendo began to contemplate taking game consoles…

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As every southerner knows it’s time to get ready for that all important cooking technique of the south—outdoor grilling!

We have found several stores (not just in the south) where you can get a FREE Bar-B-Q Grill! You can get a free BBQ grill from any of the following stores…

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Is it just me or has NBC news gone too far?

NBC made a conscious decision to show images and homemade video of Virginia Tech killer Cho Seung-Hui, the kid who took thirty-two innocent lives.  These images are now all over every television, website, and newspaper in America even though they should have been buried in a deep dark vault somewhere and should never have seen the light of day. I know that we have a supposed “right to know” everything, but there are some things we don’t need to know and these rantings could have been described rather than shown even if we have to know.

This is NBC’s current policy in a nutshell.

If you make a stupid and mean comment about a bunch of college students we will get you off of our airwaves immediately; kill 32 college students in cold blood and NBC will give you one hour specials and plenty of facetime, no matter who it hurts.

More importantly giving this facetime continues to feed the crazy people who will want their very own 15 minutes of fame. Thanks NBC for feeding the monster and making sure the next guy tries to kill even more people and one up Cho now that he knows you will be sure he will be heard.

I can’t imagine how the families who were forced to look into the eyes of this killer unnecessarily must feel. I do know that NBC has lost all credibility at this point as they have clearly chosen profit and ratings, no matter the cost. 

News is news, but this unnecessarily sadistic form of journalism is just too much.

 This has been a very interesting ten days. I have sat back and watched the talking heads on both sides, and the worst part of the whole thing is that both sides have proven themselves to be total idiots time and time again.

Here it is in a nutshell.  Don Imus is an idiot. I have never liked Imus, and have always seen him for what he is, a cantankerous old man. Not a dangerous man, not all that funny. But some people liked him. He got paid to be an idiot. His recent 5 year 50million dollar extention and his history show that. It’s disinginuous for CBS to have fired him after rewarding him for the exact same behavior.

If they wanted rid of Imus for this kind of thing they could have done it hundreds of times before now. The difference is that until the voices of the panderers got involved it paid for CBS to have him on the air. That comment was no different than the hundreds of comments that he made before. Thats why I didn’t listen to him.  The only thing Imus did differently this time was to break two of the golden rules of comedy and that is that comments must be true and must be funny*. He didn’t do it out of any mean spiritedness, more out of being an idiot in general. The panderers knew that as well, but to the Sharptons of the world, intent doesnt matter if you are a white male.

Chris Rock, who I love says things ten times worse and more racist about black people as well as whites, asians, and anyone else he can get a funny shot in at. The difference is simple. Chris Rock is funny. There are a couple of white comedians who do so called “black” comedy who also get away with it. Once again, the difference is that they are funny.

I honestly could care less if Imus got fired. I didn’t listen to him anyway. But the road we are on with these witch hunts will go both ways at some point. Bill Maher who I find insightful and funny probably could be fired 20 times a year if held to the standard of Imus. He made two homophobic jokes on this weeks show as pointed out by Sharpton on the same show.

To be honest keeping an idiot like Imus around for people who “get it” to laugh at would do much more for the cause in the near future than the termination begins to do.

One of the best articles written about this whole issue was written by Jason Whitlock, a sports reporter from KC who happens to be black who said:

“While we’re fixated on a bad joke cracked by an irrelevant, bad shock jock, I’m sure at least one of the marvelous young women on the Rutgers basketball team is somewhere snapping her fingers to the beat of 50 Cent’s or Snoop Dogg’s or Young Jeezy’s latest ode glorifying nappy-headed pimps and hos”

Thanks god a black man said it, I can’t say it first in today’s culture, although I most certainly agree with the premise. To read the whole article (which everyone should) click here. That’s the really sad thing in the whole situation. The rest of us have to watch everything we say, as intentions don’t matter.

Yes, Imus’ comment was offensive to most of us. But has the US become so fragile a nation that a radio personalities comments create a national furor? And why this radio personality rather than someone like Bill Maher or Chris Rock, both of whom say things much worse, and both of whome reach a much wider audience. Could it be because the politics differ? Just asking.

This old dude (Imus) means nothing to people my age (40) and below, probably 90% of us don’t really see color anymore on a day to day basis to begin with. It’s just a generational thing. As someone who has owned and run several businesses over the last 15 years, I can tell you that race in hiring, promotion, or just about any other aspect of society means nothing anymore to 90% of us. Yet we continue to fight these two sided battles in which both sides just appear stupid and racist. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson look like idiots as much as Imus does in this furor. They appear as racist as Imus, and possibly more so when they go after an irrelevant old white dude with this kind of vehemance while letting slide the Chris Rock. For that matter they should be going hard after hip-hop music and attitude which is really anti-black, anti-white, anti-education, demeaning, self-destructive, pro-drug dealing and violent. The difference there is a fairly simple one. Follow the money, and the liberal guilt and angst, and you can begin to intellectually understand why those racists are exempt.

For me, I don’t care what color you are, what religion you are, or for that matter what you do in your bedroom. But as I tell the boys my daughter brings around. “Get that damn metal out of your face” Thats just stupid.

* Bill Maher on his HBO show April 13th, 2007

We just finished watching The DaVinci Code, a pretty decent movie, this is not a movie review however, but a commentary. You see, the thing I could not get over in the movie was Paul Bettany’s self flagellation nude scenes. They were wonderfully acted, almost too well acted, but it really made me wonder what is wrong with the ratings board and really, America in general. This is a rant, because I am tired of this society teaching my children that something like that is OK, but that a breast, or anything sexual is something to be hidden from the world. 

If ever one scene in a movie made a movie deserve an R rating, the multiple self flagellation scenes would fit the bill like nothing I have ever seen before. In fact, I cringe to think that my daughter at 15 could get into this movie at all without an adult to explain certain things. The scenes are that realistic and violent and although they serve the movie well, they should push the movie well into R rated territory.

I do not pick on The DaVinci Code alone for this, but the ratings board, Television censors, and really, our society in general. Somehow we can show brain matter being blown out in all its full color glory on network television, but a breast of an old woman on ER created a huge stir. What the hell has happened to common sense in this country?

I am not a pacifist by any means, truth be told, my favorite movies if youve ever taken a look around at my writings tend to be very violent, I love Tarantino, Rodriguez, and like my action movies realistic. But truth be told in all of these kinds of movies, the violence is so far out to be almost cartoonish. Any child over the age of 10 can pretty much determine that these are not real. The Davinci Code was too convincing in this manner for my tastes and was quite disturbing in that manner. It got a PG-13.

That said, the damage that can be done in a child with realistic scary violence such as in the DaVinci code does far more harm than say seeing Christina Ricci’s Breasts in Prozac Nation which got an R rating or heaven forbid, hearing a curseword or seeing a breast on network TV.

You will notice, I have no screencap of Paul Bettany here in the act of his self flagellation, but I have no problem with this gratuitous breast shot of Christina Ricci. My 15 year old daughter reads this page. Breasts are not something to be hidden, Self flagellation, however is.

You will notice this is not exactly some sort of sexual pose, its just a woman sitting and her breasts are showing. Big deal. Well, big enough for an R rating according to the MPAA.

The whole thing makes me sick. Remember the flap over Janet Jackson’s boob?  FCC Commissioner Michael Copps was outraged. “Millions of Americans have made it convincingly clear that they no longer will tolerate media’s race to the bottom when it comes to indecency on the people’s airwaves,” he said in a March 2004 speech. “The Super Bowl had a galvanizing effect here in Washington, particularly at the FCC, where the tired old arguments I have been hearing for the past three years were finally laid to rest—I think. ‘If people don’t like what they’re seeing, they can just turn it off,’ I was told. Are we supposed to just turn off the all-American Super Bowl?”

Copps goes on to say that he believes that society has “a responsibility to protect children from content that is inappropriate for them. And when it comes to the broadcast media, the Federal Communications Commission has the statutory obligation—the legal mandate—to protect children from indecent, profane and obscene programming.”

Yes, thats right, the federal government in this country believes that boobs are indecent. Maimings, killings, rapes, and the like are all fair game, but a boob is indecent.

This weirdness even extends to the internet. On YouTube, boobs are a huge no no and will get you banned, but violence is no problem. The same goes for almost every advertising agency there is. This extends much further than the average person would believe. We have been asked to remove content by our advertising agencies because there was a outline of a boob showing through a swimsuit, We are talking very minor sexuality content as in the Farrah posters you had on your wall in high school is considered inappropriate by many of the advertising agencies online, but you can host a video of a real shooting, much less a fictional one, and no one will say anything. This society has just gotten completely out of whack.

To be honest I would rather have my children see real sexual content than violence, and by that I dont mean pornography, but real honest sexual content is not harmful to anyone. Sexual content is a better message for humans to consume and I can’t help but think that the more people glamorize sex and the less they glamorize violence the better the world can potentially be.

It just seems to me that if my daughter is staring at guys butts, or my son is staring at boobs, that is a fairly healthy thing in relation to them staring at self flagellation, or really any kind of violence. The MPAA and the FCC disagree however and that is a scary thought to me.