Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Couples Retreat Movie Review


If you're up for a funny movie (and who isn't these days?) then Couples Retreat with Vince Vaughn, Jason Bateman and many other great and talented actors is for you. It's a light-hearted look at problem resolution in marital relationships. It doesn't offer real solutions, but it does offer real laughs. The movie is set in the Caribbean and centers around four couples who go to an all-inclusive resort that promises to help them work out their problems. The humor is sometimes raunchy and always wacky. (The movie is rated PG-13, but I rate it PG-16 for simulated sexual activity and references.)

I love this movie and am definitely going to add the DVD to my collection when it comes out. Grab a friend or significant other and see this fun romp in the sun and sand.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Unearned Peace Prize Is Nothing New


Today the Nobel Prize committee has shown itself and its Peace Prize officially to be without value or significance. Not that we haven't seen many past poor selections already. At least when this liberal organization gave former President Carter his unearned Nobel Peace Prize, he had been out of his failed presidency a few years and had done something. But for this organization to hand a Nobel Prize to someone who hasn't done anything yet, except talk a good game, is a joke.

Did Ronald Reagan receive a Nobel Prize for helping to end the tyranny of the Soviet Union? Did he receive it for negotiating to reduce and even end whole classes of nuclear weapons? Did George H.W. Bush receive a Nobel Prize for saving Kuwait from an invasion by Iraq?

The Nobel Peace Prize is a continuous year after year joke. Just look at some of the past recipients: The International Council on Climate Change and Al Gore (for Peace?), Jimmy Carter, the UN and Kofi Annan, Yasser Arafat; and Mikail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union for helping to bring down his own country.

Someone who is humble and who recognizes that he has not accomplished anything in his presidency yet would decline this award. But President Obama is the opposite of humble.

The Nobel Prize Committee should be raked over the coals for its blatant attempt to influence world politics.

Sunday, October 4, 2009

How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint


There is an easy way for the concerned eco-citizens of our much-beleaguered world to reduce their carbon footprints.

What's a carbon footprint you ask? For those of you who may not know it, a carbon footprint is how much carbon you unwittingly spew back into Mother Earth's bosom by virtue of your everyday existence. It is measured for individuals, industries, and countries in tons of carbon emitted to the atmosphere each year. Natural sources are of course not considered.

As you may know, the European Union has a carbon trading program for industry and now the Democrats in the United States congress and the Democrat President want the same for the United States.

Carbon trading, Cap and Trade, or Cap and Tax, is a scheme where if a business produces less carbon dioxide emissions than it is allowed, it can sell what remains to some company that knows it is going to produce too much carbon dioxide. These carbon credits will be traded on Wall Street, which will give them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of new business, so they are literally salivating at the prospect that The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 will pass. It has in fact passed the House of Representatives but is idle in the Senate.

Beyond the higher prices everyone will pay for energy as a result of the Carbon Tax, we the little people need to get in on carbon trading too. And I know how to do it, without a broker, without fees, without license, and for free too. Yes, you too can acquire carbon credits and thereby control the size and impact of your odious carbon footprint.

The process is a little involved and requires some work, but you're doing this for Mother Earth so a little work ain't gonna slow you down from doing right, is it? This Personal Carbon Footprint Reduction Plan (PCFRiP as I call it) is also built on fairness, honor, and respect.

The plan goes like this. Choose a newspaper, a local one in your area would be best for this. If there aren't any newspapers left in your area then choose on online newspaper, but whichever paper you choose it should have an obituary section. Open said newspaper or website and go to the obituary section and look for a recently deceased person with the same last name that you have. If you have a common name like Smith or Patel you may find many. If you have a less common name like Frankenstein you may have a harder time. It may take days or weeks of hard work but you are doing this for all the right reasons people (to prop up failing newspapers and reduce that carbon thingy).

Once you find someone whose last name matches your last name (and assuming it is not you!), clip the obit, save it somewhere and acquire that person's Carbon Credit History. Unless you know the person, how much you actually receive can be based upon national averages (19 metric tons per year in the U.S.). Once you have acquired this person's Carbon Credit History, you can add it to your Carbon Credit History and add 38 tons of carbon to the Earth's atmosphere without increasing the net total carbon load on the Earth's atmosphere by a single extra pound.

Brilliant right? There's no downside. I have acquired the Carbon Credit History of seven decedents with my last name and now have the ability to add 152 tons of carbon to the atmosphere guilt-free, without increasing the total atmospheric load by one net pound.

I haven't been able to take advantage of all this extra emissions capability yet, but it's there when I need it and if anyone has an unusual last name or is in a hurry to offset their carbon usage, they are free to contact me to purchase some of my excess Carbon Credit History. So now the average guy or gal won't be left out of the Carbon Trading boon that is now upon us. We can all be green and expend a little energy too.

(P.S. A look at neogreen British Petroleum's [BP] carbon calculator website shows that even one of the world's LARGEST providers of carbon products can repeat the oft-repeated liberal complaint that "the U.S. despite having just 5 percent of the world's population uses 26 percent of the world's energy." Really! I would think liberals would just get tired of saying the same things over and over. But for British Petroleum to have anything to do with the phrase is laughably hypocritical.

And to address the point ever so briefly, would you expect the world's largest and most productive economy to use less energy than say, Indonesia and remain a strong and productive country? I think perhaps a personal boycott of BP is the order of the day. We can use 26 percent of ExxonMobil's energy just as well.)

Next week find out how to acquire property on the moon without paying a radio shill!