Derek's Rantings and Musings

It has just been a fuck-awful winter this year. I think we've had more sleet or freezing rain this season than we have actual snow by a factor of like two or something. It has definitely been non-conducive to commuting, which is kind of a pain in the ass. I mean, I feel lucky that my job it is at least possible to work from home, even it can sometimes annoy people when it has to happen unexpectedly. I can't imagine the level of "suck" for those people who looked outside today at their frozen cars, looked at the weather forecast of "when you're coming home it'll be far far worse than it is now and you'll be stuck out on the road so you'll have to deal with it," and have no alternative but to suck it up and risk life and limb to go get their paycheck.

Note To Mother Nature: I'm officially over "ice", please just send "snow" from now on. If you insist on ignoring me, I'm going to buy a fuckton of illicit CFCs and release them into the atmosphere so as to speed up this "global warming" thing. You have been warned! :-)

On Facebook, a friend of mine linked to this article, which claims that low-price airfares are damaging the environment because aircraft emissions are SOOOO much worse than other types, etc., etc.

Here are some of its claims:

Air travel produces 19 times the greenhouse gas emissions of trains

"produces" how? In terms of "ppm per hour"? per passenger? per passenger-hour? total?

Remember that a train by and large takes far longer to get from A to B than a train does. So while it may produce "more pollution per hour", an airplane trip from NY to LA only takes 6.5 hours, where a similar train trip takes 62 hours. Is it worth generating only 2x the emissions to get there 10x faster? I'd like to think "probably".

One return flight to Florida produces the equivalent CO2 of a year's average motoring

An average motorist drives 15k miles per year on their car, give or take. A round-trip flight (which in "Brit-speak" is a "return flight") is approximately 8k miles (4k each way). A British Airways 747, in its most "packed" variation, holds 295 passengers. So if the statistic that you get 2,360,000 flight-miles for the same emissions as driving a car-load (4 passengers) of people a total of 60,000 passenger-miles, then I'm perfectly A-OK with that.

Of course MY interpretation of the statistic provided doesn't provide nearly the gloom and doom value of their interpretation, now does it?

Who knows which of us is right? I don't. They didn't cite their source for the statistics so there's no way to go back and look to see what the statistics WERE (as opposed to how they were interpreted for easy consumption). My experience tends towards "oh, they didn't cite their source? Then it probably says what they say it does, but not what they say it means."

If you haven't been paying attention to your TV lately (and judging from Viacom's ratings, you probably haven't), Time-Warner Cable and Viacom are at an impasse over the amount Viacom wants to charge TWC for its networks (including Comedy Central, Spike, the MTVs, the VH1s, Nickelodeon, Noggin, etc.) There's a long article here with hundreds of comments from people talking about it.

The issue appears to be that Viacom wants an additional $0.25 per customer, for all of TWC's customers. TWC's contention is that this is a huge increase from what they pay now, that they'll have to pass that cost along to the consumers, and that it'll open the door for other content providers to jack up their rates and hold TWC to the fire.

Screw Viacom. Seriously? You've dumbed down MTV to the point of being not fit to sit my pets in front of when I go out for the day, and you want to charge more for it? How many "I Love the 80s" reruns does VH1 have to run before it suddenly spawns "value"? And don't get me started on the crap you're filling kids heads with on Nick and Noggin.

Turn those channels off, TWC. Seriously. I just don't care. Make my bill go DOWN by cutting them off completely.

The most annoying people who commented in that post I linked to are the mothers who are like (and this is a direct quote here) ...

Why in hell would they do this? They took a way all of the channels that kids watch on tv. When they don't have school and are home all day in bad weather what are they supposed to watch? With no Nickelodeon or Noggin. This is crap and people need to leave Time Warner Cable.

Here's an idea, lady, give your kids a fucking board-game. Give your kids some projects to do, outdoors. Help them build a friggin' tree-fort. Whatever kids did for the four-thousand-fucking-years before cable TV showed up at your ignorant living room.

I have a 4 yaer old who is going to freak if she can't watch Noggin for her alotted time each day.

Again.. why not teach your child not to rely on the idiot-box for her entertainment. Perhaps your 4 year old would love to do something else, if anyone in your house had enough imagination to suggest something different for her to do.

my 2yr old will be beside himself without his buddies on Noggin!

Maybe your kid needs real live friends instead of animated images?

Oh, my kingdom for a la carte cable. I'd just pay for the dozen or so channels I actually watch (we'd pay more for them, certainly, but at the end of the day, the net on the bill would surely go down)... but of course the cable companies have been fighting that for ages....

(Source)

I love when the hypocrisy of the religious factions are pointed out to them....