The Junk Mail Stops Here

Mail time at home has become an effort in futility for me these days. 90% of the mail is worthless junk mail. It infuriates me. I spend a good 15 minutes opening this crap so as to pull out my personal information for shredding. The remaining portion is directly recycled. While I have followed the opt out procedures for telemarketers, it is almost impossible to manage the same feat with junk mail. Enter my new best friend. Greendimes is a for-profit group that does the work for you to stop unwanted junk mail from ever reaching you. It saves paper. It saves water. They plant ten trees when you sign up. I just joined this group so cannot comment on the true extent of its effectiveness. It apparently can take up to three months to see the full benefit. However, if this removes even a fraction of the junk mail that arrives at this house, I will be a happy little Maus.

That Crazy Global Warming Myth

I've lamented to friends about the wall I run smack dab in to at work concerning the "crazy notion of global warming." I often find that I have nothing to say. This is not because I have nothing to say, but because I find that I simply cannot combat them. Seriously, if a group of otherwise intelligent people want to discount mounds of valid scientific data supporting global warming, what is a girl to do? How does one debate when the bottom line the enemy uses is that this is simply normal environmental cycling...even when it clearly is not?

What I find as one option is to use not the valid scientific evidence, but rather the real-life evidence provided by those among us who are living through the actual effects of global warming. If life was one way for a consistent period of time and now it is not and in fact it is not on such an extreme scale, well...I think we should listen. I think we *all* should listen. Honestly, whether you believe in global warming or not, *something* is happening to our environment. At the very least, we should respect the signs. We should respect the tales that our world neighbors are telling us...even if the tales are coming from developing countries. Perhaps that is why the effects are being discounted so much? I say, regardless of where the main effects are being seen right now, we should all start to accept it and do something about it because I assure you it is only a matter of time before it is on all our doorsteps. Mind you, I am one of the few at my work that feel it already is.

Is this for real?

Really, I want to know. 'Cause suggesting that teen girls use their, ummm... feminine charms for cash would be pretty weird for any store, but particularly for one that only sells edited versions of pop music. If anyone can prove or disprove the existence of these undies, which Feministing claims are being sold in the juniors departments of some Wal Mart stores, then you win... my thanks. But, really, is it real?

UPDATE: Yep, they're real.. but they've been, ummm..., removed from shelves in recent days.

Ayumu the Chimp is Smarter than You

Via.

Water Misers Sounds Dirty

I enjoyed this AJC article about the water conservation steps taken by one Roswell, GA couple who is making good use of gray water and rain barrels. Never willing to pass up even the weakest pun, though, the AJC subtitled the article "The Miser's Touch," a title that sorta insults the couple even while introducing an article which ostensibly seeks to promote responsible water usage during the drought.

Sigh.

Anyway, here is how the clever rain barrel chain works:

Let The Games Begin!

Right then. I was chastised for not having posted a sufficient number of blog posts as of late. Woe to those who challenge me.

Here is my news of the utterly bizarre courtesy of a friend in Scotland. We've seen one Haggis already. Game on. Who is gonna beat us?

Bravo to Creative Educational Methods

In honor of World AIDS Day, I submit this article for consideration.

Road Bike, Not Dope Bike

I realize that money runs the world. In particular, sponsorship rules the sporting world. It is refreshing to see that some companies still have principles.

I love cycling. I've even managed to teach Agincourt the fine art of cycling tactics. As an avid fan, I have been utterly saddened by the doping scandals to hit the sport. I suppose I should admit that I choose to believe that Lance Armstrong has always been clean, although that forces me to also admit that I am not always convinced of that. My hope is that the new generation of cyclists are indeed committed to making it a clean sport. My other hope is that sponsors continue to demand the same.

Conservation Advice in a Red State

As seen in an Emory University bathroom:

Do Not Eat at This Restaurant

Last night we ate at Los Loros, which turned out to be not only the worst Mexican restaurant in Atlanta, but possibly the worst restaurant in the world. My chile relleno was actually a slice of bell pepper covered in ground beef and what I believe was warmed Cheez Whiz. I still feel queasy.

But the place was packed! I was confounded. Why would the restaurant owners make such disguising food, and why would people buy it? Granted, most of the people there were also drunk, but still...

Of course, I've developed a (completely baseless) theory. Eating bad food is nostalgic for Americans. Eating a bell pepper and Cheez Whiz did remind me of my childhood, a simpler time when corn dogs were yummy and American cheese was considered... cheese. Until I was in college, my country was one in which ketchup was the only condiment, where Thai food was unknown, and where our food was marketed as 'cutting edge' rather than, well, tasty. Then along came Grey Poupon, with its uppity commercials that suggested that fancy was good, and Americans began to reevaluate what they wanted out of a meal. We wanted wine that didn't come out of a box, and beer that didn't taste like pee-pee. Now a days, if your a liberal, you never have to eat Cheese Whiz again - there are other options.

Unless, of course, you go to Los Loros. Then Cheese Whiz it is!

Will The Credit Crunch Steal Christmas?

Speaking of Grinch's stealing Christmas, shoppers are spending less this year, just one example from a pile of economic indicators to turn south over these last few months. Does this mean no Wii for me? With oil prices on the ups, will I be asking Santa for coal this season?

So, let's exchange our amateur philosopher's armchair for our amateur economist's ring cushion.

After the dot-com bust and 9/11, the Bush economic strategy was to flood the markets with money (while giving lip service to strong dollar policies!). This was done through tax cuts, and rock bottom interest rates. All that cheap money helped consumer confidence as well as corporate profits, but failed to create jobs or increase wages.

Now we're on the brink of a new bust with the housing bubble, brought on by those same low interest rates, and complicated by an unregulated market for exotic loans. This has been covered for more then a year by that NYT Casandra Paul Krugman.

Will this dampen the holiday spirit? My guess is not much. The American will to shop is much, much stronger then their fear of debt, and I don't feel good about this either. A little caution, even better, an investment in precious metal commodities, seems like a good idea.

We're really in uncharted territory here, but it looks to me like the perfect storm.

We'll just have to wait and see if the economic fallout reaches the North Pole.

Who's Stealing Christmas This Year?

According to the NYT Fashion and Style section, it's the environmentalists who are anti-Christmas now. Yup, the conscientious are preachy proselytizers who give bad presents!

The holidays have always been an emotionally combustible time for families... But in recent years, a new figure has joined the celebration, to complicate the proceedings even further: the green evangelist of the family — the impassioned activist bent on eradicating the wasteful materialism of the holidays.

Otherwise known, at least to skeptical traditionalists, as the new Grinch...

The question that an increasing number of families face is whether the proselytizing green member of the clan adds spice to the proceeding, like, say, a cup of whiskey in a bowl of eggnog, or an explosive element, like that same cup of whiskey tossed into the fire on Christmas morning.

Nice bully tactics from the NYT (albeit the Style Section): don't be an environmentalist, or your family won't love you.

Out All Night

Last night we went to "Go All Night" at the High Museum of Art. Basically, the museum was open until 2 am and we were allowed to get liquored-up while ogling antiquities. We felt really classy.

I really enjoyed both The Louvre and the Ancient World and The Eye of Josephine exhibitions. I was actually surprised at how little decorating taste have changed over the last 3,000 years. If Crate and Barrel were to market to the ancient Greeks, they would have very few changes to make to this season's catalog - just the replacement of a few light bulbs with oil lamps and voila!

The Inspiring Impressionism exhibition, however, was a bit thin. And the choreographed Latin dancing was just ridiculous. New Rule: Jazz hands should be illegal for anyone over the age of 12.

Who Knew?

We are in the midst of a worldwide helium shortage.

Seriously.

And there is such a thing as the Federal Helium Reserve in Amarillo, Texas.

I had no idea.

The Lie Log

How many lies do you tell in a day? What do those lies say about you?

What are the lies that we have in common? What do the lies we share tell us? What do they tell us about what we want to believe, and what it takes to make us believe it?

Casmall and I intend to start keeping lie logs, a record of all the lies we tell each day. We want to know what lies you are telling too. Just share the 'white lies;' if you did something illegal or truly mean-spirited we don't want to know about it.

I'll start... well, just as soon as I tell a lie I will. It won't be long, I'm not a very honest person.

The Founding

I declare The Journal of Modern Armchair Philosophies open for business (because some of you don't want to talk about lady things).