The above comic is created and licensed by Rudis Muiznieks of Cectic.com.

Happy Friday!

I didn’t realize how much I was missing the weekly question we used to post until it was gone (Janet has taken a break from it to focus on other things). Anyway, with that in mind I thought I would take on the responsibility and send something out.

This week’s question is geared to all of those Internet junkies out there….

What are some of the websites you read the most and why?

I myself need to think about this one a bit so stay tuned for my answer

Bunnies4Buddha

Gas prices are now much higher in America. We all know this. Some of us saw it coming (though I thought it would happen a lot sooner) and planned for it. We purchased smaller, fuel efficient cars, car pooled, and moved closer to where we work and/or go to school. We may have even taken public transportation now and then. Others, well, they continued living in the suburbs and continued driving their two SUVs 40+ miles to and from work.

You know the type. They insist that they ‘need’ an oversized vehicle to transport their kids to and from school and extra curricular activities. Not that their kids couldn’t walk the mile and half twice a day (yet they wonder why their kids are getting so fat). Despite this claim you usually see the driver alone in their tax-subsidized suburban tanks. You usually see them most often when they are right in front of you, blocking 90% of your visibility. That’s when you can’t help but notice that, more often than not, somewhere on the backs of these eye-sores, there is a little metal stylized fish.

That’s right, the owners of these monsters are often Christians. I couldn’t find any hard statistics to confirm this anecdotally formed opinion, but it stands to reason considering two commonly accepted facts. 1. Liberals are more likely to drive smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles. 2. Christians are more likely to be conservatives. Thus Christians are more less likely to drive smaller automobiles. Regardless, the point of this rant post is to highlight some hypocrisies of the Christian SUV/minvan driver, and how that hypocrisy has reached new heights recently.

How is ownership of a large, fuel-inefficient vehicle hypocritical for the Christian? Greed. First of all, SUVs are tax-subsidized, meaning that people rich enough to buy a large vehicle save money at the cost of everyone else, including those who cannot afford such a vehicle. Second, they produce more pollution. Harming everyone via the environment is not excused by the convenience of having a large vehicle. Third, SUVs are more safe for the owner (presuming they opt for the non-flipping kind), but less safe for everyone else. Fourth, they create a disproportionate amount of road damage for which everyone’s taxes must be used. And Finally, they create a high demand for gasoline which has pushed prices up for everyone. Continue reading…

The above image is created and licensed by She’s Not Ther.

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Thanks to Jason Bently, host of my favorite radio program, Metropolis, on KCRW, I’ve found a great resource for new free music. It’s called RCRD LBL (’Record Label’ without any vowels). What is RCRD LBL you ask? Here’s how they describe themselves:

RCRD LBL is an online record label releasing exclusive and completely free music from emerging and established artists. In addition to our in-house label, our network includes a roster of independent record labels offering free MP3 downloads and multimedia content.

It’s organized like a multimedia blog. You can view music videos and listen to great music. You can even download many songs. I spent a few hours this morning downloading and listening to some of their archives and found over 30 great songs! They have a wide variety of styles but one thing all the songs seem to have in common - quality. Here are some of my suggestions:

• West Indian Girl
• Bat For Lashes
• The Presets (Especially the original version of This Boy’s In Love)
• The Black Angels
• MSTRKRFT
• Ladytron

Finally, they make it easy to keep up with the updates. You can use their RSS feed or subscribe to their pod cast. Let me know if you find anything cool!

My state had it’s primary yesterday (May 6th) and, for the first time, I worked the polls. It turned out to be a fantastic, but grueling experience. I got to work with some amazing people who live in my area. These people were very friendly, intelligent, and politically engaged. It’s great to know that there are others who not only care about politics on all levels (not just the national level), but do something to assist the process.

My only disappointment was that there weren’t more young people involved in the process. I was the youngest by at least 25 years and was less than half the average age of everyone there (there were seven others). Even at my training, where there were about 30 people, I was the 2nd youngest (there was one inspiring young woman there who couldn’t have been more than 23) and likely the only one there in my 30s. It’s been said many times before, but usually with respect to voting: the democratic process needs younger people!

Here’s why. The electoral process is slowly modernizing. Here in NC, we already have electronic voting machines (with a paper trail). This election was the first time they had an electronic registered voter database. Every other person there, despite having the same training and more years of experience, would not have been able to successfully run that machine. Furthermore, most of them knew this. This is because they didn’t grow up with computers. They have little familiarity with how they work. It’s not just a matter of comfort level. Most of them don’t even have email address, yet they were expected to run (if not understand) a databasing system. Our nations youth have grown up with computers around them. They understand them and are familiar with them. Most of them would have had no problem learning and using the new system.

The above image is created and licensed by Danny.

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The above comic is created and licensed by Rudis Muiznieks of Cectic.com.

I just love Cectic.com. They even have a cool shirt you can buy now.

It’s official: G. W. Bush is the worst president ever as measured by his disapproval rating. According to a recent CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll, 71% of Americans disapprove of how he is handling his job as president. This is well above every presidents’ disapproval ratings in every poll of this kind in history. It’s even lower than Nixon’s disapproval rating just prior to announcing his resignation. In other words, Americans distrust President Bush more than they distrusted Nixon at the height of the Watergate scandal. Perhaps it’s because Watergate didn’t result in the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of non US citizens nor did it cost trillions of dollars. Amazingly enough, his approval rating is still higher than the lowest experienced by Nixon (and Truman).

Okay, so polls aren’t necessarily the best way to objectively (or accurately) measure the quality of a political figure. Furthermore, it tells us what we already knew: Bush is unpopular. But at least America is waking up to what foreigners have known for year - Bush is one of the worst presidents ever.

The image is created and licensed by Brian Sims.

That’s right! It’s been five years since IV Day, when our president declared in his historic speech “…my fellow Americans, major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.” On May 1st, 2003, America avenged the deaths of September 11th with such efficiency that we even vanquished a dictator who had absolutely nothing to do with it!

It’s easy to forget this day, having grown so comfortable in our half-decade of peace and prosperity. Please don’t forget this victory that signaled that Iraq was safe for us to rebuild. Had we not had such a decisive win, American soldiers may well have been dying in Iraq to this day! Thankfully, this did not come to pass and cries of “Allah bless the US!” can be heard every where American tourists go in Iraq.

Don’t let others forget! It’s your patriotic duty to wish everyone you see today a Happy IV Day!

Foreign Policy Magazine has identified what it considers the top 100 public intellectuals. Now they want our help to pick the top 20. On one of their webpages, you can vote for your top 5. Here were my choices:

1. Peter Singer
2. Steven Pinker
3. Richard Dawkins
4. J. Craig Venture
5. Steven Levitt

As with any voting system to chose the top anything, it’s far from perfect. Everyone brings their own bias, not least of which is familiarity bias. I voted for those because they were members of the subset of listed intellectuals that I actually know about. Still, it’ll be interesting to see who winds up in the top 20 list.

Who did/would you vote for?