Words of Truth

I was torn between the title for this post that I ultimately chose and the alternate “Six of One, Half-Dozen of the Other.” You, the reader, can tell me if I made the right choice.

If you listen to the Democrats (minus Joe “Whistling in the Dark” Biden), today is the day of doom. The day that the Democrats will almost certainly lose control of both houses of Congress, ensuring utter destruction for at least the next two years until the country comes to its senses again, and votes them back into office.

If you listen to the Republicans, today is the day that we retake Congress from the hands of those who shoved Obamacare down our throats, waffled on immigration, and allowed the President to do pretty much whatever he wanted.

I submit to you that, Republican or Democrat, today will largely be the day that follows yesterday. That’s pretty much the whole significance of the thing. Why do I feel this way? To paraphrase my friend Steve Deace (because I can’t find the actual quote), “Before America tries a three party system, we should try a two party system first.” He was saying that there really isn’t much difference between the Republicans and the Democrats. They talk a big game, but most of them are only interested in two things:

1. Getting to Washington DC.
2. Staying there.

I’ve heard some Republicans rejoicing at the forecasted Republican takeover of Congress, which means, according to them, that we will finally secure the borders, stop illegal immigration, repeal Obamacare, end abortion on demand, etc, etc, etc. To these people, I have one question:

Why didn’t the Republicans do those things before?

They controlled the White House for 8 years (2000-2008). They controlled the House of Representatives from 1994-2006. They controlled the Senate during those same years, except for two years in 2001-2002 when Jim Jeffords, RINO-NH, gave control of the Senate to the Democrats. What does that mean? It means that for FOUR YEARS the Republicans held both the Executive and Legislative branches, and for TEN years they held both houses. Did they solve the illegal immigration problem? No. Did they balance the budget? No. Did they decrease the federal debt? No. Did they end abortion on demand? No.

The Republicans have even controlled the House of Representatives for the past four years. DO you know how many bills the House has passed in the past four years to repeal Obamacare? 54 times (knowing these bills would die in the Democratically-controlled Senate, making them largely symbolic). Do you know who is in charge of what gets spent in this country? The House. Do you know who voted to fund Obamacare for the past four years? The House of Representatives. So they could have defunded Obamacare, but they didn’t. They tried, I’ll give them that, but when the Senate threatened government shutdown, the Republicans caved.

You see, when liberals defend their position, it’s called principled leadership. When conservatives defend their position, it’s called partisan bickering. The siren call of “bipartisanship” draws the Republicans onto the rocks every time.

So excuse me if I don’t get giddy when, tomorrow at this time the news agencies announce that this January Harry Reid will give up his gavel to Mitch “Bad Votes” McConnell.

A week ago I attended a talk by Dr. Neil Degrasse Tyson at the University of Indianapolis. He discussed current events in science generally, and astrophysics specifically. He was very entertaining, and I enjoyed the lecture immensely. He only mentioned evolution during the Q&A time at the end when someone asked a related question.

But one thing he said stuck with me. He was talking about how the United States is lagging behind other countries in science innovation. As an example he mentioned the three men who won the 2014 Nobel prize for Physics: Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano and Shuji Nakamura. Notice anything about those names? Dr Tyson’s point was that they are Japanese, and the Japanese (and Koreans) are outpacing us in science innovation by leaps and bounds.

But that’s not why I am writing this blog post. My post has to do with the REASON they won the Nobel Prize, specifically, “”for the invention of efficient blue light-emitting diodes which has enabled bright and energy-saving white light sources”.”

You see, when they came out with these Compact Fluorescent monstrosities, I was alarmed, because they said, “To improve the environment, you need to stop using those light bulbs made from glass and carbon, and start using glass and poisonous mercury. For the environment.” I didn’t want the things in my house. “But they’re more efficient” they said. “They’ll last longer” they said. Phooey on you, I said. I don’t want to have to call the EPA every time I break a light bulb.

But here is the answer to that problem: LED light bulbs. They use a fraction of the energy, save money over time, and are better for the environment. Dr. Tyson asked us all, “Does anyone here not have LED lights in their home, raise your hand. You’d better not raise your hand. Get your butt out there and get some! These are highly efficient sources of light, they give off hardly any heat, and they discovered it.” Evidently the invention of blue LED allowed scientists to develop white light LED light bulbs.

I had never heard of LED bulbs. After I got home I did some quick research, and found out that, while an LED light bulb is way more expensive than an incandescent bulb, it is also way more efficient and way longer lasting. The average incandescent bulb lasts about 1200 hours and will cost you $328 per year to keep lit. The average LED bulb will last about 50,000 hours (41 times longer) and cost you $32 per year to keep lit.

Today we bought our first LED bulbs. The bulbs do cost more. We paid about $6 for one bulb to put in our front yard (our HOA demands that each house have a security light post with a light bulb and a light sensor so it stays on all night). That light is on 10-12 hours every. Single. Night. And now my electric bill is going to go down. As we replace more bulbs, the bill will go down even more. As the following chart shows, these bulbs are more efficient, more durable, and better than the incandescent bulbs.

One correction: this LED bulb now costs $6, not $36, so it’s even better!

Their only drawback: they probably wouldn’t work anymore if you ever got hit with an EMP. So, barring nuclear war, LED is the way to go!

If you see this, your light bulbs will be the least of your problems.

There has been some fuss about the most recent viral video today. A woman decided to walk around the streets of New York City for ten hours, videotaping the whole thing, and then upload the results (the actual video is only 2 minutes long). She encountered a couple of creepy guys, but I watched the video, and I don’t think she got enough evidence to support that street harassment is an epidemic. Granted, I’m not a woman, and I’ve never had to deal with people hitting on me, but from my perspective, there are several problems with her assertion.

First of all, I have to say again that I am so tired of seeing these viral videos attached to words like “Jaw-dropping,” “Shocking,” “Amazing,” or phrases like “will change your mind” “will blow your mind,” etc…  Most of these videos are either cute, funny, or interesting, but nothing like they are described.  Calling the mundane wonderful gets annoying after a while.  It’s like you meet your friends for lunch, and they keep handing you store brand cookies and telling you they are “the absolute best cookies ever!!!” or eating a McDonald’s cheeseburger and being told the flavor combinations “will blow your mind!!!”  Just stop.

Back to the video at hand.  Not every person in the video could be described as displaying harassing behavior. Several people simply greeted her. It’s hard to accuse everybody in that video of lecherous behavior. That being said, some of them were definitely harassing her.

One observation I have to make: it’s New York City. I went there in 2006 and the only people who spoke to me were people to whom I gave money. Most people there are anti-social by nature. In other words, if you saw someone you were interested in getting to know, simply smiling at them is not going to be enough in NYC. They would continue to ignore you. In Iowa, if you don’t greet someone, you are looked on as rude. The opposite is true in NYC.

Finally, while a few guys in the video were creepy or pushy, some of them were just being friendly. We live in a world where the motivation of the man talking to a woman is determined by the woman receiving the message, NOT the man sending the message. In other words, if I say “hi” to a random woman, our society says it’s HER right to say if I am harassing her or just being nice.

The other thing that hasn’t been mentioned in relation to the fact that this was filmed in New York City was that this woman encountered FAR MORE people in her ten hours of walking than would be normal across the country. I’m guessing she probably went through the ten hours of video and included the worst offenders in her video. Even given the fact that that half of those people were just saying “hi”, I’d say that two minutes of examples out of ten hours of walking in NYC is pretty good. It has been estimated that about 7000 people per hour walk past certain spots in NYC. Given the fact that she was walking, we should be safe to cut that number in half, estimating that half of those people were walking the same direction she was. So that’s 3500 people per hour. In ten hours, that means she encountered approximately 35,000 people. Let’s assume for now that half of them were women, and let’s further assume the women were not interested in her. That means that in ten hours she encountered approximately 17,500 men. How many of them “sexually harassed” her? “more than 100 instances of verbal street harassment.” Let’s ignore the fact that several of these men were simply saying hello. Let’s go ahead and assume all 100 were lecherous individuals.

That means that 0.05% of the men she encountered (0.025% of the humans she encountered) were perceived by her to be sexually harassing her.  That means that out of every 175 people she encountered, one was creepy or talked to her.  I know some of you are visually oriented, so here’s a graph to display her experience.

Another thing, not one of these people touched her.  I think that’s significant.

Des Moines has about 207,000 people, whereas New York has 8.4 million. That means that it would take 40 Des Moines cities to fill NYC. This means that if she had walked the streets of Des Moines for ten hours, she would have only had 2.5 of these interactions. Considering that half of the people in the video were simply saying hello, this means that if she had walked in Des Moines, ONE PERSON would have hit on her, statistically speaking. It would probably have been the guy walking next to her for five minutes. What a creeper.

Personally I believe her assertion that street harassment is a huge problem is overblown.  Does it exist?  Yes.  Do we need to pass laws about it?  I don’t think so.

I learned my lesson today. I had some textbooks that I don’t need, so I listed them for sale on Amazon.com. Two of the books sold, and we shipped the first one via USPS on September 25th. They didn’t pay for tracking, so I didn’t ask for it. They didn’t pay for delivery confirmation so I didn’t ask for it. And I didn’t save the receipt.

I think you know the rest of the story. I started getting e-mails a few weeks ago: Where is my book? I paid you but still have not received it. Etc. Etc. I reassured the buyer it was in the mail, but according to her, she never got it.

This means logically that one of two things happened:
1. The United States Post Office lost my package, or is taking their own sweet time (almost a month now) to deliver it
2. She received the book, and is lying so she can get her money back and have a free book.

While both of these are possible, in the interests of good will I assumed the first to be true, and refunded her money. If I had gotten delivery confirmation, then number 2 would be impossible, since I could prove she received it. If I had saved the receipt, I would have the tracking information so I would be able to tell where it is (hopefully). A month ago I had a $20 book. Then I had $20, and she had the promise of a book. Now she has her $20 back, and I have no book.

Next time I will get delivery confirmation and save the receipt with the tracking information. Because those are for me, not for the buyer.

Live and learn.