These Aren’t the Hispanics You are Looking For

They Were Here Just A Minute Ago

The State of Florida is looking for something.  18,000 buildings that it owns, but doesn’t seem to be able to put their hands on right now:

The State of Florida is looking for help finding something you’d think would be hard to lose: approximately 18,000 buildings, owned by the taxpayers of Florida, that state officials can’t quite put their fingers on. What’s more, state officials say they don’t have the people to hunt them down, so they want to use tax money to hire an outside company to find each building Florida has misplaced.

Could there be any better example of how government has gotten too big?  And this is just 1 of 50 states.  And if the Federal Government were asked to produce a list of all the buildings it owns?

But remember – government is short of money – they always, always, always, always need more.

Trojan House: New poster-child of solar failure

Yeah, but shouldn’t the first clue of failure have been the very idea of building an 800 square-foot house in Troy, MI that cost $900,000 — that is, $1,125 per square foot? The median price of homes in Troy is about $159,000 and that’s for an 1,800 sq. ft home — about $88 per square foot.

Even if the solar system hadn’t malfunctioned, who in their right mind would consider the house a success?

I suppose it’s fitting that this tragi-comedy occurred in a place called Troy — the greens are trying to deceive us in adopting their nutty policies and goofy technologies with a Trojan House.

Beware of greens bearing grifts.

clipped from greenhellblog.wordpress.com It was supposed to be a shining example of the green movement — a completely independent solar-powered house with no gas or electrical hookups. Seven months ago, officials gathered for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate the $900,000 house owned by the city of Troy that was to be used as an educational tool and meeting spot. But it never opened to the public. And it remains closed. Frozen pipes during the winter caused $16,000 in damage to floors, and city officials aren’t sure when the house at the Troy Community Center will open… “The system was designed to kick a heater on to keep water from freezing,” [the superintendent of parks for the city] said. “The heater drew all reserve power out of the battery causing the system to back down and the pipes froze.”

Denver Post – I Want The Schools To Parent My Children

Yesterday’s (Sunday) DP has a big front-page screed about the urgent need to teach children how to have sex. Mark Thrun is identified as a physician at Denver Public Health and the co-parent (tipoff – if you don’t want to be known as “father” you probably are more than a little bit of a pussy-whipped Alan Alda caring and weeping proto-male) of two spirited little boys. He’s also an Assistant Professor of Medicine at CU focusing on AIDS research.

So what’s the big issue for the Post? The schools are not teaching kids enough about how to use condoms. In fact, 30 percent of the public schools are teaching abstinence (the horror! – teaching the one absolutely assured method of not getting pregnant or a sexually transmitted disease).

Of course, its all the fault of “a few vocal opponents of comprehensive sex ed” – which we all know is code for the sexually repressed white Christians who hate all people who aren’t white and Christian like them – the filthy Christians!

So why is it so important that public schools teach sex?

Occasionally, the brave among us might begin the conversations at home. Awkward and stinted, we try to muddle through “The Talk” as best we can.

Some of us, however, never even get that far. Instead, we assume that the educational system will step in. Or, at least, that is what we hope.

So I’m such a pussy I can’t talk to my children about sex – I want some stranger to tell them about it. I completely abdicate my responsibilities as a parent to the all-knowing, perfect government education system who will fill my kids brain with some information about sex – just so long as I don’t have to do it.

But then in steps the filthy idiots who don’t want to teach my children some things that I want them to know about – condoms, birth control, homosexuality, bestiality, polygamy, whatever. It would seem that logically this would be the point where I would step in as a parent and start providing whatever sexual information I wanted my children to know. If you are a parent and you want your kids to know this information – tell them. They are, after all, your children.

But this is apparently far too logical a choice for Dr. Thurn. His choice – pitch a hissy fit to force the schools to tell the kids what YOU want them to know regardless of what anyone else believes.

We abdicate our parental and societal obligations to our youth by choosing not to prepare them to be responsible when they do become sexually active.

This is where we as parents need to step in. It is imperative that we take on the task of encouraging and collaborating with schools to develop appropriate sex ed courses.

So you are willing to stand up to your right as a parent to scream and yell about what is being taught to everyone, but take absolutely no responsibility as a parent to teach your children what you want them to know?

Typical gutless liberalism.  Force everybody to believe as I do, just don’t make me actually do anything myself.

Greenpeace – Planting Trees without Approval?

That’s the way I read this story:

Over 1000 trees planted today by 30 Greenpeace volunteers in a central North Island block of land have been pulled out.

The volunteers began at 7.30am today to “re-forest” around 1600 square metres of land that had been cleared for dairy farming.

Greenpeace climate campaigner Simon Boxer said the re-planting campaign was aimed at drawing more attention to the large amounts of forestry land in the Tahorakuri Forest, northeast of Taupo, being converted to dairy farming.

But state owned Landcorp chief executive Chris Kelly which leased the land said the trees had been removed soon after the volunteers left.

“The owners of the land have taken some action, the trees have gone and as I understand it the trees are being donated to a local group,” he said.

Some questions seem to come to mind:

1. Where do these idiots get off just deciding they can come on to land they don’t own and start planting things on it? In America that is known as trespass and is against the law. I guess its different in New Zealand. It seems that something like that is possible based on this:

Greenpeace communications manager Suzette Jackson said police had arrived mid-morning, and warned the volunteers against trespassing further.

“We left then because we weren’t trying to get our team arrested, and we managed to plant all our trees.

2. The owners had to spend money and time to remove all this crap – can they sue Greenpeace to get it back? Would be an interesting test case – but again this would assume that New Zealand has a functioning legal system that actually recognizes personal property.

3. And why is this such a big problem? Apparently its a new front in the war on cow farts.

“It’s not a traditional Greenpeace action. Since we’re just starting to work on the agricultural issues, specially on dairy conversion, we want to start off a lot more calmly.”

Forestry was being replaced with one of the most greenhouse gas-intensive industries possible and emissions in New Zealand were increasing dramatically as a result, he said.

College Student Whiners

This little list of the top 5 reasons why its bad to be an engineering student sure shines a lot of light on today’s generation of snot-nosed whiners:

5. Awful Textbooks
Thick, dry, black and white manuscripts are rarely a source of inspiration and sometimes can cause loads of confusion. 

 No nice pictures to keep my attention.  Why in the world did I try to become an engineer?

4. Professors are Rarely Encouraging
During each class, a professor that would rather be tending to his research will waltz up to a blackboard or overhead projector and scribble out equations for an hour without uttering a single sentence to create some excitement.

Why won’t these people entertain me?  I’m expected to know what they are talking about without them patting my peaked little head every 2 seconds?  The horror!

3. Dearth of Quality Counseling
College students may not have a sense for how to build their resume and they might be clueless about the variety of career opportunities that await them. Unfortunately, some academic advisers do little more than post fliers about internships and hand out a checklist of classes to take.

 Here I is – a college student – and I don’t even know how to pad my resume with useless stuff that might sound good to some poor employer who will be responsible for actually educating me once I’m done with my fun-filled college days.  But these counselor people are supposed to soothe my fevered brow with individual understanding of MY situation and give ME all the answers to how the rest of my life is supposed to work out.  All those other students?  They are on their own.

2. Other Disciplines Have Inflated Grades
Brilliant engineering students may earn surprisingly low grades while slackers in other departments score straight As for writing book reports and throwing together papers about their favorite zombie films.  Many of the brightest students may struggle while mediocre scholars can earn top scores because they have a larger group of supportive friends to or more time to dedicate to studying.

I want my gold star!  This stuff is hard, and I can’t stand it any more!   I’ll tell my mommie on you.

1. Every Assignment Feels the Same
Nearly every homework assignment and test question is a math problem. Only a few courses require creativity or offer hands-on experience.

They actually expect me to learn this stuff.  What unmitigated gall.