Give me my cellphone or give me death

It is stunning how dependent some young people are on their cellphones. As I was riding the Amtrak Surfliner up to San Luis Obispo a couple of years ago, our train went through an area south of Vandenberg Air Force Base where there was no cell phone reception. Across the aisle from me was a college age young woman who had been on  her phone pretty much constantly since we'd left L.A. When we lost reception, she fiddled with her phone for about five minutes, then realizing we were in a place with no reception, she put her phone aside. For about two minutes. Then she tried to connect again. Two minutes later she tried again. Every two minutes she tried to connect for the next half hour. She was desperate and I was irritated at her need to call someone.

In an emergency the first reaction of most people these days is not to try and solve the problem (if it is in face solvable) but to call someone and tell them about it.  I remember a disaster movie I saw a couple of years ago. The director captured this phenomenon exactly right. A bunch of kids were in high school when some cosmic disaster occurred and the temperature started to drop. Big icicles were forming on the edge of the roof. The common sense hero was urging everyone to run to the basement where they'd be safe. But since there was no reception there one girl rather ran outside on the first floor to call someone to tell them about the disaster and was promptly impaled by a falling monster icicle.

I loved it. The cellphone dependent meet their much deserved fate.

More With Less, Paul MacCready and the Dream of Efficient Flight

More Male Girl Scout Leaders Too

The Seattle Methodist Church chapter of the Boy Scouts is being eased out of scouting since they appointed a gay scoutmaster. The BSA is so out of it. Having gay priests didn't hurt the Catholic Church, did it?

Treyvon Nation

There was a fight the other day at Santa Monica high school between a teacher and a student. Apparently the teacher (who was also the school's wrestling coach) saw a student pull out a bag of marijuana and offer to share it with someone. The teacher tried to confiscate the pot. The student apparently stabbed the teacher with a pencil. The teacher drove him up against the wall and tackled him with a leg hold.

When the school principal, Sandra Lyon, saw video of the fight on YouTube, she called the coach's actions "utterly alarming." She suspended him on the spot and pledged support for the student's family.

Support for his family???

What on earth do they need support for? Does she think the family was traumatized by seeing their son taken down in a wrestling hold and held by his legs? If he's openly dealing pot like that they probably had similar confrontations in their own living room.

Well, I can imagine what really happened here. The coach is white. The student is black. And the principal did not want the incident "Treyvonized," which is to say, she didn't want the parents of the student calling an attorney, holding a press conference, and bringing in Al Sharpton and Jessie Jackson to denounce the school before sympathetic reporters on national TV.

What on earth is the appeal of "rocket stoves?"

If you go to YouTube and type in "Rocket Stove" you be overwhelmed by the number of entries. These are little homemade wood stoves made out of bricks or metal which burn hot and fast. They are nothing which any six year old couldn't have made in 20 minutes on a Saturday morning. Yet the builders are so proud of their projects that they post videos of the things before they've even finished the first one, let alone made one that works better than lighting a pile of sticks on the sidewalk. Man!

Stupid Parents, Stupid School

I just read that another a school had a boy arrested because he posted a message saying he might bring a "toy gun" to school (to protest what he described as lax security at the school). Naturally the police arrested the boy--on the grounds that he was shouting fire in a crowded theater. Apparently up to 50 parents kept their kids home that day when they heard about his message. I don't know why schools (and parents) are so dumb these days. I find it hard to believe that school authorities think that a statement that a kid might bring a "toy gun" to school is actually a security threat.

I suspect they looked at the attendance numbers and flew off the handle at all the money they lost that day based on their school's average daily attendance figures. That's what really pissed them off--that other parents were so stupid they kept their kids home from school. Someone needed to suffer for that loss of income and so the boy did.

Geldof The Lame

Aging British musician turned activist Bob Geldof recently gave a speech in Johannesburg in which he said global warming would kill us all by 2030. Now I know Geldof is not a climate scientist (and wears his sunglasses indoors too boot) so maybe he deserves a little leeway but if he really truly believes his own claim that climate change will kill the entire human race in 17 years he ought to consult a mental health professional. According to a Berkeley physicist, Richard Muller, who started an organization (Berkeley Earth) to exhaustively examine worldwide temperature trends, the average world temperature will increase one degree Fahrenheit by 2030. How big a change is that? Well, it's like moving from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, where the average midsummer daytime high is 85 degrees, 40 miles south to Gettysburg, where the average high is 86. Surely Geldof doesn't believe the current residents of Gettysburg are all dying of drought and heat prostration. So why would he believe the residents of Harrisburg will all start dying off if summer highs go up one degree in 17 years?