Quick Hitts

This morning someone had one of those talking heads infotainment morning “news” shows on in another room, and I was half listening to a story about the stimulus bill.  Millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent on roadside signs telling us that millions of taxpayer dollars being spent on road work.  Toward the end of the segment the host casually mentioned that we’re spending eighteen million dollars on a web site that tracks the package’s spending.

I figured I’d research that later, but didn’t have to – an article about it showed up in a tweet from the Cato Institute.  Yep, eighteen million.

I run three websites:  davehitt.com, which includes The Facts, the Quick Hitts podcast, and this blog, and the separate sites The Podcast Peer Awards and Blood Witness.  It costs me less than $200 a year.  Granted, we’re talking a shared server and maybe 1500 unique visitors on a busy day.  But I’ve also worked for an e-commerce company and am familiar with the costs involved.  A big, busy e-commerce site costs $50k-$100k to set up, and five or six grand a month in hosting fees.  Even if Uncle Sam was contracting for a site to be built from scratch it shouldn’t cost more than five or six hundred thousand dollars for design and implementations, and no more than 100K a year to keep it up and running.

Eighteen million bucks for a single web site.  This is the same government that stupid people believe will bring down the price of health care if we socialize medicine.  Yeah, that’ll work.

“Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel”  – Mark Twain (maybe)

With the advent of the internet we all have barrels full of bits that are nearly free.  Any person annoyed with any company can easily air their grievances to thousands of people.  This should inspire companies to do whatever they can to make their customers happy, but far too many don’t get it yet. 

The latest one I’ve seen is “United Breaks Guitars,” a YouTube video that currently has 168,000+ views, 6,000+ ratings, and over 2,000 comments.  It’s the story of a musician sitting in a United airplane, watching out the window while the baggage monkeys manhandle his expensive guitar, and United refusing to address the damage they caused. 

United claims they’re finally reopening negotiations, but the damage has already been done.  And word is he has two more videos in the works. 

Wise up United (and everyone else).  Fixing the guitar would have cost you $1400, replacing it would have cost $3500.  It’s a safe bet his video has cost you a lot more than that. 

United Breaks Guitars

I’ll be doing an interview about Blood Witness on Podioracket this Thursday, June 9, from 9:00 – 10:30 PM (EST). If you’ve got any questions about the novel, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or cults in general, please join us.

Call (347) 996-3319 and join the conversation.  While it’s running you’ll be able to listen to it live on this page.  If you’re too cheap to call there will also be a chat room where you can ask questions.

If you have questions but won’t be around for the show, send them to me (hittman@davehitt.com) and we’ll try to answer them.

If you haven’t listened to the novel, but intend to, please note that this is likely to be full of spoilers.

The teacher’s union is one of the biggest reasons US education sucks. They’ve made it  impossible to give a teacher a raise for being good at their job.  And it’s even more impossible to get rid of the bad ones.

In New York City over 700 teachers receive full pay ($70,000/year) for not teaching.  They’re all waiting for hearings about their misconduct, but have been removed from the classroom.  They report to “rubber rooms” where they do anything they like, burning through eight hours and our tax money, for months and sometimes years.  Of course, they still get the vacations and holidays working teachers get.  They cost taxpayers sixty five million dollars a year.

Things are slightly better in LA, where only 178 teachers are paid to do nothing.

Why? Because it’s getting rid of a rotten teacher is harder than throwing away a boomerang.  Take a look at the procedure.

Is it any wonder we encounter so many stupid people every day?

If you’re attacked in the UK and defend yourself with a gun you will spend more time in jail than your attacker.  As a result both criminals and decent people are arming themselves with the next best thing – knives.

Britain is even more of a nanny state than the US, so it’s not surprising that for the past couple of years doctors have been whining about knives being pointy and citizens getting all stabby with them. A couple of years ago they when they suggested making pointy knives illegal, but  no one took them seriously.  But now anti-stab knives have been invented.  (Click the photo for a better look.) They have a tiny, nearly useless  point on the end, under a blunt stubby section designed to snag on clothing if someone tries to stab a bad guy with it.

I’ve worked in a restaurant, and chiefs are serious about their knives.  They’ll spend hundreds of dollars for one or two knives, and take with them when they leave work so no one else can use them.  They keep them extremely sharp, and they are all pointy.

Considering how nanny the UK has become I’m guessing that in a couple of years pointy knives will be banned in professional kitchens, and then made illegal in the home as well.  You think English food sucks now?  Just wait.

Among the many reasons I remain skeptical about Global Warming – excuse me, Climate Change – are the veracity and agendas of those promoting it.  Government, non-government and quasi-government organizations (like the UN) are spreading fear at every opportunity while jumping on the chance to grow their power and income.

The EPA has been a junk science machine since the days of Carol Browner, who changed the mission from cleaning the environment to harassing business for sport and expanding their tentacles into every aspect of American life.  Her administration released the famous second hand smoke “study,” which is a blueprint of how to turn a complete absence of evidence into a junk science proclamation that the mass media will lap up like a stray dog gobbling diseased rodent parts.  It inspired a movement that has grown into an American Jihad against smokers.

The EPA has become a good “opposite barometer” to attach to your bullshit meter.  If they say something is true, it’s probably a lie.  And the concept of GW has them creaming in their jeans at the possibilities.  They’ve expressed glee at the prospect of regulating everything, right down to the kind of lawn mower you can buy.

So it should come as no surprise that when a serious, non-crank report, (PDF file)  created by their own staff, advised caution and discussed the possibility that the fear was unfounded, they buried it.    While they continue to whine about Bush suppressing their findings, it turns out they do a much better job of that themselves.

Two days later and we’re still be bombarded by stories about Michael Jackson.  I grew up listening to the Jackson 5, loved Off the Wall and Thriller, but enough already. 

Jackson was raised a Jehovah’s Witness, and was still one when he did the Thriller video, which is why he prefaced it with the disclaimer: 

“Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this film in no way endorses a belief in the  occult.”

The sixteenth time I saw excerpts from the video it occurred to me that he’d still be alive today if instead of becoming a Jehovah’s Witness Zombie he had become a Jehovah’s Witness Vampire.