I’m Not a Professional Blogger.

Researchers from the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands have announced that they believe that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart may have died from a strep throat infection at the age of 35 in 1791.

In a slightly less formal study I did, I found that no one cares.  Nor should they.

And I can only hope that no government agency funded the research that led to this conclusion.

I’m all for studying and learning from history–especially if it leads us to not make mistakes, or go through situations we have in the past.  But studying what killed one guy over 200 years ago?  Especially when you will never conclusively prove anything?  What good does that do?

So, I was reading another article today on how Obama is going to fix the current economic situation by Week #2 in office, and I came across this little gem:

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland said Sunday he wants the House to approve the plan by the end of the month, sending it to the Senate in time for action before Congress leaves on its mid-February break.

The new Congress is sworn in this week.  And by mid-February, they need a break.

That got me thinking–just how much are we paying these clowns?  Trusty Yahoo! Answers provided me with the answer I needed–as of 2008, a Congressperson’s salary was $169,300 for the House or the Senate (more for party leaders).  Some people would argue that they deserve this pay, due to having the weight and expectations of the country essentially on their shoulers.

I might even agree–if they actually worked full time, rather than taking a break a month after they were sworn in.  And if we didn’t hear about all the trips they apparently go on (my wife sat by one of our Senators last year on a plane ride to Vegas–just a day trip, apparently, but considering we’re not from Nevada, was it needed?).  And if they didn’t take 3-6 months off every few years (or every other year) to get themselves (or their cronies) re-elected (or while they try for a better office).

And what do they do when they’re in office?  Well, as of late, they spend as little time possible debating ways to “jumpstart” the economy.  Personally, I think maybe we should take the roughly $91 million dollars in salary (not to mention benefits and off-the-book perks), and add that to the money we use for these bailouts.  See how much they like it when we start taking money from THEIR pockets.

It isn’t surprising any more when PETA makes stupid requests of companies and/or organizations.  In fact, it’s gotten to be so common, that apparently they have to now come up with requests so incredibly stupid that it’s almost unbelievable, just to get a little bit of media attention.  Ahh, the sad life of media whoring.

Their latest request is yet another case of PETA caring far more for animals lower on the food chain than they do about humans.  They want Ben & Jerry’s, the company with strange but good ice cream flavors and a reputation for being socially responsible, to stop using milk from cows.  And replace it with human breast milk.

Let me repeat that–they think Ben & Jerry’s should make ice cream from human breast milk.

Apparently, the fact that a Swiss restaurant will being to substitute breast milk for 75% of the cow’s milk he currently uses means that an American company that makes massive amounts of ice cream should too.

“The fact that human adults consume huge quantities of dairy products made from milk that was meant for a baby cow just doesn’t make sense,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “Everyone knows that ‘the breast is best,’ so Ben & Jerry’s could do consumers and cows a big favor by making the switch to breast milk.”

I’m not so sure they thought this one through.  If we started replacing cow’s milk with human breast milk across the country, this would not be good for dairy cows–it would mean we don’t need dairy cows.  So we would kill a lot of dairy cows.  And that would suck, because I don’t know that dairy cows make that great of a steak, so they’d pretty much go to waste.

Oh yeah, and there’s also no way in hell that there would be enough lactating women to supply the demand for ice cream.  Hell, we’d have to start breeding women just to produce milk, keep them in cages, and pump them full of hormones to produce more milk to try to keep up with demand.  And even then, ice cream would probably cost $25 a gallon or more.

But PETA would be happy, because we saved some cows.

Fortunately, Ben & Jerry’s declined the request.  Unfortunately, they did so in a civil manner:

“We applaud PETA’s novel approach to bringing attention to an issue, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child,” said a spokesperson for Ben and Jerry’s.

Something along these lines would have been better, in our eyes:

“We laugh in the face PETA’s ridiculous approach to bringing attention to themselves, but we believe a mother’s milk is best used for her child.  Unless that mother & child are a part of PETA, in which case we think the child should be given up for adoption, so as to prevent the stupidity of the mother from possibly ruining another life that could be spent actually making a difference.”

I’m not sure who the bigger moron in this Raleigh, North Carolina household is–the 16-year old kid who dropped out of school to focus on Guitar Hero, or the parents for letting him do so because they “couldn’t take the complaining any more.”

“We couldn’t take the complaining anymore,” Peebles’ mother Hunter told the News & Observer. “He always told me he thought school was a waste of time.”

Oh, well, if he thinks that school is a waste of time, but playing video games is a good use of time, clearly he must be the one to trust on such a decision, right?  At least they are making sure he’s home schooled.

But hey, at least he’s won some chicken sandwiches with his “talent.”

And who knows, maybe some day he can learn how to actually play a real guitar.

Seriously–are kids today getting dumber?

I realize it isn’t really something to joke about–it’s good that the morons got caught.  But how they got caught is just amazingly stupid.

« Previous entries