Register to vote

This applies to all readers who live in nations with public elections, but since I live in the United States, I’m focused more on elections here.

Everybody complains about politics.  You can either remain a whiny brat online, or you can do something about it.  The simplest thing you can do is vote; vote the worthless schmucks out of office and vote in someone who will represent you.  But to vote, you have to register.  There are places like RegistertoVote.org and the League of Women Voters that can help you do that.  Or, if you’re uneasy using a third party website, you can also use your state website, which is usually your state name.gov.  Depending on your state, there are various days you need to be register by in order to vote come November 8, so do it now to get it out of the way.

Political expenditures

For the past … year it seems, whenever you turn on the news there are political pundits yammering on about polls and what some candidate said at some place and blah.  How much time, money, and effort goes into making all the ads, conducting all the polls, and then dissecting every little bit of data to blather on for hours on end on cable news?  I’m not saying we shouldn’t put any effort into politics, just not as excessive an amount as we currently do. 

I’m curious how many man-hours will be put in by candidates, their staffs, their PACs, polling companies, and news outlets for the 2016 Election.  And how does that compare to the Apollo program?  Or building a pyramid?

The climate change “conspiracy”

It’s very easy to cry conspiracy.  I mean, it was probably less than an hour after the news broke that Justice Scalia died that I saw a tweet demanding an independent autopsy.  Because, well, I only ever saw him in his robes, but I always thought he had the face of someone who was a bit hefty.  And a hefty guy a month away from turning 80 dying of a heart attack is “suspicious.” Of course, that’s what they want you to think.

Anyway, one of the biggest conspiracy claims online is that climate change isn’t real.  Because tens of thousands of scientists working in various fields for decades in scores of countries are all “in” on whatever the conspiracy theorist is against.  Thousands of nefarious doers who never have a change of heart and blow the whistle.  Yeah, because that’s how conspiracies really work.  Have you ever heard the saying, “Three can keep a secret, if two of them are dead?”