Offshore Drilling = Not Hot

McCain and Palin would have you believe that they have a solution to high gas prices, and Obama and Biden are just too liberal and elitist to be reasonable.

McCain and Palin want to increase offshore drilling immediately. They frame this in the context of understanding the struggle that average Americans face in their day to day lives, and how much harder the high gas prices of late are making our struggles. They want to help us, and offshore drilling will bring gas prices back down, they say. Obama doesn't understand or care about the fact that so much of your paycheck is spent on gas these days before you even get to work.

What they're not telling you is that offshore drilling isn't a simple, or even timely, fix. It's not a matter of signing some paperwork one day, starting to drill the next, and saying sayonara to high gas prices and foreign oil the day after that. There are protocols to be followed, and even with advanced technology, it will be years before we see any results. Optimistic estimates say we might see some oil from increased offshore drilling in 2014. Maybe. But most estimates seem to put the benefits of offshore drilling at a decade out. No matter when we start to see the finished product, though, estimates put the amount of oil in currently off-limits areas at 18 billion barrels or more. Those eighteen billion barrels would quench our thirst for oil for about two and a half years. But let's be really hopeful here, and double the estimate to 36 billion barrels, which might last five years. Is it worth waiting at least six years for a payoff that might have a positive impact for five years?

McCain and Palin say they will fund research and development of alternative fuels. But so did Bush when he was reelected in 2004...and an entire fleet of the most promising all-electric car car of its time, GM's EV1, was destroyed on his watch. Who's to say McCain or Palin will do any better?

Or, for that matter, you might say, Obama and Biden? I do have more faith in their administration actually moving us toward alternative fuels, though, because they're not dangling increased drilling in front of us like it's a short- or long-term solution (when in fact anyone who's read up on the offshore drilling proposal knows it's neither). By refusing to give in to the country's demand for oil, Obama and Biden would leave us no choice but to move forward to energy independence now, instead of ten to twenty years from now, when our offshore drilling options are exhausted. Until gas prices stay high and we start recognizing crude oil for the unsustainable resource that it is, promising to fund alternatives is meaningless. Sorry, Paris. You almost had a great solution in merging the two tickets' platforms on energy. But it doesn't quite work.

The Antichrist Cometh

I recently contemplated that, based on what little I remember reading and hearing about the description of the Antichrist in the Left Behind series, there are probably some people out there who think that Obama is the Antichrist. And, sadly, a quick Google search confirmed my suspicion. The man thinks that talking to world leaders is a better means to achieve peace than bombing first and asking questions later. So he must be evil incarnate.

Yes, You Should Vote. But...

...first you should make an informed decision on how to cast your vote.

Take the on-camera remarks made by people in West Virginia following their May primary, which Jon Stewart then skewered for his audience's viewing pleasure. Yes, it was a while ago, but the reasons given by these people for voting the way they did have come up frequently in my house over the past couple months. Here are the reasons cited by these West Virginians for voting the way they did (for Hilary):

"I guess because he is another race. I'm sort of scared of the other race, because we have so much conflict with 'em."

"He's a Muslim, you know, and that has a lot to do with it."

"I don't like the Hussein thing. I've had enough of Hussein."

The fact that a voter can simply ignore the candidates' stances on the issues and vote for whomever most closely resembles herself or himself, in either appearance or [perceived] religious views, terrifies me. (Yes, it was just a primary and not a real election, but since it served to narrow the field of presidential candidates, it was not something to take lightly.) These people made the decision of who they wanted the democratic candidate for president to be based on (1) race, (2) a false rumor which has been exposed as such at least a hundred times by various credible sources - or a religion which the woman clearly knows nothing about, beyond the actions of extremists, and (3) a name.

All three "justifications," if they may be called that, are inexcusable, but the first two are not all that surprising; bigotry and gullibility are rampant in our culture. The second interviewee is a particularly disturbing example of this fact because she exhibits both of these characteristics.

The third woman, though, really takes the cake. She openly admits that she voted for Hilary over Obama solely because of his middle name. Because it happened to be part of the name of a late Middle Eastern tyrant who was really not a good person at all. But, if you'll indulge me in an over-quoted line from Romeo and Juliet, "What's in a name?" The name itself is derived from Hasan, which means "handsome" in Arabic. But if we're talking about name association, I guarantee that this woman also has no idea that the name "Hussein" might also bring to mind (at least to the mind of someone who has paid any attention to the Middle East beyond where the U.S. is currently waging war in the past decade or two) King Hussein of Jordan (1935-1999), who spent his 45-year reign working to improve his people's quality of life and toward peace in the Middle East. And, of course, I could also mention that Saddam Hussein's rise to power didn't start until 1963, when he was involved in the Ba'ath party's overthrow of Prime Minister Qasim. Barack Hussein Obama, Jr. was born in 1961 and named after his father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. Not that any argument really needs to be made against the "Hussein thing" woman's remark, but there you have it.

I suppose I should be glad, because of my own political leanings, that the people of West Virginia voted more for Democratic candidates than for Republicans. Even Obama (91,737 votes), who was crushed by Hilary (239,298 votes), got more votes than McCain (89,782 votes). And yet Bush won West Virginia in the 2004 election. This demonstrates how much of a mess Republicans have made things in the last four years: even in a state where people will willingly voice their bigotry on-camera, a female Democrat and a black democrat are more desirable than a white male Bush clone. But please. If you're going to vote, look at the issues more than the appearances, rumor mills, or names of the candidates.

Girls for Sale. Cheap.

So I was looking at a blog today and happened to notice one of the ads placed by Google at the top of the page. This is what it read:

Vietnam Girls
Save on Vietnam Girls. Bargain Prices. Smart Deals.

Even though I'm not a fan of the buying and selling of human beings (or the troubling sex trade innuendos that this advertisement seemed to reek of...or the idea of "bargain prices" being applied to any of the above), my inquisitive nature, which I usually manage to repress in such potentially unsavory territory, won out. I boosted Google's sales revenue and clicked the link.

I found myself looking at the shopzilla.com search results for "Vietnam girls." The actual results were, to my relief, quite tame. There were three art.com posters depicting daily life in Vietnam. But then, below what shopzilla.com had to show me, was...another collection of sponsored links. And these, of course, were targeted at the very type of person who would normally be drawn in by the words "Vietnam Girls" in proximity to the words "Bargain Prices." Again, not usually me.

You know what I'm about to describe. The kinds of advertisements that conjure up a story reminiscent of Lolita taking place in Vietnam. Only with a more pathetic, less sympathetic version of Humbert Humbert. The kind of guy who can't make it with American girls because he's a huge social failure, but who hopes that some Asian girl with visions of coming to the U.S. will tolerate his advances long enough for him to get laid. How's that for a cliché?* Politically incorrect enough? I think it helps that I once saw something like that playing out on a tour of the Jack Daniels distillery. Except that the girl in question was Russian.

Anyway, the ads on the page I ended up at on an advertising site because of the ads on another web site (meta-ads?) made my skin crawl. A sampling:

Exotic Thai Women
Meet hundreds of Thai women During our 10 day tours to Bangkok

Thai women seeking men
beautiful sincere Thai women Looking for love, dating & marriage

Thai Dating And Singles
Meet Sexy Thai Singles Now! 308,000+ Members. Join 100% Free

Apparently, shopzilla.com thinks a Thai girl is the same as a Vietnamese girl. But dammit, when I clicked this link, I was expecting to find Vietnamese girls to purchase at "Bargain Prices!

Well, to a lot of Americans, I guess they probably are the same. And I don't know about you, but when I travel to countries on the other side of the world, I'm mostly just interested in meeting people of the opposite sex, rather than this experiencing another culture business.

The best worst part of these placed ads was the headline of "Stores Selling Artwork & Posters" placed above these advertisements. As if shopzilla.com could deny responsibility for the advertising of access to nubile Asian women by labeling them as advertisements for wall hangings.

I don't want Google ads to start censoring its content any more than I want books like Heather Has Two Mommies to be yanked from public libraries. But, unlike Heather Has Two Mommies, I see the advertisement "Save on Vietnam Girls" as a sad reflection on our society. Shall I try to compose a complete list of all of the negative aspects of our society that it highlights?

Consumerism. We like spending money and are obsessed with having the "right" things. Including girls purchased over the internet, apparently.

Orientalism. As it pertains to postcolonial attitudes, mainly, but the whole concept is a slippery slope.

Sex as a marketing tool. It really does sell, and that makes me sad, because that cheapens it. Especially when it's at Bargain Prices.

The "fast food effect." We are lazy bastards who can't even be troubled to get out of our cars and walk into a restaurant. Yes, I use the drive thru, too, though not often. Yes, I don't always have time/energy to cook/walk into a restaurant. Still, the prevailing attitude is, "I want it cheap, easy, and right now, dammit!" This also makes me sad.

Unwillingness to pay for quality/high priority items. Americans use a smaller percentage of their budgets for food than most of the rest of the world and have a greater variety of choices...some good, many bad...than much of the rest of the world, yet can justify spending more on unnecessary luxury items like leather upholstery in cars - see "fast food effect."

The implication that "Vietnam Girls" are somehow the bargain equivalent of...what? White girls? American girls? Insert category here. Or that there's a surplus, which causes the price to drop. I'm probably wandering too far in the economics here.

I'm out of thoughts for now. What do you think?


*I know this is certainly not always the case with couples of mixed nationalities, and I in fact know some very happy ones, but I think you get my unsettling point here.

Well, DUH!*

First, I would like to qualify this post by saying that, like John McCain, I don't know a whole lot about economics. Now that those of you who know me have recovered from the shock of me comparing myself to John McCain, I will qualify that statement by saying that I do understand a little about the subject. I think.

That said, I would like to present my thoughts on Bush's "innovative" plan to deal with rising food prices, specifically as they impact the efforts of the U.S. to fight poverty in other, less fortunate nations. This plan, which he presented to the U.N. last September, has been in the news again recently because food prices are continuing to rise dramatically. The basic gist of it is that the U.S. will continue to spend billions on delivering food aid to poor countries, but not by growing the food here and shipping it to where it is needed - often halfway around the world. Not only does this require increasingly scarce fossil fuels to get the food there, but it also contributes to greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming, which is an issue that is becoming harder and harder to ignore, even for right-wing politicians in the ever-warmer pocket of Big Oil. These efforts are will-intentioned, and certainly needed, but the execution of them is just plain stupid. It's like giving sewer water to a person dying of thirst. It might slake the person's thirst in the short term, but chances are it'll cause more problems down the road.

Now Bush wants to use the money to buy food (let's say rice) that's already being produced in those poor countries. The farmers who grow it will be paid for their crops (hopefully a fair price, but I'm not holding my breath) instead of having them rendered worthless by free, American-grown rice brought in on big, fuel guzzling ships. I saw a clip on CNN from a speech he gave in which he called this idea "innovative." But isn't this what the U.N. has been doing for years? The same U.N. that you outright ignore on pretty much every other foreign policy?

Under the current model of American aid, we send rice that we've grown into a place that already grows plenty of rice on its own. But with all that free rice coming in, there's no one to buy the rice that the farmers grow domestically. So the farmers can't provide for their families, but they can feed them American rice. Which they'll depend on as long as it keeps wrecking the economy and preventing the farmers from making a living by doing what they do - growing crops. So all that well-intentioned rice does currently is create a vicious cycle that keeps the poor countries poor.

For all my sarcasm and bitterness regarding the current U.S. method of delivering food aid, I'm glad our brainless president finally presented a better solution for the problem, even though it certainly wasn't his. (I'm sure it wasn't even his idea that we think about revamping how we deliver food aid, but that's beside the point.) I'll try to refrain from saying things like "Well, DUH" to the television when I hear him actually present more sensible ways of doing things. Which is what I yelled at it this morning. After all, it's kind of like watching the slowest kid in the special ed class, who also happens to be a bully, finally understand that two plus two really does equal four. You can't help but be a little proud of him, even if he did wreck your country (and everyone else's he could get his hands on).

*So, apparently, when I originally wrote this post, I hadn't checked the headlines for the New York Times that day. There had been a big article about the big rice shortage in Australia because of a six month drought and how it's contributed to the overall shortage of rice around the world. Yet I keep seeing articles about how there isn't a real shortage of rice in the U.S.

Once again, the rest of the world gets shortchanged. But maybe now, unlike previously, the U.S. would be justified in sending huge quantities of rice over to poorer Asian countries. But now that it's maybe the right thing to do, it probably won't happen.

Dunk This, Fred

If you watch television, you've probably seen the Dunkin' Donuts commercial with the catchy song:

Ocho half caff latte-ccino mocha due avec moi
My mouth can't form these words
My mind can't find these words
Is it French, or is it Italian?
Perhaps Fritalian?

Yes, it's clever. Yes, it's gotten stuck in my head on several occasions lately, and yes, I've caught my boyfriend whistling the tune on more than one occasion in the last five hours. This is what anyone who knows anything about marketing will tell you is a good ad campaign. But what is the commercial really saying?

You can go with the "coffee pretentiousness" angle and say that it's presenting Dunkin' Donuts as the "average joe's cup o' joe" (see, I can play the clever angle, too) without all the fancy lingo. "You order them in English," the commercial promises. That, added to the sneer with which the redhead with the cute haricut in the commercial says "French," plus the gross lumping together of French and Italian into "Fritalian," makes me kind of angry.

English is the bastard child of all languages, for starters. Or, as a sci fi reviewer named James Nicoll put it, "On occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." That's why, no matter what language you studied in high school, you probably found at least a few cognates between that language and English (like nacht in German and night in English).

My point is that words like mocha and cappuccino are English. And have been for some time. They're even in my Webster's New World Dictionary that's copyrighted 1990, the one that became somewhat worthless to me in high school when I started writing research for my science fair project. Because it's so lacking in big, fancy words. If we were to order such things in what the commercial might imply is "pure" English (which doesn't exist), we would have to say something along the lines of "steam brewed coffee mixed with steamed milk with optional toppings." Now, that's a mouthful. One of the most intriguing things about English is that it's basically a smorgasboard of languages, both presently and historically (Battle of Hastings, anyone?). The language itself doesn't always make sense because of its various origins, but that also goes hand in hand with it being the lingua franca for the world. I'm not saying that British imperialism was a good thing, but it did make for a very rich language that, a few centuries later, is the most commonly spoken second language.

Which leads me to my other major beef with the commercial. Gasp, oh, no, not French! Are people still in "freedom fry" mode or something? And what the hell is wrong with Italian? The reason this commercial is successful, other than the catchy tune, is that it plays on Americans' xenoglossophobic tendencies. For some reason, because we speak the global language natively, we think we shouldn't be lowered to learning someone else's language. But having a second language only enriches your life. It can make you a far more appealing job candidate if you speak Spanish in a place with a high immigrant Latino population. It means that if you're in a field that falls within the sciences, you can readily communicate with colleagues in other countries and further share your knowledge and ideas with each other. As Geraldo Rivera put it on a recent NPR interview, "Si tiene dos lenguas, tiene dos almas," which means, "If you have two languages, you have two souls." In many other parts of the world, especially industrialized parts of the world, children are raised speaking two languages from the start. This is known to linguists as the critical period, which is the best time to learn a language. In many areas, English is not considered a foreign language in addition to one's native tongue, and students are expected to learn a third language in school. There are bilingual schools in Canada that teach French through immersion; everything in school is conducted in French. Students probably speak English at home, but for the hours they're in school, they speak French only (also an excellent way to learn - and retain - a language). Are we stupider than Canadians? Quite possibly. But only because of the way we approach learning new things.