What would Jesus Do? What would Buddha Do?
Now there is a reasonably-priced way to know . . .
Don’t buy Girl Scout cookies
Today, an acquaintance (I’ll call her “Laura”) asked me if I would buy some Girl Scout cookies from her daughter’s troop. I told her “No thank you.”
It’s not that I don’t enjoy eating Girl Scout cookies (I do enjoy Thin Mints and Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies). It’s not that I generally oppose the activities of Girl Scouts. I approve of much of what Girl Scouts do.
Here’s what triggered this post. Laura told me that the average box of cookies sells for three dollars and that the average profit for each box of cookies is only fifty cents. Hmmmm.
Therefore, I can support their Girl Scouts to the same extent by handing $5 directly to the local troop or by buying $30 worth of cookies. Unless you think that eating cookies is an especially good thing, it makes much more sense to simply hand the local troop $5. Then again, eating cookies, especially a lot of cookies, is not a good thing. Cookies consist largely of refined carbohydrates and sugars. These are exactly the kinds of ingredients that invite obesity. Are the Girl Scouts concerned about obesity? Very much so (so am I), yet they continue to rely on cookie sales to fund their activities.
But let’s go back to the money for a moment. If you click here, you can see it stated that “all of the revenue” from cookie sales “stays with the local Girl Scout council that sponsors the sale.” The official site carefully …
The Onion News Network is Launched
Check out this new Onion video on the human cost of immigration. And I dare you to watch this Onion news promo without laughing. Or consider this proposed solution to the troop shortage in Iraq.
3,300 active duty soldiers deserted the army in 2006
According to this article by Newsweek, 3,301 U.S. active-duty soldiers deserted the Army in 2006. Jeffry House is a defense lawyer representing many of these soldiers. Newsweek asked House why so many soldiers were deserting. According to House, The common idea is that the war in Iraq is going nowhere,…
Why Republicans deny global warming.
Jonathan Chait of Common Dreams raises a good question: why do Republicans disagree with climate scientists more at a time when climate scientists are accruing new terrifying evidence that human activities are truly responsible for warming the atmosphere?
Last year, the National Journal asked a group of Republican senators and House members: “Do you think it’s been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the Earth is warming because of man-made problems?” Of the respondents, 23% said yes, 77% said no . . . So, the magazine asked the question again last month. The results? Only 13% of Republicans agreed that global warming has been proved.
As the evidence for global warming gets stronger, Republicans are actually getting more skeptical. . . . How did it get this way? The easy answer is that Republicans are just tools of the energy industry. It’s certainly true that many of them are. . . But the financial relationship doesn’t quite explain the entirety of GOP skepticism on global warming. For one thing, the energy industry has dramatically softened its opposition to global warming over the last year, even as Republicans have stiffened theirs.
The truth is more complicated — and more depressing: A small number of hard-core ideologues (some, but not all, industry shills) have led the thinking for the whole conservative movement . . .Conservatives defer to a tiny handful of renegade scientists who reject the overwhelming professional consensus.
In other words, the thinking process of most Republicans is worse than …