hahnmeister's Blog

Cathy, Barbie, and Anne are neighbors.  Cathy and Anne are on the city planning board, and Barbie just moved into the house between them,

Barbie decided that would really make her happy is to paint her house bright pink, her favorite color. 

Cathy and Anne didnt like the idea of telling other people what to do, so they didnt say anything to Barbie, or do anything about it.

Later on, Barbie painted her shutters purple, her other favorite color, and her roof was redone with yellow shingles.
It hurt Cathy and Anne's eyes to look at Barbie's house, but they didnt want to be 'liberal' and impose their will on someone else.

Barbie wasnt home much, so her lawn went to weeds, and this meant Cathy and Anne had to spend extra time removing weeds from their lawns.

Barbie's house was starting to fall apart.  It wasnt dangerous, but all Barbie wanted to do was 'put a new coat of pink paint on' to solve everything.
One day, Barbie put a plastic flamingo in her front yard, and hung a pagan symbol from her roof.

Cathy and Anne were annoyed with Barbie's house, but they didnt want to tell Barbie what to do with her property.

They tried to live with it... they put up fences to block the view of Barbie's house... but that allowed Anne's house to be broken into by theives because the crooks couldnt be seen outside her property when she wasnt home.

Anne had enough, so she decided to move, and so she put her house on the market.

She paid $400,000 for her home years ago, and thought her home would be worth $500,000 like the rest of the homes in the neighborhood like hers.

But nobody wanted to live next to 'that ugly bright pink house' next door.  Anne couldnt sell her home for more than $300,000 to move... but, she wouldnt want to tell her neighbor what to do.

Anne moved, and the new people who moved in on the other side of Barbie painted their house bright green, and parked their broken down cars in the front lawn.

Cathy didnt know what to do...  if only there was some law that could prevent this... like a building or city code.  Then Barbie's actions wouldnt be allowed to lower the property value of those around her.  Then maybe, as a community, the property values of all the people's property would go up because more people would want to live there rather than move away.

If only there was a way...

'Global dimming' was found out through the evaporation rate info being collected throughout the world.  I hope you know what I am talking about here, if not, I can post more on that,  but I have been thinking of other ways to measure global changes... and Ive been wondering...

If more water is being released into the atmosphere, causing more violent weather changes, storms, etc... wouldnt it be accurate to also say that our global barometric pressure should also be going up?  People may not think about it, but we are at the bottom of an ocean of air on our planet, and the deeper you go in a gas or fluid, the higher the pressure.  Now, Im not claiming that the atmosphere is expanding, but if there is more water in it, more CO2, etc... this would make the air in the atmosphere (mostly troposphere) more dense, wouldnt it?  Or would the height where the troposphere and stratosphere meet possibly lower?  Just wonder if there is any validity to this approach of 'global barometric pressure change'.  The additional pressure in the atmosphere would then also create higher pressure underwater, as well as underground... maybe insignificant, or maybe just enough to tip the geological scale to create more earthquaes, volcanic activity, etc.

Is this possible?  Worth looking into?  Are global barometric pressure logs kept like the evaporation rates?

We are a rather progressive state... arent we?  Minneapolis / St. Paul, Chicago, Madison, New York, etc...  why not here yet?  I remember hearing about a proposed ban in 2005/2006, but it got 'put aside'.  What the f-bomb man?!?!

I used to smoke, but with sheer will I quit when I was 24 after years, and now I am quite sensitive to smoke.

I cant go to bars because they are usually too smokey.

There are some places I can go, with outdoor gardens or where smoking isnt allowed, but they are few and far between.  Nothing annoys me more than smoking, or coming outside of a business and seeing people standing around outside while they smoke, so I have to walk through the nasty cloud.  Heck, my nose is so sensitive now that I can pick up smoke from the car in front of me when driving in the city sometimes... often at a stoplight.

I know the common argument has been made by business owners that having a ban will deter smokers which will cost them business.  Not true, since there are more people who would like to go the bars like me, but dont because of the smoke!!!  In some other cities, they have found that the ban actually boosts business.  Also, not making your employees work in smoke all day greatly improves their health, and could even lower your insurance rates.  It seems like a win-win (unless you are a smoker).

Can the news give this some attention maybe?  It seems like some lawmakers 'put it aside' because they didnt want to deal with it for some reason (or the bar owners association paid them off with free drinks for life!  Lol.).  But really... isnt it about time?

This reminds me of the 'anti-global warming' campaign or the 'can youprove smoking causes cancer' propaganda:

From Thomas McDonald:

"Have you heard about the 3500 research studies that show a positive relationship between media violence and violent behavior?  Its an old cudgel often used to bludgeon the gaming industry in the debate about violent games.

It also turns out to be a complete fabrication.  Those 3500 studies simply dont exist.  In extensice research for their own study, Lawrence Kutner and Cheryl K. Olson (founders of the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital and professors at Harvard Medical School) searched the available literature and found only about 300 studies on the topic.  In their new book, 'Grand Theft Childhood', Kutner and Olson conclude that most of the previous studies were either inconclusive or flawed, with none providing the smoking gun linking media violence and real-world violence in an incontrovertable cause-effect relationship.

They decided to go looking for the link themselves the created what is arguably the most far-reaching and thorough study yet.  The results may not be what either side of the debate wants to hear, but after reading their results, it's hard to deny that Kutner and Olson's is scrupulously fair - and thats it's a bombshell.

They begin by making the crucial distinction between youth violence, which they define as an attack on a person of thing with the intent to injure or break it, and the less easily defined aggression, which includes antisocial behavior, bullying, and delinquency.  Their research reveals two key facts that are relavant to the debate.

FIrst, there is no link between young people who play violent games and actual violence.  In fact, as gamer culture has grown, incidents of violent crime have dropped significantly.  They also debunk the myth that school shootings such as the ones that took place at Columbine (blamed on Doom) and Virginia Tech (Counter-Strike) were caused by games.  Instread, they learned that the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho didn't play games in college, which tallied with one of their more interesting discoveries:  Kids who DON'T play games are the social outcasts and misfits.  Games help kids fit in and form relationships.  Their study did, however, find a connection between aggression and violent games, and we'll explore that more in detail next month."

I am waiting myself on the results of 'next month', but the results I saw were showing that violent games are a sort of therapy for those with aggression problems, and some other things.

SO, looks like a bunch of propaganda about nothing to distract us from the more important issues once again!  Buy your kid Grand Theft Auto and help him/her fit in at school!!!  Okay, maybe not that, but what are your thoughts?