I have been lied to, I have been abused, tricked, and now I fear the package I sent won't get to it's destination.
I go up to the counter, and ask the lady if she has a box I can put things in to ship to South Korea. She tells me it will be really really expensive. So, I ask, how expensive? She punches some buttons on her computer, and the price $17-something shows up on the display in front of me. I didn't think that was too expensive, for sending something to the other side of the planet... but she tells me this is via "Priority" mail, and it would be WAY CHEAPER to instead go get one of the boxes against the wall and send using "normal mail," just paying for the box. So I ask, "but will it get there in the same time?" She says yes - I say, "so, it will be way cheaper to use this other method, and it will get there in the same time? (just to clarify)" She says yes again. So I go back there, pick out the smallest box I could find, and start assembling the box. But wait, where's the tape? There is another guy to my left with the same question. I tell him, "I will go and ask if we can borrow some tape."
This is where it turns bad. I go up to the nearest person at the counter - a big fat white man - and ask him (nicely!) if I can borrow some tape. The fucker then YELLS at me "YOU HAVE TO BUY THE TAPE!" This is a bellow, and it makes everyone in the whole post office look at us. "How much is the tape?" I ask. He bellows again "YOU HAVE TO BUY THE TAPE!" and he thrusts his fat arm and pointed finger in the direction of the wall where the boxes are, meaning the tape is over there. However, I persist, asking "Okay, how much are the boxes?" This time, thankfully, the previous woman speaks up and says the price is on the bottom, next to the bar-code. I turn the box over and see that it says $1.79, and I think, oh this is cheap -- and even with the tape it can't possibly cost more than the $17-something for priority shipping. I am not happy about the guy yelling at me - twice! - but I am estimating a ballpark figure of $10 savings by doing it this way. I go back, get the tape, assemble the box, put the stuff in it, tape it up, and write the address on it - which took a while because I am not fast at writing in Korean. With it all assembled, and the extra tape in-hand (I used like 1% of the roll), I go back to the counter to actually mail it. I got a different lady this time; the previous had left, and thankfully the fat man also had left. The new lady was very nice, as if to make up for the fat man's rudeness, and very quickly told me the cost would be $19.38, with the tape. What!? I thought that doing it this way was cheaper than priority! I didn't say that to her - I should have. I paid, but then asked if there was any way to know for sure when it arrives. She then told me that with "Priority" they track it and I can know when it arrives, and also it will get there much faster with Priority, and if it goes missing there is insurance included with Priority -- but none of that for the way I am shipping it. My jaw dropped. I was speechless. Dumbfounded. The first woman I talked to told me "Priority" is more expensive, doesn't get there any faster, and didn't even mention insurance! But there was nothing I could do -- I had already paid with my debit card - paid a higher price! The only thing I could do was leave, and hope for the best. And fume.
Given the huge difference between "Priority" and regular, and the fact that Priority includes insurance, I am now really afraid that my package won't even reach it's destination.
Oh, and the last lady mentioned something else as well, while describing how long it will take to get there. She said that the Department of Homeland Security may cause it to take longer, because they may want to check what's inside. I didn't say anything in response to this, but I am thinking, Excuse me? What reason could ANYONE have to snoop through the contents of my mail? That's an invasion of privacy -- it doesn't matter in the least what might be in that box. (no worries, there is nothing bad in it!) But even if there was something bad in it, they have no right to open my mail.
I am so upset right now. I hope that fat-ass loses his job. I really hope that package actually gets there.
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
Sunday, December 13, 2009
This is where I get skeptical
The following was inspired by this
Now I know that I am supposed to take the side of the protesters, and I normally do take the protesters' side, but this is an exception. Here is what bothers me about it: The protesters and their allies are trying to bring attention to the lack of medical attention during detainment, no toilets, too cold, and having to sit there for hours. The first thing is, they were out protesting in the cold, and probably intended to protest for hours - so why is it a big deal that they had to sit out in the cold for hours? Secondly, I cannot say for sure, but I would bet that if someone had asked to use a toilet, it would have been allowed, and if someone really needed medical attention, I am betting it would also have been allowed. Think of the mind of the protester -- since I usually side with the protesters this is very obvious to me, but maybe not to others -- if, as a protester, you are detained by police, you should try to make the police look like the bad-guys, or else your cause loses credibility. So, instead of asking to use a toilet, protesters just pee on themselves preemptively, and then declare after that the toilet was not allowed and there was no other option. Now all the whining and complaining about the cold, lack of medical care -- I didn't read anything in there about somebody who actually needed the medical care, just that it wasn't available. So what I am saying is, all of these complaints are baseless, and so obviously baseless as to be quite annoying.
Now the real reason why I don't side with the protesters - 'cuz if I did take their side, I wouldn't have written the above paragraph. If you play the second video, you hear the chant "climate justice now!" This goes right to the issue here: justice? Justice for whom? Who is wronged that needs justice? I wonder if these protesters are chanting about the climate, or more for "equitable" distribution of wealth, as in giving money to "developing" nations. You see, these developing nations are demanding money in exchange for cutting carbon emissions - and the morons in our governments attending the Copenhagen Climate Summit are actually promising money. Take a look at this piece of work. It says: "Particularly among some of the poorer African countries, there are demands for a lot more money considerably sooner..." I have read other articles about "richer" countries paying money to the countries which have rain-forests, to keep them from chopping down the rain-forest. So now the trees are hostages? The countries with such natural assets have a moral responsibility to preserve them -- if they are destroying the world's rain-forests, then they are committing a crime and should definitely not be given a paycheck for it. This is so simple you can use child psychology on it: you don't positively reinforce negative behavior! Back to my topic, the protesters, I am convinced that this is just another protest in favor of redistribution of wealth -- you could call it the new face of communism. That's why I cannot side with these protesters.
Don't mistake my criticism of the protesters for criticism of environmentalism -- I am very environmentalist, and I know that global warming is a real threat. I have read books on it, written by scientists, not just listened to the rhetoric on the radio from guys who don't have any scientific credentials. Countries definitely do need to take action. But what action, is what I contest.
Now, for the solution to the problems and questions that I know have popped up in any reader's thoughts. If we don't pay those countries to stop destroying rain-forest, then how are we going to get them to stop? Here is my proposal, and I apologize to my other ideology, that of limited government: We should re-introduce tariffs against violators of an international law regarding protection of the environment. What I mean by "re-introduce" is that, with the WTO, almost all tariffs are gone or going. I think that's good - but the environment is the most important asset we have on this planet, and so destroying the environment is a good reason to impose tariffs, so that for countries who pollute too much or destroy biodiversity or impair the Earth's respiratory functioning, it becomes really hard to export their products, and so there is less reason to commit such destructive acts. These tariffs should be really high! So, what we need to do is, first, draft a UN resolution to create a binding law, based on good common-sense morality, that various things which harm the environment are illegal, as an international law. Second, draft a second UN resolution, or an amendment to WTO accession and retention, which takes care of the tariffs. All countries are subject, none are special, and this is the only thing that I can think of which will get some real results.
Furthermore, I think this thing in Copenhagen has lost some of it's focus. In the end, the only way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions is to make industries use cleaner technologies. Scaling back industry itself is not an option - but a lot of environmentalists don't seem to realize this. I don't care if achieving cleaner methods and technologies is done via a nice incentive/tax-break or if its a heavy-handed law that dramatically increases the costs of doing business. Actually, amend that -- I prefer the heavy-handed law in this case! The relevant economies will go back to equilibrium, and the extra cost will reduce over time -- but with incentives, the economies will never re-equalize. Therefore, in the long run, a solid law is better than an incentive. However, some politicians like to pretend that such "clean" or "green" technologies don't yet exist -- that's all BS. The technology exists; its just expensive right now - and since politicians are ultimately paid or kept in office by business people, they feed you this crap. But if we enforce the use of clean technology, then it will become less expensive over time - not that the added expense would really ever be felt by consumers anyways; economies of scale are truly a blessing.
One more point: here in America, a very tragic thing has happened in the public opinion. Environmentalism, because it is a cause taken up by the liberals and Democrats, is now associated with the controversy of gay-marriage and other things such as the general belief that Democrats want to enlarge government and take away your guns. I will state it plainly right here: I am a conservative, I want small government (but with some well-aimed regulation!), I think people have an inherent right to own and carry firearms (actually any weapon, save maybe a nuke) of any sort, I am a Christian (but not an Uber-Christian), and I also know that global warming is a real danger and environmentalism is a worthy cause. In short, my ideal self is a gun-toting tree-hugger, and in no way do I think that if you are an environmentalist you must also support gay-marriage. This highlights the problem with our 2-party politics: voting for the environment, which currently means voting for the Democratic party, unfortunately also means voting in favor of gay-marriage and the like. To all the people in favor of gay-marriage, I mean no disrespect to you, I am merely making a point. So, there are two solutions for this problem: in the long term, we need to have more political parties holding seats in Congress. This would hopefully give us more options for fine-tuning our votes. In the short term, I really think that environmentalism should be a conservative issue. Why is it liberal? Makes no sense... what makes more sense is: "conserve the environment." And the uber-christians who make up the core of conservativism should recognize that they are told by the Bible to be the "stewards" of the Earth. Do Christians say "I'm gonna purposely go and pollute the environment to prove I am Christian!"? No, that would be ridiculous. It is ridiculous that the issue of saving the planet is on the liberal side. Christians should be tree-huggers! That was half-joke, if you missed it.
In conclusion, this is all such common-sense... any intelligent person should feel that they have wasted their time in reading this, but take heart in this: my voice is out there, the voice of reason, and hopefully many more voices of reason can join me, and hopefully soon common-sense will prevail again. If anybody is even reading this...
Now I know that I am supposed to take the side of the protesters, and I normally do take the protesters' side, but this is an exception. Here is what bothers me about it: The protesters and their allies are trying to bring attention to the lack of medical attention during detainment, no toilets, too cold, and having to sit there for hours. The first thing is, they were out protesting in the cold, and probably intended to protest for hours - so why is it a big deal that they had to sit out in the cold for hours? Secondly, I cannot say for sure, but I would bet that if someone had asked to use a toilet, it would have been allowed, and if someone really needed medical attention, I am betting it would also have been allowed. Think of the mind of the protester -- since I usually side with the protesters this is very obvious to me, but maybe not to others -- if, as a protester, you are detained by police, you should try to make the police look like the bad-guys, or else your cause loses credibility. So, instead of asking to use a toilet, protesters just pee on themselves preemptively, and then declare after that the toilet was not allowed and there was no other option. Now all the whining and complaining about the cold, lack of medical care -- I didn't read anything in there about somebody who actually needed the medical care, just that it wasn't available. So what I am saying is, all of these complaints are baseless, and so obviously baseless as to be quite annoying.
Now the real reason why I don't side with the protesters - 'cuz if I did take their side, I wouldn't have written the above paragraph. If you play the second video, you hear the chant "climate justice now!" This goes right to the issue here: justice? Justice for whom? Who is wronged that needs justice? I wonder if these protesters are chanting about the climate, or more for "equitable" distribution of wealth, as in giving money to "developing" nations. You see, these developing nations are demanding money in exchange for cutting carbon emissions - and the morons in our governments attending the Copenhagen Climate Summit are actually promising money. Take a look at this piece of work. It says: "Particularly among some of the poorer African countries, there are demands for a lot more money considerably sooner..." I have read other articles about "richer" countries paying money to the countries which have rain-forests, to keep them from chopping down the rain-forest. So now the trees are hostages? The countries with such natural assets have a moral responsibility to preserve them -- if they are destroying the world's rain-forests, then they are committing a crime and should definitely not be given a paycheck for it. This is so simple you can use child psychology on it: you don't positively reinforce negative behavior! Back to my topic, the protesters, I am convinced that this is just another protest in favor of redistribution of wealth -- you could call it the new face of communism. That's why I cannot side with these protesters.
Don't mistake my criticism of the protesters for criticism of environmentalism -- I am very environmentalist, and I know that global warming is a real threat. I have read books on it, written by scientists, not just listened to the rhetoric on the radio from guys who don't have any scientific credentials. Countries definitely do need to take action. But what action, is what I contest.
Now, for the solution to the problems and questions that I know have popped up in any reader's thoughts. If we don't pay those countries to stop destroying rain-forest, then how are we going to get them to stop? Here is my proposal, and I apologize to my other ideology, that of limited government: We should re-introduce tariffs against violators of an international law regarding protection of the environment. What I mean by "re-introduce" is that, with the WTO, almost all tariffs are gone or going. I think that's good - but the environment is the most important asset we have on this planet, and so destroying the environment is a good reason to impose tariffs, so that for countries who pollute too much or destroy biodiversity or impair the Earth's respiratory functioning, it becomes really hard to export their products, and so there is less reason to commit such destructive acts. These tariffs should be really high! So, what we need to do is, first, draft a UN resolution to create a binding law, based on good common-sense morality, that various things which harm the environment are illegal, as an international law. Second, draft a second UN resolution, or an amendment to WTO accession and retention, which takes care of the tariffs. All countries are subject, none are special, and this is the only thing that I can think of which will get some real results.
Furthermore, I think this thing in Copenhagen has lost some of it's focus. In the end, the only way to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions is to make industries use cleaner technologies. Scaling back industry itself is not an option - but a lot of environmentalists don't seem to realize this. I don't care if achieving cleaner methods and technologies is done via a nice incentive/tax-break or if its a heavy-handed law that dramatically increases the costs of doing business. Actually, amend that -- I prefer the heavy-handed law in this case! The relevant economies will go back to equilibrium, and the extra cost will reduce over time -- but with incentives, the economies will never re-equalize. Therefore, in the long run, a solid law is better than an incentive. However, some politicians like to pretend that such "clean" or "green" technologies don't yet exist -- that's all BS. The technology exists; its just expensive right now - and since politicians are ultimately paid or kept in office by business people, they feed you this crap. But if we enforce the use of clean technology, then it will become less expensive over time - not that the added expense would really ever be felt by consumers anyways; economies of scale are truly a blessing.
One more point: here in America, a very tragic thing has happened in the public opinion. Environmentalism, because it is a cause taken up by the liberals and Democrats, is now associated with the controversy of gay-marriage and other things such as the general belief that Democrats want to enlarge government and take away your guns. I will state it plainly right here: I am a conservative, I want small government (but with some well-aimed regulation!), I think people have an inherent right to own and carry firearms (actually any weapon, save maybe a nuke) of any sort, I am a Christian (but not an Uber-Christian), and I also know that global warming is a real danger and environmentalism is a worthy cause. In short, my ideal self is a gun-toting tree-hugger, and in no way do I think that if you are an environmentalist you must also support gay-marriage. This highlights the problem with our 2-party politics: voting for the environment, which currently means voting for the Democratic party, unfortunately also means voting in favor of gay-marriage and the like. To all the people in favor of gay-marriage, I mean no disrespect to you, I am merely making a point. So, there are two solutions for this problem: in the long term, we need to have more political parties holding seats in Congress. This would hopefully give us more options for fine-tuning our votes. In the short term, I really think that environmentalism should be a conservative issue. Why is it liberal? Makes no sense... what makes more sense is: "conserve the environment." And the uber-christians who make up the core of conservativism should recognize that they are told by the Bible to be the "stewards" of the Earth. Do Christians say "I'm gonna purposely go and pollute the environment to prove I am Christian!"? No, that would be ridiculous. It is ridiculous that the issue of saving the planet is on the liberal side. Christians should be tree-huggers! That was half-joke, if you missed it.
In conclusion, this is all such common-sense... any intelligent person should feel that they have wasted their time in reading this, but take heart in this: my voice is out there, the voice of reason, and hopefully many more voices of reason can join me, and hopefully soon common-sense will prevail again. If anybody is even reading this...
Friday, November 13, 2009
New Space Race
It has occurred to me that we are now engaged in a new space race. Many people say that a new space race would be good for America, and the world -- and I agree. However, this one seems to have quietly crept up on us. I have seen no public speeches declaring the new space race, no demagogues leading us (even tho 'demagogue' has negative connotation, I like demagogues) ; rather, it has been other countries trying to quietly improve their space-capabilities without drawing too much attention to it, and that has initiated the new space race. Soon, hopefully, America will realize there is competition in space again, and we can enter a new golden-age of exploration, science, and bravery. Because, when you really think of it, the 1950's and 60's were America's golden age, and since then has been gradual stagnation. Lets do it again!
Here is a link to the article I was reading just now: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8094863.stm
There was another article I recently read in which a Chinese government official said that "military competition in space is inevitable." I will post a link to that article too if I find it again.
Here is a link to the article I was reading just now: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8094863.stm
There was another article I recently read in which a Chinese government official said that "military competition in space is inevitable." I will post a link to that article too if I find it again.
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Philippines: Your Choice
I have been reading more and more lately about the Philippines and their dislike of America's military presence within their borders.
Today I see a picture of a man holding up a sign saying "Hillary Go Away." The man is protesting joint-military exercises between the US and the Philippines. To which I thought, "Isn't there a more pressing concern regarding the military for the Philippines?" China continues to maintain a military base on the Spratly Islands, despite the Spratlys being a part of Philippine territory, and despite the fact that the military base is illegal. Moreover, China's military presence in the South China Sea has been increasing dramatically for the past decade, and now China claims the entire South China Sea, including the Spratly and Paracel Archipelagos. Chinese warships are firing on the fishing boats of other nations out in the South China, even when those ships are well within their home-country's respective territories. What will the Philippines do if the US leaves the area to the mercy of the Chinese? Obviously, Philippine military strength is insufficient to persuade the Chinese to leave the Spratlys. Given the present situation in Southeast Asia, it would be more logical for the Philippines to welcome US military presence.
Just my thinking... do you want US joint-exercises, aka 'cooperation,' or do you want to be militarily dominated by the Chinese? Who is doing more to disrespect Philippine sovereignty? Think about it :)
Here is the link to that picture: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8356612.stm
Today I see a picture of a man holding up a sign saying "Hillary Go Away." The man is protesting joint-military exercises between the US and the Philippines. To which I thought, "Isn't there a more pressing concern regarding the military for the Philippines?" China continues to maintain a military base on the Spratly Islands, despite the Spratlys being a part of Philippine territory, and despite the fact that the military base is illegal. Moreover, China's military presence in the South China Sea has been increasing dramatically for the past decade, and now China claims the entire South China Sea, including the Spratly and Paracel Archipelagos. Chinese warships are firing on the fishing boats of other nations out in the South China, even when those ships are well within their home-country's respective territories. What will the Philippines do if the US leaves the area to the mercy of the Chinese? Obviously, Philippine military strength is insufficient to persuade the Chinese to leave the Spratlys. Given the present situation in Southeast Asia, it would be more logical for the Philippines to welcome US military presence.
Just my thinking... do you want US joint-exercises, aka 'cooperation,' or do you want to be militarily dominated by the Chinese? Who is doing more to disrespect Philippine sovereignty? Think about it :)
Here is the link to that picture: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8356612.stm
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