Today is Blog Action Day, or B.A.D. for short, the day on which upteen hundreds of bloggers will be posting how to save the environment. I was tagged for this by Joanne.

So, being the “rebellious non-conformist,” I’ll tell you how to “save” the environment, principally by telling the politicians and activists of the world to go jump in the proverbial lake.

First of all, you need to realize that politicians are generally not the sharpest crayons in the box. For U.S. citizens, do you know who George Washington is? Would you recognize, say, a bust of George Washington? After all, this is the “father of our country.” He’s on the dollar bill, for heaven’s sake! He’s in used car commercials. His portrait is in classrooms across the country. Can you go through life in this country without seeing an image of him?

If you choose a career in politics, certainly you would be expected to know who George Washington was and what he looked like, no? If you served in Washington, D.C. in an elected office for a number of years, you would no doubt recognize a bust of George Washington, no?

Well, Vice President Elect Al Gore didn’t recognize George Washington. What a beautiful mind, eh?

So, let’s just recognize that, for the most part, politicians, regardless of their party affiliation, which is sometimes subject to change as the political winds blow, have their own interests and agendas at heart, and really don’t care about you or me or the environment or national security or anything else. They only care about the things that will financially benefit them or keep them in power. If you meet enough politicians and don’t come to the conclusion that the power that these people have should be extremely limited, you might want to have your head examined. The power you wouldn’t trust in George W. Bush’s hands you shouldn’t trust in Hillary Clinton’s hands either, or any body else for that matter, especially those from the limited gene pool of candidates we are presented with in each election cycle.

When you hear politicians ranting about we need to do this or we need to do that, just realize that these are typically just the ramblings of people with a lust for power and little concern for anything else.

And, when politicians, like Al Gore, talk about the “consensus” of scientists that humans are causing global warming, realize that science doesn’t work by consensus. Science is not democratic. Science is not based on how many people believe what. Science doesn’t care if the majority of scientists believe a certain thing. Science is based on evidence and the reason the global warming proponents speak of “consensus” is because the evidence is not there!

For one thing, we only have somewhat reliable temperature records for the past 150 years. That’s barely a drop in the bucket on a planet that is 4.5 billion years old.

Besides that, whether you believe humans cause global warming or not, what is the big deal? People have always fared better in warmer periods than in colder periods. Longer growing seasons mean more productive crops. Expansion of warmth means more land can be used for crops. Even the polar bears have historically done quite well during warm periods.

If warmer temperatures are so bad for the elderly, why do senior citizens voluntarily move to places like Florida or Arizona?

Polar ice melting and flooding the world? Puh-lease. If the polar regions go from -35 degrees F to -30 degrees F, so what? The ice is still frozen. If the ice melts during the day, only to refreeze at night, so what?

Weathermen frequently get the week’s forecast wrong, and often enough even the forecast for the remainder of the day is wrong! Yet, we are supposed to believe predictions made by computer models for longer periods of time? If the weather cannot be accurately forecast for the remainder of the week, what are the odds of a forecast one month, one year, ten years from now being correct?

We have more to worry about from power-hungry politicians than we have from their manufactured crises, like global warming. In fact, the myth of human-caused global warming is a greater threat to the world than global warming would ever be. It creates jealousy and hatred by poorer nations, by giving them a reason to blame the industrialized nations for their problems. And, instead of fixing their own internal problems, they look outward and blame others for their misfortune, feeling justified by the “consensus” of “scientists” that say humans are causing global warming.

Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize was 100% undeserved, for it is Al Gore’s hyperbole and hysterics over allegedly human-caused global warming that is a greater threat to peace and stability in the world than even George W. Bush’s Middle East policies.

The Earth is dynamic, and the climate changes and continues to change, regardless of whether humans are around or not. One must also wonder if humans are responsible for the global warming that is occurring on Mars. Must be that secret base we have up there, no? Perhaps the more logical explanation is the nearest star, which we call the Sun. Because stars don’t burn at a constant temperature, so fluctuations are to be expected. Of course, this stands in the way of political agendas, so you don’t hear much about it.

Humans are not the center of the universe, nor do we have as significant an impact on the environment as some politicians would have us believe. Abandon a house, and see how quickly nature takes over! Abandon a city, and see how quickly nature takes over! People tend to think we leave these huge marks on the planet, but our impact is as footprints in the sand: washed away in a relatively short cycle.

Remember that a volcano can exhaust a greater quantity of toxins in the air than what humans produce in decades. A tornado or hurricane can level neighborhoods in mere moments. People like to think that we are so big, but we are so very small. Despite popular belief, not even the Great Wall of China can be seen from space. And, further out, nothing man-made can be seen from space.

We are very small.

Worry less about global warming, and worry more about power-lusting politicians.

Which is more intuitive? White for articles (informational articles, how-to’s, ideas and tips, blog posts) and yellow for instructions (manuals, FAQ, technical information), or yellow for articles and white for instructions?

I lean more toward the former than the latter, but what do you think?

Thanks!

So, this past week, I finally bought a RSS reader. And, I have been adding feeds like crazy. Well, maybe not crazy, but I’ve added quite a few feeds.

It makes it nice and easy to check on blogs now, and I’ll know if someone has something new without having to actually visit the blog first. That’s a time-saver!

But, now I have come across what maybe should be the First Rule of RSS Feeds. Namely, naming. Your feed should be the same name as your blog. Seems obvious, doesn’t it? Nonetheless, there are some people that think they are being “cute” or something by naming their feed something else.

What that means is that it is a bit more difficult to keep track of the blogs you read. Sure, they might have a similar name, but “dcr Feeds” isn’t quite as recognizable as “dcr Blogs” is it? Yes, I can (and do) change the name in my RSS reader to the blog’s name, but you really shouldn’t expect your readers to do that. And, if you want readers, why make it even a little bit more difficult for them to read your blog?

If your feed name is different from your blog name, there is a better chance that one day a reader will look at a feed in their RSS reader, wonder who the heck is that, and delete it.

Need to make some cards for Halloween? Maybe some fancy headers to put on special treats for the neighbor kids? Maybe you just want to decorate the bags? Well, how about some scary rubber stamps?

Try the Skull with Propeller Cap rubber stamp because even the dead and gone can still be young at heart!

Or, how about the Scary Clown rubber stamp? Not scared? Join 100,000+ others and read “In the Mind of the Screaming Clown.”

Are cats your thing? How about a Scary Cat rubber stamp?

Perhaps brains and the bizarre is what interests you? Take a peek at the Got Brains? rubber stamp.

Are none of these your thing? Not interested in Halloween? Well, if you’re even a little bit girly, you might like this nice Unicorn rubber stamp. Looks great in Purple ink.

So, the end of the world is coming in 2012. A number of different prophecies suggest that. But, it has been suggested that the end of time may mean that 2012 might not be the year the world ends, but the year we discover time travel. At that point, the concept of linear time would be forever changed if not brought to an abrupt end. It would be the end of time as we know it.

And, as we march closer and closer to 2012, it seems new theories on time emerge more frequently. The latest being that time may be in two dimensions instead of one.

Let me grab some handy dandy charts so you can follow along as I brainstorm outloud.

Figure A is pretty much time as we know it. Things begin on the left and end on the right. Yes, arrows would illustrate this better, but that’s why you read the text and not just look at the pretty pictures. Anyway, back to the point, which is that things begin on the left and end on the right with varying lengths in between. So, if you’re a fruit fly, your line is very short. If you’re a Redwood, it’s very long. So, that’s time as we know it. We can only go from left to right, so if you missed something, oops. Try again next time.

Figure B shows two parallel timelines. You remember Back to the Future, right? If you go back in time and mess something up, you create a parallel timeline. So, as you continue along the timeline, even if you skip ahead in a time machine, you’re still stuck in that parallel timeline. Now, parallel universes may be created all the time. Every time there is a choice to be made, boom!, the universe splits. In one universe, you turned right. In another, you turned left. Then, there are other possibilities, such as going straight, turning back, not going at all, turning right but leaving your left blinker on, etc. So, the universe is splitting all the time, and it’s all your fault you indecisive… But I digress…

But, what if time has two dimensions, as indicated in the article linked above? Well, that may bring us to Figure C. The red line is the timeline where you weren’t born. The green line is the timeline where you were born. Those two divergent timelines create a plane in which varying timelines of things happen all because you were or were not born. These all radiate outword from the moment of your birth (or non-birth). Figure D shows the radiance, kind of.

However, you might have been born (or not) at 8:00 a.m. Maybe you dragged things out and waited until 8:15 a.m. Maybe you were a real pain and waited until 6:00 p.m. to show your face to the world. (Alternatively, I could have began with varying times of conception, but as I try to be relatively family-friendly here, it’s best not to go that route.) Point is, your existence could have began (or not) at varying times, which leads to staggering planes, right?

Granted, the universe does not revolve around you. (Sorry!) You’re just a point in the universe’s timeplane. So, your varying planes are just varying points on the universe’s timeplane.

But, then we go back to where you’re making a turn. In traditional, linear time, you can only go straight. You can’t back up, you can’t turn left, and you can’t turn right. Straight is your only option. We can theorize that we could go backwards, but we can’t figure out how yet. But. left and right don’t even enter our minds. It’s forward or backward, but really only forward.

The universe isn’t that simple, right?

Thus, we have two dimensional time, as mentioned in the aforementioned article linked way, way above. So, now you can go left or right. Or straight. Still can’t go backwards, but maybe you just need to have your car looked at.

Still, a bit simplistic right? Because, not only can you go left or right or straight or backwards if you get a better car, you can also go now or later, or sometime in between.

Thus, Figure E. Three-dimensional time.

You see, you could have turned left. You could have turned right. Or you could have gone straight. You can map that on a two-dimensional grid. But, you could go now or later, or not gone at all. How can you graph all of those possibilities on a plane?

If space has three dimensions (that we experience), doesn’t it make sense that time would also have three dimensions? I mean, what if you were in a plane? Left, right, up, down, now, later…

Anyway, so now I pass the deep thoughts on to you…

You asked and I answered. Okay, so it was only Joanne that asked*, but, still, I answered!

Joanne asked:
(1) Haha, you know that’s interesting because I did wonder, how did you happen to come across that post which inadvertently started this whole blog sparring between us? MBL? Though I can’t remember if I joined it after or before I wrote that post…

I didn’t know about MBL back then. I don’t remember for certain, but I think I had found your blog a couple days earlier through another blogger’s blogroll. Don’t remember who though.

(2) And, how do you pronounce your last name?

Correctly.

(3) What are your 3 favorite books? Or 5, even…it’s always hard for me to chose all-time favorites and I know you read a lot. Oooh, do you have any favorite authors? That’s generally easier to narrow it down.

The Science Fictional Dinosaur was, I think, the first non-fiction book that I read. Death of a Salesman was good. Candide, which I enjoyed for the fact that I was finally able to answer my high school psychology teacher’s question from the beginning of the year. Several years too late, but at last I knew the answer! I swear that one day I’ll be in a school and he’ll have a class there, and I’ll just walk in his classroom, announce “Candide!” and walk away. Autobiography of a Yogi was one I did a high school oral book report on. We all had to draw numbers to see what order we would go in. I think I drew #17. But, I ended up at #2. Authors: Douglas Adams, Joseph Campbell, Guy Kawasaki. Probably more, but those are the ones that come to mind at the moment.

(4) Coffee or tea? Or neither? Or do I already know the answer to this question since you did have a soda plugi-n for awhile…

Don’t you read my blog? You make me so sad.

(5) Recent weirdest dream?

None lately. You should have asked me a couple weeks ago, when I did have an odd dream. I have since forgotten it.

(6) What’s your favorite dish to make?

Haven’t made any dishes yet. I made a vase once, that didn’t turn out too well. I was supposed to put two coats of the final whatever on it, but only did one. So, it was blotchy and part of it broke. The teacher displayed it in front of the class as an example of what happened when you didn’t follow directions. The teacher said I should have followed the instructions in class better. I told her I was out sick for a week so she should have given me better notes. Okay, I didn’t say that, but I should have. Ticks me off because of the work I put into making the thing.

So, I am just going to say that my high school art teacher sucked. There, I’ve said it. I’ve kept that bottled up for far too long. She did not have a freaking clue what she was doing.

Through my school years, I had that “respect your teachers” stuff in my head, so I never spoke up or anything. And, I should have. One time, she accused a classmate of lying about a piece of artwork, and I could have handily demonstrated minutes later that she was most likely wrong and that my classmate was not lying. But, instead I said nothing.

Were I to do things over, I think I would worry less about grades and more about building and keeping friendships. A’s and Honor Awards and all that stuff doesn’t make a hill of beans of difference in the real world.

Besides, I learned more about drawing spending an hour on a website reading about it than I did in a whole year of high school art class.

And, while I’m confessing things, I ought to mention that I got an A on my high school book report on The Aeneid. This is in spite of the fact that, to this day, I still haven’t finished reading the book. And, no, I did not use CliffsNotes.

(7) If you HAD (not could, because then that gives you the opportunity to be a sneak and say “Why, of course I wouldn’t change anything about myself!”) to change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

I’d like to lose weight.

(8) What’s the most important thing you learned about blogging thus far?

This chair is not comfortable.

(9) Which do you think is better: the 1-column, 2-column, or 3-column layout for a site? Why?

It really depends on the site design and layout. Readability is key, and it can be difficult to have a readable 1-column layout on large monitors. I tend to prefer the 2-column blogs. The key is that the content area (i.e., where the posts are) is the largest section, but not too large that you’re reading long lines.

I don’t mind 3-column layouts. As you know, I’m using 3-columns on my eCommerce site. The key is that the content area ought to be wider than the combined widths of the other two columns. With a lot of the 3-column blogs, one column will be for content and the other two columns will be for ads. And the ad columns seem to dominate the page. The mindset seems to be to jam 2 columns with ads with little consideration given to the overall look of the page. People come to a site for the content, not for the ads. The ads should never draw away from your content.

That’s not to say that ads are a bad thing; just that more consideration needs to be given to their placement in terms of the overall appearance of the site. I see a number of well-designed 2-column blogs, but it is rare that I come across a well-designed 3-column blog.

(10) What is your preferred site stats tracker that you use?

I just use MyBlogLog.

Thanks to all who submitted questions. Wait, that was just Joanne… Okay, thanks to Joanne for asking questions! Well, Deborah too, but her Q & my A will be on her blog, so that doesn’t really count for Open Mic Thursday!

*And that’s beginning to worry me… What does she do with this information? Time for a pre-emptive strike with a tiny drunken Google bomb for drunk Chinese girls.

I usually don’t do these things (anymore, and hardly ever since I started blogging), but I saw this one on Ann’s blog, and my curiosity was piqued.

You Should Be a Science Fiction Writer

Your ideas are very strange, and people often wonder what planet you’re from. And while you may have some problems being “normal,” you’ll have no problems writing sci-fi. Whether it’s epic films, important novels, or vivid comics… Your own little universe could leave an important mark on the world!

As luck would have it, that’s the kind of writing I usually do. How about that? What about you?

Fred Rinnert was a character on Tuesday night’s episode of NCIS, “Ex-File.” It’s pretty rare to see my last name on TV.

Unfortunately, the pronunciation was wrong. They pronounced it the way most people pronounce it, and not the way it’s supposed to be pronounced. Of course, considering the guy was a (******* SPOILER WARNING *******) villain in the story, maybe it’s good that they said it wrong.

Yes, I know today is Wednesday… But, the forecast calls for a lack of ideas on Thursday, so I want to make sure I have something to write about!

First, a small challenge. Can you find the post where I first linked to Joanne’s blog? It was before I even knew her.

I just mention that because I happened to stumble upon it while looking for what follows…

Remember this? Well, Q&A is open once again. Ask your questions by commenting on this post, and I’ll answer them on Thursday! Again, maybe not the answers you want, but an answer nonetheless.

Also, what would you like to see? Answer in a comment to this post. That’s this post, not that post. If you’re lucky, you might see what you want to see. Deborah of DeboHobo.com did!

Finally, if you would like to give me some feedback on my redesigned eCommerce site, follow the instructions in this post. Thanks! And thanks to those who have already volunteered: Lewis, Sam, Terence, Joanne and Chris.

Seriously, no one liked my Saturn illustration? No one hated it either? Or was the headline just not catchy enough?