06/30/11, 21:12 EST

We arrived at our hotel at about 19:05 EST, 18:05 local time.  After moving in our stuff, we goofed off in the pool and are currently preparing for sleep in the hotel room.  I think that so far my highlight for the trip is seeing a Red-tailed Hawk soaring over a deep valley in West Virginia, with mountains as far as the eye can see in every direction.  I guess that seems kind of mushy, but I'm not a mushy person and it really was my favorite part.

06/30/11, 10:25

It is currently approximately 10:25 on Thursday the 30^th of June, 2011.  We have resumed our journey after a quick stop at the Sidling Hill road cut.

Although the road cut was very interesting, the scenery at and after the road cut is fabulous.  In fact, I’m hesitant to look at the computer because I’m missing the scenery.

P.S.  We’ve just gone over the peak of Big Savage Mountain, at 28000 feet.  We noticed that the temperature dropped down to 68º, compare that to 75º at the bottom of the mountain.  (We’ve managed to make it so far without turning on the air conditioning.)

P.P.S. It’s now 12:07 EST and Mom and Dad just turned on the AC.  I could have gone longer.

06/30/11, 07:28

It is approximately 07:28 EST on Thursday the 30^th of June.  I am sitting with the rest of the family in the car, on our way out West.  Because I’m the only one in the family with a blog, I have been elected to record our trip from Southeastern Pennsylvania, to Oklahoma, to The Grand Canyon, to Yellowstone, to Omaha Nebraska, to Dayton Ohio, and back home, deo volente.  (Although I’ll be dropped off in Ohio for a summer camp.)  I am now turning myself so that my nosy sister can’t see the laptop and offer criticisms of my writing.  If she insists on it, she can always just write the comments on my blog, and I won’t have to know it was her.  Anyway, we left our abode at about 07:21 EST.  We did have a slight delay, however, when we rounded a corner and half of my seat flew up.  We were able to pull over and fix the problem without too much trouble, however, and we are currently sailing down to highway (well, maybe not sailing, thanks to those people driving 5 miles under the speed limit in the fast lane).  

42,000,000

Unfortunately, that's the approximate number of people who have been killed this year.  Not by war crimes, not by capital crimes, and not by global warming, but by Doctors in Abortion Clinics.  Why are all of these human beings being slaughtered by the tens of thousands daily?  To further women's freedom rights to be every bit as stupid and irresponsible as some men.  Apparently, while it is cruel and heartless to allow people to choose their own health care, it would also be cruel and heartless to forbid women the "right" to choose whether the babies they conceive live or die.  (But only before they give birth.  I guess they're just trying to save women the discomfort of labor pains or something.)  Although this is somewhat of a mystery to me, I suppose it makes perfect sense to an absurdists or a nihilist, as most liberals are, whether they admit it or not.

The liberals to give lip service to reason, though.  They claim that babies are somehow inhuman before they exit the womb and are therefore more like an annoying dandelion or some other kind of weed than a human being made in the image of God.  On the one hand, this makes a lot of sense if you believe in Evolution (which doesn't make sense at all) because to all atheists, people can only assume a status as a animal of higher intelligence than others.  Although this puts us at the top of the food chain, it does not give any reason why human life should be considered sacred or valuable.  Of course, this is a rather untenable position because it basically gives everyone permission to kill you, which most people would rather not have happen to them.  So, excluding complete ethical Nihilism, that justification is illogical.

However, most pro-death people hold the belief that a human fetus is not human, like a baby outside the womb.  Unfortunately (for pro-death proponents) this argument is rather hard to defend as well.  There are only a few consequential differences between a fetus and a baby.  Perhaps the most obvious is location.  While the fetus resides in the womb, an infant resides outside the womb.  Although this difference is a nice distinction, it offers no moral distinction.  After all, how illogical would it be if someone could only kill you when you were in the shower?  That would be rather difficult to justify, as is abortion.

One difference that many employ is that a fetus is incapable of consciousness on the same level as an adult.  This is a rather unjustifiable as well.  After all, if someone killed a person in a temporary coma, they would be tried for murder.  After all, a person in a temporary coma is, like a fetus, currently unconscious but capable of gaining consciousness.  Furthermore, one might say that a sleeping person is in a temporary coma, why isn't it legal to kill them?  However you spin this, I would say that consciousness is an extremely bad way of determining humanity or moral rights, unless you never sleep and are confident that you'll never black out.  Even then, it doesn't seem fair to those other people who rely on sleep, or have not yet gained consciousness for the first time.

Hmmm.  I'm afraid that those are the only reasons for legal abortion I can think of.  If you know of a reason I didn't touch on or have a critique of my arguments please respond and let me know.

UFO

Well, time for an update on the local bird life.  Yesterday I saw something that looked a lot like a Purple Martin. Although it's not likely to see a purple martin here because they generally like more open areas and I can't think of a nest box anywhere near here, I can't think of anything else it could of been, since it definitely had a completely dark breast and belly, and looked a lot like a swallow.  Unfortunately, I only had a very short window to look at it, so I couldn't really verify anything.

To subsidize or not to subsidize, that is the question

Well, if you've read many of my posts you probably know where I stand on man-made Global Warming.  Considering this fact, it's obvious where I stand on the production and use of ethanol.  However, just for fun, I'm going to pretend that I believe in global warming and cover some more good reasons not to use ethanol.

However, just for starters, lets look at the supposed benefits of ethanol (while pretending to believe in Global Warming).

1: Ethanol reduces CO2 emissions.  Actually, burning ethanol produces CO2 also, but all of that CO2 has been taken out of the atmosphere while the corn grows.  Therefore the increase in atmospheric CO2 is 0, unlike fossil fuels, which have been storing that carbon for thousands of years (or maybe even forever if the young-earthers are right).

2: Ethanol reduces reliance on foreign oil.  This is an obvious benefit considering the current unrest in the middle east and the fact that most of the people we buy oil from are our enemies or uneasy relations.

There.  Now we can look at the disadvantages (not mentioning the fact that the first benefit is pointless anyway).  First of all, many people don't realize that there is a lot of oil that goes into the planting, growing, harvesting, moving, fermenting, and further moving of the corn.  I know I've heard the stat, but I can't remember how many gallons of ethanol you get for one gallon of gasoline.  But if you include the production of pesticides and other factors like the ones I mentioned above, I'll bet it's less than 3 gallons of ethanol per gallon of gasoline, and I think I'm being very conservative.  Prove me wrong.  The point is, why on earth would you want to use tax payer money to make gasoline out of corn AND gasoline.  Doesn't that just seem dumb to you?

Sorry I'm not done yet.  Ethanol gives cars a lower gas mileage.  Because ethanol does not burn as well as gasoline, you go less miles on a gallon of gasoline corrupted with ethanol than you do on a gallon of regular gasoline.  Furthermore, many people claim that ethanol is bad for cars and causes engine trouble.  This seems pretty likely to me, especially in older models that weren't designed to burn ethanol.  If this is the case, it would seem that we are not only using gasoline to create fuel out of food, but the fuel we make is inferior in almost every way.

Finally, ethanol causes an increase in corn prices.  Furthermore, an increase in the cost of corn causes an increase in beef, dairy products, and a host of other products that use corn as feed for animals and as components of the product.  As we have seen, the price of food has gone up significantly since the large-scale production of ethanol was introduced.  If people have to spend more on food, they have to spend less on other things.  If they spend less on other things the economy is hurt because there is less consumer demand for non-essential products. 

Ok, lets sum things up quick.  To slightly reduce the increase in atmospheric CO2 and somewhat reduce our reliance on foreign oil, we are subsidizing making fuel that is inefficient, less effective, and probably more detrimental to engines.  In addition, we are dramatically increasing our demand for corn, at a time when world hunger is one of the largest exporters of corn in the world.  This causes economic depression at home and abroad.  Although farmers will respond by growing more corn, that will mean that they will be growing less of other things, which will and if it causes an expanse in farmland, they will have to cut down trees and ruin natural habitats, which the greenies typically don't like.  Although ethanol may have a few benefits, the harmful affects are pretty steep.

Now, since ethanol's benefits are arguably far outweighed by its harmful affects, why does the government both subsidize it and force people to use it?  Doesn't it seem rather odd that in the land of the free we are forced to use fuel that hurts our engines, hurts our economy and that of the rest of the world, and arguably is worse for the environment that regular fossil fuels.  Although I have no problem with people using ethanol because it makes them feel environmentally conscious, it seems rather odd that our government would force us to use an inferior product.  

In fact, there are a number of reasons why our government does this.  First, farmers who grow corn receive a HUGE benefit from ethanol, which makes sense because someone has to benefit from all this waste stupidity. If you are a politician from a state that produces a lot of corn, you could very easily be voted out of office for even thinking of touching ethanol subsidies.  

In addition to this, the government likes bossing people around.  Politicians usually have a mentality that they are smarter than everyone else and know what's best (even though most of them probably don't even know what ethanol is).  Because of this they like to take away as much freedom as possible from people so that they can control them with godlike power and wisdom.  Unfortunately, they happened to be born in a republic, so they have to find ways to control people that seem good and necessarily, like making everyone use recycled toiled paper.  (Fortunately that one didn't make it, but they did consider it.  People are only green because it makes them feel good.  Recycled toilet paper arguably does the opposite.)  

Because of these factors, congress voted against eliminating ethanol subsidies.  There is, however, a chance that it'll come back and pass later.  Contact your representative.

New Bird

Last Sunday, my Dad and I went on a father's day canoeing trip with some friends from church on the conastoga river.  To my great surprise, I actually saw a new bird while on the river.  Not that there aren't plenty of common birds that I haven't seen, but it's hard to see birds from a boat anyway since you're moving and it's hard to keep binoculars steady, even when you can drop your paddle and get your binoculars in time.  Fortunately, the bird I saw was easily identifiable without binoculars.  The Red-headed Woodpecker is a very distinctive bird with its all red head and distinctive black and white markings in flight.  Although the conastoga is well within the birds range, it has been declining due to habitat loss.  Anyway, it's always nice to see a new bird, and this one is a particularly beautiful one.  To top this off, we also got a great look at a Black-crowned Night-Heron, which is a beautiful bird that I don't see frequently.  Finally, I think I finally figured out how to distinguish Tree Swallows from Northern Rough-winged Swallows.  Although they look really similar, sometimes the light doesn't catch the tree swallows blue color and I'm preparing for when the juvenile Tree swallows appear, which are colored brown like the Northern Rough-winged Swallow.  Bottom line, I had a much better trip than I expected (also thanks to the beautiful cool weather).

Pakistan Problems

As if Pakistan hadn't been enough of a jerk lately, they've just decided to arrest the correspondents who made that killing of Bin Laden possible.  If they really weren't harboring terrorists, one would think that they would be thanking us for our operation, but instead they have whined and threatened us and now arrested our correspondents.  If this isn't reason to stop giving them money I don't know what is.  After all, not only was the most wanted terrorist hiding in plane sight next to a military academy in one of their cities, they are mad at us for not getting their permission to kill him first and are treating our correspondents as criminals.  Now, if Pakistan and the US were allies, correspondents from either side would also be considered allies, I would think.  If, on the other hand, they were enemies, they would treat each other's correspondents as spies and incarcerate them.  Therefore, since Pakistan has incarcerated our correspondents, I would argue that they consider themselves enemies with us (they probably also consider the money that we give them tribute).  Now, If they are enemies with us, it seems to follow that we are enemies with them, since friendship is requires cooperation from both parties.  Since we appear to be enemies with Pakistan, why do we give them money, despite our gigantic deficit.  The only rational reason someone would give money to their enemy is that they want to appease them, in other words pay them tribute.  Since Pakistan has not beat us in a war or shown itself able to defeat us in a full scale conflict, it makes not sense to pay them tribute.  The reason our government gives for paying Pakistan to hate us is that it gives a certain amount of control over them and helps maintain our "friendship".  Since we don't appear to have any friendship to maintain, and our control has failed miserably, I see no reason to give them another dime.  Maybe, since the house is controlled by republicans who ran on fiscal responsibility and common sense we will stop giving aid to Pakistan, but since Obama seems rather interested in alienating our allies and assisting our enemies, that may be wistful thinking on my part. 

Eagle II

Well, the eaglets have fledged the nest, although they appear to still be pretty reliant on their parents, which isn't unusual.  When I went to church yesterday the whole family of five was hanging out in the tree.  My best guess is that the parents were looking for fish in the steam below the nest while the eaglets were waiting for dinner.  Anyway, I snapped a lot of pictures in the hope that one of them would be semi-decent.  Well I can hope can't I?!!

I'm sure that any of you who are or once were parents will sympathize with the difficulty I had with the eaglets.  Why can't those kids just sit nicely and smile into the camera!

Raise Taxes?

Although it seems to be less of an immediate concern right now in the media, Congress still hasn’t come to a decision on whether to raise the debt limit or not.  Historically this has usually been an easy vote, except that one time when they didn’t raise it and the government went into default (yet we’re still here).  The reason, as I explained earlier, is that while the Democrats just want to borrow more money to fund their excessive programs the Republicans want to put measures in place that will ensure that our nation starts down a road to fiscal responsibility so that we won’t have to default later when we have more debt and no one is willing to to lend money to the US. 

Of course, even those who agree on taking measures to decrease the debt as part of raising the debt limit do not agree on how to do it.  The Democrats want to increase taxes, while the Republicans (for the most part) want to cut spending.  Of course, most Democrats want to include both, since taxing to rich 100% would be no where near enough to sustain current spending. 

I would argue, however, that raising taxes on the wealthy will not, as the Democrats claim, increase revenue.  Although this idea is somewhat counter intuitive, it is rather simple and has been proven a number of times.  The idea goes something like this.  When you raise taxes, you encourage people to put their money into tax-free forms, meaning that the government does not get the money anyway and often gets less, despite the higher tax rate.  In addition to this, high taxes discourage entrepreneurship and encourage the rich to hunker down and try to weather the storm instead of going out, taking risks, expanding their businesses, and hiring more workers.  This in turn causes the economy to go down and causes their to be even less wealth around, leaving even less for the government to tax. 

This phenomenon has been proven a number of times in the past.  President Regan’s tax cuts actually caused an eventual increase in government revenue, which the Liberals promptly spent.  That wasn’t the first time, however, there were other times that this correlation has been seen, although I can’t remember the times and names involved right now.

This brings up another point that I think is worth considering.  Historically, whenever new revenue has been created, the Democrats (and sometimes Republicans, unfortunately) have spent the money on new programs instead of paying off our nations debts.  The obvious way to avoid this happening in the near future is to make the government make due with what they have instead of giving them more money.  Just think, when you have an individual who is physically irresponsible, you don’t give the individual more money, you set up a way for them to live within their means and avoid the problem in the future.  Otherwise they’ll just go out and spend it and come back to you again wanting more money.  That’s how I feel our government has been acting ever since the start of the great depression.  Hopefully, now that America has elected congressmen and senators who have vowed to turn our nation around physically and stop the government from taxing us to pay for actions that we don’t want and that infringe on our rights, the story will be different this time.  However, considering how vicious the democrats are becoming at the threat of losing their precious big government program, I can only hope that the political theater will shift even more in favor of the Republicans in the upcoming elections.   

Eagles

Well, these are pretty horrible pictures, but they’re the best I could get.  I took these at a local nest that happens to be visible from the parking lot of my church on Wednesday.  The juveniles have gotten pretty big and they may be fledged by the time I see them again on Sunday.

Obama's Birth Ordeal

Well, I know this is old news, but I haven’t gotten a chance to post about it recently.  For those of you who haven’t heard, Obama’s birth certificate is a fake.  I’d go into the evidence, but you can just watch it all here.  

(If you have any doubts or questions, he made some other videos to answer questions he received via comments.)  Anyhow, what I’d like to know is why on earth the Obama administration would release a fake Birth certificate (and a junky one at that).  Of course, Either the birth certificate doesn’t exist or they don’t want people to see it.  Although Obama would probably rather lie than tell the truth, it just doesn’t make sense at all that they would release a junky fake instead of the real deal, if they had it.  So, I would argue that this is evidence that Obama was not born in the United States (although I can’t imagine how).  However, I would not say that it is conclusive evidence, especially considering the compelling evidence on the other side that he was born in Hawaii.  Whether or not he was born in the US, it seems clear that the Obama Administration has no birth certificate.  How or why this came about must be left to the imagination.  Now, of course, the next question arises.  Why on earth didn’t the Obama administration release a half decent fake?  As you can see from the video, this fake could have been superficially covered up by a number of simple measures, like printing the fake and then scanning it instead of sending the actual file of the fake.  Two possibilities remain.  Either the Obama administration is completely incompetent or it wants people to know (or at least think) that Obama has no genuine birth certificate.  Although the second option seems absurd at first, the Obama administration might be trying to distract conservatives away from the important issues of Obama’s horrible policies and keep them focused on the arguably less important issue of whether he can legally be president.  Furthermore, the first option, although generally true, is unlikely in the case of lying and deceiving.  If there’s anything that the Obama administration is good at it is lying, the the idea that they would be this bad at deceiving people just doesn’t make sense to me.  Therefore, it seems to me that the best explanation is that the Obama administration is using this as another ploy to lead the Republicans down a rabbit trail.  Whether this is the case, I don’t know.  After all, que sais je?

Encouraging Inefficiency

As I touched on in my last post, in government programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government encourages the programs to be inefficient by giving them more money when they go over their budget and less when they go under.  Another area where this is true is welfare, and many similar programs.  In welfare, individuals are encouraged not to get a job, not to work hard, and not to look after their own interests.  Although Liberals at least claim to want to help people, I think I would be pretty miserable if the government took over my entire life.  Just look at the things they have taken over, such as the postal service, education, can you name one thing the government has taken over that it didn't ruin?  (Excluding the military of course.)  Do I really want that kind of bloated, inefficient institution taking care of things like my medicare, my retirement (oh wait, they've already messed up that one too), what kind of car I drive, what I can teach my kids, and what kind of toilet paper I use (yes, they did try to ban non-recycled toilet paper)?  If the government tries to take care of everyone, who is going to take care of the government?  Even the rich only have so much.  If the government just keeps paying people to be lazy, I'll bet there will be even more people who will decide to be lazy.  Then there are less productive people paying for the lazy people.  Anyway, whatever you think you can't deny that there are some people who abuse the system.  Certainly that's a problem worth addressing for a nation that is trillions of dollars into debt.

The Budget Battle

As anyone who pays any attention to the political arena knows, the US government is now debating on whether or not to raise the debt limit of the federal government.  What makes this debate interesting is that Republicans are insisting that the bill include large cuts, to make sure that the government does not continue its irresponsible path and just have to raise the debt limit again.  Democrats, on the other hand, say that Republican are playing with the reputation of the US for political gains.  Therefore, even though the Democrats claim that they want to reduce the deficit, they seem to want to do it after the pressure is off and it is easier to deceive voters into thinking that reducing the deficit is not an urgent matter.

My first question about the Democrats' argument is why, if they really want to reduce the deficit, they don't just gladly put some cuts in the bill and get it passed.  If, as they say, they want both the debt limit raised and deficit reduced, then one would think that they would be glad to get a chance to pass both in the same bill.  Unfortunately, the opposite is the case.  The Democrats, rather than demonstrating a willingness to reduce the deficit are slandering the Republican for try to restore some semblance of fiscal responsibility to the government before they allow it to go deeper into debt.

Furthermore, I wonder, what is so cunning and evil about the Republican's plan?  All they want to do is make sure that the nation will not continue its path to destruction.  After all, if there aren't major cuts soon the US government will have to default on its debt anyway and the consequences will be even more severe.  It seems that the Democrats decide the policies of the US based on how they feel and what gets them the most votes.

Here, I am afraid, we come to the eye of the storm: entitlements.  Unfortunately, in addition to taking up 43% of 2010 federal spending, Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid are all programs that have made the Democrats strong.  Since FDR, Democrats have bought votes through entitlements and other forms of handouts.  Although helping the poor and elderly is wonderful, these programs have created more poverty, less working individuals, and have had a huge drain on the treasury (although, to my understanding, social security would be doing just fine right now if the feds hadn't been "borrowing" money from it to pay for other programs).  Considering the fact that these programs are the largest blocks of spending, one would think that to make real cuts one would need to reform these programs.  Democrats, however spaz out whenever someone talks about changing Medicare or social security.  Why? because the republicans have suggested shifting some of the responsibility back on individuals and the private sector.  For a nation well on its way to becoming a nanny state, this would be a catastrophe.  To expect adults to be able to take care of themselves is, obviously, cruel and heartless, as republicans always are.  Or at least that's what the Democrats say.  Is there really anything wrong with people taking care of themselves?  Well, there is if your goal in life is to expand the power of the government and systematically take away the rights given to Americans by God, as outlined in the constitution.  Now, If evolution is true, as Liberals insist that we teach in the public schools, wouldn't it be better to leave people to their own devices and allow the weak and inefficient to die out and let the strong reproduce?  Why do the Democrats insist on weakening the species by supporting the weaker, less competitive individuals by taking away from the strong?  Of course, I don't actually believe in evolution, but the liberals seem to and it seems that this is a major inconsistency in views on government.

Whatever your views on entitlements, you have to admit that they take up a much larger percentage of the deficit than the military, so we can't just raise taxes on the job-makers and cut the military and expect to make a big difference, considering that military was only 20% of the 2010 spending.  Although liberals claim that these programs can be reformed significantly enough without changing the benefits, I find this hard to believe.  Although government programs are certainly inefficient, I doubt that the politicians will be able to whip it into shape significantly enough, especially to save trillions of dollars.  One of the biggest reasons I think this is that Government programs are designed in a way that encourages wastefulness.  Unlike in business, where there is a finite amount of money available and it must be made the best of, a government program basically has an infinite amount of money from the ever-borrowing federal government.  After all, if a program goes under it's budget by working efficiently, the government will punish it by giving it less money next year.  If, however, it spends more than it is given, the government will reward it with more money.  Therefore, the programs are set up in such a way that it encourages inefficiencies and punishes hard work and ingenuity.  This flaw is only reparable if the task is put into the public sector, which is rewarded for efficiency and quality, unlike the government which rewards inefficiency and doesn't give a fig for quality (just look at the postal service).  You may have noticed that this brings us back to the public sector.  Wait a minute. . . THAT’S THE REPUBLICANS’ PLAN!!!  Seems to me that Republicans are doing exactly what the Democrats claim to want to do, remove inefficiencies from the system and maintain the benefits.

If you disagree with me PLEASE post a reply and explain why.  I am completely open to the possibility that I am wrong, I just don't see how yet.

Thrasher Update

Well, I have continued to see Brown Thrashers in my yard lately.  In addition to this, when I mowed my grandparents lawn, which is really close to my house, I saw a Thrasher fledgeling.  It looked a little bit like a robin fledgeling in shape, but it was reddish brown on the back, like an adult Thrasher.  The part that really made it look awkward was that, unlike adult thrashers, it had a very short tail (not to mention how clumsy it was).  Anyway, I hope that the adult thrashers will bring the fledgling over to my feeder soon.  Whether or not that happens, though I'm glad I got a chance to see it.