A Mishmash of Modern Disasters, or Things I Really, Really Hate!

As the nine regular readers can attest, this blogger has been in a dark and pessimistic mood for several days. That mood continues. To prove it, I list, in no particular order and with no particular rhyme or reason, SOME, only some of the things I consider the modern world's greatest disasters (and I won't even mention Islam . . or I might . . . don't know yet.)

1) The Telephone Answering Machine: This horrid device and its subsequent even more horrid offspring have ruined my life. As a career bureaucrat, for years and years, prior to this devil's device I could pretend not to have received calls or pretend to have made them. With the advent of that machine that evasion became virtually impossible. This invention is one of the greatest contributors to the decline of Western civilization. It has destroyed one of the great and useful white lies, "I tried calling you . . . "

2) Twenty-four Hour News: The arrival of CNN and its imitators helped create the atmosphere of perennial crisis in which we live. These news services run the same story over and over and over all day long, to such an extent that one cannot after a bit tell whether it is a new story or the old "tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury. . ." It has led to a couple of generations of news anchors who have become masters at filling dead air.

3) Universal University Education: How many people really need a university education? Better asked, how many people really need a budget-busting indoctrination "noneducation" which is what most universities now provide? Do we need hundreds, nay, thousands of these institutions producing millions of half-literate and arrogant idiots indoctrinated in the liberal orthodoxy and possessing no discernible skills? You know the answer . . .

4) Tax Withholding: Allowing the government to take its "taste" of our income before we even see it has helped produce the disastrous growth of government and the spiral of ever-increasing taxes. It has produced workers "grateful" every year when they get tax refunds, and made them almost oblivious to tax increases. Imagine how people would react if they had to save up the money and on December 31, write a check to the government for the full amount of taxes owed. The 1773 Boston tea party would be nothing in comparison to what would happen.

5) School Districts: Why should tax paying parents have to send their kids to schools in their "district"? Why not allow free competition so parents can send their kids to good schools, and force the bad ones to shutter or improve?

6) Texting: I remain convinced that horrid devices such as cellphones and "tablets" were designed by opticians and chiropractors. We are developing a generation of children who are going blind, hunchback, and bonkers staring at their hands even at the dinner table, not to mention while driving or even while "talking" with each other. I never see them with books, just IPhones.

7) Global Warming AKA Climate Change: Stop. Please, stop. To those die hard believers in this nonsense it is time to go back to believing in the power of triangles, chariots of the gods, and the peaceful, Gaia-loving essence of native American societies. Or better, just go away. As Einstein has shown us it is never wise to claim that "the science is settled" but it is just about as settled as it can be. The evidence is not there for the belief, and note I use that word deliberately, that human activity causes global warming or the even more vague and dishonest "climate change." Amazing ain't it? Finally, finally, scientists are breaking through the wall of censorship and grant terror to note that, well, ahem, it seems the sun, you know that big yellow hot ball in the sky, might, just might have more to do with changes in climate than does my SUV. This climate nonsense made Al Gore and others very rich; they should now just take their money and go away.

Sigh, there are so many other things out there that make a person sad and depressed. Can't possibly list them all . . . soon I will be back to my old self and ranting about jihadis and liberals . . . give me a day or so . . . where's my oatmeal?