Commentary on recent events

Harold comments on recent events. Feel free to comment below, but please mind your language so that everyone may participate comfortably.

I don’t know how regularly I’ll post commentary such as that contained herein, but perhaps if it generates some discussion or otherwise entertains people (myself included), I’ll do this more often. A couple of recent events got me to thinking about the direction of our society, so I wanted to point them out.

Record labels run by the deaf?

First off, NBC televised the Miss Teen USA pageant the other night. For those who missed it, congratulations. You did not see (or worse, listen to) Aaron Carter perform. How does this nasally off-key performer top the music charts? What happened to needing talent to get a recording contract? If this guy can top the charts, then why hasn’t William Hung joined him up there? I did not enjoy that performance, Aaron. If someone can explain this phenomenon to me, I would appreciate it. I’ve heard much more talented acts that don’t get nearly the same attention and it just seems wrong.

Yes, I flipped the channel not soon afterwards.

New Energy Bill, new electronic devices?

First of all, a general comment on the new bill President Bush signed into law on Monday. Critics claim that the bill doesn’t do enough. Well, the last I checked, doing something about the energy situation sure beats doing nothing about it. Secondly, the tax breaks to companies pursuing new energy-saving technologies and to the consumers who use them encourages, in our capitalist society, the businesses to pursue these technologies and allows them to release them to the eager public at more palatable prices. It also encourages the public to think “green” in two ways–buying hybrid and electric cars will save more green come tax time. The alternative to this bill, of course, becomes no bill at all. That translates into no new incentives, no actions taken, more people complaining about the lack of action. Besides, environmental extremists scored a victory on this one, since Congress shelved attempts at Alaskan oil drilling to get this bill passed. Sure, Congress needs to do more to alleviate our dependence on foreign oil, but let’s encourage them to pass more legislation to address what they haven’t addressed instead of whining about it and move forward with what they did pass.

But the point of contention that I did have relates not to any of these tax incentives, which I like, but with the Daylight Savings Time changes. As a result of this bill, Daylight Savings Time will start 3 weeks earlier and end 1 week later. Now, of course, this development looks great, especially to those of us who enjoy the shifted hours. But why not just extend DST to the whole year? By merely shifting the start and end dates, the bill has a stealth economy booster built in. Anyone who still runs an old VCR that does not download updated time data will now find that the automatic adjustment for DST no longer works. For those who can’t afford new recorders, you get to configure your clocks manually. Turn off the automatic DST adjustment, or you’ll have to set it again when it would kick in automatically. And how about people who still run outdated operating systems like Windows 98? Do you think Microsoft will patch Win98 for you, or encourage you to make the jump to XP? Of course, that leap will make some of you need to upgrade your hardware as well.

Until next time…

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