Fox News reports on a public-relations stunt conducted in Times Square where people were invited to shred or demolish with a sledge hammer their bad memories from 2007.

Apparently there are a lot of people who needed to be embarrassed publicly before they could face the new year. But the most pathetic of them all was Joe Costarella of Staten Island who took the opportunity to demolish a tall garbage can from his kitchen with an opening too narrow to scrape his plate. Before this, could you have imagined someone carrying a tall garbage can from Staten Island to Manhattan to destroy it so he could get a new one? Don’t you think placing it beside the road for pick-up and stomping on it a couple of times would suffice for most people?

Perhaps he got the idea from the commercials running on TV that show people dramatically destroying their old trucks so they can get a new one. I came up with an apparently very clever idea years ago; I sell the old truck and use the money on the purchase of a new one.

Since I’m off the subject now, why do the commercials showing people driving with booze sloshing around in their cars imply that they have been drinking? It seems to imply the opposite to me.

Get ready for the next huge scam — like that of ethanol — to be perpetrated on the American people. Why do I know it’s a scam? Because it has to be forced on us by an Act of Congress. Congress forced ethanol on us and now they are about to force CFLs on us. If CFLs or ethanol are as great as they are claimed to be why wouldn’t the free market usher them into universal usage? The truth is that they aren’t as great as the claims.

USA Today reports on a bill now being pushed through the Senate that President Bush has said he will sign. It sets a timetable for phasing in energy savings in light bulbs. Comparing fluorescent and incandescent bulb energy costs, it says that a fluorescent bulb “saves about $5 a year in electricity costs, paying for itself in as little as four months.”

Although they don’t say so, apparently that claim is based on burning the bulbs constantly for a year. Otherwise it doesn’t make any sense. Its obvious that a bulb that’s only on for two hours a year is not going to save $5 a year in power costs. The lights in my boathouse are turned on about once a month and only stay on about 10 minutes each time. The lights in my detached garage aren’t on much longer. But Congress is going to force me to pay four times as much for these bulbs in order to save maybe about two cents a year in energy costs.

I tried CFLs and found two deficiencies so far. They don’t last as long as claimed and they don’t work too well outdoors on cold nights. And there’s the disposal issue. We aren’t supposed to just throw them in the trash because they contain mercury. Does this mean we have to get another recycle basket and have another big truck lumbering down our street each week?

How long before Congress tells us what color to paint our walls? After all, a room with white walls doesn’t need as much light wattage as the same room with darker walls.

Update: A commenter has pointed out that new problems with CFLs have surfaced. Some people with certain skin sensitivities have found that fluorescent light exacerbates the condition. And it has been found that the CFLs can cause migraines and increase the risk of seizures in people with epilepsy. See the comments for a link to a BBC article.

Right now the Midwest and Northeast could use some of Gore’s hot air. Even in Florida I’m sitting by a fire looking at 29 degrees and frost outside. But it’s been said that global warming works in mysterious ways.

It should be clear now why Gore and his cohorts held the big climate conference in Bali instead of, say, Buffalo. He caught a lot of criticism for the amount of carbon the conference generated, but can you imagine how much the participants’ enthusiasm might have been dimmed by sub-zero temperatures. If not, consider the negative image of parka-clad television reporters standing in knee-deep snow.

There has been a lot of ink this past summer about how the arctic ice is melting more than usual. One fear is that the melting sea ice is threatening the polar bears. But I don’t see any concern for the seals. It seems to me that the seals would be happy to see fewer polar bears lurking around their habitat.

The glowarm alarmists are pressing forward with their efforts to impose economy threatening restrictions on carbon dioxide emissions despite substantial evidence that the global warming trend ended in 1998. It’s interesting to note that the glowarmers are trying to change the name of their movement (religion?) from “global warming” to “climate change.” Perhaps they are aware of the recent cooling trend but don’t want to acknowledge it directly.

Actually I’m referring more to extreme interrogation techniques than to torture. Torture is cutting off fingers, ripping off fingernails or intensive electrical shock. Water-boarding is an extreme interrogation technique.

The fact that the CIA used water-boarding to extract information from a couple of terrorists has gotten a lot of play in the media lately. Despite the fact that the government claims that the extracted information allowed terrorist attacks to be averted, most of the media accounts have been highly critical of the use of water-boarding. (But they seem to have been more worked up over the fact that the CIA destroyed video tapes of the interrogations. If they think it’s so bad why do they want to watch it?) They seem to be saying that saving innocent lives does not justify scaring the crap out of a known terrorist.

If you think you’re opposed to using extreme interrogation techniques under any circumstances, consider the following scenario: Your daughter has been kidnapped. Due to a lucky break the police have arrested a man they are certain is the kidnapper. Although he won’t tell the police where he is holding your daughter he has told them that she is locked inside a large tank that is slowly filling with water. He says that she will drown in 48 hours if the police don’t meet his demands, which are to be given a million dollars in cash and transportation to a country of his choice. He says that he will tell the police the location of your daughter when he reaches his destination.

Would you bet your daughter’s life that the kidnapper will keep his promise? Or would you encourage the police to use some innovative forms of persuasion to convince the kidnapper to reveal her location?

Considering the possibility that the kidnapper is lying and your daughter is already dead, would you discourage the use of torture because doing so would make you as bad as the kidnapper? Or would you want the kidnapper to suffer as much as your daughter likely did?

If you would choose to take the so-called high-road on this I’m glad you’re not my parent. If it were my daughter in this situation I would choose to use any non-life-threatening means available to break the kidnapper.

In principle this scenario is no different than dealing with a person that you know has information critical to preventing a major attack on our country that could kill thousands of people. The key element in both is that there is no doubt that the person has critical information and is refusing to give it up.

I believe the reason so many people in this country condemn the use of extreme interrogation techniques under any circumstances is that they don’t have a clear stake in the outcome. It’s a lot easier to take the high moral ground when neither you nor close loved ones are directly threatened. We should all take the time to consider whether our moral stances would survive if the bad stuff is happening to us.

There has been a lot of discussion lately about a new National Intelligence Estimate that concludes that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program about four years ago. It has given rise to another what-did-Bush-know-and-when-did-he-know-it witch hunt by the media. As if the general public is entitled to know every step the executive branch of our government takes. Can you imagine dealing with any adversary, much less the regime in Iran, by always putting all your cards on the table before negotiation begins? Do you suppose that any of the media idiots, like David Gregory, ever consider the possibility that they are being used?
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Wouldn’t it be nice if we had the option of voting for none-of-the-above on all elections? And if none-of-the-above gets the most votes, none of those running would be allowed to take office? Of course you might ask, what would we do then about filling the office? My suggestion is to just leave it vacant until a new election can be held — in which none of the candidates from the previous election would be allowed to run.

Chances are that none-of-the-above wouldn’t win by a clear majority that frequently. But wouldn’t it be great when one of the candidates has to conduct a run-off campaign against none-of-the-above?
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Is a President Bitch, President Diversity or President Hairspray really the best the Democrats have to offer? The one candidate, Bill Richardson, that might actually have the kind of experience needed is not even in their first tier. It seems to me that if their goal is something other than to ensure eight more years of Republican control of the White House they would offer us someone like Joe Lieberman.
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Have you noticed how many twenty-somethings are passed off as experts on one subject or another on the talking-heads channels? Most of the young women are really easy on the eyes of this old man but I don’t give much weight to their opinions or those of the young men. I don’t care how bright they are or what school they’re from they don’t know that much yet.
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Am I turning into Andy Rooney?