By Steve Erbach on Wednesday, May 28, 2008 3:52 PM

The perfect answer to World Jump Day, the Green Hannukia Campaign, Gas Outs, and Earth Hour: Carbon Belch Day, June 12th!

Discover just how big a carbon footprint you can make by using the Carbon Belch Day Calculator.  I weighed in at 192 lbs. of carbon that I'll belch into the atmosphere on that glorious day.  (The American average is 41 lbs!)

Then sign the Carbon Belch Day petition.  Finally purchase a "Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Friday, May 16, 2008 4:42 AM

All you can do is laugh:

Obesity contributes to global warming: study

Thu May 15, 2008 7:03pm EDT
 
By Michael Kahn

GENEVA (Reuters) - Obesity contributes to global warming, too.

Obese and overweight people require more fuel to transport them and the food they eat, and the problem will worsen as the population literally swells in size, a team at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine says.

This adds to food shortages and higher energy prices, the school's researchers Phil Edwards and Ian Roberts wrote in the journal Lancet on Friday.

"We are all becoming heavier and it is a global responsibilit ... Read More »

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The Town Crank

By Steve Erbach on Tuesday, May 13, 2008 6:52 PM

This story made local news on Monday:

Boy suffers burns in blowtorch game

May 12, 2008

MANITOWOC — A 14-year-old boy was hospitalized Saturday with burns on more than a quarter of his body after a blowtorch game with another teenage boy, authorities said.

The injured boy, who was not named, was sent to Columbia St. Mary's Hospital in Milwaukee, said Capt. Mark Rusboldt of the Manitowoc Fire Department.

Rusboldt said firefighters found the boy in the garage of a residence with burns to his back, head, face, both arms and hands.

The injured boy and another teen apparently used spray cans as blowtorches and would use them on each other, Rusboldt said. The other teen was not injured.

When I heard that story on the radio Monday morning I got to thinking about how this kid is going to live the rest of his life.  Every ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Monday, May 12, 2008 9:12 PM

In keeping with The Town Crank's designation as part of the Read the Bills coalition, I'd like to present this latest offering by DownsizeDC.org, a bewildering account of behind-the-scenes budget maneuvering and CYA.

D o w n s i z e r - D i s p a t c h

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In 2005 Republican Rep. Don Young of Alaska championed a $10 million earmark for a highway interchange. The earmark appeared in an 835-page transportation bill called SAFETEA-LU. Rep. Young was the man behind Alaska's infamous $233 million "Bridge to Nowhere," so this sounds like nothing unusual for him, except that . . .

• The project wasn't in Alaska, but as far away as possible, in the Florida district of Republican Rep. Connie Mack.

•   Mack and other local ... Read More »
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  The Town Crank

By Steve Erbach on Monday, May 12, 2008 5:39 PM

I caught our son, Sam (on the left in the gray t-shirt), sparring -- well, posing as if he were sparring -- with his friend, Vinny.  They use weapons made from PVC pipe, foam insulation, and mucho duct tape.

I could not get on-camera our next-door neighbor, a retired Marine captain, who has sparred a few times with the boys.  He was retired out of the Marine Corps with severe bone cancer.  He now gets around with a cane, but he is a formidable sparring opponent nonetheless.  He uses an unpadded boken or bokken, a wooden sword used for practice in the martial arts.  You can try to outmaneuver him if you'd care to, but he's going to split you from chin to nether regions if you get cocky.

Just a fun time ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Sunday, May 11, 2008 7:03 AM

You'd think that federal programs (as Joseph Sobran says, anything called a "program" is unconstitutional) would at least be more carefully constructed than, say, a water plant in Appleton or a steam plant in Menasha.  Not so.

The federal student loan program was fiddled with last fall because the lenders were making too much money.  So, after the lenders decided to scale back their student loan offerings because they couldn't make as much money off of them, there were fewer student loans available.  Now we're being treated to the spectacle of the federal government "bailing out" the very same lenders it punished for making too much money.

This is how government works.  The Wall Street Journal has an excellent editorial on this topic:

Read More »

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The Town Crank

By Steve Erbach on Saturday, May 10, 2008 9:44 AM

For the millions of programmers out there,
this book speaks to YOU!

Mr. Smolin's book isn't for the Sergei Brins or the Linus Torvalds of the world. If you think that the author is going to reveal the most sure-fire software development environment that will have the greatest chance of acceptance in the marketplace, you'd better look elsewhere. Actually, there IS no elsewhere because there is no such source that can deliver o ... Read More »

By Steve Erbach on Friday, May 09, 2008 5:37 AM

How concerned are you about food safety?

(published 12-May-2008, Appleton Post-Crescent -- published portions in bold-italics)

 

How concerned could I be when I've got all these wonderful, kind-hearted politicians and safety mavens who'll see to it that I never have even the remotest chance of putting anything unhealthful into my mouth?  Restaurant maitre-d's will have those little fat pincher doohickies that measure my body mass index, so after leaving a red welt on my love handles, they'll have Victor and Bruno show me the error of my ways while throwing me out on my ear.  I'll be prevented from eating anything that could possibly do me any harm if consumed in mass, lab-rat-gagging q ... Read More »

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The Town Crank

By Steve Erbach on Thursday, May 08, 2008 4:43 PM

This message from DownsizeDC.org is important enough, I think, to re-publish in its entirety:

D o w n s i z e r - D i s p a t c h

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Quote of the Day:

"I freed thousands of slaves. I could have freed thousands more if they had known they were slaves."
-- Harriet Tubman

Subject: A Day of Infamy & Inspiration

Saturday is an anniversary. May 10, 2005 was a day that will live in infamy. On that date the Senate passed the REAL ID Act.

No Senate majority ever intended this outcome. We had defeated REAL ID in the Senate twice before. After the second vote the Senate declined to vote again.

The White House and the House Republican leadership got around this by inserting the bill ... Read More »