The "Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change" released its report on climate change yesterday, and Outside magazine declared it an "Authoritative Report" (http://outside.away.com/outside/news/2007201_1.html).
I'm not interested in a debate about whether or not climate change is impacted by human beings (the IPCC is "disclosed its educated belief that it is “very likely” that global warming has been caused by human activity").
I'm interested in the idea of a non-governing body (or any-body for that matter) being declared "authoritative."
History is not what happened, it's how we remember what happened. One of the philosophers said that - Plato? Aristotle? Liberace? - I don't remember which. What's important is that if the ones who win the wars get to record history, is it the groups who appoint themselves and have some sort of quorum who get to be authoritative?
Friday, February 2, 2007
Thursday, February 1, 2007
The hot poop...
Ever notice how expensive diapers are? Yesterday, I spent $112 on diapers. Seriously. I'm probably not the first person to rant about this, but they're expensive. As I am a poorly-paid public servant, my wife and I buy store-brand diapers for our boys (22 months and 5 months). Our local Grocery Warehouse (a ghetto subsidiary of Albertson's) is closing for some unknown reason, and when I went by yesterday, diapers were 30% off. So I actually cleared them out of size 3, 4, and 5 diapers. My cart runneth over. Towers of yellow plastic packages threatened to tumble over the edges of my cart as I headed towards the checkout and received inquisitive looks.
Here's the boring math: 6 packs of size 3's = 240 diapers; 12 packs of size 4's = 408 diapers, 3 packs of size 5's = 90. So, I bought 738 diapers yesterday at about 15 cents apiece. Again, we buy the cheap stuff. Huggies and Pampers cost roughly a third more than the store-brand diapers, so they're almost double what we pay. I haven't checked to see what the Eddie Bauer or - gasp - Louie Vuitton-branded poop catchers cost.
We often change the boys if we think they might have a dirty diaper, if they had a loud fart, or if we can't really remember the last time we changed them. Can you imagine paying 15 cents everytime you (insert colorful euphemism here)? I - I mean this friend of mine - goes enough that he'd be paying over a dollar a day into the void.
A potty-trained kid is a frugal kid.
Here's the boring math: 6 packs of size 3's = 240 diapers; 12 packs of size 4's = 408 diapers, 3 packs of size 5's = 90. So, I bought 738 diapers yesterday at about 15 cents apiece. Again, we buy the cheap stuff. Huggies and Pampers cost roughly a third more than the store-brand diapers, so they're almost double what we pay. I haven't checked to see what the Eddie Bauer or - gasp - Louie Vuitton-branded poop catchers cost.
We often change the boys if we think they might have a dirty diaper, if they had a loud fart, or if we can't really remember the last time we changed them. Can you imagine paying 15 cents everytime you (insert colorful euphemism here)? I - I mean this friend of mine - goes enough that he'd be paying over a dollar a day into the void.
A potty-trained kid is a frugal kid.
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