Unexpected gift!

i got home today from work and I checked the mail like I am accustomed to doing.

In it I found an 8X11 picture that was autographed saying:

"To Greg, Best Wishes, John Rocker"

It seems as though he must have liked my post a few weeks back.

Who would have thought an autographed picture from John Rocker would make my day!

Why I won't give blood.

I refuse to give blood in blood drives. If my mom needs a pint or two, that is fine. I will go to the hospital and give it to her. But not the red cross.

Do you think that they just give blood away? In 2004 they had $3 Billion dollars in revenue. THREE BILLION. Where'd they get that from? Well they would have had to sell something to get revenue, right? Yes, they sold your blood (that they got for free) to people in hospitals that need it. Why aren't they paying you for your blood? Because that would eat into their profits! But Greggie, they are non-profit.

Are they? A great way to get rid of profits is to pay the executives more. Or better still pay independant contractors millions of dollars...(see page 7 and page 66 of the below link).

See for yourself...here is their 2004 tax returns.

Not everything is as it seems. The Red Cross sells the blood that you donate, and the hospitals and the red cross get rich off of it. (I think its a safe bet that the hospitals mark up the cost of blood, and pass that expense on over to you.).

But hey, at least it feels like you're doing a good deed, right?

Clean up your act.

Have we lost all respect? Last week at a red light I saw someone throw a bag of fast food out the window. What in the hell were they thinking, that someone else would pick it up? Yesterday I saw someone empty their ash tray on the street.

Have you ever thought about where your trash goes? just because you take it to the curb doesn't mean it goes away. I'm not going to throw stats at you about how much trash the US goes through, I'm going to throw logic at you.

Trash doesn't go away!

I'm not asking you to change your lifestyle and start buying hippie environmental products. I'm just begging that you be cognizant of the fact that trash doesn't go away. Don't litter! It makes our cities look horrible. Next time you want to throw something out your window, just set it on the floor and throw it away 10 minutes later when you get home.

(note I always put my money where my mouth is....I own the following stock: SRCL).

Please don't litter. Have some respect.

Stephen Hawking, kiss my black hole.

Stephen Hawking wrote a book called "A Brief History in Time." You probably are more familiar with him as the smart guy in the wheelchair who uses computers to talk.

The whole book is based on 2 key premises. That there is nothing faster than the speed of light and the speed of light is a constant. I am not claiming to be on his level. I didn't even understand half the book...(the half after he summed up Einstein and co). He is a genius, and should be treated as such.

But I think his whole argument is wrong. If one premise is wrong, the argument is wrong. How can he say nothing is faster than the speed of light?

- How about darkness? Darkness has to be at least as fast as the speed of light.
- How about anything we don't know about yet. How can he base his whole argument on a premise that contains the word "nothing"? Extreme words in a premise are begging to be wrong.
- Light is a wave. Anyone familiar with an osciliscope or car/home audio knows that waves lose their power over distance. Hawking/Einstein claimed that the speed of light was a constant...how can it be a constant if it loses its speed? (think this is too easy to be true...create your own wave by throwing a penny in a pond...notice that the ripples are less the further away you go). Thus the speed of light is not even as fast as the speed of light. If this simple observation is correct than I have just proved Einstein's theory of Relativity wrong (E=MC^2)

So what's the point? The point is be skeptical. Just becausewe are taught it doesn't make it so. Just because its in print, doesn't make it so.