When I was a boy science was fun!
Rich wrote a great post explaining why we are destined to live with the negative effects of erroneous Environmentalist policies for quite some time. I agree. But how did we get here?
Greg Conterio at Modern Conservative wrote a piece on July 26th about an annoying 13 year old boy lecturing a group on an elevator about their profligate waste. It’s a well-written piece. I recommend you read it. Mr. Conterio takes a “kids these days” approach to the incident, and half-jokingly blames the Disney channel for its endless barrage of substanceless public service announcements, programming kids to be robotic, enviro-bots. Mr. Conterio’s article is a useful piece in explaining why we are in the dire, legislative straits Rich outlines in his piece on Green policies, but with all due respect, Greg, it’s not “kids these days,” it’s “adults these days.”
When I read Greg’s piece I didn’t think, “Why didn’t that annoying kid’s parents shush him?” Or, “Why didn’t someone else on the elevator tell the boy to pipe down.” I thought, “The kid’s statement is completely incorrect, yet nobody explained the fallacy of his logic to him and now all the kids on the elevator walked off thinking the same, foolish nonsense.”
Greg was mad that the kid had the hubris to tell others how to live their lives, and he’s right. But it honestly saddened me that none of the grown-ups on that elevator appeared to understand enough about energy to point out the fallacy of the kid’s thinking. Greg, the problem isn’t that the kid was interfering with your decision on how to get to your hotel room. The problem is the kid’s advice would result in the exact opposite of what he thought he would achieve. Here’s what I think I would have said had I been on that elevator:
“So you think a large group of us taking the stairs, rather than the elevator will save energy and help the environment? How will we ascend the stairs? Our bodies will burn calories to contract our muscles. How do our bodies get calories? That’s right. From food. How much energy do you suppose it takes to grow or raise the food our bodies need to ascend seven flights of stairs? How much fuel is used in transporting that food from a farm, or a ranch or an orchard so we can consume it? In reality, young man, this elevator is literally a miracle of energy conservation. The energy required to lift all of us is only a mere incremental fraction of the energy required to lift one of us. There is no more efficient and environmentally sound way I know of to lift all of us, simultaneously, off the ground and to our respective floors. If you truly love the environment as I do, and I’m sure you do, then you should marvel at this elevator and what it does. I strongly encourage you to devote some time to studying mechanical energy, human metabolism and the mechanics of electric motors, pulleys and counter-weights and one day, in the future, you might be someone who designs something as efficient as this elevator.”
The problem isn’t that our kids are immature, and believe a lot of silly nonsense about energy and pollution. They are kids, after all. The problem is there aren’t adults in their lives who are correcting them. And this is what has happened to our public policy and legislation. We are basing our policy decisions on Saturday morning cartoon, “Captain Planet” sentiments, rather than the brilliant science our best and brightest are developing in our industries, and at our institutes of higher learning. Our problem is not that we have children in our midst. Our problem is we have adults in our midst who are failing to tell the truth to those children. Environmentalism and energy conservation are not easy topics to understand. They require hard work and a lot of study. It appears far too many of our Congressmen and Women spent Saturday mornings watching “Captain Planet” rather than “Bill Nye the Science Guy.” What a shame there wasn’t a single grown-up on that elevator willing or able to help that kid understand the illogic of his thinking. Five years from now he’ll be another voter in favor of ethanol and electric car subsidies. Or worse, in seventeen years he might be a Congressman!
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I’m sorry all I can think of right now is the line, “So what do you little perverts what to do first?”
I love that line! Far be it for me to correct Mr. Aviator 80′s cultural memory expert, but I’m pretty sure the line is, “So, what do you two maniacs want to do first?” I use it with my kids and their friends all the time. I suppose it’ll be a bit embarrassing when one of them sees the movie and figures out the context!
Yes, you are right I stand or sit corrected.
Rufus loves that movie… I hear he showers fully clothed
I’m a never nude. There are a lot of us.
“I’m a never nude.”
Except, from what I hear, when you’re driving around in your Fiat alfresco!
By the way, googl’ing images for Ms. LeBrock for this post turned up some current photos.
Yikes!
I don’t think she has to worry about anyone hating her because she’s beautiful.
She’s gone full Claudia Cardinale or Brigitte Bardot eh?
So why did you feel the need to do that?
Just honoring Floyd’s request.
I’ll have two pickets to Titsburgh please.
It looks like she ate Steven Seagal instead of divorcing him.
and she looks like 10 lbs. of sugar in a 5 lb. sack
she looks like 10 lbs. of sugar in a 5 lb. sack
my momma used to say that all the time
Have you seen Seagal lately? She only ate one of his thighs.
Wow! It looks like he borrowed one of Ann Wilson’s moomoos!
10 lbs. of botox in those lips!
Speaking of Ann Wilson, I bet he could “go crazy”…on a plate of wings and a pony keg of Shiner.
She did and afterwards said, ” It Was Nothin’ At All.” Then she drove off in her Barracuda which is painted with dogs and butterflies on the sides.
it’s been a long day with these kids… a long day of doing nothing. Ahhh!
I lol’d at that, woke zoon from his after work zombie state.
Zoon’s a zombie?! Tracy, you have little time to waste. He’ll soon awake and have an insatiable appetite for brains. BRAINS!
Well, I’m off to catch my flight to the Clinton nuptials. Have a great weekend, all!
don’t smoke the cigars!
no problem there, he’ll starve
Wow.
Moreover, why does she feel the need to dress like that?
No, she’s not tiny as she once was but Heavens to Murgatroid, there’s no need to put oneself in a dress like that unless one is going to a costume party as a sausage. There’s nothing wrong with getting older and if you’re heavy, so what? Just keep the girls in that dress and we’ll all feel safer.
I’d like to know what material that dress is made of. We would have only needed about half the bolts that went into that gown and we could have contained all the oil from the BP well in a one mile radius of the leak.
Goodyear called, they want their blimp cover back.
I think I saw her with Underdog in front of Macy’s last Thanksgiving.
You know, of all the various discourse I imagined in the comments of this post while I was writing it I never imagined this!
What like 48 comments about Yiddish penises on a movie trailer post? Threedonians work in mysterious ways!
Don’t be an insufferable boob!
Wait, I thought I was commenting on Perez Hilton’s site…oops.
It’s “the wisdom of crowds,” Floyd.
this crowd is full of wise guys to be sure… yesterday was crazy around here… everyone was on a roll.
I don’t know whether to be glad or dismayed that I cannot recollect the name of that stuff (collagen?) they were injecting into ladies lips to get that pouty effect, but if this is what happens when it goes bad I can see why they’ve stopped using it.
This is the 35th comment and not a single one about the subject of the post…awesome!
There’s a subject to this post? I saw the pictures …
Here ya go:
“Weird Science!”
The cats of Threedonia refuse to be herded!
that’s right daddio
Greg is wrong. Phineas and Ferb is a cancer.
A very annoying cancer.
I like Phineas and Ferb. Squirrels in My Pants is a classic…
Ditto and ditto. “S to the I to the M to the P.”
It makes engineering, design, creativity and being a nerd look like fun. Well, I guess it also makes being a platypus and a diabolical villain look like fun too, but hopefully my kids will get the right message from it.
Have you seen the “Love Handles” episode? Have you seen the “Love Handles” episode in German?!