Exxon Valdez, anyone?

Letter writers keep discussing how we need to wean ourselves off foreign energy sources by drilling and attain energy independence. I wonder if they’d go for cartoonist Dan Perkins’ proposal: Before we drill, commit, in law, to a ceiling on how much foreign oil we import, based on how much we take out of the ANW (or the Gulf). If we hit the ceiling, we conserve.

Makes sense to me.

Possibly this is too complicated for Riehl to grasp, but Snipes wasn’t thrown in jail for leading a peaceful protest against income tax or trying to reform the tax system, he was thrown in jail for not paying it. Since I do think taxes should be paid (though like most people, including Riehl, I have strong opinions on who should be taxed, how they should be taxed, what should be taxed, etc.), I can’t say this shakes me to the core of my liberal soul.

In fairness, reading some of Riehl’s other posts about torture (which he seems to rank much less important in terms of liberty than tax evasion) and Islam, I suspect he’s of the right-wing persuasion that thinks “libertarian” makes him stand out.

Moving somewhat higher on the right-wing food chain, we have George Will on teachers: “After 1962, when New York City signed the nation’s first collective bargaining contract with teachers, teachers began changing from members of a respected profession into just another muscular faction fighting for more government money. Between 1975 and 1980 there were a thousand strikes involving a million teachers whose salaries rose as students’ scores on standardized tests declined.”

I know Will’s supposed to be very, very, very smart, but does have the slightest idea how crappy teacher pay used to be? So help me, every time in my memory that teachers have asked for better pay or benefits, the cry goes up “My god! If they want to be paid well, they can’t possibly care about the kids! They’re supposed to be in this for love, not money!”

Teachers are, apparently, wonderful noble beings until anyone asks they get paid what they deserve.

That’s it for me. I’ll post again May 5, unless I put something up while on vacation.

I loved it. A great show with great talent, cool set and full of energy and life.

Not everyone agreed. A Destin resident wrote to the Daily News this morning that he “escaped at intermission as though we were fleeing Sodom and Gomorrah. This play was a disgrace not only in the eyes of God but in the eyes of all who profess faith in him.”

Well, I’m not the only person who believes in God and likes “Rent” so he’s a little off.

But he’s really off when he paints himself as an “unsuspecting attendee … if we had known the play’s content, we would surely have stayed away”—he optimistically predicts so many people would have stayed away, OWC would learn its lesson about offending him—and that he wants to make sure “future productions are reviewed and the public can be warned.”

In fairness, the big Daily News article in Showcase the Friday before didn’t divulge much of the storyline. On the other hand, “Rent” is a show well over 10 years old, multiply reviewed and it wouldn’t take much effort to find the details on the Internet before forking out $45 for a ticket.

I feel the same way about this I do about people who announce at Destin City Council meetings that stuff I’ve been writing about for months has been covered up and carried out without any information reaching the public.

So if you have time this coming weekend, check it out.

This is followed up by several nonsensical statements sucha s “evolution requires a relatively steady environment.” No, evolution works just fine in times of chaos and disorder.

“All species must always be evolving to take advantage over incremental changes in the environment.” He goes on to cite the coelocanth, which has remained unchanged for many millions of years as proof that therefore, evolution doesn’t work.

Wrong again. Evolution isn’t some independent force making creatures adapt, it’s the result of natural selection operating on the differences between members of the species. If they live in a stable environment, it’s possible to stay unchanged for a long, long time.

And while I don’t know that Mr. Riggs is a creationist or intelligent design believer, no amount of disproving evolution—even if he could do it—would make those bogus theories scientifically valid. Despite the insistence of some creationists that if evolution is wrong, creationism must be right, science isn’t a football game: You have to have positive evidence to prove your case, not just disprove the other side.