May 15 Gas Out

Why this won't work: it's stupid. Okay, so there are more complicated reasons. But when I first saw this on Myspace, I thought it was another bad joke. Because I just saw a front page article on it on msnbc.com, I've decided that it's clearly not a joke.

Why is this idea stupid? A number of reasons. 1) Not buying gasoline for one day won't damage profits at all. It just means Americans will fill up their gas guzzlers the day before or after, thereby ensuring that profits remain stable. 2) The idea itself assumes that we're stupid enough to believe that we, a nation of perpetual consumers, will have any impact on anything by changing habits for one day.

This is like just about every other American idea - fix it quick'n'easy. The only way to make a real dent in the profits of large oil companies is to reduce the total amount of gas consumed, not reduce the short term amount of gas consumed on May 15. In real world terms, what this means is that you should ride a bike, bus or train, or carpool, or go shopping for a more fuel-efficient car. Now that would actually make a difference. For those of you who already are, kudos to you. For any of you driving a vehicle getting less than 20mpg (which is still pretty lousy), get a different car.

The stories that really matter

One of the teachers I work with brought in English newspapers to work on with her class. She had been under the impression that at least one of them was a tabloid based on the cover picture. The cover depicted a rather scantily dressed beautiful Indian woman and a rather unattractive white woman with short brown hair yelling in a rather frowsy sort of way.

This story, the story about racist slurs made by essentially a nobody on Big Brother in Britain against a really famous Bollywood star was on the headlines. Front page news on five out of the six papers she had. It also happened to be in every news segment I watched on BBC and CNN Intl over the weekend.

I find this fascinating for a couple of reasons. First, it was a rather stupid comment that started it all - this girl just seems to be to be an ignorant idiot who has motormouth syndrome. Not to discount the amount of damage such people can cause, however. But amid all of the problems our world is currently facing, racial slurs against a Bollywood star - and the fallout in India, which was fascinating to hear about - is what has apparently captured the attention of the English press.

Final note: 24 US Servicemen/women died in Iraq on Saturday.