The DavidCyrus Blog of Wisdom

Doctor Supports Eating Boogers

Score one for the weird kid in the back of the classroom! He knew he wasn't being rude and sickening when he ate his boogers in the middle of History class. Now Innsbruck-based lung specialist Professor Dr. Friedrich Bischinger states that it's not just healthy, but that we should encourage ourselves to do so, because it gives one's immune system "a natural boost. Read more about it here.

Retort to the White House's 20/20 Hindsight

Officials have been proclaiming how lucky Americans are to have George W. Bush as their president during these trying times. Particularly, accusations that Saddam Hussein would still be in power if it was up to the Democrats, have come from the Vice President and President alike.

We never hear the counter-point that over 600 American soldiers would still be alive, and over 3000 would not have been wounded, over 8000 Iraqi non-combatant civilians would still be living, and Americans would have over $100 billion extra dollars to spend on real terrorism concerns. In terms of results, America would still have the nearly unanimous global support for our foreign policy that existed immediately following 9/11, hundreds of thousands of military troops now stationed in Iraq could instead be searching for Al-Qaida terrorists, and exactly the same number of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction would be accounted for as before the war.

Beverly Hills Ninja (life strategies)

In the tradition of Dr. Phil, I present a simple life strategy to guide you through life's difficult times. It comes from the movie Beverly Hills Ninja, which stars Chris Farley as a bumbling would-be Ninja attempting to solve a mystery in Beverly Hills. This quest leads him to sneak into a mansion, by using a grappling hook and rope to scale the walls.

The humor of the movie comes from the fact that Chris Farley is well over 300 lbs., and has no skills normally attributed to Ninja warriors. But he does have confidence, and once he gets that grappling hook set, the next scene is him taking a deep "let's get to work" breath, and saying to himself "...Up The Rope..."

Up The Rope! That's the spirit! When faced with the impossibility of today's struggles, the sad situation of looking up at a thin black thread that couldn't hold your weight, even if you did manage to somehow hold onto it with your doughboy hands, you must grit your teeth, mutter, "Up The Rope!" and press on, because that's what you are meant to do. After all, you are a Great White Ninja, correct? ...Not simply a wanna-be warrior?

Peak Oil (...what's that mean?)

The increasing production/consumption of any natural resource follows a bell curve over time. Early consumption of the resource is cheap, easy, and plentiful. That causes an increase in consumption (i.e., the rise in the bell curve). After a while the resource runs out, decreasing production and consumption (i.e., the downward slop of the bell curve).

In between the side of the curve representing "cheap, easy and plentiful" days and the side representing the "expensive, hard, and scarce" days is the peak of the curve. At that point, the resource is as plentiful as it can get, and as the bell curve suggests, it is all downhill from there. The term Peak Oil describes the time that oil is the most plentiful that it we ever be. After that point, consumption of oil will become harder and costlier.

The rise and fall of oil production will occur. Oil, being a finite natural resource, will at some point, run out. Non-renewable natural resources all follow this pattern. But we have to consider the other forces causing this curve, and consider what will happen to them, and as a result, us.

The main force driving the increase in oil production is consumption. As oil disappears, consumption will have to disappear as well. What is causing increased consumption? Obviously and increase in world population is affecting this, as is a continual increase in oil as the energy source for the world economy. In short, all forms of transportation, most forms of food production, home heating, and any plastic production depend on oil. If oil disappears, the society and people that depend of it for life will either radically transform, or disappear.

There has been a lot of discussion on alternate strategies for producing more oil. One popular strategy is to begin drilling for oil in new areas, such as Alaska's arctic wilderness. Whether this idea is good, bad, or indifferent to the arctic ecosystem is the point here. The point is that it is now becoming cost-effective to travel literally to the ends of the earth for oil. This is only a small fact in the growing argument that we are soon reaching, or may have already reached the time of Peak Oil.

Max Clelland Honored Again, No Response From Coulter

Far be it from me to belabour a point on which Ann Coulter has so ignorantly erred, however, Joseph Galloway of the Knight Ridder Newspapers pens an excellent clarification to Coulter's false version of Clelland's injuries. Most accurate would be his classification of a certain journalist as, "...someone who was never there and knows nothing about the war..."