Help Support a Good Cause

I happened to stumble upon this interesting website today, FreeRice.com, which helps fight world hunger, certainly a good cause. How the site works, is you play a fairly simple vocabulary game there, and for each question you get right, their sponsors send a certain amount of money towards feeding the needy. This site was just created last October so I figured giving it a little press would not hurt.

As always, I have to turn this into a political statement. On the site mentioned above, I found some very interesting statistics. Back in 2002, the US government signed a deal that they would send the requested (by the UN) 0.7% of their yearly income of the country to help end world hunger. What happened? Well, the US is only sending 0.17% (about a fourth) of what they promised. Out of the 22 nations that signed this deal, the US is second only to Greece for the least percent of money sent, and at least Greece has a plan to increase it.

If this annoys you, please write to the government and tell them what you think

www.poverty.com/internationalaid.html

thank you and good night

Global Warming

The below is a brief essay I wrote concerning this topic (please remember, plagiarism is illegal).

Imagine a world five degrees warmer year round. That means when it used to snow, it might rain, and when it used to be 95 degrees, it might be 100. And these scenarios may happen sooner than you think. Global warming is a serious concern facing us and future generations that we must make an effort against. By learning about the evidence of global warming, the greenhouse effect, and what causes greenhouse gasses, we may be able to slow the unwanted results of heat.

Some skeptics say that global warming is a natural phase; however, there is substantial evidence suggesting that worldwide temperatures have risen at alarming rates. First, over the past century, average temperatures have increased by about .7 to 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit. If this pattern continues, temperatures are expected to rise by about 6 degrees in the next century. Information from coral, trees and ice cores suggests that the 1990s was the hottest decade in a millennium. Also, in oceans, the average water temperature in the past fifty years has gone up by about half a degree. Because of these hotter temperatures, the average glacier has been shrinking by about a foot each year for the past fifty years.

Although many things are attributed to causing global warming, the most widely accepted cause is the greenhouse effect. In a greenhouse, light comes in through the glass to heat it, but less heat can escape because of the insulation of the glass. A similar situation occurs on earth as well. In our atmosphere, gasses such as carbon dioxide and oxides of nitrogen (known as greenhouse gasses) act as an insulator. They allow solar radiation to enter the atmosphere, but when the earth radiates infrared waves back out, come of the radiation is stopped by these gasses and converted to heat. When this happens, the earth keeps more heat than what is given off which causes the overall world temperature to rise.

In our society, there are several ways that unwanted greenhouse gasses are produced. Almost anything that uses fossil fuels gives off carbon dioxide. Most of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuels including coal and oil. When these are burned, many pollutants are given off; among those is carbon dioxide. Also, cars and other major forms of transportation burn petroleum products that give off greenhouse gasses. Another major greenhouse gas, methane, is produced from agriculture.

By knowing the evidence of global warming, how the greenhouse effect works, and what causes greenhouse gasses, you can better understand what action can be done against global warming. A hotter climate presents many ecological challenges that would eventually affect humans. It is therefore necessary to take action to slow down global warming and to limit the greenhouse effect. Some species of animals have already migrated north because of a changing climate. Do you want to have to join them?

http://www.climatecrisis.net/takeaction/whatyoucando/index.html
http://go.grolier.com/gol
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming
http://globalwarmingart.com/

Thank you and good night

Blogs

Blogs, blogs, and more blogs.  Why can't people just stop blogging?  Why do we need to know about all of these things that people just decided they need to post on the internet?

A lot of people use their blogs as an online journal where they put what they did that day, random personal thoughts, and other things that were never meant to be read by the whole world.   (Yes, I know I am being hypocritical.)  A blog is a good place to post information you want people to read, but still, sometimes I think there are many unnecessary posts.  That is great that you are really depressed that day or you just got some new thing that is really cool, but it used to be these things were kept in a personal journal, not viewable to the public.

Oh well, I guess it really does not matter anyway.  Writing is a type of speech and therefore is protected under the first amendment, so I should just stop complaining.

This post does not represent the personal opinions of INC, inc., part of Prose Interprises

Barack Obama

Is it Barack Obama or Obomba?

Recently, Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, was said to not have much of a stance on foreign affairs.  In response to this he gave a speech on his foreign policy last Wednesday.  In this speech, Senator Obama stated that if he were elected to the white house, fighting terrorism would be a priority.  He said that if the Pakistani government did not get rid of terrorists in their country, he would take military action in Pakistan against the terrorists.  You heard me right, invade Pakistan.

Seems to me, this was not too smart of a move for a Democrat trying to be elected.  Considering we are in a war right now, I doubt that most of the public would support another one.

"Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."  In any case, I don't think I would vote for another president to get us stuck in a war.

Thank you and good night.

Darfur

The crises in Darfur has been escalating since 2003.  Now considered to be genocide, the UN has decided that more has to be done to resolve this conflict.  It is now essentially a civil war between several groups, each wanting to achieve different things (more info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict ).

Recently the UN decided that a greater military presence is necessary, leading to the decision to send in 26,000 peace keeping troops into Darfur. 26,000! That is 6,000 police and 20,000 military personnel.

Although I agree with the necessity of restoring peace to that region, I do not think that this is the best solution.  Maybe it is just me, but it does not make sense to force peace through military action. It would seem to me that this would just make more people in Sudan mad because of increased military power, not cause people to just lay down their guns.

In my opinion violence is not the answer.  It may be a temporary solution, but the same problems will still exist.  What ever happened to fixing the source of the problem instead of the symptoms.  Oh well, this is just a blog.

Thank you and good night

Iraq or Iran

As many of you may know, we invaded Iraq based on inaccurate information (according to the President). In actuality, the information was out that there were no weapons of mass destruction before we went in; however, the president did not change his plans based of that. It turned out, we had absolutely no reason to be there yet the war has continued for over four years now.

Since the 1950s, Iran has had a nuclear program of sorts and currently has a uranium mine, uranium enriching plant, and various test sites. Several governments, including the U.S., suspect that Iran is or is planning on using this enriched uranium for creating nuclear weapons. Iranian officials claim that they are only using it for a nuclear power plant which should be operational by 2010.

Just last week Vice President Cheney recommended to President Bush to take military actions against Iran to remove the threat of a nuclear attack. Just my opinion, but I do not think it would be a smart decision to start a war in Iran. What will happen when it turns out there are no nuclear weapons and then we are stuck in Iran, just like how we are stuck in Iraq. Violence is not the solution. Let us hope that the President sees the side of reason.

You can't blame Cheney though - he likes to shoot people

Thank you and good night

Advertising

Advertise: To draw attention to a product, service or event in a public medium in order to promote sales or attendance

I think most of most you would agree that advertisements are annoying (at least I would say they are). Sometimes though, there is a product that is so great, that you think everyone should know about (like gamesonlineforfree.googlepages.com). Possibly though, the individual is just rather mean and wants to make you mad. Or, possibly they just want money. In either case, hear goes nothing.

National Update

Right now, as I right this, the U.S. trade deficit continues to increase and the costly wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue.

Just the facts:

• The National debt is near 8.9 trillion dollars
  
• That means that to get out of debt, everyone in the U.S. would have to pay the government $30,000 (or a new car)
• In income tax each year, the government receives about 2.4 trillion dollars
• More than half of that money is used for military related expenses

Maybe it is just me, but it seems like we have a pretty big problem. The government cannot just continue to spent money it does not have. Just another point: our generation has to pay for other people's social security because a lot of it has been spent for other things by the government. If you think this is bad, please contact our friends in Congress (http://www.eff.org/congress)

Thank you and good night

The Simple Truth (according to me)

A lot of those smart people are always asking the same dumb questions, what is the meaning of life?, what is the purpose of this?, as if they are trying to find some deeper meaning in something. Well, I spent a bunch of time thinking about those to questions (man, was I bored).

I have come up with simple answers to those questions that might just make your life a little better (or possibly a heck of a lot worse).

What is the meaning of life?

Well I will tell you what the meaning of life is. You know what, there is no meaning to life. You heard me right, life has no meaning. Why? Because I said so. But no, seriously, life does not have a meaning when you think about it. Quite honestly, we are just a bunch of atoms that make up our cells that make up our body. Nothing more. If you believe in evolution, then you should understand that there was no divine intervention to give us any sort of purpose. On the other hand we could just be some cruel test by God and reason of existence is for His amusement (if this is what you believe, you have no reason to read this).

What is the purpose of this?

To be quite frank, the purpose of this blog is an outlet of my thoughts. The purpose of my thoughts, well, there is no purpose to my thoughts. When you think about it, nothing truly has a purpose

Thank you and good night

Intro type of stuff

Welcome:

For the start of every blog, you have to say a bunch of sappy things about it and why it is here and a bunch of other useless s***.  So here it goes.

Here at Lookout Life, you get an introspective look at the idiotic thoughts that go through my mind.  Personally, I have absolutely no idea why any one in there right mind would want to read this, but whatever, your choice.  Through this blog you will learn about things from my perspective, and read my narrow minded rantings (or what ever you call them: annoying vociferations, spouts, tangents, blusters, etc. Just like that guy on faux news network who thinks he can just go on and on and on about completely random subjects that he calls important like the war, immigration, social security and other completely irrelevant things. We all know that the real issue here is people like me who are just sitting here wasting your precious time!).  Anyway, the purpose of this blog is to annoy you, bore you, make you want to kill me, or, however unlikely, possibly entertain you.

Thank you and good night.