Notes on a viral video

I just found this video on the YouTube home page.

Observations:

1)  How cool, simply;

2) How great that Home Depot is getting/will get support and goodwill out of it;

3) This is what equality is all about;

4) Most of us don't have, will never have someone who loves us that much;

5) It's freaking beautiful;

6) How great that all those friends--ALL those friends--were there and so supportive;

7) Their parents were there;

8)  Lots of family was apparently also there;

9) Plenty of people will have cried at how beautiful and simple this is.

10) If someone's religion gets in the way of this beauty, in the way of love, of this kind of love, it's their problem--the one with the judgmental, condemning religion--and no one else's.


Now, get out there and have a beautiful weekend, people.

A PhD to buy a light bulb now?

Have you been to buy a light bulb lately?

Holy cow.

I went the other day to a Lowe's and then to a Home Depot.

First, you have to know the regular bulbs are going away. There are darn few of those.

After that, it's a whole new ballgame.

You need to know there are two options.

The first option is all the new fluorescent bulbs.

Sure, they save money and electricity and energy, more than anything.

You have to see how many Kelvins and lumens so you have the right coloring of the bulb in your room(s).

If you also need a 3-way bulb, fugghedaboudit. There are very few of those. And some of them are just bloody huge. They could be as big as a grown man's fist.

Then there's pricing.

If they're cheap, they only cost a little over $8.00.

Each.

They're supposed to last far longer but some friends have one that blew after less than a year.

Apparently we're supposed to start files at home, keeping track of how long ago we've bought these things and where.

The second option--you'll love this--are the LED bulbs.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of LED bulbs since they last far longer than all the other bulbs--supposedly--but also, they aren't nearly as hot as halogens. (I'm not even going into those here. Suffice to say, they're bloody hot).

Then there's your second option. LED bulbs.

They're a whole 'nother issue. And education.

Same deal, too, where you have to look at how many lumens they put out but also different shapes and sizes.

And now, here again, the issue of price.

Holy cow. These things can cost you $40 for one bulb.

So if you haven't been out lately, to one of the big stores, be ready for a real education.

Book a lot of time.

You'll be there for a while.

After all, a doctorate in lighting takes some time.

I wish you good luck. And a lot of time.

This is how messed up things are

You know things are messed up--system broken--when even corporations want the change that the people on the street want and need.

I have two examples.

The first was in The New York Times yesterday and dealt with credit card fees being too high.

Sure, we've been experiencing this and complaining about it for a long time--getting killed by it, actually--but finally it's getting to companies, too.

Seems MasterCard and Visa and all of them have been adding all these additional fees to simple transactions and, like the old saying goes, a few million here and a few million there and all of a sudden you're talking serious money.

Wal-Mart, Home Depot and 7-Eleven "have spent years unsuccessfully fighting the biggest of these costs, known as an interchange fee, which generates an estimated $40billion to $50 billion in income annually for banks that issue credit cards."

Forty to fifty billion dollars.

You can see why those companies love to tack on those little fees.

Understand, this is for credit purchases and ATM transactions, both.

Keep in mind here, too, for the Republican years of 2000 through 2008, folks, those wonderful folks in Washington were so deep in the pockets of these credit card companies, there was no way this was going to change.

Heck no.

So now, finally, though the Democrats aren't exactly saints, at least it looks, finally, like something is going to change here, and for the better. Between the man on the street--you and me--and other Big Business needing this, it looks as though it's going to change.

And thank goodness for that.

The other thing that pits the "little guy" in with Big Business is on health care.

I contend that this is another big reason why we're getting a solution to health care right now. "Big Business"--and by that I mean General Motors, GE and a lot of other, big "heavies" in the corporate world--are getting killed with high costs on their health insurance. They can't take it either.

So, like I said, this is how screwed up our system is, on at least two levels, credit card fees and health care.

At least we're finally getting some help from our government and it isn't just attacking us, the way it did for those fateful, ugly, Republican, "pro-business", "to hell with the little guy" years.

All that good stuff said, however, one must keep in mind that the bankers virtually own our government and this falls into that grouping. Let's see if we get the change and improvements we need.

Link to story:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/business/16fees.html?th&emc=th

Update:

I see in the Huffington Post just now an article by Arianna, saying pretty much the same thing--but this time about Goldman Sachs and our screwed-up, unregulated banking system, particularly now that we've pumped so many billions (trillions?) of dollars into Goldman and the others.

Seems everyone thinks things are out of control and kilter--except Goldman Sachs, Tim Geithner, Larry Summers and other people in government who work (or worked) for Goldman. Ms. Huffington points out the venerable Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed piece about this yesterday which made them sound more like Robert Reich than the "always support business" rag they usually are.

See the article here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/shattering-the-right-vs-l_b_234582.html