Sally Likes This

I wish this new trend would go away. The trend of capitalizing on the sheeple mentality of the people. Why is it that every so-called legitimate online news organization now rates their articles based on--"most popular", "most read", "most emailed...?" Besides the curiosity factor (like why are so many people interested in that dumb story?) It is useless and actually harmful information.
I fear it will simply dumb down all the media, as you can tell the "most popular" article is usually something like: "suburban mom gives child to grizzly bear", or "stupid celebrity is having another affair", This is not helping the information quality that we receive. And the rush to get these trivial stories to the internet press results in articles written at a third grade level. I can't even believe the grammar and spelling errors--using spell check , but not understanding the meaning of the word, has disastrous results.
Even worse, Facebook has normalized the trend to write : "Becky likes this" or whatever on every comment ever written. Good grief!! Who cares?? Becky could be a psychopath for all I know.
I thought we adults eventually grow out of the high school phase, interested in only what the popular kids are doing and thinking--apparently not. What happened to caring about what is actually best?

Al Gore and Global Warming

I'll admit I was reading a bit about the ridiculous Al and Tipper Gore divorce scandal. I'm not really interested who caused it, but that said, I am saddened by a solid-looking union calling it quits...
But moving on...this story led me to read about other Al Gore events I was not aware of--namely the California home he bought in April. This I found even more interesting than the divorce, as I firmly believe huge houses are environmental nightmares. No matter how many solar panels you have--they usually are a resource and energy drain. So I wanted to cut Al some slack and tried to research the square footage of said controversial property--is it really ostentatious or maybe just a tad fancy??

Instead I was hit by the brutal reminder that many, many Americans believe that Al Gore started a Global warming hoax. This absolutely blows my mind. I do remember a statistic somewhere about the percentage of Global warming believers in the USA declining. But what are they denying ---that the earth is warming--or that humans caused it?? Denying the earth is warming reminds me of ancient history--when people would argue about the earth being flat. Anyone who doesn't believe in climate change should just travel a bit and get off their fox news watching couch. They'll see how respected scientists all over the world agree on this topic, how certain islands are going under water, the ice caps are melting--just look people. (seeing is believing)

I can better understand the "humans caused this" factor being controversial-it's probably more vague. But who cares who caused it?? If new energy sources and carbon caps can curb this event from happening faster--why be against it??? Instead like little toddlers they argue about who broke the toy (or lying that the toy is not broken at all) instead of just cleaning it up. Weird. It just makes me worry about Americans in general and their ability to compete with international scientific minds. Are we doomed folks??