I’m sure you have all seen them. Car washes. Has anyone pondered why they exist? Much like it’s sister-business, they provide an unnecessary service to it’s customers, virtually stealing your money. Let’s explain what goes on in a Car Wash first, in order.

• Attendants clean out your vehicle of all of the unnecessary crap that you have accumulated during your life which includes, but is not limited to:
• Fast-Food buildup - Fast food is unhealthy, not to mention addictive. Save the abused minimum wage employee’s time, and stop ordering those cheeseburgers. No, you aren’t going to win the five thousand dollar contest on the back of your cup. I am almost certain everyone knows this is just a marketing scheme designed to increase income. Unfortunately, the marketing teams have yet to understand that this does not generate that many more customers than the other contest that they seem to have running every single month.
• Clothing strewn about - keep it at home. The only excuse for this is if you are homeless.
• Mail (Identity theft anyone?) - At least put it in the glove compartment and bring it into your home at the end of the day. When do you read your mail when you’re driving? It’s unneccasary. Why can’t you clean up some of this crap? Disorganization does nothing in return for you and your laziness besides convincing you to visit the Car Wash. In addition to robbing you of your money due to your stupidity of going to a car wash, the attendants may just steal your vehicle.
• Automated machines wash your vehicle, followed by a bath of hot wax.
• Automated machines dry vehicle.

Simple enough.

You may be asking yourself, this sounds like something I can do. You can. You must have access to water, and some sort of rag or brush. And even if you cannot, why wouldn’t you let nature take care of it? Rain will clean your car surely. It may not clean the interior car, but if you can’t get rid of some fast food accumulated in your vehicle, then you should stop reading this article and do just that now. Why waste money and gas on something you can do at your home? The answer for many is laziness. More and more businesses are being created due to the increased laziness of people (Ex: Food delivery, virtual High-school, etc).

Inspired by the Subaru commercial, I decided to write this article.

Official-BS would like to sincerely congratulate President-elect Barack Obama for winning the presidential election of 2008. His victory marks the end of an era of agression, radical policies and counterproductive legislature against progress in the fields of education and research. Barack Obama will be the first half-Black, lefthanded president of the United States of America, as well as the first President in a long time to be funded solely by the people rather than by corporations and lobbyists. The amount of political leverage the man has is staggering and it will be interesting to watch what he does with his justly earned power. The challenges that lie ahead won’t all be overcome in the next four years, but it certainly won’t take much effort to outdo Dubbya, whose flaws we need not mention. Many people have fears that Obama will not go through with measures they feel are necessary and that he will go through with measures that are shortsighted or might cause a tax increase. While these are all valid reasons to be worried, the country has been on a decline in terms of overall success and changing the policies that have brought it to its current state likely will not make things any worse than they are already. Besides, a tax increase can only help get the staggering national debt under control. One thing is certain - Barack Obama will probably be entering the busiest time of his life, and the world will be watching every minute of it.

As you may have gathered from my previous articles, I am an enthusiast when it comes to having the privilege of living in the era we find ourselves in. Modern society has given us so many luxuries that the kings and emperors would be envious of the lifestyle of even the poorer segment of our global community. However some believe in not conforming to certain standards we should be taking for granted in this day and age. And that’s BS.

Perhaps the most ubiquitous interface today for anything electronic is the standard USB socket and for smaller devices the mini-A and mini-B versions thereof. They are used so much so that we have everything from keyboards and mice to storage to coffee machines and sex toys powered by USB. We are at the point where we condemn most devices useless if they do not interface through USB. The problem comes when there are companies, such as Apple and even Microsoft, employ custom sockets for the standard we have come to know and love. The first question that comes to mind is why they do it. Apple uses a custom USB port in all its iPods. Does it serve a purpose? Absolutely not. Other than that it allows them to blatantly inflate the prices for their custom USB cables. Not even Microsoft has the heart to commit bigotry on such a level. (Though they are guilty of custom ports which I will explain momentarily.) To understand why custom ports are useless you have to understand USB to its fullest, which can be explained fairly briefly - it provides more bandwidth than you need in most cases and it also has the ability to provide raw power to whatever it is connected to. This is why we can charge all our stuff through it, albeit slowly. So for the consumer, the iPod cables serve no purpose over the regular ones.

I did say earlier that Microsoft is guilty of the same shenanigans, which it is (or at least was). Remember the first Xbox, otherwise known as the thing that plays Halo 2? The controllers used USB. Believe it or not those clunky slots are really just USB. Hell the controllers themselves have USB hubs built in to them. Why? Because the memory cards no one bought connected to the controllers using, you guessed it, USB. And yet they had the ports in that clunky shape, doubling the size of the socket. It’s not like toddlers and blind people have something to find enjoyable on the machine. Furthermore, the proprietary port isn’t required for the safety mechanism used for when you pull the cable, safely breaking the cable in two parts, as it is also featured on the 360 controller which uses standard USB plugs. We can only conclude that the companies using these custom ports try to regulate their product market. No one benefits from this, which some companies seem to understand more than others.

What’s bullshit here is that we still can’t take USB for granted, eventhough it’s convenience has been with us for a decade.

Jose Caceres’ Macbook was stolen on September 4th. He left his Macbook ontop of his car while he ran into his home carrying other things. When he returned, his Macbook was gone. Jose used A remote access application called Logmein was used in this case to track the thief.

Gabriel Mejia, the thief, was for the most part viewing pornographic material. Jose was frustrated because Gabriel’s pornography watching habits were not helpful to catching Gabriel. That changed when Jose registered on a website requiring his name and address (in other words personal information).

Gabriel was caught and charged with fourth degree grand larceny. Other incidients much like this one have occured throughout the United States where laptop (And desktop) owners have used remote access software to ’snap a picture’ of the thief using the built-in webcam, or just by observing the thief’s website visiting habits. The moral of the story? Don’t be a dumb thief. ALWAYS format the laptop you steal, Unless you are trying to steal it for corporate secrets, or something, in which case said data should be encrypted.

Most people throughout history have believed in them. Most people alive today do the same. The tradition propagates down the timeline by force and conformity. Of course I am speaking of the greatest package of logical fallacies to ever be accepted by the overwhelming majority of people - religion.

First off, let’s agree on a common definition of what religion actually is - the belief in deities and/or objects and lifestyles based on pure faith. It is the last word that really defines the concept of faith. The inexhaustible self convincing cycle of telling oneself that there is indeed a greater being or plan which guides us toward salvation. In terms of logic this is known as proof by assertion -in other words repeating the same thing over and over as to suggest that such repetition would make something actually become true. It is indeed such mindless repetition that has convinced most people that there is a god, a Buddha or Allah (praise be to him). It is indeed also the key to modern propaganda - simply and repeating until every idiot understands it. After all, how much easier does it get than to suggest that everything good that happened in your life is due to the existence and guidance of your favorite deity.

This brings us to the next issue which religion seems to love doing to people - it is an excuse for people to surrender their human curiosity. Why question how things truly work when we can simply say god did it? It doesn’t even seem to matter whether it was an event caused by human decisions - if it somehow affects you personally, god did it because you have sinned. If you win the lottery, it’s not because of statistical chance and well understood mechanics of probability, but because god did it. If god does all these awesome things, why bother trying in life when the old guy in the sky can take care of everything for you?

God only helps those who help themselves. You can find variations of this in any deity based faith. It is a safety net provided to people so that they give credit to god when their own hard efforts pay off. The result is a culture of self-deprecation as a result of the assertion that humans are little more than puppets of a greater being. There is no longer the need for aspiration other than to serve the lord almighty in his self-serving glory. If everything we do is the will of god, then we are but a cosmic game of chess. One big flaw in the idea of god doing everything is that if god was responsible for our glorious and bountiful civilization, why are there so many problems in our biology, society and economy? The devil did it? One imaginary friend is enough, thank you. God wants to punish us? Why should we believe in such a being? Why would god care? Believers of such faiths will discount these essential questions by stating that one should not question the will of god. I beg to differ by asking why the hell not!

Religion is an excuse for irrational actions taken by those who have a little too much faith. It is not too hard to find examples of these events in history. Muslim fanatics caused the fall of the World Trade Center 1 and 2 in New York, 2001. Christian kings were responsible for the crusades in the early second millennium. Judaism is the central reason for conflict between Israel and Palestine. Some Buddhists sacrifice themselves to make their point. See where this is going? Religion is responsible for an incredible death count. But it also plays a role in the everyday lives of citizens in any country. People pour incredible amounts of money into the churches of their faith. This is for the most part a burden on the economy which could better allocated to useful things such as education and hospitals.

On a side note, please take a look at this clip from the science fiction series Stargate SG-1 as it sets up the storyline of an evil army preparing for war:

Now take note that this is not too far off from what some faith-driven people are actually doing:

It is not a pretty sight. Granted this comparison represents the minority of religious people, but it also represents just what religion does to people who take it too seriously.

Equally significant is the sheer amount of time people spend on religious activities. Going to church, praying and reading your holy book of choice are some of the most unproductive ways to spend time. Instead you could be working or educating yourself or making love. Life is too short to be wasting it on belief systems that tell you not to do things which will move you forward in life, possibly compelling you to commit unforgivable deeds. Which brings us to the next issue - where did people ever get the idea from that they have to have faith in order to be well mannered and behaved citizens? The concept of life after death trivializes life itself, if anything. Why shy away from killing people when you know they will live on in some paradise? Not to mention the threat of “hell” is nothing more than getting people to be nice out of fear rather than to be good for the sake of being so and living in harmony with others.

Needless to say there are more issues about religion that I could rant about, but I leave that task to the likes of Richard Dawkins and likeminded people. With so many different things pointed out it is hard not to realize that religion is BS and that we would all be better off without it. Instead I propose that people have more faith in themselves and placebo-effect themselves to being better people and in turn forming a better society that is based on good will rather than fear of the almighty.

It’s been around a week since the unprecedented bailout plan was proposed to save Wall Street. The plan that was devised in desperation to avoid a repeat of the great depression is intended to provide quick relief to the failing mortgage market. As one might have expected, politics has been and will continue to stall the implementation of the big bailout - perhaps until it is too late.

This past week has been pretty hectic with WaMu collapsing and every politician out there pretending to know what to do in order to solve the economic crisis. It’s pretty bad when a plan that’s supposed to provide immediate relief takes so long to put into motion that Time magazine writes about it before it gets fixed. We may in fact begin to speculate over whether it will ever materialize at all - some people believe the best solution to be that Wall Street bails itself out. Either way, it isn’t the best idea to bail oneself out by taking out a bigger loan to pay the old one off. Or is it? Maybe it’s just me, but I’ve never been very fond of going into debt in the first place. Cheers to the genius who brings us out of this mess before it gets too bad.

Glasses have for a long time been the only way to see better if your eyes were less than optimal. They provide better vision at the cost of money that your insurance likely does not want to spend on you anymore as just about everybody is visually impaired to done degree these days. So why settle for antiquity when there are more aesthetically pleasing alternatives out there these days? Glasses are BS and I am going to explain why.

The first thing is obvious to anybody using glasses - they get scratched at some point and almost always end up dusty. This is an absolutely bothersome aspect of the glasses wearing lifestyle. Every other day extensive maintainance procedures are required which many people in our modern society simply cannot afford to waste their time on. Glasses, after all these years, still don’t clean themselves.

There is more however - most people simply have bad taste in picking the style of glasses they wear. Here is a hint to all you people shopping for glasses: get ones that don’t look like those cheesy military standard issue models or ones that make you look like Steve Urkel. All too often do I come across such tripe, which should have ended it’s reign of perpetual eye soring a long time ago.

Clearly people with any common sense will wear contacts to avoid humiliation or if money (or credit) is present the option exists to undergo laser corrective eye surgery, which thanks to modern technology has a high rate of success. Why bother with constant eye maintenance when you can get all that trouble over with in a day and fix everything. Doing so will free up valuable time which you could be spending with your family or getting work done. Not to mention the long term cost saving from not having to replace glasses or contacts.

For those who don’t want surgery contacts are understandable and they give people a cleaner appearance - especially when matched by executive style clothing. Not to mention custom contacts can be used as fashion statements on their own merit. It is really incredible why anybody would bother with wearing the antiques known today as glasses given the convenient and modern alternatives to said ritual. When we get a flat tire we don’t attach another tire to the vehicle - instead we fix the tire. The same should apply to anything that goes wrong in our bodies. We are at the pinnacle of human achievement and it would be an embarrassment to all those before us if we didn’t take advantage of the resources and technologies available to us in massive quantities and variety today. Wearing glasses is bullshit and anybody and everybody who wears them knows this fact - whether they are conciously aware of it or not. It can only be said that we will resolve this issue entirely when it becomes available to us the technology to replace our eyes entirely with synthetic ones, allowing us to customize our vision to our needs and personal tastes.

In a recent study it was found that many eighth grade students are complete idiots at math who are outdone by their eight year old peers.

The twenty-first century put on productive citizens the responsibility of learning and applying many different skills to a sufficient degree. These skills include driving cars, cooking food, brushing teeth and operating DVRs. But there also some critical levels of knowledge needed in the field of mathematics. We know that most people get by just fine, but only so after highschool or in some cases only after mandatory math courses in college. What is particularly worrying is that many kids are incapable of performing some basic arithmetic at the age of thirteen. Arithmetic is not something only mathematicians and stock brokers need - people doing their taxes should have some proficiency as well as anyone shopping for groceries. In other words many children are lagging behind on skills essential to modern life.

Solutions to this problem have been proposed, such as improving the levels of math taught in a given grade. While that idea may seem plausible, it does not remedy a common problem which averts kids from wanting to learn these things - fear and hatred of what one is not good at doing. The natural tendency to avoid doing things one isn’t good at will still act as a powerful deterrent to math-defficient children if a “solution” is ever put into motion. And that is bullshit.