laneys.info Beware of Yankees, drunks, and loose women.

What do the housing crisis, higher gasoline prices, and higher food prices all have in common?  They're all caused by greedy, stupid people.

I'm sure you've heard the phrase, "There's two sides to every story."  I've found that usually there's way more than just two.  I recently stumbled across an exclusive interview by British journalist Johann Hari with Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez that drove that point home.

Take a look around you for the next 24 hours. See if you can notice every advertisement in your environment. I suspect that it will overwhelm you.

One interesting thing about advertising - it all assumes that the problem is on your outside. Use this cream or that pill, eat this, go to this doctor, join that club, and everything will be all better. Blah blah blah.

The problem is, if you take a good, hard look at the actual problems we face as a society, you'll soon see that our problems have nothing to do with the outside, but with the inside. The "War on Drugs" is doomed to failure, not because drugs aren't bad, but because drugs aren't really the problem. People who have happy, healthy lives, and feel good about themselves don't need drugs. People who don't have that inner peace will do whatever it takes to try and find it, whether that's drugs, sex, bad relationships, crime, or whatever.

Like every good geek, I was in a movie theatre at 12:01 AM on Thursday May 19, watching Revenge of the Sith. Setting aside for a moment all of the normal, geeky comments about the movie, I found some interesting points in the movie that completed some other thoughts that had been rolling around in my head for a week or so.