Go PC On Halloween!

Not sure what to wear for Halloween?  Go PC!
From the government website energy.gov.  (This means that people have been forced to pay taxes for this or go to jail.)  Hilarious isn't it?!  What will they think of next!

SOLAR PANEL

Halloween may be dark and spooky, but you can bring some (renewable) energy to the party as a sleek, shiny photovoltaic solar panel. Just cover the cardboard with cellophane, secure the edges with duct tape, draw on a grid of silver contacts, and presto! You’re a critical piece ofAmerica’s clean energy future and the fight against climate change. Wear your sunglasses at night for added sustainable swagger, but please, resist the urge to climb onto any rooftops.

BONUS: Have a friend dress up as the Sun and spend the night basking in his or her glow.

INGREDIENTS:

• Cardboard
• Dark blue or black cellophane
• Silver permanent marker
• Duct tape
• String

ENERGY VAMPIRE

You are a creature of the night. You lurk in the shadows, draining the power of the unwary. No energy bill is safe! Far scarier than the stuff of Dracula or Twilight, energy vampires are home appliances and electronic devices that suck electricity even when they aren’t in use. This Halloween, unplug all the unused phone chargers in your house and attach them to yourself for a costume that will fill your friends with terror while saving you money.

INGREDIENTS:

• Black cape
• Plastic fangs
• Lots and lots of charging cords
• Tape

WIND TURBINE

Afraid to wear white after Labor Day? Don’t worry -- clean energy never goes out of style. For this majestic costume, cut out three “blades” from a piece of foam poster board and attach one to each of your arms. Cut a hole for your face in the third, and wear white clothes or an old sheet to complete the look. You won’t produce electricity, but at least you’ll generate conversations wherever you go, so why not impress your friends with the fact that U.S. wind energy prices reached all-time lows in 2014, or that wind could provide up to 35% of the nation’s power by 2050?

BONUS: Add inflatable ankle floats or an inner tube to take your turbine offshore!

INGREDIENTS:

• Foam poster board
• White clothes/sheet
• Scissors/knife
• Tape

Why Not Privatize Marriage?

Excerpt:

Being a conservative, I advocate limited government.  Big government leads to big trouble as we fight endlessly, acrimoniously, and fruitlessly over all sorts of issues that we really ought not be fighting over.  As one of my slogans has it, "The bigger the government, the more to fight over."  The final clause of the First Amendment of the U. S. Constitution enshrines the right "to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."  So the more the government does things that grieve us, by intruding into our lives and limiting our liberties, the more we will petition, lobby, and generally raise hell with the government and with our political opponents.  If you try to tell me how much soda I can buy at a pop, or how capacious my ammo mags must be, or how I must speak to assuage the tender sensitivities of the Pee Cee, or if you try to stop me from home-schooling my kids, or force me to buy health insurance, or force me to cater a same-sex 'marriage' ceremony, then you are spoiling for a fight and you will get it.  Think of how much time, energy, and money we waste battling our political enemies, working to undo what we take to be their damage, the damage of ObamaCare being a prime example.

So if you want less contention, work for smaller government.  The smaller the government, the less to fight over.

Along these lines, one might think it wise to sidestep the acrimony of the marriage debate by simply privatizing marriage.  But this would be a mistake.  There are certain legitimate functions of government, and regulating marriage is one of them. Here is an argument from an important paper entitled "What is Marriage?" by Sherif Girgis, Robert P. George, and Ryan T. Anderson.  (I thank Peter Lupu for bringing this article to my attention.)

Read the rest.