After months of back and forth indecision, the Hamlet of Hattiesburg has finally chosen to be… A Minnesota Viking:

Brett Favre will be a Viking after all.

Three weeks after the future Hall of Fame quarterback told the Vikings he had decided to remain retired, he arrived in Minnesota and prepared to sign a contract at Winter Park.

Word on the street is that Vikings coach Brad Childress called Brett Favre after being stricken with pangs of guilt over how the Sage Rosenfels / Tavaris Jackson tandem would unfairly tear up the league, obliterating quarterback passing records and leading the Vikings to an almost automatic Superbowl victory. With 40 year old Favre at the helm the Vikings should keep things a bit more even and interesting.

Kidding!

I’m thinking this image may be a wee bit closer to the true story here:

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Quick: which era would you consider the greatest in human history? I’ll give you a few moments to think about it.

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What did you come up with? Did you choose the classical era, with the birth of modern philosophy, democracy, and classical art? Or perhaps you’re someone who appreciates the achievements of the modern world, in which the health and wealth of people around the world is greater than its ever been? Or did you focus on some other time? The era of revolution perhaps where men through off the rule of kings for representative governments?
Turns out you’re all wrong. It’s actually been all downhill since the Paleolithic…

IMAGINE a small group of farmers tending a rice paddy some 5,000 years ago in eastern Asia or sowing seeds in a freshly cleared forest in Europe a couple of thousand years before that. It is here, a small group of scientists would have you believe, that humanity launched climate change. Long before the Industrial Revolution—indeed, long before a worldwide revolution in intensive farming, the results of which kept humanity alive—people caused unnatural exhalations of greenhouse gases that had an impact on the world’s climate.

I imagine this is just the first step in a longer scientific trend leading to the conclusion that coming down from the trees was a bad idea in the first place. And of course this will be rivaled by the school of scientific thought contending that the trees themselves were a bad move and we shouldn’t have even left the oceans (a little inside joke there, from a book which rapidly seems to find it’s once absurd-seeming humor challenged by an increasingly absurd reality).

Have you ever had the experience of reading a book when, suddenly, you realize you’re no longer doing it because you like it but rather to see just how bad it’s going to get? Ever talked back to a book the way MST3K‘s Tom Servo talks back to a bad movie?

I’ve had that experience recently reading Conn Iggulden’s Emperor: The Gates of Rome. The book purports to be “A Novel of Julius Caesar.” And it kind of is, in the sense that it features a protagonist of that name who lives in the vicinity of some ancient city called Rome. After that you kind of have to take Iggulden’s word for it that he’s writing about THE Julius Caesar because it reads more like Luke Skywalker meets Gladiator as pictured by Michael Bay. It decidedly does not read like the life of the historical man who conquered Gaul, bedded Cleopatra, and inspired Shakespeare to write a play about him sixteen centuries later. Which is not to say it lacks redeeming value. I place great value in laughter after all.

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Setting aside the unpleasantness which characterizes so much of our political discourse today, I’d like to turn my attention to something which we can all celebrate together, as it has absolutely no potential downside.

If you live in a city with a good metro system, you’re probably used to having a swipe card system of some sort – load up money on the card, swipe it as you enter the station and as you exit, and your card is deducted the amount that ride cost…. [W]hat if your swipe card were based on carbon emissions instead? That’s the idea proposed by designer Nick Hunter for this wearable carbon emissions tracker.

Rather than a key or a card, the carbon meter would fit on your hand and glows a particular color – green, yellow, orange or red – depending on how well you’re using your public transportation allowance. Are you saving more carbon by hopping onto a train for a short ride, or would the hybrid bus have actually had the smaller footprint? The meter would let you know. But there’s more…it’d give the government insight on how well the public transportation systems are being used.

Isn’t that great? No longer do we need to debate the complicated trade-offs of energy use versus freedom in regard to an individual’s personal transportation decisions (let alone worry about the tedious science underlying hundred year climate forecasting based on projected human carbon emissions… bo-ring!). The government will take all of that burden off our hands, providing us a rating from “nice” all the way to “naughty” without requiring us to fill out a single form or stand in any lines! All we need to do is put on our government issued “wearable carbon emissions tracker.”

Here’s a picture of what the new wearable emissions device might look like. Prepare to see the future…

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Do you know Kim Carlson, the “footprint blogger” at the Star Tribune? No? You don’t think so? I believe you’re mistaken. You may not know Kim Carlson by name or by her Strib blog, but you certainly know Kim Carlson. As evidence I submit the first line of her latest post:

I was feeling a bit virtuous as I was bringing my recycling to the curb this morning.

Not many people can summarize their entire personality in a single phrase, but I think Kim did a terrific job of it here, don’t you? I mean you absolutely know this person after reading that sentence. Kim is the kind of person who believes she’s “saving the planet” by her own everyday activities. Recycling makes her feel virtuous. But it doesn’t end there, as you well know. No, when you’re Kim Carlson life is little more than a quest for the next guilt trip.

Then I decided to look up some recycling facts and was quickly deflated. According to RethinkRecycling.com, the average Twin Citian still produces 7 pounds of waste per day and one-third of what we throw away at home is recyclable through curbside programs. I suppose it is no surprise that nearly 30 percent of our trash is packaging – urgh!

Urgh! indeed! Why oh why didn’t we compost our packaging or use it as feed for our backyard chickens?! Why oh why didn’t we… oh heck, let’s stop guessing and see where she decides to run with it. It’s bound to be as entertainingly goofy as anything we might invent.

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More trouble on the horizon for The Great Society part deux: After thinking it over, many people are coming around to the notion that the current health care system may not be so bad after all.

Forty-eight percent (48%) of U.S. voters now rate the U.S. health care system as good or excellent. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 19% rate it as poor.

These figures reflect a significant increase in support for the health care system over the past few months. In May, just 35% of adults nationwide rated the system as good or excellent. A year ago, just 29% of Likely Voters rated the system in such positive terms.

The new polling also shows that 80% of those with insurance rate their own coverage as good or excellent. That’s up from 70% in May.

Bolding mine, and it’s a doozy. President Obama and his Congressional groupies launched into a bold initiative to reform the nation’s health care system under the premise that people wanted… ahem… change. But how much “change” will really be tolerated by people who already find their health care coverage as, at worst, “good”?

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Before I get rolling with the real posting here, I thought I’d provide a brief personal introduction to the Shot in the Dark readership who may have no idea who I am.

I’ve been a blogger in the Minnesota blogging scene since July of 2004. I was one of a small but plucky cadre of conservative bloggers who came onto the scene following in the footsteps of the Northern Alliance of Blogs. I met Mitch around about the same time, via links and comments at first and eventually at some of the many Minnesota Organization of Blogs gatherings. As one of the few who remained unintimidated by his large frame, gregarious personality, and tendency to burst into a spontaneous bagpipe arrangement of Springsteen’s “Nebraska” album without explanation at times, I must have made a favorable impression.

Not so long ago, as I was considering closing down my own blog (the very recently late Bogus Gold), Mitch extended me the invitation to move my blogging operations over here under the SITD banner. I was more than happy to agree.

A few words about the person behind the moniker: I’m 40 years old, married, with three children. I live in the frightening reaches of the Twin Cities metro where even Mitch fears to tread (i.e. the suburbs). I hold a degree in anthropology, but make a living as an IT business analyst. I have a passion for the theater, heirloom tomatoes, wine, food, music, and history… as well as more ordinary blogospheric passions like politics, global warming cooling climate change, and general snarkery.

Thanks to Mitch for the opportunity to join the party here. I’ll try not to wreck the place.