Functional Ambivalent says goodbye

A blog that I read on an occasional basis (I'd drop in about once a week) was Functional Ambivalent. I say was not because I've stopped reading it, but rather because Funcational Ambivalent will no longer be a blog.

Fighting climate change really ISN'T like cheating on your spouse

The Atlantic tells us why the website CheatNeutral.com is operating from a flawed premise.

That premise is, as explained by Robert Frank in the NY Times:

A British Web site called Cheat Neutral (www.cheatneutral.com) parodies the concept [of carbon offsets]-- by offering a service under which someone who wants to cheat on his partner can pay someone else who will refrain from committing an act of infidelity. The site's founders say they wanted to use humor to demonstrate why the market for carbon offsets is a moral travesty.

But the Atlantic explains:

ne reason is that I don't necessarily think of the cost associated with consuming fossil fuels as moral. It's a market failure. The issue is that there is a social cost -- an externality -- that isn't internalized by the consumer. Ordinary consumers acting in ordinary, rational ways create the problem.

In other words, expect James Inhofe and Rush Limbaugh to be parroting this line of thought from

Why I don't care that Lebron James didn't go to the postgame news conference

OK, Lebron James decided not to go to the post-game news conference after the Cleveland Cavaliers' game six loss to the Orlando Magic. The loss meant that the Cavs were eliminated from the playoffs.

And now every sports talk radio host and commenter on sports websites are saying that James not going to the post-game news conference showed disrespect to the game, to the Magic to, blah blah blah.

I have to call BS on that one.

The Cleveland Cavaliers pay James to play basketball. And he does that very well. They don't pay him to talk to the media -- sure they'd like him to, but they'd live without it if he didn't. Nike and his sponsors pay James to promote their product (those Kobe/Lebron Crank Yankers ripoff commercials suck, though), not to go to post-game press conferences.

I think it's just a slow sports news day -- no one cares about the hockey playoffs (Detroit is up 2-0 in the Stanley Cup Finals over the Pittsburgh Penguins). No one cares that Andy Roddick lost again in the French Open (after being openly taunted by his French opponent to the delight of the crowd). No one cares about baseball in June (the Evil Empire New York Yankees are once again in first place in the AL East).

So the sports pundits and talking heads have to argue about SOMETHING. And they decide to argue about this. Give me a break.