another rant left over from last week

One of the local media outlets runs a "question of the day" survey on its website. On May 12 and 13, it ran questions dealing with the recent increase in gas prices. You can find the original (in French) here: the translation follows.

May 12, 2008

Do gas price fluctuations affect you?
68% Very much
24% A little
8% Not at all
Number of votes: 6,975

May 13, 2008

High gas prices: what are you doing to save?
11% Carpooling
18% Public transit
28% Walking
43% Nothing
Number of votes: 5,131

Those are telling numbers. They tell me we're a bunch of whiny SOBs - we love to complain about rising gas prices, but not enough to actually DO something about reducing our consumption.

I was originally going to pull that quote about loving the human race, but having issues with people, but I found this one, by Ralph Waldo Emerson, which will do nicely:

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

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