This year Daylight Savings Time started earlier in the year than normal, which you now know.  But it cost me an hour of sleep, which I don’t particularly care for at all.  I know it’s traditional to have it on Sunday morning, but I have no problem with upsetting the status quo in this case.

Here’s my new suggestion for it, which will make everyone happier : have the time skip ahead an hour on Monday morning.  When we get to work at 8:00, let the time jump to 9:00, with the lost hour being lost, as it is now.  Then people will actually look forward to Daylight Savings Time, instead of dreading the lost hour of sleep as they do now.

I realize this would not be ideal for the fall, when we gain the hour back.  So let’s leave it like it is, where we get an extra hour of sleep.  Sleep is important, you know, and most people don’t get enough.  So let’s quit losing sleep for this time-shifting event in the spring, while continuing to gain the extra hour of sleep in the fall.

Let’s put this to a vote in our country.  I think most Americans would go for this.  So let’s let the majority decide.

The thought of an asteroid crashing into the earth and causing the end of humanity ought to be important, and NASA says they could find all the potential offending asteroids except that they don’t have enough money for it.

NASA officials say the space agency is capable of finding nearly all the asteroids that might pose a devastating hit to Earth, but there isn’t enough money to pay for the task so it won’t get done. … “We know what to do, we just don’t have the money,” said Simon “Pete” Worden, director of NASA’s Ames Research Center.

We’re only talking about the end of the world here…

Granted, they speculate the cost would be about $1 billion to find them all by 2020.  I don’t see what costs so much.  They can use currently-existing equipment, so you just have to pay the astronomers, right?  Apparently the official NASA astronomers are extremely expensive.  Granted, they are highly-trained and experienced, for sure.  But we can’t let a few dollars come in the way of saving the earth!  So I’m proposing a new plan to NASA.  The Buffet o’ Blog staff plus seven (7) carefully selected participants (for a total of 10 people) will handle this project for NASA at a fraction of the cost.  We might be slightly less trained and experienced, but we learn fast, and we know a thing or two about star-gazing and saving the world.

So here’s the “fine print” : Our 10 people will do this full-time for a cost of only $1 million per person per year, using equipment already in place.  That’s $10M per year for 12 years (if we start in 2008), which works out to $120 million.  This is a 88 percent discount from NASA’s price, saving the government $880 million (which is not a small number!).  Yes, we’re willing to do all this work for so much less than the high-priced engineers, in order to protect the earth and save money for the government.

Have your people contact my people, and let’s do this.

We’ve had a discussion here on how to make the best bathroom, but we figured most of those ideas would never be realized (unless one of us becomes crazy-rich).  Well, Roto-Rooter now has a sweepstakes where you can win the ultimate “pimped out john”.  Yeah, it’s a toilet with almost all the luxuries you could think of.  There’s a 20″ LCD flat-panel TV, an Xbox 360, DVD player, TiVo Series 2 digital video recorder (DVR), cooling fan that you can move, refrigerator, pedal exerciser for your legs, a laptop (on a stand), a magnification mirror, a USB-powered cup cooler/warmer for your beverage, and the toilet paper holder is also an iPod docking station (and the iPod is included).  But wait, that’s not all!  It also comes with a megaphone (which they say is for telling people about the toilet or asking for more TP, but I suspect some people would find other creative uses for it).

By the way, this is for-real.  You can go to this website to enter : pimped-out john sweepstakes.  The sweepstakes is valid until April 2, 2007.  So tell your friends.  Who wouldn’t want this in your house???*

* Wives need not answer that question.  If a married man wins this, he would have to put his foot down and demand it be accepted.  There has never been a cooler toilet in the history of mankind.

BTW, you can enter once a day, to increase your odds of winning.  Although, realistically, you shouldn’t waste your time entering a lot, because I’m gonna win it.  🙂

In the news, there is a group called National Action Against Obesity that thinks the Girl Scouts shouldn’t sell their cookies because they make Americans overweight.  And Prince Charles thinks McDonalds should be banned.  And some people think Oreos shouldn’t be sold because they make kids fat.  (BTW, Oreos also make adults fat, according to my research.)

Anyone with a clue can see that the problem isn’t the food but with the people who eat the food.  Most of us eat too much junk food and fast food, plus we don’t exercise enough.  But that’s our choice, right?  Last I checked, this is supposed to be a free country.  But apparently some groups think the government should regulate what we are allowed to eat.  This raises an interesting question — are some people too stupid to be healthy?

If the answer is no, meaning that obese people are fat because they choose to eat too much and not exercise enough, then the government should stay out of our business.  But if it’s true that some people are too stupid to be healthy, then perhaps some regulation is necessary.

I’d like to hear what you think on this issue…