It’s actually quite unfortunate how a good portion of America views public transit. Aside from residents of cities that are dense enough to necessitate high transit usage (New York and Chicago come to mind) most people think of the bus as the domain of the poor, homeless, and criminal and/or that they are “too good” for the bus. Yet others are out there that just make excuses, like their trips taking longer, no privacy, et cetera. In cities that have train systems, the public view tends to be a bit more positive than the bus, but it is still quite negative. These opinions come in part from the jacked up vision of what the “American Dream” is, or more generally, what an “ideal life” is supposed to be like. Thanks to irresponsible media programming, greed, and some other factors that are harder to grasp, that view tends to be a life in the suburbs, away from the “icky” city centers; house with a big yard, two-three children, and more to that extent. While these factors are most certainly topics for future posts, the main point for this one is that part of that “dream” involves the car.

America, as well as some of the other industrialized nations of the world, has come to worship the car. Only a minority of the population wants to take advantage of some great transit systems that are much better for the environment and much more affordable; most everyone wants to cruise around in a big, fancy car or truck.

What people in general need to realize is that the automobile ain’t all that and no bag of chips. Let me tell you right now: Dark Serge ain’t a big fan of a multi-ton potential death machine that belches all kinds of crap into the air and that costs oodles of money to run and insure. He prefers clean-traveling, efficient buses and trains that take him where he needs to go with little concern for expense and road rage–and you should too. Wihout further ado, I present you with my Reasons Public Transit is Awesome!

1. It’s Affordable

Remember back in 2008 and such when gas prices reached their most recent peak at a little under $4 a gallon (and in some places, even a little under $5 a gallon?) Guess what segment of the population didn’t sweat it much at all? That’s right, transit riders! (In fact, many people who would have normally driven packed the buses and trains to save money!)

While some transit agencies raised fares to help cover the extra cost for fueling up their buses and trains, that fare increase was nowhere near the increased cost of driving. In fact, transit has always been, and always will be, cheaper than the car.

Let’s imagine a guy named Paul. He lives in Garland, a short bus ride away from Downtown Garland Station on the Blue Line. He owns an average car. It gets 20 mpg, on average, in the city. He has an average American commute, 32 miles every day, for five days a week. In other words, 160 miles a week for commuting. In his personal case it’s from Central Garland to West Irving. Factoring in his other activities, his weekly mileage total is the same as the American average, 230 miles. Gasoline is around $2.80 a gallon. Every week, he spends $32.20 on gas. In a month, that’s $128.80. Keep in mind, this is only gas–he’s also spending $145 a month on insurance, the American average. Then we throw in 15 more dollars for miscellaneous costs like upkeep. That means it costs Paul $288.80 a month to drive.

You can just *feel* your wallet getting lighter, can't you?

Now, guess how much DART charges a month for a regional bus/train pass–not just DART on the Dallas side, but one that also includes Fort Worth’s “T”?

$105.

That means it costs less than half of his driving cost to just take the bus and train.

I don’t know about you, but I’d want to save some money by taking transit rather than driving. I think you would too, actually. According to the American Public Transportation Association, households that use public transportation and live with one less car can save on average $9,000 every year.

What’s more, some people can save even more than the average by using transit just because of who they are. Do you work for a major company that subsidizes transit passes? Are you a high school student eligible for reduced fare? Are you a college student whose institution offers passes to students, faculty, and staff? If so, then there you go! Transit just got even better for you.

2. Hello There!

Recent studies show that despite the advent of the World Wide Web, proliferation of social media, and other related factors, the average American has fewer close friends today than the average American had in 1980 (Statistics on the number of mere acquaintances are probably the opposite, however.) We are in actuality becoming more isolated from each other.

“But I have 500 friends on Facebook!”

Oh, believe me, I know you do. But think about it: how many of them ‘friends’ do you actually hang out with frequently, on a one-to-one or small-group basis? (No, parties don’t count.) How many of them do you talk to daily or semi-daily? I thought so. Our expanding isolation from others, and in the process isolation from our communities, is caused by and manifests itself in many different ways.

One way it’s manifest is by our isolation while traveling. Instead of hopping onto the local transit system where there’s other people to possibly interact with, most people opt to travel in their own little cubbyhole–their car or truck. This leads to more isolation, and in turn helps feed apathy toward gaping social and economic problems like outcastism and homelessness cause of people distancing themselves from said problems. That is a dangerous trend (and probably part of the reason why the Republican Party is even still viable). We need to reconnect with our communities, and one of the ways we can do that is through interaction on transit.

3. Lose Yourself in a Book… Without Crashing into a Street Light!

One of the most common criticisms of transit is that it takes longer to get places than if you were to drive. For example, it takes an hour to get from Fort Worth to Richardson by car, but takes 2.5-3 hours if you take transit. There is a gaping hole in the critics’ argument, however:

Have you ever tried reading while driving? Typing on a computer? Surfing the Internet? Finishing some written/electronic work? Playing a video game? Hint: if you haven’t, don’t. If you have, shame on your ass.

What I’m getting at is that while transit takes longer, you’re able to make productive use of that time, because you’re not the one with hands on the wheel driving. You can pull out a book and read without running off the road. You can surf the Internet, assuming you either have a cell tower Internet connection for your laptop or you’re on a vehicle with WiFi such as the Trinity Railway Express here in North Texas. You can whip out your PSP, DS, laptop, or iPod touch/iPhone and play a video game (just make sure to wear your headphones!). You can make good use of that longer period to enjoy some light leisure or get some work done, instead of having to concentrate on the road and/or engaging in road rage.

4. Ahh, the Smell of Nature (Rather Than the Smell of Pollution)

Us environmentalists are in love with public transit for a very good reason: According to the American Public Transportation Association, municipalities that have public transit help to reduce the nation’s carbon emissions by 37 million metric tons each year, which is the same as if New York City, DC, Atlanta, Denver, and Los Angeles combined totally stopped using electricity. It’s much more fuel/energy efficient to move a whole lot of people in a huge vehicle (such as 30 people on a bus) than if the same amount of people were to each drive even a small car. The benefits increase when we talk trains – DART even boasts that their light rail vehicles have the emissions of an average golf cart. They also have much better capacity than buses–DART’s trains, classified as “Super Light Rail Vehicles”, carry 150-200 people each!

Not just light rail. SUPAH light rail!

Just one person riding transit exclusively saves an average of 4,800 pounds of carbon dioxide from being emitted into the atmosphere annually. Taking transit can also reduce pointless travel, saving even more energy and reducing pollution a bit more.

Then, there’s the political side of it. Our main fuel is of course gasoline, made from crude oil. Most of that oil comes from countries that are quite hostile toward us, mainly in northern South America and the Middle East. We are pretty much dependent on a lot of our enemies just to keep this country going! How much sense does THAT make?! If just 10% – *ten percent!* – of Americans took public transit daily, we could reduce our foreign oil dependence by 40 percent! That’s almost half! (Yes, I know that was narmy. So sue me.)

5. Ready for a Run?

Everyone knows America is fat, and only getting fatter. We hear a lot about our diet and exercise issues, but most of the people talking about all this miss a big contributor to this problem – our cars!

Seriously, look at it: You walk a few feet to a garage or a bit more if you have to go to an apartment complex parking lot, and are mostly shaded while doing it. You simply sit in the car, moving only your feet a bit to operate pedals, then get out close to your destination.

It’s much different for us transit riders. Most of the population in transit-utilizing communities do not have (a) bus route(s) running right in front of their house, and even fewer have an actual, physical bus stop directly in front of their house. Most of the time, you have to walk to the bus stop, or in the case of some places that are more distant from stops (very common in the suburbs), bike there. That is much better for being active and getting exercise than just plopping down into a car. It’s even more of a workout when you realize you’re running late and have to RUN! to the bus stop to make it before your bus leaves.

HOME FREE!

Then there’s transfers. Many, if not most, transit trips involve transferring from one route to another and/or transferring between two routes of different modes of transport (such as from a bus to a light rail line at a train station). You gotta walk and make it, after all.

Finally, we get to the final part – deboarding. Like when you’re boarding, you rarely get dropped off right in front of your destination. Most of the time, you have to walk or bike to where you need to go from there.

All of what I mentioned is much more active than driving. Helps you keep more in shape when you gotta walk and bike some, eh?

So there you have it. A Love Affair With Transit, Part One. Not to toot my own horn, but I’m fairly sure I made a pretty dang good case for transit already. But don’t worry, there’s more coming up later on, cause Transit is the Ticket!

Anyway, without further ado, on to the main post!

—–

Logic would dictate that if someone claims to be a Christian, they’d be people who follow the teachings of such Christian cornerstones as the Golden Rule, the Parable of the Good Samaritan, and the Great Commandment. Unfortunately, as anyone (and especially any misfit) knows, the world is anything BUT logical.

Let’s look at the case of a “fictional” character named Karl. Before I go on, the reason “fictional” is in quotes is because of the simple fact that this is going to pretty much be a retelling of a real experience I had with the name of the offender changed. All the names in this post series will be that way.

Anyway, Karl is a fellow UT Dallas student just like your old pal Dark Serge here. He is someone who claims to be a good Christian. He goes to church regularly, is in the main Christian organization on the campus (FOCUS – the Fellowship of Christian University Students), and overall has the appearance of the friendly Christian student.

Taylor is one of my fellow misfits. He is lonely and seeking some brotherhood here. Perfectly understandable, seeing as how you see many of the guys around here walking around with their little buddy-buddies acting so close you’d think they’re blood or something. Taylor wants that too, cause after all, he ain’t sub-human by any stretch of the imagination.

Taylor and Karl know each other, and are friends (or so it seems…) Taylor asks Karl for a little help, because he (Taylor that is) has tried all the conventional crap when it comes to making friends, but he’s been rejected by clubs left and right, his roommate is indifferent about him, people flat out tell him to ‘f— off’… pretty much overall, he has failed at the typical stuff. Taylor, being a major misfit, missed out on his childhood and wants to make youthful memories before his youth ends. So he ain’t exactly got time to try and go about a “natural” pace when it comes to friendship; he has to press the gas a bit for closeness because the “natural” way would cause him to run (much more) dangerously low on time for recovery.

Taylor finishes explaining to Karl, who acts understanding.

“So,” Karl asks, “what do you need me to do exactly to help you?”

“Well,” Taylor replies, “I figure you know a fair number of people here; maybe you could connect me with some people and help explain my situation, so maybe they’d want to help fill the friendship gaps I have in my life.”

“Okay,” Karl says. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

The next day, Karl approaches Taylor, who is sitting beneath a tree with his laptop.

“Taylor, I think that your problem could go away if you just showed an interest in other people. If you do that, then people will naturally gravitate toward you, and…”

Without warning, Taylor gets up and walks away. After all, if he had stayed much longer, he might have just gone ballistic on Karl.

Logic 0, Logic Bomb 1

So who was right? Here’s a hint: his name ain’t Karl.

There are myriad reasons Karl is in violation here. Can you guess which?

Let’s say you’re a doctor, and you have a patient that really needs antibiotics. As someone who is (supposed to be) professional, what are you going to do? Are you going to give the guy the aspirin, or are you going to jam a laughing gas mask on him and do open-heart surgery? The answer’s fairly obvious: you’d give him the aspirin!

So why did Karl decide that Taylor needed the typical advice mantra when Taylor already knows all that has failed and that he needs direct help? Several reasons:

1. People will be quick as lightning to jam advice into someone’s face and walk away, but very few care enough to actually get off their fat ass and help someone directly. In other words, an epidemic of laziness.

2. Culture has unfortunately developed to embrace the Ayn Rand-type “ideals” of selfishness, ‘bootstraps’, and other “you’re on your own” type of opinions. Karl knows that Taylor could use direct help, but he still did an advice dump since he’s a slave to the status quo.

3. Part of Karl’s ego depends on him always being right, so when Taylor proved otherwise, it burst his “high and mighty” balloon.

4. Karl is a hypocritical Christian.

Oh yes.

It’s really interesting and thought-provoking how so many people claim to follow a religion that teaches quite clearly that you should help those in need directly. It’s almost like they are talking the talk but failing to walk that walk. Yup, that’s it.

Everyone knows what the Golden Rule is: “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. In addition, the Great Commandment reads:

“Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” (NIV)

As for the Parable of the Good Samaritan, Serge here will put it in a nutshell for all y’all. A Jewish traveler is beaten and robbed and left for dead on the side of a road. Despite seeing that injured man lying there, a Levite and a priest (!) pass right by him (hey, who knew New Yorkers existed way back then?) Finally, a Samaritan comes along. Keep in mind, Samaritans and Jews were rivals in that age. But what did that Samaritan do? He stopped and helped. Yes, I know–SO radical, right? Right?

Keep in mind, I haven’t even gotten into the slap-in-the-face insult Karl hurled at Taylor without even saying it. By going straight for the dead-horse advice card, Karl basically said that Taylor was a moron that didn’t know what was best for himself and that Karl is an “all knowing wise man” compared to Taylor, who is apparently a stupid mook. Taylor explicitly stated what he needed, but Karl opted to push HIS will on Taylor. In other words, he ignored Taylor’s need for aspirin and went straight for the gas and sawboning.

People, when you claim to be a Christian, you better be a real dang Christian and practice what you preach. If someone like Taylor needs direct help, listen to them. I know, it sounds all radical. But it’s the best thing to do, and it’s what your religion calls you to do. People just have the “Dr. Phil” ‘do this to make friends’ mantra burnt in their heads to the point where they are not willing to accept anything different, especially something that calls for them to actually lend a direct hand. That’s wrong, and that’s a fact. Sure, it can’t be proven by no scientific proofs or any crap like that, but it’s no less of a fact. It’s one of what I like to call “moral facts”–facts that just represent the right thing to do. There are people out there for which the conventional crap won’t work, yours truly included.

As for the title, popular slang term for people who act like they’re worshipping up a storm in church but don’t act like a real Christian in their daily lives is that they are “fakin’ and shakin’”. They are acting like they are Christian, but they are faker than plastic flowers.

That’s all for now, but next time, we shall take a look at the case of Taylor and his interactions with Bryan. Bryan’s in violation too, perhaps even more so than Karl… come to think of it: nah, I’d say they’re equally dickish.

Oh, almost forgot: the DorkLife™/DorkLife International™ idea is now Green Wolf™/Green Wolf International™. After all, a green wolf would not fit with all the more mainstream ones, would it?

Okay, not really. It ain’t official or anything. But I do have some suggestions for anyone riding trains and/or buses of the DART (Dallas Area Rapid Transit), TRE (Trinity Railway Express), T (Fort Worth Transportation Authority), or any other transit agency on Earth.

* Smokers, if you want to trash your lungs, I don’t care. Y’all dying off early keeps the population numbers in check anyway. I do start caring, however, when you light up at the bus stop or train platform with other passengers waiting. Some of us may be allergic to your smoke, can’t stand the smell, or actually care about our health. Now, I am aware that smokers, especially the younger ones, are the kind of people who generally don’t give a flying rat’s about anything but their own narrow asses (those who do, I am not talking about you). If you’re one of those people, you obviously don’t care about others, but think about stepping to a secluded part of the platform as a form of insurance against lawsuits.

* Parents, keep your kids in check. Don’t let them run around the vehicle and shut their little mouths up if they start crying or yelling or making any other annoying little kid sounds. For those who already do that, Dark Serge applauds you. If you are the kind of parent who has these stupid little conversations with your kids, talk in baby/toddler talk, can’t control your kids, don’t want to control your kids, or anything like that, do us all a favor and get a minivan. Now don’t get me wrong, I am all for people using public transit – it’s great seeing a train or bus crowded cause it means fewer cars on the road – but some people just need to stay their asses off the buses and trains. Y’all are part of that group.

* People riding with their significant others, keep public affection to hugs and walking arm-in-arm please. Sometimes I just got finished eating within the past hour or two before boarding, and would like to digest that food rather than hurl it back up. For kissing, ass-grabbing, dirty talk, sticking your tongues down each other’s throats, and similar activities, please rent a room or save that crap for when you get back home. Don’t worry, hotels are everywhere – there’s even a tunnel from Union Station to the Dallas Hyatt. Try it! (Note, added 4/4/10: Yes, ‘pecks’ ‘little kisses’ I’d consider under the kissing category here. They are still fairly disgusting. Also, it and the other stuff listed makes people like me who can’t get relationships to save our lives feel even worse cause of our lack of love.)

* Cell phone talkers, please keep phone conversations to non-personal content only. I really don’t need or want to know that your sister and her boyfriend conceived a baby in the back of a Ford Explorer while their threesome partner drove down the LBJ.

* Water and soap is not that dang expensive! If you smell like corn chips and ass, stay your ass off the train or bus and TAKE A SHOWER!

If you are a responsible rider who boards and de-boards (?) the bus/train in a responsible manner, follows the above guidelines, and is friendly, congratulations and keep up the good work!

This has been a Public Transit Rider Alert from Dark Serge, thanks for listening!

• Plymouth State Weather Center is a weather site from Plymouth State University in New Hampshire. This site I love for their multitude of useful maps, mostly the radar/satellite images. They also have other stuff like current observations from many areas and forecast models. The NEXRAD products are what I like the most, though: by going to “CONUS & PR Sites” you can access the radar sites around the USA. These are basic maps, yes, but the reason I like them so much is the multitude of products – they have the VIL images for hail size estimations and all kinds of velocity images at different scan levels…wow. And the no-frames site that is offered is very lightweight, making viewing on mobile devices like PSPs and iPod touches, Blackberrys and such easy. Heck, it is still great viewing on the laptop and desktop too!
• College of DuPage Weather. This weather site, run by the aforementioned college in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, is very much the same kind of site as that of Plymouth State. Great radar products, lightweight site, models, all that good stuff. I absolutely love their 1km state/state region radars, since they tend to show phenomena like outflow boundaries very well, which are critical for local short term forecasts when thunderstorms are scattered around the area on a summer afternoon or something.
• Meteostar. This fairly obscure general weather site offers the usual airport current conditions and forecasts and local alerts on city/zip lookup. Their radar is basic, but not that shabby looks-wise (believe me, the background land map makes or breaks radars a lot of the time). They also have miscellaneous current conditions and forecast data for local areas as well as regions and the country at large, even having a Google Map for current conditions (once again, only at airports).

  What makes this site notable, in my opinion, are the extraordinary weather maps offered. Seriously, go to Imagery and look at their satellite images. Dang – look at that radar/satellite image! Meteostar’s radar/satellite images are very large and detailed and great to look at.

So there you go: a bunch of weather sites that serve as great (or not-so-great) places to keep up with and track weather in your area, at least here in the United States. Someday in the future I’ll review weather sites in other countries – don’t want to leave you out!

Get yourself ready now, as it’s time to dive into number…

Ah, Accuweather. What can I say about this one…?

Okay, it’s not THAT bad. But its quality is definitely below that of the others, though it does have a couple strong points. Looking up your local area’s weather pulls up your basic airport current conditions, and a forecast for the rest of the day you looked it up and the next one. There are also tabs for a weekend forecast and an extended forecast for 15 days. “Wow,” you must be thinking, “a 15 day forecast?! This site may very well be great!” Well… beyond about 10 days it is pretty much just them filling in whatever is similar to days 6-10. So take that with a grain of salt. There are also hourly forecasts and such, in line with the other sites I mentioned.

You also get weather news below all that for your region of the country. I have to give Accuweather credit in this aspect: they are great for checking up on weather news and such. They have articles and video, as well as blogs. Also on the page is another neat feature – for major metro areas, video forecasts from Accuweather meteorologists are available. They aren’t local to the regions though, so some of the benefit is lost as far as my opinion goes. Local weather alerts are also highlighted.

After this, though, Accuweather starts to fail, and fail hard. There is a link to a weather radar, which will take you to a state image. You can zoom in to major metro areas also. These radars are fairly basic, though, and only update every 15 minutes That’s different though if you shell out some ¢a$h monthly/yearly for their premium service, which counts against the site heavily as far as these reviews go. While the WU does have premium benefits as well, they are not nearly as ridiculous as Accuweather’s. You’ll see more examples of this as we go through this post. You can also view NEXRAD images, which are just the basic radar data, unless you wanna shell out some bucks for the detailed storm data and plotted paths (hint: they are on the Weather Underground for free). I do have to give credit where credit is due, though: their radar/satellite combo map is straightforward and awesome. They also have some great satellite maps.

On the Severe tab you’ll get an interactive weather warning map (ya know, just like the WU and Intellicast, only more clunky). They also have a variety of forecast maps, which are fair, but not as visually appealing to me as the ones on Intellicast.

Also a little credit for Accuweather: they have an active community in forums, on social networking sites, and so on and so forth. But so does the Weather Underground…

Well, after hitting them points, we come to yet another interactive weather map. Here, it’s called MapSpace. There is a regular radar view and a high-res one, but there is nothing in the way of storm data or anything with the images. The high res is kind of neat though…

While this map ain’t nearly as useful as that of the WU or Intellicast for local storm tracking, they do have some good data views for other purposes. They have a really good radar/satellite combo and enhanced satellite as well as radar for the sometimes-neglected Alaska and Hawaii. Also included is a current conditions view like you might get on TV, but there is no clicking for detailed data or anything. MapSpace can’t touch Full Screen or the WunderMap there. Then, there is the lightning strike data. Useful? Only if you can pay to view the strikes close up…

One of the things that really stand out about Accuweather is that they are one of the only American weather sites that includes radar from Europe and Canada, and on MapSpace no less. I mean, you can find that kind of data on sites in the respective countries, but man – that is neat. Gotta give them props for that.

Overall, while Accuweather does have its perks, I don’t use the site very much at all in my weather tracking and monitoring, as it’s fairly mediocre. It ain’t so if you decide to pay (frankly, they offer some neat-ass stuff for the money) but these reviews are about what everyone can see, including those who can’t pay, and Accuweather kinda sucks in that category. Plus, the ads are overwhelming and not well-integrated like those on the WU and Intellicast.

In the next few days, look for some summarizing and some very honorable mentions.

Overall Grade: C-

Some say that when you have a government-owned entity in any field, it will tend to be more serious and straightforward. While I believe there are examples and exceptions in that belief, the National Weather Service is an example. Their website is ad-free, fluff-free, serious weather data and information.

The National Weather Service is the official weather analysis and observation organization of the United States Federal Government, and is the backbone/provider for most of the weather data that the other websites use (like radar, forecasts, current conditions [for non-PWS websites], warnings, and more). There is the national office with many departments around the nation as well as local offices for each region of the United States. What you want to do is find your local office and go to their site for local information, using the national site for national analysis and maps. If you’re seeking no-frills maps of the nation to use for making personal forecasts and doing amateur analysis, then the NWS site is where you want to go. It’s a bit hard to navigate because of the sheer amount of data available and confusing site design, but it’s worth it.

Your local NWS site is a great place to have in your weather website bookmarks. Many offices, like my local office for the Dallas/Fort Worth area in Texas here, offer ‘graphicasts’ that tell you about weather coming your way that you’ll only see on the NWS site, like this one forecasting thunderstorms tomorrow for North Texas:

Graphicasts can be quite useful, as you can see. You can also get forecasts for your local area, often for your neighborhood specifically, by clicking close to where you are on the clickable maps on the local office homepages. Weather warnings, watches, advisories, and outlooks are there, too, of course, but the other weather sites do a good job of displaying them as well (especially the Weather Underground).

There is also a feature called “Graphical Forecasts” (not to be confused with the graphicasts) where you can look at maps of the U.S as well as zoomed-in regions that are basically forecast maps showing everything from precipitation outlooks, to temperature forecasts, and even humidity and wave height. This is a very neat feature as well.

The NWS radars are basic and not that exciting – just the data on a map of your local area, region, or the nation. Nothing more, nothing less. There is no interactive map or anything, though there is one in proposal at the moment which I’ll discuss when it comes out this October or so. Looks like it’ll be on par with that of the Weather Channel at best right now. Other maps are the same way.

Every NWS site has miscellaneous information (like local climate data) and region-specific stuff that is too numerous to list and review here, so I’ll just say to check out your local site as well as the national site and see what they have to offer. The strong points overall would be the graphicasts and local forecasts, as well as the weather maps, forecast maps, and the clean site. Overall, the NWS is a good site to have in your bookmarks. Next up, Accuweather! Then, after that, look for a summary of the weather sites and perhaps a few honorable mentions.

Overall Grade: B+

Today, however, is a day in the week known as Spring Break, and I am fairly bored, so I figured I’d look at CBS 11′s website and check up on the local goings-on. Lo and behold, I saw a story that captured my eye right from the start:

Dallas Jail Guard Fired Over Anti-Gay Remarks

Ding! Whenever a story comes out about an LGBT topic, I’m tuned in, since I have a personal interest in them. Pretty much, this guy is a religious right wacko who went around claiming that he “disagrees with homosexuality” and that gays should be killed, slavery is justified by the Bible, and other generally ancient and off-the-wall “ideas”. He has a history of racism as well, and claims that dinosaurs are the work of something Satanic (his exact wording was too rambly and wacky for me to really decipher).

What really got me is this little snippet of the story:

“They made it out to be that I was a bigot. I was fired ’cause I hurt someone else’s feelings,” Johnson said Monday. He said that his free speech rights were violated but that he will not appeal.

Wow, where do I start? Well, guess I should start from the beginning. Saying you “disagree with homosexuality” is like saying you “disagree” with being black or being left-handed: it’s saying you don’t like a part of who someone is. It’s a simple fact that being gay is not a choice but is something that occurs in people naturally, as with other animal species.

This guy seems to think that he had the right to say that stuff based on the First Amendment or something. He’s freaking promoting genocide! That is not covered, period, because he is promoting criminal activity against people due to a naturally-occurring trait. Newsflash, guy – you ARE a bigot. Simple as that.

Finally, the part where he claims he was fired because “he hurt someone’s feelings” is really provoking in itself. While he’s going around talking about all this “Christian” belief stuff, he seems to not be aware of one of the Christian principles that he and other religious righties love to ignore – the Golden Rule. Under that rule, which morally applies to *everyone* (not just Christians) he should be treating others the way he wants to be treated. That includes what he calls “hurting someone’s feelings”. Ain’t it amazing how many insensitive pricks there are, Christianity-claiming and otherwise, who seem to ignore a common sense moral like the Golden Rule?

The thing about it is, out of all those dozens of websites, there are only a small handful that are really worth your time – that offer more than just conditions and a forecast, but really good miscellaneous features. With that, let’s move on to weather website number…

3. Weather.com

Ah, The Weather Channel. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the United States that has not heard of it. The cable and satellite network, launched in May of 1982, has been the source of weather pages for newspapers, current conditions and forecasts for radio stations, and data for local TV stations for years. When the Internet really started taking off in the early 1990s, they jumped on the bandwagon and started a website, known simply as “weather.com”.

So how does weather.com stack up against the Weather Underground and Intellicast?

Well, the homepage is nice and neat, which, as you know by now, is something I give automatic points for. What I like about weather.com is the inclusion of more “weather news” stories then Intellicast and the Weather Underground, though all of them have weather news to some extent. As noted in the WU post, they have blogs from weather professionals. Also neat is how weather.com offers video of everything from the weather news stories to forecasts for specific regions.

Weather.com offers a smorgasbord of weather maps, from radars to current surface (conditions) to “yesterday-today” temperature differences. The maps are all cleanly made and easy on the eyes, like Intellicast’s. As for current conditions when you look up your area, it’s just airports again. Forecasts offered are a ten-day one, hourly, tomorrow, and one for the upcoming weekend. You can also look back on the conditions for the previous day and the days in your current month prior to the day you check it. A neat little widget on the current conditions page gives you a “comfort index” for exercise outdoors, a cool feature.

Below the current conditions for your area is a local radar map, clickable to access the Interactive Weather Map feature weather.com offers. The interactive map offers radar, satellite, a few elements of current conditions (temperature, dew points, etc), and a radar/satellite combo. You can zoom the map and observe local storms and look at your region’s satellite and such, but there really ain’t much to say about this one. It’s fairly mediocre compared to Intellicast’s and does not even come within a hundred miles of the greatness of the Weather Underground’s interactive map. Weather.com also offers this feature called “future radar”, which is supposed to show where storms and precip are gonna be within the next couple hours, but all it does is blur the radar and push the storms in the direction that they were going previously. It’s just clunky and ugly. They do get points for the inclusion of the radar/satellite, though, cause a good product like that is actually rare.

Weather.com offers some sections for things like driving and travel and such, too, but overall there ain’t much to say about this site except that its strong features are video and weather news. For anything else, the Weather Underground and Intellicast, and probably the site(s) I mention in the rest of this series, beat weather.com out. The next post will tackle the more serious and straightforward website of the National Weather Service.

Overall Grade: C+