Category: Soap Box

Man Says Home Depot Fired Workers For Catching Thieves – Yahoo News

A former Home Depot employee said the company fired him and three other workers because they helped police catch several suspected shoplifters in May.

[Click the above link to read the whole story.]

I am the first to admit that I really didn’t like Home Depot’s door receipt procedure. It made me feel like a thief, for doing nothing more than buying their merchandise. I’ve written about how it bugs me, other people have written about how it bugs them, and some of those people linked back to my post. So, I would say that the disdain for the door receipt checking guard was fairly wide spread.

I’ve been to Home Depot a few times lately. I’ve noticed that the door guard checking receipts is gone. I asked someone at Home Depot about it, and they said the contract for that service had expired. They didn’t mention whether or not it was a policy change. I, for one, am gload to see them gone. Customers should not be treated like thieves.

On the other hand, thieves should be treated like thieves. If you spot someone actually stealing something, you should be able to stop them. Seems that Home Depot has gone off the deep end in the other direction, and you can get fired for stopping someone from stealing.

Home Depot needs to understand that there is a middle ground. Apparently they are unfamiliar with the “Shopkeeper’s Privilege“. While it is unreasonable to treat all customers like thieves, it is perfectly reasonable to detain someone for which there is a reasonable belief that they have committed a crime.

Home Depot, your word for today is: Balance

-Chris Knight

Venting Our (Carbon Dioxide) Problems into Space (TreeHugger)
by Jeremy Elton Jacquot, Los Angeles on 06. 3.07
Science & Technology

This week’s issue of The Economist reports on an interesting scheme proposed by Alfred Y. Wong, professor of physics and director of the Plasma Physics Laboratory at the University of California, Los Angeles, to rid the Earth of carbon dioxide emissions. Wong posits that a conveyor built in the Arctic could take advantage of the Earth’s magnetic field to expel emissions into outer space.

[SNIP] .. Read the whole article by clicking the link above… [/SNIP]

If only the astronauts in Apollo 13 had thought of that! Venting the atmosphere into space solves all your space problems. Sure, we are on a planet; but a planet is just a really, really, really big self-sustaining space ship that uses a gravity core to maintain atmosphere instead of a hull.

I’m sorry, I just can’t believe this idea is getting any serious traction. It’s the sort of idea that sounds good at first, but in the end is no better than dumping waste into the ocean or airborne pollutants into the atmosphere. Sure, the ocean is big, and the atmosphere is huge, but that doesn’t mean they are infinite. You can’t vent the Earth’s CO2 into space long term any more than you can dump mercury salts into the ocean, and not expect to cause long term harm.

Oxygen == Life. NASA has spent a lot of money researching the viability of extracting O2 from moon rocks, because O2 is necessary for Life. Carbon is also necessary to life. Plants extract Carbon from CO2 as a basic building block of their chemistry. We can not afford to vent the natural resources of Life on Planet Earth into space! For every molecule of CO2 ejected into space we lose, forever, a molecule of life sustaining Oxygen!

Wouldn’t it be better, and smarter, to be replanting lost forests and jungles, reducing our consumption of fossil fuels, and working on new ways to extract Carbon from CO2?

We are, for now at least, permanent residents of Planet Earth. We can not afford to continue acting like our resources are unlimited. We can’t afford to vent our atmosphere into space, any more than the astronauts of Apollo 13 could have.

-Chris Knight

Bush to mother: Dont sell on eBay
Posted by Mark Silva at 2:30 pm CDT

Several mothers who have lost children at war in Iraq took part in a new talk show today on National Public Radio.

One of them, Elaine Johnson, recounted a meeting that she had with President Bush in which he gave her a presidential coin and told her and five other families: “Don’t go sell it on eBay.”

[SNIP… Click the link above to read the whole story. ]

“Then he gave us a presidential coin,” she said. “Now you check this out: He gave six of us a presidential coin, tell us not to tell the rest of the people that was there, and then after that he told us don’t go sell it on eBay. Now you tell me how insensitive that can be? What kind of caring person is that?”

It’s just not possible to make this kind of stuff up. No human being could be so compassionless that they could have written this dialog. Well, ok, maybe Charles Manson… Maybe.

Next up on eBay, the very same 30 pieces of silver that paid for the life of Jesus Christ… Offered up by an anonymous seller who listed both a D.C. and a Texas address.

-Chris Knight