Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/238535
6A Daily News – Wednesday, January 8, 2014 Opinion DAILY NEWS RED BLUFF TEHAMA COUNTY T H E V O I C E O F T E H A M A C O U NTY S I N C E 1 8 8 5 Greg Stevens, Publisher gstevens@redbluffdailynews.com Chip Thompson, Editor editor@redbluffdailynews.com Editorial policy The Daily News opinion is expressed in the editorial. The opinions expressed in columns, letters and cartoons are those of the authors and artists. Letter policy The Daily News welcomes letters from its readers on timely topics of public interest. All letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and cannot exceed two double-spaced pages or 500 words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section of those submitted will be considered for publication. Letters will be edited. Letters are published at the discretion of the editor. 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Some involved with mental health, some uneducated and others who are suffering from some other grave and mental and emotional disorder. That they haven't reached out to help for. I hear our community repeatedly complaining about the homeless, the trash they say they are, the filthy drug addicts that plague our streets and the amount of drugs that are in our little community here. Well I challenge all you complainers who are more than likely a closet addict of some sort themselves to some mood altering substance to get off your high horses, brush the dust off your backsides and contribute to doing something to help remedy the situation. I wonder truly how many of you are one maybe two paychecks away from homelessness yourselves. Your complaints and lack of community involvement to remedy a situation that is not going to vanish due to your lack of contributions to such places like PATH who are genuine in their hearts and truly trying to make a difference in our community and in the lives of those less fortunate who in reality just need some help. Of course there is always going to be those who like where they're at and do choose to be homeless but in all fairness, stereotyping them and not reaching out to better the community you take time to complain about, seems to me doing nothing about is enabling the situation to only remain as is if not get worse. Our caring friends at PATH need help. Help them help the community you care enough about to complain about better the homeless situation. Some sober living environments for those that are homeless, a day center that gets people off the street and shows some concern for the less fortunate. Working together, reaching out, showing a little compassion certainly cannot make matters any worse but only better. Which are you a do nothing complainer or a complainer who wants to see change and will become part of the solution. Lets make a difference in 2014 Tehama County, help PATH. Instead of sweeping these people under the rug and capitalizing off others diseases let's try to find a solution and help these suffering people. Love is the answer. Kevin Teeny, Red Bluff went from square to widescreen and I had to spend Editor: the whole freaking day figurI know most people have ing out how to get it back to heard this phrase and here's square. another one, killing two birds God how I miss the old days with one stone. I've come up when all a simple adjustment with an idea, maybe even a required was simply turning partial solution to the AB109 one or two knobs, overcrowding issue. and they never sponStart a new protaneously reset Your gram, call it A second themselves. chance and focus on Like every time first time offenders the lights go out, I that have not been in have to reset the trouble before, but clocks on half a dozen are looking at some serious machines and reprogram my time. DVR. Young people make bad Government and law are choices. Give them the chance even worse. No simple knobs. to show they have learned a Performing the simplest task lesson, and prove it by work- requires first spending days ing towards a modified sen- wading through volumes of tence. Once out they need to information learning how to work with youths at risk, com- do it, and then praying your munity service, work and interpretation of the rules daily reporting. matches the judges or he'll disThey can detour kids from miss your entire case. drugs and gangs, and it may I swear to god, it could all keep some already in trouble be 10 times easier, faster, and from becoming institutional- require 10 times less stress, ized. expense, injustice and wasted Who do you think would be time. most likely to change bad If it could all be done so behavior, someone looking at much more efficiently, why 10 days or some one looking isn't it then? Because the at 10 years? Sometimes more intimidating complexity is not be. makes ordinary people like us Marlena Norman, Red Bluff believe the huge cost of insurance, lawyers, judges, government bureaucracies, etc. is a necessary evil. Also, mindblowingly complex procedures make illicit activity hard for Editor: Booting my PC this morn- voters to spot. Nathan Esplanade, Corning ing, the picture spontaneously A second chance Turn Bureaucratic maze Your officials STATE ASSEMBLYMAN — Dan Logue, 150 Amber Grove Drive, Ste. 154, Chico, CA 95928, 530-895-4217 STATE SENATOR — Jim Nielsen, 2635 Forest Ave., Ste. 110, Chico, CA 95928, (530) 879-7424, senator.nielsen@senate.ca.gov GOVERNOR — Jerry Brown, State Capitol Bldg., Sacramento, CA 95814; (916) 445-2841; Fax (916) 5583160; E-mail: governor@governor.ca.gov. U.S. REPRESENTATIVE — Doug LaMalfa 506 Cannon House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515, 202-2253076. U.S. SENATORS — Dianne Feinstein (D), One Post Street, Suite 2450, San Francisco, CA 94104; (415) 393-0707. Fax (415) 3930710. Barbara Boxer (D), 1700 Montgomery St., Suite 240, San Francisco, CA 94111; (510) 286-8537. Fax (202) 224-0454. Commentary Elegy for the incandescent bulb Farewell, old friend. I am going to miss you. I speak of the incandescent bulb — the light of my life for all of my years. As of Jan. 1, you have been shut off. That was the mission of a 2007 law that raised energy-efficiency and wattage standards far beyond what you are capable of reaching. You had a fine run, my friend. Perfected by Thomas Edison some 135 years ago, you stand as one of the greatest inventions of all time. Your brilliance was in your simplicity. By sending an electrical current through a thin filament, which is sealed in a gas inside a bulb, you produce light. Several inventors worked on the concept until Edison produced a carbonized-bamboo filament that could last up to 1,200 hours. Thanks to him, the cheap, long-lasting bulb was born. Oh, how we took you for granted over the years. Because incandescent bulbs are so cheap and plentiful, virtually every home in America has had dozens of them. You walk into a room, flip a switch and, presto, there is light! To be sure, you have been so successful, it took the government — not better lighting prod- ucts — to kill you off. That's because, some argue, you are causing the Earth to warm. As electricity passes through your filament, you see, the filament gets white-hot. That is how light is created — but in the process,you also create a lot of heat, and heat is wasted energy. You require more electricity than other lighting alternatives, such as fluorescent bulbs, halogens or LEDs. Since electricity comes from the electric company, which may be burning coal to produce it, you are causing more greenhouse gases to be emitted into the atmosphere than other lighting sources would. Already I miss you. I am no big fan of the alternative lighting sources I must now use. The compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs take forever to get bright. They lack the warm glow unique to incandescent lighting. The fluorescents are a wee bit dangerous, too. They are filled with mercury vapor. When electricity passes through the vapor, ultraviolet light is produced. But these bulbs sometimes explode for no reason. I was sitting in a coffee shop when one went off. Luckily, nobody was sitting at the table beneath it. It fell from the lamp and crashed onto the table — the and what light bulbs we can manager was unaware that it was use. Sure, I'm all for unhealthy to touch the new technologies shattered glass without replacing older ones. rubber gloves or that I'm all for energy effithe shattered bulb ciency and cost savrequired special disposings and minimizing al. electricity usage. My But these are the science friends tell me kinds of bulbs we must LED lighting offers use now. great promise. I am something of But I am not ready an agnostic where the to see my old incanglobal-warming debate descent pal go. You is concerned. It is surehad a fine run, my ly possible that human Tom friend. I leave you activity is contributing with some gallows to a greenhouse effect. humor: We are pumping vast How many people amounts of carbon does it take to shut off an incandioxide into the atmosphere. Then again, the science is not descent light bulb? Answer: 264 members of the conclusive — it is not a closed case, as some journalists and House, 65 senators and one politicians would like us to Republican president. believe. The models that predict Tom Purcell, author of complex future weather patterns are fallible. The news reports are "Misadventures of a 1970s incredibly confusing and fre- Childhood" and "Comical Sense: A Lone Humorist Takes quently contradictory. Nonetheless, the global- on a World Gone Nutty!" is a Tribune-Review warming issue has become a Pittsburgh giant political football and humor columnist and is syndicated power-hungry politicians hope nationally to use it to pass lots of new laws exclusively by Cagle Cartoons and controls that further limit Inc. Send comments to Tom at what we can and cannot do — Purcell@caglecartoons.com. Purcell