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Greetings,
Quotaholics:
Happy Earth Day.
Earth
Day was first celebrated in 1970 when US Senator Gaylord Nelson had the
day designated to be set aside for awareness of Earth’s fragile environment.
The day is celebrated on April 22 each year around the world. The UN celebrates
Earth Day each year on the March equinox.
Environmental
concerns continue to grow. Years ago, there was a switch from paper grocery
bags to plastic. Both are still available, at least where I grocery shop,
but the paper bags must be requested. For years after the switch, each
trip to the grocery store ended at the checkout with someone asking, "Paper
or plastic?"
It
was considered irresponsible to kill trees for something as mundane as
getting your groceries home from the store. The fact that it took maybe
three or four paper bags instead of nine or ten plastic bags was not an
issue. And if you got something heavy, they often doubled bagged it in
plastic, since sharp corners tore the bag or the handles tore with too
much weight. But we were still being ecologically sound.
Stores now sell reusable
cloth/canvas bags to drag your groceries home in. Most of the ones I’ve
seen cost between one and one-and-a-half-dollars. You can purchase really
fancy bags for $5 or more. They last for a long time. However, when I
buy chicken in a leaky package (and don’t they all seem to be leaky packages?)
they will wrap my chicken in a plastic bag before putting it in my cloth
bag. If they don’t, then I have to launder the cloth bag or risk contamination
with salmonella.
According
to
USA Today, after being pressured by consumers and environmental activists
along with retailers who care, more than 80% of the plastic bag manufacturers
are going to make plastic bags from 40% recycled material by 2015.
Some places have
outlawed the use of plastic bags and some stores have simply stopped buying
them. They take hundreds of years to degrade and are often seen willfully
clinging to tree branches, fencing, and any number of other protuberances
making the world an uglier place.
Plastic
bag making is a $1 billion industry supplying about 90 billion bags for
the US alone. Whole
Foods is one of the companies that has stopped offering plastic bags.
They claim to have eliminated 150 million plastic bags from landfills
in one year’s time. They still offer paper bags for the unenlightened
super-users/wasters, but most people have switched to the reusable bags.
Using
recycling techniques will save 463 million pounds of greenhouse gas emissions
and 300 millions pounds of waste will be saved from reaching landfills
per annum. The new plan will cost over $50 million to upgrade manufacturing
venues. They will need to collect 470 million pounds of recycled plastic
to make the bags.
The
announcement was made to coincide with Earth Day. Kathleen Rogers, president
of Earth Day Network, is still not happy. She said, "It’s annoying.
And it’s transparent. The death knell has sounded for plastic bags. They’re
just trying to continue to make a bad thing."
The
goal is to get consumers to bring their own carry items with them when
shopping. But those shunned paper bags are still held as back up. Instead
of any method of disposable bags, we all should be using reusable bags.
Is
this a reasonable goal for all our shopping? Am I supposed to purchase
a set of bags to use for my chicken and other messy meat packages (wrapped
in plastic wrap and often sitting on a Styrofoam tray while still leaking)
and then another set for my fresh fruits and vegetables (often placed
in a thin plastic bag to make weighing easier)?
What
do I do about going to the mall? Do I take my bags into the stores and
have security follow me around? Well, they probably wouldn’t because I’m
old, white, female, and look honest. But what if I was a teenager? Are
they not supposed to shop? Am I better off killing the trees when I shop
at the mall? Are we supposed to stop shopping at the mall?
How often do
we wash these bags with the salmonella items lovingly placed inside? Icky
stuff ruins the cardboard insert, so do I have to buy a new bag each time
I purchase chicken? Or is it okay to use my laundry soap and ruin the
environment with that? And perhaps I could buy some cardboard and cut
out new inserts for the bottom.
Have
you gone green with your bags? Do you always use them? What do you do
when you are half way finished with your shopping before you realize you
didn’t bring the bags in with you? Are we all going back to the "Paper
or plastic?" question.
Greenly,
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“I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.” - Frank Lloyd Wright
“If God is your co-pilot, swap seats.” - John Lehman
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Emergency Room
Visit
[Thanks Sied]
“How did this accident
occur?” asked the doctor.
“Well,” explained the patient, “I was making love to my girlfriend
on the living-room rug when, all of a sudden, the chandelier came
crashing down on us.”
“Fortunately, you’ve only sustained some minor lacerations on your
buttocks,” the doctor said. “You’re a very lucky man.”
“You said it, doc,” exclaimed the man. “A minute sooner and it would
have fractured my skull!”
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“I tried to keep both arts alive, but the camera won. I found that while
the camera does not express the soul, perhaps a photograph can!”
“It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the
environment.”
“Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.” – all
from Ansel Adams, American photographer, died April 22, 1984
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E-Mail
the Imp
Everyone
knows that a nuclear bomb, even a small yield bomb, can level a city…at
least a small city. A small yield bomb dropped on a city the size of
New York would cause proportionately the same amount of damage as an
F1tornado tearing through a west Texas Trailer park. Radiation would
be a difference of course, but I’m just considering knocked down; blown
up; torn apart damage.
That’s a military use of an atomic bomb, unless you’re talking about
massive urban renewal projects and I don’t think the Nuclear Regulatory
Agency has approved any of those lately. But there have been many civilian,
non-military uses for atomic weapons considered over the years, and
some were even tried.
As Livermore Lab physicist Edward Teller, known as the father of the
hydrogen bomb and a backer of Project
Plowshare, wrote in 1963: “…the peaceful applications of nuclear
explosives…have produced some promising possibilities…we must consider
as dreams. They boil down to a single fact: We
can make a hole in the earth — if anybody wants to do that."
There were seven basic civilian applications that were considered by
the US government. There were about a dozen US test firings of nuclear
devices that did more than just test ignition, delivery, and yield…they
also were used to gather data for civilian uses of huge blasts. The
Russians turned over about ten dozen nukes for civilian application
testing.
Some civilian projects would seem to go hand in hand, particularly those
that require digging big holes or moving vast amounts of earth. Creating
a harbor, digging a canal, or digging tunnels for roads and mines are
three of the seven applications looked at by the government. Exploring
for natural gas and mining oil shale are two others that were considered
and for which actual test blasts were conducted. Disposing of nuclear
waste was considered and finally rejected. I suppose that making more
atomic waste to blast old atomic waste is another idea that had little
appeal for the public or many in the government. Using nukes to deflect
or destroy asteroids that threaten Earth is an application, or is an
idea for an application, for non-military nuke use that is still being
seriously considered.
The last of the original seven ideas concern using nukes for non-military
applications was as a power source for space flight. Project
Orion, was a study and a plan for igniting atomic weapons behind
a spacecraft to propel it at tremendous velocity. General Dynamics prepared
a comprehensive paper on a Nuclear
Pulse Vehicle.
That sounds like putting a steel plate in the back seat of a car and
tossing lit sticks of dynamite over your shoulder…hoping the blast will
move you down the street and not kill you.
I can think of a few other uses. Explode nukes on fault lines to relieve
pressure and create small earthquakes before large ones can develop.
Explode them to relieve pressure on magma domes to prevent cataclysmic
volcanic eruptions. And of course there’s always urban renewal. We dynamite
old buildings now, this would be way cooler!
The Bad Sied 
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Speak
right up!
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Down & Dirty
Most
farmers, and many gardeners, will have their soil tested to see what
needs to be done to get the plants to grow to their optimum. In the
U.S., we have a Cooperative
Extension Service that will test the soil and make recommendations
as to what is needed.
There
are many factors affecting plant growth. From an amateur gardener perspective,
it seems daunting trying to assess whether this plant is going to be
healthy in this setting, or if it would be better over there. Sunlight,
temperature, soil, and other factors gang up on the unknowing to prevent
the ultimate goal, a hardy plant displaying the foliage we want.
Soil
holds many things that conspire to challenge us. There are many things
growing under and atop the surface that will make a difference in the
ultimate outcome. Many plants exude chemicals to mark it’s territory
and prevent other plants from invading. Black
Walnut trees are among the worst for this. They produce "juglone"
which is toxic to most other plants.
Fungus
is another conspirator. The
largest living thing on the planet is one big fungus, a type of
mushroom. Spreading from spores there are so many different
species that it would be impossible for the amateur to address them
all. Besides, they are such an important part of the process, we don’t
want to get rid of them in the first place.
Chemical
balance, moisture content (in subsoil) and on and on and on. Nature
seems to dare us to try to get something to grow, especially in some
of the new housing developments. We buy a brand new home not knowing
what was growing there before the builder bulldozed the area and used
the excavation debris to cover the indigenous soil. What used to be
there can leech through later to give the gardener a surprise when their
prize blooming plant begins to wither.
Here’s
your quiz:
Have you had your soil tested?
Do you have the soil retested regularly, or do you wait to see what
happens?
Have you had lawn or garden plants suddenly wither no matter how hard
you try to keep them hardy?
Have you gone to appreciable expense to address soil compatibility?
Down
& Dirty - Not Just For Perverts Any More
Cliff (the High-Tech Redneck who doesn’t rate a fancy ’signature pic’)
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Email
Kirsten
“Whoever
made these boots hates feet and wants them to die!”
~ Monica - Friends ~
Earlier this week, I realized that I needed a new pair of shoes. Now,
allow me to tell you about my relationship with shoe shopping. Did
you ever meet a woman whose sole mission it is to have a different
pair of shoes for each outfit? This is the women who cannot go to
a mall without going into every shoe shop there, who will devote an
entire room in her home to the storage and display of shoes. She takes
little pictures of her shoes to put onto the shoeboxes, allowing her
to find her desired shoes at a glance. Nothing makes this woman happier
than shoes. She lives for shoe shopping.
I am not that woman. I will tell you something that I’m not even sure
women are allowed to say: I hate shoe shopping. I hate it with an
absolute passion. Handbags are a different story. I could shop for
handbags all day, but keep me away from the shoes! I don’t have a
separate room for my shoes. I don’t even have a closet for my shoes.
I have a couple of cardboard boxes just inside my front door, and
the shoes just get chucked in there. Sure, they get a bit scuffed
sometimes, but I just don’t care. I don’t like them very much.
My, my. Two confessions in one day. Not only do I hate shoe shopping,
I hate the actual shoes themselves. The only reason I wear them is
because it is socially required, at least for part of the day. If
it were up to me, I’d just go barefoot all day. Shoes that serve a
purpose are fine. If they’re keeping my feet warm in the winter, or
if they’re preventing them from getting shredded while I’m running,
I don’t mind them so much. But shoes worn for absolutely no reason
are not my cup of tea. My Dad always used to say, “If God had meant
for us to wear shoes, he would have made our feet out of leather.”
So anyway, I needed a new pair of shoes. So my lunchtimes this week
have been consumed by my search for shoes I could actually bring myself
to wear. It’s not that I’m fussy, really. In fact, I’m the opposite
of fussy. I don’t ask for a lot from my shoes. I have only two requirements.
One, they have to look reasonably nice. And two, I have to be able
to walk comfortably in them without completely decimating my feet.
I don’t think that’s so unreasonable.
But in my travels to a variety of shoe stores, it is becoming increasingly
apparent that I am faced with a choice between style and comfort.
I mean, I’m not completely immune to fashion. If I have to wear shoes,
I want them to go with my outfit (which is why my shoes are almost
all black - black goes with everything), and I want them to look nice.
If I’m wearing an elegant mid-length skirt, for example, I can’t very
well wear shoes that make me look as if I’m about to go mountain-climbing.
I also cannot wear six-inch heels, no matter how much they make my
calves look slender. I am frankly amazed at some of the contraptions
women squeeze their feet into in the name of fashion. Why is it that
they can walk gracefully in these things while I totter along looking
as if I’d been drinking? Why is it that their feet don’t get destroyed,
while the insides of my shoes slowly fill up with my own blood? It’s
no wonder that shoe shopping is such a traumatic experience for me,
or that I only venture into a shoe store when there’s no other option.
I still have not found a new pair of shoes. The quest will continue
tomorrow. The perfect pair of shoes has got to be out there somewhere.
Kaleidoscopically yours,
Kirsten
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Write
to Faithy
Faithy’s Freaky
Sites (and free downloads)
Happy
Wednesday RGQ!!! No day to be Wicked, It’s EARTHDAY!!!!!!!
I lived in Boston, back on the very first Earthday. We went out as
a group and Cleaned up the Boston Commons and the Public Gardens (adjoining
sites similar to New Yorks Central Park) We pulled out over a ton
of debris, and planted new gardens everywhere.
As
common as that sounds to people today, it was nearly unheard of then.
I knew a lot of people who said it was a waste of time, or the city’s
job, or some other excuse to not become involved. So tell me, what
did YOU do for Earthday this year?
Eartday.net
The Official Earthday Network site
Events
A fair listing of events all over the Planet
History
The History of earthday from the EPA
Kids
Site And don’t leave out the Kids. They are the future.
BTW:
Here in Baltimore, in order to encourage more Recycling they are limiting
Trash pick up to one 64 gallon can per week, with unlimited pick-up
for re-cycling. Currently they collect twice a week here. I think
it is a great idea, as I already recycle nearly twice what I throw
away, but some people are up in arms. I just don’t get it. After all
we have ‘single stream recycling here’, meaning you do not need to
divide your paper from plastic from glass from metal, but can hand
it over all mixed up. What do you think? Do you recycle?
A
Slightly Recycled,
 the
Freeloader
With another load of _ _ _ _
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Once again our new system leaves me scratching my head. To understand
why I’m scratching my head, you have to know how things work. I’ll
try to keep it simple.
I work for a college. We advertise in hopes of attracting potential
students. Those potential students ask for applications. On that application,
we ask them things like what they want to study and when they want
to study it. That helps us plan their collegiate career. Follow me
so far? Good.
After we accept them as students, they pay us money so we keep our
jobs, and then they are allowed to register for classes. Still with
me? Good.
The problem comes when a prospective student wants to become an actual
student. Our new system automatically flags new students as new students,
which makes them easy to pick out. It also assigns a date for when
they can register, see their schedule, and all that fun stuff you
need to do before you actually attend a class.
The date that is automatically assigned is the first day of classes
for the particular semester/major combination.
Let me explain what *that* means to my web page.
A new student cannot pick the classes they want. They can’t even
run an academic evaluation to find out what classes they should take
for a given major. You have to have an active major first, and by
default that is the first day of classes you can’t register for because
you can’t run an academic evaluation until the first day of classes.
That’s right, by default, you can’t register for a class until you
should be in that class.
And you wonder why I’m bald…
Tim a’Musing
Having a Ball with Yarns
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Shallots
Shallots burn easily because of their high sugar content. For this
reason, saute briefly over low to medium heat.
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Julian was on a roll with that one. Thanks.
Next opening line…
There was a young man from Dealing…
Hints:
Here’s a great new rhyming/composition tool. http://www.writerhymes.com/
There’s also a great rhyming dictionary at http://www.rhymezone.com/
Limerick rules. http://freespace.virgin.net/merrick.sheldon/limerickrules.htm
Submit
Opening Line
Submit
Limerick
There
once was an old man from Esser
Who was an unusual hairdresser
His spiritual air
As he cut people’s hair
Made him every transgressor’s confessor - Julian, England |
There
once was an old man from Esser
Who caressed his hairdresser, Vanessa
She enjoyed being caressed
Whereupon he confessed
He’d prefer her to be the aggressor -
Julian, England |
His suggestion
didn’t distress her
‘I’ll treat you as a transgressor’
Laughed the beautiful witch
‘But sometimes we’ll switch
And you can be my professor’ -
Julian, England |
There once
was an old man from Esser—
who was a really snappy dresser—
he was such a dick
always up to a trick
and turned all of us into his "guessers". - Cassandra
in New York |
There once
was an old man from Esser
Who was a retired professor
When getting ready to eat
He could find no meat
Being forgetful, he’d put it in the dresser! - Bonnie |
There once
was an old man from Esser,
Whose knowledge grew lesser and lesser.
It at last grew so small,
He knew nothing at all,
And now he’s a college professor. - Author Unknown |
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Re: High IQ and Weight/Reaction Time
All of us in the military were given IQ tests. In the Marine Corps it
was the General Classification Test (GCT). Certain job classifications,
Military Occupation Specialties (MOS’s) required a minimum mental acuity
or GCT level often with prior experience or training. A technician might
require experience as a repairman on associated equipment along with
a certain GCT.
The last Technicians Class I went to in the Corps had an IQ/GCT entry
requirement of 120. There were 31 people in my class and we had a class
average IQ/GCT of 132. There was another class behind us with an average
class IQ/GCT of 143. We were all friends and most of us kept in track
of each other over the last 40 years. Those of us with IQ/GCT levels
of about 120 - 135 are either an average of 20 - 30 pounds overweight,
and those with IQ/GCT levels of 135 plus either weigh in correctly for
their age and build or are underweight. All but one of us had sedentary
jobs after our military service. The only answer we could come up with
is this…we all would get caught up in our work and forget to eat lunch
and often worked late and missed supper. We would go to work early and
almost all of us would skip breakfast.
Here’s the difference. The 120 - 135 IQ/GCT group would tend to "snack"
on chips and other vending machine snacks between the meals we missed,
while those with the 135 plus IQ/GCT’s seemed to snack on carrot sticks
and celery! Almost to a man, those of us that are still alive have medical
problems related to decades of our screwed up diets, either by direct
causation, or by exacerbating an otherwise non-critical condition.
As for reaction times, I know most of us would concentrate so deeply
on a problem, a maintenance action, or reading something in front of
us, that we would hardly jump to grab a falling pen or tool and you’d
have to call us two or three times before we’d respond. If that’s the
reaction time the article talks about, my experience would be that there’s
no truth that higher IQ’s and faster reaction times go together. - sied
Here’s the dig. For most of
my 64 years I have been a thin guy. However, when I turned forty, my
knee gave out when playing shortstop for three different teams. About
the same time I got a desk job and my wife developed cancer. I became
inactive and went from 175 lbs to 225 pretty fast. My wife passed on
and I got depressed and I ate my way up to 292. I remarried, changed
from a 12 inch plate to a 9 inch plate and dropped to 250. My knee is
shot and I cannot walk more than 15-20 minutes at a time. So it is a
catch 22. I drank more water and got down to 240…
I am not diabetic but realize that with a BMI of 42, I will not live
a normal life expectancy so I went to a weight loss seminar for weight
loss surgery. My wife had the ruen-y surgery and lost 140 lbs, my best
amigo had the lab band surgery and lost 180lbs and my wife’s niece had
a fairly new surgery called the ’sleeve’ and lost 189lbs in just a year.
I am only about 80 over, but need to shed it so I can have my knee surgery,
and before I develop back problems and other problems associated with
being overweight. I want to get back to playing senior softball and
being competitive in bowling. I miss the thin man in me. So if all goes
well, in October of this year I will have my surgery. I will keep you
guys informed of the happenings. - BJ in Guthrie
[Good
luck BJ and please keep us informed. I’m sure my weight is a result
of sitting behind a desk for the last 35 years. I haven’t had
any knee problems, but I’m currently having back problems. I need
to lose weight but I don’t think I’m brave enough for surgery!]
Re: Lawns
The two best things about a lawn is that it makes it look as if you
pick up after your sheep, while it actually gives some lucky kids a
chance to drive lawn mowers. (I used to beat the governor on dad’s,
to do a wheelie up the ditch. :-))
I never fertilize or water the lawn, so the clippings can go in the
organic compost when needed to help the veggie garden. Dandelions are
just one of the weeds I tolerate because they end up in the salad. I
remove them from parts of the lawn to look normal in one small respect,
but I’m really just out there for the exercise. I let a low "weed"
vine cover my garden as green mulch, while my neighbors all have very
distinct areas of grass, dirt, and non-weeds.
Is it my laziness, ignorance, or pioneering in permaculture? I hope
we are all still guessing. - Bob of the North
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Disclaimer- All quotes printed in this publication are believed to be
accurately attributed, but no guarantees are made that some incorrectly
attributed, or even outright false quotes won’t get in here from time
to time. I assure readers that I will do my best to weed out incorrect
quotes, and will print a retraction as soon as I become aware of any errors.
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