Questionnaire

by Wendell Berry

How much poison are you willing
to eat for the success of the free
market and global trade? Please
name your preferred poisons.

For the sake of goodness, how much
evil are you willing to do?
Fill in the following blanks
with the names of your favorite
evils and acts of hatred.

What sacrifices are you prepared
to make for culture and civilization?
Please list the monuments, shrines,
and works of art you would
most willingly destroy

In the name of patriotism and
the flag, how much of our beloved
land are you willing to desecrate?
List in the following spaces
the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
you could most readily do without.

State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
the energy sources, the kinds of security;
for which you would kill a child.
Name, please, the children whom
you would be willing to kill.

Almost Makes a Person Want to Recycle . . . .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYnd5JRu86E&feature=player_embedded

A PSA from London's Sewer Workers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1rItAH60MU&feature=player_embedded

Meatless Monday's

Terrible Terrible Terrible.

And that my friends, is reason 1348 why I will never move to San Fran (I imagine SF is just as pleased to hear it as I am to say it).

Teaser:

The city of San Francisco has just become the first town to adopt a resolution to stop serving meat of any kind on Mondays. As stated on the official Meatless Monday web site: “The resolution to make Mondays meatless was introduced by supervisor Sophie Maxwell, who hopes that residents will use this opportunity to make nutritious, sustainable choices.”

Now This is Interesting . .

VFTW has a post on home-made cleaning products that are earth-friendly . . . 

Good stuff.

Of course, I am too tired, worn out and pre-occupied to ever get around to doing it . . . but someone autta . . .

Smart Green

This sounds pretty cool (from Neatorama)


Behold a new prototype dashboard by Ford in collaboration with Smart Design (the designer for the super-easy-to-use Flip camcorder) for their new breed of "green" cars.

The dashboard gives drivers a "wealth of info" without confusing or distracting them. And when Ford researchers tested the new design, they found that drivers get obsessed with achieving a "high score" of getting the highest fuel efficiency:

In order to play into the research finding that drivers are looking for a high score when it comes to fuel efficiency, one high-resolution LCD screen on the dash features an eye-catching rendering of curling vines blooming with green leaves. It’s more than a decorative element; it’s a data-visualization tool intended to change the way people drive. If a driver wastes gas by aggressively accelerating or slamming on the brakes, for example, the vine withers and leaves disappear. More leaves appear if individuals drive more economically.

Smart Green - I'm all for it.

THIS however, does not strike me as "Smart Green".

Scientists Find Oldest Living Animal, Then Kill It

Via the Evangelical Outpost:

British marine biologists have found what may be the oldest living animal — that is, until they killed it. . .

"Its death is an unfortunate aspect of this work, but we hope to derive lots of information from it," postdoctoral scientist Al Wanamaker told London's Guardian newspaper. "For our work, it's a bonus, but it wasn't good for this particular animal."

Flame On

Now this looks like fun.

Click through and read the article.

Alas, the Linden estate is too small and cramped to allow for the use of a weed-eating flame thrower . . .

Um . . . .

Elizabeth sent me this one.

From the New York Times:

Teaser Graph:

The world’s physicists have spent 14 years and $8 billion building the Large Hadron Collider, in which the colliding protons will recreate energies and conditions last seen a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang. Researchers will sift the debris from these primordial recreations for clues to the nature of mass and new forces and symmetries of nature.

But Walter L. Wagner and Luis Sancho contend that scientists at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, have played down the chances that the collider could produce, among other horrors, a tiny black hole, which, they say, could eat the Earth. Or it could spit out something called a “strangelet” that would convert our planet to a shrunken dense dead lump of something called “strange matter.”

Spring has Sprung

This looks like a good idea.

Alas, it is out of my price range . . .

Bottles of Water!

Stuff White People Like

Bisphenol A or BPA

From Dad Labs:

Organic Food!

Stuff White People Like

Quote of the Day

Let us not be content to wait and see what will happen, but give us the determination to make the right things happen.

- Peter Marshall

Hummers are Good for the Environment

You want to save the environment? Trade in your Hybrid Prius for a Hummer.

From the Recorder via Instapundit:

Key Graphs:

The Toyota Prius has become the flagship car for those in our society so environmentally conscious that they are willing to spend a premium to show the world how much they care. Unfortunately for them, their ultimate ‘green car’ is the source of some of the worst pollution in North America; it takes more combined energy per Prius to produce than a Hummer.

Unfortunately for Toyota, the government realized how unrealistic their EPA tests were . . . This has dropped the Prius’s EPA down by 25 percent to an average of 45mpg. This now puts the Toyota within spitting distance of cars like the Chevy Aveo, which costs less then half what the Prius costs.

It gets much worse.

Building a Toyota Prius causes more environmental damage than a Hummer that is on the road for three times longer than a Prius.

When you pool together all the combined energy it takes to drive and build a Toyota Prius, the flagship car of energy fanatics, it takes almost 50 percent more energy than a Hummer - the Prius’s arch nemesis.

The Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over a lifetime of 100,000 miles - the expected lifespan of the Hybrid.

The Hummer, on the other hand, costs a more fiscal $1.95 per mile to put on the road over an expected lifetime of 300,000 miles. That means the Hummer will last three times longer than a Prius and use less combined energy doing it.

One last fun fact for you: it takes five years to offset the premium price of a Prius. Meaning, you have to wait 60 months to save any money over a non-hybrid car because of lower gas expenses.

All These Trees Are Ruining the Environment!

From the San Jose Mercury News via Instapundit.

Key Graphs:

"Richard Treanor and Carolynn Bissett own a Prius and consider themselves environmentalists. But they refuse to cut down any of the trees behind their house on Benton Street, saying they've done nothing wrong.

"'We're just living here in peace. We want to be left alone,' said Bissett, who with her husband has spent $25,000 defending themselves against criminal charges. 'We support solar power, but we thought common sense would prevail.'

"In December, Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Kurt Kumli found the couple guilty of one count of violating the Solar Shade Control Act. . . he ruled that six of the trees can remain and that the two generating the most shade must be removed.

"'We are the first citizens in the state of California to be convicted of a crime for growing redwood trees,' Bissett said, forcing a smile."

Years ago, you used to get your groceries in a paper bag. Then the we were all told that plastic bags were more environmentally friendly. Now plastic bags are being outlawed and they want us to cut down trees to make room for solar panels? Give me a break.

I Had No Idea Chicken Was So Bad for You

And by "you", I mean YOU!

You have been warned.

Order something else - everything else tastes like chicken anyway . . .

Except STEAK!. Mmmmmm . . . . I love steak . . .

HT: World Net Daily

From Lileks Today

"So I stopped fretting and entertained (G)Nat’s questions about astronomy and ghosts. She’d read a scary book at school, and was freaked out about ghosts. She was in a mood to be freaked out, though, so she requested another look at the Scary Hexagon on Saturn. That thing creeps me out too."

Well that's weird.

What I'm Talkin About

VFTW has a great example of what I mean by going green / making green. Starbucks probably saves .15 - they pass .10 on to the consumer and the whole enterprise is easier on the environment.

While I am at it, he also has a great suggestion for a new year's tradition.