July 14, 2005
As ye sow...
Why are human beings still chucking extremely dangerous and toxic waste out to sea and thinking that there's an end to it?
This sounds like karma to me.
Except of course it isn't the polluters who are directly suffering as a result of this.
Posted by groc at 07:38 PM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2005
uh-uh
Global warming is 'twice as bad as previously thought'
Posted by groc at 04:57 PM | Comments (1)
August 26, 2004
de-clutter and then what?
So. There's all these programs on TV of which Life Laundry is only one, encouraging/badgering everyone to be ‘ruthless and clear the clutter’ out of their lives, but how are we supposed to reconcile this new artificially prompted urge with the glaring fact that there simply isn't anywhere to actually put all that amount of stuff once it's been reclassified from being merely clutter to unwanted waste?
Posted by groc at 04:42 AM | Comments (0)
May 08, 2004
Crude 2
If we dug a lot less oil out of the ground we might treat our plastic goods with a lot more respect.
Posted by groc at 07:10 PM | Comments (2)
February 24, 2004
Brrrr...
Well, I seem to remember whacky insane hippy Environmentalist types warning about exactly this sort of thing oh, about 10 or 15 or more years ago... now the Pentagon is singing the same tune, while a certain Mr Bush sits around his fingers in ears going 'la-la-la, not listening, la la la'.
Posted by groc at 07:17 PM | Comments (1)
January 27, 2004
Sweet
Enjoying your diet Cola?
Sweet as a tumor.
[via Goluboy.]
Posted by groc at 03:17 PM | Comments (3)
January 19, 2004
Ordinary everyday things that I find weird 2
So there’s this stuff, right - it’s called fresh water. It falls from the sky for free as rain. You pay a water company for a supply of it to be sent to your home to drink and to wash in and to piss and pooh into.
Then there’s the stuff in plastic bottles that they sell in shops. It’s expensive. A lot more expensive than the stuff that comes out of the taps. Often even more expensive than the water some other companies add sugar and flavourings and colours to and make fizzy. Why is it so expensive? -well because some company is putting it into plastic bottles then slapping a pretty printed label on it and then shipping it around the world and to the shops where you buy it from. All that costs money to do. They also add in a rather hefty profit margin that covers all the costs of advertising it -in order to convince you that all this is a sane and sensible thing to be doing.
People buy it because they say they think it tastes nicer than the tap water, even despite the fact it’s likely to be full of dodgy bacteria (and in a few cases it’s been known to cause food poisoning). It doesn’t seem to occur them to that if their tap water tastes that nasty that they should be complaining to their water company and keep on making a fuss until the water company does something to make the water taste nicer. They are paying for it after all. (They should do something to make them stop putting fluoride in the water too but that’s another issue for another time.)
Buying bottled water also means we have an awful lot of waste plastic bottles that we don’t know what to do with. An awful, awful lot of plastic bottles.
Weird.
Posted by groc at 04:57 PM | Comments (3)
January 09, 2004
Cybergreen
Bruce Sterling interview in Reason
Posted by groc at 11:38 AM | Comments (5)
January 03, 2004
random thought
putting on my environmental hat for a moment -I was wondering: with new fangled CDs [cough] with their plastic jewel cases (I hate Jewel cases with a passion -they're awful, awful, awful) do they use more or less plastic than their 12" vinyl predecessors? Surely it's a bit more -and that's a bad thing. Also -aren't downloadable mpgs in actuality more environmentally friendly because being just computer files there is no plastic and paper whatsoever to clutter up the place? So think how much more environmentally friendly an iPod or any of it's equivalents must be when they can hold hundreds of CDs worth of music... or does having a hard-to-recycle battery negate all of that?
Unrelated slice of life:
As I was wandering around a shop today the muzak system started playing this year's Xmas hit - 'Mad World' and some child piped up loudly: "Oh Mommy -this is your favourite isn't it? You think he's sexy -don't you Mommy?" I had a hard time resisting the temptation to find this poor mommy person and give her a wink and say "hey, me too!"
Posted by groc at 02:05 AM | Comments (1)