Free and Easy Environmental Help

I am sure you have heard the expression “reduce, reuse, recycle.” That is a short-hand expression used by the environmentally hip to indicate the order in which you can and should act in regard to material things in order to help the environment.

• Reduce means to reduce how much you contribute to the waste stream. For example, use cloth diapers instead of disposable ones, or use a reusable steel bottle instead of buying water in plastic bottles, or buy products in bulk instead of in wasteful packaging. It also means to buy less, period. Just think of disposable anything as unacceptable (with very few exceptions), and you have a guideline that will help you a lot.
• Reuse means to take an existing item and use it again, possibly for another purpose. For example, take an old ceramic whatsit and create a planter out of it, or cut up old sheets to make napkins or curtains.
• Recycle means to take an item, crush it or melt it or whatever, then make something new out of it. For example, a lot of plastic bottles and bags are recycled into a large number of things.

There is one excellent, free way to reuse things. It is called freecycling. Here is how it works. You sign up for your local freecycling group. Then, when you have something you no longer want, something that you can’t or don’t want to sell because it isn’t likely to sell or it is too much trouble to sell, you post it as an offer on the freecycling list. Members of the freecycling group who are interested send you email, and you give it away to whomever you want.  (Thus, they are actually a freeusing group, since what they do is take existing items and reuse them, but I guess they thought freecycling sounds better.)

George Washington’s Farewell Address

When George Washington decided to not run for office again, he wrote a farewell address in which he urged people to be wary of threats to their peace and liberty. He was remarkably prescient in warning against special interest groups who might influence Congress and ultimately co-opt our government for their own.

On page 10, he warns against “overgrown military establishments, which under any form of government are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.”

Pages 12 through 16 are particularly apt. I urge you to read those pages at least, if you don’t have time to read the whole of it. Here is page 14 in its entirety:

“All obstructions to the execution of the laws, all combinations and associations under whatever plausible character with the real design to direct, control, counteract, or awe the regular deliberation and action of the constituted authorities, are destructive of this fundamental principle and of fatal tendency. They serve to organize faction; to give it an artificial and extraordinary force; to put in the place of the delegated will of the nation the will of a party, often a small but artful and enterprising minority of the community; and, according to the alternate triumphs of different parties, to make the public administration the mirror of the ill concerted and incongruous projects of faction, rather than the organ of consistent and wholesome plans digested by common councils and modified by mutual interests. However combinations or associations of the above description may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

Read that carefully, bearing in mind the immense power that big-business lobbyists can wield, then send a letter to your elected representatives with a copy of that page and urge them to resist such influences.

On pages 16 and 17, he speaks of the dangers of becoming overzealous in considering one party (and therefore its adherents) to be superior to another.

It became a tradition for the US Senate to read the farewell address each year. A different senator is chosen to have the honor of reading the address to the Senate, after which he or she signs a leather-bound notebook. Initially, the signaure was just an acknowledgement of having read it; later, it became tradition to add notes or comments. This page provides links to actual scans of a number of those comments; just taking a look at the handwriting alone is interesting, but so also are the comments themselves.

Help Soldiers in Iraq

I haven’t met anyone who doesn’t support our soldiers in Iraq, no matter what their opinion is of the war itself. Here is one way you can help our soldiers: Project Boresnake.

Cake Humor

I stumbled across these two Web sites and ended up laughing harder and harder as I perused them.

http://cakewrecks.wordpress.com/2008/08/06/what-we-have-here-is-a-failure-to-communicate/

http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

RFID-Blocking Wallets and Passport Holders

Newer passports and an increasing number of driver’s licenses and credit cards have an RFID chip embedded in them. Setting aside some larger concerns about privacy and safety, these chips have data on them that makes it very easy for thieves to steal your identity.

According to a video report done at the 2008 O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, a person can buy a reader for just a small sum of money that will take all the data from your RFID chip, allowing them to use your card as though it were their own.

So what to do? There are a number of choices for protecting your data. The least expensive solution is to make your own RFID-blocking wallet with duct tape and aluminum foil.

If the duct-tape-and-aluminum look is not your style, there are a several companies selling products that will do the job as well:

• DIFRWear’s leather wallets and passport holders
• Kena Kai’s collection of leather wallets and passport holders
• The Ogon aluminum wallet at Amazon.com
• Stewart/Stand’s collection of stainless-steel wallets
• Travelon’s line of ballistic nylon wallets, passport holders, and boarding pass holders

One place that sells a few of these products, sometimes for a discount. Also try Amazon.com.

None of these links get me anything, in case you are wondering; I have nothing to sell here and will not profit in any way. I am simply sharing the information.

A Failure to Communicate

A number of years ago, I agreed to help a young professional masseur set up his QuickBooks software. In return, he was to give me a number of massages, basically on a time spent exchange. Before I go any further, I will say that he was very good and helped me a lot.

The first thing I asked him was how he wanted me to do it. I could do it the slow way, I said, and teach him step-by-step how I was setting up his system so that, should he ever need to make changes, he could. When I ws done, I explained, he would not only know how to use the program as an accounting ledger (he was also taking a class in acocunting), but he would also understand how the program worked.

Or I could just set up his system for him. That would be faster, I said, but he wouldn’t learn how I had done it.

The difference, I explained, would be like just driving a car (that was the fast way) versus learning how to work on a car (that was the slow way). In the end, with the fast way, he could get where he wanted to go, but if the car broke down, he would have to call in an expert to fix it. With the slow way, he would be able to fix the car as soon as it broke down. Or, if he wanted to make modifications, with the slow way, he would know how; with the fast way, he would need to call in an expert any time he needed to make a modification.

Oh, he assured me, he wanted me to teach him the slow way; the “how to fix a car” way..

So I did. Or rather, I tried to. Man, did I try. But every time I was there working on his system, he always paced around the room, wanting to talk about just about anything rather than the task at hand, and every time I tried to explain something, he would be on the other side of the room or even in another room entirely doing something else. Sometimes he even left the premises entirely for 20 minutes or more at a time. It was very frustrating.

Because I couldn’t seem to keep his attention, I started to suspect right away that maybe he didn’t want to be taught. So during each session, I would ask him several times if he was sure he wanted me to teach him; perhap, I suggested, I should just go ahead and set it up for him? And then he could ask me questions later if he had any.

Oh, no no no, he would assure me each time I asked him that question. I want to learn how to set it up, he said.

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