Earth Day!

[eyeball]

Perhaps you will get vision in right eye in the future. But if only your left eye works, then you have pretty good vision EYEBALL.

There is something being celebrated by government every day of the week. Earth Day received lots of publicity. And while I agree with your sentiment, I do cherish rememberance day. I find that people with the bumper stickers haven't a clue why they put one on or who the organization is that just pocketed the money for a ribbon.

I can see Earth Day, taking off, becoming commercialized, much like Christmas has in the last 100years. Christmas was about the Earth, Faith and a time to reflect upon ourselves. It is now Mass Consumption with worship attached as the tagline, although that has been removed in many stores to the point it is just about Consumption.

So can you see it, Earth Day, BUY OUR EARTH FRIENDLY CONSUMER GOODS. 2 for the Price of 1, 50% off on all store items after Earth Day ends.

Then you have EARTH DAY followed by RECYCLE (OH WAIT, ISN'T that what BOXING DAY was?) DAY.

Recycle all of your last earth day gifts to others, or come out this recycle day and receive 20% off all Earth Day Products.

So.... Lets see where we were.

Ah yes, Christmas. Jesus Christ, someone to worship and reflect about our place on Earth on a day associated with his birth.

1800s consumerism is already part and parcel to Dickens "A Christmas Carol".

Boxing Day, the Rich People would hand down their unwanted consumption (consumer goods) to the less fortuneate.

Anyone see this going around in circles?

I don't care if it rains or freezes

'Long as I got my plastic Jesus

Riding on the dashboard of my car

[Wild Bill]

I don't care if it rains or freezes

'Long as I got my plastic Jesus

Riding on the dashboard of my car

Through all trials and tribulations

Me and Jesus 'cross the nation...

[Wild Bill]

Hello Bill

You seem very knowledgeable on this subject. Not like just a recent commentator, or latest flavour of the week. You have knowledge, which I just researched to double check and I verified your facts.

1) Are you in the industry?

1a) or are you with the city or something related like that.

No MM, I'm just an old guy who always was a science junkie! The first real book I ever owned was a Dictionary of Aerospace and Physics given to me by a Gr. 3 teacher who recognized my flair and wanted to encourage it. I was frying wires across batteries in Grade one, built my first tube radio by the time I was 12 or so, and after a few years as a rock and roll roadie touring all over Ontario I settled down to sell electronic parts, just as computer chips were being invented and the computers to go with them. That industry has collapsed to a shadow of its former self in Canada and now I make my living building and repairing amplifiers for the music industry. Not as much money but a LOT of free beer!

I've always had enough self-taught background to see through the official crap the "powers that be" rain down on us poor peasants. I cried when Von Braun's team lost the war on how to go to the moon. They wanted to build infrastructure with a space station in orbit that could actually do things, which could build a large, reusable spaceship that would lead to a manned moonbase. We'd then establish industry on the moon, resulting in real numbers of people living and working in space and moving out to Mars and beyond.

As we saw, the US went with Apollo, a stripped down tin can holding 3 people that needed huge boosters that were disposable one-shots to land and return with a few pounds of moon rocks, just to win a race against the Russians and ensure national pride! So for 40 years and more since all they've done is dink around with their shuttles and build a small space station, where they conduct "weightless experiments" over and over and over. What a waste! In space zero g you can make PERFECT ball bearings, among other things. You might want to google just what could be done with them and how much money could be charged for them. By now we should have seen manufacturing in orbit, with companies making ZILLIONS! And that's just ONE application!

We could have solved our energy problems back in the 80's, with orbiting solar power satellites beaming the power back to the ground. The initial cost was high but the payback was incredible! The politicians wussed out. Their idea of space is Buster Crabbe as Buck Rogers, rescuing Dale Arden from the Lava Men of Mars.

Did you know there are ways to farm LARGE amounts of wheat in space? We could feed ALL the hungry! Especially since delivery is so cheap. You just let it fall to earth. It's just ballistics. Any soldier who manned an artillery piece could make sure a ten ton container of wheat fell where you wanted it to.

So I follow environmental problems like garbage disposal, with new technologies as they emerge and it pains me to see how woefully inept our politicians are at understanding and implementing solutions that might actually WORK! I've come to believe that a good portion of them couldn't care less if we arrive at a solution. It's more important to LOOK like you're doing something and keeping votes. When things still aren't fixed it's not a problem as long as you can shift the blame to someone else!

I know this all sounds cynical what what else can one conclude? Toronto council sending hundreds of garbage trucks down the 401 to Michigan every day is really kinda dumb, wouldn't you think? Yet they were so proud of themselves for shooting down the Kirkland Lake solution! Kirkland Lake had the engineering bona fides and the community WANTED it!

A good friend predicted years ago that society is getting more and more complicated and yet as a group we are becoming less and less capable of managing and coping with its problems. I fear he's right!

Oh well, as long as ABBA doesn't make a comeback the world can't be all bad!