[Listening to Workbench, “Air Cargo”]
Oorgh.. Must cut 8 more minutes off presentation… I keep clocking in at a hair over 30 mins. 30 info-dense slides. Not sure it can be done. Must… hack and slash.
“War and uncertainty loom large!”
“Buy defense sector stocks!”
“Buy, buy, buy!”
Cripes. OK, break, then one more pass before I pass out.
The IPCC’s AR4 Summary for Policymakers is out. It’s like a State of the Environment address every 5 years.
It’s an extremely compact document. Like having 0.5% body fat. Fairly readable, since it is intended for politicians, not lawyers or scientists.
Some say we’re already beyond the IPCC’s worst case scenario. I say so what? All we can do is the best we can do. So ignore that and let’s look at what we can do:
Whole Foods has 30 ways to make a reasonably easy effort.
Plant a tree (for those with yards).
Strive to avoid extensively packaged products. Aim to reduce your monthly garbage output by 10%. I could do it by going cold turkey on prepared snacks (which aren’t good for me anyway, like chips and goldfish crackers). The rest of my output tends to result from allergies, so that’ll be a bit more challenging to reduce. I think I only take out one grocery bag of trash every 2 weeks, anyway.
I reuse all my coke machine soda cartons in various ways. Formerly, they were a major source of cardboard for armor patterning. And whether pattern-cut or not, it all eventually goes to the recycling center in monthly drop-offs en route to school.
Greenstyle Magazine put out a list of 101 things (from piddly to life-changing) you can do to green up.
Got an LCD monitor yet?
Avoid drivethroughs.
Eat less meat.
Skip the bottled water (or at least reuse the bottles like some people I know do). This one is huge. Stupid big. I appreciate the water snobbery, b/c I am one. That’s why I ruthlessly recycle my bottles for drinking, then for sharp cutting practice, then I finally recycle them monthly. And anyone who’s seen me at practice or an event knows I have that obnoxiously modern Nalgene bottle. Leather wrapping. Someday. Gulf Wars? Reasonable target.
Bring your own bags (cloth or otherwise) to the grocery store. I use my 4 Windrose Armoury bags for that.
My friend and WMA partner of 6 years, Chris C., is as near to a paragon of environmentalism as I know or can tolerate. :) He was on Green Mountain back when rates were $.08 / KWH and he paid $.23 / KWH (it certainly discouraged high usage, in addition to being green). Soon as he got his new job, he ditched the old Pontiac for a Prius. He’s been bringing his own cloth bags and tupperware containers to Whole Foods for as long as I’ve known him. One of my skeptical friends thought he was just another big talker, until we went out after practice one night, and we observed Chris being his normal, low impact self.
He’ll never know I wrote this, but I’ve always admired him for it.
Yeah, there’re no doubt greener folks in Austin, but I live in Houston, and we’re trying.
And I loved the fact that there were 2 Prii at Roses (Maaggie and .. I don’t know if the other Prius’s owners are on Xanga). But go you. You guys are making it possible for people like me to buy a used one in 5 years. :) Well, that may or may not be sensible, with the rumors of expensive battery replacement. I’ll do more thorough research when I get closer to replacing my soul-blackening SUV (that has served me well and with only moderate complaints these past 7 years).
If ZeroGravity are amateurs, then some martial art choreography studio / troupe totally needs to pick them up.
Man, some of those stunts landing on concrete must have been rough, staged or no.
Great use of classic kung fu flick moves and cues, including the humor.
Thanks to Blakely for the tip.
And for completely unrelated reasons, here is a link about Black Tuesday.
[Listening to Verso, Reflections album, “Rhymes with Seven” track. Good stuff.]
OK, I’m only feeling awesome for values of it where “awesome” = “bleary”. :P
Wet b/c it’s raining outside. Was raining at 1 a.m., raining at 4 when I got up to take an apparently sympathetic leak (the sound of rain is pretty audible in my room), and still raining now.
Went out to grab some class notes from my car, and figured I’d do a quick little morning kung fu routine in the grass. Whee! Now I’m cold. And wet.
My shoulders were really sore when I woke up, though, and I had a groggy moment of panic — “Oh noes! Delayed injury from my not-so-awesome Friday night flipping out!”
Then, stupid bint that I was, I finally realized it was b/c of the 3×4 sets of behind-the-head pull ups I did in my room yesterday. I know, certain of my muscle groups (where certain = the majority) are wussbags. Including my brain. B/c the brain is a muscle and mine hasn’t gotten enough exercise.
But I heard back yesterday from the exec director of a client organization I had for one of my classes. I recently e-mailed her, asking about where the org was, a year after our group did its research and recommendations on improving volunteer recruitment and mgmt. Preliminary reply indicates that they’ve increased their volunteer base by 52%! That’s something like almost twice what they intended, when we worked with them.
And I found <drum roll> Eli Steenput’s website as a 3- or 4-level deep random web trawl.
Who’s Eli Steenput, you ask?
Well, he’s only one of the cool kids who had a hand in the whole historical armor / WMA research thing back in the early-early ’90s. He once wrote an article about sword fullers. Certain engineering-minded females in Austin who probably don’t normally read my Xanga ramblings would get a kick out of this (nudge nudge, Colsith).
The cross section is similar to an I-beam (if you squish the serifed ends of the I and draw the resultant blobs out into tapering points — voila, fullered sword blade cross-section). And thus, like an I-beam, it is *not* stronger than an unfullered sword of the original weight (before removal of material from the fuller grooves). However, it retains something like 50% of the strength in the direction we most care about (i.e. the cut), while losing 80% of stiffness in the other direction (the flat of the blade) but also 80% of the weight! Well, that’s if you made an I-beam shaped sword. Actual weight loss and stiffness change may vary. See your blacksmith for details.
And it is definitely stronger than an unfullered sword made with the same mass as the fullered blade. A rough eyeball estimate suggests the fullered blade has 8x the stiffness on the direction of the flat (but is still absurdly wimpy compared to the more massive, pre-fullered blade) and 3x the stiffness on the direction of the edge.
It’s a fine distinction, but one that I hear incorrectly made all the time (fullers stiffen the sword). Well, not really incorrectly. It’s incorrect if you grind or cut a fuller. I just realized it’s correct if you forge a blade, then hammer in a fuller, working the blade hot. But since most modern makers cut their fullers, then they’re technically weakening the blade. Hrm.. I should point that out to Steenput and see what he has to say, 9 years after the fact.
Boy, let me tell you, thorny problems like this really keep me up at night. (Not!)
But now you know (and probably don’t care). And knowing’s half the battle, G.I. Joe.
And now I know that Eli’s been teaching dagger plays at HEMAC. Pity he’s out of Belgium and I’m here. At least he’s got an awesome pictorial tutorial on making German kebabs.
Oh, and this is cool, too: Skewers for German schweinhunds.
Finished 6/9 weekend to-do items for school/work yesterday. Just added one, and two can’t be done until Monday now, so I think I’ve earned a fencing practice. Now if only we can pause the rain in the 1-4 p.m. timeslot.
Can’t dally too long, though. Got a 30-slide PowerPoint presentation to rehearse for Monday night — with a 20-min time limit. We’re going to break the sound barrier on this one.
“Look. Data.”
“Oh, more data.”
“Data on your mom.”
“Company-specific data.”
“Fun corporate logos promoting the military-industrial capitalist running pig-dog lackeys of the Western oppressors.”
“Questions?”
So got out of my team meeting at school. Bauer (the biz school at UH) doesn’t run Friday evening classes, so it’s kind of a ghost town by 9:45.
I walked down to the crosswalk. Usually, I assume a lot about oncoming traffic, but I make sure to stick with ped flow. When no one else is walking, I’m much more cautious about crossing, b/c I’ve seen people blast through that crosswalk.
So this late-model Jeep Grand Cherokee with those annoying HID white headlamps is a ways off and approaching in the middle lane.
I stop at the curb.
He slows down, coming to a stop.
I start out, and have just entered the middle lane when he guns it. (I’d guess about 5-7 feet away, looking back. That’s how far most cars stop from the crosswalk.)
The next bit happens pretty fast (see bottom, I’m guessing max 20 seconds) and I was a mix of terrified, angry, and knocked around. But this is what I can remember and put in order:
You know those springboards gymnasts use to launch for some of their routines?
This was like that, but horizontal.
For some reason, I got my left foot up (I think my lizard brain had some futile notion of pushing the car away), and half-turned away to run back.
I remember feeling contact with the foot, and wanting to kick away. (probably my sole hit his front bumper. I don’t know.)
I hit the ground and I sorta rolled. I wasn’t thinking I would — it just mostly happened by itself. I think I went sideways too much, and not forward tucked properly, b/c I landed on my back and shoulders pretty hard.
(In hindsight, I guess he couldn’t have been going more than 7-10 mph from a dead stop that close to the crosswalk. So it’s like I ran and threw myself into a wild, full-speed roll. I’ve been starting to practice my rolls from benches, or on concrete, but not at a run. The funny thing is, these kung fu guys I know, Rob and Derek, have knocked me around a lot worse in our padded sparring practices than I felt after I fell tonight. But I was never pissed and really scared when I fought them. OK, just a little. :P)
So I’m on the pavement, halfway back on my feet, it’s dark / bright, and I hear the Jeep start to swerve around me and peel out, gunning it again from a stop. (I think he must’ve slammed on the brakes when he realized he was going to hit me.)
You know that adrenaline-induced kind of tunnel vision? Yeah, like that, from when I hit the ground.
I wasn’t thinking, I was just.. I dunno, pissed. Filled with inarticulate wrath. But if there had been words, they’d probably have been:
<That jerk’s gonna run off after nearly running me down. No way!>
I was mad. I kicked out, kind of in a roundhousey way, but I don’t really know. I felt my right heel connect with something, probably his fender. Hope it left a good bootmark.
In hindsight, that was probably really dumb. If I’d hit his wheelwell going by a fraction earlier, I might have gotten caught and would be writing this much later, with a crushed ankle or foot, or road rash or something.
So the Jeep screeched and stopped, and the guy jumped out. He was dressed pretty nice, business-formal minus the jacket. For once in my life, I think I was ready to put a fist and then a couple elbows into someone’s face.
But I’d started sorta thinking again, enough to realize things could get really stupid fast, so I didn’t approach b/c that might be taken as aggression.
He was about 15 feet away, and he cussed me out, something about an Asian sh!t (I was in my avg jeans and a sweatshirt), and I remember something about calling the police.
I was tensed and all trembly, but I wanted to sound steady (just because, maybe as a coping mechanism for stress; not because I was thinking of reasons like intimidation or placation) as I said something like, “Go ahead! You do that!”
He took a step, and I was afraid he was going to aggro on me. I was *not* thinking clear thoughts like “Why? What’s he doing? Where am I going to go?”. I just wanted to run and duck behind his car then run back to school, if his hands went near his waist or pocket (knife? gun? I don’t know — I wasn’t thinking about it. There are bushes on the campus side, and if I got 20+ feet away, he’d have to be a calm, crack shot to hit me in the dark. But this is what I’ve thought about since 9:45. And chances of *that* happening are probably nil — b/c he wasn’t likely to be a CCL guy, and more importantly, I don’t think handgun owners are statistically likely to use a gun in anger. My feelings at the time could more briefly be translated into English as, “Hands. Waist. Bad.”)
I think I took a step towards the car b/c I was preparing to run / dodge, b/c he stopped, then he cussed me out again (I remember what he said this time, just don’t feel the need to repeat it here), then got in his car and floored it.
Maybe he thought *I* was going to beat his ass. Funny, b/c when he took that first step, I thought I was going to be in deep doo-doo. He looked kind of average for a white guy, except really angry. But if he was aggressive, he might well have beaten *me* up. Who knows? I’m glad we didn’t explore the issue.
Sat down by my car for a few minutes to get calm before heading home.
Well, I’m OK, after a quick check. Got a scuffed elbow through the jacket / sweatshirt, and I’m glad I wasn’t carrying my laptop. And the tops of my shoulders are probably going to be bruised / lacerated a bit, b/c that happens every time I practice on concrete so far, and this time I hit a lot harder than ever in practice.
It’s possibly bad that my fight-or-flight instinct went with choice A. But it’s definitely good that I was able to square myself away quickly enough to avoid real trouble. I’m mostly totally over it now. Still a little nervous-trembly from the adrenaline rush, I guess.
And you know, no one wants to be around school late in the evening, much less on a Friday for most people (it’s all the same day to me). But whether you’re still headed to the parking lot or already in your car… What the hell, y’know? Jeez. I hope his date was the hottest woman on earth or whatever. Like Heidi Klum hot. And then she dumps him. For his father. Except Heidi Klum’s married, I think.
Maybe I wasn’t paying quite enough attention. I was thinking about calling someone. I dunno. I do remember waiting enough for him to have pretty much stopped (y’know, when the vehicle does that last little rocking movement forward), b/c that’s what I always do when I’m alone at the crosswalk.
I have no idea what *he* was doing. Irritated? On the phone? :/
Oh yeah, and there were no witnesses to back me up. Friday night, far side of campus by the railroad and Spur 5 access to I-45, go figure.
So lessons learned:
- Incidents happen *fast* (couldn’t have been more than like 20 seconds). I totally didn’t catch the license plate. It was just a shiny, dark-colored Grand Cherokee (b/c I know what they look like) with white HID beams.
- You don’t think. It’s true what they say about not having time to think. It’s like feelings and reactions more than thoughts. I feared this, felt that, got angry and lashed out, wanted to run away, etc. I want to emphasize that I didn’t have a clear, verbalized thought until sometime on my way to my car about 100 feet away. Everything in my description above is stuff I thought of after *well* the fact, on the way home or while writing this.
- Anything you do is a reflex. (duh, but the reality of it is so much scarier.)
- I have some useful reflexes, some bad ones. (good thing I’ve practiced a couple hundred rolls in the past week; bad thing that I only practice martial arts towards incident escalation — maybe I should think about incident extraction and withdrawal)
From a martial art perspective, I’m utterly amazed I even sorta did a roll. And I won’t pretend that I planned it or the kick. The kick was pure fighting-mad instinct. No form or anything. I could have wiffed and landed on my butt. Almost did. The only thing I did that came close to real thinking was when I wanted to run.
And I know, I cussed in one of my recent blogs. I just really don’t feel like writing anything vulgar tonight. I just want it to be all good. Because it very nearly wasn’t.
Waiting for people at school. Again. Well, sometimes I’m late for the meeting, and sometimes the meeting is late for me.
So last night after work training, I went the 4 blocks to Rice, and did some longsword exercises. Really worked out some of my lesser-used muscle groups. I think it’ll really help. But today, I can barely walk without falling over, due to the soreness in my lower legs, above the ankles. Good stuff. :)
On the way back to the stadium lot and the car (yeah, I know it’s lonely, but it’s so close to park coming from Kaplan, and the walk probably does me good), I was thinking about stances, and started working through some of Duncan’s hip-swinging stance changes (back stance to forward stance, advance with a step, repeat mirrored). No one was around except for folks walking in the distance, so I just let myself fall into the rhythm, and was really feeling the burn about a football field and a half later.
Then the burn overwhelmed the zen, and I gingerly walked the short remainder of the way to my car.
Oh, hey, the team’s here.
<real cocky and Italian>
“Catch you on the flipsi-ide.”
[For the romantics among you, have a listen at Kissing, by Bliss.
I’m sooo glad I found out who it was by — for 3 years, I only had a 74-minute techno chill mix with the song in it.]
Take a look:
(Senator Clinton’s full plan; a short, easy read)
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/energy/
Let her know you support it (if you do):
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/action/energyplan/
The Democrats have set out some really challenging (but feasible) targets on green and energy issues. I think that they’re a big step in the right direction (and the Republicans won’t be the first ones to stand for good, Christian stewardship of God’s earth so *someone* has to do it). And the plan appeals to the non-green-minded populace as well, with creation of 5 million jobs (primarily higher-tech, I might add), and $20 billion to help out the auto industry in this direction. But obviously, if they get Senator Clinton into office, horse-trading with the Republicans will water down and rein in some of them.
It’s still better than dicking around in the desert with boys and their toys.
I see the side of my pro-gun / libertarian friends, but when it comes right down to it, I believe more in the greater good than my own need for pro-gun platforms. I intend to be around in 2030 (and beyond), and I’d like to help make some real progress away from things like that direly blue and toxic SPF 2000 stuff from the Max Headroom / Mad Max / whatever movie. And since the Democrats are pro-choice, that makes my choice even easier. On that note…
For an interesting perspective on crime, did you know that NYC is America’s safest large city, at 6.9 murders / 100,000 people? Washington DC has 20.9/100k (29.1 if you go by the FBI’s 2005 figures). London has 2.4/100k murders. (These are 2006 figures)
On the flipside, London’s total crime index is 946/100k. DC’s is 6162/100k.
And the London papers are screaming about how unsafe the city is compared to the rest of the UK (roughly twice the national crime rate). <cocked eyebrow>
Rates of murders/total crimes seem in line with each other. I found some other news articles (one from the BBC, no less) that had really wacky numbers — 14,000 crimes / 100k pop in London in 2000.
There is no way London’s crime could have gone from 14k/100k to less than 1k/100k in 7 years. And it also means that 1.4 in 10 people were victimized annually. That’s not a city — that’s a warzone. It’s not possible even if an armada of flying Portuguese Man-O-Wars reached down out of the sky with their magic tentacles to promote hooliganism in London’s boisterous youth.
Oddly, the official Metro police report says there were 12,500 crimes against the person in 2000. I suspect someone misinterpreted raw totals with per-100,000 population index figures.
So do we need guns? Yes, if the 14k/100k figure is correct (but I haven’t found any other sources to support that huge number). Otherwise, no. It would appear that we are in fact better off living in a police state — I make this claim only where violent crime is concerned. :P
I didn’t check my number further b/c it is late and I felt I’d sufficiently cross-checked my facts and sources. :P
That said, I don’t plan on giving up my guns, present or future, any time soon. I *like* 7.62 x 39, thank you. I just think gun ownership doesn’t substantively correlate with increased personal safety on a societal level. And without proper close combat training, can be a hazard in self- or home-defense situations. In short, I think people should be able to responsibly own guns, but they shouldn’t argue that the guns promote personal safety.
Sources:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/article407900.ece (2006 numbers)
http://www.met.police.uk/crimefigures/index.php (for 2000 and 2006)
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/dccrime.htm (supposedly sourcing its data in turn from the FBI, Uniform Crime Reports) (for 2000 and 2006 numbers)
http://www.london.gov.uk/gla/publications/factsandfigures/factsfigures/population.jsp (for 2001 census figures)
Intelligent counterpoint source (Lott, J. and Mustard, D. Crime, Deterrence, and Right-to-Carry Concealed Handguns, University of Chicago, 1996.):
http://christianparty.net/gunstudy.htm
Alas, the research paper is hosted by an iffy site.
[Don’t know why I periodically write these things. It’s interesting, but kinda pointless, to see where I come from and how absurd past positions were.]
I thought I was living in the U.S., the most advanced nation in the world…
http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/071009-kaguya-update.html
http://www.jaxa.jp/press/2007/11/20071107_kaguya_movie_e.html
Sure, a moon probe by itself doesn’t mean anything. But the fact that these countries are really getting into the swing of pure space exploration (sending anything to the moon is currently a 9-figure loss, with no commercial benefits) means they have economic power and brains to spare.
So admittedly the Nikkei, at 17,000, has yet to reach 50% of where it last peaked at 38,000 in the ’80s. I’m, for once, trying to not be all sensationalistic about this. China (especially), India, and Japan have all come a long way since the ’70s, but http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10102893 says it’s not time to hide the women and the liquor just yet, ‘cos the Hottentots aren’t out to eradicate us — just make some big bucks and tech growth off us.
In the medium term, it’ll be pretty exciting and cool to see which countries grow to give the U.S. some more competition. Japan officially has the world’s second largest economy ($4.2 trillion to the US’s $13 trillion), but by purchasing power parity, China effectively has a $10 trillion GDP. India lags behind Japan by a hair at $4.16 trillion. (All this is out of a global economy worth $65 trillion, so the U.S. has a pretty nice slice out of 194 countries.)
Growth-wise, China has been giving us all a pasting at 11%. India’s just behind at 9%. Those are *amazing* numbers at the level of nation-states. 3% seems to be about typical (we’re at 2.9%). Japan’s the big loser at 2.2%.
The European Union combined manages to edge out the U.S. by $20 billion, but they’re not quite that coordinated yet.
(All numbers from 2006)
And a rising tide floats all boats, so here’s hoping the world overall does well and manages its growth effectively (runaway growth leads to crashes).
But we in the U.S. probably don’t want to get left behind, turned into a tech backwater reliant upon tourism and olive oil exports. Oh, wait. That’s Spain. Admittedly, Spain’s been doing well for itself since Franco kicked the bucket in ‘75, but it’s in 14th place and the last of the $1+ trillion economies. Canada, South Korea, Brazil, and even Mexico all beat out Spain — whose armadas and empire once spanned the globe.
Growth trends can be looked at a lot of ways:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_theory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_life_cycle
But in a nutshell, you have the innovators (or people present at inception) who kick off something. Then you have the early adopters (or people in the know) who further contribute to sales growth, influence, power, whatever. Finally, you have the late adopters (i.e. the ignorant masses) who finally catch on that they’re missing out on something cool.
Unfortunately, the first phase is where the biggest action happens. The second phase may push total sales, influence, reach, power, etc. up further, but the impulse isn’t as big as in the first movement. The third phase is where the product or activity becomes commonplace. In terms of stocks, this final peak tends to be lower than the second peak.
But people only perceive that something is big once it’s in the second phase, moving into the third, by which point it’s already relatively in decline. Not necessarily in real quantities, but in influence or power or growth.
So Rome, Spain, et al were at their most colorful and grandiose at that point, when their growth had long ceased to be dynamic. And then when the slide down into obscurity happened, it caught people by surprise, b/c we see what is, rather than what will be. It’s easier to perceive the current quantity, than to calculate future growth. Or even to predict where something with constant velocity will be instead of something with even a simple, constant rate of acceleration (or deceleration). That last point ties into WMA and martial arts very well, BTW, but you won’t hear the gory details from me. :P
And I could make some sort of cautionary tale out of this, but I doubt the U.S. is going to collapse in 20 years or anything like that.
But the really important thing is that everybody needs to get sorted out, long-term. Lots of growth will lead to increased competition for a shrinking pool of resources. And when people can’t get their fuel, food and cheap entertainment, they get cranky. Like genocidal war kind of cranky. I like to cite Diamond’s book Collapse, wherein he says that the lists of top 10 places in the world with critical environmental problems (including overpopulation) also happen to be the top 10 politically unstable places. He gives a solid argument for reasons why, but I won’t repeat it here.
Zero-population growth and stabilizing per capita consumption are pretty much the *only* way to do it, medium to long-term. Longer-term, technological growth will let us do more with less, thereby effectively making the pie bigger, so that people’s relative slices stay the same but the real amount of fruity goodness increases. But that’s the work of decades, not fashion seasons.
For about a week now, I’ve had this pair of welts in the crook of my left elbow. Spaced about 3/8″ apart, they felt painful the first few days, akin to being pricked by some nasty plant or bee sting. They’ve mostly faded now, but for a while, I was wondering if it was cause for concern.
So either I ran into some aggressive foliage and don’t recall it, or maybe I was bitten by a spider in my sleep or something. After all, the average person … <searching the Internuts>
Huh. OK, so the average person *doesn’t* swallow 4, 14, or 42 spiders a year or in her lifetime. Get the skinny on the appetite for arthropods.
Well, if it was a spider bite, with a fang spread of 3/8″, that thing must be gigantic — a remnant of the brood of Shelob, daughter of vile Ungoliant. Hiding, lurking in this Sixth Age of Middle-Earth, biding its time in the dank depths of … my cupboard?
Well, I’m not dead from poison, so it’s probably something much more inane, like walking into a prickly bush and not remem–
<Urk!>
<thud>
[This is totally not a serious thing. I’m waiting on group members at school right now.]
Argh, I don’t need to wake up at 6 anymore, but I’m adrift in the seas of sleep madness. Past couple days have been like that. 4 hours, 2 hrs, 30 mins. Sometimes in class or a short window in the afternoon. Just haven’t been able to get to sleep. Haven’t been able to stay awake, either, but that’s to be expected.
Last night, I got out of Kaplan training (after 10) and dropped one of the other instructor trainees off at Rice. Did a bit of a workout, ran through my limited set of Shao Lin forms, then called it quits when I couldn’t do another push-up. I usually park across the street from campus, in one of the West U neighborhoods. Parked down in the stadium lot, visitors’ section (the farthest away, natch). Don’t think I’ll do that again — walking through the desolate expanse of the main lot is kinda depressing.
Stopped by Kroger on the way home. On a whim, picked up some BioKleen dishwash concentrate and Seventh Generation laundry stuff. Phosphate-free, etc. They’re pretty price competitive with (or cheaper than!) most of the non-green brands. Going to see if I can persuade my mother to try them out. I tried to substitute stuff that approximates her current preferences (liquid concentrate). If they work, I might try a switch to the powder versions, which’re even cheaper (and then we’ll see if we get any clumping issues).
I’ve seen reviews of them, plus they’re featured on various LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) retail sites like www.gaiam.com. So it seems like the folks who A) care about this and B) are making money off of the upscale believers believe in those brands.
Aside from what little green research I’ve done (*not* into dishwashing detergents), I just don’t have time to research every product, and I kind of have to take it on faith (and some cursory fact-checking) that these products *are* environmentally sound alternatives.
I can’t be a hardcore hippy, but I hope at least I’m not just another dude who buys trendy things b/c they make him look good.
Unless they’re clothes.
Oh, wait. Not even if they’re clothes.
OK, unless they’re swords. Then I’m a total snob.
I am forced to relinquish any claims and pretensions to eclecticism. Check out this guy’s interests.
We crossed paths online regarding a Spanish HEMA group.
Tantric orgasms and shuriken-throwing. Of course!
I hope I’m that .. interesting when I’m 64.
“Will you still need me, will you still feed me
When I’m sixty-four?”
The full story for the obsessive-compulsives:
Name: Houzan
Age: 51
:Writing business
:Student of Throwing knife & Shuriken
_Wrote one books_
:Sexual intercourse counselor
_Wrote three books_
:I teach original Zen in Japan
_Wrote five books and made five Music CD_
Hometown: Japan
Country: Japan
Occupation: Writing business
Interests and Hobbies: Doing nothing
Movies and Shows: The Dead Zone -1979__ THE GREEN MILE__ The Dark Crystal -1982__ CSI.Miami__ National Geographic channel__
Music: Tangerine Dream
Books: Douglas Adams Robert A.Monroe
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