Life is a Process

Sheesh. We’re off to Vancouver for a week and it really has hit how completely “un-green” air travel is. Besides the obvious of fuel for the massive jet (though ours isn’t a huge one), the new TSA regulations are just awful. The silly 3oz - 1 quart bag - 1 bag per person rule is silly. That means that I have no choice but to use disposable cups for the coffee (picking it up after clearing security); bottled water (blech), again after clearing security; airport food (they don’t feed you on planes anymore - gone are the days of free meals and cheap wine) with yet more throw away wrappers and “dishes”; and those plastic ziplock bags. Ah! Big oil strikes again! When the preschooler is older, we’re probably going to bit the bullet and drive.

We took the plunge and purchased a Ford Escape Hybrid 2008 back in May, complete with the “fancy” navigation package.  (To afford this purchase, we traded in our 1999 Ford Escort ZX2 and returned the leased Ford Escape a few months early.)  Google Maps does a better job at finding places and plotting routes than does this thing.

We recently drove from the middle of Indiana to the eastern corner of West Virginia. The Nav system wanted to send us off to Cincinnati for the shortest route (it isn’t) or on backroads for the fastest route (they aren’t). And when we did take a known shortcut that is also faster, the Nav system complained and requested that we do a legal U-turn. Over and over and over again.

The maps are not current. Google Maps has had our house pinpointed for at least 4 years now (it’s a new-ish subdivision). The Nav maps can’t seem to locate it - it’s like our house is in an abyss or “fluidic space”. Because the maps aren’t current, the points of interest are also not current. Why oh why didn’t they have this system be update-able over satellite? Why does it cost so bloody much to get an updated DVD?

I’m not even going to express my frustration with the user interface. Let me just say that they need to hang out more with Apple UI or Google UI engineers.

I owe the Japanese a debt of gratitude for sending a probe to the moon that has taken awe inspiring high-definition pictures of this overburdened planet that we call home. As a pantheist, I find these images humbling, breathtaking, and in many ways spiritual. But no matter what you believe, there is only one earth in this universe and it is fragile, tiny, and dare I say it… insignificant. That’s right, the earth and everything that lives on it is insignificant from the universe’s perspective. Stuck in an uncaring universe, the earth toils along doing the things that planets do. It will continue to do this until it is destroyed by some cataclysmic event, such as the Sun going supernova, being sucked into a blackhole, or possibly when the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies collide. So why does this tiny pale blue dot matter, anyway?

Obviously it matters to its inhabitants, and should matter to humans in particular, given our complete dependence on it for survival. But here we are with our government denying that global warming is a problem, unable and unwilling to take the most basic actions to try and slow its effects. If only we could frame global warming as being so crucial to our survival as the so-called “war on terror”, maybe then we could spend billions of dollars doing something that would actually make a difference. The fight against global warming is ultimately about saving humanity, but we can only do that by saving the planet. Unfortunately, the whole anti-global warming camp focuses on the latter instead of the former. To them it’s one in the same and is completely obvious. What they really need to be telling the masses is that global warming is about the people, stupid! If people cared about saving the planet then they would be doing more to save the planet. People care about themselves, their children, and supposedly the troops, and are more likely to take action if the threat is brought closer to home. Something like “the terrorists are using the planet against us! Cut back on your C0₂ emissions to help the war effort!” might work.

Then again, I often wonder if the earth and the universe really would be better off without us. After all, humans are just as insignificant to the earth as the earth is to the universe.

I feel blessed, in some ways, that I grew up in an area that pioneered “blue box” recycling. Saving up the cans, paper and containers has become second nature to me now. It MADDENS me that we live just a teeny tiny bit outside city limits that (a) we have to pay for private trash collection; (b) no private trash collectors do recycling; and (c) we have to haul our recycling products to the local recycling center (where we often battle with the yellow jackets). Yet, if we lived in the city (well, large town), we have FREE curbside recycling though we would have to pay a modest fee (but much much less than our current fee) for trash collection.

I have heard, over the years, arguments that “bah, recycling isn’t worth it - it doesn’t save anything”. Well, I was elated to read this tidbit in the Economist. I can sleep again at night knowing that my recycling efforts are not in vain.

Well, I can sleep until I get the next package in the mail from Gaiam.com. This mail-order/web-store company purports to be a green company. We ordered some rechargeable batteries from them and I cannot count the bits of unnecessary packaging that arrived. One set of batteries were in a ziplock bag - so far so good. The AAA batteries came in this elaborate, shrink-wrapped package, surrounded with additional layers of cardboard and recycled plastic. The shrink-wrapped part would have been sufficient.

People people people…. PLEASE figure out how to use “then” and “than”. This distinction is not a hard one.

then can be used, general, as an adverb to indicate a particular time in the past or future.
for example,

• (adverb) after that or subsequently in time, order or position
• (adverb) that being the case, or in that case
• (adverb) in addition to something else, or besides what has been mentioned
• (adjective) being at that time, or existing or belonging to the time mentioned

than is generally used as a comparative adjective or adverb to introduce the second element of the comparison. If people would only remember this bit about the comparison, they’d be able to remember proper usage of these words.

• (adjective or adverb) introducing a rejected alternative in a contrast between two alternatives, in order to state a preference
• (adjective or adverb) after inverted constructions to say when something happened

This pair of words must be very confusing. It is mentioned in various Handbooks of Style, and on a number of websites. I liked this little poem, and this example of usage. But I especially liked this resource.