Sustain Myself

I was watching a show on Discovery last night about how they make Apache attack helicopters (or as I like to call them ‘Stupidly overpriced death machines’.) I was stunned to learn that the machine gun under the helicopter will point where ever the pilot looks! That means that all he has to do is look at something, pull the trigger and its dead. Whatever it was. This is 2009 technology.

On my new iPhone, I can let it read stories to my daughter. I can let it automatically update the world with my precise location. I can connect to my servers from anywhere I have phone service and check that everything is ok. I can take a photo, upload it to Evernote and have it create tags for that photo based on the text within the photo! The iPhone is incredible. This is 2009 technology.

Today, I received two highly glossy, 50+ page ‘adazines’ from a company called Kids Central. At first I thought one must have been for my wife and one for the previous owners (we still get lots of their mail, 1 year after moving in). I was horrified to see that BOTH the adazines were addressed to the same person! On one, it is addressed to ‘Dominique Lastname’ and on the other, to ‘D Lastname’. Not only do they send two identical adazines to the same residential address, but they send them both to the same person. These are not small, insignificant brochures or pamphlets, they are huge, heavy, paper and plastic filled picturezines wanting you to rediscover your love of kids clothes. How is it that a company is unable to detect not one, but two identical records (last name, and address) in a system? I could write a program to pick up such duplicate records in about 10 mins. Shame on you Kids Central, the environment and sustainability is not on your priority list and my family will not be buying from your stores. Ever. This is not 2009 technology.

Excuse my iPhone pic.

Back in December, I wrote a post about the pitiful effort of the Australian government to reduce emissions. Kevin Rudd had set a guaranteed 5% reduction by the year 2020 despite the uproar from the public and some scientists, this figure has remained in place.

Today I received an email from GetUp asking for me to write a message to the government with my opinion of their 5% reduction scheme.

This is my message:

To whom it may concern,
When I watched kevin rudd in the debates on TV prior to his becomming prime minister, I remember being so excited that we were about to elect a forward-thinking, environmentally conscious man to run this country. So far, I have been nothing but disappointed in his decisions surrounding climate change and the environment as a whole.

The Australia under john howard was a follower. We were seen as like america and were mocked as weak. Instead of following the rest of the world in the crusade against climate change, how about we lead the rest of the world and gain the respect that we would deserve for taking a stand. 5% is simply not good enough and Australians are intuitive and intelligent enough to acknowledge that not only can more be done, we can do it in innovative, industry-leading means which will eventually create more jobs as well as lessening the countries footprint.

We cannot escape climate change. Many scientists believe that the human race will not survive this century which is not the future I want for my daughter. Please, I beg that you reconsider this pitiful stance.

Regards,

Christian Biggins
PS. Certain words were left non-capitalised intentionally

Please join me in sending messages to the government by going to GetUp.

I was reading a nice new blog that I found today (Green Change) and came across an interesting post.

This post describes the current ignorance-filled, idiotic water restrictions currently implemented for Sydney. A small excerpt from the site will give you a little indication of the level of sheer moronic thought that must have been excreted from the orifice of some Neanderthal recently revived and given this task…

Hosing residential building structures including windows, walls and gutters is allowed using a hose with a trigger nozzle or high-pressure water cleaning equipment (to a maximum of 10L/minute)

Ok, so we can hose down our houses, thats kinda cool. But…

Hand-held hosing of lawns and gardens and drip irrigation is allowed only on Wednesdays and Sundays before 10 am and after 4 pm

We are not allowed to water our gardens outside the specified 36hrs within the week…

As Darren (from Green Change) says;

Kids can run under sprinklers any time of the day, you can hose windows and walls any time, and you can wash your car at any time. You can also leave your hose running unattended to top up pools or fill containers, and you can even fill pools under 10,000 litres without a permit.

But try to hose your tomatoes any day other than the dictated Sundays and Wednesdays, and then only before 10 or after 4, and you’ll be fined $220.

As my wife said, obviously its more important to have clean cars and houses than it is for you to be able to grow your own vegies (or even use your lawn as a carbon capture! Heaven forbid…).

This insanity makes me sleepy.