Plant a Billion Trees Widget

Can't we do something about this?

http://www.bestlifeonline.com/cms/publish/travel-leisure/Our_oceans_are_turning_into_plastic_are_we.shtml

Polling

Does anyone know how those polling services decide who to ask when they're conducting their polls?  Do they call people up or do they ask people on the street?  I'm just wondering if they're getting a fair sample.  I know I've never once been asked any question by a political pollster, and I have a hunch that part of the reason is because I don't use a land line.  I have one, but I don't plug a phone into it (we just use it for our DSL).  I don't think pollsters have access to cell phone numbers, and even if they did, I'm not sure it's legal for them to call us.  Most young people I know only have cell phones and don't use land lines at all--are we being represented in these polls?  They say Hillary Clinton is leading in California polls right now, but almost everyone I know my age is voting for Obama.  Could this be why the polls are so off this year?

Currently Reading Angle of Repose (Contemporary American Fiction) By Wallace Stegner see related

From Natural Capitalism (by Hawken, Lovins, and Lovins):

"Researches have calculated that industry moves, mines, extracts, shovels, burns, wastes, pumps, and disposes of 4 million pounds of material in order to provide one average middle-class American family's needs for a year.  In 1990, the average American's economic and personal activities mobilized a flow of roughly 123 dry-weight pounds of material per day--equivalent to a quarter of a billion semitrailer loads per year.  This amounts to 47 pounds of fuel, 46 of construction materials, 15 of farmland, 6 of forest products, 6 of industrial minerals, and 3 of metals of which 90% is iron and steel.  Net of 6 pounds of recycled materials, that Average American's daily activities emitted 130 pounds of gaseous material into the air, created 45 pounds of material artifacts, generated 13 pounds of concentrated wastes, and dissipated 3.5 pounds of nongaseous wastes into the environment in such scattered forms as pesticides, fertilizers, and crumbs of material rubbed off tires.  In addition, the person's daily activities required the consumption of about 2,000 pounds of water that after use is sufficiently contaminated that it cannot be reintroduced into marine or riparian systems, and produced 370 pounds of rock, tailings, over-burden, and toxic water as a result of extracting oil, gas, coal, and minerals. ... In sum, Americans waste or cause to be wasted nearly 1 million pounds of materials per person per year."

Yes, that means you.  Something to think about next time you make a purchase.

Currently Reading Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage: Stories By Alice Munro see related

[Copied from my journal.  Names sometimes abbreviated.]

Pen poised.  Something was on my mind, but I've forgotten it.  Lost it in the whirl that includes Chris and Shay and Carlos and Annie Dillard and (miraculously) Jackie and fish and fathers and babies and Marykate and all the dreck and dust cluttering my old, wrinkled brain.

For example:  Walking in the Chiang Mai rain wearing leather flip flops.  I had thought tropical rain would be warmer, but dampness carries a chill even in Southeast Asia.  We examined the market goods.  I made K bargain for me.  She has a talent that I missed when I was with C in Mexico City.  C and I both feel shy of bargaining; we fear insulting.  It was on that Chiang Mai trip that I bought the "hideous" gifts for J's mother, who in turn piled them on J, who probably threw them away.  So craft becomes trash.  But it doesn't matter in the free market since it was "paid for."

Why do I want girls to be more serious than guys?  Maybe because I find their kind of frivolity insane.  If they aren't going to be funny or entertaining they better bring something else to the table.  They batter damn well care about this world.

I'm afraid I try to make everyone feel guilty these days.  It's only because I feel so guilty myself that it's all I can think of--our society, like a giant parasite.  Sometimes I think I can't live here anymore:  I'll burst.  I have to go somewhere else to be just one person.  I can't be that here.

And he wants me to wait more.  He wants me to get old this way, sitting on my mound.  My whole body rebels against this suggestion, all my cells quivering.