Garbage: Reuse, Recycle, etc...

Thread inspired by Anna's garbage review, suggested by dchaikin. I'm not saying your review was garbage, Anna. And if anybody says so, then their opionion is garbage, as far as I'm concerned.

What a chip you have on your shoulder, Henri. Big as a boulder.

Thanks!

That's an old Springsteen song, btw, remade into a hit by Manfred Mann. From "Blinded by the Light": "with a boulder on a my shoulder..."

Way to go, Freeque....but, is your "opinion" an opinion..or an "onion"???

SmartAss Me

see, i had to edit this Thang, cause i can't spell...

Springsteen? When The Boss was actually THE BOSS...remember BLINDED BY THE LIGHT....FROM ASBURY PARK no less

you got it!

;-}

But did Springsteen ever sing anything about garbage?

My father knew a guy named Dana Lyons, from Seattle, who sings environmental themed songs. For example there is a great "state song" called "My state is a dump site" about the nuclear sites in Washington. Then there was the "Recycle Wrap" (a very silly rap song that was very very dated and pathetic sounding as the guy is not exactly Eminem and not all white guys can get away with rapping)

Recycle, reuse! Again and again! That's the only way you're gonna be my friend!

My kids when they were about 4 or 5 really liked it.

:)

Thanks Rique - I was interested in three things (i'm setting myself up here, so it goes...)

1. (devil's advocate of sorts) A lot of environment stuff doesn't seem that significant to me

1a. While I recycle as much as possible and know this is a good thing...it's still not sustainable. Recycling still requires the use of non-renewable, non-recyclable resources. It doesn't solve the consumer problem.

1b. Do canvas bags really make a difference (other than nice sales for sellers)?

2. more on Murr's post on consumerism, in response to Anna's review:

"another thumb from me, anna, great stuff. You put your finger on the pulse of the matter, I think, when you said we have become consumers, and are no longer people. I see this more and more in the young people I teach, whose only recreational activity is to shop, to buy more and more useless shit that they don't need. I hate it."

3. (devil's advocate again - and self exploration) Where is our responsibility? (I know, this is selfish) Or, do we have individual responsibility to solve environ problems, or only collective? For example, we live in the culture that already exists, we're just a small irrelevant spec. That culture is an environmental catastrophe. But, if we individually refrain this part of that culture, there is a great cost to us (in my case -income) and essentially no benefit to the environment.

1 is definitely something that we all face if we try to do individual things. Eventually we feel, "I am doing so many little things, but really collectively what use is it?" Also, 1b, if they are backed up with real avoidance of plastic, it would make more of a difference. I prefer getting plastic bags in the super market because I reuse them for garbage bags and avoid buying plastic bags specifically for garbage. If this option goes away, then I have to really think about it.

3. I see personal responsibility as being a cost benefit analysis, of course, on an individual level, and you do what you can afford - but also I think it depends a lot on how easy it is to do these things where you live. I live in a town that has lots of alternatives - community gardens, curbside composting, a really convenient public transit system. For me, it's really more of a responsibility to not use my car to go to work, than it would be someone who lives in a city where this is really hard, inconvenient and time consuming.

The story of stuff had a lot of chapters on how we can start living more locally and being more engaged in our community and the key thing about those chapters for me was not that they help the environment, which they do, but that's merely a side effect - the main thing is, we become happier people.

I have a lot of ideas from this book that I want to start working on, for example:
- Start using my bike more often
- Really stop using plastic to the extent possible
- Get to know neighbors, walk around the neighborhood more and make conversation, go to neighborhood events, etc.
- Get involved in neighborhood organization
- Buy local stuff at farmers markets
- Read labels on food more carefully, buy stuff that was produced closer geographically to me

But then again I live in Portland where all this is relatively easy to do.

The notion that doing small things, which in the larger scheme don't matter, is self-defeating. You have to act where your actions will have an effect. That of course does not preclude doing other things, whatever they might be. And, let's face it, what we do now will only, hopefully, have global results when our children and grandchildren have assimilated whatever positive mind-set becomes the new norm, including disdain for buying "more and more useless shit that they don't need," and perhaps other things that we do and they won't: like using cars casually, rather than out of necessity.

8: But I see the message of her book as don't beat yourself up. Set small goals for change and concentrate on doing stuff that isn't really difficult for you and will make you happier/healthier. It will start to be easier.

So often us enviros (as we are sometimes called) are seen as trustafarians who have the wherewithal to do things and then sit around and judge others who don't, and that was what I really liked about her book was that she talked a bit about structural issues. For poor people who live in neighborhoods without access to good grocery stores it's harder to buy locally produced fruit and veggies, for example.

So in addition to doing personal things that we can easily or comfortably do, I think it's important to address those structural issues. Maybe go to neighborhood meetings. I work for a housing bureau -I know there are opportunities for public involvement in structural decisions - people may be able to go to a budget meeting, or a planning meeting, and advocate for sidewalks or something that your community needs. Or to donate money to an advocacy group that is fighting for those things. Like our local street people's newspaper for example, or the bike transportation alliance, or whatever.

I hear what # 6 has to say. I do it to work on myself. Of course we can't change this puerile culture. This shouldn't stop us from working on ourselves. And maybe being a good model for the young folks. I work at a school so I can proselytize to my heart's content. I can philosophize with a hammer for that matter. As I am a shameless name dropper and quoter of my betters, listen to Dr. Johnson on effort, sometimes above and beyond the call of duty:

PERSEVERNCE
Life affords no higher pleasure than that of surmounting difficulties, passing from one step of success to another, forming new wishes and seeing them gratified. He that labors in any great or laudable undertaking has his fatigues first supported by hope and afterwards rewarded by joy; he is always moving to a certain end, and when he has attained it, an end more distant invites him to a new pursuit. It does not, indeed, always happen that diligence is fortunate; the wisest schemes are broken by unexpected accidents; the most constant perseverance sometimes toils through life without recompense: but labor, though unsuccessful, is more eligible than idleness; he that prosecutes a lawful purpose by lawful means acts always with the approbation of his own reason; he is animated through the course of his endeavors by an expectation which, though not certain, he knows to be just; and is at last comforted in his disappointment by the consciousness that he has not failed by his own fault.

Well, but Anna, all that requires a governmental interest in people. For many of US, the only interest government takes in its people is as fodder for whatever shenanigans they can cook up to separate US from our money while giving nothing in return. I have spent the better part of my life in locales where people were a necessary evil in the redistribution of wealth upward. We generate it, government takes it and gives it to people who don't need it.

Besides, if we all stop using plastic bags, that will be bad for the plastic bag business. It will cost people their jobs, reduce revenue, and drag down business. Why do you want us to go to war with our own industry? Sounds anti-American to me. Wouldn't want to do anything that interferes with peoples choices, or hurt the plastic bag industry, now would we? Besides, what are a handful of dolphins in the face of the crying need of the wealthy?

11: Your frustration mirrors mine re: government and redistribution of wealth upwards. But that leaves me disenfranchised and bitter. I can own personal choices. And I can advocate for stuff at a local level. More than that, I don't really do apart from voting and writing letters to my congresscritter.

I don't any longer watch mainstream news because it makes me so angry, but I still try to get info about what's going on - and I don't trust politicians, but I still try to make individual choices that will improve my quality of life and reduce my carbon footprint. What else can I do on an individual level?

Industries that produce stuff like plastic bags don't provide Americans with jobs, for the most part, although I know you are being sarcastic/rhetorical.

Regarding goods and the idea that not being a consumer of them will hurt someone - actually it will help people. The chapter in the book that looked at some typical goods and how they are made and how many diffrent countries they exploit and damage was pretty depressing in that it confirmed that when I buy that cheap T-shirt made in Honduras, I am really doing something even worse than I thought.

(This isn't theoretical - today we all got new T-shirts for our bureau because it had merged with another bureau. They are made in Honduras. What do I do? I could try to educate the well-meaning people that bought them for our bureau. Or not, that would be a really killjoy thing to do. I think about these things a lot and yet I know there are many others who think about them a lot more than i do. It's never easy and I never feel like I'm doing enough - while at the same time I want to not beat myself up.)

Look way up above

Le Freeque referenced Springsteen's song...BLINDED BY THE LIGHT.....not garbage...per se.....and the song title is wrong, too

kick me
J

Will someone please explain to me what "...wrapped up like a douche, another runner in the night..." means?

An early protest against the consumerist society, Plastic Fantastic Lover.

14: Is that really what it says? Because I have always wondered that too.

14:
"Revved up like a deuce" are the lyrics. I don't know what "another runner in the night means." Maybe it makes sense in the context of the song, but I don't really like it very much, so I'm not going to check.

'Duece and a 1/4, also known as, Electra 225 (Buick). Inner-city names for luxury autos. Bro-ham, El-de-dodo, Star, C - - t (Licoln Continental). What else can be revved up? Bro-hamm and El-dee-dodo are Cadillacs of course. Does it make sense here?

If that isn't the correct explanation, Peter, it should be. I mean, as you say, it fits.

#14-17 in the Springsteen version it's "cut loose like a duece." Then in the more popular Manfred Mann version it was changed to "revved up like a deuce"...but does sound like "wrapped up like a douche"

#18 Yes, that's correct, it's a car.

Manfred Mann version: http://www.stlyrics.com/lyrics/blow/blindedbythelight.htm
Springsteen version: http://www.brucespringsteen.net/songs/BlindedByTheLight.html

Springsteen's attempt at a sounds over sense Bob Dylan song.

Wrong thread, I know, but: Both of them were represented by Columbia Records impresario John Hammond (Senior), whom I interviewed many years ago and recollected when he first met each of them. I wouldn't be surprised if Bruce wasn't indeed influenced by and/or straining to be somewhat like Bob back then.

ok, so silly silly Bruce Springsteen aside, can we get back to garbage?

I hear you anna, when you say that doing your bit makes you feel empowered and feel better, but I'm afraid I don't see it that way myself.

I don't want to diss your individual response, but it sometimes seems to me that this notion of 'taking individual responsibility for recycling' is a manufactured idea that has been foisted on us so that we won't see what the real problem is.

It is not consumers/people who produce waste. It is the companies who make the stuff that produce waste. I'm thinking of packaging, which I hate with a vengeance. Plastic bags are ok, coz they are necessary for getting your shopping home, and nowadays they are biodegradable (at least they are here, by law) but the stupid packaging, the teabags individually wrapped in each little envelope, then put in a bag inside a box, which is then wrapped in cellophane. Crazy. Bananas, wrapped in plastic and placed on a little polystarine tray. Apples that have a little sticker on them that says 'Apple'. Why? Face cream, in a bottle, then in a box, then in another bag? Why?

I rip off most of the packaging of things I buy in the supermarket, and leave it in the store. When the store manager complains, I tell him to talk to the companies, and tell them that consumers don't like the packaging. If stores have to deal with all the packaging themselves, they will soon let the manufacturers know. LEAVE YOUR PACKAGING IN THE STORE!

We should have a hefty packaging tax, where companies are charged tax on the weight of the packaging they use.

now, all this makes me feel a bit better, I admit, but I still think these are all structural problems that are largely unaffected by our individual actions. For example, in Taiwan, about 10 years ago, they passed a law that all stores would stop distributing free plastic bags. Great, we all thought, no more bags. but no, you can still have a bag, but you have to PAY for it. so it's just another way of generating profits for the companies. the number of bags produced and used actually went up as a result, as sales clerks were instructed to push bags on people. Most environment laws like this are designed to benefit someone somewhere, not to really fix the structural problem.

ok, my rant for today over.

I avoid big supermarkets as much as possible, buy my produce from the local farmers who come down from the hills in the morning and lay out their wares on the street, other stuff I try to buy locally produced goods (except MUESLI which no one in Taiwan has even heard about). I have not bought any clothes for about 1 year, do not have a car, do not own an ithing or any other useless and pointless gadgets. my only real expense is books! haha!

oh I hear you absolutely, and of course for our self respect it's important to feel that we can effect change.

I'm just very cynical, perhaps too cynical, Freeeky, to actually believe that we can, though. coz in that picture, I don't see bravery, I see (admirable) folly. One man's bravery made no difference at all. the tanks still rolled on, and thousands died, and what they were protesting for was still not achieved in China.

http://thelectern.blogspot.com/search?q=Gandhi

I am more and more tempted to believe that the only solution is one in which we must make our anger register: by arousing fear in the hearts of those who trample greedily over us and the world, by making them and others who want to be like them, realise that they can no longer do what they do with impunity.

But this is probably the kind of solution that will bring the FBI knocking on my door if I talk more specifically about what I would really like to see happen to these motherfuckers. I'm sure you all catch my drift, though.

Hot day here. Sorry for the rant.
I will go read some poetry now.

The 'green bags', at least here in Australia, aren't made of canvas, but of polypropylene, which is not biodegradable and thus just as bad as the plastic. Everyone feels all virtuous using them, and it's all just a marketing strategy that destroys the planet as much as anything else.

Exactly.

More on garbage:

http://www.literaryreview.co.uk/mirsky_07_10.html

#26 - I'll have to go check our bags...

#27 from that article "A year earlier, Friedman wished that 'we could be like China for a day' so that the US could really get things done on saving the environment. -- ?!!!!

I know, amazing isn't it. My guess is that Friedman (who he anyway?) never been nearer China than his local China town.

Isn't the "the world is flat" guy ?

28 - 30: Yes if it is Tom Friedman who wrote the Earth is Flat and is a NYT columnist, he is probably my least favorite newspaper guy on the planet. He wrote an article once called "Hama Rules" where he approvingly explained that Hafez el Assad understands the Middle East where you have to use force and flattened a town (Hama) that was rebelling. After that when my mom would send me NYT stuff by him about the ME I would write her angry e-mails about what a jerk he is. She finally stopped, but then he moved on from merely being a racist jerk to being a globalization guru. I sure wish we could get rid of these idiots.

Tomcat, of course individual stuff you can do is not enough and is a cop out and is marketed to us so we can feel "empowered" while companies keep doing evil shit. I am sorry if it came through that I feel any differently than you, because I don't.

I have heard that in Europe (Germany, I am not sure about anywhere else) packaging has to be removed in the store and that consumers leave without the packaging, and since stores have to deal with it it's an incentive on producers to reduce packaging. Packaging is one of my big bugbears. I don't understand why stuff has to be wrapped and boxed to death.

Also one of the things the book suggested is that you mail stuff made using vinyl to the Vinyl Association telling them to take their toxic shit back. You could enlarge on this type of civil disobedience re: packaging or other things.

No need to apologise Anna, we are all in the same boat. Absolutely. :)

I'm big on civil disobedience. I love the idea of sending stuff back to the company. I will try this.

There are graduate and post grad degrees in packing. I don't much like packing but it is jobs for somebody. Plastics is a giant business. Think of all the plastic water bottles. I think it can all be replaced by a corn product but like the car & oil people they are loath to give up their hegemony in this concern. We are but hollow men after all. The attraction of lucre & pelf is much too strong for the greens. That's where I think our president fails, I know he can't go down there with a shovel, it doesn't look to me that he would know one end of a shovel from another, but he should be a shameless cheerleader. Instead of playing powder-puff basketball with Axelrod & co., he should be a burr in the saddle of BP and all the despoilers around the globe, or at least in the Gulf. But he's content to play Ghandi in a suit, so we will get nowhere on this score, will we?
He showed his stuff when he said should we use ant SWATTERS, or something to that effect. Who uses an ant swatter? Only someone who has never dealt with ants, it seems to me. The ant swatter comment was in response to that hideous congressman from Ohio. The element with the painted on, or tan salon, tan. They say he's in the grog shoppe before happy hour. Seems about right to me. It would take something little more than a chimp to replace him when he calls in sick.

>29 QuentinTom:, 30, 31. Friedman was also the guy who used the phrase "Give war a chance"--the cute son of a bitch--during the war-mongering run-up to that disaster; I believe that was before his The Earth Is Flat. I dismissed him back then, like I dismissed ever other columnist (and politician) who jumped on that bandwagon and later didn't admit they were wrong, which was almost all of them. The only notable exception I know of was Andrew Sullivan, who authors an always interesting and fair-minded blog on the Internet.

35: He also was the one that said "Suck. On. This." about the iraq war.

#31-35 - wow, this is all new info to me. I once picked up "The World is Flat" and read the introduction or first section, and put it down. Something about it really bothered me - I wish I could put it into words, although my memory is hazy. (It was something like how he took a not very interesting observation (I think it Indian technical support speaking to people elsewhere in the world) and then somehow jumped ahead to some crazy conclusion, which he presented as if this was a huge breakthrough in understanding the world. I disagreed and I didn't find the observations all that enlightening in any particular related way. It left me going, huh?) Since then I've seen so much praise that I've assumed I was just in the wrong mood when I read it.

> 24 When I was in China, I had a private guide, who spoke fluent English. When We arrived at Tien Amen, I asked "is this the place where the world famous clip was made of one guy standing in front of the tanks ?"
The guide had absolutely no idea what I was speaking about. In fact she forgot all her English for the next 15 minutes.

Yes in Lithuania, the Russian tanks went right over the demonstrators who had flocked to the communication tower in protest.
Only the Iclandic governement had the cojones to immediately accept Lithuania's claim to independence !

Michel Pfeifer is a babe !

Yes she is.

Some of the individual things we do to protect the environment are effective if there is any merit to this article from Science Daily:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/06/100630101022.htm

I happen to think that the world has a better chance of recovering if we poison the well promptly enough that we die off when the world still has a chance to recover.

Robert

Ack, so much good comment! I will drop a stitch, and merely post this hilarious takedown of Thomas Friedman (douchebag) by the more talented Matt Taibbi:

http://www.nypress.com/article-11419-flathead.html

41:

http://www.worldwithoutus.com/

World Without Us was just such a hopeful book, I was enthused about it for days. Sadly he doesn't synthesize his various scenarios. What, for example, happens when the pollutants from the decaying Houston-Galveston corridor reach the newly wild Manhattan?

But I'd be happy if bears and elephants didn't have to adapt to bipeds bearing large bore weapons. It would be nice to maintain a small colony of human beings to maintain a museum and library, and for safety's sake to replicate that in diverse locations.

Robert

42: I read that a long time ago but it was good to re-read it. I find that reading Taibbi is much better for my blood pressure (mostly because he's so funny) than reading the guys he writes about. Especially Friedman. I dislike him more than any other stupid op-ed writers.

#42 - oh, that is entertaining, thanks for the link.

ETA - I added it to the book page "published reviews"

>41 Mr.Durick:, "I happen to think that the world has a better chance of recovering if we poison the well promptly enough that we die off when the world still has a chance to recover."

I don't get this line of thinking. We are fowling our nest, destroying that narrow band of space and time that we as humans, and indeed many non-human forms of life require to exist, but we are not destroying the world. Indeed, the world will destroy us. If plate tectonics accurately describes some of the forces that shape our home, nothing that we see, from the tip of Mt. Everest to the depths of the Challenger Deep will survive. Nothing.

If you want to make maintaining an environment conducive to human life on earth the subject of your environmental activism, fine. I disagree with the line that we are in any way shape or form "harming the earth". That thinking leads to people actually considering human life should be exterminated for the health of our planet. Don't flatter yourself. I'm afraid our planet is a much tougher bird than you give it credit.

Prius: I quite enjoyed the quote on perseverance.

General comment to all courtesy of an avid sustainable environmentalist and fellow dancer: If it's pee let it be. If it's brown flush it down.

And this:

Step by step the longest march
Can be won can be won
Many stones can form an arch
Singly none singly none
And by union what we will
Can be accomplished still
Drops of water turn a mill
Singly none singly none


Notes

Words from a 19th century Mining Union rulebook. Pete Seeger put the tune to it

And apropos of nothing in particular but somehow applicable (only I cannot articulate this idea at the moment because my thinking cap is not functioning correctly), one of me favorite sainted quotations:

Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
--Helen Keller

Apropos Helen Keller, I've always referred to life as a contact sport. One of the ways we waste our lives and make ourselves miserable is by attempting to make life a sure bet. Can't be done and we waste time, energy, money (lots and lots of money) and buckets of joie de vivre in order to take the risk out of life. Life is risky business and, to quote another famous American, no one gets out alive, anyway. Why not live it to the fullest. Fear is poisonous and leads to Authoritarianism/Totalitarianism and all the unpleasantnesses along that road.

just cancelled my life insurance

nah

Was that your dog who ran in front of the Tour de France the other day and wrought havoc?

hehehe Belgian cobblestone roads are mischievous !

>52 Macumbeira:

What life insurance? Just dance!!!

I've been meaning to put this up for a while. It was in our weekend newspaper The Australian.

(Yes, there is more than one Australian paper.)

Ahahahaha

I have set it as my desktop background!

By the way I am glad to jump on your bandwagon from the nature thread - I hate being called a "consumer" as well. It is true I consume things but I certainly hope that the human condition is more than a sum total of all the consumption in one's life.

You just don't get it, Anna. We are bred to consume. We are like cattle: we are bred, given jobs so we can earn money to consume the things we are told we want. Our function in our present economy is to consume. Without rampant consumption our economy would fall apart. One of the reasons we are still struggling on the brink of depression is people have done the logical thing and cut back on their consumption, retarding the flow of money. But in a consumption based economy this is exactly the wrong way to react. We must fulfill our economic imperative, which is to increase production (a euphemism for longer hours and less pay, or lose our jobs overseas, rendering us superfluous and a candidate for warehousing in one of our many, many prisons, you know, where we keep the people who remind us of our failures as a society) and spend wildly beyond our means. The game is rigged against non-consumption from the outset. We are cattle being led to the bilking barn and there is no way out short of a major collapse and concomitant reconstruction, hopefully around people and not money.

Have you all ever actually heard somebody referring to human beings as, essentially, consumers, though? That word is used a lot, but it's just the appropriate term for the citizens of a capitalist society. Our society's capitalist nature is a lens that a lot of political and economic journalism adopts, and with pretty good reason most of the time, given their aims.

I'm as disgusted with the excesses of a consume consume consume culture as most people, but the alternative is the generation of wealth for wealth's sake, which is what led to all the economic unpleasantness going on right now. To be perfectly honest, a lot of us would be better off if our societies were a little more focused on manufacture/consumption, and a little less focused on the kinds of "financial instruments" that start popping up when money doesn't get reinvested in material stuff.

59: I think I have a deeper issue with this world view than the word "consumer". It's the idea that human behavior can be completely captured by a 100% materialist view.

Economics, to me, has always been a make believe field that makes up laws about human behavior based on weird definitions and a sort of backwards morality (rewarding hurtful behavior and discouraging positive behavior).

Society has a lot of elements to it that aren't about what we buy, sell, throw away. For example, our relationships with the people who we live near. Our activities that are not about using some product (e.g., walking to the park).

Human behavior is very complex and when we are reduced to consumers we all suffer. I believe that part of our problem when we try to confront all these major problems we've created, for example, the environmental problems, is that we are conditioned to see it as a problem of consumer choices. There is a lot more there. You can pick none of the above. It's not just, paper or plastic? Incandescent or CF? What about trying to design homes that have more natural lighting so that you don't need to turn on a light at all? (this is a simplistic example, but I work in the housing sector so it's a real example I can think of). What about going outside?

Right now my city is going through a planning process for the next 20 years. Part of what they are shooting for is "20 minute neighborhoods" so that people are always 20 minutes WALKING distance from places they need to go. These are both places wehre you buy stuff (grocery, bank, etc.) and "commons" (parks, baseball fields, community centers). If we focus on consumer stuff because we only think about economics we are really limiting what changes we make in society.

I am not really saying we can't focus on economics at all. I just think in today's media climate it gets treated like the ultimate thing to diagnose our societal issues and other stuff gets ignored or sacrificed to serve it (why growth? Seriously, why must we always be tryign to grow bigger?) and this is not only a limiting way to look at the world but it is actively harmful.

When we stop growing, the market becomes alarmed and may even falter a bit. Where will the next profits come from? If company A doesn't show the quarter to quarter growth I want, I'll pull my money out. I need dividends. The evil here is the privileging of monetary interests and money over human beings. The interests of human beings should be paramount. Money and finance are tools, human beings are sentient, inter-dependable people. Do we build a house just so we can increase the use of hammers? Or do we use hammers to build a house to increase the quality of life? The end point of any discussion must be how humans are effected. It should be apparent by now that financial markets of the sort we have seen recently are dead ends, not aids to the effective distribution of wealth. Markets are inherently amoral (not a good thing, they can easily be nudged into the immoral) and chronically myopic, also not a good thing. Wow! look at that pretty butterfly, the market says, and goes off chasing it until splat, oops, didn't see that coming. Well, had you taken your nose out of the market's ass for five minutes, you would have. If the mission statement for an enterprise values profits over increasing the quality of all life on earth, then it is a business we don't need.

This is getting way disorganized and rant sounding, but I am not a fan of "free markets" (just a euphemism for regulation favoring the producer/developer side of the market equation). Consider that great free market sage Rand Paul. Afraid BP will be put out of business by the American people's indignation and desire for accountability. How rude of us. We must be easy on BP. They are in a tough place right now, and our requiring responsibility for the results of their criminally mismanaged company is hurting their feelings, not to mention, and way more importantly, their bottom line. Oh, must not impact the bottom line. Oh, heavens! Fire a thousand people if you must, but please, show a profit over the same quarter last year.

Heads on pikes at the entrance to the NYSE is my solution to this mess.

>58 geneg:, 61 eloquently said! my heart's in your corner

>59 Sutpen: accurately said! balance, then; sustainability

Everything you all are saying here reminds me of Cloud Atlas. I can't help but recommend that book :)

And thank you Gene and Anna, you've put my nebulous thoughts into eloquent and informed words, plus a lot more.

Cloud Atlas will be one of the books I'll read during the holidays.

Great, Mac. I hope it resonates with you like it did for me! I'm already excited about your review.