I was just informed that the recycling rules in SF have changed.
According to the SF Recycling website, the change is that plastic tubs can now be recycled. Oops, I was dumping those into recycling all along!
Why can't I put all plastic items in my blue cart? Unfortunately, not all plastic is acceptable because there are not companies that will take it all from us, (even if it has the recycling arrows on the bottom). We do accept: - Empty plastic bottles (#1 thru #7). A bottle has a neck smaller then its base, (i.e.: soda, shampoo, catsup, detergent).
- NEW: Plastic tubs and lids (#2, #4, & #5 only). Examples include yogurt, margarine and sour cream.
In the process of searching, I found an Oakland women's site with some great information. Especially her FAQ and the pages linked from there. - where plastic comes from (I think I was just having a conversation with someone about whether plastic came from oil)
- what can be recycled, why recycling is downcycling
- her experiences in trying to reduce consumption to 0 - she's had to give up tortillas since they ONLY come in plastic bags
BTW, one easy thing I can recommend to everyone is to always take your own re-usable bag(s) shopping. Just leave one in the car/entry/wherever so you have it when you need it. I know, you say that you use the paper/plastic bags from each trip for home purposes, but we've been doing this a while, and really, we always have enough back-store. I'll happily discuss with you :) And yes, I'm no angel. As one twitterer famously said, uh, yesterday"Until your tattoo ink and ironic hats can be shipped via fixie, I wouldn't get *too* smug about gas prices."
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No, I'm not talking about beer.
A number of reasons why you are better off drinking water from the tap instead of purchasing (over-marketed) bottled water.
My favorites cited reasons:
- Americans buy 28 billion water bottles a year, all that plastic and the energy used for manufacturing and transportation is very hard on the environment
- Why would you want to pay more for a product whose quality is worse than the water that flows from the faucet in your home?
- City tap water must meet standards for certain important toxic or cancer-causing chemicals, such as phthalate (a chemical that can leach from plastic, including plastic bottles); some in the industry persuaded FDA to exempt bottled water from the regulations regarding these chemicals.
- For those who feel tap water is any less clean than bottled water, filters may be purchased; buying filter cartridges once or twice a year requires much fewer resources than buying bottled water each day
So, whether it's your budget, the environment, or the convenience, bottled water is NOT the way to go. Like to carry it around? Purchase your own re-usable water bottle for less than the price of two "disposable" bottles! Plus remember, all that jazz about fresh mountain water? Usually a load of bull. Do you remember where Pepsi was getting its bottled water? c'mon, people.
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A bit of a complicated trope (I love that word!)
So here's the comic. Enjoy if you can, and remember, there's no boy word for "whore" or "bitch"!
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Glassbooth - Your results: I'm aligned with Kucinich.
Intresting non-partisan site. Give it your issue priorities and strength of conviction.. and it will show how you compare with each of the candidates. includes history of voting and choice quotes.
But, um, are we allowed to vote issues in the coming election?
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Another Republican official with interesting bathroom antics. My favorite part, of course.
"Conley wrote that had the investigation been allowed to continue, it likely would have concluded in DiFatta's arrest on obscenity charges, including a possible attempted crime against nature."
I really do prefer the term like public indecency.
Tangent:
Asha asked yesterday about my thoughts on scarlet letters for sex offenders, even after serving terms.
The most important part of my trained response is that the category is really bad. The legislation that we passed last year barring registered sex offenders from living within a short distance - never mind whether it's effective at its intended purpose - makes in irrelevant punishment on all the categories of sex offender that have nothing whatsoever to do with a threat to minors.
Now, for those "serious" sex offenders - offenses against minors, or involving violence - should they be identified, branded,registered for life afterwards? Man, I really wish to think our penal system is capable of rehabilitation. But how do you really know?
My old co-worker (with kids) thinks that once people cross certain lines, they forfeit their right to a normal life. What do you think?
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.. is hard to do. I keep missing things friends sent, and feel stressed when I realize I'e been out of touch.
The "good" news is part of hte reason why - I no longer hover over my various inboxes, pressing refresh/re-check every minute or two
Anyways, this guy's been collecting some solutions for the eternal inbox.
It's called "Inbox Zero" with the idea that you just keep it clean, by applying a bunch of tactics so that you never feel/get bogged down again.
One of the key paragraphs for me (which probably applies to much of life ;) )
"If you’ve allowed your email to get out of control, and you can trace any of the resulting procrastination and inaction back to feelings of guilt, low self-esteem, or just the general feeling that you alone completely suck at this, quit it now .You are so not alone. Everyone I know (including me) is overwhelmed with email and unsure of how to make it better in a given day. Beating yourself up about it is the worst thing you can do, since it just reinforces the core fears and anxieties that kept you from dealing with the problem in the first place (buy this book, dammit)."
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Zombies:
http://www.eatbrains.com/
Pillow Fight:
http://sanfrancisco.tribe.net/event/9b4ab840-f324-425f-b339-92c5d4e5096a
Friday, May 27
6pm
Justin "Pee Wee" Herman Plaza
Rules:
1) Tell everyone you know about PILLOW FIGHT!!!
2) Wait for the Ferry Building clock to strike 6:00pm
3) Don't hit anyone with out a pillow (unless they want it)
4) Don't hit anyone with a camera
5) HAVE FUN!!!
And of course bicycles:
I think I'll just be on foot this time. Or plan to be on a bike wearing duct tape.
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Bike to Work Day is may 17th.
See if you can get a couple other folk to do it. Even part of the commute. The weather's already been pretty stellar this year ( I mean, this morning aside)
If you want to volunteer to put a friendly face out for those braving the streets for the first time, how about volunteering on the day? I'm signing up for morning duty. Should get me out of bed early :)
Also, free food the week before:
"May 9th our office will be humming with pre-Bike to Work Day activity and we need your help! SFBC Headquarters, 995 Market St, Suite 1550, 5pm - ? Dinner is on the house!"
See you on the streets! Oh, and don't forget about Waving Wednesdays. TeeHee!
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Just yesterday, my coworkers were talking about Ann Coulter's homophobia and how they figured it would go unpunished. And look what happened.
Repercussions for hatred by visible figure
Companies to pull ads from Coulter's Web site - CNN.com:
And justice actually applied to a member of the Bush administration
Libby guilty on 4 of 5 counts in CIA leak trial - CNN.com:
Feelin' surprisingly warm and fuzzy about the results. Am I enjoying seeing other people hung? Yes - when those people have been getting away with destroying the liberty and values of the American public.
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Hey guys - I thought this was an interesting approach to making sure that we don't wake up to war.. again. The boilerplate text below is agreed to by me :)
boilerplate:
I just signed a petition to ask Congress to demand President Bush seek congressional authorization before considering military action in Iran. He seems out of control, and we have to stop the war in Iraq from escalating into a regional crisis. Congress can do this, but they need to hear from us.
Can you sign?
http://pol.moveon.org/noescalationiniran/
Will
p.s. I'm never sure who to mail my petitions to.. but this seems like an excellent vector for livejournal posts. Let me know how you feel about this.
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This topic has definitely come up in my perception alot recently - Cars != bikes != pedestrians.
I'm hearing a lot of compelling, to me, arguments about coming up with a differing view of Stop Signs for bicycles.
Here's my VERY poor paraphrasing of what I consider to be the emotional arguments against different stop rules for bicycles
- Bicyclists are already governed by (mostly) the same laws as cars (never mind whether they SHOULD be)
- Automobilists and bicicyclists are not good about respecting the rules anyways, so letting the bicyclists get a better deal is unfair.
The arguments FOR a different set of rules include: - bicycles have much higher visibility to incoming traffic
- The cruising/slowing speed of bicycles is much closer to a stop (or california rolling stop) than the non-slowing speeds of cars
- The reflex time for a bicyclist is much quicker than for a car
- Car kills bicyclist/pedestrian. Bicyclist does not kill car or pedestrian.
For the record I am opposed to bicycling through stop signs at cruising speeds, and going through red lights when there's potentially any traffic in the intersection. I am also opposed to any bikes, including fixies, slowing but not stopping for a red light intersection with cross traffic. The idaho law now exactly supports the preference I have above, which shows that legislators have some conviction that these are reasonable variances from the vehiclular driving code: 49-720. STOPPING -- TURN AND STOP SIGNALS. (1) A person operating a
bicycle or human-powered vehicle approaching a stop sign shall slow down and,
if required for safety, stop before entering the intersection. After slowing
to a reasonable speed or stopping, the person shall yield the right-of-way to
any vehicle in the intersection or approaching on another highway so closely
as to constitute an immediate hazard during the time the person is moving
across or within the intersection or junction of highways, except that a
person after slowing to a reasonable speed and yielding the right-of-way if
required, may cautiously make a turn or proceed through the intersection
without stopping.
(2) A person operating a bicycle or human-powered vehicle approaching a
steady red traffic control light shall stop before entering the intersection
and shall yield to all other traffic. Once the person has yielded, he may
proceed through the steady red light with caution. Provided however, that a
person after slowing to a reasonable speed and yielding the right-of-way if
required, may cautiously make a right-hand turn. A left-hand turn onto a
one-way highway may be made on a red light after stopping and yielding to
other traffic.
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Last night, after a quick (2 hour?) stint with the bears doing a cinco castro pub crawl, I called it quits ALMOST when planned as ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) contrabear and snuck off for pizza. (there were many LJ cubs + bears there, I mostly talked to xbearxrx and deaconcub , I'll let you journal-surf for a wider listing. Plus I got to introducte contrabear to some of his future burning man camp mates)
Then I ended up chatting for 20 minutes or more with some of the christian folk who have been somewhat subtle-ly hanging at castro and 18th the past few weeks. Few big signs, just properly young-ish and alterna-ish folk hanging there looking to engage people about their love of jesus christ. Cynthia, whom I talked to mostly, seemed a very nice and generally good person - I was fishing for WHY exactly she came to stand at the corner, and we mostly chatted about how (someone like) Jesus shares love with other people, and how it can be hard to view a christianity that has very harsh things to say about basically good people. Then my buddy Harsal came by and ripped a second asshole in the general presentation of Christianity, having grown up at a catholic private school. I was glad for the balnace of his perspective. I think I'm going to re-appropriate armaroundyou 's re-appropriation - "Love the practitioner, hate the sect" (BC, thanks for the gallery tour thursday!)
( some personal philosophy and antagonism )What are the questions for genuiene conversation instead of mutual antagonism? I have to give my parents props for writing a letter to the local paper in mass on a similar target - if someone can speak out against being queer in combination of religion.. why target tat particular group? Why not women, asians, immigrants? (Oh yeah. They do. But that's a gross "They")
Happily this morning, I by the UCC storefront on Polk street and got to read a much more humane interpretation of christianity. Whatever your views, take a look at this (challenge to the un-thinker's) version of the 10-commandments. What do you think? Does it speak to you as a christian? as a non-christian?
Activism forward (From the San Francisco Biking Coalition)
"
*** We need your help to make sure it passes! Please contact the Mayor and urge him to support Healthy Saturdays. Please call 415-554-7111 or email gavin.newsom@sfgov.org before Tuesday.
*** And join us for a rally for Healthy Saturdays this Sunday at 2pm in Golden Gate Park @ JFK Dr. & 6th Ave.
For more information on Healthy Saturdays, including our open letter to the Mayor and the answers to common myths about the legislation, see http://www.sfbike.org/ggp
"
Contact Gavin Newsom to oppose any potential Veto to the 6-month trial period of biking/walking/bladin gin GG park - no clear determent to the opposition, and more green space available to more community. Do it for the children!
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cheerful
accomplished
contemplative