So I went back and read a few of my old posts today while updating some of the system software. The piece I did on popcorn toppings, which is one of my most popular posts, is rather good if I do say so myself.
Some days I wish I wasn’t so damn driven to innovate that I forget to do a bit of navel gazing on a daily basis.
I live on a fairly busy street and the amount of trash that we collect from drive-by dumping is astonishing. The majority is beverage containers but there is also a good amount of plastic of various forms. I thought we had a lot until I read this article.
All that plastic that you dump into the trash doesn’t always end up in a landfill/incinerator. We consistently throw away one small grocery bag’s worth of ‘trash’ on a weekly basis; we recycle one, sometimes, two bins of glass/plastic/metal weekly. By weight we recycle far more than we trash. Sadly, we are still in the majority.
I weep for the future of our planet; it won’t matter to me because I’ll be nicely decomposed by the time this really comes to a head but for those Billions of us still around it’s going to suck big time unless we start making significant changes NOW.
This shot of Quincy Jones that I took at the 2006 CES show was recently selected to illustrate his Wikipedia entry.
I learned a bit about Wikipedia in the process. I tag all my Flickr photos as CreativeCommons:Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs which, in English, means you can use my photos in original, non-commerical works as long as you give me credit. However, Wikipedia allows only Attribution and/or ShareAlike licenses. ShareAlike allows a use as long as the work in which it is included is also licensed as ShareAlike. Basically, if I share with you then you must share with others.
I can understand the NoDerivs (No Derivatives) liscense being a problem since in this case the photo was to be a part of a larger article. The part that confuses me is the requirement that I remove the NonCommerical limitation. Last time I looked (about 4 seconds ago) Wikipedia did not include ads, nor does it charge for access to the site. Perhaps they are girding themselves for the day when they will.
Since last we spoke dear reader I’ve been to Spain for 3 weeks, Los Angeles for 5 days and buried under snow. Now, the ‘holidays’ are upon us and things get even more harried.
I have a ton of pics to share from my trip and tips about what to do when you are stuck in traffic during a snow storm (hint: bring water and a cup to pee into).
Oddly, the same week where Lori and I were talking about the inbalance between spending on ‘special ed’ and support for ‘gifited’ programs I stumble upon this piece from TIME magazine.
It makes many great points but a few of the items really struck me:
American schools spend more than $8 billion a year educating the mentally retarded. Spending on the gifted isn’t even tabulated in some states, but by the most generous calculation, we spend no more than $800 million on gifted programs.
and then later:
But since at least the mid-1980s, schools have often forced gifted students to stay in age-assigned grades–even though a 160-IQ kid trying to learn at the pace of average, 100-IQ kids is akin to an average girl trying to learn at the pace of a retarded girl with an IQ of 40.
Thus continues our countries headlong rush to mediocrity.
While we as a society rush to support those that are below the norm we allow to lay fallow those that are our best hope of improving the lives of everyone.