Day: January 18, 2012

Posted on

What is this about Energy from Canada?

So I just saw this commercial by the “Petroleum Companies” asking President Obama to sign some bill to build a new pipeline which will create American Jobs.  What a load of crap!

More Jobs

I love how everyone uses the “more jobs” argument.  Sure, anything that requires humans will create jobs, but does that mean we should do it?

Sustainability?

For a long time the US has been known to consume much more food and resources per capita than any other country in the World.  Why is it so hard for us to be self sufficient?  Wouldn’t it be ideal if we did not have to rely on other countries for anything?

Think about it….if we produced all products locally, we would increase the number of jobs in this country exponentially!  Just think about how many products we buy are imported?

OIL – Seriously, why are we so slow to find alternate energy sources.  We continue to be brainwashed by “Clean Coal” and other statements of job creation using finite natural resources?

Solar and Wind

Why are we not tapping solar and wind energy, truly renewable resources which have little or no impact on the environment!  Shouldn’t we invest in solar panel technology which could be used in place of Windows?  How much glass is used on the exterior or buildings these days?  In the country side, conventional solar panels could be used and wind turbines would be very effective.

Money Talks

Granted I don’t have facts to prove it, but you have to wonder how much money is being invested by companies to slow down our progress in energy efficiency and sustainability.

Posted on

CaBi vs Giant

Lately I have been opting for Capital BikeShare over my personal Giant bike.  I always thought CaBi would be my savior late at night or when needing a one way ride, but recently I have been using Capital Bikeshare much more for the following reasons.

  • More Stations
  • More Bikes
  • More Station Balancing

Along with the original reasons

  • Zero Maintenance
  • No Theft Potential
  • No Batteries for Lights

The expansion of the Bike Share system has really alleviated the number of empty or full racks by the addition or expansion of stations and additional bikes.  Granted this comes in the winter and perhaps ridership is down due to the cooler temps, but recently whenever I have wanted a bike, there has been one, sometimes only one, and always a spot in my destination rack 🙂  Before the expansion, I was able to walk past 3 empty stations on my way to work and ended up just taking public transportation.  I sometimes will supplement my travels with a CaBi leg to additional transportation.

Go CaBi

So…hats off to d. and Bike Arlington for making this system one that will be around for good, unlike the first stab at bike shared called “Smart Bike” which was added by d. in order to give Clear Channel Communications advertizing rights on the bus stations.

Find someway to provide sanitized helmets and the system would seem perfect 🙂

Posted on

French Lesson

While the couple shall remain anonymous, I had the privilege of helping some friends, a newly arrived couple from France with some English.

Dilemma

While I have heard that in some languages, accent and tone can complete change the meaning of a word, I did not realize that English was one of those, but here is an example to support this.

How do you pronounce the following….

  1. Lawyer and Liar
  2. Sheet and Shit
  3. Beach and Bitch

Firstly…. Lawyer and Liar and sometimes considered synonyms.  I am just kidding of course, but there are times when this is true.

Second…. Here is where we chucked a bit, but I was glad to help as it is certainly important to make sure these words are pronounced correctly.  The big lesson here is the vowel pronunciation.  They do have a very strong accent, so even while I explained the difference between “ee” = “eeeeeee” and ‘i’ = “ih,” the words still sound almost the same 🙂

Thirdly…. Basically the same dilemma as number 2.

Practice

I came up with the following sentence to help reinforce this lesson.

“Don’t take any sheets from the beach.”

Granted it is not the best, but I think you get the idea 🙂

The Best and Worst v1.1 Proudly powered by WordPress
Translate