I wonder if Republicans feel embarrassed about Japan? (And WoW)

[thistlechaser]

What a strange subject line that must seem like, but it's fitting:

A couple weeks back, the news was covering a story about the Republicans. Since they're the majority in the House now, they get to set rules on various things. One of those things is recycling and how green they'll be (hint: not green at all). One thing that stuck out to me was an interview with one of the House Republicans, done in the House cafe. He stood in front of the cafe's trash area and gestured to the three trash bins behind him as he explained why they were ending recycling. One bin was labeled 'Glass', one 'Plastic', and one 'Compost'. His exact words were: "This is too confusing, how could anyone know where to throw anything!".

Last night I heard a story about a shelter for the Japan earthquake victims. The shelter had no electricity, little of anything... and yet they were fully recycling.

I wrote a post about how awful the Republicans were being about this (they're even rolling back switching out lightbulbs for energy efficient ones!), but I ended up not posting it.

---

... Oh, well 4.0.1 ruined that goal! Or set it further away. I googled for the exact figure of the gold cap to use in this post (214,748 gold) and in doing so learned they increased it in 4.0.1 (to 999,999). That's kind of sad, as I was going to say I would be hitting the cap this weekend or early next week.

Ah well. Making gold is just a time-filler anyway. If not for RP, I'd be so very gone from WoW.

Comments

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

There's a subset of Republicans - not all, for sure - that the tea party types come from, that have a truly hard time with thinking of people not like them as actual people. If you're not white, straight, christian, male, often Southern is on the list, and a born-in-the-US, english speaking citizen, and not making six figures, you're an Other to them. You're never part of 'us', always 'them'.

And all they do, everything they do, is to take and hold power for people like them. They're terrified at the Other having a voice and having power. It shows up in opposition to gay marriage, illegal immigration policies, union busting, making it harder for students to vote, disenfranchising felons (and often people with similar names to felons, aka, random black people), serious overreaction to liberal voices in the media, no gays in the military, no women in combat duty in the military, anti-abortion crusades... all of these are a culture war between this one small, powerful demographic, and the rest of the world.

So no, they don't feel shame. To them, Japanese aren't really humans they way they are.

(Not all Republicans are vile like this, but way, way too many are.)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

They're likely the same group that thinks that the quake was "karma" for bombing Pearl Harbor, too.

The us/them thing really fits. I swear, it feels like they're rolling back all the green stuff just because it's what the other side wants. (Really, why be against upgrading light blubs?)

[ani-mama.livejournal.com]

Have you seen the websites that are "outing" the idiots who are making those kind of comments about Pearl Harbor?

http://ignorantandonline.tumblr.com/

What amazed me was how many of these are YOUNG people. I can kind of see the bitterness if you were actually in the navy at Pearl Harbor and lost your friends. But these kids have absolutely no excuse. I hope all this idiocy comes back to haunt them when they go for that important job interview.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Wow, I'm so glad someone is collecting them and keeping them available with their names. Kids don't realize that stuff they write online doesn't vanish. I can't wait until they try to get into college, get jobs, date...

[bricriu.livejournal.com]

I'll be honest, I hate, hate, HATE CF bulbs.
The only thing I hate more than CF bulbs is the idea of being told that they're my only choice as a consumer, and being told that it's my only choice for reasons not related to, "they might explode and kill you".

Mandating for businesses, government buildings, public areas? Fine by me.
Mandating for personal use? Step off, kthx.

They flicker to the point that it tends to trigger migraines for me if I'm in rooms that use them for more than a few hours; the fluorescent lighting at work isn't much better, but at least I have the sort of job that lets me wander outside at regular intervals if I want to.

My loophole for that comes down to my pets.

CF lights don't heat, my inverts and reptiles require heat + full spectrum light, which doesn't come from the energy efficient bulbs.
Some of them require UVA/UVB as well as full spectrum white light.
The marine tank uses metal halides; the corals would die off with CF lighting.
The parrots, while kept near windows, still have full spectrum, UVA/UVB lighting as the windows filter that out. That's really helped with the secondhand pluckers, the UVA/UVB lighting.

Oddly, most of our house is lit by animal enclosure.
Even more oddly, the heat put off by those lights means we can keep our actual heat turned way down.

If it came down to it, I'd just buy the more expensive incandescent "pet" bulbs, which aren't covered or pestered by any of the legislation, for our lamps to avoid having to deal with the constant flicker of CF bulbs in my own house.

[bricriu.livejournal.com]

Oh also, light bulb rant aside (No, seriously, I FUCKING HATE CF BULBS!!)

He stood in front of the cafe's trash area and gestured to the three trash bins behind him as he explained why they were ending recycling. One bin was labeled 'Glass', one 'Plastic', and one 'Compost'. His exact words were: "This is too confusing, how could anyone know where to throw anything!".

Uh.
Maybe he could...read the labels on the bins?
It seems pretty straightforward to me.
Glass goes in the bin marked glass, plastic goes in the one marked plastic, and food garbage goes in the "compost" bin.
If he can't tell glass from plastic, there's an issue; mainly the issue of why he probably gets paid more than I get paid when he can't tell glass from plastic from compostable garbage. >:|

"Compost" I could POSSIBLY see being confusing, at least, for someone who maybe grew up in a large city and never did things like have compost piles. Maybe "food garbage" might be a better way of wording it, but still...

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it was probably (hopefully!) 'compost' that confused him. Too bad there's not some sort of system that lets your computer connect to other computers that might have information on such things...

[bricriu.livejournal.com]

He probably thinks that only deviants, nerds, terrorists and child molesters use the internet.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

*laughs* You're probably right.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Agreed. (And I hadn't thought of the pet part! That's good to know.) I don't like them personally, but I use them. Oh god, the one in my bathroom flickers horribly though! It drives me crazy. I thought it was just a bad bulb, but I've been too lazy to switch it out.

I'm all for requiring them to be used in public places, but forcing people to use ONLY them at home is a different story.

and being told that it's my only choice for reasons not related to, "they might explode and kill you".

That made me snicker. :)

[bricriu.livejournal.com]

Even the good ones have this...it's not something people usually notice unless it causes problems of they have really weird perception.

I fall into the latter two. I can see computer screen flicker as well, and most people tend to look at me like I'm nuts if I complain about it. CRT monitors...erg. Even the monitors and LCD panels out now have flicker that most people don't see/notice (refresh time, yay!), but I notice it and it drives me up the wall.

But, yeah, my problem with the mandates like that comes when they start telling me what I can and cannot use in my own home for my own personal use and the reasoning behind it is is more of a 'feel good' reason as opposed to a legitimate safety hazard.

It just treads a bit too far into my private life for me to be comfortable with it.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can't see the flicker, but like the rest of us unable-to-see-it folks, it can contribute to eye strain if it's not set correctly, so I always check my refresh rates on new machines.

I'm sorry to hear even the good bulbs bother you! Unfortunately you'll be running into them in more and more places...

[bricriu.livejournal.com]

That's how you normal "see" it: In the form of eye strain. :D

CRTs were the worst for that, even on high refresh rates.

My monitor at home has a 2ms refersh rate, and if the room lighting is wrong, oh MAN can I see it.
The newer LED laptop screens and LED monitors don't seem to bother me though.

The lights at work here? HNG. O_o
They're all in varying states of working and color too. Some are yellow, some are BRIGHT BLUE WHITE, and some are...uh...out, now that I look up at them.

Having anti-glare coating on my glasses tends to help cut it down somewhat.

The CF bulbs only start to bother me after a few hours of being stuck underneath them (that includes the big ol' tube lights in most businesses and schools). By and large, I've just learned to cope with them or to try and get outside or to a place with dimmer/different lighting once every hour or so for a few minutes.

Or I just eat Advil like candy when I can't get away.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Can you get the lights turned off over your cube/in your office? Some of the people in my company are bothered by the lights, so they take the bulbs out (since they can't be turned off one by one, big overhead lights).

If you guys have a... what do you call it... people who work with and prevent RSI stuff, making .. AH! Ergonomics. If you have an ergonomics team maybe they can help you?

[bricriu.livejournal.com]

Nah, it's a big room that we share with another department, and it's an open floor plan/work bench area, so there are no 'cubes'.

Plus, I'm a contracted state employee (work at a university for a private company that said university has a contract with), which means the lighting is state mandated anyway.

It's one of those "lean to cope with it" sorts of situations.

I do laugh when I see the posters in the break room about cutting costs by working in the dark (not possible, lots of tiny, black screws + dark room = disaster), yet they somehow found an extra quarter million to remodel two floors and shuffle three departments around.

That's another rant entirely, though.

[bricriu.livejournal.com]

LOL! OH! They did order us "more ergonomic chairs" a couple years ago, but they didn't take into account that we don't work at standard height desks.

We work at these weird benches that are too low to stand at but too high to use a normal chair (even all the way up).

So we have these awesome chairs that we can't use because we end up having to reach way too high and can't really see properly since, even at the highest setting, the chairs are a good 5 inches too low.

We use the old, supposedly crappy chairs and have the new, awesome chairs set up as ottomans on the opposite side of the work benches.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Ha! That's horrible. You'd think they would have checked heights BEFORE ordering them...

[bricriu.livejournal.com]

You'd think.

You'd think so doubly since they're the ones who installed the original work bench equipment.

Their excuse was, "Oh, we mistook the measurement".
See, from the top of the back of the chair to the floor, the measurement was right.

We do not, however, sit on the backs of the chairs.

They were special order too, and couldn't be returned.

They do make good foot rests though.

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

LED light bulbs for life! (or until something I like better comes out)

Ya, japan is crazy when it comes to recycling, something about having a ridiculous amount of people all crammed into small areas with not much land mass to dump garbage. I remember awhile back I saw a video of an invention that was like, the size of a small night stand that you could throw any plastics into and it would melt them down and convert as much of it was possible back into a burnable oil (for like lamps or anything you would normally burn oil for)! Science! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-Lg_kvLaAM)

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Wow! I'd be scared to have plastic melting in my home. I've been scarred by my experience with making that custom cat box! The smell! The smoke! I bet they address those issues though. *watches video*

[voidmagus.livejournal.com]

As Veloxe says, recycling is definitely important when land is at the kind of premium as Japan has.

In the US though, recycling is somewhat pointless. Especially from an economic standpoint, and in most cases from an environmental one too. Plastics are kind of pointless to recycle right now - when we run out of petroleum that will obviously not be the case. Glass is somewhat feasible, though it isn't like we'll run out of the base materials anytime soon. Likewise with aluminum. Paper is a waste.

The worst part is the recycling facilities, though. Most end up just dumping trash to landfills anyway. The company that runs the major recycling centers where I live is a disgusting, shameful corp. Every time my homeowner's association yells at me for not recycling, I explain that I refuse to support the local company that handles the recycling. They employ mentally handicapped workers so they can pay them less than minimum wage (fed law states the handicapped don't have to get full wages), and sabotage their workers' attempts to get jobs elsewhere under the guise of "Employment Assistance Services" (offering to help write resumes, provide references etc). And still, at last survey, this facility pushed 3/4s of materials sent there into landfills.

Maybe one day recycling will make sense. Not today though.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Plastics are kind of pointless to recycle right now - when we run out of petroleum that will obviously not be the case.

Why would we wait until we run out to start dealing with the issue?

Glass is somewhat feasible, though it isn't like we'll run out of the base materials anytime soon. Likewise with aluminum. Paper is a waste.

This isn't just talking about the materials though, it's about saving space in the landfills, about not ruining our ground water, about lots of issues.

The company that runs the major recycling centers where I live is a disgusting, shameful corp.

Sorry to hear about that, and while I'm sure it's not the only bad one, you can hardly toss out the whole recycling idea based on that...

Maybe one day recycling will make sense. Not today though.

If not today, then when? If other countries can do it, why can't we?

Heck, you can use that argument for so many things. "The government wastes tons of money, so it makes no sense for me to pay my taxes. Maybe one day it will, but not today."

[voidmagus.livejournal.com]

I haven't tossed the idea out completely. If the local collection & recycling agency is corrupt as hell, we can (and do) voice our complaints, as well as refuse to pay for their services. As I said, they dump 75% of stuff in landfills as it is.

What I can do, however, is minimize waste. I buy things with reusable containers, many household items I make myself, most food waste goes to the dog (who eats ANYTHING), etc. These habits result in about a half-bag of trash produced per week for me + wife + 2 pets, whereas most of my neighbors fill a big rolling trashcan in the same time period. The vast majority of our consumption is in power (TN leads the US in per-capita power consumption) but 60% of our power consumption is from nuclear, 40% from hydroelectric (we live 1 mile from a hydro dam).

Recycling is a great idea, but is more complex than just sorting trash. At some point technology will advance waste disposal to the point that we can reclaim more useful stuff from plastic, paper, metals, etc...but for now, asking me to recycle is asking me to pay 3 times the cost to have my trash dumped in the same landfill and contribute to the indentured servitude of the mentally handicapped.

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you found other ways to get around it! I'd be fine if the House folks did that way instead, but I highly, highly doubt they are.

[quistie.livejournal.com]

Having been to Japan before, I can honestly say a) recycling is a way of life in Japan, or at least in Tokyo b) recycling *is* complicated. Trash is separated into flammable/non-flammable (loose translation from yours truly), and that's not to mention glass/plastic/etc.

That being said...you know what else is complicated? Taxes! Let's not pay taxes because tax laws are genuinely confusing! You can't avoid life just because it's complicated and/or confusing. By that logic, one shouldn't bother getting married or having children or even applying for a job. All of those things are confusing and complicated.

Without putting everything Japanese on a pedestal, I can't help but wonder whether we as Americans (or just Californians) can ever hope to cope with a disaster quite as well. Are our building standards up to par? What about our emergency procedures? Japan is as ready as it can be, and even so the nuclear reactors are not really under control (so there is room for improvement there, clearly) right now. Can we do better?

[veloxe.livejournal.com]

Another reason recycling is simpler then taxes:

I know that the tax forms go into the flammable pile! It's so simple!

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Interesting! I've not seen it flammable/non-flammable before.

That being said...you know what else is complicated? Taxes!

Ha! I like your logic!

Without putting everything Japanese on a pedestal, I can't help but wonder whether we as Americans (or just Californians) can ever hope to cope with a disaster quite as well.

Know one of the things that most impressed me about Japan in all this? They had not one single case of looting. Why is it that we think it's okay to loot in an emergency? I mean, okay, zombie invasion, 99.9999% of humans dead, then I'd be fine with taking stuff from a store. But earthquake? Storm? When life on the other end will be back to normal? No.

Not to mention, even here in California our buildings aren't up to their standards. It does worry me a bit.

[quistie.livejournal.com]

I am totally keeping my eye on you in case of a zombie invasion...

There are far fewer high-rise buildings here in LA (and I would assume up north as well). Maybe we just assume that with our standards, high-rise buildings simply would not hold up in a major disaster. But if that's the case, who is to say our not-so-high-rise buildings would fare any better?

[thistle-chaser.livejournal.com]

Yes, thankfully we have few highrises around here. (There are likely more in San Francisco, but I rarely go there.)

And you have my word, if zombies invade I won't touch any of your stuff. Unless you're one of the zombies, then all bets are off. Please be the slow moving, mummy-armed type of zombie, not the speedyfast GOTCHA BRAINS! kind. D: