In Cash We Trust

I haven't been able to give this blog as much attention as I had hoped. Sorry about that - to the few of you that check in on it from time to time. My life has been super busy as of late, and real life always takes priority over blogs. That's as it should be.

I have to say that this is one of the things I'm finding disturbing at the moment. The whole Michael Jackson trial thing. I have a distinct feeling that this whole case will come down to it being nothing but circumstancial evidence and prove nothing. I'm not reading a lot about it, but what I am suggests that it's just a whole lot of people pointing fingers at each other saying "he/she did that bad thing!" Whether or not Michael Jackson showed kids porn, gave them alcohol, and molested them? We may never know the truth. Lawyers are involved now, which tends to send truth scurrying back to the darkest corners it can find, and brings forth half-truths and little white lies.

Which brings another interesting point to my mind - why do they have you swear on the bible? "I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so help me God" is what they say, isn't it? What if you are agnostic or hold a different belief than what is written in the bible? I know it's a crime to commit perjury, but for some people that only matters if they get caught in the lie. And, if they don't consider it a "sin" because they don't believe in the "God" they are swearing to... hmmm.

Maybe we should have people swear on something more important to them? Like their wallets.

Paper or Plastic?

I like to recycle. I pride myself on the fact that I use cloth diapers (most of the time) on my kid, and that when we put the trash out each week we have two big overflowing bins of recycling, and only one garbage can that's often only about half-full. For the most part, I toss every little scrap of paper, plastic, aluminum, or styrafoam that I don't want anymore into the bin. And I have bins all over the house for recycling, so there's not much excuse for anyone to toss it in the trash instead. I like the thought that I'm contributing to this world having a better future. It's not much, but it's a little thing I can do. I also know that my area actually does take it to a recycle center. I've heard that some of the other collection services have you sort it all out, get picky about what they'll even take, and then just take it to the dumpster anyway. Bastards.

But what's starting to really annoy me is how much stuff I am recycling that is plastic or styrafoam. Plastic especially. I see a lot of plastic. My groceries come in plastic bags, which we use as liners for our smaller trash bins. We get way more than we need for that purpose though, so every so often I have a huge bunch of them that I don't have a use for. Fortunately, the store I buy from has a bin where I can bring them to, since that's one thing my recycle collectors won't take. Mind you, I don't even see a stack of paper bags at the grocers anymore. Not that I'd trust the baggers to bag them right anymore anyway, but that's another rant altogether.

But there's all the other crap that I do put in the recycle bin. Cookies come in plastic tubs that keep them all lined up. And then those tubs are wrapped in plastic to keep them "fresh", and that plastic isn't recycleable. Soda comes in cans or plastic containers for the most part. I almost feel more responsible drinking my beer which at least comes in glass bottles!

Is melting down this plastic to make other stuff out of it actually better than some of the stuff we were using say, fifty years ago? Or is it just that plastic is cheap and the saving the environment just isn't good for a company's profit margin? Oh, and planting a few trees doesn't actually make up for putting extra pollutants into the air. No matter how nice it might look in the annual report.

I'm getting really sick and tired of people who think time is money and don't give a damned about anything that doesn't affect them right now. Does no one care anymore? What kind of a world will this be for my son? Or his children, for that matter?