Stop the Insanity!

It's time for lunatics to stop strapping lawn chairs to helium balloons!



The Rev. Adelir Antonio de Carli set off from the Brazilian port city of Paranagua on April 20 strapped to 1,000 helium-filled balloons in an attempt to raise money to build a rest stop and worship center for truckers.
But the 41-year-old Roman Catholic priest soon lost contact with his ground team, and the cluster of yellow, orange, pink and white balloons was found in the Atlantic Ocean a day later.



Look, I'm for all for wacky stunts like this and even cheap air transit and of course raising money for worthy charities....BUT THIS SHIT HAS GOT TO STOP PRONTO!! THIS IS A TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE IDEA!

....a rest stop and worship center for truckers? wow.

Nurdles

Came across a new word and a new disaster in the paper this morning:

The Great Pacific Garbage Patch consists of two concentrations of mostly plastic garbage caught in swirling ocean gyres between the U.S. and Japan. Similar phenomena exist around the globe. But they aren't just floating landfills that can be fixed by removing trash. Why?

Plastic does not biodegrade. It undergoes a solar-driven process called photodegradation. The sun breaks down the plastic into smaller pieces called nurdles, which retain the plastic's polymer structure. So, much of the millions of tons of pollution in these garbage patches consist of ubiquitous nurdles in a watery soup. In the North Pacific gyre, plastics outnumber surface plankton six-to-one, according to Capt. Charles Moore, the leading researcher.
http://www.santacruzsentinel.com/ci_10012838

In my search for a picture of nurdles I found a great web site led by people who are actively devising solutions to this man-made catastrophe, check out:

http://www.crypticmoth.com/2006/11/plastic-vortex.html

On the Road Fun Facts

The band known as Extreme composed and recorded the rock ballad, 'More Than Words' in 1990 on the album, Extreme II: Pornograffiti.

hands-free

I'm already sick of everyone walking around looking like Lobot from Cloud City. The hands free cell phone law went into effect yesterday and seemingly normal people have become cyborgs. Not only that, California has banned teens from using cellular technology while driving....NO TEXT MESSAGING!!! (fucking fascists)

I'm still telephone free. No landline or cell phone. It's getting old though and although I'm saving a whole bunch of moolah, no one I love or hate can get in contact with me. Perhaps I just have Lobot envy.