Oxygen from Books
Margaret Atwood is one of my all-time favorite authors, not just for her position in promoting the fight against library cuts here in Toronto.
Today’s Toronto Star carries a quotation from a book printed on paper made from straw in which Atwood says “Human beings need oxygen, and forests produce it; printed books require paper, but paper need not be made from virgin forests.”
This strikes me as an odd statement to make.
My understanding of photo-synthesis is that almost all types of vegetable matter take in carbon di-oxide during the day and expire oxygen.
So straw, trees, carrots and rhododendrons all take part in creating oxygen. Swapping trees for grasses doesn’t add up to a hill of beans unless someone does the maths.
- For example, maybe grasses, pound for pound, per day, produce more oxygen than trees.
- For example, maybe grasses, acre for acre, per day, produce more oxygen than trees.
Discussing leaves leaves aside, of course, the whole arena of electronic books
Tags: Atwood, Books, Chris, ChrisRewards, Custom, CustomSearchControl, Discussing, Element, Google, Greaves, Human, Loading, Margaret, Oxygen, Star, Swapping, Talk, Today’s, Toronto
A Device that Will Limit the Maximum Speed of Any Car …
You’ll see articles like this every now and then in papers like the Toronto Star.
A well-meaning but slow-thinking member of parliament gets a bit of traction in the local press.
But we can stop and think.
Who are these young hoods who are blasting along city streets at 150 KM/hour?
They are not my little-old-widow friend who has run out of smokes and is desperate to get to the corner store.
They are not the harried businessman racing home with a full bladder.
They are young guys with spare time and cash, keen to get under-the-hood and fine-tune their vehicles.
For whom removing or adjusting such a device will be child’s play once someone posts instructions on the internet.
Installing such a device will be expensive – development costs alone – and won’t be retro-fitted to cars.
On top of that the device is aimed at perhaps 0.001 percent (that’s 0.00001 as a fraction of the population) of vehicles on the road.
- It’s a people problem, not a machine problem.
- So the solution must be a people solution.
Tags: Chris, ChrisRewards, Custom, CustomSearchControl, Device, Element, Google, Greaves, Installing, It’s, Limit, Loading, Maximum, Speed, Star, Talk, Toronto, Tweet
It’s Back to Driving School for Halton Police
Says the Toronto Star.
Me? I’d rather their editors started work.
The leading text of the article says it all:-
So many Halton police cruisers have been involved in crashes that the force has instituted mandatory driving training for its officers.
In the first six months of this year, police cars were involved in 70 accidents, …
Yep!
- In paragraph one they are “crashes”.
- By paragraph two they are “accidents”.
And note that it’s NOT about the number of events.
It’s the muddled thinking that allows us to drop into an irresponsible pit of reduced responsibility.
One again, cars don’t crash; drivers crash cars.
Paragraph three:-
Most of this year’s crashes, 41 of the 70, were classified as preventable.
I’m prepared to bet that, when the analysis is made, 100% of collisions are foreseeable and therefore preventable.
I understand the sometime-urgent nature of police calls.
I accept the speeds sometimes-necessarily above speed limits of regular prudence.
But always, police or not, they are crashes or collisions.
They are not accidents.
Tags: Chris, ChrisRewards, Custom, CustomSearchControl, Driving, Element, Google, Greaves, Halton, It’s, Loading, Paragraph, Police, Says, School, Star, Talk, Toronto
It’s Back to Driving School for Halton Police
Says the Toronto Star .
Me? I’d rather their editors started work.
The leading text of the article says it all:-
So many Halton police cruisers have been involved in crashes that the force has instituted mandatory driving training for its officers.
In the first six months of this year, police cars were involved in 70 accidents, …
Yep!
- In paragraph one they are “crashes”.
- By paragraph two they are “accidents”.
And note that it’s NOT about the number of events.
It’s the muddled thinking that allows us to drop into an irresponsible pit of reduced responsibility.
One again, cars don’t crash; drivers crash cars.
Paragraph three:-
Most of this year’s crashes, 41 of the 70, were classified as preventable.
I’m prepared to bet that, when the analysis is made, 100% of collisions are foreseeable and therefore preventable.
I understand the sometime-urgent nature of police calls.
I accept the speeds sometimes-necessarily above speed limits of regular prudence.
But always, police or not, they are crashes or collisions.
They are not accidents.
Tags: Chris, ChrisRewards, Custom, CustomSearchControl, Driving, Element, Google, Greaves, Halton, It’s, Loading, Paragraph, Police, Says, School, Star, Talk, Toronto
