Now IS The Time To Come To The Aid...Of Our Planet....

Over the last 5-6 weeks or so I had the chance to watch a new network brought to us by the Discovery family of channels. 'Planet Green" Planet Green was put on to replace a very popular Discovery Home. I must admit in all fairness I had never watched Discovery Home much, about the only show I cared for they had was "Holmes on Homes" It follows the adventures of Mike Holmes Contractor extraordinar. His mission is to go into jobs that had been either never finished or done very wrong by the original contractors and fix whatever needs fixing and fix it he way it should have been done in the first place. Simply put he treats each project like it was his own home and dose the job they way he would if it was his own place. But I digress; the emphasis of this is the replacing of Discovery Home. I have both watched many of the shows and been very active on the message boards. The concept of the network is excellent. a network devoted to everything green and sustainable, renewable and energy efficient. While the grand idea is noble, the execution leaves some to be desired. The sudden replacement of one network with a another with little or no warning is not a good start. The only way I knew about it was I read about it in my monthly magazine from Dish network, and was waiting to see what they were doing. Over all I do like the channel, they do have several shows which at this point I seen no use for, however time will tell. The important thing is that they work to bring in people who used to watch Discovery home and have turned off the new programing, mostly because they felt that wasn't fair to just kill a popular shows like Holmes on Homes, and a couple of theres that have been mentioned in the message boards, to either them or the show. I have expressed a similar opinion on the message boards along with other ideas for improving both the content of the shows and and the web site.

Over the last few years being "Green" has become socially acceptable and a financial necessity as well as environmently.too.
Here in my corner of Western New York, Wind power is all the rage theses days. There are wind turbines up in Buffalo, in Towanada a place once known for some of the worst pollution in the area, due to Bethlehem; Steel , which is now long closed, and the towers, if there even still there now stand empty with no smoke. replaced with wind turbines generating electrically. There are a number of other windmill farms in the area. In fact my five corners of Centerville is in the process of getting, I believe between 50-75 or so windmills put in in the surrounding area. I have come out in favor of them. As with any project like this there are always the naysayers, who for whatever reason are opposed to the project. While i haven't been as actively involved in the process as I would have liked to have been, The reports I've gotten is that is going well, I know they have a number of windmills up already and have seen them, and have no problems them.

The push for more fuel efficient cars has put the care makers on notice. if they don't make what the public needs they won't buy anything at all. The rise in gas price has hurt everyone across the board. A while ago a car that did 30-40 miles per gallon was considered pretty good. Now the push is to see how far we can stretch the millage, There are a number of hybrid cars, cars that run on both electric engines and when the hit a certain speed, the gas engine kicks in, the gas millage is way up and the overall appeal of the car is also up.
As the resources of the world are used up and unrepairable damage is done to the planet, the more important it is to take more drastic measures now. The idea that in 10-15 years we find that some of the prognosis that have been made by the scientist were not as dire as first thought,We would still be ahead of the game, with cleaner air and more economical ways of living.
Other areas which need serious work on being more consumer friendly are alternative power supplies, such as wind, and solar, and geothermal. The push for residential plug and play windmills and solar systems and other form of energy conservation needs to also bring the price down to where it is possible for a average family to afford to put in a system with minimum effort and a relatively quick payback. Of course the payback will be the and environment and the community.

There are many people who have a passion for the Environment and also for all things mechanical and a desire to push the envelope to see what can be built and actually work , have built many vehicles that run on alternative fuels, usually batteries, and have shown that they are viable, with more research and backing and promoting, many of theses vehicles could and should find they're way into the mainstream and compete successfully with traditional versions of their type, The vehicles I'm thinking of range from snowmobiles, to 4 wheelers and other types of vehicles not traditionally thought of in the same breath as Environmentally friendly .

The point is all means of conserving the resources of the planet need to be seriously considered. Not just the ones that are politically correct and have the highest profile, and bring in the biggest venture capitalist to help finance it. One would do well to remember that some of the giants of today and in the last 100 years started out in garages. The only difference is now its much harder to get out of the garage.


I would urge anyone who can get Planet green on the tv to please give it a look at, while there are a number of shows who's value I question, there are several shows which are interesting and informative and while your there participate in the web site .While it has its own set of issues it still need to be looked at and commented on. I realize that is is a bit of out character for me to recommend something so directly its important to both support the network and in so doing hopefully eventually help support the planet itself.

http://planetgreen.discovery.com/

And the Winner is....Not US....

The time as come to wax poetically, or just rant... on and on,,,,,,,,,,

I have several pet issues, which I've covered in some detail. I don't want to bore you by going over ground you can just as easily read by clicking on my archives.
As you may know the Oscars are coming up very soon, I haven't watched a Oscar show in many years, I've also not watched any awards show for music in at least as many years.
I haven't let myself get pulled into the pettiness and shallowness and gaudiness of of toady's commercialism . While its hard to completely ignore the advertisements and the push to get you to buy into a system where you want it before you even know what it dose. It can be done. The thing to do is realize that 99% of the "stuff" that is pushed into the market is either useless or just plain junk that should never have ever been brought to market in the first place . I have been heard many a times, when a commercial come on, saying to whoever was around, usually myself,"If you believe that, I've got some Farmland in the Middle of the Ocean to Sell YOU" meaning they're full of" whatever adjective you want to insert.". and I don't believe one word of their BS.

This morning my seven year old daughter wrote up a list of item she wanted for her birthday this spring,there were only three, but the point is, She saw them all advertised on tv this morning and decided based on one 30 second spot that she wanted them. Of course I know by the time her birthday comes around she'll probably forgotten about them, but it bring home the point about people particularly young kids thinking they have to have every new thing that they see, whether they need it or not. Kids are not he only who fall into this trap. Many adults of the last couple of generations have grown up with advertising blasting at them from the time they wake up in the morning, till they go to bed at night. They think they have to have every new do-dad that is shown them. weather they need it or not..

The basic of the new economy is consumerism and a throw away mentality, that is use something once and throw it away. It all started after WWII during the prosperity of the 1950's when the US economy was a giant in the world, exporting more then we were importing and selling goods all over the world. Science was making new discoveries every day and they were trickling down to the consumers at unbelievable rate. Consumers were bombarded with a whole new world of goods and experiences that had never dreamed of, soon they had more stuff then they knew what to do with.All that new stuff has to go somewhere when is being replaced, It used to take 10 plus years before something needed replacing, now almost anything needs replacing in two -three years; either because it stops working entirely or because its so outdated its useless it has to go.

Technology was moved so faster that its impossible to keep up with it. Computers that cost $3,000.00 10 tears ago, are now relics sitting in the back of a closet collecting dust, while some of the faster of the older machine can be used as servers and linux boxes, the vast majority are consigned to the giant tech pile of trash we as a world are building everyday.

All of this is not even counting the push for alternative means of generating energy. windmills, solar, ect, and some really off the wall stuff that if implemented with the proper backing and funding and management could actually work, People have a knee-jerk reaction to new ideas, if we don't as a world and as a country step back and reexamine every idea to help save our world or we'll be digging our way out of a massive pile of Tech junk the suffocating us so we can't breathe what air there is.

I realize that this is a pretty broad indictment of the economic system which we've come to know and love. I think that one to take a step back and reevaluate what they're spending their time and money on in the way of contributing to the national economy.
Well, I guess thats my rant for this week, I hope it give folks some ideas of things they should think about...

And if we're not very careful the winner will not be us...