thanks for the link to that article, it was very interesting. for those who are interested, the only bibliographical info i could find on the article was that it was published in aug. '92. (i searched in discover's archives.) it seems odd to me that discover would put this article on the web without providing any bibliographical info for it. (nothing on the page even says that it's from discover mag. that piece of essential info came from the original post!) thanks again.
While your sentiment is undoubtedly worthwhile, it would probably be a good idea to avoid spelling mistakes when criticizing others' spelling and grammar.
I loved the darkness and nostalgia of Martian Chronicles. What great stuff. I haven't noticed anyone mentioning Dandelion Wine, which I found absolutely exhilirating. I wanted to be that kid, to have summers like he did. Years after I had first started reading RB, and some time after I finally read 100 Years of Solitude and the phrase "magic realism" started appearing everywhere, something made me think, hey RB was writing US magic realism a long time ago.
So, I have some RB questions for you guys:
The Martian Chronicles I read was a paperback with some wild line drawing illustrations in it. The cover had one of these line drawings printed on an orange background that was surrounded by a white border. I haven't seen these line drawings in any MC versions that I have run into since, and I would love to get a hold of that version again. Can anyone help me with a publisher/date etc?
I have a friend who is doing his grad field work in the tropics and is out in the rain every night looking for frogs and lizards. I wanted to get him, as a gift, a copy of the story of the < poor recall> scouting team sent to find out what happened to the colonists on planet insert-name-here. It was always raining on this planet. Raining and raining and raining until people went crazy and committed suicide, and then they would get gobbled up pretty quickly by the incredibly fast-growing plant life </poor recall>. Can anyone help me with a story name/collection name so I can get a copy for my friend? Thanks!
Kudos to you. Any "eco-freak" who moderates you down is an ignorant "eco-freak" because your point is a good one. In fact, your point is very much more "eco-freak"y than that of someone advocating recycling!;) That being said, why did you have to make your point with such flame-ish language and name calling? Furthermore, though I agree that the issue needs more thought than knee-jerk reaction, I doubt that the "garbage problem" is as non-existent as you claim it to be. Does anyone out there have some nice, solid numbers (as opposed to agendas)?
It wasn't too long ago that I too thought recycling was the most damned important thing for an environmentally-friendly person to do. Fortunately, a wise, more rational friend pointed out that as soon as you start including energy into your resource calculations, recycling is often Not a Good Thing (tm). Somehow the word "recycling" got so much airtime in the U.S. that it has embraced and extended its much more important colleagues: reduce and reuse. This phenomenon is in plain view in the comments for this article. People are using "recycle" to mean everything from breaking down into elemental components and rebuilding to recharging the battery. It would be easy enough to develop a corporate-conspiracy theory for this phenomenon (no corporation ever benefits from reducing/reusing), but that would be silly. Or would it?
So come on folks, use the right word for the idea you want to express. When promoting resource conservation (including energy):
Which made me think, well, I did read the article, maybe not slowly enough, though. So back I went. And now I think it was he who didn't read it slowly enough:
Vector Inspector:
The phone isn't even really meant to be disposable: Part of it is credit card shaped so it can be swiped through and given more air time. You can keep using this sucker 'till the battery dies..
Article:
~~~~~~~
...so inexpensively that they could be sold for a fixed amount of air time... and then tossed in the garbage once their minutes have been used up.
...further down, about the credit card option that Vector Inspector mentions:
It would require a longer-lasting power source than the 60-minute battery Ms. Altschul envisions with the purely disposable cell phone.
~~~~~~~~~~
So folks, let's be sure to recognize this beast for what it is!
Ok, folks, we need some facts here. A lot of people are claiming (though it sounds a lot more like hoping) that those cardboard-box cameras are reused/reprocessed/re-something (other than recycled ! the distinction is very important).
One of the first posters claimed to have worked in a photo shop where these thing were routinely thrown out.
Does anyone else out there have some facts/direct personal knowledge about what happens to these things? If so, please enlighten us!
Please don't tell me these things will actually get thrown out! Sure, both the inventor and the product sound cool, but we really shouldn't be making more one-use only gadgets. This seems like a poster-product for a European policy (proposed or actual?) I once heard about: making product manufacturers take responsibility for the garbage they produce (packaging, etc.). As things stand now, society subsidizes manufacturers who produce garbage-intensive (and other resource-hogging) goods. They make the stuff, get the profit, we have some fun, and then we pay for it be hauled away and stored (as well as a bunch of other "externalities"). Shouldn't the burden be shared a little more equitably? Since manufacturers never have to deal with the disposing of their items, there are no incentives for them to reduce garbage production. How different would Ms. Altschul's throw-away-cell-phone look if she knew that she would have to pay for dealing with them after they're used? This kind of thing sure makes the U.S. look hypocritical when we try to tell the rest of the world to slow population growth or forest felling.
whoa. this is wild. it's there all right. no question about it. i'm psyched about that. but...um... how did it get there? is this legal? (copyrights etc) how does the author feel about this? well, i bought a copy of this a while back, so i've paid some some dues at least. now i can make links galore within the text. yay.
i'm no physicist, but the idea of gaining any benefit from "eating nuclear waste" sounds like some serious physics/chemistry confusion. i could see the point of "eating" and breaking down toxic (to someone/thing else) organic compounds...such that after being eaten they are no longer toxic. but nuclear waste...it just keeps on going and going, half-lifing away, right?
now, if you could get them to ingest the stuff, concentrate it, not sh*t it out, and then on some chemical cue, all gather in the same place, hey, you've got a refinement scheme (or at least a way to collect the waste before sticking it in a barrel and burying it somewhere for the next x-thousand/million years).
Slashdot Mirror
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thanks for the help q #2. i'm pretty amazed that i received even one response. i figured that i had pretty much relegated myself to "last post."
So, I have some RB questions for you guys:
- The Martian Chronicles I read was a paperback with some wild line drawing illustrations in it. The cover had one of these line drawings printed on an orange background that was surrounded by a white border. I haven't seen these line drawings in any MC versions that I have run into since, and I would love to get a hold of that version again. Can anyone help me with a publisher/date etc?
- I have a friend who is doing his grad field work in the tropics and is out in the rain every night looking for frogs and lizards. I wanted to get him, as a gift, a copy of the story of the < poor recall> scouting team sent to find out what happened to the colonists on planet insert-name-here. It was always raining on this planet. Raining and raining and raining until people went crazy and committed suicide, and then they would get gobbled up pretty quickly by the incredibly fast-growing plant life <
/poor recall>. Can anyone help me with a story name/collection name so I can get a copy for my friend? Thanks!
RB get well soon!Kudos to you. Any "eco-freak" who moderates you down is an ignorant "eco-freak" because your point is a good one. In fact, your point is very much more "eco-freak"y than that of someone advocating recycling! ;) That being said, why did you have to make your point with such flame-ish language and name calling? Furthermore, though I agree that the issue needs more thought than knee-jerk reaction, I doubt that the "garbage problem" is as non-existent as you claim it to be. Does anyone out there have some nice, solid numbers (as opposed to agendas)?
It wasn't too long ago that I too thought recycling was the most damned important thing for an environmentally-friendly person to do. Fortunately, a wise, more rational friend pointed out that as soon as you start including energy into your resource calculations, recycling is often Not a Good Thing (tm). Somehow the word "recycling" got so much airtime in the U.S. that it has embraced and extended its much more important colleagues: reduce and reuse. This phenomenon is in plain view in the comments for this article. People are using "recycle" to mean everything from breaking down into elemental components and rebuilding to recharging the battery. It would be easy enough to develop a corporate-conspiracy theory for this phenomenon (no corporation ever benefits from reducing/reusing), but that would be silly. Or would it?
So come on folks, use the right word for the idea you want to express. When promoting resource conservation (including energy):
reduce >> reuse >>>>> recycle.
Folks, read the article.
Which made me think, well, I did read the article, maybe not slowly enough, though. So back I went. And now I think it was he who didn't read it slowly enough:
Vector Inspector:
The phone isn't even really meant to be disposable: Part of it is credit card shaped so it can be swiped through and given more air time. You can keep using this sucker 'till the battery dies..
Article:
~~~~~~~
It would require a longer-lasting power source than the 60-minute battery Ms. Altschul envisions with the purely disposable cell phone.
~~~~~~~~~~
So folks, let's be sure to recognize this beast for what it is!
One of the first posters claimed to have worked in a photo shop where these thing were routinely thrown out.
Does anyone else out there have some facts/direct personal knowledge about what happens to these things? If so, please enlighten us!
whoa. this is wild. it's there all right. no question about it. i'm psyched about that. but...um... how did it get there? is this legal? (copyrights etc) how does the author feel about this? well, i bought a copy of this a while back, so i've paid some some dues at least. now i can make links galore within the text. yay.
i'm no physicist, but the idea of gaining any benefit from "eating nuclear waste" sounds like some serious physics/chemistry confusion. i could see the point of "eating" and breaking down toxic (to someone/thing else) organic compounds...such that after being eaten they are no longer toxic. but nuclear waste...it just keeps on going and going, half-lifing away, right?
now, if you could get them to ingest the stuff, concentrate it, not sh*t it out, and then on some chemical cue, all gather in the same place, hey, you've got a refinement scheme (or at least a way to collect the waste before sticking it in a barrel and burying it somewhere for the next x-thousand/million years).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~