She’s 16 and very cute, though she has a temper. In fact, she is correct. The adults of the world are ruining the environment, and her generation and beyond will need to repair it. While the outcomes are irrefutable the contributing issues are complex. While there is no excuse for wrecking the environment, there are reasons why adults are not more proactive.
People need jobs or they cannot live. Many of these jobs involve natural resources. Canada, for example, has oil in the ground that has been traditionally extracted and sold to customers around the world. If we stop the burning of oil completely, these jobs will disappear and people’s lives and families will be destroyed. While this can change, in the long run, we have no mechanism to do this yet.
I have heard about wabi-sabi before but have not grasped the meaning. This article grasps the concepts.
Originating in Taoism during China’s Song dynasty (960-1279) before being passed onto Zen Buddhism, wabi-sabi was originally seen as an austere, restrained form of appreciation. Today it encapsulates a more relaxed acceptance of transience, nature and melancholy, favouring the imperfect and incomplete in everything, from architecture to pottery to flower arranging.
Wabi, which roughly means ‘the elegant beauty of humble simplicity’, and sabi, which means ‘the passing of time and subsequent deterioration’, were combined to form a sense unique to Japan and pivotal to Japanese culture. But just as Buddhist monks believed that words were the enemy of understanding, this description can only scratch the surface of the topic.
Little Giant 554405 VCMA-15 non-submersible condensate pump, removed from black base. Output tube, pump intake and impeller (large round part). You can see the impeller shaft through the intake windows.
Even the most elementary animals do not defecate where they live. Even so, their scat is biodegradable and is quickly transformed to base organic waste by microbes. This is natural. Man, on the other hand, has created a remarkable material: plastic. Remarkable, yes, but it is inorganic and as it does not break down to an organic waste, it is polluting the earth and mankind. Ironically, we are eating our own waste.
The Oukei TW-2700-E1 Table Tennis Training Machine is a consumer grade serving machine. It stopped working due to an out of aligned spring. Photo 1 by Don Tai
My neighbour is hard working and has few hobbies. She loves table tennis but has no partner, so she bought a table tennis machine, which shoots balls at her. This machine, an Oukei TW-2700-E1, she loves, allows her to return balls without help from the family. It was unfortunate when the machine began jamming. I opted to fix the machine, and she was grateful to have it back in service. It turned out the fix was very simple, but rendered the machine unusable.
It had to happen sometime, and the time is now. As of 2017 Jan 01 China is refusing to accept a large proportion of the West’s plastic waste. Consumption in the West has depended on China for decades. Now China makes new pretty things, the West uses them, creates a lot of garbage, then ships a proportion of the garbage plastic back to China for recycling. This needs to stop, and I thank China for pushing us to a better solution to our rampant consumption.
The Moyu Cube Stand has some clever design, and it looks really good as well. The stand came with the WeiLong GTS cube. photo 1 by Don Tai
Bought, Little Weed did, yet another cube. This was because the new cube had great reviews from a reputable company, and was supposed to be fast. He was not disappointed. The new cube, a Weilong GTS from MoYu, came with 2 plastic cube stands, convenient for displaying the cube. Or are they really just cube stands?
We save money by automating, or so the City of Toronto politicians say. For the last couple of years there has been changes to our weekly garbage pickup, specifically trucks that have large claws that pick up our garbage cans and dump our garbage into the truck, all without the operator leaving his seat. There is also only one guy on the truck, saving labour costs. Of course there are other details to note.
Inside a Solid Waste drop-in Depot, Toronto, Canada. Garbage everywhere.
Not all garbage is disposed of in the same matter. Here in Toronto, Canada we have fairly strict rules of garbage disposal. There are organics, recyclables and yard waste, all with their special pickup schedules. And then there the pickup for “the rest”, that that is destined for land fill, tilled down and buried into some hill, whereabouts unknown. Old shingles from my recent shingling task needed to be disposed of, so off to the Toronto Solid Waste Drop-off Depot I went.
