George’s slightly off-center view of the world
I’m glad to have been a teenager in the time before cell phones and GPS tracking allowed parents to always know where their kids were. And as a parent of now-grown daughters, well, if you don’t want to know the answer, don’t ask the question.
Here are some useful smartphone apps, and not just for travelers. But don’t use them when you’re crossing a busy street.
ExxonMobil touts its success in extracting natural gas by fracking – hydraulic fracturing. They also want us to know how safe and inconsequential to the surroundings it is. But just in case, ExxonMobil’s CEO Rex Tillerson is suing to prevent fracking near his property in Texas. It would impinge on his “rural lifestyle.”
The economy in California has been getting better. Californians are increasing their production of trash: 33.2 million tons in 2015, compared to 31.2 million tons the previous year. That’s 4.7 pounds per person per day, up from 4.5 pounds in 2014. Here in Sonoma County, we did much better, swelling our output to 4.3 pounds per person per day, 19.4% more than 2014’s 3.6 pounds, but still less than the state as a whole. California overall had a meager increase of less than half a percent.
According to Michael Mann, a climatologist at Penn State University, “The impacts of climate change are no longer subtle. They are playing out before us, in real time. The 2015 numbers drive that home.”
The Planet Earth set several records in 2015:
Not to worry though. The Earth doesn’t care. It was OK before humans arrived and will recover and be just fine after we’re gone.
Congratulations if you live on the West Coast. You are in the least stereotypical region of the United States! Anyway, that’s how people in other countries view us: “Americans are highly religious and wealthy consumers who spend their time firing guns, driving vehicles, stuffing their faces, watching reality TV, and are averse to traveling or learning about anything beyond their borders.”
A real estate blog did some research and ranked the fifty states from most-to-least stereotypical. The state of Washington is number 41, California is 45, and Oregon at number 49 is the second-least stereotypical state.
How safe is air travel, really? We are at the height of the vacation-travel season. Here is something to think about at the airport, while you’re waiting in line for the security screening: “How (and How Often) Airplane Bathrooms Are Cleaned”
