Random

[magid]

Yesterday: first crocuses in bloom! Little yellow ones, with one purple outlier (color and location).

The store name is Barnes and Noble. Note the lack of final s. However, feel free to shop at your local independent bookstore :-)

Yesterday I pushed myself into some walking errands, and by the end, I was starting to feel tired. I thought it was maybe four miles, and felt lame, until I mapped it out online, and realized it was more than six and a half miles. Then I went to the gym and rode a bike for well over an hour. Yay, exercise.

The clocks changed this past weekend. I don't understand why the government moved the change later in the fall and earlier in the spring. There are so few hours of "regular" time that it seems silly to have it. Just switch over to whichever time, and stick with it, at this point. (I'm not cranky that the clocks changed right when Shabbat was getting to the perfect time, no, not at all.)

My newest RSS feed: Green_prophet, about living green (or at least, more green) in Israel. Given the state of things when I lived there (no recycling, lots of smoking, no mention of organics, etc), I'm particularly happy that this blog exists. (It looks like there are CSAs starting up, even!)

eta, 8:40 P.M.: As of today, no new LJs can be "basic." In other words, if you start an LJ now, you get advertising or you pay money. Thank goodness for grandfathered Basic accounts, but I still don't like this. Yes, I know it's a business. I still don't like coercion (nor advertising, when it comes to that).

Comments

[fetteredwolf.livejournal.com]

Did you know that my cousin (whom you met) and her husband are major contributors to the Green_Prophet blog?

[magid.livejournal.com]

I had no idea! Very cool.

[bitty.livejournal.com]

I am soooooo glad I set up LJs for work last week, then.

I *hate* advertising. myspace and facebook drive me up the wall.

[magid.livejournal.com]

Wow. Just under the wire, indeed.

I just love how they did it without telling anyone, changing the FAQ but not making announcements. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by whatever our new corporate overlords do, and yet for some reason I had kept my optimism until now.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I have no problem with LJ no longer giving stuff away, but the fact that they made the change so silently is pretty sucky.

[magid.livejournal.com]

I guess I'm still in that old LJ brain, the one where it was all about community for all, sweetness and light. And unicorns. And rainbows. No, wait, not rainbows, they can be evil. But definitely unicorns.

I hate that there's so much advertising around, making us more and more into what people are seen as today, consumers. In the end, though, it's their company, they make the rules. I just wish they were more upfront about rules changes, as you say.

[surrealestate.livejournal.com]

I've always had a paid or perm account, so I've never seen the ads, and really, I can't fault them for saying that if you're getting it for free, they need to compensate. They are a business, after all, that costs real money to run. And $20/year is not a lot of money.

Not being open about it, though, was a really bad plan, made worse by the poor guy they had responding to comments on the subject, who was either under orders to avoid the truth at all costs, very stupid, or some combination, I don't know. Reading/skimming through the comment threads was grotesquely fascinating.

[hrafn.livejournal.com]

Meet the new boss, same as the old one. I'm glad my paid account ran out several months ago.

[neorock.livejournal.com]

It's happening slowly, but some things are improving...

There are CSAs, not many, but they exist. Lots of organic supermarkets are opening all over the place. Consumers are getting used to the idea that it's worth paying more money and buying not as "pretty" fruits vegetables and meat, but understanding it isn't full of garbage.

In November the public smoking ban was enforced and today no one smokes anywhere, not bars, not restaurants, not in any public buildings and places, it's nice. (They were able to get close to full and immediate adherence by letting people affected by second hand smoke sue both the business owner and the smoker. Two big restaurants lost suit and paid 100k damages and the next day Israel became smoke-free.)

There's paper and plastic bottle recycling in most places, cans are collected by homeless people for the deposit money and there are places to drop used batteries and light bulbs and such, though not enough.

There's no glass recycling and the can people refuse to take other cans that aren't soda cans.

I wish people knew more about composting.

The one innovative thing about this country is its reusing of water. Israel currently recycles and reuses 70% of its water and has set the goal of 100% in the coming years...

Since the 50s the majority of homes are heated by solar panel powered boilers...

In the next few years Israel will be home to the most ambitious electric car experiment yet. I'm sure you've heard about it...

[magid.livejournal.com]

It doesn't sound slow to me, somehow. I hadn't heard about the smoking ban, and that's huge. When I was there last spring, it was still tons of smokers everywhere, just as I remembered, and that was one of the bigger negatives for me. (I've heard that the only reason there aren't rabbinic bans on smoking is that people wouldn't follow it, even though it's such an obvious health risk. I wonder if this will lead to that?)

CSAs make me particularly happy, but greater acceptance of organic is key, I think, to changing how agriculture is done (I don't know enough about that in Israel, though I get the impression that there isn't the same level of huge agribusiness as there is here.). It would be incredibly cool to pick up a share year round, like CA, and maybe have olives and lemons. (I'm sure there's other things I'd be giving up, but the allure of the exotic being local...)

When I was growing up, the only thing that the town recycled was glass, so it sounds wrong-way-front to have plastic recycling but not glass. Glass is much more inert than plastic, though, so if there's going to be recycling of only one (for now), I'm glad it's plastic.

Composting isn't trivial in an apartment, in having somewhere to put a bin that's accessible yet out of the way, and having a use for the end product; a few plants in pots aren't really going to use up that much compost. Cambridge just started an experiment in municipal composting. I'm very curious to see how it works out.

Israel's always been very conscious of water. And I love seeing all the dudai shemesh on the roofs.

I haven't heard about the electric car experiment. What's the plan?

[neorock.livejournal.com]

First, I humbly invite you to peak into my Tel Aviv balcony... (public album, no need to sign up to view

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2072871&l=283c2&id=1700358

Second, check out "Israel's only socially conscious organic csa" (though I've heard of more already...) I'm sure you can see examples of the weekly offerings...

http://www.or-gani.org.il/


and finally, the most ambitious thing to happen to the electric car ever... (pardon the dated article, lots of new developments have occurred since)...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/21/world/middleeast/21israel.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

[magid.livejournal.com]

I am officially envious of your balcony. Totally gorgeous. (I lived in Jerusalem, years ago, and my memories are of smaller ones, and ones not used nearly so horticulturally as yours.)

The CSA sounds yummy. Of course, tomatoes and cucumbers sound luxurious right now, with the earliest signs of spring just starting, barely any green showing at all.

Wow. Electric cars for Israel do make sense, as long as the infrastructure is there, and with the government committed to making sure the infrastructure will be, it sounds like a win all around.