Posts Tagged ‘Environment’

11 items.

Long Hot Shower

by Seraphine Khorana on August 1st, 2010
Posted In: Comics
Long Hot Shower

My final exam is this week. I also have to do a final project incorporating everything I’ve learned (or should have learned) in Microsoft Office Professional 2010. I’m almost finished. Yay! I haven’t decided whether to take classes this fall or not, but I need to decide tout de suite because fall semester starts in two weeks.

You can’t just beat a team, you have to leave a lasting impression in their minds so they never want to see you again.
Quotation from Mia Hamm

The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.
Quotation from Friedrich Nietzsche

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Mind Your Surroundings

by Seraphine Khorana on June 18th, 2010
Posted In: Comics
Mind Your Surroundings

The tragic oil “spill” in the Gulf of Mexico continues. BP CEO Tony Hayward’s congressional hearing this week was a disappointment. I wanted him to tell Congress that BP takes every precaution to prevent accidents like this. I wanted to hear that safety and protecting the environment is as important to him as profits. After all, Mr. Hayward was appointed in 2007 to “clean up” BP after the Texas City refinery fire of 2005 and the Prudhoe Bay pipeline spills that occured the following year. But instead of changing the penny-pinching corporate culture of BP, he cut expenses and eliminated 7,500 jobs.

Does America’s rightous indignation make you feel uncomfortable? It does me. Two months ago, we were angry at Goldman Sachs. BP is just the villain du jour. The underlying problem is we– as a society– tolerate expediency over having to make difficult choices. Too many of us think it’s ok to use torture as a tool in the war against terrorism. Why do Republicans and Democrats point fingers at each other rather than fix the health care system or Social Security? Where is the indignation over having 300,000 homeless children in California?
Doing the right thing proactively is always less costly and painful than damage control after something bad happens.

Far From Gulf, a Spill Scourge 5 Decades Old (The New York Times) “The Niger Delta, where the wealth underground is out of all proportion with the poverty on the surface, has endured the equivalent of the Exxon Valdez spill every year for 50 years.”

Be inspired by: The Excitement is Building (on Habitat for Humanity) “Everyone is pretty ordinary. No divas or superstars. But together we make a very big difference.”

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Water is Water is Water

by Seraphine Khorana on May 26th, 2010
Posted In: Comics
Water is Water is Water

Water is water is water. Until you mix it with oil. Water and oil do not mix, and that’s a lesson we are learning again and again… and again.
The 10-million gallon Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska 21 years ago isn’t even in the top 30 oil spills of all time. Remember when Iraq opened the spigots on several Kuwaiti oil tankers in 1991? That spill topped 520 million gallons. A rig in Mexico collapsed in 1980 and spilled 30,000 gallons of oil into the ocean every day for a year. Bigger oil spills have occurred in France, Russia, Angola, Canada, Italy and in the Persian Gulf.
The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill on America’s Gulf coast is “officially” leaking 5,000 gallons a day, but “Steven Wereley, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at Perdue University, told the House Energy and Commerce Committee that by his calculations… the spill appears to be closer to 72,000 barrels per day–or more than 3 million gallons” of oil per day.
Tomorrow, the Deepwater Horizon will become the second worst oil spill in history. There is no good news in this.
My wish is that we could turn oil into water and let fishes be fishes.

The world’s five largest publicly traded oil companies [are] on track to earn more than $100 billion before year’s end. Yet, at the same time that Big Oil’s bottom line is going up, so are Americans’ energy costs.
Quotation from Allyson Schwartz

I hear one message- don’t blame me.
Quotation from Sen. John Barrasso, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. (BP blames Transocean Ltd. and Transocean Ltd. blames BP… or maybe it was Halliburton Inc. Some blame the Republicans while others blame President Barack Obama)

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A Powerless World

by Seraphine Khorana on April 24th, 2010
Posted In: Comics
A Powerless World

Not everything is fixable. I don’t now which is worse- knowing something can’t be fixed, or knowing it can be fixed and doing nothing about it. Either way, it translates into feelings of uselessness and inadequacy. And why is it so easy to put off important things until tomorrow, when fixing them today would be much less painless.

“Procrastination” Tales Of Mere Existence (YouTube)

Procrastination is, hands down, our favorite form of self-sabotage.
Quotation from Alyce P. Cornyn-Selby

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task.
Quotation from William James

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Raise the Stakes

by Seraphine Khorana on March 18th, 2010
Posted In: Comics
Raise the Stakes

I hear people say we should raise the stakes in Afghanistan. Or we need to raise the stakes in the War on Drugs. But you rarely hear talk of raising the stakes in the war on poverty. Why is that? If we are going to “raise the stakes,” we should do so for jobs, women’s rights, the environment, health care, financial reform and schools.

Drug cartels exploit illegal immigrants by forcing them into economic bondage or prostitution. “Drugs are only sold once,” Rep. Loretta Sanchez, the chairwoman of the House Homeland Security border subcommittee, said in an interview. “But people can be sold over and over. And they use these people over and over until they are too broken to be used anymore.”
Quotation from Josh Meyer, Drug cartels raise the stakes on human smuggling
(The Los Angeles Times)

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Dear Employee

by Seraphine Khorana on August 26th, 2009
Posted In: Comics
Dear Employee

“Your paycheck will be delivered via Thought Transference. Please ensure you have a valid connection with the Human Resource Department or your salary could be delayed indefinitely.”

When you have too much month for your paycheck, then what you need to do is realize that there is abundance all around you and focus on the abundance and not your lack and as night follows day, abundance will come to you.
Quotation from Sydney Madwed

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Cash for Clunkers

by Seraphine Khorana on August 10th, 2009
Posted In: Comics
Cash for Clunkers

Cash for Clunkers is a government program offering “cash” towards the purchase of a new car in return for junking an older automobile. The purpose of the program is to stimulate the economy and to encourage the purchase of more fuel-efficient automobiles.

Some of the folks who drive a beater all the time are unlikely to get a new car loan.
Quotation from Art Spinella, CNW Research

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It’s Earth Day. Are You Serious?

by Seraphine Khorana on April 22nd, 2009
Posted In: Comics
It’s Earth Day. Are You Serious?

A billion people will participate in Earth Day this year. If everyone thinks to better the world, there will be at least a billion acts of green performed. Whether you plant a tree or recycle a post-it note, it all makes a difference.

Earth Day Facts: When It Is, How It Began, What to Do (National Geographic)
Earth Day 2009: The Green Generation (Earth Day Network)

Nature rarer uses yellow
Than another hue;
Saves she all of that for sunsets,—
Prodigal of blue,

Spending scarlet like a woman,
Yellow she affords
Only scantly and selectly,
Like a lover’s words.
Poem by Emily Dickinson, Nature

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Who is going to save us now?

by Seraphine Khorana on April 6th, 2009
Posted In: Comics
Who is going to save us now?

It wasn’t my fault. I drive a honda.

Disintegration: Antarctic Warming Claims Another Ice Shelf (Earth Observatory NASA)
Collapse Of The Ice Bridge Supporting Wilkins Ice Shelf Appears Imminent (Science Daily)

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I used to be purple, but then I evolved

by Seraphine Khorana on February 27th, 2009
Posted In: Comics
I used to be purple, but then I evolved

Americans go where the money goes. That’s because we’re chameleons. That’s our reputation, whether it’s true or not. But now that the money is gone, where are we? That’s the question everyone is asking: Where are we going now, and what do we need to do to get there?

Green jobs are a way to aid the middle class: Comment by Joseph R. Biden Jr., Vice President of the United States (Philidelphia Inquirer)

When the men on the chess board
get up and tell you where to go
And you just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving slow
Go ask Alice
I think she’ll know
Lyrics from Jefferson Airplane, Go Ask Alice White Rabbit

A Granola type who bakes cakes for the moon as ‘offerings’, thinks tofu and tahini are great breakfast choices, and who’s idea of style is to wear multiple layers of cheap market clothes made in Cambodia from dried grass and colored using low impact dyes such as menstrual blood and compost bin ‘discharge’.
Definition of “Yoghurt Weaver” from UrbanDictionary.com

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Drinking the Water of Lab Rats

by Seraphine Khorana on November 25th, 2008
Posted In: Comics
Drinking the Water of Lab Rats

I wonder if astronauts can wish upon a star? Maybe they have special rules about wishing like “You can’t make a wish on Uranus because that belongs to the Russians” or “No wishing for a parallel universe.” In space, you have to be careful what you wish for. If you get that pony you’ve been wanting, where are you going to put it? And everytime it pees, do you have to drink it? Um, no thank you. I’ll have a diet coke please.

Lab animals on the [International Space Station] breath and urinate, too, and we plan to reclaim their waste products along with the crew’s.
Quotation from Layne Carter, Marshall Space Flight Center

Water on the Space Station (science.nasa.gov) Rationing and recycling will be an essential part of life on the International Space Station.

When Paris has to pee, Paris has to pee!
Quotation from Paris Hilton

The only rule is don’t be boring and dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in.
Another quotation from Paris Hilton

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