Recycling is Bullshit

There are long tracts of glass in the Sahara, caused by meteorites skidding across the sand and melting it. Glass looks pretty and feels precious, but sand does not, and this is perhaps part of the reason why people perceive glass recycling to be a valuable exercise – something that is debatable at best.

I am actively against recycling non-metals, because I think it does nothing to aid consuming less, and may actually exacerbate the problem. In other words, I think it creates a net damage to the environment. It would be better that people had to pay directly for the removal trash which scrap merchants wouldn’t pay them for and for these people to be non-subsidized.

Showing up in a car to the bottle bank with Perrier bottles reminds me of Roman schoolboys who had slaves who would take a proxy beating for them when they did something wrong. Both are dubious ways of avoiding blame.

Recycling is about preventing people digging something out of the ground and burning fuel to make something from it. If it were truly viable, then people would be ransacking landfills to recycle them.

Reuse yes, recycle no. Penn and Teller make the point better than I ever could.

12 comments business, comedy

Hands on a Hard Body

How a very simple idea can be completely gripping. Who can keep their hand on a pickup truck for the longest amount of time.
via: Kottke

1 comment society

Richard Dawkins – The Genius of Darwin, Part 3

The last in the series, segment 1 of 5.

Segment 2
Segment 3
Segment 4
Segment 5

2 comments science

Hoop Dreams

A seminal moment here – the excellent, Hulu.com allows us to post one of the all time great documentaries: Hoop Dreams. (US Only)

1 comment sport

Emily

The London Times’ technology section ran this piece showing the current state of the art in 3d animation. Normally this stuff is not that interesting and just a bit naff. But, having used 3d animation software fairly intensively in the past, this does seem genuinely impressive.

4 comments animation, clips

Richard Dawkins – The Genius of Darwin: 2

In this second part of the series Dawkins progresses from the origin of species to the descent of man and what we know today about its implications.

He points out that as a program for living Darwinism is usually abhorrent, but that from Social Darwinists to Libertarians, kin selection and the resultant emergence of altruism as a natural outcome, has been ignored.

His point about Enron is especially pertinent: by periodically culling the people who they believed were the bottom 15% of performers, they encouraged individual ruthlessness rather than team players who would benefit the company as a whole, at the expense of their individual performance. Enron’s selection methods were unnatural rather than natural, and open to error of judgment. Unnatural selection was well known to animal breeders, centuries before Darwinism, but Natural Selection is different, there is no purpose and therefore no possible ideological attachment.

(This is the first of 5 parts of the second program in the series)

1 comment science

James Bond Creator Ian Flemming and the Other Ian Flemming – a fat man on the toilet, hurling expletives

Ian Flemming, holding his trademark cigarette holder, describes how he chose the name James Bond, to be deliberately ordinary, despite the glamorous nature of the character.

Flemming himself, of course, is similarly exotic, despite his relatively commonplace name. Which is why the video of another Ian Flemming, I just found on Youtube – a fat man sitting on the toilet, hurling expletives – is so particularly hilarious.

3 comments connections

Stevie Wonder on Sesame Street

David France pointed out another musical gem from Sesame Street. Stevie Wonder performing Superstition, live, for the show.

4 comments music

Phillip Glass for Sesame Street

In 1979 Phillip Glass composed a series of pieces for Sesame Street called the geometry of circles. Well they say kids like repetition. Again.

9 comments animation, music

New Romantics

Given the current predilection for hanging fringes in Indie bands, perhaps this tribal profile should be called ‘Old New Romantics’.

4 comments nostalgia