SWCAMBORNE

“90% of life is just showing up.”

Woody Allen

This is such a great idea it must already be happening and I haven’t seen it yet.  Did you know that it is against the law in California to throw used batteries in the trash?  You are supposed to recycle them.  It makes sense, they contain acid and who knows what else.  But how are we supposed to recycle them?  This idea helps to answer that question and to make it much more easy to recycle.

Battery companies or battery recycling companies could distribute printed ziplock bags.  Maybe to school kids maybe as a handout where batteries are sold.  The bags would have contact information for finding a recycler in your area and would make it convenient to do so.  Here is a mockup:

Some benefits that would accrue to the company that does this first are:

1. Positive publicity, lots of it.
2. Corporate pride for doing the right thing.
3. Enviro stuff to point at to keep the regulators at bay.
4. An advertisement in peoples homes to help increase sales.

I am so green I look like a tree.

Cellphonehenge

I received via email the following extremely good news from Goodwill of Southern California:

Hey Simon,

That’s really cool, have no problem letting you borrow some laptops for your project as long as people know the laptops were provided by Goodwill of Southern California, thanks a lot for considering Goodwill of Southern California

Give me a 3 day heads up so I can prepare the laptops or you can come choose them.

Albert Montanez Recycling Manager
Goodwill of Southern California

This has happened to almost everybody.  You walk into a market or other big store and take a cart.

About ten steps from the door the cart starts to exhibit bad cart behaviors.  Like pulling to the left or a banging wheel or hard to push.  You can go back and change carts or you can just tough it out.  What you can’t do is pull the cart out of the inventory and make sure that no one else has to suffer with it.  Now you can because I have invented the bad cart tag.

This is just an illustration the final product will be made like one of those hospital bracelets that you need tools to remove.  The tags will be available at the checkout register.
Soon a retailer, like Home Depot (this is for illustration purposes only) will implement a bad cart program, shoppers will like always getting a good cart, they will, in the margin, shop more at Home Depot and the increased profits and goodwill will pay for the extremely low cost of the program.
If you know someone who runs a retail store with carts or someone in the tag business please forward them this idea.  They can make some money with this little idea and we can all benefit.
Some people see a problem and complain.  Some people see the opportunity that the problem creates and prosper.

On August 11, 2006 the UN Security Council passed resolution 1701 that reads in its third paragraph:

“Emphasizing the need for an end of violence, but at the same time emphasizing the need to address urgently the causes that have given rise to the current crisis, including the unconditional release of the abducted Israeli soldiers.”

This sounds pretty clear: “unconditional release”. Here is a picture of one of the abducted soldiers:

As those of you who read this blog regularly know my brother Tom, who lives in Derby, England was visiting over the weekend.

Tom and Simon

We did all of the things we like to do. Argue, eat, play with water and go to a garden. This time we went to the Huntington Library to see the new Chinese Garden.

The Small Bridge

The new garden is definitely a work in progress but it will be wonderful when it is finished. I took pictures of all the bridges and a few other things in the library garden click here to see them. Over the weekend Nurit and I also went to a fundraiser for the Arcadia Methodist Hospital. We got to dress up.

Simon and Nurit

Lillian and Heidi came up from San Diego to go to the UCLA Football game and I took this terrific picture of them with their friend Elizabeth before they left for the game.  The Bruins won the game.

Elizabeth, Lillian and Heidi

Life is good!

My brother Tom has been staying with us for a few days while on a business trip to Southern California.

Nurit and Tom 

I told him about the idea of a Heavy Machinery Fantasy Camp and he said that something like it already exists in the UK: Diggerland.

Diggerland 

The web site is worth a visit just for the lovely song.  It is run by the heavy equipment manufacturer JCB hopefully as a profit making division.  The question is: does anything like Diggerland exist in the USA?

“He who cannot obey cannot command”

Benjamin Franklin

While working in my yard Joey L. found this fragment of a jawbone, probably from a dog.

I took this terrific picture of it. Now I need a caption for the picture.