Environmental concerns…

I was just thinking about all the talk about the environment: About greenhouse gas emissions produced by automobiles, industry, transportation vehicles, freighters… the list goes on and on… when suddenly I remembered the horrid images in the media from “The War on Terror” in Iraq. How many years ago was it? 2001 was the WTC catastrophe, the first bombs were dropped on Iraq by 2002, and by 2003 we were seeing images of Baghdad being carpet bombed. What’s more, miles and miles an miles of Iraqi oil wells were bombed. Do you remember the plumes of black smoke that burned for… how long? Months? A year? How much pollution was spewed into the atmosphere from that, and how come no one talks about it? Has the world forgotten about it? Was it not a climatic disaster? Is driving my car to and from work worse than the plumes of black, acrid smoke billowing into the sky from those burning oil fields?

It appears oil fields are still burning:

After reading the article in the link above, it’s even more evident to me that the issue will never be resolved. Greed and obfuscation will reign. All living things deserve clean air and water, but humans will ensure that won’t happen. Ever.

Oh, Fuddle Puddle. I just don’t get it.

Ingrid

Cell phone rate rant

I’m hatching a rant. And it will be about cell phone rates in the province of BC Canada.

Once upon a time, not very much money would pay for a home phone that you could use anytime, any day. There was no such thing as call waiting, call display or whatever other “feature” can be added to phones these days. Nope, there was local calling and long distance calling. You paid a fixed fee for local, and per minute for long distance.

These days, the home phone, aka “land line”, is still reasonaby priced. But, and here’s where my rant gets going, cell phones are ubiquitous, they are also OUTRAGEOUSLY priced: The cost of the plans to use these phones is unreasonably expensive.

Is it right that a person should pay between $600 – $1200/year for a phone that may give you between 450 – 700 minutes/ month? That’s for a “large” package. 450 minutes over a month translates to approximately 15 minutes a day! And, if you go over, the sky’s the limit in how much you can pay. It’s highway robbery!

I hate the greediness of these corporations, and I’m incensed that the Fed. Gov’t. won’t regulate them.

As these stupid cell phones are gradually replacing the “land line”, then it stands to reason that the price of having one should be comparable to a land line. Instead, the carriers happily charge through the nose and profit considerably, while we dummies on the ground shell more money for a luxury we can’t afford.

It’s time to revolt and correct the discrepancies! If we’re going to use the cell in the same manner as the lowly “land line”, then we should pay the same price as it.

Times are a’ changin’ and we communicate differently than we did 10-20 years ago. But we shouldn’t be penalized for it. We’re being pushed into the technology, and believe me, I resisted a long time before I got one of those damned phones. Now that I have one, I can’t seem to get a decent plan where I can talk on the phone and not get soaked for it.

What to do… what to do.

Wanting to drown cell phone rates in the puddle…

Ingrid

Writing papers

I’m teaching at a university this year. Of the two essays they the students have been assigned, they have completed the first, and I am currently marking them – well, between wasting time on FB and posting to this blog for the first time in over a month!

Okay, so we know that writing for university is not like writing a blog, right? Right. Unlike the relatively forgiving medium of a blog, which allows for an elastic acceptance of writing style, when writing an essay, it’s important to use a more formal language, and to ensure your impressions can be clearly understood by the reader. This requires good sentence structure and grammar, and proof-reading. These are just a few things that are essential to writing a good essay.

If you’re a student and you find yourself wondering how to write an essay, then I would like to direct you to the following two links: The Online writing lab at Purdue University, and its grammar blog .

Please, do your instructor a favour by submitting a fabulous essay that he or she can enjoy, and read with ease. I’m waiting for that one essay where I don’t have to work so damned hard to pierce through the white noise of bad grammar to get to the content.

Maybe your essay will be The One?

Ingrid
Mired in a puddle of muddled phrases.

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