SoapBox it.

photo: I'm not sure of the photographer but Seattle held a competition for people to submit their favorite photos of Seattle (they had so many entries they ended up choosing ten winners and this was one of the ten.) this is personally one of my favorite because it doesn't idolize the needle which really isn't something that important to us locals, I think this photo is something that really captures the essence of Seattle, the real identity of how Seattle is an Urban city in the middle of true environment (that being Mt. Rainer in the background.)
I couldn't decide what LOST boy to choose so I avoided that all together, lol

Menu of my day

Drink: Fanta Strawberry - So yum.

Eat: Strawberries, they aren't the greatest but its hard to find really great strawberries these are mediocre.

Music: oldschool U2 "with or without you" right now

Read: still reading the really awesome Hunter S Thompson book that was gifted to me 'Curse of Lono' it has illustrators from Ralph Steadman (if your a HST fan you'll know all about him as well, they were drug buddies, pretty much, lol) its really cool though I like the book more as a collectors item than the story itself.

SoapBox: I've had my first big bum-out from Obama. (I know shocker that I would even admit to having one lol) but Nuclear Power Plants. I just think its a big mistake, I personally feel like its a step backward. If you are unfamiliar; Obama basically is giving $8 billion dollars to basically start up nuclear power plants again (which by definition is "energy harvested by nuclear reaction" that is of course non-explosive chemical reactions.)

it is technically safe for the environment (as long as their is no "mistake" "leak" -- basically an explosion.) nowadays NPP are built in overly protected buildings the walls are like 3 FEET thick and they are basically "contained" buildings so if there was a mistake or explosion (like what happened on 3 mile island in Pennsylvania) everything was completely contained in the building, the cleanup has been long and expensive but the area is still habitable where as when a "mistake" happened in Chernobyl in the 80's (a NPP that was not built in a contained building) that was a HUGE explosion and the area is currently still inhabitable because of radiation (and people are still affected by radiation poisoning)

now the idea and the reasoning is that we need to have so many possible ways of creating and harvesting energy, we are after all in an energy crisis and Nuclear Power is considered a sustainable method and safe.

HOWEVER, the waste from nuclear power is around for 10,000 YEARS, we are in an energy crisis but we are also in a waste crisis where we are trying to reduce waste and become sustainable, and here we are harvesting power that creates 10,000 years of wastes?

my objection doesn't just come from these facts, my objection comes from our alternatives. We have already discovered great ways to harvest energy from Wind Turbines, Microhydro Turbines (harvest power from moving water) Photovoltaics (solar panels) others that aren't quite as popular or effective-- (interestingly enough in the study of interior design we study a lot of this and I've taken a whole class on sustainability and we spent weeks and weeks just on energy harvesting.) So why don't we use $8 billion dollars to make these even better? more innovative? why even bother with Nuclear Power anymore? (technically I've heard the argument is that the creation of the nuclear power plant has no off-gasing as the others do, and this is speaking of the buildings and equipment themselves.)

I wasn't planning on having a blog about Nuclear Power but that's where the soapbox led so we will let it be...