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September 4, 2008 by enchantingsunshine.
You may be surprised to learn that the credit companies are not always on our side. I know, I know. Shocking! There is a class action lawsuit against Transunion for every consumer who had a line of credit opened between Jan. 1, 1987 and May 28, 2008. Again, you’re not going to believe this, but the agency meant to protect our credit illegally and inappropriately shared private information for marketing purposes.
Here is a link to the article in the Washington Post. There you’ll find a link to the Transunion website to file a claim. Make sure you do. Don’t let the man get away with bad behavior.
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August 11, 2008 by enchantingsunshine.
Sierra Club radio provides a weekly broadcast on environmental news. Sure, I’m a year behind on the podcasts, but the news is interesting and useful nonetheless:
Climate Change–Wonder if scientists disagree about climate change? Read Sharon Begley’s article here, or listen to an interview with her.
Honey Bees–What’s the big deal about the disapperance of honey bees? According to Elizabeth Kolbert, honey bees are important to polinating many of our crops, including fruits and nuts. Read about honeybees disappearance here or Kolbert’s full article, “Stung” here. You can also listen to the interview here. Kolbert suggests that we should do everything we can to avoid further hurting the bee population, including eliminating herbicides and pesticides on our yards.
Plug-In Cars–Perhaps like me, you might have wondered how plug-in cars might help global warming when recharging the car still requires energy. According to Plug In Bay Area, using plug-in hybrids, even with the dirtiest energy like coal power, would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 40%. More info here and the podcast here.
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August 3, 2008 by enchantingsunshine.
As I often lament at this url, I have stacks of magazines, books, podcasts, and emails that I can never manage to get ahead of. Rarely, in a moment of frustration, I delete some of my email newsletters and vow to make a fresh start, imagining that I’ll invent more hours in the day to somehow create a new pattern of organization and efficiency. Usually though, things get filed in a “To-Do” or “Reading” folder for some future imaginary event when I’ll have so much time that I’ll be able to read every word of every email. Of course, by the time I get to them, all the political “action alerts” will be expired, which is maybe what I’m secretly hoping for to absolve myself of not being more civicly involved.
I mention all this by way of justifying momentarily, if not to you, at least to me, my information hoarding behavior. This morning while I was happily filing one of my weekly newsletters, I noticed a headline that I could not defer until later. It is just these sorts of articles that keep me hooked. A valuable therapist I once had keyed me in on the nature of the problem: variable reinforcement. Hardest pattern of behavior to break. Variable reinforcement. Cognition helped me to finally escape a bad relationship. It hasn’t helped, and likely never will, with escaping the grip of the Orioles, even if I wanted to escape. And I don’t. Likewise, my brain loves new information and will keep me wading through gobs o junk to enjoy the occasional gem.
Perhaps this variable reinforcement is that same strategy that I’m using on you, though you have much more junk to wade through than I, with my dozens of email subscriptions.
Now finally, the article to make you happy that you didn’t have enough money to install granite counters during your recent kitchen remodel. See, you never know what you’ll find here.
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August 2, 2008 by enchantingsunshine.
A few years ago, on an early Sunday morning, my husband and I were driving separately to my house after spending the weekend at his. It was an unseasonably cool summer day and I had the windows down and the sunroof open, carefree and happy, singing along to the radio. It was one of those calm summer days when you’re imbued with joy to be alive. The event that followed left me with renewed appreciation for how life can change in an instant and for the great fortune to have my fast little 240. That wonderful car and the gorgeous weather potentially saved my life that day.
All was good until, to my left, I heard a loud pop. I didn’t know what it was, but by the Grace of God instinctively knew that I was in trouble and needed to get away in a hurry. I floored the accelerator and veered towards the right hand shoulder. When I had a chance to look to my left, I saw an SUV with a blown tire swaying wildly, and now perpendicular to the highway, headed straight for me. I gunned the accelerator harder and managed to barely escape as the SUV narrowly missing my rear bumper swerved into the small grassy lane bordering the highway. I watched in the rear view mirror as the SUV rocked so violently that I thought it would topple over. Eventually, after what seemed like a long time, operating as I was in enhanced, slow motion time, the vehicle stood motionless. The four or so other drivers in the vicinity, now parked in the shoulder, all sat momentarily motionless too, as we took a minute to catch our breath before descending on the SUV to ensure the driver was unharmed and to inquire as to what happened. (Fortunately, my husband was safely ahead of me and there to comfort me as I tried to remember how to breathe.)
The SUV driver was uninjured, though rattled, as were we all (it was a full twenty minutes before I stopped shaking and overcame the onset of an asthma attack). When we asked how her tire blew, she could not explain: they were brand-new and had just been installed. Until today, I could not understand how a new tire could blow.
A loyal reader in Baltimore sent this 20/20 video about tire safety. It provides one more reason why I want to live in a world free from the automobile industry that as a whole seems to be as conscienceless and anti-consumer as they can get, with decades of history fighting regulations to protect the very people who keep them afloat. It’s also yet another reason to not trust Sears. It’s almost not fair, they’re such an easy target for these sensational news shows. I have a long standing vendetta against them regarding car service never rendered, and don’t even get me started about their “Die-Hard” battery. Dirty snakes.
Out of curiosity, I called two stores to find out their policy in terms of letting consumers choose tires. Tire Rack said that they get tires directly from the manufacturer, so are not able to disclose the date the tire was manufactured prior to shipping. However, Tire Rack can provide this detail to the purchaser after the tire has shipped, and, if not acceptable, the consumer can refuse to accept the shipment. Discount Tire has the tires in the store and told me that I would be free to choose each of my tires. (Sorry there aren’t any stores in Maryland, but I’m sure there are other honest tire dealers.)
The last time I replaced my tires was September 11, 2001. (For some reason that date sticks in my head.) I’m about due for new tires, so when I get them, I’ll let you know if someone tries to scam me. I doubt that I’ll have a bad experience, but at the same time knowledge is empowering, and it’s nice to be an informed and confident consumer.
Before you buy tires, I also recommend consulting Consumer Reports:
Stay safe dear reader!
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April 22, 2008 by enchantingsunshine.
Hope your Earth Day has been green and environmentally friendly! I’m sure you’ve seen lots of guides to reducing your CO2 footprint with suggestions such as changing your light bulbs and toting your canvas bags to the store, but as a long-time tree-hugger, I can’t resist requesting that if you’re trying to minimize your consumption, you consider your lifestyle habits.
There are so many things we can do to reduce our impact. We take for granted our grocery stores full of fresh food year-round. We forget to think about how far it was shipped to get to us. We are so incredibly lucky with so much food, but we eat too much and far more than we need. Some reports suggest that 90% of commercial fish are gone.
We have an attitude of entitlement about what we have. Our voracious appetites, coupled with our growing population, are too much for our earth with her finite resources, to satiate. I worry sometimes what will be left for the next generation? Will they inherit a world of war over food and water? Instead of waiting for the worst-case scenario, doing nothing, and assuming that catastrophic predictions are inflated or exaggerated, why not err on the side of caution? If we don’t, and the predictions were right, how will we ever justify our selfishness to our descendants? Or to ourselves?
One easy way to reduce our impact is to consider the packaging of the products we buy. One day I was staring at the liquid soap bottle in my shower thinking, “This is such a waste.” I remember reading not long ago about a man who saved all his waste for a year. You can imagine that he was surrounded by piles of empty bottles, cartons, and toothpaste tubes. What a luxurious world where our waste just disappears and we never have to think about it again. How many of my empty liquid soap and shampoo bottles are sitting in a landfill? Even despite my efforts to be a conscious shopper? That day, I switched back to bar soap. Now, I buy in bulk when possible for beans, nuts, and rice. It’s just a small fraction of the packaging though. There is so much other waste I wish I could eliminate, if only there were a choice. (I could save a lot of glass bottles if I had my own wine barrel, for example.) We must demand better choices from the manufacturers and vote with our dollars.
Reduce, reuse, recycle. Reducing is the first step. We live in a consumption-oriented society, where too often our worth as a human being is estimated in a snap judgment by the stuff we own and wear. Deep down, we might think, “Who cares!” or “That’s silly!” but on some level, if we want to be part of society, we know we must participate to some degree. Perhaps more than we desire. The pressure is there. We are social beings after all, so we must either find like-minded people, go along, or reconcile being ostracized and have the willpower to eschew cultural habits that don’t reflect our real beliefs.
How are environmentalists portrayed in the media? Not as a group of intelligent, discerning people with a strong grounding in science and nature, not as people to admire and emulate, but as extremists and nutcases who value people less than the environment (as if the health of humans is independent of the environment), people who have an agenda like saving owls or salmon to the detriment of someone’s pocketbook. Hippies who don’t understand the concept of economy. What’s missing is the discussion of the eco-system. High school biology. We are interdependent. There’s always an angle that somehow neglects to mention what the use of an economy will be when when we have no fish left to eat. (Putting aside all other arguments about the intrinsic value of every living creature.) There’s the omission of the angle that one person’s profits do not supersede the needs of the collective. As a species, we are notoriously short-sighted and we continue to be so at our own peril.
There’s the trouble. There are some that believe that the government doesn’t have a right to tell us what to do. It’s our land. We own it! We can pollute it as we wish. We’re free to make whatever profits we can. This is capitalism! This thinking reflects an erroneous notion that we are individuals, independent of each other. But we are not. We are one. The drycleaner who pollutes the stream behind his property that flows into my drinking water affects me and my neighbors. Our collective need as a society for clean water is more important than one man’s desire to freely pollute his property. Our collective need as humans that salmon not go extinct is more important than the bank account of a few. No one person’s profits are so important that he has a right to choose to eliminate a species from all the earth, from all of us, for the rest of time. We share this earth. We all “own” it.
In Baltimore, I worked for a drycleaner who had five stores. Every store had a stream running behind it. The owner knowingly and deliberately disposed of his drycleaning chemicals by dumping them into the streams. It was cheaper, you see. He was eventually caught and fined by the EPA, but he admitted to his young hourly workers that the fine was insignificant and not enough to make him change his behavior. A friend of mine lived downstream from one of the cleaners. The same river he polluted ran behind her house, and is the same river she played in. Now, at 40, she has breast cancer and I wonder, is there a connection?
This is why we need effective regulation.
We have messages to consume all around us. Powerful images fly at us from the television. Paco Underhill discusses in his book, “Why We Buy, the Science of Shopping,” how much television influences our expectations and standards. Not only are we comparing ourselves to our neighbors, friends, and coworkers, but we’re evaluating “how well we’re doing” by comparing ourselves to the fictional characters we see on television. What’s more is that advertisers are smart about the psychology of how people operate. They convince us that we need a product we never knew existed, and survived quite well without, by creating a feeling of inadequacy in us. Consider how many products you buy because of how they might improve your image, or how good they’ll make you look. (I do too.)
I, too, even as an ardent environmentalist struggle with all the enticing objects there are to buy. Here’s just one story of many from my own experience. A couple of years ago, one morning as I was preparing to do my DVD workout, I became engrossed in an infomercial for a Sleep Number bed. On and on they went about how much better one can feel after having a good night’s sleep. Who doesn’t want to operate at her peak and feel amazing after a great night’s sleep? One thing led to another, and after a conversation with a colleague, I found myself owning a memory foam mattress topper. It’s a long story, but while my husband loved it and would have married it if he could have, I spent months without sleep and discovered the horrors of night-sweats that await me at menopause. It took considerable effort to convince my husband to let go of the thing while I cursed myself for buying it and evaluated the possibility of setting it on fire. I didn’t have to start a fire and managed to wrest it out from under my very disappointed husband to let the hateful thing off-gas its offensive chemical smell into the guest room for a few months. By the time I aggressively pushed it off on an unwilling friend to get rid of it once and for all, I had learned a valuable lesson about the dangers of trying to improve an already perfectly good, or as I discovered, good enough, situation.
We’d do well to reduce our exposure to advertising, these messages to buy more, and it would go a long way to reducing our consumption. All those wonderful products that are going to immeasurably improve our lives, seldom deliver as promised. Though some do. I’d hate to return to a world without my IPOD, or Kitchen Aid mixer, but somehow we need to find a way to be discriminating about the things we can’t live without. We’re so lucky and spoiled already. All it takes is one issue of National Geographic to remind us how much better we live than most of the rest of the world. If only we could be peaceful and end our quest for more, more, more. (I’m sure my husband would have a comment about this regarding my love of clothes. But I do so love them.)
I’ll let that end my diatribe for Earth Day. You had to expect one from me, right? Two things everyone knows about me, I love the earth and I love my Orioles. I can’t resist talking about either.
Happy Greening!
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April 3, 2008 by enchantingsunshine.
It’s been a long time since I had an edition of “We’re all going to die.” What with the upcoming elections, the working electronics in my home, attending Opening Day, I’ve barely had interest in the subject. Being a selfless person however, I set aside my own joy to take care of you, my readers, who I know so look forward to these posts.
It took a bit of work, but I was finally able to turn up a couple of ideas which I hope will strike the appropriate terror in your heart. It’s really not much, but the best I can do at the moment.
Don’t get too content. Another edition of how to solve world peace is underway.
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December 12, 2007 by enchantingsunshine.
A colleague sent me this link about the lack of hygiene in hotel rooms. The news crew set up web cams to see how thorough the maids were. Watch it and you’ll never use hotel glasses again. It’s vile. Vile, I tell you.
As I was watching the video, I was reminded of a lovely business trip I took last year. When we travel for the job, we are forced to use the company’s hateful travel agency whose sole directive in life is to pick the travel itinerary which creates the most hassle and unpleasantness, at the most inconvenient time, with the most connections, and that will most make us miserable, even if an alternative travel arrangement more to our liking is less expensive. It’s not because they’re getting kickbacks or anything. That would be cynical of me.
Last year, I went to a conference in Miami Beach. For reasons I’ll never understand, our request to stay at the Marriott which was walking distance to the Convention Center was denied. Instead, the travel agent booked my boss (who is rather high up on the food chain), three of my other colleagues and me at a place I’ll call MSBR, a hotel/condo that preferred to charge by the hour. Our company has plenty of deals with the big hotel chains, but no, instead we stayed in a “resort” as they had the nerve to call themselves, with rooms that not only had stained upholstery and bedspreads, but little sex kits that helped you understand how the furniture got that way. The kits had a variety of lubricants, labeled according to the particular purpose for which you might use them, suggestions if you will, as well as prophylactics. Seems like there was something else in the box, but I can’t remember now. I snapped it shut as quickly as I opened it and have tried to block out the memory as best I can. Miami Beach is a colorful place, granted, but I’d be willing to wager money that the Marriott at least looked clean and its rooms didn’t conjure up images of orgies which may have taken place the night before.
After watching that video showing what happens to glasses in reputable hotels, I’m really grateful now that the MSBR charged for the coffee in the room, so my lips never touched anything from the hotel. Except the wash cloth and who knows what was on that.
It’s enough to make you never stay in a hotel again.
One further note about the MSBR, a couple of weeks after we returned home from that trip, all of my colleagues discovered extra charges from the MSBR on their credit card.
Let’s just say that I wouldn’t have wanted to be our travel agent. I think she learned a new definition of wrath.
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November 10, 2007 by enchantingsunshine.
First, before you read any further, I recommend that you visit my favorite website, Happy News.com and read some heart-warming stories about how good and wonderful people can be.
Then I want to contemplate how lovely it’s going to be when all those good people die, cause that is exactly what’s going to happen. Soon! I’m not Fox news here, trying to be sensationalist, just to stir up interest, garner more readers, playing on your fears for my own benefit and pleasure. That would be mean.
Back in the 80s we were worried about the Cold War. Those unpredictable, irrational Russians might push the button at any time, and Reagan wasn’t the sort to let anyone bully him into dying alone, no sir, if we died, the whole planet was going to go with us.
The 90s were a period of calm. Perhaps there was the “irrational exuberance” that might get us, but otherwise, we didn’t seem to have much to fear.
Then in 2001, people got all worked up about terrorists, afraid to fly or be in public places. We’re over that, but now, it’s back to the bunker age. Start stocking up on food, canning your beans and tomatoes, and fill your basement full, cause we’re in the period of Global Dimming. Yup. Never heard of it? Read about the episode of Nova to learn why we’re doomed.
Now, go outside and enjoy the day, while you still can.
This episode of joy brought to you by Enchanting Sunshine, meeting all your gloom and doom needs since 2007.
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October 20, 2007 by enchantingsunshine.
I believe that if there is any secret in life, it’s to live life with balance. So while I’d like to only present you with features like “That’s Love,” for your own good, I have a responsibility to also inform you of troubling and depressing news. How else will you appreciate the lovely beauty the world has to offer unless you’re fully informed of all the death, conflict, and disease?
The truth is I’m just a little cranky about our unseasonably warm October. Here it is the 19th, and last night I woke up at 3 am in a sweat. I had to actually turn down the air conditioning another three degrees, just to get comfortable. I never thought I would say this, but, is it ever going to get cool? In the South, we’re suffering from a drought that is becoming severe. Personally, as a long-time conservationist, I have no problem with conserving water and I think it’s about damned time that Americans woke up to their excessive habits and lived more realistically, in touch, and respectfully of the planet and the rest of its inhabitants. Believe it or not, we’re not the only people, or species who have merit.
What’s concerning is hearing news like this: that Atlanta has 90 days of water left. Had the news come from Florida, I wouldn’t be surprised, but Atlanta isn’t typically a place I think of as having water shortages.
Recently, I was in the company of someone who scoffed angrily at Al Gore winning the nobel Peace Prize for his campaign against global warming. This person really hates Al Gore and the whole environmental movement. I’m not a scientist, but it seems pretty clear that the majority of scientists agree that global warming is a fact. Perhaps it is a result of natural processes; however, is it really so difficult, so impossible to believe that all our carbon emissions could be contributing to the problem?
I truly do not understand the opposition to protecting our natural resources. And why in particular the politics around this science? I mean, do we believe scientists when they describe the fertilization process? Do we trust the science of egg meeting sperm? Do we trust the principles of chemistry that have allowed the pharmaceutical companies to get rich? Do we believe that scientists are lying when they say they know the properties of an atom or the double helix? How is it that only some science is credible and the rest is to be rejected?
It’s true that climatology is an imperfect science, as is all of our science. We live in such a wonderful time where we are discovering new things about ourselves and the world around us every day. What we believe and know continues to evolve and in my opinion, that’s what makes science credible and worthy of respect. It shows that instead of holding onto dogma for political reasons, we are willing to dispel myths, to discard false or incomplete information and move forward with new findings. We are constantly perfecting what we know and how we learn it. We’re not plugging our ears and covering our eyes, we’re always trying to improve on what we know.
So why is this topic so political? Why do people get so defensive about global warming? Is it really so threatening to one’s quality of life to even consider carpooling or living in a slightly smaller McMansion? Are so many people lacking that part of science education that talked about the ecosystem and how we’re interdependent? I can still see the spiral arrow diagram from 9th grade biology. Isn’t it obvious that destruction of the environment will result in our own demise?
Let’s say theoretically we were forced to use our cars less, or consume less water. Would that really be so much of a hardship? This is what I desperately want to know. What if we change our lifestyle and the scientists are wrong? What then? What great price has been paid and what has been lost? What if, on the other hand, when we carpooled with a colleague we made a deep friendship? What if our lives became less stressful as we scaled back on the number of activities we tried to cram into 24 hours? What if we lived in a slightly smaller home that used less energy, that we could afford better, that gave the whole family a chance to learn to cohabit the same space peacefully instead of spreading out into separate rooms never seeing each other or sharing experiences. What is so awful with this scenario that is so distasteful to people? Are we bothered by the science or what we perceive to be lack of science or the thought that someone would dare to say that we should reconsider how we live?
So what if we believed the scientists and in twenty years time, they turned out to be wrong? And…? Don’t we have to live the best we can with the information we know? Isn’t that what we do every day anyway? Nothing in life is 100% certain except death. Why is changing our lifestyle to combat global warming so different? Why do we demand perfect climate models and perfect science, before we act, when we manage to function with uncertainty in other areas of our life? We don’t know how other decisions we make are going to influence the outcome of our lives, but we manage. We don’t know if taking a new job or moving to another city is going to turn out okay, but still we make the decision to move forward based on our best guess about what the facts suggest. Often things don’t turn out as planned, and we adjust. Scientists aren’t God, if indeed there is a God. Why not operate on the premise that theories are based on observable, measurable, and repeatable facts and act on the best information we have at this time? As we gather more information, we can adjust accordingly. Why is that so scary and offensive?
A certain preacher of my acquaintance has a good theory about this. In the U.S. we see everything in terms of “rights.” We have the Bill of Rights, that clearly states, that we have certain “inalienable rights.” Every time someone wants to pass a law, we get worked up about it taking away our rights. How dare anyone tell us how to live or what to do. We think we have a right to use our land however we wish and consume resources in whatever quantity we choose. Future generations be damned! If we want to ride a motorcycle without a helmet and smash our brains on the side of the road, by God, we should be able to do this! (In my opinion that’s just fine as long as taxpayer money doesn’t have to pay for the aftermath.) I would also like to add that we have a right to live in denial. We have a right to get that mortgage we can’t afford, and a right to live in that big house, and a right to be bailed out by the government when we default. And so on, and so on, and so on…
At any rate, I didn’t intend this to be a diatribe about the environment, I just can’t stop wondering why the issue is so inflammatory. It’s another one of those things in life that makes no sense to me. At any rate, I’m making sure to keep my friends in the North so that I have someone to ship me water when we run out.
Moving on though, there’s more news that is important for you to know. If it’s not the global warming that gets us, or the water shortage as our dehydrated, dead bodies lie shriveled up over the toilet bowl, as we attempt to suck the last remaining drops of water from it, it’s going to be the MRSA. My brother and sister-in-law suffered from this two years ago and said it was horrible. Months of wiping down every surface they came in contact with. It appears that the bacteria is becoming more of a threat, killing 19,000 people per year. About nine years ago, a close friend of mine lost his mother to a staph infection - most likely the same strain. A teeth-whitening retainer was implicated as the culprit, even though she cleaned it diligently and as directed. One day she called her daughter and said, “I don’t feel good.” Her daughter immediately took her to the emergency room and within 24 hours she had gangrene in all of her appendages, as the bacteria consumed its way through her body. Within a week, she was dead. Don’t mess with bacteria.
So if it’s not the bacteria that gets you, it’s going to be the crazies. Can you believe some moron threw paint into the Trevi Fountain. You see what I mean? We’re doomed.
Just to make sure you’re convinced, here’s the final news story for today. Apparently Brits are not popular after you get to know them. The article didn’t say if the Brits who participated in the forum said things like, “your jokes are stupid” which would entirely explain how they could alienate the entire continent of Europe. Regardless, one has to mistrust the validity of the survey when you consider that the British have given us this brilliance:
Whoever could say such a thing could only be French.
So I hope if nothing else, if you’re not sucking on your car tailpipe at this very moment, this post has helped you feel appreciative of all that you have, water, lots of clean water, a house free of life-threatening bacteria and a residence far from the English or the French, or the Italians, depending on your perspective.
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