Wall Street is Insane

So, retail sales over December were flat at best. (Here's some stats) And credit card debt went up over that same time, which meant people were spending money they didn't have just to stay where they were.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke yesterday said "The outlook for real activity in 2008 has worsened," and "We stand ready to take substantive additional actions as needed to support growth and to provide adequate insurance against downside risks,"

The second translates to interest rate cuts. But basically he's saying the economy is not doing so hot, which most anybody could tell you. o in response? "Stocks in Canada and the U.S. shot up in the hours after Mr. Bernanke speech."

The stock market reacts exactly opposite to how common sense says it should. A company lays people off, its stock goes up. The chief banker of the US says the economy sucks, stocks go up. These people are insane.

The List

Via a link in a WorldChanging comment thread, I give you The List of what one woman's done to cut down the amount of plastic she uses. A good idea, considering the floating island of plastic trash twice the size of Texas in the Pacific. (Here's more photos)

There is No "Away"

In a lot of RPGs, WoW for instance, when you throw something away, it disappears from your inventory and the world, for good.

It's not like that in the real world. We're all here on the bottom of this thin ocean of air surrounding a ball of molten rock. You're breathing the same oxygen the dinosaurs did. The carbon in that burger you ate could be the same as Abe Lincoln ate.

So what happens when you throw something away? Most of the time, it gets driven off to somewhere, and then tossed on a pile with a lot of other things people didn't want or need any more. Eventually, it all gets covered with plastic and buried under dirt. It's still there. It doesn't disappear.

The Earth is largely a closed system. There is no "away" where we can just throw things and forget about them. Solid, liquid, or gas, it's still gonna be here with us.