So, I know it's not a popular subject. But still, with the lack of forward progress on reducing carbon emissions - what do we do for alternative power sources?
Go nuclear.
Yeh, I know, I know. Not a good idea - or is it?
"Australians are against carbon emission reductions. Well they must be, and anyone who disagrees, please point out to me where all our nuclear power plants are? For those who reject the idea of nuclear power in Australia, consider this - Fact - if every country in the world had the same attitude as you to nuclear power then the planet would be totally screwed by now. In my opinion, we should have been building nuclear power plants that double as desalination plants all along, ever since safe Nuclear technology has been around."
Not my words, but I definitely agree with that statement. I just think that we are holding on to too many prejudices and fears - the same mistakes we make over and over again, and where do we end up? No further reductions, still following the same paths we've been walking for the last twenty years while our streams dry up and Australia suffers from the worst droughts it's ever had. Does it take the entire country to run out of water before we do something?
And what about recent developments in the nuclear physics fields? China have been making enormous break-throughs in nuclear reactor designs, but still the Australian people (and thus, the government) choose not to look at the options available to us via nuclear power.
I think if we really want to help the environment we need to start looking at all available avenues. And demanding more action! Just as I predicted, the whole 'concern for the environment' cards dealt out by Rudd during his election campaign just haven't been fulfilled. I know we're in the middle of an economic crisis, but that doesn't change the fact that we are also in the middle of an environmental crisis - one that has greater ramifications than the economic one (as unbelievable as that might sound) and one that had been going on for longer, with far less concern from the powers that be.
If my ranting offends you, apologises. But please people, let's get our act together before it's too late. What the point of saving the world from the credit crunch if there is no earth to support business full stop?! Guess that would throw the spanner in the works, but no one thinks of that now do they...
Ciao, b.
Friday, February 20
Wednesday, February 18
BBC Top 100 Reads - how many have you done?
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read.
2) Tally your total at the bottom.
2) Put in a note with your total in the subject
1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x (Love it - so many re-reads over)
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien x (Good book once you get past all the walking. Seriously - too much walking!)
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte x (*shudders* Creepy. Sorry, but I don't like the Bronte sisters at all.)
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x (Started it - wanted to finish, but it wasn't my book and I couldn't borrow it. :p *Edit - did finish it, I'd just forgotten. It's a powerful read. Not something I'd read over and over again, but still good. )
6 The Bible x (I think it goes without saying that this one's my favorite... :D )
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte x (Stupid. And creepy.)
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x (Love it and who wouldn't - I've read all four in the little woman series, and I love Teddy. But the last one "Jo's Boys" is reallly sad.. *sniff* )
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thoms Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare x (Not quite - does Terry Prachett's versions count? I do love The Tempest however, hilarious, and The Merchant of Venice and a Midsummer Night's Dream)
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien x (So funny, I found this one really hilarious after the slog of LoTR times 3!)
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams x (Yes, better than the movie too.)
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll x (As if anyone hasn't?)
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame x (I adore Ratty and Mole and Badger. Toad was always a silly fool to me - even when I was, like, eight!)
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens x (Sad, sad, sad!)
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis x (Sooo good, no matter your age!)
34 Emma - Jane Austen x
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen x (I've read all of Jane Austen's stuff. She's just so brilliant!)
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis x
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden x (Love it - movie and the book)
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne x (Winne-the-Pooh - yay!)
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell x (I personally thought this book was silly, although I did see the point he was making)
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery x (Read them all ~ timeless and so good; I love Anne spelt with an 'e'!)
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen x
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens (Think I started that, but I was twelve or something, so I never finished it. Will have to try again.)
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tart
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas x (This is such an awesome, truely EPIC novel!)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding x (One and Two.)
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville x
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x (Did a book report on it - probably didn't get any of the symbolism either!)
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray (I saw the movie and I really do not want to read this book.)
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White x (One of my childhood favorites)
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle x
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton x (Ooooo - I loved Enid Blyton as a kid!)
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupéry x
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams x (Best book with animals I can think of. Besides Redwall.)
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas x
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl x (One and two!)
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo (I want to read this very badly...)
Thursday, February 12
25 Random Things About Me... (Like anyone wants to know...)
Whether anyone cares or not - here's the latest FB craze. Write down 25 random things about yourself and bore people to death... Fun!
Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you. (To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click post.)
There will be one difference to mine though - I'm not going to torture any of my friends and tag them.... Okay - maybe one or two just for the heck of it!
1. I can't stand it when people are late - appointments, meetings, even just for casual hang outs... But for all of my problem with it; I am continuously doing the whole "Kiyyyaaa - I'm-so-late!!" dash. Go figure.
2. There are three things in life that I can not do to save myself:
~Bowling (I always come dead last and break at least one nail...)
~ Navigation (Anyone who rides in my car when I'm driving will experience the fun of reversing from traffic lights 'coz I'm in the wrong lane, or squealing around a corner 'coz I just about missed the turn off - or on the likely hood that I actually DID miss the turn off {this happens much more than I would like it too!} random U-turns whenever and where ever I can. Yup. I'm a crazy driver.)
~ Math (Do not ask me to do it, because without a calculator or my fingers and toes it just will NOT happen. Seriously.)
3. One of the things that I MUST do before I die is ride a cow. I've ridden horses of all descriptions and sizes, I want to ride an elephant when I go to Thailand, and I've ridden in cars, trailers, tractor scoops and on boats (speed and a ship), ferries, trains, aeroplanes, a motorbike and a quad bike. And merry-go-rounds and rollacoasters! I've even been in a hot air balloon (but didn't go any where) and basically, besides all of that list: I just want to!
4. I'm going to get my rally car drivers licence. Probably not that soon, around my 25th bday I think, so when I get my super-sweet car I'll be able to thrash it. Sweeeeet!
5. And, on that note - I hate Volvos. (The cars, not the biscuit). They suck hardcore.
6. And country/western music... Ick!
7. And wasps - they are seriously creepy! I think it's because they can fly, so you can never be sure if they are stalking you, or even if they are around half the time, so basically they freak me out.
8. On the other hand, I love spiders (particularly Huntsmans 'coz they are really pretty close up) except when they are on me. Then they have to get off.
9. I'm addicted to music and tea. (Particularly Jasmine tea, but I'm not fussy) I can't live with out one or the other or both at least once a day. Mmmm... Tea....
10. Animation/Cartoon and Dance/Musical are my favourite genres of movies. Put them together (like in Happy Feet) and you've got me - hook, line and sinker!
11. I get cold really, really easily. Apparently I have shocking circulation.
12. I'm a closet Aqua fan...
13. My "Most-shameful-tv-program-that-you-can't-help-but-be-addicted-too"? Er... ANTM. Nope, I won't decipher the acronym. If you really want to know, find out yourself! I told you it was shameful... =^.^=
14. I get blisters from like, ninety percent of my footwear, but I wear my shoes anyways because I am addicted to shoes. I guess that makes me a bit masochistic though...
15. I hate shark fin harvesting. Yes, I also care about the whales, but if someone was to ask me what regular act of cruelty conducted for money/as business really gets my goat - it would be that. I just can't stand the fact that hundreds and thousands of sharks have their fins cut off and then get chucked back in the sea to either drown (sharks swim to breathe) or get eaten alive. I think it's disgusting.
16. I have stayed up all night on many an occasion just to finish my book, or a series of books.... I can't help myself! I'm addicted to books. Someone check me into rehab - I have way too many addictions to be healthy!
17. I once cartwheeled down a church aisle for the sheer sake of it. I did the same in the Attorney-Generals Department of Defence building. Yep, the AGD. For the sheer sake of it.
18. I love haute couture and bargains. So yes, if I was a squillionare, I'd be saving half my money and spending half of the rest (exaggeration - maybe just one eighth or something) on Jimmy Choos, Chanel, D&G and the other part of that eighth on Valley Girl camis, JayJay's t-shirts and sale rack shorts!
19. It is my goal to go to as many museums and art galleries around the world as I can. I will drag my unsuspecting fellow travelers along for the ride, so beware!
20. I get paranoid whenever I pack up and go (from home, work - even a bus stop) that I've left something behind! I guess that paranoia has stopped me from loosing all my stuff when I was overseas though, so I'd call it a bit of a blessing in disguise.
21. I have insanely sensitive skin so you can tickle me absolutely anywhere - but don't touch my neck if you want to live.... I can't stand people touching my neck - just thinking about it gives me the heebeejeebies.... *shudders* Yuck.
22. Someone once thought my name was Barbie. -______- I wasn't impressed.
23. I have never had an imaginary friend. I think with three sisters I probably had more than enough playmates not to bother!
24. I'm an avid collector - stamps, coins, jewelry, shoes, hats, books, teapots - random bits of junk. I have the best excuse too - I'm an artist and I need all that stuff for reference! :D
25. If I'm away from home - I miss the stars. Funny, but true. When I was in the Northern Hemisphere, I hated looking at the night sky because I'd get homesick. The Southern Cross, the Milky Way, Orion and Scorpio - and other constellations that I love but don't know; I really miss them when I can't see them.
So there you go - twenty five strange and random facts about me that I'm sure you didn't want/didn't need to know, but whevah*....
It's strange how different we human beings are. I mean I just listed 25 things about me, and there are hundreds more things that make me; me and not someone else. (Duh) I think that's the great thing about meeting new people, or even just D&M-ing* with friends. There is always more than what meets the eye. ...
That's cool. Anyways ciao peeps;
b.
* 'Whatever' in shortened version.
* Deep & Meaningful coversation with friends.
Rules: Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you. (To do this, go to “notes” under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the right hand corner of the app) then click post.)
There will be one difference to mine though - I'm not going to torture any of my friends and tag them.... Okay - maybe one or two just for the heck of it!
1. I can't stand it when people are late - appointments, meetings, even just for casual hang outs... But for all of my problem with it; I am continuously doing the whole "Kiyyyaaa - I'm-so-late!!" dash. Go figure.
2. There are three things in life that I can not do to save myself:
~Bowling (I always come dead last and break at least one nail...)
~ Navigation (Anyone who rides in my car when I'm driving will experience the fun of reversing from traffic lights 'coz I'm in the wrong lane, or squealing around a corner 'coz I just about missed the turn off - or on the likely hood that I actually DID miss the turn off {this happens much more than I would like it too!} random U-turns whenever and where ever I can. Yup. I'm a crazy driver.)
~ Math (Do not ask me to do it, because without a calculator or my fingers and toes it just will NOT happen. Seriously.)
3. One of the things that I MUST do before I die is ride a cow. I've ridden horses of all descriptions and sizes, I want to ride an elephant when I go to Thailand, and I've ridden in cars, trailers, tractor scoops and on boats (speed and a ship), ferries, trains, aeroplanes, a motorbike and a quad bike. And merry-go-rounds and rollacoasters! I've even been in a hot air balloon (but didn't go any where) and basically, besides all of that list: I just want to!
4. I'm going to get my rally car drivers licence. Probably not that soon, around my 25th bday I think, so when I get my super-sweet car I'll be able to thrash it. Sweeeeet!
5. And, on that note - I hate Volvos. (The cars, not the biscuit). They suck hardcore.
6. And country/western music... Ick!
7. And wasps - they are seriously creepy! I think it's because they can fly, so you can never be sure if they are stalking you, or even if they are around half the time, so basically they freak me out.
8. On the other hand, I love spiders (particularly Huntsmans 'coz they are really pretty close up) except when they are on me. Then they have to get off.
9. I'm addicted to music and tea. (Particularly Jasmine tea, but I'm not fussy) I can't live with out one or the other or both at least once a day. Mmmm... Tea....
10. Animation/Cartoon and Dance/Musical are my favourite genres of movies. Put them together (like in Happy Feet) and you've got me - hook, line and sinker!
11. I get cold really, really easily. Apparently I have shocking circulation.
12. I'm a closet Aqua fan...
13. My "Most-shameful-tv-program-that-you-can't-help-but-be-addicted-too"? Er... ANTM. Nope, I won't decipher the acronym. If you really want to know, find out yourself! I told you it was shameful... =^.^=
14. I get blisters from like, ninety percent of my footwear, but I wear my shoes anyways because I am addicted to shoes. I guess that makes me a bit masochistic though...
15. I hate shark fin harvesting. Yes, I also care about the whales, but if someone was to ask me what regular act of cruelty conducted for money/as business really gets my goat - it would be that. I just can't stand the fact that hundreds and thousands of sharks have their fins cut off and then get chucked back in the sea to either drown (sharks swim to breathe) or get eaten alive. I think it's disgusting.
16. I have stayed up all night on many an occasion just to finish my book, or a series of books.... I can't help myself! I'm addicted to books. Someone check me into rehab - I have way too many addictions to be healthy!
17. I once cartwheeled down a church aisle for the sheer sake of it. I did the same in the Attorney-Generals Department of Defence building. Yep, the AGD. For the sheer sake of it.
18. I love haute couture and bargains. So yes, if I was a squillionare, I'd be saving half my money and spending half of the rest (exaggeration - maybe just one eighth or something) on Jimmy Choos, Chanel, D&G and the other part of that eighth on Valley Girl camis, JayJay's t-shirts and sale rack shorts!
19. It is my goal to go to as many museums and art galleries around the world as I can. I will drag my unsuspecting fellow travelers along for the ride, so beware!
20. I get paranoid whenever I pack up and go (from home, work - even a bus stop) that I've left something behind! I guess that paranoia has stopped me from loosing all my stuff when I was overseas though, so I'd call it a bit of a blessing in disguise.
21. I have insanely sensitive skin so you can tickle me absolutely anywhere - but don't touch my neck if you want to live.... I can't stand people touching my neck - just thinking about it gives me the heebeejeebies.... *shudders* Yuck.
22. Someone once thought my name was Barbie. -______- I wasn't impressed.
23. I have never had an imaginary friend. I think with three sisters I probably had more than enough playmates not to bother!
24. I'm an avid collector - stamps, coins, jewelry, shoes, hats, books, teapots - random bits of junk. I have the best excuse too - I'm an artist and I need all that stuff for reference! :D
25. If I'm away from home - I miss the stars. Funny, but true. When I was in the Northern Hemisphere, I hated looking at the night sky because I'd get homesick. The Southern Cross, the Milky Way, Orion and Scorpio - and other constellations that I love but don't know; I really miss them when I can't see them.
So there you go - twenty five strange and random facts about me that I'm sure you didn't want/didn't need to know, but whevah*....
It's strange how different we human beings are. I mean I just listed 25 things about me, and there are hundreds more things that make me; me and not someone else. (Duh) I think that's the great thing about meeting new people, or even just D&M-ing* with friends. There is always more than what meets the eye. ...
That's cool. Anyways ciao peeps;
b.
* 'Whatever' in shortened version.
* Deep & Meaningful coversation with friends.
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