A USB AA Battery

I did watch the Maslin video, so I feel especially guilty today about power consumption.

My deal does shut off just the a/c (and not the heat). Hadn't thought that allowing a company to play w/ your power (in return for cool things like new electronic thermostats--mine was a mercury one, circa 1948) is probably middle-class savings; but, yes, I imagine rich people aren't exactly signing up for this like I am.

I found homegrown Greeks (in a country that suffers from some scary anti-immigration stuff) to be chronic litterers, right in their own country that they were so busy defending against the foreign rabble. In Latin America, it's a different kind of arrogance: "We have little people who will clean this up for a pittance." Costa Rica, which boasts endlessly of its natural beauty, generates more trash per person than any other South or Central American country.

Jake

Shame what they did to that park.

The facts are simple...people who litter are simply lazy. Nothing more. They throw their trash wherever it lands rather than caring for it properly.

When I lived in Eagle River, the school bus stopped right in front of my house. The kids got off, took their drinks cans and such and just threw it in the front of my yard. I filmed this secretly with a videocam.

After about a week or two of this, I carefully watched which homes the kids went into. Then later I went on knocked on my neighbor's doors and spoke with their parents. Most of the kids owned up to their poor behavior and that was the end to it for them...they quit doing it, which is all that I asked. Three of teenagers denied they did it at all. I remember one parent saying, "If my son said he didn't do it, then he didn't do it!" At that point I handed him a VCR tape to watch.

Egg on face, the 3 sets parents had the kids cleaning my yard for the summer, mowing it and everything for free.

I actually got to know those kids, gave them sodas and such to drink while they worked on my yard and we all became friends. The next year I paid them to mow my yard. If anyone got off the bus and threw something down, the other kids jumped on them and the trash was picked up immediately.

The point is that some people's behavior is directly the product of parental upbringing, or the lack of it.

On another point, back when I resided on the military post, they installed thermostats that automatically cut off air conditioners to reduce power consumption. They set them at 81 degrees F. It was hot in Mississippi where I lived, mid-90s in the summer. And 81 didn't cut it for me. Stupid mercury switches can easily be bent and adjusted so that while the thermostat thinks it is 81, it is in reality 72. I stayed nice and cool.

Wow, what a litter of a story. Given our litigious nature, I'm surprised you weren't sued for some sort of "invasion of privacy." "Yeah, I threw the trash on your lawn and lied about it. But you taped me doing it, that's worse, pay up." Nice to hear, though, that most ways were mended.

Jake

The theory on the London Park was that they went around the local area getting paid for rubbish disposal and just dumped it on the park. They do the same with skips. A friend filled one with the contents of his garage, shed and house. Literally filed it. Woke up at 7 the next morning to find it totally empty.

Naturally half of it turned up in a field and when the police came knocking in an accusatory fashion be had to point out the odd charge of fly tipping given the week old, empty licensed skip on his drive.

Mark's video is good, well worth a watch. Quite eye opening.

When I was a kid, people used to dump their trash out at Kilowatt Lake (Morrow Lake). The dirt roads twisted and turned and went everywhere. I used to go out there and pick up old motors and all types of metal and break them down and turn them into the salvage company where we were paid by the pound for our salvages. Copper brought the best price, but iron was pretty good too. Aluminum not so much. Still on any given weekend I could earn $5-$10 and that was a fortune for a 12yo kid back in 1965.

Not to count the pop bottles that went for 2 cents each and beer bottles that went for 3 cents.

The video was good.

I wonder if there is any value in the Lithium we have in old batteries?

That sounds like the time of October Sky, the book!

A few years later perhaps...but yes...same era.