Great Expectations: Feast of Green

It's one of the more aesthetically rich films by Alfonso Cuaron.
I thought of the uber-talented Cuaron today while talking to someone who reacts to his work in a similar fashion.
Cuaron's filmic adaptation of the Dickens' novel remains to this day a favorite even though the literary text is not represented as authentically. But then again that is the beauty of interpretation. I believe Dickens would not mind many of Cuaron's choices, especially his poetry of color.
Here is a music video of the film. Notice the green texts featured therein.

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Free Bikes on Campus?

I feel strongly about bikes. In my case, the bike represents not only an active and serious hobby but a way of life. On the average, I cover about 50 miles a week which is much more during warmer seasons. I believe in notions like 'agito ergo sum' and being on my Cannondale brings that very thing to fruition.
However, I find many examples from my quotidian routes of drivers who seem to have a hard time with the idea of bikers safely riding on the lanes. Biking and bikers are featured on driving manuals and, based on that bit alone, I assumed that people would be aware of the biking breed and respectfully acknowledge them on the road. Alas, this is not the case all the time.
I have biked in different countries and US states and I find that there where biking is used more by people be it recreationally or transportationally, it is safer to ride.
But drivers are not the only ones at fault. Many bikers seem to forget to abide by traffic rules as well. Hand signals are not always used and the red light is seen as optional. So, drivers and bikers, safe traffic goes both ways. While driving I have caught myself making comments like: "Grh [insert eye-rolling], where did you learn how to ride?! It's a LEFT turn, Armstrong!" And as a rider I often think: "Oy! Driver's manual and the law says I need to be on the road not on the sidewalk!"

I was very happy to read about this practice some US campuses are following. A snippet says:
"When Kylie Galliani started at the University of New England in August, she was given a key to her dorm, a class schedule and something more unusual: a $480 bicycle. Bicycles to be given to freshmen at the University of New England in Biddeford, Me.
The University of New England bikes are personalized. Free or subsidized bike programs at colleges have had mixed success.

“I was like, ‘A free bike, no catch?’ ” Ms. Galliani, 17, a freshman from Fort Bragg, Calif., asked. “It’s really an ideal way to get around the campus.”

University administrators and students nationwide are increasingly feeling that way too.

The University of New England and Ripon College in Wisconsin are giving free bikes to freshmen who promise to leave their cars at home. Other colleges are setting up free bike sharing or rental programs, and some universities are partnering with bike shops to offer discounts on purchases.

The goal, college and university officials said, is to ease critical shortages of parking and to change the car culture that clogs campus roadways and erodes the community feel that comes with walking or biking around campus."
Read it all here.

SLC Drives Cheaply

Just read this on the Times. Salt Lake City is one of my favorite spots so, naturally, I was interested in the subject.

"The best deal on fuel in the country right now might be here in Utah, where people are waiting in lines to pay the equivalent of 87 cents a gallon. Demand is so strong at rush hour that fuel runs low, and some days people can pump only half a tank.

Gov. Jon M. Huntsman Jr. of Utah spent $12,000 to convert his government-issued S.U.V. to run on natural gas.

It is not gasoline they are buying for their cars, but natural gas.

By an odd confluence of public policy and private initiative, Utah has become the first state in the country to experience broad consumer interest in the idea of running cars on clean natural gas."
graph per ny times

Bicycle Thief

No, this is not a post on the Italian film Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves, 1948)
directed by Vittorio De Sica.
This comes from Toronto.
One of the main reasons why I like Toronto is how well the city caters to bikers. Alas, the story the Times reports on today is not about Toronto's nice bike paths. It's about Toronto's biggest bicycle thief and his bicycle operation. What a story!

"The jumbled collection of bicycles suggests that Mr. Kenk is the unofficial world champion of bicycle thieves. But as he awaits trial next month on 58 charges related to theft and drug possession, the biggest mysteries of all are Mr. Kenk’s motives and his ultimate plan for the armada of steel, rubber and aluminum he amassed.

“He’s easily the most hated man in Toronto,” said Alex Jansen, a filmmaker who has been working on a documentary about Mr. Kenk for more than a year as part of a study of his rundown neighborhood’s transition to hipsterdom. “But I just found that it’s not as black and white as I originally thought.”

graph per ny times

Conversation I Heard Out and About

She: I want that.
Other Person (OP): It's nice. Don't you have plenty of t-shirts, though?
She: That's irrelevant. Not ALL my t-shirts are 100$ organic cotton! I want to be more green, you know?
OP: True, true. But aren't you then wasting resources by buying more even though the new stuff is 'green'?
She: The color brings out my eyes, though.
OP: It's a really nice shirt, yup.

Going Green

This is a really good piece on thinking and being Green. It also tackles a most relevant topic called Green Fatigue. Let's face it, after Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, much Green-inspired discourse has been generated and, while I find much of it very useful and helpful, some can be a tad much. I try to live as green as I can. For example, today I'm wearing my 100% organic cotton 'Go Green' t-shirt.
Right.
Well, I also drive only when I absolutely have to. My people would say, 'thank goodness for that!' since I used to tend to speed a bit. But that tendency has long been attended to, naturally. And I bike everywhere. Let's see what else, I also tend to wash my dishes by hand. And I tend to put the groceries in washable cotton bags.
I do think that we can all make a difference by being more mindful of resources and being more gentle to our planet. At the same time, I also think that we tend to behave better when not constantly told what to do and how to do the things we are supposed to do.
Hence, I found the following the paragraph from the article particularly interesting:
'Eddie Stern, 38, a media strategist in Durango, Colo., said he recently “went nuts, just trying to buy a car” because of the “overload of info, from the news, from the Internet, from quote-unquote experts on the street.”

Every new tidbit of research seemed to contradict the last. Some environmentalists made the case for a new hybrid, others insisted that buying a used model with a standard engine would save the huge amounts of energy that go into manufacturing a new vehicle. Other environmentalists supported biodiesel, on the grounds that it means, essentially, growing gas. Others countered that biodiesel still pollutes.

Mr. Stern said he finally settled (after a coin flip) on what seemed like the ideal compromise, a used Ford Escape hybrid. Ideal, until his brother, who works in the solar-power industry, asked, “Where are you going to bury the battery?”'
But jokes aside, the NY Times' piece is particularly sound and relevant. I enjoyed.
graph per ny times