Nooze

[elfs]

Shortened because my wrists are a bit stiff today. It's partially the keyboard; it's teaching me to type for real. Real finger placement, real touch typing.

The superintendent of schools in Texas who has been fighting to keep the Gay/Straight Alliance out of his schools has been busted for having an affair on school property and using school computers to solicit acts of prostitution. One of the emails revealed that the superintendent engaged in such activity on the same day he was standing in front of news cameras and proclaiming that he would not allow anything that interfered with the school's abstinence-only policy from being

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A woman who forgot her child in a carseat and allowed the kid to die of heat exhaustion has blamed Everquest for being so addictive she completely lost track of where her child was.

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Reason editor Julian Sanchez does a good job of dismantling the USA Patriot Act and showing how easy it is to abuse and how few checks really exist over the power it grants federal authorities. Right now the battle cry of its supporters is "show us one instance of abuse," but we cannot know because inquiries into the use of the Patriot Act have been ruled invulnerable to FOIA requests for the duration of the emergency.

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An article in Issues in Science and Technology decries Bush's gutting of science programs and ends with this dire note: "No science, no surplus. It's that simple."

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Plastic bags have become so commonplace that they are clogging the shores and oceans at a frightening rate, according to National Geographic. I've been trying to use cloth bags for years. Maybe you should too.

Comments

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

A lot of people will be more inclined to use cloth bags when they cost less than $10 - $20 apiece for the good ones. Maybe if grocery stores gave a few-cents incentive for bringing your own cloth bag (as they often do for reusing paper grocery bags), and made *good* cloth bags available at a much lower price, more people would use them.

When you're out buying five to ten bags' worth of groceries at a go, that's anywhere from fifty to two hundred dollars that you have to spend on bags beforehand to have enough. I want bags that are comparable in size and volume to paper sacks, have good, strong, securely-attached handles made of webbing, and will last for many years. Where do I find them? Bookstores!

[omahas.livejournal.com]

Actually, we've gotten the majority of our bags, free, from computer/electronic expos! Those kinds of bags stand up to abuse, since they have to hold heavy electronics, books, and other stuff from those expos.

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

This is handy if you go to the kind of expos where bags are given out. Even better if you get into the expo for free.

What do the rest of us do? Anybody want to start a bag-making co-op? (I may just make my own anyway; I do have a sewing machine, and I know how to use it somewhat.)

[jerusha.livejournal.com]

a few-cents incentive for bringing your own cloth bag (as they often do for reusing paper grocery bags)

When I was checking groceries, Lo These Many Moons Ago, the store at which I worked did give a credit ($0.03/bag IIRC) for re-using bags. I don't know what the official policy was, but I interpreted it as "$0.03 per new bag that you would otherwise have used today" and issued it for cloth bags and other containers as well as re-use of our own bags.

[riverheart.livejournal.com]

That's terrific! I have seen everything from credit for reusing *any* bag, including cloth bags, to credit given only for reusing *that* store's paper sacks.

And then many stores don't give credit for bringing your own bag at all.

Pattern to Sew Grocery Bags

[(Anonymous)]

http://www.make-it-easy.com/opentot2.html or, even easier: http://craftandfabriclinks.com/halloweenbag/trickbag.html
My Co-op charges 4 cents each for plastic or paper bags, provides an area to select boxes, and has promos for quality cloth bags.