Chasing Clean Air

Skype enables chase for clean air to continue hassle free

I just discovered Skype, like a gold-miner might have discovered a rock glimmering in the sunlight for the first time.

Why should traditional phone companies get all the money?

Researching phone rates when I'm in Canada was no fun.

The best rate I found was 59 cents a minute with AT&T's international plan. I can talk a lot, so that rate--giving and receiving calls--was sure to add up fast.

And then I found Skype, hanging in cyberspace, enabling millions around the world to talk for....

Free.

If you sign up with this phone internet service, and the person you call is signed up, you speak free anywhere in the world from your computer. No money. No plans.

I signed up with their Canada/US plan, which means for $6.00 (covers three month period) I will get 10,000 free minutes of calls per month within Canada and U.S. After that I believe the rate is 17 cents a minute. But I won't talk more than 10,000 minutes a month.

I also bought a Los Angeles phone number so friends and colleagues can call me on Skype free of cost when I'm in Canada. If the computer is turned off, they can leave a voice mail message.

The sound quality is great.

All you need is to go to Office Depot and buy a mic, and if you want, headset. I don't know about radiation emanating from computer from plugged-in headset, but, I believe a "head's free" mic is safe.

I have both.

And that little Dell Inspiron 700m laptop, small enough to fit in my person, just got a whole lot niftier! One of my best buys ever.

Oh, yes, and go to www.skype.com

Are cell phones and cell phone tower transmittors dangerous to public health?

So I'm researching phone use while I'm in Canada, and I get a crash course on health risks from cell phones, bluetooths, and microwaves from cell phone transmission towers.

Based on my research, I'm buying a wire headset with a blue air tube that runs between your ear piece and phone, thereby breaking up radiation that otherwise travels directly into ear.

Intuitively, I have believed there are risks to using a cell phone or even holding one close to one's body.

Before I bought my Blackberry, which I do love using, I had a cell phone with speaker function, which is recommended. No, you don't have privacy but yes it's better than having a phone, wire, or bluetooth directly on or in your ear and next to your brain. Here's a good video on subject. You might also learn more about electromagnetic radiation by clicking here.

Green Crude

The race for clean fuels to make fossil fuels obsolete is underway!

My eyes have been on algae, ever since National Geographic did a story on biofuels last year.

Algae grows fast in small spaces, as opposed to corn or sugar, which take land that can be used to produce food for people.

The lead story in L.A. Times business section today was about a San Diego-based company called Sapphire Energy that says within five years it will mass-produce algae crude.

Sapphire's algae crude has a similar composition to fossil fuels but without the pollution.

And a bonus.

They say they use carbon dioxide, which can be sequestered from coal production. This I don't understand but maybe I'll get an interview and learn more.

Green algae at our pump?

More power to them. To read more, click here.

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Last night was a big dance night--hundreds and hundreds of people showed-- because choreographers were just in town teaching their new dances. Eleven years of dancing with the same crowd means I see new marriages, babies, and careers. A lot of foward movement, which was one reason I ended up feeling not so hot. Once again, I'm planning my next trip alone. That photo was taken almost two years ago with my girlfriend of loving husband and six kids. When I got home, my phone rang. It was the male version of me with his own issues, saying dancing made him feel blue. He saw men at dance whose careers and incomes had surpassed his own. So we had company with one another in the comparison game. I don't think it was so much comparison as seeing something we'd like reflected in someone else. An older friend of mine (she's 80) tells me you never know what goes on behind closed doors. But I've been part of a happy couple before, and I think I do know what goes on behind closed doors. I also know what goes on when you're in love with your dance partner. Some of those women at dance with loving husbands, dance partners, and kids, I recall the day when they had none of the above. And each declared in their own way that they were going out to get the man, the kids, and their needs met. And then they showed up one day with a husband, and babies in the stroller, and a smile of satisfaction. I saw five such women last night. And I wondered about my personal goals, and what I'm capable of; a loving husband of my own, too, and a career as a novelist, continue with my blog and activism, and career in PR until I can make a living through writing and speaking. I've got to get back to comedy. The novel I wrote and my agent didn't sell, Chasing Normal, was a comedy. So was my stage play that won an honorable mention in a national comedy playwriting competition. In a world with serious issues, laughing is the best. Selling. Would it hurt?

How Kids Can Make History: Climate Change and Clean Air

I woke up thinking given the state of our world, 3rd-8th graders should make history more than read about it.

Kids could show up at utility board meetings throughout this country, and the world!, demanding renewable energy for their TVs, computers, light to do homework by, refrigerators, and on and on.

Not the tiny percentage currently alloted to renewable energy but...

Tell these electricity leaders to take climate change seriously now.

Like the tornados, floods, and hurricanes, do. And receding shorelines, too.

Instead of business as usual with coal polluting our skies and lungs, and acid rain hurting our forests, and unreported nuclear meltdowns and leaks occuring while talk of "clean nuclear" goes on, and neighbors risk leukemia and thyroid cancer, instead of all that, I suggest kids (and teachers) take all or part of their school history hour--reserved to learn facts and figures about a world long gone--and take care of the world now instead.

Create cleaner skies and a cooler planet.

Make history. 

And when the kids were done at Utility Board meetings, like LADWP in Los Angeles, they could go to bank board meetings, and talk to the folks that give money to Big Coal, and tell them to cut it out. Tell those moneymen to fund Big Solar and Big Wind, instead.

And kids could go to board meetings at Ports throughout this country, and encourage low-sulfur fuels, and encourage clean trucks and clean rails to transport goods throughout the country.

Kids can speak at California Air Resources Board and South Coast Air Quality Management District, too. And tell them to mandate and fund all-electric transportation. Tell them it's because you want to breathe clean air. You have a right to clean air.

Make history, don't just regurgitate a past.

There's too much work to do now.

If the size of the board meeting rooms allow, bring whole classrooms of kids.

That was the visual I woke up with. Bus loads of kids testifying one after another to those adults supposedly taking care of them. Those adults with important jobs.

But if we learn from history, many adults do like kids in history class, regurgitate the past. Some adults that you think are well-meaning, do harm (intentionally or not), and these people need to be taught differently. Even if it takes a kid to teach them.

Kids learn from adults, and adults learn from kids.

History tells us that concerned citizens, willing to reach out and make a difference, are the catalysts for meaningful change.

Last time I testified at an EPA hearing for stricter ozone standards, I can tell you that the kids and teenagers testifying in the room were some of the most powerful and moving speakers of them all.

So I woke seeing a bus load of kids, and the first, a young girl with long hair, a big heart, and ideas to clean the skies, steps off the bus in front of her utility company. She walks through the board's meeting doors, the first of many, prepared to help make history.

Not repeat it.

A People's History of American Empire

Update: Feb. 4, 2010 I just learned Howard Zinn passed away at age 87. He was one of the finest historians alive, who told the truth through history, not the dominant aggressor's truth but the whole truth. To read more about his life and work, click here.

Talking about history in last post, I recently enjoyed historian Howard Zinn's graphic book called A People's History of American Empire. I highly recommend it for kids and adults interested in historical truth written in easy-to-understand, entertaining language with pictures.