Flying Off in the Wrong Direction

Richard Branson's stunt of flying a Boeing 747 from London to Amsterdam using 20% bioethanol seems to me to be heading in the wrong direction. For a start, why take such a huge, heavy, gas-guzzling plane on such a short hop? Unless of course it was fully laden.

Then there is the collateral effect of large scale bioethanol production - grain prices have gone through the roof. So the (roughly) 100% of the world's population that needs to eat, is being screwed by the eco-friendly posturing of the 2% (my guess) of the population that "needs" to fly. If flight were to be made significantly more expensive, its carbon footprint would be reduced by having fewer planes in the air.

Given that the fliers are generally well off people, shouldn't we be thinking of a fuel surcharge whereby they subsidise the people that the World Food Program doesn't have funds to feed, increasingly the middle classes in developing countries, due to the huge rises in basic food prices? Along the same lines of reasoning, we could extend that charge to the hedge funds and commodity traders that are reaping huge profits buying stakes in foodstuffs when they have no intention of taking delivery. I'm not usually in favour of intervention in markets, but something needs to be done.

Office Annoyances

I've been meaning to do this one for ages, but today I was more annoyed than usual:

• Colleagues who use the last of the water, but don't change the bottle on the cooler.
• Colleagues who take stationery items that they don't need, never use, and know someone else ordered specially, just because the items are interesting.
• Colleagues who join us for lunch and insist on individual bills when it saves them money, but never when they have eaten or drunk more than the others.
  
• Staff who go for a cigarette break within 10 minutes after clocking in or before clocking out.
• Staff who are always present when their boss is around, and never present when the boss is out.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. I could go on for ever, but it wouldn't be very original.

CD of the Month (8)

The Corrs are one of my great favourites, despite being relatively recent. I saw them at the Pavilhão Atlântico last year, with my older son - a great concert!

Their Unplugged album shows them at their best as spontaneous, talented musicians, though with a huge backing orchestra, and reveals cover versions of some unexpected tracks, such as Everybody Hurts.

Recycle This!

This should be the title to an Al Gore type educational movie, starring Billy Crystal as the conservationist and perhaps Michael Caine as the big bad polluter. Actually it's only the heading for my own personal attempt to encourage readers to recycle.

In Portugal, recycling is optional and not easy unless you live in a built-up area. We have recycled glass for years, because we don't use much, it's easy to store, doesn't smell and is 100% permanent, no decomposition at all over time. But it wasn't until we found the right size of boxes at Ikea that we finally got round to recycling paper and packaging.

It's been quite a surprise. Our "general rubbish" volume has fallen 70%! We now have to take the recycling bags with us when we go out, as the nearest recycling point is at driving distance, and the volume going to the landfill is almost none. But that's no big deal. So if you don't recycle yet, WHY THE HELL NOT!!!

(Nothing worse than a born-again recycler, eh... )

Diary Entry

Today was Dad's 66th birthday - congratulations.

Younger son learned to ride a bicycle - that's important for a young un!

Nothing earth-shattering to write about, good night...

Conservation Area - Build if you can!

I was out yesterday in the Serra de Arrábida, doing a spot of Geocaching (of which more on another occasion) and was amazed to find, up on the top of a hill, apparently new houses. All along the road that crosses the summit are markers defining the limits of plots.

The markers are painted with the red letters "AXL", which everybody south of the Tagus knows stands for António Xavier de Lima, known for being the major landowner ever since the 1974 revolution. How he can possibly have registered the land and a zoning plan in a Conservation Area beats me, but there is definitely construction going on up there. Does Setúbal council know, or just choose not to look?

Another example of the sad culture of getting away with as much as possible...

Mythical beast from Funchal

BANIF's new image has me rather baffled, I'm afraid, not helped by the coincidence of the teaser campaign, that had the Centaur image but no name, with RTP's screening of the Chronicles of Narnia, featuring large numbers of centaurs, fauns and other mythical animals.

So having established that the stylised centaur logo represents the Banco Internacional de Funchal, I still don't understand. Could it be that the Mad Hatter who runs the archipelago has decreed that centaurs do, in fact, exist, and thus needed one of his key local businesses to support him? Does anybody have a better idea?

Golfing on a Wii

Saying how wonderful the Wii games console is would be a post that's only two years overdue, though we only got one for Christmas, but I'll say it anyway. Despite the inferior quality of the graphics processing, the Wii, with its Sports games and innovative wireless game controllers, is great for getting us couch potatoes on our feet and leaping around.

And having gone and hit some golf balls today, after a sickly month of January, I find an interesting side effect. While playing Tiger Woods Golf 2004 on the PS2 was disastrous for my golf, the 2007 version where the Wii obliges me to practice a full, slow golf swing, appears to actually improve my game! Strangely, after playing the real sport, I can't hit a thing on the Wii...

Unfortunately, the console is right to tell us to take a break every so often. The realistic sports actions do tire muscles, despite the light weight of the controller, and seem to aggravate my injured shoulder almost as much as the real game: extra realism I'm not sure the game developers were aiming to simulate!

Publicidade Parva

What on earth do MediaMarkt think they are doing, using an actor dressed in full Scout uniform to portray the fool (parvo) in their recent advertising campaign? The Scouts simply cannot be depicted like this. It's a scandal!

Of course there are two guilty parties here, the company and the idiots from their advertising agency. Unfortunately, the scouts are too restrained to react. On the other hand, it would be easy for irate parents to block access to the stores. Hope they do!