Rethos.com - BillTheDestroyer's News Feed

The Invasion of Bits of Plastic Doom

Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:17:33 -0500

At twenty-one years old, I am starting to feel a bit like that crazy old guy with the sign that reads: “The end is near”.

The more I go to the beach, check out the everglades, read the news, and reflect on the rising temperatures, the more I realize that we’ve hit the alarm clock of environmental consciousness and slept right through those crucial moments when we should have woken up. Now we find ourselves snapping into awareness, feeling groggy and a little hung over, and running lik...

Nonviolence: Practical or Practically a Fantasy?

Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:22:53 -0500

Help! I need your opinion on something.

I’ve been practicing self-defense for a while now, and I constantly find it arguing with my instincts about nonviolence. If you could, consider this article and let me know what a non-practitioner thinks about it.

In martial arts circles (particularly Aikido), there is a bit of an ongoing debate about nonviolence, and I can’t make heads or tails of this mess. Opinions on nonviolence in self-defense are of a wide variety.

Some believe that you can disarm and tame an opponent without harming him, but my scho...

Quit spinning your wheels, silly auto industry!

Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:55:54 -0500

Electricity, atomic energy, bio fuel, hydrogen, peanut oil, and alcohol: what do all of these have in common? The answer is that they have all been considered as a means to power those four-wheeled vessels that we use to go to the store and get our peanut butter and orange juice. All of these fuels have, at one point or another, been considered the future energy of the world, or at least a pleasant alternative to one of the more common types of fuels out there. And yet, for all of our research and development, our cunning and skill, none of these has produced a widespread and useful vehi...

No Longer Vegan

Tue, 25 Dec 2007 08:01:58 -0500

My New Year’s Resolution: No Longer Vegan

by Deborah Mitchell, Vegetarian Resource Group of Tucson (VRGT)

Recently I was privy to a heated discussion over the definition of “vegan.” Person #1 insisted that people who said they were vegan but ate honey were not truly vegans. Person #2 said honey wasn’t such a big deal, that she considered herself to be vegan but occasionally ate foods that contained honey and that she even ate vegetarian cheese that contained casein on rare occasions.

Person #3 said that Person #2 had no right to ca...

A day in the life: Cops, cell phones, and being a planeteer.

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 21:35:48 -0400

â€˜Local Actionâ€™: Itâ€™s the trendy catchphrase that you see all over any website that has even the most vague reference to environmental, social, and political subjects. But really, what is it?

The easiest answer is carrying a big sign and marching about. Perhaps, also, it is being involved in an organization that focuses on the problems around you, such as the Sierra Club, The Nature Conservancy, or any of the multitudes of local action groups. But it seems that I stumbled upon a new (to me) means of getting stuff done. I have dubbed this method â€œCalling the Cops.â€ Plea...

A Word on Beach Erosion

Thu, 04 Oct 2007 17:28:18 -0400

So when I got home from work today I started a painting. It was nothing exciting; just a simple oil-based mock up of the ocean. As the work progressed, I decided that it would be worth my time to stroll down to the beach and snap a few pictures of said ocean. What I ended up with was several shots of a five-meter stretch of sand separating A1A from the angry sea herself. What once had been a long, lovely stretch of seashore was now a heavily eroded shadow of its former self. Where had all of my sand gone?
You see, Iâ€™m from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Lauder...