It’s Just Another Manic Monday

31. March 2008 by Anthony Lindner.

Yep…that song is stuck in my head for some unknown reason. My brother was assigned an interesting science project dealing with his “Global Footprint.” Basically, a footprint is how many resources you consume to exist. And as is expected, we Americans are right by the top for the most consumed. Did you know that on average, every American uses roughly 370 liters of water a day? Now this takes into account the water that was used for the cow to drink that is now the steak on your dinner table, but even so, that is a ridiculous amount of water.

And in relation to water, the bottled water industry has exploded in the past decade or so, thanks to companies such as Nestle with their Poland Springs and Nestle Waters brands. Now, in 2002, there were 15 billion plastic bottles manufactured, of which only about 12% were recycled. And it takes about 700 years for plastic to even start to decompose! That’s a lot of plastic we’re putting in the ground for a very long time.

I’m not an environmentalist, but when you look at the facts about some basic things, it is amazing how truly wasteful we can be. I have developed a new appreciation for the recycling I do. I guess that was the idea behind the project: to get you to realize just what is involved with trash and consumption that we all take for granted.

I’ve been watching some videos over at LayersTV.com and I was sparked by an impulse to try Adobe Illustrator CS3 so I downloaded a trial version. I have no idea how to use it. It looks like the Cape Canaveral “Let’s Launch a Space Shuttle” version of Microsoft Paint. I tinkered with it for a while but I think I need to watch a few more tutorials before I get the hand of what each tool is for. I sure am going to miss all of this idle time when I have to return to work.

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