Monthly Archives: March 2007

The Trouble with Biofuels

These past few weeks have been hectic, and I haven’t been blogging much. But I think I’m going to start doing better with any luck. Being a stay at home mom isn’t all soap operas and bon bons, after all. Sometimes it’s running around and wondering where the day went.

Ok, now I’ll get serious about this post. I read an interesting post over on Tree Hugger about the dangers of biofuels. This is a topic I’ve been reading more and more about. It’s always a pity to see what had been such a promising technology turn out to be not so green after all.

So what’s the problem?

Mostly the trouble is how biofuels are grown. They’re pretty popular in countries with few resources, and virgin land is often stripped for farmland to grow crops for biofuels. Sometimes the land is cleared by burning, releasing more carbon than the biofuels will save for a long time. Then there are food crops being made into biofuels as well, raising prices. Continue reading →

One Car Not So Hard as You May Think

We’ve been living as a one car family essentially since Christmastime, that being when my car first died and was never successfully repaired. And you know what? It really isn’t that bad.

Of course, it helps that I’m a stay at home mom. That really does make it easier. I don’t need a car to get to work, just for errands. My daughter’s preschool is easy walking distance. As you can see, my need for a car of my own is quite minimal.

Today I learned about a service called Flexcar, which is really neat for those of you who need a car somewhat more than I do. It’s available in certain areas, including near enough to me to be a consideration, but I quite simply do not need it. But for those of you who do need a little more help, it could be an option.

There will be times that I will need a car, and fortunately I have one I can borrow from my mother. She has a company car, and so barely needs her personal car during the week. That will become important when summer rolls around and I enroll my daughter in swimming lessons. As my inlaws have a pool in their backyard, I consider this a must, not a luxury. Continue reading →

Now That’s a Cool Refrigerator!

It’s not often you can get me excited about an appliance. They’re nice and useful, generally speaking, but not exciting. But when I saw the Sub-Zero PRO-48 over on Hippyshopper, I had to take a look. Any refrigerator that is rated as using less electricity than a 100 watt lightbulb is pretty interesting in my book.

I must say I like many of the design features. LEDs make a lot of sense for lighting. And it manages to have those little luxuries like a built in water filter, ice maker, two compressors and three evaporators. And I like how they have the produce drawers separate from the rest of the refrigerator. That actually makes sense to me that you can have different foods stored separately like that. I wonder how much that does for efficiency?

It’s also quite simply huge. 884 liters capacity.

I will admit I’m not a big fan of the stainless steel look, though. It just looks cold and commercial to me. I like my appliances to look like they’re a part of my kitchen, not something that belongs in a professional kitchen.

We won’t discuss the price of this beast, of course. Suffice it to say that it goes far beyond most people’s budget… more than some cars, in fact.

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