Fill 'er up?

It was a landmark fill-up: I recently topped the $50 mark while gassing up my little VW Golf. Yikes!

Happy Earth Day from Brawny

I found a special gift on my doorstep this morning: a free sample of a paper towel tucked in with my Sunday newspaper.

To deliver a single 10.5 x 11-inch sheet of Brawny paper towel to my door, the nice folks at Georgia Pacific folded it in quarters, backed it with a piece of white card stock, and tucked it inside a preprinted cellophane wrapper.

Then they stuck that package inside a larger four-color brochure detailing the delights of the NEW softer and thicker Brawny towel. Finally, they sealed the whole thing inside a pocket in the plastic bag my newspaper was delivered in this morning.

As you can see, there's way more wrapper than paper towel.













The kicker? It arrived just in time for Earth Day.

Somewhere a Georgia Pacific marketer is about to be fired.

A stroke of insight

My mother's brain is being eaten away by Alzheimer's. That's one reason why I found this video of brain researcher Jill Bolte Taylor so fascinating. But not the only reason.

Taylor had a massive stroke and lived to tell about it. The experience gave her new insight into how our brains function, and into that place in the brain's right hemisphere that she calls "nirvana."

The video, posted on ted.com, is titled My Stroke of Insight.

TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment and Design, is a nonprofit foundation that works to spread great ideas.

"There is no greater force for changing the world than a powerful idea."

Can we solve it?

You know, maybe we can.

If polar opposites like Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich can actually sit knee to knee on small sofa and agree that we must take action to address climate change...well, maybe there's a glimmer of hope. Maybe we will come to our senses and take action before we destroy the planet.

To view the ad, just click on the pic.

The ad is part of the We Can Solve It campaign, a project of The Alliance for Climate Protection, a nonprofit, nonpartisan effort founded by former Vice President Al Gore. The goal is to educate people that the climate crisis is "both urgent and solvable."

I'm hoping they're right.

Already the naysayers are piling on, bitching and moaning and calling them hypocrites in blog posts, comments and the like.

But I prefer to take a "the glass is half full" approach to life. I'd rather applaud them for doing what's right and trying to make a difference...in spite of their political differences. That's what we all need to do if we want to pass on a livable planet to the next generation.