thank you Katra!

All right, so I just wanted to take a second and thank our wonderful and fabulous member Katra for a couple recent contributions to the club.

Firstly, a friend mentioned today that she used to bring her lunch items in disposable packaging, but after the urging of our good friend Katra converted to tupperware. Three cheers for reducing waste! And I'm assuming that it was done very politely and pleasantly.

Secondly, Katra was responsible for ordering our new stainless steel water bottles, and we thank her for that contribution as well. They're still in Mr. Steussy's room as far as I know, so get them while they're hot! I know we'll be setting up and organising lunch sales soon.

Thirdly, we now have a new little poster that mentions the water bottles and the STWF t-shirts that Katra designed. Jimmy got clearance with ASB to post them wherever, so you should be seeing them multiply in the next few days.

I just thought it'd be nice to give a blog-five to a member that helped out a lot recently. Keep up the good work, everyone, and we'll see you on Friday!

Andy Rooney on Water Bottles

"What people will remember about Andy Rooney are things like this: He’d open a can of mixed nuts on 60 Minutes and separate the various nuts by type, and then he’d count how many of each nut were in the can. What made this so interesting (at least to me) was not the metaphor this act represented; what was interesting was that there was no metaphor at all. It wasn’t a veiled sociological commentary or a criticism of advertising or a meditation on consumerism. It wasn’t about anything, except the contents of the can. This, I suspect, is why Rooney’s seemingly banal essays were so infuriating to a certain kind of person: We have come to assume that whenever a media personality talks about something basic, he or she is actually trying to explain something complex. The idea that someone on television would just sit at his desk and complain about mixed nuts and have it only be about the ostensive subject — without a larger meaning and without a defined purpose — seemed facile and ridiculous. But isn’t it equally ridiculous to assume trivial thoughts are only worth considering when we pretend they represent something else? As a self-defined atheist, Rooney would have never pretended that filtering peanuts could help us understand the nature of existence; he was wholly resigned to the fact that we couldn’t even understand the nature of peanuts."


-Chuck Klosterman


Andy Rooney 1919-2011

Cool video!

Hi everyone,

I hope the end of the semester hasn't been too brutal for anyone, and as you are all cramming for finals and putting finishing touches on papers/projects/what-have-you, here's a short video to take a break with:

CLICK

NASA apparently had some time on its hands and they produced the video to show modern global warming and how the temperatures have changed/risen from 1880 to 2010. It's a neat little thing. It'd be interesting to analyze the causes of the fluctuations between 1880 and 2010. If you have any ideas, feel free to toss them down in a comment. (I'm assuming there are a couple of Industrial Revolutions in there...)

Hope all is going well! Best of luck finishing up this fall semester.

JANUARY 13 MEETING

Hey guys!

Sorry I haven't posted lately. My computer had to go for repairs and Senior year's been keeping me real busy. Just wanted to record and remind you of a couple things:

• The bottles! They have come in, and we'll be selling them soon. We need to fill out a form first, but now we have the bottles to sell, it's super cool.
• Speaking of bottles: the flyers you made. Remember them? You can post them up wherever. We don't need permission. So go for it.
• T-Shirts! We still have a bunch! Buy one, they look (and feel) really neat. They're organic cotton! And, um, yeah. Oh: if you have one, make sure to wear it! I like the idea of wearing it on Fridays, as it creates more of a presence in the school.
• Environmental week! We still need to figure it all out. I'll keep you updated on that.

So yeah. There's the stuff. Just part of my ongoing mission to provide transparency for student governments. Yeeeeeeeahppo.

composting!

I am almost absolutely sure that somewhere on this blog is a post about composting. We're all tree-hugging hippies, right? It comes with the territory.

But I figure that sometimes redundancy doesn't hurt, especially when we've just been handed this new, shiny 2012 that's just begging for new projects and resolutions. If you've already thought about giving composting a go, here's some information that could help you along the way. If you haven't, then maybe this will cause you to consider it? Who knows.

Anyway, I got this information off of the conveniently-named howtocompost.org. I'm sure the website (and the internet in general, really) is full of helpful tips, but I thought their "top ten tips" would be a neat way to get us off the ground.

1. Gather all grass clippings and green yard waste but be sure to mix with the "brown" materials like leaves and shredded paper to add carbon. You will need both, but if you only add grass clippings your pile will compact and start to stink.


2. Do not compost meats or pet droppings. Stick with food scraps and yard waste only.


3. Avoid all pesticides and/or herbicide treated material.


4. If you add weeds to your pile make sure your pile is good and hot. It should be steaming hot, not just warm otherwise it may not kill the seeds.


5. Turn your pile as often as you can. Each time you turn it will speed up the process.


6. Keep your compost damp but not wet. As you add material to your pile make sure that each layer is moist as it is added. During the summer your pile will dry out and the composting process will slow down.


7. Got too much material to compost? Make a second or third pile. Stop adding material to a pile that is under way and start a new pile. This will ensure you get a chance to use the compost this season.


8. Add compost to your garden a few weeks before you plant. Let the compost have a chance to work into the soil. Try to mix it in and let it sit before you plant.


9. Worms and most bugs are okay. No need to go crazy trying to keep bugs out of your compost.


10. Since the compost process works best at temperature between 120 and 150 degrees composting in the warmer months is easier to do, if this is your first attempt at composting best to try in the summer. 

And there we have it! Good luck to you if you're trying out this new endeavour!