Green Guilt

The Phactors  bought themselves a new TV.  It's a bit of an understatement to say that the technology has changed considerably in the last 25 years. As hard as it is to believe our still fully functional TV was 25 years old. By the standards of the industry, our new TV is far, far from the biggest, fastest, highest res, smartest TV you can buy.  Now here's the problem: TVs are not very green, and no one is even trying to figure out how to recycle them.  It costs money just to  recover a few materials, and while paying is OK with us, no one wants to help.  It hurts environmentally conscious people like us to be forced to recycle a perfectly good, functional appliance that doesn't recycle very well. When you ask a sales assistant (Do you have any questions?), "How well does this type of TV recycle?" They give you a quite strange look. Such a concept had never ever entered their mind before. And what is the expected functional life of this TV? And you know they're thinking, "Well, Grandpa, since you've bought a model that is already outmoded by about 2 years, it's about 6 months."  No one else seems to care. Manufacturers of such things have no environmental ethic at all, and if you were to require them to build in a recycling plan and front load it into cost, there would be a huge outcry.  "It would make our product too expensive!"  This is an example of letting the environment pay part of the cost, and it then results in the public subsidizing of an environmentally unethical business. Just as if there isn't enough money out there in all the programming, delivery, receiving, aspects of the industry combined to pay for the environmental cost of recycling TVs.  There just isn't a will to do anything.  And it leaves the tiny  portion of their market that has an environmental ethic suffering from green guilt, while enjoying greatly improved image quality.

News, infotainment, comings and goings

These days it's hard to draw a line between news and entertainment. Although TPP doesn't rely upon these types of TV shows for news, apparently many people do. John Stewart's annoucement about leaving the Daily Show left TPP quite sad; he did a great job of putting things and people into perspective, and giving you a grin or two during grim times. The revelations about Brian Williams generated a feeling of who cares? Never watched the guy and wasn't impressed. Watching Bill O'Really getting his notoriously thin skin poked has been amusing as is his totally predictable response. He seems to think that if you bully someone into submission, your point of view wins. Cannot for the life of me understand the popularity of this second rate thinker. Less than impressed so far with the Nightly Show, although Larry has had his moments. Even John Stewart took awhile to hit his stride, find his rhythm. That and he's on a bit too late for us senior citizens.