Monday, May 08, 2006

Soy Yogurt

In my ongoing effort to eat fewer milk products I've started eating soy yogurt. The first soy yogurt I purchased was Stonyfield Farm O'Soy and it tasted great. My next trip to a different grocery store forced me to try a new brand as Stonyfield Farm soy yogurt was unavailable so I purchased Silk soy yogurt. Sadly, I was disappointed with both the raspberry and blueberry. I'll stick with Stonyfield Farm soy yogurt in the future. It tastes great and provides six live active cultures.

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Government Positions Like Jury Duty

I think our senators and representatives should no longer be elected but selected through a process similar to jury duty. I propose this idea as a different form of term limits. We would no longer have life long law makers who lose the interests of the people in pursuit of their own personal gain.

These selected legislators would serve a shorter term of 1 or 2 years.
They must be registered voters and have voted in the past 5 to 10 years which should weed out individuals who know little about the government.
If selected a person has the opportunity to opt out of service.
Salary would be similar to jury duty. The pay isn't great which would discourage greed.
We could start with one representative per state to see how well it works and then increase numbers later.

Conservative Environmentalists

Caring for the environment doesn't automatically make you a liberal. It just means you care about more than just yourself. You care about future generations and not just today. I'd call myself a conservative who cares about the environment.
I recycle not just because it keeps our landfills smaller but because it makes economic sense. I learned from our city hall than recycling keeps my garbage bill lower as they pay by volume. Recyclable materials tend to be rather bulky, plastic containers especially.
Everything you throw away that ends up in the landfill is akin to littering, albeit controlled littering. You might as well just through you garbage out the window if you don't want to recycle it. I was taught not to waste things and not recycling is wasting valuable resources.
Personally as a Bible believing Christian, I believe that we are called to be stewards of our world. As stewards we should take care of it but don't place it higher than ourselves. If we can care for the world without hurting our fellow man then go for it. I don't hug a tree but I'm glad it is growing and I'll care for it. However, if I need paper or firewood I'm going to cut it down and use it but I'll plant another one or two in its place. Likewise animals eat other animals so we can too.

Monday, May 01, 2006

My First Post

Well, here it is, my first post.
If everything goes well I should be blogging more.