Morning Thoughts

Al Capp War Bonds Cartoon, U.S. Government Poster (Sarah Palin could be Daisy Mae with glasses.)

Morning Thoughts

I walked up to my local library this morning. I picked up a couple of books, Yoga RX by Larry Payne, Ph.D. and Richard Usatine, M.D. and The Forty- Niners By Alan Moore, Todd Klein, Gene Ha, and Art Lyon. The Forty Niners is published by America's Best Comics, a company of which Alan Moore is one of the founders.

It has been pretty quiet right now. I returned a few books.

I've spent a little bit of time looking through Yoga RX, there is a specific section for yoga that deals with overweight people. The book is broken down into floor exercises for specific problems, asthma and allergies, back pain, hypertension, and other problems. I tried the floor exercises they suggested. They are all doable, I could probably add a few other ones and have a short workout which I could do every single day. I'm planning on walking a bit every single day. The illustrations are very clear and the language is easy to understand.

Earlier, I had said I was going to lose 5 pounds every two weeks for a while. There will be a point, I guess around midpoint where dieting will stop being that effective, and I'll have to do some light exercise. I don't want to lose too much too fast, because then I won't keep the weight off permanently. I've stopped eating candy and soft drinks. I'm replacing candy with nuts and plain seltzer water.

Green Thoughts

I've been buying inkjet printer refills from Walgreens lately. It saves a decent amount of money. It is half the price of buying a new cartridge. The process is very fast.

I like to think there are Five R's ; refurbish, remanufacture, reduce, reuse, recycle. The first two R's are industrial and they could be built much more strongly into our economy. It is the xerox model of service which most uses the first two very well, they refurbish and remanufacture many of their machines.

Congress and the public are becoming more enamored with trains. I have always preferred trains and subways for going short distances. (I am not that fond of buses). I also don't like driving that much. Trains are one of the major reasons I live in New York. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081101/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/passenger_trains_2

Morning Subway

I take the train

Rolling and rocking

Puts me to sleep

Thoughts for the Day

Union Square Farmers Market, New York, Public Domain Photograph.

Good afternoon. I have finished reading The Djinn in The Nightingale's Eye by A.S. Byatt. I have to sit down and go back through it to make some notes on what I read. Sometimes memory is not perfect and you interpret things differently while you are reading and have to check your own thoughts to make sure they are accurate. Everyone has different perceptions on what is being written. It is very easy for people to give very different accounts of the same event.

Today, I was cutting up scrap paper for the reference desk. We cut up old flyers, leftover printouts from the cybercorner, and other scrap paper into small squares to take notes at the reference desk. We of course check to make sure we aren't cutting up salacious printouts before we hand them to patrons. We also reuse scrap paper for the printer. If only one side is used, we use the other side. The amount of paper which goes through the library is truly amazing. In addition we have a scrap box to give out paper to patrons. We don't give out clean paper.

There is a famous story of an investor who visits two different railroad offices. In the first office, the man takes notes on monogrammed paper with a fine fountain pen and is dressed in a very nice silk suit. He tosses the paper which he makes mistakes on into the garbage without a thought. In the second office, the manager is dressed in a conservative, but inexpensive blue suit, the manager takes notes on pieces of carefully cut scrap paper, using as few pieces of possible and uses an old pen to take the notes. Immediately after visiting, the investor buys stock in the company from the second office without looking at the financials of either company.

People ask for whiteout, pens, envelopes, rulers, calculators, and various office supplies from the reference desk. We try to limit the amount of office supplies we give to patrons sticking to tape, use of the stapler, and golf pencils. If they insist on borrowing a pen, we ask them to bring it back. We put a piece of green tape around our pens to indicate they are library pens. We keep a magnifying glass in the drawer along with a ruler and a calculator for people to use. We have big steel scissors, but we ask for people to not sit too far from the desk with scissors and bring them back immediately when they are done.

Another thought which comes to mind about my earlier hobbies. Many of them were focused on avoiding spending money for things which I wanted. I didn't really understand then that investing is often a better vehicle for some than saving. I've never been particularly good at saving money. I have always been good at avoiding debt. I think many people who scout books for bookstores or sell books on the internet are preserving income not making money. They have a habit of collecting books or comic books that they really can't afford with their salaries.

So, they end up going to garage sales, estate sales, goodwill stores, thrift stores, library booksales, church sales, and book fairs to look for books which they want. They are never going to make enough money for a living, but they will be able to support their habit of filling their house top to bottom with old paper and books. For the few extra dollars they get in trade at their local store or on ebay, they support a book habit.

I still have five long boxes of comic books which I traded for where I live. Not a huge amount. Mostly ground level comic books, things like Den, Quack, Cobalt 60, Vaughn Bode, and Alien Worlds. Ground level is an odd term which is not quite alternative and not quite mainstream. It is bringing material in at the "ground level" to the comic book seller. There is not a huge amount of value in this, but most of the material is fairly rare.

I used to go to the big open air flea markets in Manhattan. Some of them have shutdown because the real estate values rocketed to the point where it was worth more to build skyscrapers in the open parking lots where they were than keep them as parking lots. There are still some indoor flea markets like http://www.greenfleamarkets.com/ in Manhattan. There is also the Chelsea Antiques Fair which is going the way of the dinosaurs or the old book shops.
http://www.antiquestradegazette.com/news/news_article_main.aspx?id=6537&pt=nb&cp=1&keywords=&phrase=no

It seems many of my old hobbies are becoming part of the musty old dust bin of history. I no longer have time for these things, but it is interesting and sad to see them go.

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The first few ads from Project Wonderful are up. Three are comic strips. One is from a site which I happen to enjoy reading on occassion, Environmentastic. The cinemacomics site looks interesting, it has a whole set of different free downloadable comics.

Cradle to Cradle Print On Demand Kiosk Book System-- A Syncretic Idea

Occassionally, I get syncretic ideas, ideas which combine two or more things into something new. The idea is that you would take a print on demand book kiosk system and design the books coming out of the system so they can be recycled completely back into the system. A person would buy the book from the kiosk, then get a deposit when they returned the book.

You would go to the kiosk look at a selection of materials then key in the material you were interested in and the book would be printed once you made your selection and paid for it.

The books would be designed as a cradle to cradle product. The pages would use ink that could be reclaimed, instead of paper you would use a thin plastic which could be printed on multiple times, the glue could be removed as well, the cover could be stripped off and reused.

Initially the book would cost a little more, but costs would be reduced because the books would be recycled. I was thinking you would have a few standard size formats and would initially focus on plain text books without illustrations. Maybe the classics or things which people would read a lot over and over again.

Please comment on the idea.