Today was a relatively big day in our household, what with the skating carnival. Today is the last day of ice in the local arena and the skating club held it's carnival. They had all the kids taking lessons of various types put on a show. My youngest son has been taking lessons - most likely on the "pre-hockey" track, but it's too early for that - and his group got dress in costumes and skate around. It was pretty fun to watch, plus there were some pretty good figure skaters and a couple of synchro teams. Pretty nice event, so I suspect I'll be going to this event a few more times. That will turn into a certainty if my wife gets into skating a little bit more. Maybe they won't make here skate with the 6-year-olds that are in her class though.
Yesterday was Earth Hour and I completely forgot about it. I try, though not too hard, to reduce my resource impact. Mainly because it is good for everyone - me, my kids, my wallet - everyone. Not being wasteful is just good in general, so I question the steps that so many took to reduce usage. Maybe if we, as a society, enacted a few changes, we'd use less energy. Biggest thing would be this stupid daylight savings time switch. A related idea would be go to bed when the sun goes down and get up when the sun rises. That would eliminate the need for many lights around the home and stop the stupid clock moving for no good reason. Next, if most people go to bed near sunset, we wouldn't need so many outdoor lights at night. I have felt that streetlights and so on are light pollution. If we wanted to live closer with nature, we need to respect natural rhythms, like "day" and "night". One final thing about "Earth Hour" - the building managers at my office were going to turn off the lights for the hour. Why can't they do that all the time? There are many light fixtures on each floor so turning them off at night with the option of switching them on when necessary, would go a long way to reducing usage.
The last thing I've been thinking about is US Banking regulations. I remember hearing recommendations over the past few months for changes to make financial institutions in the US more stable - more like Canada. Here in Canada, our strong regulations were scoffed for many years, until all hell broke loose and we're now hailed as the wisest one on the block. The Current had an interesting set of guests who pointed out that Regan proposed, G. H. Bush and Clinton implemented, the removal of similar regulations during the late 1980s and 1990s. The regulations in the US that separated certain financial roles, set minimum liquidity requirements, and who could receive mortgages. These regulations were established after 1929 but were pushed aside in "near total" deregulation proposed during the Regan administration. Funny "coincidence" - Alan Greenspan was someone brought in by Regan. Looks like we can pin a bunch of stuff to Regan, but I think the removal of the regulations was something that should not have happened. No need to blame someone - just realize that the government had to work to change those rules and it was the wrong choice.
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