Archive for March, 2007

Yoga Posse

Thursday, March 1st, 2007

Thursday nights my yoga posse comes to my house and we do yoga in my dining room. Tonight we did standing twist poses. They are tough ones, both in balance and in strength. The posse is getting stronger and more proficient in their yoga practice. It’s a pleasure and an honor to have them in my house. I feel lucky to have such wonderful women in my home every week. As soon as the weather gets nicer we can be back out on the deck.

Yoga on the deck

An Inconvenient Truth

Thursday, March 1st, 2007

Watching An Inconvenient Truth I was struck by several things.

First, I felt really bad for Al Gore. Getting the message out about global warming has been this guy’s life mission and, it seems, nobody is listening. He’s a passionate, smart, and interesting guy and it was heart wrenching to see him put his heart into this work and have it ignored

Second, at the end of the movie I wanted to sell my house and buy one with solar power and a wind mill. I feel far more concerned and aware of the energy I use. Even though I’ve replaced all my light bulbs in the house and keep my heat low when I’m not home, it just doesn’t seem enough. I don’t walk enough or bike enough.

The United States of America would be quite a different country if Al Gore was our president. We’d be a better country, a better contributor to the world as a whole, and maybe we’d have a chance to drive an electric car!

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Thursday, March 1st, 2007

I watched “Who Killed the Electric Car?” this week and was outraged at the guilty parties for killing the electric car. This is a documentary exploring the birth, limited commercialization, and subsequent death of the battery electric vehicle manufactured by General Motor. The EV1 was quite a favorite of many owners. The cars, only leased, mostly in California, ran on battery power. The film explores the roles of auto makers, the oil industry, the US government, batteries, and consumers in limiting the adoption of this technology. In my mind by the end, GM and the US government were the main culprits of killing the electric car.

Personally, I remember the announcement of this technology and was interested in having one myself. Now the program, at least the EV1 program, is dead. Listening to a podcast today, the automakers are beginning to come back to this notion of electric cars. After seeing how GM treated this program I would opt to purchase a vehicle from Honda or Toyota. The American automakers are in trouble, have been for a long time, and haven’t heeded the warnings in their industry for decades.