Our reliance on electronics is making our society ever more infantile in its ability to handle shocks.

Yesterday, the power went out at Newark airport for a couple of hours. The world shut down. Our reliance on electronics is making our society ever more infantile in its ability to handle shocks.

Here are just a few examples of what happened, and how people reacted.

• Passengers were trapped for three hours aboard planes that could not dock with electronically controlled docking platforms tied to an electronic scheduling program.
• Cash registers at coffee shops and airport bookstores shut down, not to mention coffe makers, refrigerators and lights.
• Automatic faucets in restrooms stopped working, as did automatic toilet flushers.
• Thousands of baffled travelers simply sat in the dark. Most talked frantically on their cellphones and smartphones until the batteries began to run out (the outage lasted about 3 hours).
• On the good news front, CNN and FOX stopped blasting their mean spirited half truths out on televisions all over the airport. Things got a lot quieter.
• Kindle dependent book readers lost access to their library. Pandora-based music lovers lost their normal 24/7 FEED of music to the brain. In other worlds, everything digital or electronic either ceased to exist, or enter into its rapid battery death phase.

And people wonder why I prefer automobiles with windows I can roll up or down by hand...

Maine's new governor is not just a neanderthal when it comes to environmental issues, he's a hazard. As Europe moves forward on E-Waste, he's pedaling backward.

Here's a sample of what Maine's extremist Republican governor is up to lately. Paul LePage won in a three-way fluke election when voters panicked, looking for something new in an independent candidate. Well, instead of something new, they got something old. Very old. A neanderthal. This economic "fear" vote put a global climate change denier in the state's top office. The man is not just a fool. He's a dangerous fool who's clueless about green technology and global trends in that direction, and instead wants to take the state backwards and dismantle the EPA.

To add insult to this ignorance, the EU just announced plans to create an E-Waste program that's similar to Maine's. Instead of leading the world on green innovations, LePage would like to take us back to a time when Maine's rivers flowed thick with dioxins, evolution was a dirty word, and a Neanderthal with two bucks in his loincloth could get a good Dodo bird casserole.

Posted: February 6
Portland Press Herald

Maine may dump e-waste statute

Gov. LePage proposes reviewing the law, which requires makers of electronic products to pay for recycling them.

By Beth Quimby bquimby@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

AUBURN - Surrounded by towering piles of electronic equipment, a half-dozen workers at eWaste Recycling Solutions spend their days prying apart old TV sets and computer monitors.
click image to enlarge

Rick Dumas, CEO of eWaste Recycling Solutions, LLC, in Auburn, points out all of the old TV sets, computer monitors and other electronic devices that await dismantling for recycling.

It takes about three minutes to separate glass, plastic, metals and cathode ray tubes, which may contain lead and other toxic substances. Later, the manufacturers of the products will receive a bill for the work, which, in the case of Sony Electronics Inc., is 36 cents a pound.

"Before, the cost was borne by municipalities, or the consumer paid a tipping fee at the recycling center," said Rick Dumas, chief executive officer of eWaste, which employs 15 to 25 workers a year.

Dumas and his employees are among the beneficiaries of Maine's seven-year-old electronic waste law, which was designed to prevent electronic equipment from filling up landfills and releasing toxic substances into the environment.

The law is also one of the environmental measures that may be subject to a repeal effort by Gov. Paul LePage, who is looking to slash environmental regulations that, in his view, get in the way of a friendly business climate, job creation and an improved economy. READ ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE.

Interesting new documentar from HBO suggests that companies such as Halliburton are using extremely dangerous gas extraction techniques that are poisoning ground water.