Picture of the day.

Is paper better than plastic?

Compare to people in western Europe, people in the United States or Asia pay less attention to the environment, I think. However, eventually, all people on this planet will have to pay more attention and efforts to preserve our environment, which is now rapidly changing.

Recently, I noticed that all grocery stores in San Francisco quite using plastic bags. Three years ago, most of shops uses the plastic bags, but nowadays they all use paper bags instead. I think this is a part of the environmentalism movement, which is hitting the city.

However, I got a fundamental question about this change. Are paper bags better for the environment than plastic bags?

Quote from Stranger in a Strange Land:

MSNBC provides an educational piece about the debate of whether paper or plastic bags are better for the environment with their Battle Of the Bags website.

Paper bags are good because they are compostable, recyclable and made from sustainable resource, trees. However, it is also true that we need more energy to make paper bags than to make plastic bags. These energies are generated by burning oils, which destroys our environment. And cutting trees to make paper bags will increase greenhouse effects. Therefore, I personally do not have the conclusion which one is better, and do not totally support San Francisco's movement toward paper bags.

In the bottom line, bringing own reusable bags to grocery stores is the best way. Although, it is not convenient, I will load many reusable bags in my car trunk not to forget to bring.

A perfect day for LSD.

Today is really a beautiful day. I love California because I sometime have a day like today. Clear sky, comfortable spring air and peaceful mind. Everything is so calm today.

Today was a perfect day for LSD (long slow distance running). I run around the city very slowly today. It was about 6 miles or little more. I love running in such a beautiful day.

It has been rough.

I have been pretty busy these days and have no time to write entries. But I have a couple of ideas for new entries, so I will find time during this weekend to write.

Picture of the day.

This picture is also from flickr.

Comment again.

Ivette send me a message that she thinks I should open comment of this blog again. Ok, Ivette, although my blog traffic is still less than 100 unique access per day, I open comment again for a while and see what will happen.

How to forefoot run.

I found this video is very informative. I was recently told that I am a heel runner who touches his heel first. The heel run form is not suitable for a marathon, I want to change my running form to a forefoot run form. This video explains the difference between forefoot and heel run forms.

Radiohead and Tom Petty are coming to SF.

Radiohead and Tom Petty are coming to San Francisco. I kind of like both of them, so I will definitely go to the Ouside Lands at Golden Gate Park this summer.

For more information, check this site:
http://www.sfoutsidelands.com/

Best of Runner's high. [weekly link post]

I like the suggestion described in Revellian Dot Com about how to be a good blogger.

Revellian Dot Com:

Create a list of your most valuable posts and put it in your side bar (I’m working on that). You may have already written your best posts. Let people know what they are and you’ll increase your chances of being read or linked to.

Therefore, I tried to create a list of the most valuable posts of this blog. This list should be keep changing, however at this point, these are my most favorite posts. Check them out.

Vegan stories

Blogging stories

My life stories

Favorite minor web pages

Cover of the Cranberries

Watch oil price to predict U.S. recession.

As I predicted, the U.S. economy steped down to a severe recession from the beginning of 2008. The U.S. lost 63,000 jobs in February (See this article).

It has been suggested that there is a tight correlation between crude oil price and U.S. economy trend. I think this point of view is useful to predict U.S. economy in the near future.

As this graph showing, U.S. economy usually experiences recessions soon after the oil price jumped. All of recent recessions (in 1981-1983, 1990-1991 and 2001-2002) were coincided with sudden rises of the oil price. Indeed, the longer the oil price stayed high, the longer U.S. economy continued recessions.

As you know, the oil price in the U.S. is now actually jumping up. Therefore, the important question is how long the oil price stay very high. If we carefully observe the crude oil price, we will be able to predict when U.S. economy will recover. Since the stock market will decline sharply in this and next quarters (I think), if we can see the bottom of the economic wave, we can make more money out from the stock market.

Picture of the day.

This picture is from flickr.