The Adlington Post

 google is taking a very high-handed approach to its "customer service" - ie there ain't any. They keep changing the "look"of gmail & youtube - all to their advantage & as per their agenda:  sucking up our personal data so they can "monetize" our use of their services. I guess there ain't no such thing as a free lunch. hahahahahahah - don't even bother to try The good thing on the horizon is that even the Roman Empire didn't last 1,000 years. My prediction is that google won't even make it till the middle of this century - some smart folks will have figured that out & a truely user-friendly net model is about to be launched sometime soon.

Just what do the letters "ACT" stand for? I suggest: "Apocolyptic Conspiratorial Tendencies" "Absolute Complete Twats" "Appallingly Craven Turds" "All Cxxxs Together" ..any ideas readers?

"The motto is reduce, reuse and recycle but nobody's reducing" - martin adlington "Members of a fringe group known as dumpster divers are enjoying fancy meals – for free. On an average evening they can be found knee-deep in supermarket skips collecting food, despite most being able to pay for it off the shelves. Former rubbish truck driver and self-proclaimed professor of garbology Martin Adlington says people like him are dumpster divers out of principle. "On the Shore what is thrown out by supermarkets, veggie shops and restaurants you can live off very well. I've found stuff where the expiry date isn't for another month." One of his most successful yields includes bacon, salami, yoghurt, cream cheese dip and blue vein cheese barely past the use-by date and still cold from the chiller. "If you know the right times and places to go you do pretty well." see the rest of the article, plus some intern...

"Computer gamers a bigger risk on roads" NZ Herald Computer geeks who play driving games are more likely to crash on a real-life road, a study says. It found that motorists who play games such as Need for Speed and Gran Turismo are also 44 per cent more likely to take risks on the roads such as running a red light, and are less successful at carrying out everyday manoeuvres. Continental Tyres commissioned the study of 2000 British motorists. Safety experts agreed that driving games gave motorists more bravado. But they said driving games should not be confused with computer simulators which are driver education tools that teach motorists to be aware of dangers on the roads. The British study found computer gamers were more likely to speed, suffer from road rage, be stopped by police and make insurance claims. They are also considered over-confident by non-gamers and a potential risk because they might repeat their virtual driving approach in the real world. Co...

Everything from my local fruit & vege shop comes wrapped in plastic & in these black trays. For those who get bugged by this kind of thing there is an annual competition for the best & worst packaging in NZ. Here is the link at "Good Magazine" - I get a weekly email from them updating environmental/food/green issues. www.good.net.nz/blog/siobhan-leathley/unpackit-awards

My freganing buddy Laurie arrived for lunch the other day with her contribution - 3 bags of pita bread she found at the back of a local store. We fried some diced lamb pieces (from the supermarket pet food section @ $2.50 a kg) and added raw onion, mayonnaise, mustard, & tomato....delicious!

Last week a reporter from our local North Shore Times came to my home to interview me on matters regarding freganing & dumpster diving. Between 30-40% of the food produced in NZ is wasted at some point on the food chain. The reporter asked me if a family of four could live from the food disposed of in local dumpsters - "easily" I replied - they would probably even thrive on all the fruit & vegetables disposed of because of a slight blemish or (horror!) odd shape.

 Here is my 2011 Xmas tree which exemplifies the true spirit of Christmas as practised. The key ingredients are money, possessions, greed, & prostitution. My inspiration is a Quaker quote from the 19th century (sorry to be so old-fashioned): "Let those of us who are opposed to war look into our own homes and the furnishings of those homes for the seeds of war" - feel free, gentle reader, to substitute the words "global financial collapse" or "vulture capitalism" for "war".

The week before Xmas a very professional team from Whitebait TV spent the best part of a day with me - doing an interview & filming for a documentary on environmental artists in New Zealand - to be screened on TV sometime early this year. We had fun in the dumpster & on the beach. Hopefully I was able to get my message across: the motto is "reduce, reuse, recycle" - but no-one talks about reducing! I guess the likes of the Warehouse, Harvey Norman etc won't like that message. Too bad. The problem with the current recycling fad is that it to me it makes buying crap OK - as long as you recycle it when you're done. Sorry, but no, it doesn't work that way: Just don't buy crap in the first place. The core of the problem is that most people can't differentiate between their needs & their wants - more on this later. In the meantime, may I suggest viewers read "To Have or to Be" by Erich Fromm - a seminal text on the topic.