Get TREES Planted for FREE

There’s this great group I signed up with a few months back (Greendimes). For 10 cents a day (just $3 per month), they help to get you off of all the postal junk mail lists in order to help save all the wasted paper and everything that goes into making that paper. They also plant a tree on your behalf every month. In the last 5 months they have:

“stopped over 130,000 pounds of junk mail, planted nearly 75,000 trees … saved over 340,000 gallons of water and processed more than 60,000 catalog cancel requests!”

Their plan is to plant another 175,000 trees by March 22. You can help out by joining their MySpace friends list. For every person who joins, they’ll plant TEN TREES!

http://www.myspace.com/greendimes

This is not a MySpace scam. They’re a legit company, and they know the value of building a network. That’s why they’ll plant the trees. (Plus they want to help save the planet.)

Also, if you want to go beyond joining their MySpace friends list and actually sign up with them (c’mon … it’s dirt cheap) to reduce your junk mail, do so THROUGH THIS LINK:

http://www.greendimes.com/index.html?src=mem&uid=1567

This way, they don’t just plant an extra 25 trees for you. They plant an extra 25 for me too. So your sign-up means FIFTY TREES planted! (How often could you do THAT for 10 cents a day?)

I don’t know about you, but this was a no brainer for me. Thanks for getting involved!

Now What about Vaccines?

A friend of mine just wrote and asked whether we’ve vaccinated our children and what our position is on that subject. This is the e-mail I sent back to her, with brief edits in [brackets] for clarity:

*****

My stance is that it’s a very personal decision that should not be made by doctors or government, and that everyone should have the chance to be thoroughly educated on the topic before deciding what makes the most sense for them. It does appear that some vaccinations have helped to diminish certain life-threatening illnesses, although there is also the argument that the ones that have appeared affective made their debut just as the natural cycle of that disease started to wane. [And there is statistical evidence around this.] But in any case, this “evidence” [of effectiveness] is certainly reason enough to respect those who choose to vaccinate for those types of diseases. In the case of things like chicken pox and flu, I think vaccination is a travesty of special interest pressure on government. Very sad. This is especially true because they are now saying that a single flu shot doesn’t do anything to protect a child, and that now you need to give them TWO for protection. (And this is the one vaccine for children that still contains thimerosol, a known neurological toxin.) 

A challenge with this whole topic is that: 1) many of the studies about vaccination safety are paid for by the pharmaceutical companies; 2) the FDA is largely funded by the pharmaceutical companies; 3) the pharmaceutical industry is ALSO the largest lobbying industry in the nation; 4) medical schools are largely supported by pharmaceutical companies; 5) despite more than 100,000 people per year dying to pharmaceuticals, their risk is considered “acceptable,” while natural alternatives are considered suspect until they kill about 3 people [often who abused the supplement], at which point they are criminal. Doctors generally do NOT study outside their resources that are so heavily influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, but if you go outside it and start reading into independent research, there is a lot of question about whether immunizations do much good at all. And of course meanwhile we are decimating the immune system by pumping children (with immature immune systems AND neurological systems) full of chemicals.

[It is also noted that many doctors do NOT immunize their own children, and many who DO read outside their traditional avenues of learning start to have more open minds about what really works.]

Those who choose not to vaccinate their children are harassed for putting everyone else at risk, begging the question, “If you’ve been immunized, how am I putting you at risk???” And the irony is that, anyone vaccinated with a live virus (which is NOT introduced to the body the way an actual virus would be) is actually contagious, and then heads off to school. AND, whenever there is an outbreak of viruses for which there are immunizations … guess what? The kids with immunizations get sick too! So why are we giving them the shots in the first place? Obviously you can see my personal bias. [Our older child] received some of his initial vaccinations, before we read far enough into this. [Our younger child] never got any. I still respect anyone’s right to choose for their children, until the point that independent scientific evidence gives us a clear answer on these issues. But we decided that the potential benefit was not worth the potential risk. 

Here’s an excellent site for doing some research: http://www.thinktwice.com/ 

Hope this is useful.  Sincerely,   –Steve.

I Feel Naked and I LOVE It!

Man oh man, I can’t tell you how swamped I’ve gotten by spam in some of my business accounts. One was getting about 200-300 pieces of junk mail every day, and if I didn’t put the time in to eliminate it, then it got to 600 in no time, at which point I didn’t want to touch it.

Then a month would go by and I wouldn’t respond to any legimate incoming messages. Yeah, it was bad.

Problem was, I did NOT want to implement a spam filter, because those are worthless. They leave some spam alone, then throw half your legitimate messages and newsletters into the garbage. You spend as much time as ever sorting through.

Then there’s the challenge/response option, which makes a lot more sense but still ends up blocking automated mails that you want to receive (like newsletters) UNLESS you remember to add every last one to your white list.

I even researched one that uses UpPeR- ANd LOWer-CAsE letters as an added key to help filter things, but then I figured my friends and contacts would all have to alter the address they already had on file for me.

FINALLY … today I found a solution that … shoot, just works. So far anyway, it’s been great. I have tested it with addresses not added to my white list, and it sends out a verification notice to them. But meanwhile, I can not only whitelist a bunch of addresses up front … I can ALSO add rules so that, for instance, I can let any e-mail with my name in it slip through. This way, most newsletters sent to me should still make it through without a hitch.

So, I don’t usually go bonkers over a product, but my e-mail today is so empty, it’s left me feeling naked, but not in the “first day of school without clothes nightmare” kind of way. Instead, I can look at my inbox and tell if I’ve got something I actually want to read. Imagine!

Interested to shed your clothes and feel great? Check it out here: ChoiceMail