[Greenbuilding] (not) Re: infrared thermometer

[RT]

On Thu, 03 Mar 2011 08:43:33 -0500, JOHN SALMEN <terrain at shaw.ca> wrote:


> I find it humorous that our culture has a penchant for identifying  
> problems and self diagnosis and the gadgetry that accompanies it rather  
> than simply spending the equivalent on fixing the problem.

> there was an article in a magazine that described how snowshoing was  
> much more
> aerobic than running - with a picture of all the lovely gear (with
> pricetags)that you could purchase to go snowshoeing (about 2k worth)

While I would typically eschew needless gizmo(il)logical complexification  
of seemingly simple tasks, tools like an infrared thermometer are pretty  
easy to justify for me simply because I find myself using it every day,  
sometimes for things as mundane as checking the temperature of a wok or  
skillet before adding the food to be cooked to perfection.

Nor do I have any problem with self diagnosis to identify problems.

I much prefer that to being clueless/useless to the point of having to  
rely on some other perhaps slightly less clueless/useless person (only  
because they made the effort to educate themselves sooner) to do the  
necessary thinking to diagnose/identify/fix problems for me.

What I find humourous is that people would have to read a magazine in  
order to know that one activity is more conducive to aerobic activity than  
another and would need to be told what to wear in order to do it and then  
SUV-ise the whole affair -- not unlike the SUV-isation too many things  
these days I suppose... like kitchens in new homes where people feel they  
*must* have commercial grade kitchens heavy on the stainless steel and  
granite when in fact, they are more likely to end up simply nuking  
excessively packaged/pre-prepared/highly-processed food-like substances  
rather than do much real food preparation.

Me ? After shoveling out the laneway this morning and then pedaling  
through the as-yet unploughed roads to get to the woods where I snowshoed  
over the freshly fallen snow with the mutts, it was pretty easy to  
conclude that shoveling out the laneway was the most aerobic (and useful  
to boot) activity of the three... with the pedaling through the  
wet-on-the-bottom-layer snow coming a close second and the snowshoeing  
being effortless in comparison but definitely yielding a greater level of  
aerobic activity than running (but not if that running were being done  
through knee-deep snow).


-- 
=== * ===
Rob Tom
Kanata, Ontario, Canada
< A r c h i L o g i c  at  Y a h o o  dot  c a >
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