A little more talk and all the wrong action

Earlier today, I took a break from painting my house and walked into my kitchen to throw an aluminum can in my indoor recycle bin (which is actually a trash can with a lime-green recycle symbol drawn on the lid in Sharpie). For some reason, my garish sign reminded me of the Disney movie WALL-E. Has anyone else noticed the irony in this phenomenon? This is a film based entirely on how consumerism, materialism, and a disposable culture ruin our planet and effectively turn us all into helpless little babies living in a container owned by a super-duper-huge retail corporation which we will get sued if we name so we will instead call it "Buy n Large."

And yet, Walmart and Target sell WALL-E products. Furthermore, the consumer products that were released in support of the film (which can only be purchased at Disney stores) are made of shiny new plastic. Like this:

Is the plastic used to make these things recycled? No way. If that were the case, Disney would want FULL

credit for it.

Birthdays are the final FUN-tier! It even comes with a vinyl tablecloth!

Seriously. Thank you, Disney, for preaching so loudly. The children of the world will thank you someday.

From a spaceship.

Owned by Wal-Mart.

Unacceptable.

There's a smaller message in WALL-E, too: maybe BnL takes over the world because the government just couldn't hack it. Today in the news, I read that a Federal Judge issued an injunction against the Federal funding of embryonic stem cell research, almost directly after the Obama administration had made provisions for it. Specifically,

"[The Director of the National Institutes of Health] said 50 new grant applications up for peer review will be pulled. In addition, 12 grants worth an estimated $15 million to $20 million that have already gone through initial review will be halted, along with another 22 grants totaling $54 million that already are under way and scheduled for annual review in September, Collins said." (CNN.com)

It is important to not that not all stem cells are taken from embryos, and not all stem cell research uses embryonic stem cells. The NIH is still funding stem cell research with other non-babyesque sources. But let's just forget the political/ethical issue momentarily. The hours spent and the sleep lost over writing 84 grant applications (that are now completely useless) could have been used to find a real cure for cancer, to revolutionize burn victim care, or to provide a replacement for the organ transplant donor list, which is a death sentence for many. Congratualations, academia... you just got punk'd.