Although the women of the United States are confined within the narrow circle of domestic life, and their situation is, in some respects, one of extreme dependence, I have nowhere seen woman occupying a loftier position; and if I were asked... in which I have spoken of so many important things done by Americans, to what the singular prosperity and growing strength of that people ought mainly to be attributed, I should reply, To the superiority of their women.

--Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

Thursday, July 28, 2011

Color Me Green - Crayola Propoganda

So I recently purchased some crayons at the local back-to-school sale. I stockpile A LOT of crayons because you know they're going to loose or eat them over time, right? Well, I was helping my 3rd grader with her 2+3+R=10 kind of problems using crayons to illustrate. While I'm waiting for her to compute things, I'm looking at the back of the box which says:

* Made with solar energy! Solar panels provide enough energy to make one billion crayons each year. Starting Spring 2011, additional panels provide energy to make a half a billion markers in the USA.

Crayola Eco-Evolution
Here are some of the ways Crayola is conserving energy and making the products you love in a more environmentally friendly way:
A new tree is planted for every one used to make our colored pencils.
Using recycled plastic in our markers keeps hundred of tons of plastic out of the landfills each year.
To learn more about other ways Crayola colors are getting greener all the time, go to Crayola.com.

I know what you're thinking..What's the big deal? Are you against solar panels and conservation? No, I think those things are great, but the angle I'm looking at is how kids are bombarded with this green stuff all day, everyday of their little lives. When my daughter when to public school, science was all about pollution and compost. To contrast, the Apologia Homeschool science curriculum has elementary aged kids memorizing the taxonomic classes of the animal kingdom and the like. You know, real science.

It's Orwell's world we're living in and you know that green is the new red, right? So I went to investigate who owns Crayola to see what the interlock might be. Well, the parent company of Crayola is Hallmark, that's right one of the companies where Herman Cain is on the board of directors. What you take away from this is that there is considerable interlock between the board members of Hallmark and board members at some of these Fortune 500 companies you see to your right. Stupid map thing is not saving right, so I don't have a link, but the other thing I discovered was that two of Hallmark's former CEOs and a board member are affiliated with the Midwest Research Institute, which has now changed its name to MRI Global to be more fashionable. And buddy, are they all about the green. They have recently bought a great deal of office space in North Kansas City, and do a lot of contract research for the United State Government. William Hall of Hallmark family fame, is the Chairman of this nonprofit's board. So there's your answer as to why Crayola is trying to color our kids green.


3 comments:

  1. One big happy family..except for us.

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's mind blowing they can manage to corrupt something as simple and harmless as a crayon.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes, we're the Eloi in their minds.

    There's this one Dick Van Dyke episode where the accountant explains how Rob is paid out of one pool of money and Bud and Sally are paid out of a different salary. The explanation is a tangled web of which corporation owns what that makes Rob back out of the office slowly. This scene reminds me of what it's like to convey how tangled up all this stuff is.

    ReplyDelete

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