Friday, December 11, 2009

They Say We’re Smart in Fairfax County

A “Recycled” Joke?

A few weeks ago I took some oil from my lawnmower to the recycle center just off I-66 in Fairfax. (Yes, my yard equipment has four-cycle engines, not those two-cycle oil-burning Trabi jobs.) The County authorities have put in a lot of money to repave the roadway, mark lanes, and add new signage. Here is the sign at the used oil recycling station:



Something is not quite right. Here is a closer look at the professionally-printed sign. Notice that it has a bit of an error in it (red circling added for emphasis):



As luck would have it, VA Blogger links to an opinion piece by Pat Herrity in the Connection Newspaper in which he (Herrity) rips Fairfax County for its overspending. I'm not saying that fixing up the recycling center isn't a laudable thing for the County to do. However, as we can see from the pictures, Fairfax County sure got some quality for the money!


What amazes me even more is that our supposedly environmentally conscious elected representatives (COUGH Gerry Connolly COUGH) have not caught this error. Maybe they don’t do the recycling that they preach to us. Poor dears wouldn’t want to get their hands dirty, would they? Something very Al Gore/Tom Friedman/Copenhagen about all this, don’t you think?


Better still, the Northern Virginia leftist bloggers have not picked up on this, either. Not walking the talk either (on environment or education), are they?