Earth Hour: Switch Off The Lights For A Brighter Future
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 27, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green, Holidays
Saturday, March 27th, 2010If you’re still in the dark about Earth Hour, just stay that way ’til 9:30 tonight and you’re covered.
Now here’s a holiday that shouldn’t stress you out. It requires little or no preparation, and only takes an hour of your life. All you have to do to celebrate Earth Hour and make a stand against climate change is turn off your lights for one hour starting at 8:30pm tonight (your local time). Earth Hour began in 2007 in New Zealand as a project created by the World Wildlife Federation. That year, 2.2 million people and 2,100 businesses participated, and the event has grown steadily since then; in 2008, an estimated 50 million participated worldwide, in 2009, hundreds of millions took part, and if things keep growing at the same rate, there may be more than a billion people taking part this year. Support is also being shown in a big way by governments and businesses around the globe, by turning out the lights on major landmarks including the Empire State Building in New York, the Forbidden City in Beijing, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the pyramids near Cairo, and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. So while it may not be as much fun as Global Orgasm Day, why not turn off your lights for an hour tonight to show your support. In the right circumstances, you might get the same results.
Your Computer Needs A Bigger Recycle Bin
[ Comments Off ]Posted on March 11, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green, Technology
Thursday, March 11th, 2010Did you know we discard enough computers to bury Los Angeles EVERY DAY?
How many “dead” personal computers do you have around the house? One or two? I was recently refurbishing a bunch of computers for a client who needed them for POS systems in their retail stores. In the process of working on them, I not only got to re-experience the “joy” of working with Windows 98 (the machines were perfectly viable, and buying XP was more expensive than buying new computers!), I was reminded of what a global tragedy the computer industry creates. Yes, your greed for Gigabytes fuels an industry that helps us as consumers decide to discard over 47 million computers annually. Pause and think about that for a moment. That’s over 130,000 computers per DAY. Doing some rough math, that’s enough to cover about 36 square miles – or most of Los Angeles – in one layer of computers. EVERY DAY. The sad thing is that even if you go to the extra effort of recycling because you don’t want to destory our groundwater with toxic metals, a lot of the components just end making the world toxic somewhere else, often China, India or Africa. So what can you do? Well, consider running XP for a few more years! It kinda works, doesn’t it? Besides, the business model driven by Moore’s law and an unspoken collusion between Microsoft & Intel (Microsoft writes more crappy code that needs more power, Intel comes up with the chip) has run its course; some say Moore’s Law is on its last legs. If you want to recycle though, the EPA has a decent list of resources. And for a quick summary of why my use of the phrase “global tragedy” is not just hyperbole, check out Where Computers Go to Die. Read the rest of this entry »
Bill & TED’s Energy Adventure
[ 1 Comment ]Posted on February 22, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green
Monday, February 22nd, 2010Whether you agree with Bill Gates’ recent TED talk or not, he’s at least keeping clean energy in the media with his zero-emissions pitch.
While I think it would be perfectly reasonable to question whether or not we want the man who brought the world the Blue Screen of Death and Clippy focusing his energies on nuclear power, I would still encourage anyone to take the time to watch Bill Gates’ recent TED talk (video below), and to recommend it to friends as well. Why? Because in spite of the fact that in a way it’s just a plug for his investments, and in spite of the fact that the arguments for and against what he said are all over the map (this BoingBoing post was fairly Stepford Wives-ish in tone, but the commenters fixed that in hurry), the fact remains that he did one very positive thing with his talk: he got the media talking about green energy issues (and in a very sticky, contentious way) with his bold assertion that we need to aim not merely for reductions in emissions, but for zero emissions. To me, it’s a tragedy that the politicizing of global warming and emissions issues detracts from the simple fact that we shouldn’t NEED an apocalyptic reason to have a cleaner, more efficient world. What rational argument could there possiby be against doing it just because it MAKES SENSE? In any case, the clip is a bit longish, and Bill’s “hip-three-years-ago” glasses only contribute to the overall “SNL Pat” look he’s sporting these days, but whether you agree with him or not, he throws an important objective on the table, and has generated a lot of green talk just by being Bill Gates. By the way, if you’ve wondered what Bill has been up to since his retirement, check out his site, The Gates Notes. Read the rest of this entry »
The Greenest Detroit Auto Show Ever
[ Comments Off ]Posted on January 14, 2010 by admin in Clean & Green, Technology
Thursday, January 14th, 2010Ford’s Better Ideas Make Other Carmakers Green With Innovation
 This guy may be a little disappointed if he bought the “chick magnet” pitch |
While it’s usually the concept cars that grab a lot of attention at the Detroit Auto Show, this year, it’s the REAL cars that are stealing the show. And there’s probably a message in the fact that two of the biggest stars at the 2010 Show are companies that didn’t accept bailout money to float the top-heavy, profit starved, gas-guzzling monstrosity that is the Detroit auto business. It’s inspiring that amidst the rather bleak economic environment that is Michigan, there’s a lot of hope and inspiration for a smarter, cleaner future for the industry, and Ford in particular is leading the way. After being the only of the big three to refuse bailout money last year, they were also the only one to enjoy a 33% sales rise in December! Now, they’re sweeping the auto show in a big way; their Fusion Hybrid and Transit Connect won the North American Car and Truck of the Year respectively. While the Transit Connect is neither hybrid nor electric, it’s part of the One Ford initiative, which will – among other things – bring the hipper fuel-efficient vehicles previously only available abroad to the states. Like the Fiesta, which we complained about some time ago. And there’s another unexpected force making a splash this year: The Chinese BYD hybrid. Go ahead and sneer at a Chinese-made car, but if you’re old enough, you may remember back when Japanese products were the low-quality laughingstock of global markets, and we all know how that ended up. BYD is no factory town upstart; one of the company’s major backers is Warren Buffet, who describes the company’s CEO Wang Chuan-Fu as a cross between GE’s Jack Welch and Thomas Edison. This CNN Money piece explains how the guy has so much faith in his company’s commitment to a green approach that he’ll drink the cars’ battery fluid to drive the point home. In my opinion, this is capitalism at its best: tough times driving innovation. And although the Transit Connect may not be a “chick magnet”, as Ford CEO Alan Mulally has suggested, this more in-depth Business Week piece gives you some insight into why Mulally’s vision may just turn Ford back into a world leader. Though they may have to fight with the Chinese to pull it off. Read the rest of this entry »
ExtInked: Helping Endangered Species Through Tattoos
[ Comments Off ]Posted on December 4, 2009 by admin in Clean & Green, Lifestyle & Culture
Friday, December 4th, 2009How a UK design studio’s experiment has inspired me to finally defile my body with a tattoo.
We’ve touched on tattoos and body mods before, and I’ve shared why I may never get a tattoo myself. That may all change though, which I’ll explain at the end of this piece. My new-found willingness to think about getting a tattoo myself was inspired by reading about an interesting “social experiment” that was recently promoted in the UK by Ultimate Holding Company, which -although its web site gives the impression is some sort of non-profit – is in fact an ethically-minded commercial design studio in based in Manchester. In their words, they are “committed to sustainable practices, ethical and responsible business, and design driven grass roots collaboration“. UHC recently put together an exhibit and event called ExtInked, in which 100 “ambassadors” applied to have one of England’s 100 most endangered species tattooed on their bodies. A cool idea, although it might have been interesting to see them do something more than basically garner attention for their own studio; as of this writing, neither their web site, their Facebook page, nor any of the press they’ve generated mentions any tangible results of the idea, beyond a few hundred people getting interested in the concept, and a hundred of them getting tattoos of endangered species. The last I knew, getting “Mom” tattooed on your arm isn’t going to bring her back from the dead. All the same, it’s a pretty cool and hip idea, and it will be interesting to see if generates some real results. I wish the UHC, their partners, and the participants the best, or I wouldn’t be sharing their project here. As I was reading about their project though, I ran across another tattoo idea that hit closer to home. Earlier this year, Phil Plait of Discover Magazine’s “Bad Astronomy” Blog announced he’d get a tattoo if site traffic increased to 2 million page views for a month. It worked, and he and Discover CEO Henry Donahue ended up getting tattoos. So here’s the deal. I’ll get a tattoo if Dissociated Press traffic increases to 250,000 monthly page views in January. Right now it’s hovering around a paltry 20,000 page views monthly, a level that – trust me – does not generate enough revenue to make it worth maintaining. So, much like the UHC’s project, if you don’t want to see Dissociated Press become extinct, send us some visitors. Maybe I’ll let you pick the tattoo.