November 30th, 2007 Frank
Well this is big news 
Google, the uber-giant of the web and technology, will be investing ‘tens of millions on research and development and related investments in renewable energy’ during 2008 and eventually ‘hundreds of millions of dollars in breakthrough renewable energy projects which generate positive returns’. This is from an official press release released this week by Google.
The great thing about this is that Google carries a big stick and makes a wide wake in technology circles. They aren’t just a web search site any more. Some people think they are took big and expanding too much into things they shouldn’t be into, but something like this can’t be a bad thing, can it? If they forge the path, it will be easier for smaller companies and even governments to benefit and move in the same direction.
From the Google press release:
Coal is the primary power source for many around the world, supplying 40% of the world’s electricity. The greenhouse gases it produces are one of our greatest environmental challenges. Making electricity produced from renewable energy cheaper than coal would be a key part of reducing global greenhouse-gas emissions.
“Cheap renewable energy is not only critical for the environment but also vital for economic development in many places where there is limited affordable energy of any kind,” added Sergey Brin, Google Co-founder and President of Technology.
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November 29th, 2007 Frank
Now this is pretty cool. I’ve been reading recently about how Indonesia has been going through record levels of deforestation, and activists around the world have been condemning this kind of thing (of course, as they should).
Well the Indonesian government decided to sponsor a tree-planting day to get about 79 million trees planted in a single day, something that should get them into the Guinness books!
Let’s hope it worked, and that those trees aren’t destined to be hacked down in the future - Indonesia is the third largest producer of greenhouse gases because of their deforestation policy, and the country leads the world in the rate of deforestation.
Maybe they’ve seen the light about what they’re doing to their own country and homeland? One can only hope.
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November 29th, 2007 Frank
Popular online design magazine/blog Dezeen has posted a bunch of really great pictures of inspirational compact flourescent bulbs from a company called Hulger that take the standard shape of a normal CFL bulb, which is this:
and transform them into something like this:
Aren’t those cool?!
I’m sure these would cost a bit more than a standard CFL bulb, but once regular manufacturers see how popular these design bulbs can be, maybe they’ll start making them too, decreasing the prices for these bulbs, which are meant to be displayed ‘naked’, that is, without a shade.
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November 28th, 2007 Frank
To follow-up my post a while back about natural home cleaning ‘products’, Eco Geek has a cool compilation of natural stain removers to try out on those stubborn stains. I don’t have any stains to get rid of at the moment, but if I did…well, I’d try these, of course!
I’ve been using a bit of natural cleaning solutions, right now I’m just using up the stuff that I’ve bought from the store. In the UK it’s slightly more difficult to find big jugs of distilled white vinegar, so I have to buy them in glass bottles about the size of a quart. At least I can re-use or recycle the glass easily. Recently I used up a big squirt bottle of window cleaner, and filled it half-full of water, half vinegar, about a tablespoon of lemon juice to help cover the vinegar smell, and finally a few drops of dishwashing fluid to make it stick a bit easier.
I still need to find borax somewhere, so I can do some proper degreasing of things, but a bit more digging should help me find some.
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November 21st, 2007 Frank
There are a lot of folks who’ll tell you that one way to get out of the consumerist rigamarole and escape the constant bombardment of advertising is to not watch TV. I remember a band called “Ned’s Atomic Dustbin” (the band name was inspired by a Monty Python sketch, I believe) had a sticker that said “Kill your television”.
That’s a great idea, but the only problem with this plan is that you would miss out on the all the TV out there that is actually good. And what about watching DVDs? I mean…hey, I may be aspiring to a hippy lifestyle but that in no way means I’m going to to toss out all my DVDs! There’s a lot of movies I’ve got on disc, and I like all of them. I love most of them, that’s why I bought them!
So…what’s the middle ground? The mute button, of course.
It’s hard for anyone to get away from advertisements - even a granola-crunching, public transport-using hippy wouldn’t be able to escape the adverts on buses, inside train cars and along the sides of bus and train stops. The only way to get away is to close your eyes - and you can escape advertising at him in the same way by just hitting the mute button between segments of your favorite show.
I know, this is a pretty simple tip, but one I re-learned recently to get away from the constant blathering of TV commercials.
Another plus: you don’t have to deal with lowering the volume when the advertisements come on, because advertisers or TV stations will often raise the volume of the adverts (this is illegal in Italy, by the way…that’s right, Italy, the country that elected a porn actress to parliament and is still in the grip of the mafia - showing you how far some countries have to go).
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November 19th, 2007 Frank
I’m the last person to use the letter ‘e’ in front of normal words to describe things in the internet-enabled world, so I apologize for the title
Anyway, in the spirit of a previous post about re-using, today I just wanted to bring folk’s attention to the problem of getting rid of ‘e-waste’ like televisions, computer monitors, computer parts, printers and other things.
With Christmas coming, and all sorts of electronic toys, gizmos, consoles and other things on the wishlist of many people, getting rid of our old things that are broken or simply unwanted is a growing problem. Naturally, like most waste, most of the old electronics that people don’t want any more ends up in landfills, which is bad enough, but even the electronics and computers that are collected in recycling drives ends up in third-world countries where there aren’t any laws or rules regarding the recycling of circuit boards, cathode-ray tubes (CRTs) and other things like that.
According to the CNN article:
“While there are no precise figures, activists estimate that 50 to 80 percent of the 300,000 to 400,000 tons of electronics collected for recycling in the U.S. each year ends up overseas. Workers in countries such as China, India and Nigeria then use hammers, gas burners and their bare hands to extract metals, glass and other recyclables, exposing themselves and the environment to a cocktail of toxic chemicals.”
So it’s not a great thing to just blindly recycle things, because the charity taking care of it may not have researched where exactly the items will go, or check up on if they were properly taken care of.
I have enough trouble finding a place in the UK that will recycle my old batteries that I don’t bother trying to recycle my computer bits - I put things like that on Freecycle to get them to people who will actually use them. There are plenty of geeks out there that would love to have an extra computer case, old motherboard, anything, that there’s almost no excuse for just throwing things away these days (and not just computer bits).
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November 16th, 2007 Frank
Hey, now there’s something to cheer about. A company called Naturepaints has powdered paints they sell online, that they say has low fumes, is compostable and even recyclable!
“Liquid Naturepaint can be safely mixed with garden materials and composted, or left to dry and disposed of with household waste. Naturepaint pads can be peeled off, dried and, if you wish, returned to us for recycling or disposed of with household waste.”
Very cool. Since I’m not familiar with painting costs I don’t really know how much it costs in comparison to normal house paint but it’s a great thing that this is even an option. More info here.
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November 15th, 2007 Frank
Again on the low-stress kick, there’s a fantastic quote that is attributed to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States during the Civil War.
It goes a bit like this:
“People are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”
Isn’t that fantastic? I mean, really - think about it: think about all the ‘depressed’ people you know, and think about all the ‘lively and happy’ people you now.
Do your depressed friends just act down all the time, keep the curtains closed, never go out, act anti-social, etc.?
What about your happy friends? Do they always have a smile on their face, dress in light or bright colors, always have groups of other happy people around them?
If you’ve found these stereotypes are true, would you then agree that ‘happiness is a state of mind’? Don’t positive people stick with a positive frame of mind? Yeah, they can be really annoying with their good attitudes when everyone else is super-stressed, but it takes a good attitude and determination to get out of sticky situations.
Conversely, people with bad attitudes tend to bring down the attitudes of the people around them. Even positive people can be brought down a bit by people who are moaning and whingeing all the time.
I subscribe to the mercola.com, and a few weeks ago they sent out a link to this video from a Harvard professor and the science & thinking of being positive and happy.
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November 12th, 2007 Frank
I haven’t done a lot of posting about lowering stress or stuff like that, but I thought I would start with this simple workout that I found through the Real Age website.
It’s called Chi-Gong and looks similar to Tai Chi, but to be honest I don’t know much about either one, so maybe one is a derivative of the other, maybe it’s something along those lines or possibly they are totally different in origin. If you know what Tai Chi is or looks like, you have an idea of what Chi-Gong is, but it’s more like a series of no-impact exercises rather than graceful movements. And there’s no swords or spears used, like some Tai Chi practitioners use!
Anyway, this looks like a good way to start the day with some good stretches and simple exercises. After you do this, you’d be warmed up for a bit of rowing or low-impact exercises.
Edit: after the helpful Steve posted a comment to a different post, I tried a search on Wikipedia again, this time without the hyphen, and found this page that can tell you probably all you want to know about Chi-Gong (or, Qigong)
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November 7th, 2007 Frank
The Santa Barbara Independent Eating French
The guy who wrote this article spent a month in France on holiday, eating rich foods, drinking plenty of wine, and only gained a pound after all that.
He asked around and found out that it’s all about the lifestyle:
“The French don’t traditionally wolf down a meal at their desk or while commuting in traffic. They sit down with family or colleagues at a table, taking the time to relax and share conversation. When you are talking, you are not eating, and because you are relaxed, the hormones released help in the assimilation of calories, unlike the stress hormones we are riddled with here, which trigger hoarding of fat. In other words, eat 800 calories while sitting at a café in Paris, and they will get spent. Eat 800 calories while sitting in your car in traffic on the freeway, and most of them will settle in your hips or gut.”
I know I spend too much time in my car and sitting in front of the computer, and I know I’d do better looking after myself by walking to shops every day for food but the ‘drive everywhere’ mentality is still too ingrained in me. At least it’s not as bad as most places of suburban America, where walking is nearly non-existant and you pretty much are forced to drive everywhere to do your shopping and regular business. I mean, what does it say when people get their exercise by walking around an indoor shopping mall? Even suburban England is the same way, with superstore areas and indoor malls taking over many towns and putting smaller traditional shops out of business.
Maybe that’s the way of business, maybe it’s a sad comment on modern fast-paced society, but it’s the way things are going.
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