April 30th, 2008 Frank
You may have heard about the island of garbage and rubbish floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, but has anyone ever SEEN it? Have you seen any pictures of it? Video or other data? I mean, it’s the size of the state of Texas (you know, Texas, that state that takes 18 hours to cross east-to-west and at least 12 hours north-to-south?), so SOMEONE must have seen it somewhere…
A few people sailed for several days to find the rotating island of garbage, known as the Pacific Garbage Patch. What they found is absolutely disgusting, discouraging and frightening.
Check out the site they made here, with all the video segments they’ve made so far.
If even one video doesn’t make you want to start using cloth shopping bags and think about the types of purchases you make as you go about your daily life…just keep watching.
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April 28th, 2008 Frank
You’re reading this site on the internet, but what if you weren’t able to look at sites that you want to? What if the company that provides your internet service (your ISP, or Internet Service Provider) limited the access to the sites that you want to go to? What if your acces to iTunes or YouTube was so slow you felt forced to go to other online music or video sites?
That, unfortunately, is what Virgin internet services in the UK have started doing. They have been quoted as saying net neutrality is ‘bollocks’.
While customers in the US and Canada react negatively to ISPs like Roadruner and Comcast doing the same thing, Virgin is the first in the UK to do this, and this site is urging people to stand up, take notice, and take back the internet. I’m sure Virgin won’t be the last UK ISP to do this, and I know that some ISPs ’shape’ traffic to prevent the use of torrenting websites like the Pirate Bay during certain hours, but forcing users to use sites they don’t want to use is much worse than limiting high-bandwidth usage during business hours.
I would recommend that if you’re a frequent internet user that you do some research (Google, of course) and see if your ISP is for or against net neutrality. This is actually one of the issues that the US presidential candidates have had to take a stand on, but it’s so far down the priority list that it’s hard to even see in the current media environment around the candidates.
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April 25th, 2008 Frank
The Nature Conservancy (nature.org) is sponsoring the Plant a Billion campaign to get a billion young trees planted for Arbor Day (today!)!
Arbor Day is a primarily American thing, but in general it’s about planting new trees, and what better way than to donate just a buck to the the Plant a Billion program?
Check it out here and donate! (way cool website, too!)
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April 23rd, 2008 Frank
The New York Times has a good article that goes through what’s probably going through a lot of environmentalists’ minds, called ‘Why Bother‘
Basically the author goes through the environmentalist anguish of cutting carbon, eating locally, using less electricity, etc., while thinking there’s someone on the other side of the world (or down the street) buying a new SUV, leaving all the lights in their house on and having a massive beef roast in the back garden during the weekend…and the natural anguish and hopelessness that ensues.
What can one drop in the bucket do, against a flood of people who just don’t care about reducing their energy or carbon usage?
Well, what I realized a while back, and what the author of the piece gets to, is that eventually that little bit of effort that you do, and keep doing, it shows other people like friends and family that small steps to help ’save planet Earth’ aren’t that hard after all! Simple things like recycling when you can, dropping off newspapers at the animal shelter, shutting off the lights when you leave a room, all that stuff adds up.
So if you’re despairing, don’t worry! 
It all comes round in the end…
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April 21st, 2008 Frank
It’s been a while! Yes, it certainly has…I can only say I’ve been busy, then sick, then just lazy…but a lot of stuff has been building up that I’ve been wanting to write about, so I’m going to dedicate a bit of each week to get back on my 3-posts-a-week schedule.
So, for the two people out there that were paying attention, I hope you’re still up for reading a bit about the Wannabe Hippy
…so let’s get started again, talking about Earth Day!
Every year since the late 60’s Earth Day has fallen on or about the 21st of April, in time for spring in most populated areas and hitting an opportune time for people to remember the outdoors is there for people to enjoy and experience. Personally, I’ve never made it a point to do anything particularly special for Earth Day, but this year I’ve joined up at the Google Earth Day 2008 website to list what I’ll be doing for Earth Day this year:
I’m cycling to work and back!
That’s right: 35 miles round trip, taking me about 2 hours one-way. I know it’s about 2 hours because last Thursday I did the round trip, leaving at 06:35 and arriving at about 08:40, covering 17.5 miles. That’s roughly 8.7 miles an hour, but hey I am basically out of shape and I can only get faster. There are a couple of major hills on the way but mainly on the way back, so I took my time and was able to relax a bit more than on the way to work.
I had to deal with some cramping and saddle soreness but I hadn’t really eaten anything before I left home (I did have protein shake, though) and on the way back I was going a little slower but I’d had loads of water and an energy bar before I left.
Tomorrow, the plan is to get up at 05:15, have some breakfast and a protein drink, set off at 6 and get to work around 8, with plenty of time before 08:30 to shower and change. I picked up a spare tube over the weekend just in case I get a flat (hopefully I won’t because I’m using Schwalbe City Jet tires, which are specifically for commuting and reviews on the ‘net say they’re pretty good at puncture resistance) and I even ordered a gel seat that should be a bit friendlier on my nether regions going over the street drains and pavement ripples on the lanes - it’s surprising how much pain is transferred to sore bits when going over just a strip of road paint…not to mention a sunken water drain!
I’ve got to adjust my rear and front dérailleurs to get them shifting perfectly, but I found a great site at bicycletutor.com that has videos and other stuff to get things sorted for the cycling novice. An even better site with loads more detail is the fantastic Sheldon Brown cycling website, and I found quite a bit of help about cycle commuting in the UK on the BBC H2G2 website and the Nutty Cyclist.
In addition to cycling in, I’m going to invite the folks at work (again) to help clean up the parking lot and the bushes that line the main road right next to the building. Every few months it just gets too filthy to live with and although I send out email requests for people to help, not one person yet has come out to help…so here’s hoping someone does something this time!
So wish me luck! It should be a fun Earth Day.
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