May 30th, 2008 Frank
Ecospace has a cool posting about a single woman who cut her home energy costs in half by simple methods and sitting through a few lectures (or you could read a few blogs and eco-websites).
Since she lives alone she’s able to push for the cheapest option (like setting the water heater to its lowest setting), and this woman was willing to do things like tackle her own plumbing and attic ventilation, but there’s definitely something to learn from this. She saved loads of money over having a contractor or handyman come in to do simple electrical and insulation jobs, and she’s saving money overall with the lower electricity bills.
It’s a good read - give it a shot if you’re concerned about the rising costs of fuel and gas!
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May 23rd, 2008 Frank
Lifehacker has a great heads up on a free Windows program that lets you clip bits of web pages and print them on one page, instead of printing pages of filler and wasting paper. Check out the link below!
Featured Windows Download: HP Smart Web Printing Saves Tons of Paper
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May 20th, 2008 Frank
I was in the US recently, and while visiting my mother I went to one of the SeaWorld theme parks. I didn’t think I’d enjoy it as much as I did, especially when I saw the price (fifty bucks!) and surrounded by hordes of schoolkids and their teachers, but it was a really good day, aided by the fact that the blazing sun had relented and it was partly cloudy all day.
One of the things that really brightened my time there was the discovery that apart from having recycling containers next to nearly every trash bin, the food places there served drinks with paper straws. Yeah - paper straws! I couldn’t believe it, really, and when I I checked out the web site printed on the wrapper. The company that provided these particular straws is the Aardvark Paper Straw company, based in the US and the manufacturers of the first paper drinking straws back in 1888.
The straws are marketed to various industries that are (or should be) concerned about waste and the environment, but also to zoos and animal theme parks, where plastic straws could seriously harm any animals that were to eat a straw.
Naturally, I think this is a great idea - it keeps plastic out of landfills, protects animals and is a great talking point (like this post) about environmental awareness. Now, if only those plastic straws weren’t so damn cheap to make and buy, we’d have more companies using the original paper version…
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May 20th, 2008 Frank
Here’s an interesting news tidbit! EXXON (you know, of the Valdez) board members are being confronted by major shareholders because of a lack of major investment into evironmentally friendly power systems like wind and solar energy. Wow!
I guess the shareholders (including the Rockefeller family, which started the business that became Exxon way back when) have gotten really tired of how other oil companies like BP and Shell have been moving forward with new energy types and Exxon is still languishing back in the 20th century:
“Exxon is facing a rebellion from its investors over its hardline approach to global warming. The firm has refused to follow rival oil companies in committing large-scale capital investment to environmentally friendly technology such as wind and solar power.”
Hey, I think this is great. I mean, apart from Exxon not paying its Valdez-related bills, now the folks that really matter in the company are wanting them to get more green!
Originally reported by the Guardian but I spotted this on ENN, the Environmental News Network.
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May 16th, 2008 Frank
Another one from EcoSpace:
Just wanted to comment about a recent article there about what they call minimalist composting, which is basically collecting kitchen scraps in a covered plastic bucket on their back porch and dumping it on the leaf pile in their back yard when it’s full.
To gardeners and people who compost already, that sound really really obvious, but most people don’t even consider composting, even with countries like Britain considering charging people by the amount of rubbish they produce. It’s not a popular scheme because people are already subject to CCTV coverage in many places they go and shrinking privacy rights really rankle the populace, but it’s a policy I don’t mind because if you make less waste, you take up less landfill space and the garbage trucks don’t have to come ’round to your house so often.
In fact, the city where I live started skipping every other week of rubbish collection and gave every house a new composting bin as well as a recycling bin and door-to-door newspaper recycling collection. Not all cities or towns in the UK do this, but I’m happy that mine does, but I still compost because of my growing container garden, and to just make less waste.
So I’d encourage anyone who is able to collect kitchen scraps in a bucket to do so, even if you don’t garden. You could always dump the scraps at the bottom of your yard or ‘donate’ them to a neighbor who gardens, I’m sure they’d appreciate any extra food for their worms!
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May 14th, 2008 Frank
No, not commandments from the Bible, these are 10 commandments from Dumb Little Man about losing inches off the waist and getting back 10 years of youth. Not too shabby.
What I like about these ‘rules’ is that they are simple, not a ‘diet plan’, and best of all, I already do most of these!
No white bread, only wholemeal. I dropped white bread ages ago. I still like my French bread but only occasionally.
Have a few cups of green tea every day. Green tea is an acquired taste for me, I’m more into the black tea popular in the UK, but black tea has nearly as many anti-oxidants as green tea - I just add milk and fake sugar which apparently lowers the number of anti-oxidants.
Eat nuts. I like raw and roasted nuts, so yeah I’m already there on this.
Get your Omega-3. I take supplements just in case I don’t get enough from the food I eat.
Eat avocados. Yeah…this one I’m not so keen on. Except for guacamole on nachos or burritos I’ve never gotten into the avocado, but maybe I can give it a shot. The person that wrote the original article has half an avocado a day! That might take some work for me to get up to that.
Eat bigger meals in the morning and smaller meals in the evening. This has always made sense to me, I’m not sure where having a massive evening meal came from. I do try to not eat meals after 9, too.
The 80/20 rule. Now this one I definitely follow, at least when it comes to the amount of food I eat. Basically this means eat wisely during the week but during the weekends go ahead and have what you like. The way my schedule is right now, this is a cinch to follow.
Visualize yourself as perfect. This is basically actually thinking ‘my body is my temple’, and knowing that if you eat garbage, that’s what you’re taking into your temple. Rephrase it however you like, but if you put junk or processed food into your body, you’re not getting the best out of it. Even if you don’t want to be at your physical peak, it just doesn’t make sense to regularly eat crap food.
Exfoliate your skin. This is about looking younger. I’ve known plenty of guys younger than myself that looked older than me, simply because they don’t get enough sun, stay out till the wee hours all the time, and generally don’t take care of themselves. I hardly ever exfoliate, but I will admit that after watching a few shows of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy I did go out and get some ‘product’…I just need to use up that stuff now, even if only to justify the cost of buying it!
Love yourself with a passion. This basically means be happy with yourself and you’ll be happier overall and more positive about things, which will help you look and act younger than you are. Ever hear that old saying, “You’re only as old as you feel?” That’s what this is about.
Finally, a simple daily exercise plan is key to dropping the pounds. This ‘plan’ can be easy as walking 15 minutes in one direction, then 15 minutes back to your house or work or car, but mine will be to start cycle commuting to work at least 3-4 times a week, 32 miles each time. That’s 2700 calories burned every day, at my body weight. I’ve done it a couple of times and while the first time I was aching all over, the second time I was fine, and it will only get easier from there.
So, by the end of the summer, will I be ripped, shredded and sporting a six-pack? Probably not, but that’s not the goal. The goal is to get in better shape, that’s all. Oh, and save £5/$10 a day on fuel costs! 
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May 12th, 2008 Frank
Hey, I like my car. It gives me the freedom to travel where and when I want, and most Americans feel exactly the same way. Without being tied down to a bus or train schedule you’re able to roam as you wish, without any grubby co-passengers staring at your or listening in on your conversations.
But what if you could have a lifestyle with the same freedom as a car, without needing a car? Many people already do, and they do it by traveling with their bike.
I read a cool post on the EcoSpace site about the worldwide car-free movement, where they talked about the weekly car-free day in Bogota, Columbia. All the city streets are shut every Sunday, and people walk, cycle or skate everywhere to go about their business. What a fantastic idea! I imagine that on the weekdays the streets are choked with buses, taxis, diesel fumes and horn blasts, but every Sunday it’s just the hum of cycle tires, a few bells, and that’s it. Maybe it’s completely different than that but what a place a city like that would be! Portland, Oregon is going to experiment with something similar with a single day this June, shutting down several miles of streets for 6 hours. It’s a great start but more cities in the US and Europe could easily follow suit.
I’m only just now coming around to the idea of cycle commuting to work (and I’ll be doing it regularly during the summer to save up to £90 - nearly $200 - a month!), and I’m sure if I lived in London or New York or any other urban setting I’d have just a bike to get around. Car repair and maintenance cost enough, plus the regular fill-ups add more and more to the cost - never mind that barrels of oil are setting new price records every few weeks!
So if you’ve got a bike, get on it! See where it takes you.
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May 9th, 2008 Frank
…Monsanto corporation is.
On the Mercola website, there’s a great video about Monsanto and their business practices, plus a short explanation of how they grew from a simple chemical company into the biggest supplier of genetically modified seeds around the world.
It’s scary how one company, with the single purpose of making more and more money, is dominating farming and therefore what regular people eat every day.
Stuff like this is why I cook from scratch when possible, grow what I can in an organic container garden, buy free range eggs and organic meat (when I can - organic meat is quite expensive).
Give the video a watch, and see if you can make any simple, money-saving changes to your eating habits.
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May 7th, 2008 Frank
Which side of this fight are you on?
I realize most people don’t even choose a side in this, at least most people I know, British, European or American, so it’s not a matter of the ‘ignorant American’ so-called stereotype - many people are ignorant of the history behind this thing. I know I’m still ignorant of the facts.
It’s a tough call, because the Israelis are friendly with most developed nations (especially the Americans), so the news that most people see is about how tough the Israelis have it. And it is tough, some live in war conditions, many Holocaust survivors are still alive and share their stories about that horrible time, terrorist attacks are still targeted at places and people in Israel, and of course the Jews have been subjected to some of the worst acts in history (England was the first country to ever throw out Jews, many centuries ago).
But in the battle between Israel and Palestine, who’s the bad guy, and who is the good guy? Like the US now, the line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is definitely getting blurred, and even in the mainstream media Israel isn’t getting very good press.
Recently, nearly 40 ex-IDF (Israeli Defence Force) soldiers came told their stories of systematic abuse of Palestinians, even the killing of at least one young boy.
In another report, the US military wants an explanation from Israel about helicopters sold to Israel decades ago that have ended up in the hands of South American drug cartels (the helicopters were sold with the express agreement that if they were ever re-sold, they would go to Spanish firefighters or Mexican federales. Maybe there’s a reasonable explanation (perhaps they were sold to Mexico, then sold again and again down the line to the cartels; maybe they were stolen or), but maybe there’s not…
Also in recent news is the story of the Reuters television cameraman in Gaza who filmed the Israeli tank firing the shell that killed him and a few other people in an unprovoked attack. Like all TV journalists in that region, he had been traveling in a clearly marked ‘TV’ truck…And this wasn’t the first time a TV crew had been attacked by the IDF.
This might seem like a strange thing to bring up on a blog/site like this, but recently there’s been a wave of bad press about Israel, Palestine, Gaza, etc., and I suppose I just wanted to say something about it. I don’t think there will ever be ‘peace in the Middle East’, I’m not as much of an idealist as that, but every time there is a glimmer of hope in one area something happens to shatter it. Well…here’s hoping something improves!
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May 5th, 2008 Frank
A couple of Girl Scouts in the US have refused to sell their share of Girl Scout cookies this year because of the use of palm oil in them, Fox News reports.
Hey, good for them! It’s about time some serious effort was taken to remove palm oil from food items - farm the oil palm encourages rainforest deforestation and ruins the habitat of native species.
It’s been a couple of years since I’ve had Girl Scout cookies, and while I’m not normally in the habit of automatically rejecting a particular food on ethical grounds (although I have started buying lots more fair trade items when possible, along with organic of course) and palm oil does provide many many poor people with a living, overall it’s one of those things that I’m just generally against, but of course there are arguments for using it instead of rape seed and other ‘bio’ products.
This is one of those ‘eco-questions’ you could argue with yourself for and against depending on your mood, like using loads of water to rinse out a peanut butter jar before you put it in the recycling bin. I guess it’s one of those things you’d have to make up your mind about…
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