Archive for the 'Sustainability' Category

Monday Links: April 28th, 2008

Published
by
Taylor
on April 27, 2008
in Art, Business, Computing, Monday Links, Politics, Random, Social Networks and Sustainability
. 2 Comments

Hey folks–I’ve been a bit out of the loop lately, and I’ll be traveling almost non-stop for the next few weeks. While Jarred will be taking one (a few?) for the team and blogging in my absence, I hope to chime in when I can from the road. Here are a few links, albeit a little abbreviated this week:

  • The Bush-Cheney 2004 e-Campaign Director offers ideas for how the McCain campaign could have moved past traditional press-release blasts to create momentum around Obama’s “Why can’t I just eat my waffle?” comment. As I think is pretty clear by now, Jarred and I are Obama fans…and, for the record, I think we both ate waffles almost exclusively one summer. But regardless of your politics, this piece is really striking in the creativity available to campaigns online, IF they’re willing to push the envelope a tad and move away from their old habits (NO MORE PRESS RELEASES).
  • I never thought I would subscribe to–much less link to–a Wal-Mart blog, but this post written by the company’s sustainability director is worth a look. He describes new packaging options (some as simple as milk in a bag instead of a carton) and weighs the merits of biodegradable plastics.
  • Lifehacker offers ten tools to maximize your Amazon shopping experience. These range from discount finders and gift list managers to a site that tracks prices of a recent purchase in order to cash in on the “if you find a cheaper price in 30 days we’ll give you the difference” offer. Pretty impressive, though some of these things might take more time than the $3 you’ll save is worth.

“The sculpture consists of 100 cast iron figures which face out to sea, spread over a 3.2 km stretch of the beach. [...] As the tides ebb and flow, the figures are revealed and submerged by the sea.”

  • This is a few weeks old but worth sharing: PaleoFuture points to a 1995 Newsweek article that basically…well…calls the “internet” a passing fad and a huge crock:

“[N]o online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.”

Well, that’s all for now. Keep checking back all week for new posts.

Monday Links: April 21st, 2008

Published
by
Taylor
on April 20, 2008
in Careers, Design, Energy, Environment, Google, Monday Links, Politics, Space and Sustainability
. 1 Comment

Another week closer to Spring…or so we hope.  This week’s links are very heavy on environmental stories.  I apologize for the one-dimensionality, but Jarred has some Web 2.0 stuff planned for this week to even things out a bit.  Links:

  • Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. offers three major environmental policies for the next president: a carbon cap-and-trade system (wisely endorsed by Senators Obama, Clinton, and McCain); smart grids and modernizing energy delivery infrastructure; and drastic improvements in energy efficiency for buildings and machines.  Sounds like a start [Hat Tip: Grist].
  • Treehugger features stories on space debris (click through to see the image…pretty unbelievable) and the “Pacific trash vortex“–an area twice the size of Texas in the middle of the Pacific Ocean that’s entirely covered in garbage (more here).  Further proof of the attitude that out of sight is out of mind…until our children grow up, anyway.
  • The latest version of Google Earth includes a feature that shows users when a satellite image was taken; this is enormously important for conservation efforts aimed at tracking land and water conditions over time.  Also helpful for spies.

You could train a recent college graduate to do your job well in a few days or less - This demonstrates you do not need any experience or knowledge learned over time to complete your tasks, which implies busy work or menial duties.

  • The New Yorker featured a really fascinating article on something I rarely give a second thought: elevators.  The story includes an account of the horrific experience of a guy trapped in an elevator for 41 hours.  The time-lapse video of his ordeal makes me think I’ll be taking the stairs for a few weeks.
  • I keep procrastinating on a green architecture post; in the meantime, this is one of the coolest green building concepts I’ve seen recently: urban skyscraper farming, courtesy of the Dwell Magazine blog.  Check out this design, and follow the link for details:

dwell city farm

  • I’m giving Jarred this raw meat themed iPod case for his birthday, just to send Ashish (and Steve Jobs, for that matter) over the edge.  Fortunately for you, Ashish, it’s way too expensive for a gag gift.

Enjoy those links while I go read the NY Times magazine “green issue.” More to come….

The Birth Of BLUE (Long Live Green)

Published
by
Taylor
on April 13, 2008
in Consumer Behavior, Environment, Sociology and Sustainability
. 0 Comments

Adam Werbach is a very controversial figure in certain (mainly older and/or purist) environmental circles. His company, Act Now Productions, works with a variety of companies (including Wal Mart) on improving sustainability. He’s criticized the traditional “environmentalist” movement, even declaring it dead. He gave a speech last week that’s worth highlighting. Apologies for the gratuitous excerpts, but I found it impossible to leave much more out. Courtesy of Grist (emphasis mine):

Tonight I invite you to join me in Wonderland. I ask you to consider joining me in building a movement that goes beyond the political to the personal, that views the existential threat of global warming as a chance to change the way we treat ourselves and the planet, that aspires to have one billion active participants across the earth. Tonight I’ll contend that we need to invest more time in making a difference through our routine activities and the things we buy every day. To achieve this we need a broader platform than green. [...]

[All over the world], I’ve seen people seeking something broader than a green or environmentalist solution to the myriad problems they face in their lives. Yes, they believe climate change is happening, but they also want to feel good about the way they look in the mirror and the way their kids look at them at the dinner table. They want to be part of something larger than themselves without having to sacrifice their identity. They want joy, not guilt, and a little money in their pocket so that they don’t have to trade down on yet one more thing in their life.

Building this new movement will require a commitment to the mainstream that we are unaccustomed to in San Francisco. It’s not enough to have a revolution that consists only of Mac users. It’s not enough to have a revolution that exists only in coastal states and college towns. It’s not enough to attack China as the home of lead-painted toys and neglect the aspirations of the hundreds of millions of people who have been brought out of abject poverty because we’ve bought those toys.

Something is happening now; progress seems at hand. We don’t know what to call it. For now let us call it the sustainability revolution — we are beginning to understand how human culture will harmonize its relationship with the living world. [...]

Continue reading ‘The Birth Of BLUE (Long Live Green)’

Pork Across the Pond and Here at Home

Published
by
Taylor
on April 10, 2008
in Agriculture, Animals, Business, Cooking, Environment, Health and Sustainability
. 13 Comments

hogsLast night’s winner on Top Chef served grilled shrimp with a pickled chili salad and miso smoked bacon.  The dish looked delicious, and who can blame the judges for going with the clear winner: bacon.  What self-respecting meat eater doesn’t love the salty, crispy stuff?  On a recent episode of Iron Chef America, Cat Cora referred to maple and brown sugar bacon as “pig candy,” which I find both hilarious and a little disgusting.  Regardless, one thing is clear: many of us freaking love bacon.

Here’s the bad news: Smithfield Farms, the world’s largest hog producer (based, regrettably, in my home state of North Carolina) is responsible for true environmental injustice in rural communities in NC and IA…and now they’re expanding to Europe.  Grist reports (emphasis mine):

In the 1990s, Smithfield perfected the meat industry’s infamous “vertical integration” strategy that it’s now unveiling in Eastern Europe. In an old-school meat market, packers bought livestock from independent farmers. But starting in the early ’90s in the United States, dominant meat packers began to raise vast numbers of their own animals, stuffing them into concentrated animal feedlot operations (CAFOs).

In doing so, they put independent farmers in direct competition with [Smithfield's] own livestock operations — a game that the meat packer usually wins. Farms go out of business in droves, unable to sustain themselves on the low prices offered by the packers; survivors scale up, mimicking the packers’ intensive techniques. That is, they CAFOize, using debt to erect large confinement buildings into which they stuff thousands of hogs. Most of them essentially cede their independence, working under contracts wherein the packers supply the feed and the hogs.

The trends now playing out in Poland has already flattened small farmers in Iowa and North Carolina. When Smithfield first bulled its way into Poland in 1999, after buying an old state-run processing plant, it declared its intention to make Poland “the Iowa of Europe.”

Continue reading ‘Pork Across the Pond and Here at Home’

Monday Links: April 7, 2008

Published
by
Taylor
on April 7, 2008
in Advertising, Business, Cooking, Design, Energy, Environment, Health, Monday Links, Philanthropy, Sociology and Sustainability
. 3 Comments

Sorry for the delay in posting these links, folks. I’ve been traveling, and I’m just now getting back to bloggin’. Unlike some people, I’m determined to make it through the 826 unread items in my Google Reader. How about a few links?

Although common tracking systems, known as cookies, have counted a consumer’s visits to a network of sites, the new monitoring, known as “deep-packet inspection,” enables a far wider view — every Web page visited, every e-mail sent and every search entered. Every bit of data is divided into packets — like electronic envelopes — that the system can access and analyze for content

  • This Nick Kristof column on racial and gender bias provides links to a number of interesting online psychological tests.
  • PhilanTopic highlights a Gates Foundation initiative aimed at involving scientists who might not normally focus on global health issues, particularly those in the developing world or in complimentary disciplines. From the Gates site:

The initiative is modeled after the grand challenges formulated more than 100 years ago by mathematician David Hilbert. His list of important unsolved problems has encouraged innovation in mathematics research ever since. Similarly, the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative aims to engage creative minds from across scientific disciplines — including those who have not traditionally taken part in global health research — to work on 14 major challenges.

  • Smitten Kitchen is my new favorite food/cooking blog. This lemon blueberry yogurt cake looks amazing (due in no small part to their expert photography…and baking).
  • If you’re looking to spice up an office memo, or maybe a senior thesis, try the beard font.

That should be enough for now. Sorry to fill the links with so much random stuff, but expect more *ahem* serious blogging to follow this week.