Humorous interlude that's somewhat relevant

Pastafarianism and a correlation between pirates and global warming

The Electric (car) Slide

Maybe the backlash following the death of the electric car has had a bigger impact than previously thought. GM has announced that they are beginning redevelopment of a new electric version of the Saturn Vue, though they can't say right now when it will be ready. Check out this article for more info, and note that includes a mention that all Hummers will soon be converted to run on E85 fuel (which is only kind of better than gasoline) Perhaps we should all write a thank-you letter to GM for their renewed commitment to fuel efficiency and environmental responsibility .

"When 98 percent of scientists agree, who is Shell to say, 'Let's debate the science'?"

That quote is from John Hofmeister, president of Shell Oil Co. He agrees that we need to do something to deal with increasing levels of greenhouse gas emissions, and in this article it looks like that will soon be happening. It's amazing how much has changed in only the few weeks since the Democrats gained control of the House and Senate. Maybe things will actually get done now.

Travelling green (or not)

To be...
Expedia.com now offers the option of purchasing TerraPass for all flights booked through the site, ranging from $5.99 each for a short flight to $29.99 for international flights. This is the cost Expedia pays, so all of the money goes directly to TerraPass to offset the greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere during the flight. Check out the TerraPass option on Expedia here or learn more about TerraPass here.

Or not to be...
Just saw "Who Killed the Electric Car?" It made me want to never own a car again, because the car companies are all the same. Maybe Toyota and some of the others have gotten better, but GM is still evil. There are two interesting parts in the movie that have nothing to do with the topic: first of all, Mel Gibson is one of the featured celebrities, and really, the guy gets more nuts by the day; second, two women protesting the transfer of a number of electric cars to the demolition site park their car peacefully in front of the truck. When the cops pull them out of the car and arrest them (the women are peaceful the whole time and don't resist arrest), the cops put the plastic handcuffs (plastic baggie ties, really) on the white woman and real handcuffs on the African-American woman. Maybe it's just coincidence, but I just thought that was interesting.

Weather or not...

I have lived in North Carolina for three months now, and I have two questions:

1. Why would anyone want to live in North Carolina during the summer, when it is completely hot and humid and there is no major body of water in sight? Chicago in the summer is just perfect, and I've had the most fun ever during the two summers I lived in the city of Chicago.

2. Why would anyone want to live in Chicago during the winter, when the cold wind takes your breath away and the sun doesn't come out for weeks? The past month in Durham has felt more like September in Chicago, and locals aren't terribly surprised that it's going to be 78 degrees and sunny tomorrow. It's kind of weird to not feel cold and depressed in November, because that's about all I've ever known. Not that I miss it.

On a completely baffling side note, I just learned today that Time Warner Cable has a monopoly down here (not the baffling part), and that they have decided not to carry the Bravo and LOGO (a network with gay- and lesbian-themed programming) channels because "Time Warner carries only family-friendly programming" and apparently Bravo and LOGO aren't "family-friendly." Also, North Carolina's policy for teaching health in school includes abstinence-only sex education, and rape prevention education in schools suffers because it means people would have to admit that kids actually have sex. So I guess it's too much to ask to have good weather *and* open-minded community members. Not that I'm surprised.

C'mon, ride the train

This weekend, I rode the Amtrak to Charlotte. Loved it! Why don't people take the train more often? Okay, it does take longer than flying if you're travelling long distances, but here's why the train rocks if you have the time to take it:
1. WAY cheaper than flying or renting a car. I paid $60 for a round-trip ticket, and it would have cost more than that just to rent a car, plus gas is expensive.
2. You get to see the scenery as a passive observer. North Carolina is gorgeous, and the trees are just starting to change. Today I saw a goat hanging out on someone's lawn (it was a farm, to be fair). Until now, I don't think I've ever seen a goat anywhere besides the zoo. I also saw cotton growing in a field. That was a first, as well.
3. Train seats are much more comfortable than plane seats, the gentle rumble and rock of the train is soothing, and you don't get that weird "I'm suspended in an air-tight vehicle coasting 30,000 feet in the air and defying the laws of gravity, and yet I can't tell I'm moving" feeling. It also feels much safer when there's no laminated card in the seat pocket telling you how to use your seat bottom as a floatation device.
4. Trains are just cool. They remind you of how quickly (and how slowly) the world is moving around you. Taking the El in Chicago always makes me tingle. The excitement of people coming and going, the rumble of the clacking trains on the tracks, the whoosh of the train passing you by. It's like the videos of city life happening in double-time.
5. Trains are more environmentally conscious than driving or flying. Yes, there is still the issue of the impact the train has on the surrounding rail corridor, not to mention that they use a huge amount of electricity (hmmm...masters project topic floating in my head...) Actually, I'm going to do some research on this, and I'll get back to you...

My SLC friend doesn't know it yet, but I'm now contemplating a cross-country train ride to visit him over spring break. The American West by train. Awesome. In the meantime, I'm going to continue advocating rail travel. Maybe it'll make a comeback.

Girl Power!

Yet another reason I love Joel Achenbach: his latest Washington Post blog post is about Arianna Huffington's latest book, On Becoming Fearless.

I read this post after reading a friend's blog post about his latest ego stroke from a new female friend. And now, all I can think about is the song Female of the Species by Space. But really, I think the key to being a truly powerful woman is to know how to get what you want without being intimidating or sickeningly sweet. Guys don't want to date a bitch, and they don't respect a sap. And it's no fun sitting at the top of the heap, looking at what you stepped on to get there. Even powerful women want to have friends.

Community-owned sports

Maybe I'm the last to know this, but hey, I don't keep up with sports that much. Anyway, I just learned last week that the Green Bay Packers are the only team in the NFL that is owned not by some guy with a big bank account but by community stockholders. The team was incorporated in 1923 as a private, non-profit, tax-exempt organization. According to the New Rules Project, "Article I of their bylaws states, "this association shall be a community project, intended to promote community welfare...its purposes shall be exclusively charitable." The team can move only through dissolution, in which case the shareholders get only the $25 a share they put in. A board of directors, elected by the stockholders, manages the team." No wonder cheeseheads are such crazy fans. What a cool idea. That's the way sports should be, really.

The Bears will still kick some Packer tail. I'm just sayin'...

By the way, I just came across the New Rules Project ("Designing rules as if community mattered") when I googled for information about the Packers. Encouraging community support is kind of a resurging movement, as outlined in a presentation by Michael Shuman at the Nasher Museum here in Durham last week. His latest book is The Small-Mart Revolution. (I know, the link is to Amazon.com, but only because they have the best synopsis, reader reviews, and links to other similar books. Please buy the book from your local bookstore). He mentioned the tidbit about the Packers, as well as a ton of other reasons why we should support our locally owned businesses and community groups when possible. Shopping at locally owned businesses saves money and energy on transportation and manufacturing costs, puts a higher percentage of money spent back into the local economy, and prevents big companies from pulling out and cutting jobs. There are myriad other reasons. Just read Shuman's book or check out more information online. People complain about rising energy costs, but it means that we'll all start to do more of our business closer to home, and that translates into a healthier and happier community.

Fashion forward (and socially conscious, too!)

I love tee shirts. I've decided that if I'm going to wear tee shirts on a regular basis (and I can, because I'm in grad school), I may as well be original, fashionable, and socially conscious. So I just bought two new tee shirts from Threadless.

Here's the deal: Joe Schmo creates an original tee shirt design and submits it to Threadless (based in Chicago--they have a van that is completely covered in Threadless stickers). If Joe Schmo's original design gets chosen, he gets paid by Threadless with $1,500, a membership to the 12-month club, and a $300 Threadless gift certificate, and Threadless will add tee shirts with Joe Schmo's design to their stock for the public to buy. The designs are printed on tee shirts from American Apparel, which is American-made and sweatshop-free. And the shirts are cheap: $15-25 each.

So yeah, buy Threadless. Support a local Chicago business, independent artists, and socially conscious apparel.

An environmentally responsible alternative to AAA

The cuz posted this information on her blog, and even though there's a link to her blog on this blog, I thought I would mention it because everyone should know about it: the Better World Club. It's a roadside assistance, travel, and insurance club, just like AAA, but it's environmentally conscious. I could list all the benefits, but to quote Levar Burton (remember Reading Rainbow?), don't take my word for it. Go to the Better World Club website and check it out for yourself.
Thanks, K-Dawg, for helping others be better world citizens. I'm still loving my Co-op America membership and I recommend it to people all the time!

And the Big Box debate rages on

Mayor Daley vetoed the Big Box ordinance passed in Chicago that would require stores like Target and Walmart to pay workers a living wage, and today City Council members failed to garner enough votes to override the veto. Alderman Joe Moore (49th) assured the City Council that the issue would not go away and promised to produce a broader ordinance that would apply to workers of companies with at least 1,000 employees. Not sure what this means, but if it leads to fairer wages for all Chicago employees, then let's hope for the best. Stay tuned.

Homecoming

Paul Salopek will be freed on Saturday from Sudan, where he was being held on charges of espionage. Salopek acknowledges that he entered the country without a visa, which is a civil offense in Sudan. Bill Richards, Governor of New Mexico, helped secure his release in a meeting with Sudan's president Al-Bashir. Richardson had worked with al-Bashir in 1996 on the release of three Red Cross workers detained by Marxist rebels in Sudan, and Salopek is a resident of New Mexico. But there's another element to this story:
From the Chicago Tribune: During the meeting, according to Humphrey, al-Bashir said, "When I announce this, the Sudanese people will say, 'What about our people in Guantanamo Bay?'"

Ah yes, what about the people in Guantanamo Bay? Perhaps we should ship them to one of the secret prisons that Bush recently admitted that the U.S. runs after all? Pres. Bush said he would send the message immediately to release the detainees, so we'll see what happens. Isn't this, in effect, similar to negotiating with terrorists? The Sudanese government isn't terrorist per se, but it looks like they agreed to let people go in exchange for the U.S. release of some Sudanese prisoners. Hmmm...

Journalism versus Activism

In high school, I was trying to decide between conservation biology and journalism as a future college major. I chose journalism, with the hopes that I could write about conservation. Then my frustration with my journalistic skills and my burgeoning passion for environmental advocacy collided, and I decided this journalism thing was just a phase. Obviously I have moved on. These journalists have found a way to do what I couldn't figure out: how to balance environmentalism and journalism. Props to them. Keep on fighting the good fight.

What price, conservation?

In a tragic and ironic turn of events, Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, died today. He was filming a documentary segment called "Ocean's Deadliest" when he was stabbed in the heart by the deadly barb of a stingray. It's almost poetic. Saving the world is an expensive proposition, and Steve Irwin paid for it with his life, leaving behind a wife and two young children. (Is his dog Suey still around?)

And a jab at the national media: when the anchor on Good Morning America previewed the story about Steve Irwin (which I missed, but I read that another great, Jack Hanna, came on the program to talk about it), she announced the tragedy and paired it with a story about whether stingrays are a threat to everyone else. Steve must be rolling in his not-yet-dug grave. Fear is not the answer. Let's not start a crusade to rid our oceans of stingrays, let's educate the public about stingray behavior and about why we should be working to preserve the natural habitats of these animals. Steve was trying to do just that.

Rest In Peace, Steve Irwin. Thank you for being crazy enough to show us just how wonderful, important, and dangerous the animal kingdom is.

Anticlimactic rainstorm, anyone?

Last night's tropical storm here in Durham was the same as any old rainstorm in Chicago: Steady (and heavy at times) rain, with lots of wind. No local flooding, and it was 65 degrees and windy and drizzly today. Ho hum. It was worse south and east of here, but mostly just some power outages and high wind, with some local flooding. If they hadn't hyped it up as a tropical storm, I would have thought it was just a front moving through.

That's the problem with the media (I wrote a J200 paper on this my sophomore year of college). Weather is weather. It's great to be prepared for HUGE weather events, but it need not be the entire day's news. This morning we had all local news instead of Good Morning America/Today Show. And all they talked about was that it rained. They do the same thing everywhere--any sort of bigger weather event warrants over-coverage, which ends up either freaking people out over nothing or repeating the same news instead of giving people useful information. Whatever happened to the days when a little box would sit in the corner of the screen with color codings for watches and warnings, and if specific areas were in immediate danger, a warning would come over the air telling people to seek shelter immediately. When the storm blew through, the warnings and boxes would go away and we would go about our lives, usually none the worse for wear.

Batten down the hatches

Tropical Storm Ernesto is heading this way, and I mean RIGHT this way. We're supposed to get eight to 12 inches of rain tonight. My first tropical storm. Hells yeah. The only thing that worries me is that I live at the bottom of a hill. There's some land that's lower, but it looks like the water could back up a bit. There are also storm drains nearby, and if they back up, we'll be a-swimmin'. So no toilet flushing allowed.

Last night a different storm came through the area, and the rumbling thunder was so long and loud it sounded like a tank coming down the street. The lightning was silent but bright, like someone flipping on and off a light right outside the window. I love thunderstorms, and it's interesting that thunderstorms in less congested cities with higher humidity are much different than the thunderstorms that blow through the tall buildings of Chicago. Here, and in Missouri, the storms are long and low, with flashes of lightning and thunder that sounds like it's quietly complaining about something. In Chicago, the claps of thunder will jar you wide awake in the middle of the night, and even if you've never been afraid of storms before, you'll begin to fear that the sky will soon fall through the roof.

Speaking of storms, yesterday after a downpour, a woman walked into the building and apologized for being late because she had gotten stuck in a gulley-washer. I love the South.

Paul Salopek is not a spy.

Chicago Tribune correspondent and National Geographic freelance writer Paul Salopek was detained in Sudan, charged with espionage and two other criminal counts on Saturday. He was on assignment in sub-Saharan Africa, and as people sometimes do, he entered the country without a journalist visa. National Geographic's editor in chief, Chris Johns, stated, "He had no agenda other than to fairly and accurately report on the region," Johns said. "He is a world-recognized journalist of the highest standing, with a deep knowledge and respect for the continent of Africa and its people."

Read the Chicago Tribune's statement here and National Geographic's statement here.And hope for a speedy resolution of this problem so that Paul can be released soon and get back to (legally, according to Sudan laws) doing what he does best: reporting about the problems plaguing the peoples in Africa, with the hope of affecting positive change in the region.

I don't care what those astronomers say...

Pluto IS a planet. Just take it from 2 Skinnee J's, whose song "Pluto" has been flying through my head lately because of astronomers' recent decision to downgrade Pluto. Don't worry, littlest planet, we still love you!

"Pluto" by 2 Skinnee J's, off the Supermercado album
With depravity,
I break lots of gravity
Blast past the atmosphere
to the last frontier
I go boldly through space and time
The sky's the limit,
but they're limiting the sky
I break orbit by habit,
I ignite satellites and leave rings round the planets
A flying ace like that beagle,
nevertheless this alien remains illegal
Cause their discovery dont cover me
the immigrants been left in the cold
to grow old
and disintegrate
Discriminate
against the distant and disclaimers,
Cause small minds can't see past Uranus
When I shun their race
cause that's just a phase
and my odyssey runs in 2001 ways
And I can see clearly now like Hubbell
shoved off the shuttle,
here's my rebuttal
It's a planet.

Who do you represent?
I represent the smallest planet
A tourney in this journey
versus those who tried to ban it.
If you don't agree
go see interplanet Janet Cause
the sun is star like
Pluto
is planet.
So lend me all ears
and let me state my case,
about all the types of satellites we must embrace
Cause like parents'
great-grandparents,
this planet was an immigrant,
to deport its an offense.
It's an upstanding member of the solar system
Abide the laws of Earth and make it a victim.
Of Proposition
107,
When Pluto spawns a moon it will apply to the heavens.
A dandy like Judas of a chariot
If you demote this boat
remote to a goat
It's like taking ETs custody from Elliot,
support yours
clearly put cause,
simply put

Pluto is a planet. Pluto!
Pluto is a planet. Pluto!
Pluto is a planet. Pluto!
Pluto is a plane

Organic?

Shame on Horizon Organics, which has lately been pushing the limits of what can be considered organic. They're owned by mega-farm Dean Foods, and the new management has trouble keeping the cows out in the pasture, which is the key element of organic dairy. The cows often remain in the barns, and they're fed food that, while healthy, is meant to increase milk production. It's not like Horizon is some small farm struggling to survive, so the company's behavior is puzzling.

Check out the article here, which does include explanations from Horizon.

Hhhhhuuuuuuuummmmer

McDonald's is pairing up with Hummer to offer kids a special toy rootin'-tootin'pollutin' machine with their Happy Meals. Well, only if they're boys--girls get Polly Pocket fashion dolls instead. Let's count how many things are wrong with this:
1. Feeding McDonalds to kids. Keep doing that, and someday the only cars big enough to fit their fat behinds will be Hummers.
2. Advertising products to children that they won't even be able to use for a good 10 years. That's like Joe Camel advertising to kids. I guess at least a Hummer won't outright kill them, just slowly pollute their world and drain their wallets. Oh, Hummers really are like cigarettes.
3. Reinforcing gender roles by giving cars only to the boys. Picture a little girl accidentally getting a happy meal made for a boy. "Do you want a Hummer?" she asks a boy in her class, offering him the toy from her meal. And we thought that stuff only happened in the White House.
4. Hummers and fast food are the kinds of things that are essentially totally wrong with this world in general. Nuff said.

Speaking of Hummer, those tv commercials are really lame. One appeals to the soccer mom in all of us when someone else's kid cuts in front of ours in line at the playground, so we must buy a Hummer to feel superior. Yes! Get our girl on! the ad states. Another ad appeals to the neanderthal in all of us when some guy with meat and beer gets in the checkout line behind a guy with vegetables and tofu, so we must buy a Hummer to even the score or something. For the record, I would guess that any guy who eats tofu and vegetables (which does NOT make him less of a man, by the way) certainly would not stoop to buying a Hummer to boost his ego. Maybe Hummer has issues because real men don't need a big gas guzzler to feel better about themselves. That's what trophy wives and fancy technology are for.