Artful slideshow from Fast Company–that’s a lot of garbage

Check out this slideshow–then bring your own mug to Starbucks, carry reusable bags when shopping, stop drinking bottled water, buy rechargeable batteries … Well, I’m trying.

Portraits of Consumption: Visualizing the Statistics of Waste in America

Chris Jordan’s body of photographic artwork focuses on the startling statistics of American consumption. Numbers are translated into visual representations–what would all the pollution in the ocean look like? How much space would five seconds of waste take up? Some of these depictions take up whole walls of gallery space. Here are some of the images from Jordan’s latest book, Running the Numbers.

Sleepless in Las Vegas–my 1st mattress at Caesar’s Palace

Happily, in recent years the hospitality industry–from high end to low–has been investing in better beds, replacing mattresses more frequently, and using the promise of a good night’s sleep as a marketing tool.

Therefore, what a shock to lie down in my room at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas, and feel springs pressing against my shoulder, hip and knee causing instant pain. Whipping the sheets off the hard lumpy bed, I discovered dated blue damask ticking and a law label dated 1999.

The woman who answered the front desk phone said, “All our mattresses are the same. If you change rooms I can’t guarantee you’ll like the bed.”

The sympathetic young man at the front desk–I got dressed and went down there after a second failed attempt at falling asleep–said: “Let me move you to a much nicer, larger room with one of our pillow-top mattresses.”

“Thank you,” I tearfully sputtered.

Caesar’s Palace, please throw out all those old mattresses. No one should have to sleep on them. Not even guests on a budget.

Jon Stewart’s tribute to another New Jerseyite Bruce Springsteen

–too funny to miss tonight at the Kennedy Center Honors on CBS:

“I am not a music critic. Nor historian, nor archivist. I cannot tell you where Bruce Springsteen falls in the pantheon of the American songbook. I cannot illuminate the context of his work, or its roots in the folk and oral history traditions of our great nations. But I am from New Jersey. So, I can tell you what I believe. And what I believe is that Bob Dylan and James Brown had a baby. Yes! And they abandoned this child, as you can imagine at the time…interracial, same sex relationships being what they were…they abandoned this baby by the side of the road between the exit interchanges 8A and 9 on the Jersey Turnpike…that child was Bruce Springsteen.”

google sidewiki–are they out of their minds?

the oldster in me sits here pondering google sidewiki–thinking, why, it’s a tool that allows anyone to scrawl graffiti across any web page. how can that not be “evil”?

then someone much younger than me says “it’s about time.” and I try to adjust my mindset.

every single web page is already an opportunity for conversation & commentary–thru digg, delicious, email, etc. google sidewiki just makes the chatter easier to spot.

so, sidewiki is the web as it was meant to be? … or is it an ominous “shadow of things to come”?

and what makes it a “wiki”? you can’t rewrite others’ comments.

Read this at SmartBrief on Social Media:Never too early: Making the most of Google Sidewiki.

excuses, excuses for not going social

“nonprofits and others need to get clued in to social media” says Clickz blogger Sean Carton:

… audiences are actively engaged with the Web, civic engagement is at an all-time high online (especially, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, “the wealthy and well-educated”), and nearly half of U.S. adults are using a social networking service. As far as the “digital divide” goes, 79 percent of U.S. adults are now Internet users — a 67 percent increase from 2005 — and 59 percent of Americans have accessed the Web from a wireless device. Clearly, we’re past the point of “oh, our folks don’t use the Internet or social networking!”

Mattress industry, r u on Twitter?

If you are in the sleep products industry  –  mattresses, pillows, mattress protection — as a manufacturer, industry supplier or retailer and you’re on Twitter, I’d like to follow you.

Please follow me @barbaratnelles so I can follow you back. Or hashtag #sleepproducts in a post or 2 so I can find you.

Thanks!

Women rule at social media!

Sorry guys, but my favorite social media experts are girls! Like Amber Naslund and Beth Harte. And I love digital marketer Lisa Barone’s in-your-face blog at Outspoken Media. She’s part of an all-girl digital agency in Troy, New York. More power to ya!

Talkable tweets from Word of Mouth Marketing Association [WOMMA] 2009 summit

View more presentations from Word of Mouth Marketing Association.

‘Dizzy & me’

Cheraw, S.C.

A stop in Dizzy Gillespie’s hometown for a photo op. Visit Cheraw’s website.

Facebook: Segmenting your friends into lists

Alison Driscoll at Mashable tells you how to use facebook privacy settings and avoid disaster

Facebook Friend Lists can be utilized for a variety of purposes, but the biggest draw for the average user is that they can label their friends for easy adjustment of Profile Privacy Settings. Creating Friend Lists may sound harsh or judgmental, but this categorization happens every day in real life; Facebook just allows you to put it to good use.

The Prince and the mattress

Prince Charles shows how to not try out a mattress. Photo No. 12 here

I slept on orange juice cans

and I’m looking forward to reading Gail Collins’ new book When Everything Changed. A NYT reviewer called it a “smart, thorough, often droll and extremely readable” history of American women’s social and political history since that groundbreaking year: 1960. And I wish it were required reading for every woman under 40.

The review is here.

Colorblends tulips

The Gudoshnik collection from my favorite tulip company, Colorblends.

beautiful, scary

An absolutely gorgeous look at our earth:“Home” by Yann Arthus Bertrand

Those fun Facebook quizzes–the ACLU wants u to take theirs

The ACLU facebook quiz. When you’re done, you may want to contact mark zuckerberg and demand privacy rights on facebook.

Thomas Berry R.I.P.

Geologian at–hopefully–the birth of the ecozoic age.

NY Times obituary here

 From here on, the primary judgment of all human institutions, professions, programs and activities will be determined by the extent to which they inhibit, ignore or foster a mutually enhancing human-Earth relationship.

Excerpt from The Great Work:

We live in a political world, a nation, a business world, an economic order, a cultural tradition, in Disneyworld. We live in cities, in a world of concrete and steel, of wheels and wires, a world of business, of work. We no longer see the stars at night or the planets or the moon. Even in the day we do not experience the sun in any immediate or meaningful manner. Summer and winter are the same inside the mall. Ours is a world of highways, parking lots, shopping centers. We read books written with a strangely contrived alphabet. We no longer read the book of the universe.

More at CommonDreams.org 

‘The case for working with your hands’

Excellent piece in NYTimes, “The Case for Working With Your Hands by Matthew B. Crawford. Don’t knock it.

In the boardrooms of Wall Street and the corridors of Pennsylvania Avenue, I don’t think you’ll see a yellow sign that says “Think Safety!” as you do on job sites and in many repair shops, no doubt because those who sit on the swivel chairs tend to live remote from the consequences of the decisions they make. Why not encourage gifted students to learn a trade, if only in the summers, so that their fingers will be crushed once or twice before they go on to run the country?

Earth Day email from the Piedmont Environmental Alliance

 

HAPPY EARTH DAY from Piedmont Environmental Alliance

This email was sent by Piedmont Environmental Alliance
1959 N Peace Haven Rd., #257
Winston-Salem, NC 27106
United States

You’ve probably already received hundreds of tips on what you SHOULD do for Earth Day – and maybe they’re now a big mish-mash in your brain. Here are ten things you SHOULDN’T do. 

  
1) Don’t drive like a teenager, speeding up and slowing down and weaving in and out of traffic. Such aggressive driving can lower fuel efficiency by 33%. Accelerate gently and stay with the traffic to save gas and money.

2) Don’t use cleansers and personal care products that contain triclosan or other antibacterial agents. Public health officials worry that antibacterials (in cleansers, window cleaners, and soaps are causing us to become resistant to antibiotics. Use simple soap (like Dr. Bronner’s castile soap) and hot water for cleaning, and body soaps and lotions that do not say “antibacterial” or “fights germs” on the label.
 

3) Don’t go shopping without a list! According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, people waste about 30% of their household food budgets buying groceries that eventually expire and have to be thrown out. Know what you want to buy before you hit the store aisles – you’ll buy less, buy more of what you’re likely to use, and reduce the impact your shopping has on the planet. Then put your list on your refrigerator so you don’t forget what’s inside.
 

4) Don’t leave the lights on when you leave the room. You could save as much as $100 a year in electricity costs by turning off a 100-watt lightbulb when you’re not using the light.

5) Don’t leave the computer on if you’re going to be gone longer than two hours. Don’t leave the monitor on if you’re going to be gone longer than 20 minutes. If you plug your electronics into an energy-saving power strip, you can reduce the energy they use by as much as 40%.
 

6) Don’t leave the water running when you brush your teeth. Turning off the tap when you brush your teeth can save up to 8 gallons of water a day, 240 gallons a month, saving hundreds of dollars on your water bill each year.
 

7) Don’t buy “snack packs” that come wrapped in cardboard and plastic. Small individual packages use more energy and resources to manufacture and transfer, and are often twice as expensive as the same product sold in a larger bag or box.

Don’t use so much shampoo, soap, lotion, make-up, gel and perfume. More than 25% of all women and one of every hundred men use at least fifteen products daily, according to a survey of 2300 men and women, exposing people to hundreds of chemicals during the course of a day. Can you reduce the number of products you use by at least three?

9) Don’t buy anything new. Remember the 3 R’s of eco-friendly living? They begin with “reduce” (the other two are “re-use” and “recycle”). If you need to shop, start with EBay.com, Freecycle.org, the neighbor’s yard sale, or the community vintage or thrift store.

10) Don’t sit at your computer all day. Get outdoors for at least an hour to remember why Mother Nature is worth protecting. Besides, if you’ve accomplished all the other don’ts on this list, you deserve to take a break!

Source:  http://www.biggreenpurse.com

 

 

VOTE EARTH: switch off lights at 8:30 tonight for one hour in observation of EARTH HOUR

Earth Hour 2009

Gallows humor: ‘The Job’ at YouTube