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Photo: pink_fish13, Creative Commons, Flickr American Public Media has come up with an equally fun and guilt inducing game called Consumer Consequences. It’s part of their "Consumed" series, which explores whether the modern American lifestyle is sustainable in the long run:
Day two was a little more mellow than day one. Many of the attendees had already met and connected, and the Cisco Systems’ Vineyard Conference Center started to feel a little like a college campus.
Photo: ReefRaff, Creative Commons, Flickr< I attended the NetSquared Year 3 Conference on May 27-28, 2008 in San Jose, CA, right after Memorial Day weekend. I had spent the weekend in Berkeley, CA at my friend Sammy’s wedding so I was a little shaky for the meet and greet on Monday night, but Jean Russell…
The N2Y3 2008 Mashup Challenge featured 21 teams competing for funding for initiatives ranging from saving endangered languages to ending genocide. On the first day of the conference each team was permitted two minutes to describe their projects, many of which focused on themes like government transparency and corporate accountability, and all of which rely…
There is nothing light about cellulite. Recent government reports suggest that one in three American children born in 2000 will suffer from obesity, leading some observers to suggest that this might be the first generation where kids are dying at a younger age than their parents. Most of us assume that obesity is the end…
Statistics are often used to demonstrate the severity of a given situation and a call to action, but when particularly massive numbers are cited on a regular basis they become difficult to comprehend.
Last weekend, an uncle asked me "How many hours a day do you go online?" I looked up from my iPhone and repeated the question out loud several times, stressing the different words to understand what he meant, like Jude Law as Brad Stand in "I Heart Huckabees" pondering "How Am I Not Myself?" Go…
Photo:refractionless, Creative Commons, Flickr We have been raised in the culture of “more money equals more happy.” But this old axiom doesn’t seem true anymore, if it ever was.
Saving Energy Growing Jobs: How Environmental Protection Promotes Economic Growth, Profitability, Innovation, and Competition (2007, Bay Tree Publishing) By David B. Goldstein
I have a list of about 100 movies I’ve never gotten around to seeing so I know all about putting things off. But even I managed to make time for this 20 minute fast-paced video about stuff. It sounds like a weird premise but that’s literally what it’s about. Our stuff. Where it comes from.…
As the Hollywood writers themselves predicted, the strike has been going on for months and months. The New York Times has an entire section devoted to the action initiated by the Writers Guild of America. The big boys are back on air and we are ecstatic to see Colbert and Letterman kicking it again. What…
Bideawee is a no-kill animal shelter that has a special program designed to help individuals save animals. For $24/month members can help give a shelter animal a second chance. With funds from this program, Bideawee rescues animals who are scheduled to be euthanized at kill shelters and cares for them at their own shelters (three…
According to GreenDimes, a company that prevents paper junk mail and unwanted catalogs, over 100 million trees and 28 billion gallons of water are wasted annually on US junk mail alone. What GreenDimes aims to do is cut 90% of this unnecessary mail and plant 5 trees per member. For those of us that look…
Socially conscious gifts for everyone on your list:
The Times' Style section yesterday discussed the newest addition to the Christmas holidays: the green Grinch. This is the environmentally obsessed family member who is "bent on eradicating the wasteful materialism of the holidays." Focusing on the usual Grinch-like grievances of excessive consumption, this person puts an environmental spin on the most negative aspects of the Christmas…
As we push further into the 21st century, the corporate world continues to evolve in front of us. Themes such as sustainability and corporate social responsibility (CSR) gain traction as we witness first-hand how the business world is (or is not) embracing new ways of thinking. In her book, The High Purpose Company, Christine Arena defines this…
What a treat to hear Kenro Izu talk with Owen Flanagan at the Rubin Museum of Art in conjunction with the opening of his exhibition of photographs, "Bhutan: The Sacred Within." Kenro Izu's been exploring and photographing sacred sites both natural and manmade for decades. To look at his landscapes of sacred places around the…
What do M&M’s, Snickers and Twix have in common besides chocolate? Deadly animal tests!
“I love playing a high status idiot.” Raucous laughter. It’s hard to tell if Stephen Colbert is being funny when a packed crowd of white people in flip-flops dies laughing at everything he says. Such was the scene at the 92nd Street Y last night where I heard him speak with New York Times columnist…
Chris Jordan's concerned that we can't feel statistics. Our brains aren't hardwired to deal with high numbers. If we're going to make radical changes, we have to fall in love or feel angry enough to do something. His art translates raw data and numbers to the visual language of feeling to help people shift from…
Most people buy into the idea that socially responsible companies must necessarily be less successful than companies with an emphasis on the bottom line. The point of "The Blue Way: How to Profit by Investing in a Better World" is to dispel what the authors consider to be a myth and show how socially responsible…
If universal health care were a reality in the United States, would the regulation of harmful products be tighter since the government would have to deal with the long-term health (read: economic) consequences?
Ethical investing, which encompasses environmentally friendly investing, is becoming increasingly popular. And, while the stock market is somewhat bullish, people are feeling more friendly towards investments that haven’t quite “made it” yet. But according to “The Clean Tech Revolution,” so-called environmentally friendly investments may be the wave of the future.
I just finished listening to none other than blog superstar, Arianna Huffington, give her keynote at the first annual WebbyConnect conference in beautiful Laguna Beach, CA. Prior to this appearance, I never really knew anything about her. I haven't spent much time at her site, www.huffingtonpost.com. Sure, I was familiar with her and of course…
This is a follow up to my piece on the feature film Evan Almighty, starring Steve Carrell. In investment terms, this movie was a complete loss, a bomb, a stinker. Universal ponied up $175 million for the feature, not to mention an additional $50 million or so in marketing. To date, this movie has grossed…