Thu, 27 Sep 2007 06:06:39 GMT

The challenges of going green

This is the week of critical meetings to find answers on what to do about global warming. In New York, the United Nations will be looking at tighter emission mandates and the Bush administration will be looking at voluntary pledges, although one has to wonder whether non-binding goals are that effective.

But as Jeffrey Ball says in The Wall Street Journal, the fundamental issue is coming up with a scheme that will provide incentives for the developing world to cut emissions. It's all very well for the developed nations to talk about emissions reductions but in places like China, India and other parts of Asia, it's a different story altogether.

Another issue is whether there can be incentives for companies to go green.

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, for example, which takes in Fox News, the New York Post and soon The Wall Street Journal, has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2010. "Their footprint is 641,150 tons of carbon. That's the equivalent of taking 130,000 cars off the road," Greenpeace research director Kert Davies told ABC News.

Other companies getting in on this include Virgin, Dupont, BP and NBC Universal.

Environmentalists say that even if the companies are doing it for less than altruistic reasons, like public relations and marketing, it still has a positive impact.

But does it? All these schemes have one big weakness: there is no accurate way to measure either the emissions or the carbon that is ostensibly being saved elsewhere. Tree-planting is one solution, but how many forests can you grow. Also, there is no single standard out there to appraise the quality of the claims for carbon neutrality and the quality of the marketed offsets. Businesses, for example, can calculate their direct operational emissions from electricity, gas and transport use. However, many fail to do an audit calculating emissions from other sources such as paper, waste generated and outsourced activities.

And they seem to ignore the carbon emissions coming from the outsourced operations, including the call centers in places like Bangalore.

All this means is that there are no simple solutions to one of the big issues confronting the world today. Posted by: leon      Read more     Source

Wed, 19 Sep 2007 04:34:31 GMT

The dangers of one-to-one emails

With a fascinating email trail at the heart of an industrial espionage case involving McLaren and Ferrari and with Morgan Stanley's email woes last year, it's time to ask whether companies need to reassess how they treat emails.

According to Rob Hillard, information technology global solutions leader for consultants BearingPoint, businesses should abandon person-to-person email for their own legal protection. When we interviewed Mr Hillard last week, he said companies needed to replace person-to-person emails with what he described as "collaborative communications" where many people in the organization were in on the loop. This would be the best legal protection.

"A person-to-person piece of communication is not visible to anybody else. It is a legal document. You would never consider writing a letter between two organizations without having an appropriately authorized person reviewing it but you don't hesitate to have two junior members of two companies write an informal email to each other that would expose both organization," Hillard said.

We put the interview on our weekly business podcast The Take Two Show and you can listen to it here.

The interview is slotted into the middle of the program which looks at what's happened in business over the last week. Posted by: leon      Read more     Source

Thu, 13 Sep 2007 03:00:50 GMT

Fierce People.

Nick Schager at Slant on Fierce People: "Director Griffin Dunne's ability to elicit fine performances from [Diane] Lane and [Donald] Sutherland, who share a mature, authentic chemistry, initially overshadows the easy-target critique supplied by Dirk Wittenborn's script (from his own novel). Yet after many soft jabs at its spoiled affluent cretins, Fierce People takes a thoroughly ill-advised wrong turn into male-rape territory."

"[W]hereas most of the injustices suffered by [The Nanny Diaries'] nanny are of the skin-deep variety, the hopelessly reductive Fierce People ups the ante," writes Scott Foundas in the Voice. "It says, in effect, tangle with these crazy rich, white folks and they will - quite literally - fuck you up the ass."

Updated through 9/10. Posted by: dwhudson      Read more     Source

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 03:05:00 GMT

pencils

I was sitting here, chewing my pencil, conscious that I'd not added anything to this list for a while, wondering what I should add. Then it struck me - pencils. They're good. They're ordinary. They're probably even interesting, I remember being interested by the pencil museum in Keswick. And by Henry Petroski's book, which I've got somewhere. And I also remember reading about the discontinuation of the Blackwing, apparently the best pencil ever, only now available on ebay. Maybe I could order one from there and write about how good it felt to write with it. But when I googled 'best pencil in the world' looking for Blackwing info I discovered that there's a rival claimant for the ultimate pencil title - the Dixon Ticonderoga #2.

So now, here's a real mission. Get them both and have a pencil off. I'm going to enjoy this. Plus I'm delighted by all the brilliant pencil resources out there. Doug Martin has some brilliant stuff here (including the blackwing picture above). And the wikipedia pencil section is fascinating. Posted by: Russell      Read more     Source

Sat, 01 Sep 2007 12:58:47 GMT

The Nines.

The Nines is "an intriguing, episodic film that starts out genuinely creepy and funny and ends up like an overblown Twilight Zone episode," writes Andrew O'Hehir at Salon. "Hell, at least it's a good Twilight Zone episode. [John] August's directing debut - he's a veteran screenwriter who's penned several films for Tim Burton, including Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Corpse Bride - occasioned a certain amount of yammer at Sundance last winter, but I honestly can't see much here to discuss. By all means see the film; it's an ingenious, interlocking construction worthy of Agatha Christie, with tour-de-force performances from Hope Davis, Ryan Reynolds and Melissa McCarthy and a clever backstage-Hollywood premise (several movie-biz personalities play themselves). But David Lynch this ain't; you'll go to bed with all your questions answered, and answered with a kind of moon-faced, altar-boy earnestness."

Updated through 8/31. Posted by: dwhudson      Read more     Source

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:50:58 GMT

Great Racing at the 2007 Monterey Historics

I may as well be blowing in the wind with this thought but when I attended the Monterey Classics Week last year I found myself wishing the accompanying vintage races at Laguna Seca could be held at a different time of year. Yes, the Monterey Historics are a natural tie-in to Pebble Beach but with three days of competition it became a matter of Laguna vs. the Concours. I couldn't afford to miss the latter yet wanted to see all three days of historic racing, for this is one of the best vintage race weekends in America. I settled for just one day, which I didn't enjoy as much as I should have, being somewhat worn from dashing place-to-place to cover the other events.

Well, that was then and this is 2007 and I'm not there at all. Fortunately other bloggers with fatter wallets or backed by employers paying expenses, were on the spot, providing extensive coverage of all the other big events and, I'm happy to report, the races at Laguna Seca. Check out this report from Jalopnik, which also has a number of fascinating photos from the pits and on the track. If you've ever wondered whether vintage racing is worth the trip, take a look at this photo from the gallery, showing a pair of Ford GT's leading two Porsches down the corkscrew. The action's exciting and the sound is real, folks.

[photo: jalopnik.com] Posted by: Philip Powell      Read more     Source

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 09:09:14 GMT

Want to Snag a Bite Off Another's Plate?

There is always that one thing on someone's plate that you are dying to try: the potatoes, that shrimp, that chocolate mousse- even a few fries! Typically you either have to wait to the other personn looks away and move super fast and hope you don't get caught OR you have to ask them and then juggle forks, plates etc - or risk them saying no.



Now you can sneak that taste easily without reaching across the table or passing plates around in a group. Check out the Sneaky Fork. This telescopic wonder does lots of things courtesy of its two foot maximum extension,
You can remove icky things like bugs, use as a backscratcher and it's a great alternative to a laser pointer and I suppose for the ladies (of which I am one) it might make a great safety device if accosted by the wrong sort of person. Mostly I see it as a great way to sneak a bit of dessert or that extra shrimp off their plate!



Sneaky Fork retails for about seven dollars and is available at the end of August. ORDER NOW- they sell out fast.

And in case a spoon is needed, there is the Sneaky Spoon.


It's the same price as the fork and accomplishes similar tasks-but is much better for stealing ice cream and larger bites of certain things. Also safer to use when poking someone too.

Check out both products at xtremegeek.com Posted by: Stevie Wilson      Read more     Source

Sun, 26 Aug 2007 00:42:36 GMT

Helianthus annuus hybrid

This is the backlit leaf of a giant sunflower growing in the Food Garden here at UBC Botanical Garden. Despite the general cloudiness of this past summer, a few of these plants have easily exceeded 3.5m (~12ft) in height.

What is immediately obvious is the network of veins in the leaf. While the veins are essential for nutrient and water transportation, in many leaves they also help to provide a structural skeleton. Each vein consists of xylem (water-conducting) tissue and phloem (sap-conducting) tissue surrounded by a protective wrapping of structural tissues, including collenchyma. In the spaces between the veins (and bounded by the upper and lower epidermi of the leaves) is the tissue called parenchyma. In leaves, parenchyma cells are packed with chloroplasts, the organelles that are responsible for photosynthesis. It should be noted that other parenchyma cells may have different functions elsewhere in the plant, such as storage or secretion. This is why the chloroplast-laden parenchyma of leaves is sometimes referred to as chlorenchyma, so as to better reflect the specific purpose of this tissue.

I don't mention photosynthesis often enough on BPotD, considering the fact that nearly all complex life on Earth depends on this process in one way or another. The evolution of photosynthesis approximately 3.5 billion years ago and subsequent alteration (with some lag time) of the Earth's atmosphere to the present day concentration of oxygen in the air permitted the evolution of complex life. Posted by: Daniel Mosquin      Read more     Source

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 02:04:16 GMT

A Cheap Way To Whiten Your Teeth

The best way yet to get whiter teeth using cheap house hold items. The preparation and time to do this is less than 5 minutes. Amazing results! Posted by: Gerard      Read more     Source

Wed, 03 Oct 2007 02:20:47 GMT

Trailer Safety Tips From Lucille Ball

Via Youtube - Via Youtube - This is clip from the movie, "The Long Long trailer"  Lucy gets herself into some trouble in the back of a trailer. Posted by: Zinzi      Read more     Source