Daily Archives: November 22, 2008

Image from garryknight

It’s amazing what an Olympic victory can do for a country’s cycling fervor. Yes, as noted by The Times‘ transport correspondent, Ben Webster, the British are in the midst of a cycling revival of sorts — fueled as much by the recent hikes in energy prices as by their team’s epic haul at the Beijing Olympics. The squad, which boasted two Olympic track cycling champions and a BMX wor

(photo credit: Universal Studios Hollywood) Debut of Universal Studios Hollywood’s Solar Golf Cart

Golf carts have long been associated with either business men with really bad taste in clothing (khaki pants and a gator/polo shirts), or important, silicone injected celebrity figures in Hollywood, such as Cher, Joan Rivers, Barnie the purple dinosaur, and Shrek the ogre.

Well, Joan and Cher were no where to be found as Universal Studios Hollywood celebrated their new addition to their green initiative in the p

Leviticus 11:40 says “If any animal you may eat has died, anyone who carries its carcass

shall wash his clothes.” Just don’t use Downy fabric softener; according to Wired, (but not online at time of this writing) a main ingredient is Dihydrogenated tallow dimethyl ammonium chloride,

“a derivative of rendered fat from cattle, sheep and horses. Just boil it down and mix with ammonium. After a series of chemical pit stops, it comes out a quaternary ammonium compound, or quat

quats effectively coat your clothing with lipids, (fats) making the fibers soft to the touch.”

The<a href=”http://www.downy.com/en_CA/articles/f

Image: FactoryFarm.org on Flickr
We’ve talked about the pervasive industrial chemical melamine appearing in Chinese food – from its domestic supplies of milk to its exports of wheat gluten found anywhere from pet food to chicken feed. We’ve also covered how new tracking measures are being implemented to improve food safety (see New Tracing System To

Coming soon to the Middle East? “The Ziggurat.” (Image via World Architecture News)

Financial crisis or not, the folks in the Persian Gulf are thinking big, as usual. While construction projects in the rest of the world are grinding to a painful halt, two new ecocity-building projects have recently been unveiled in the Middle East: a conceptual pyramid-city for one million in Dubai and a $10 billion coastal city project for Qatar

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photo thefuturistics @ flickr.

Recently I declared I’d never buy a $40 Kids Konserve lunchbox for a kid no matter how many sustainable bells and whistles it had. The price seemed unsustainable.

But it got me to thinking – and TreeHuggers on the lunch box forum thread seemed to agree – it’s not all that easy to find a lunch box that meets all these criteria – as green as possible, not too heavy, sturdy, long lasting. As I was still thinking $40 was too steep for the Kids Konserve, I set out to put together a kid’s (or a

The still un-named Toronto cyclist who lost his leg last weekend when squeezed between the rear end of a taxi and a signpost (see Taxi Driver Severs Cyclists’ Leg in Violent Hit-and-Run) finally was coherent enough to give his statement to the police. The result:

Sultan Ahmed, 38, of Maple, Ontario has been charged with:

1) Criminal negligence causing bodily harm,
2) Dangerous operation causing bodily harm,
3) Fail to stop at scene of accident bodily harm,
4) Attempt to obstruct justice,
5) Aggravated assault,
6) Assault with weapon.

We still don’t know the full story and the police are saying ‘‘Althou

Afghan security forces watch over a new wind farm in Afghanistan’s Panjshir province. U.S. Army photo by Sgt. Paul David Ondik.

Over the past few years, there’s been a lot of promising talk about bringing renewable energy to developing countries. Afghanistan’s Panjshir Valley, a generally windy region where <a href=”http://www.cenlamedia.com/alb/index.php/site/article/afghan-wind-farms/alb7

image by apple

While the future of General Motors hangs in the balance, the future of public transit is getting more and more appealing. And much much easier.

If you ride mass transit, have an iphone, and live in any of these cities , you are about 245 megabytes away from being rewarded for your carfree lifestyle.

So now you can choose between the following two ways to plan your commute via public transit:

1)

photo: Sumter County Geographic Information System

With the already clear need for an animal shelter in Florida’s Sumter County, the Humane Society/SPCA of Sumter County has outlined plans for Florida’s first environmentally responsible animal shelter. After 26 years of serving the community without an animal shelter, the Humane Society/SPCA of Sumter County has begun its major capital campaign to raise the $1 million needed for construction of the 7,300 square foot structure. Read on to find out what makes this animal shelter so