« September 2007 | Main | November 2007 »
October 26, 2007
Early Adopters Aid Africa: iPhone Owners & Product Red
Every once in a while, an opportunity comes along that, although it may not be the most straightforward of choices, can help others with absolutely no increased cost to you. One such opportunity arose for our household earlier this summer when my husband Shane became an early adopter of the new Apple iPhone. I asked him to do a write-up here to share what he learned. So here it is:
Do you own an iPhone? Did you buy your iPhone before August 22nd? Do you know somebody who can answer yes to both? If so, that person qualifies for Apple's $100 credit for early adopters.
Hey, this isn't a gadget blog! Why is this guy talking about iPhones here?
Simple: There is a way to use your store credit to help Africa. I did.
There aren't that many interesting things you can buy from Apple for $100. Sure, you could put it towards a new iPod or something, but you did just get an iPhone... So one of the most useful purchases you can make with $100 is buying stuff through the iTunes Store - Music, Movies, Games, etc. It turns out that you can use your $100 store credit to buy iTunes Gift Cards (but not iTunes Gift Certificates).
iTunes Gift Cards come in a variety of themes, but one of them actually donates 10% of the profit to the (PRODUCT) RED campaign, which raises money for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, primarily in Africa.
So, you can turn your $100 in to a bunch of songs and videos. However, if you make a wise choice of cards to buy, you can have an additional $10 go towards a good cause. It doesn't cost you anything additional to choose this card over the other themes, and you get four $25 (PRODUCT) RED gift cards, for yourself or to give as gifts for the upcoming holidays!
It's straightforward to do this, and fast. First, you go to the Apple site and claim your credit. They'll send your phone a free SMS message with a code that you then enter to get an Apple Store Credit number and PIN. This can then be used immediately in the online store to order four $25 (PRODUCT) RED cards. They only come in $25 denominations. The shipping was free for me, so may be free for you. I had to enter my credit card information as well as the Apple Store Credit information, but the $100 was fully deducted from the store credit and no charge was placed against my credit card processing.
So if you bought an iPhone early on and are eligible for this credit, please consider using it this way and telling your friends and acquaintances about it, as well!
Posted by shane at 4:22 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 25, 2007
Don't Forget The Forest
According to Presidential Proclamation, the week beginning on the third Sunday of October of each year is designated as National Forest Products Week.
So today I am going to try to come up with the A-Z of forest products (products that can come from forests as opposed to traditional farming)... some are a bit of a stretch, but this is nowhere near a complete list, especially when you start looking at the products that can be made from the products you get from forests... Now here we go!
- A:Adhesives
- B:Boards, Books, Baseball bats, Berries, Boats, Baskets
- C:Cellulose, Cardboard, Cutting Boards, Cider, Cork, Chopsticks
- D:Dyes
- E:Energy, Extracts, Egg Cartons
- F:Firewood, Furniture, Flooring, Fruit, Fragrances
- G:Grocery Bags, Glue, Gum, Gin (Juniper berries)
- H:Hockey Sticks, Hides, Handles
- I:Insulation, Inks
- J:Jewelry Boxes
- K:Kitchen Cabinets
- L: Lumber, Log Cabins, Latex
- M: Mulch, Maple Syrup, Mushrooms, Medicine, Meat
- N:Newspapers, Nuts
- O:Oxygen, Oils
- P: Paper, Plywood, Pencils, Paneling, Planks
- Q:Quinine (Tonic, to go with your gin)
- R:Resin, Rosin (for your stringed instrument), Rayon, Rubber
- S:Stringed Instruments, Stamps, Salad bowls, Seeds
- T:Truffles, Turpentine, Toilet paper, Totem poles, Toothpicks
- U:Umbrella handles
- V:Vitamins, Veneer
- W:Wood, Walnuts, Wild game
- X:Xmas Trees
- Y:Yo-yos
- Z:ZÅri (è‰å±¥, traditional Japanese sandals)
Posted by sorsha at 1:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
October 12, 2007
A Nobel Cause: Gore Wins Peace Prize
It's a beautiful day for Al Gore and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Today they won a Nobel Peace Prize for their work to educate the world about the man-made factors behind global warming and laying groundwork for combating it. By winning the prize, Gore and the IPCC join the ranks of people and organizations like The Red Cross, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., UNICEF, Mother Teresa, and Nelson Mandela, amongst others.
Mr. Gore "is probably the single individual who has done most to create greater worldwide understanding of the measures that need to be adopted," the Nobel citation said, referring to the issue of climate change. The United Nations committee, a network of 2,000 scientists that was organized in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Program, has produced two decades of scientific reports that have "created an ever-broader informed consensus about the connection between human activities and global warming," the citation said.
More At: NYT.com: Gore and U.N. Panel Win Peace Prize for Climate Work
I'm ecstatic to see Gore's hard work recognized yet again on the world stage - the Academy Award for his documentary An Inconvenient Truth was not nearly enough. This is a man who was a very good vice president, and then after a political mess that could have made him completely lose faith in public service, Gore has gone back to his roots - the issues he'd been passionate about, the issues that had driven him in his career prior the presidential campaigns he was a part of.
Today a lot of people are wondering if this will trigger Gore to run for president this upcoming term. As much as I like him, I hope it doesn't. Right now he can focus on this key issue - climate change - which is in fact a plethora of problems needing solutions, from the energy crisis and our oil addiction to drought and famine brought about by a warming world.
A leader who can work within and beyond our borders to educate people about climate change and help find solutions to the many problems brought about by it is needed, and I really think Al Gore is, and can continue to be effective in this role, but not if he runs for president and inherits responsibility for managing our presence in Iraq. The many other issues that bombard the oval office on a daily basis would only detract from Gore's ability to be our steward in the climate crisis which is bigger than just the United States.
Posted by sorsha at 9:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
October 10, 2007
He Sleeps With The Fishes: Another Juvenile Great White Shark On Exhibit In Monterey
I believe implicitly that every young man in the world is fascinated with either sharks or dinosaurs.
- Peter Benchley
The Monterey Bay Aquarium has successfully put a young great white shark on exhibit for the third time in history. Earlier in the fall, the young male shark was put into the 1.2 million gallon Outer Bay exhibit, where the public can watch him at their leisure. And he can watch them.
I enjoy going to watch the behavior of the white sharks the aquarium has displayed almost as much as I like watching the people who are there to see the shark. Most of the time, parents seem to be telling their kids that one of the Giant Bluefin Tuna is the great white shark. Or one of the scalloped hammerheads. Another favorite is thinking the dolphinfish (mahi-mahi) is the great white.
Luckily, most kids can tell a great white from a mile away, just like they can ID a brontosaurus. Still, this is the only chance most people will ever have at encountering a live great white shark.
The other fish species in the tank clearly know what the apex predator is. They give him a very wide berth. Executing sharp turns to avoid him within the giant tank. Anyone who has seen the tank behavior enough without the shark can tell there's a certain layer of tension amongst the other fish and turtles when they have a white on exhibit.
He arrived on August 28, and will remain in the million-gallon exhibit as long as he's in good health and hasn't grown too large for us to return safely to the wild.
Like our first shark in 2004, he was caught accidentally in commercial fishing gear. Like our second shark in 2006, he's a young male: just 4-feet, 9-inches long and weighing 67 ½ pounds. As with both of the other young white sharks, he was kept in an ocean holding pen off Malibu in Southern California until we observed him feeding and navigating well in the confines of the pen.
Our first shark was with us for 6 ½ months; our second, for 4 ½ months. Both were successfully returned to the wild, and the tracking tags they carried documented their journeys back in the ocean. We've tagged 10 other young sharks in the wild in Southern California waters as part of our white shark field project, and support research to track the migrations of adult white sharks tagged off the Farallon Islands and Point Año Nuevo on California's central coast.
More At: Monterey Bay Aquarium White Shark Exhibit
The aquarium has been able to do a lot of behavioral research on young whites, of which very little is known, and has successfully returned the previous juvenile great whites to the wild and tracked them.
Posted by sorsha at 9:14 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Planet-Friendly Moving: It's The Little Green Things That Count
It's The Little Green Things That Count
Fox Mulder would understand this, and so should you.
These past few weeks have been hectic, but very productive. Still, despite deadlines and getting a really nasty cold and did I mention we moved all our worldly belongings about 3000 miles and then entertained family for a few days while we unpacked, we managed not to lose track of our green living principles, we just adjusted them to fit our needs.
It's so easy to let good habits slide when you're under pressure and outside your normal routine. Especially when you're moving house.
Stuff you'd normally recycle, you chuck. Stuff you'd normally keep in the pantry, you chuck. Stuff that would normally hang out in the back of a closet, you... get the picture.
I thought today I would share a couple of little random tidbits that helped keep our cross-country move's planetary impact minimal...
Packing
Packing is mostly about boxes, packing materials, and what you keep versus chuck.
First, the boxes. We had saved up a lot of boxes, snagged them from work and friends. We still had to get more and we ended up buying a few moving kits from Costco - not so many that we had extras.
Packing fragiles can be tricky. First, we used up all our stuffable clothing. Mugs got wrapped in t-shirts. Plates in towels. Why buy extra packing materials when you're likely going to wash your clothing on the other end anyway if its not neatly folded and has gotten dusty? For large, flat items like picture frames and flat screen TVs, I wrapped them in some non-scratching bubblewrap or their cover, and then I wrapped them inside throw rugs and taped that up like a Christmas present. Then I put them inside the box that our boxes came in which was a long shallow rectangle of flatted boxes. We also were given some fantastic bubblewrap which we reused with great success, no peanuts were used. For other fragile stuff, we used old newspapers and unbleached recycled paper towels.
Instead of throwing out stuff we didn't want to take, we craigslisted it, gave things away to friends, and donated things to charity. Canned goods we didn't want to bring. Garden plants. Clothing from our closet we never wear. Any viable container that was at least half full (cleaners, toiletries) went with us - caps taped closed and troublesome ones put in ziplock backs or wrapped in plastic bags. Wine boxes, easily gotten at liquor stores and such, make great boxes for glassware and jars, not to mention those half-full bottles and tubes mentioned above. Sometimes I just filled a whole wine box with stuff and then stuffed the box itself in a trash bag or two.
We read the owner's manual for the truck to determine the most fuel efficient way to pack the truck. Also, to avoid a lot of weight in the truck, we USPS media mailed ourselves most of our books, saving a lot of truck weight and the USPS gets better gas mileage than we would.
Moving
Because we were moving a very long distance and we are cheap and wanted control over how it was done, we decided to use a Do-It-Yourself moving truck. Penske came in with a substantially more reasonable price than U-Haul and Budget, and then on top of that we added a AAA discount AND a trick of the trade: you'll have much cheaper rental fees if you return the truck to a metropolitan area. Since we were moving stuff from a small California town to an even less urban area in the mountains of New Hampshire, we found that it saved us many hundreds of dollars to pick up the truck about 20 minutes away, and drop it off in the nearest major metropolitan area instead of the tiny drop-off location nearest to our destination which was still an hour away- at little additional diesel expense. The best way to figure this out is to play with the pickup and drop-off locations on the company's reservation website until you get the quote you like. We got the size truck we needed, made sure the tires were good, and turned on the economy gas mileage option of the engine (not on by default).
We brought a lot of our own snacks and drinks. Surprisingly, only a handful of states on Interstate 80 have rest stops with recycling facilities - California and Utah, then not until you hit around Iowa. We bagged our recycling and kept it around until we hit one of these nice rest stops and could dispose of things appropriately. Even though we were traveling, we still took leftovers from our dinner, like pizza, and ate it for breakfast or lunch on the road.
We took the most direct path, and stayed within the speed limit and tried to get the best mileage per gallon we could. The only thing we kicked ourselves for not asking was if the truck could take biodiesel, or we would have filled up using that. We did notice that while consumer gas stations have rules about not topping off, and regularly get cleaned up, the truck pumps are ridiculously fowl. Diesel is often puddled on the ground along with leaking oil from the trucks. I got very nervous one day when we were finishing filling up and the guy next to us hops out of his truck with a lit cigarette dangling from his lips as he pumped his fuel. Not cool. There needs to be more attention paid to this area of trucking and environmental waste management.
Unpacking
Unpacking required a bit of organization but it was very satisfying. Basically, we sorted out the used newspaper, slightly used paper towels, packing bubble wrap, and boxes. The boxes we carefully flatted to craigslist to someone who needs them for moving. The bubble wrap was packed back into suitcases to go back to California to give back to the person who let us borrow it. The slightly used paper towels were used to dust the furniture off as it came out of the truck, and any leftover is in the laundry room for the next time dusting or cleanup is needed. The newspaper we kept and are using in the woodstove. The ziplocks, plastic bags and garbage bags we used for packing were then resorted and used for non-food related purposes.
Because of all this forethought, we have very little actual waste from our moving expedition. Likely less than one trashcan full.
Entertaining
There's nothing like a nice glass of red wine at the end of a long day. Sometime soon I need to talk about corks versus screen tops, but there's also another kind of cork - the plastic cork. It looks kindof like a hard sponge, but low and behold- it's recyclable! We cracked open a bottle of Kono Barú 2005 South Eastern Australia Shiraz when Shane noticed that not only was the label upside-down to indicate it comes from the Southern Hemisphere, but the cute yellow cork was #4 plastic and marked for recycling. Did I mention it was a very nice bottle of wine?
Posted by sorsha at 7:49 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
