Man-Powered Ferris Wheel is Dangerously Green

Sometimes, low-tech is the best way to tackle a task, and sometimes it’s not. In this case, it may be really fun to watch, but Jesus, you’d have to pay me a lot of money to ride it: a man-powered ferris wheel. A group of about 5 men keep it going by jumping up on it and using their body weight to make it spin, one after the other.

Sure, it’s zero-emissions, but that thing is going awfully fast. And, safety inspectors here in the U.S. would take one look at that thing and condemn it. Watching the video, I was just waiting for one of those guys to get caught in the bars as the wheel turns. That would be painful.

Link [Environmental Graffiti] via [Really Natural]
Photo credit: Flickr user sourabhj via Environmental Graffiti

Sam’s Club Selling $100K Electric Cars

If you’re in the market for a new, high end, six-figure electric car, where’s the first place you think to shop? If you said Sam’s Club, the warehouse store where you can pick up 5-gallon barrels of pickled eggs and a 30-pack of underwear for $5, you’re – um – correct.

Sam’s Club is currently offering a “Once-in-a-Lifetime Electric Super Car Package” which includes Hybrid Technologies’ new electric sports car with a top speed of 150 mph.  It also goes from zero to sixty in 5 seconds, has a charge range of 200 miles and comes with an invite to a race track in LA (including first-class airfare and accommodations).

Seriously, who buys $100k electric cars from Sam’s Club? Could you even fit a gallon jug of mayo in its trunk?

Link [Gizmodo]

George W. Bush Sewage Plant Proposition Fails

Sadly, there will be no sewage treatment plant in California named after George W. Bush. Backers of the proposition gathered in excitement awaiting the results, only to be crushed to learn that it had been defeated by a 70-30 margin. Especially sad were Bob Katz, who flew in all the way from Florida for what he thought would be a Proposition R victory party, and Peaches Christ, the proposition’s “basket-ball player sized drag queen” spokesperson. Reality is so often stranger than fiction.

From The Snitch:

Not all of the folks gathered near the Abe Lincoln statue voted for the proposition — or even knew about it. Barbara Coleman said Bush didn’t deserve the honor of having anything named after him.

“He done fucked the country up. What I want is for him to pack up his shit and get his ass out of the White House so Barack Obama can move in — tonight!”

Jacinto and McConnell quietly puffed on cigarettes and sipped from clandestine beers in the shadow of city hall. “We gave it the college try,” noted Jacinto, a city planner when he’s not writing ballot propositions. “We got our message out far and wide to get people thinking about George W. Bush’s legacy.”

Check out one of the group’s campaign ads:

“Pansy” from Brian M on Vimeo.

Ah, San Francisco.

Link [The Snitch]

San Francisco Scrambling to Prevent Victory Garden from Becoming One Big Toilet

The victory garden currently growing in San Francisco’s Civic Center Plaza was meant as a celebration of local food, planted over the summer as part of the privately sponsored “Slow Food Nation” festival. The garden, which is home to a variety of herbs and veggies, is prized enough by Mayor Gavin Newsom that he decided to pay thousands of dollars a week for security to keep vagrants and drunks from using it as a toilet. Unfortunately, that’s not working out too well.

From SF Gate:

Once the food fest ended in late August, however, the mayor decided to keep the garden going. His office contracted with Jeff Gutierrez Security, a local outfit, to keep an eye on the pea patch from 4:30 p.m. to 8:30 a.m.

“If they don’t have security, it will become a toilet,” said one city gardener who was planting a fresh bed of marigolds in the plaza the other day.

Newsom initially planned to keep the garden as part of his drive to turn the Civic Center into a model of green sustainability. But Ballard said it soon became apparent that it “was imprudent to sustain security at that level.”

Now, the garden is set to come out in December. And three weeks ago - after trimming back the level of protection - the security price dropped to about $2,200 a week.

Who wants some tomatoes that smell and taste vaguely of human waste? Yum, yum. It’s a shame that they can’t keep this going, because we’d really love to see more examples of victory gardens in cities across the nation. Call me crazy, but it sounds like some public restrooms are in order. Although I suppose that still wouldn’t stop the dude who just drank seven Jack & Cokes from deciding to unload his burden in the basil.

Link [SF Gate]
Photo credit: Ads of the World

WTF, Broccoli? Check Out This Cascadian Farms Package

Someone at Cascadian Farms has a great sense of humor. Bloggers Alicia Carrier and Summer Allen-Gibson of Bread & Honey noticed something funny recently on a bag of broccoli, and took to the web to share it with all of us.  Check it out:

Now that we’re settled in from our respective vacations, and enjoying the fall weather- Summer and I are getting back down to business. I was over at her place this morning photographing some tasty treats that will hopefully show up here later today, and she suddenly remembered this crazy broccoli package in her freezer she wanted to show me. She handed me the box and I studied it carefully, squinting, even allowing my eyes to blur, to try and see what I was missing. She pointed- “Do you see?” See what? I didn’t see anything. Just broccoli. Her finger tapped on a certain part of the box and she urged me to look closer. “There- right there. Do you see it? I’m not going to tell you what it is if you don’t see it.” And then, it suddenly became clear to me. WHAT THE HELL?

I’M IN UR BROCCOLI, FREEKIN U OUT! Can’t you just imagine some stoner opening the fridge to grab some Hot Pockets and noticing something funny on the broccoli bag? “Duuuuude, there’s little people in the broccoli, man!”

Link [Bread and Honey]

In the Wake of Hurricane Ike, Residents Forced to Rebury the Dead

When Hurricane Ike hit the Gulf Coast last month, the storm surge that came with it swept hundreds of caskets out of their graves, sending some floating miles out into the marsh. The 13-foot storm surge ripped through cemeteries in southwest Louisiana and coastal Texas.  Officials estimate that some 200 caskets were unearthed.  And, this isn’t the first time such a thing has happened: Hurricane Rita did the same thing three years ago.

From MSNBC:

Officials in coastal areas have long struggled with interring the dead, as caskets buried in low-lying areas are susceptible to being belched up by floodwaters. Some areas — most notably New Orleans — house the dead in above-ground crypts to keep them from drifting away in storms.

Of the caskets ejected by Rita in September 2005, 335 were found and reburied, he said. Eighteen were never found.

“Our mother came out for Rita, and now she came out for Ike,” said Debra Dyson, a commercial fisher whose house in Cameron was destroyed by Ike.

Dyson said coffins holding her brother-in-law and cousin also were heaved out by Rita. Ike was worse — the storm thrust out caskets containing her mother, brother-in-law, cousin, niece, three uncles and two aunts.

The one containing Dyson’s mother floated to the same spot it came to rest after Rita, 22 miles from the cemetery. Only this time, it didn’t take nine months to find it.

This sucks, but it calls to mind the fact that, if we used green burial practices, there would be no coffins to pop up.  Our bodies would simply return to the earth – though, we must admit that some bones would probably be washed out, which could cause an even more gruesome scene than coffins strewn about.

Still, stories like this make us realize how many coffins and caskets there are buried just beneath the surface of the earth, and what a waste it is.  The materials used to make them, the land used to serve as their final resting place. It’s so unnatural, yet we’re still too squeamish about the dead to allow the natural cycle of life and death to carry itself out unimpeded.  One of these days, though, with the population growing as fast as it is, we’re going to run out of land for the living.

Link [MSNBC] + [Green Burial Council]

New Company Offers Green Spray-Paint Service for Dead Lawns

All those banks trying to sell off foreclosed homes with dead, brown yards have a new, convenient, guaranteed non-eco-friendly option available to them: spray paint.  Chances are, you’ve seen the sickly, unnatural blue-green look of grass that’s been spray-painted in order to appear alive on the side of the highway once or twice.  Now, a company called Greener Grass Co. is offering the same service for foreclosed homes.

From RecordNet, via BoingBoing:

For between $175 and $225 per yard, Terlouw uses a motor-powered 50-gallon insecticide sprayer designed for treating orchard trees. He waves his magic wand and in broad sweeps, a la painting a house, makes tired, if not expired, turf sit up and sparkle like Shirley Temple.

“Looking good from over here,” hollered Chad Lam, a homeowner watching Terlouw spruce up a brown lawn across the street. “I’m glad to see that happen. It gives us all a lift around here.”

Terlouw, who formerly had a window-cleaning business, said he got the idea for the new business from football games.

“They paint logos on football fields,” he said. “Why can’t we do the same for homes?”

Yeah, because surely potential buyers will be totally fooled that the foreclosed home they’re looking at has a bright green, totally alive lawn.  Just ignore that crunchy feeling when you’re walking on it.  Seriously, this really is ‘putting lipstick on a pig’.  And what’s in this stuff? It’s undoubtedly seeping into the soil and going down storm drains.  FAIL.

Link [RecordNet via BoingBoing]
Photo credit: Craig Sanders/The Record

More Farmers Should Use the Lounge n Pick

Farmers, are you tired of your wives and daughters lounging around in the sun, soaking up rays while you’re out plowing the field and picking the harvest? Well, now you can put them to work with guaranteed 50% less complaining.  They won’t have to actually touch dirt at all, and the risk of coming into contact with insects is minimal.  With the Lounge n Pick, you can even employ paraplegics and the elderly.  The convenient removable cover allows your harvesters to sun themselves on nice days, and be shielded from the rain when necessary.  The convenient conveyer belt system delivers your harvest directly into containers at the end of the line.  It can be yours for only $999.99!*

*Fashionable camouflage bench pads extra.

Link [Wacky Archives]

Eat Rats to Solve World Food Crisis

An Indian official says that he has the ultimate answer to solving the world’s food crisis. Vijay Prakash, secretary of the northeastern Indian state of Bihar, wants to put rats on food menus. According to Prakash, regular rat snacks would result in fewer rodents eating grain stocks – plus, you know, rats are packed with protein.  And just look at that photo - doesn’t it make your mouth water?

From Breitbart.com:

Prakash’s plan promotes consumption of rat meat in homes, street stalls, restaurants and even international five-star hotels.

He said he was also holding talks with prestigious hotels outside India to encourage them to put rat meat on their menus, but admitted his scheme had to overcome public prejudice.

“The only issue is how people react to rat meat, but I think it will not be a problem,” he said.

“Some socially deprived people in Bihar have always consumed rat meat. If they can eat rats, why can’t the rest of the people?” he said.

Members of the Mushar community and some other impoverished groups have traditionally eaten rats in India.

Call me crazy, but somehow I just don’t see this catching on in most areas of the world, especially the United States. Something tells me that rat fritters and the rodent filet sandwich would be the least popular items on the McDonald’s menu. We could certainly all benefit from eating a wider variety of foods, but rats are probably not the answer to the food crisis.

But, hey, it’s the Year of the Rat – and as you can see on this National Geographic video, residents of the West African country of Togo have been doing it for ages.

Link [Breitbart] + [YouTube]

Orange County, California’s Sewage to Drinking Water Treatment Plant Finished

Here in America, we have a water problem – and I’m not just talking about shortages. We waste incredible, mind-boggling amounts of it. There are so many things we can do to use water more wisely, and in parched Santa Ana, California, officials are getting creative in a way that has some residents angry and disgusted. They’re recycling toilet water. Like it or not, people might as well get used to ideas like these – it’s wasting so much water that’s really disgusting.

From The New York Times:

When you flush in Santa Ana, the waste makes its way to the sewage-treatment plant nearby in Fountain Valley, then sluices not to the ocean but to a plant that superfilters the liquid until it is cleaner than rainwater. The “new” water is then pumped 13 miles north and discharged into a small lake, where it percolates into the earth. Local utilities pump water from this aquifer and deliver it to the sinks and showers of 2.3 million customers. It is now drinking water. If you like the idea, you call it indirect potable reuse. If the idea revolts you, you call it toilet to tap.

Recycling sewage into potable water was a no-brainer for Orange County; an ever-rising population meant that a new $200M sewage pipeline would have needed to be built, and they over-pumped their groundwater basin to the point of drawing seawater into their water supply. So, the sewage to water plan works out for a lot of reasons. It sounds gross at first, but the process used to clean the water really is incredibly thorough.

If you think about it, though, why are we flushing so much fresh, clean, potable water in the first place? Greywater systems that at least divert used water from the bathroom sink and/or shower could be used to flush toilets instead. It seems absurd to foul perfectly good drinking water in such a way. The way we use water is so messed up and backwards. Hopefully we’ll do a lot of catching up in the coming decades as people realize how precious a resource it really is.

To read about the full treatment process that transforms the sewage into drinkable water, read the full piece in The New York Times.

Link [The New York Times]
Photo credit: Flickr user Oracio Alvarado

Slaughterhouse Worker Injured by Falling Dead Cow; Karma Wins Again

A 30-year-old slaughterhouse worker was doing what he does every day – waiting for big dead cows strung up on hooks to come down the line so he could butcher them. But on Monday, one of those dead cows got the last laugh. In an apparent attempt to posthumously exact revenge from one of the humans that robbed it of its life and desecrated its remains, the cow fell off the hook and right on top of the butcher.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Milwaukee Fire Department spokeswoman Tiffany Wynn said the cow fell off the hook and onto the man, hitting him on the shoulder and neck at Cargill Inc., 1915 W. Canal St., just before noon. She said it was a whole cow and the victim was about to butcher it. He suffered moderate but not life-threatening injuries and was taken to Wheaton Franciscan Healthcare-St. Francis hospital for treatment.

Police are investigating how the cow fell on top of the man and determining whether an investigator from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration will have to look at the details of the case as an industrial accident.

Revenge of the Undead Cows! There’s this thing called karma.  In all seriousness, this guy’s life must suck. He stands around wielding a big knife, covered in blood and guts all day and then gets taken out by a giant carcass.

Link [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
Photo credit: PETA via Vegan Outreach

Celebrity Chef Nearly Kills People with Salad

UK celebrity chef Antony Worrall Thompson made a misstep that might have had some serious repercussions if the magazine printing his quote hadn’t noticed the mistake. Thompson accidentally recommended a deadly plant for use in organic salads. The chef and TV presenter told the magazine “Healthy & Organic Living” that the weed henbane, also called stinking nightshade (yum!), is a delicious addition to summertime meals.

From Reuters:

Henbane, or Hyoscyamus niger, is toxic and can cause hallucinations, convulsions, vomiting and in extreme cases death.

Worrall Thompson, who was discussing his passion for organic foods, had confused the plant with another of a similar name.

Henbane, a close relative of deadly nightshade, was used by Dr Crippen to kill his wife in 1910, and is thought to have been the main ingredient in the poison Romeo took in Shakespeare’s play “Romeo and Juliet.”

Thompson apparently confused henbane with ‘fat hen’, a weed rich in vitamin C. Um, oops.

Link [Reuters]
Photo credit: Flickr user Catsper

Granite Countertops May be Tainted with Uranium

Would you like some cancer with those sweet granite countertops? Granite has been all the rage for the last decade or so, gaining 5% in popularity with each passing year. Homeowners might be getting more than they bargained for when completing kitchen renovations, however. Rice University physics professor W.J. Llope says that some granite countertops contain high levels of uranium which can endanger human health.

From Chron.com:

“Most stones, in terms of radioactivity, are relatively quiet,” Llope said. “But there are a couple I have found that are insanely hot.”

Using a Rice University spectrometer, Llope has examined 55 stones, representing about 25 varieties of granite purchased from Houston-area dealers. Some, he said, could expose homeowners to 100 millirems of radiation — the annual exposure limit set by the Department of Energy for visitors to nuclear labs — in just a few months.

Llope, who said he plans to publish his findings in a peer-reviewed journal, declined to name the most hazardous varieties of granite he has thus far examined. But he said dangerously radioactive varieties include striated granites from Brazil and Namibia.

As many as 1,600 varieties of granite from 64 countries are sold for household use in the United States. None of them is routinely tested for radioactivity.

Scientists are currently being assembled to develop a protocol for testing granite for radioactivity. While the granite industry has grumbled about the findings, saying that competitors selling non-granite products have made a bigger deal out of this than it is, Llope applauds the industry for taking an important first step to protect consumer safety.

In the meantime, homeowners worried about their countertops can get inexpensive radon testing kits from most hardware stores to test the levels in their homes themselves.

Link [Chron.com]
Photo credit: Sinks for Less

How to Throw Away a Car

Wait, that’s not how you do it?

Link [Bits & Pieces]

Eating Pigeons as Part of a Local Food Diet

Here in America especially, people have pretty narrow ideas of what is acceptable to eat. We’ve cut back our produce variety to a very small percentage of what’s actually out there, and there are only a handful of animals that are considered standard fare. So, it’s not surprising that people might balk at the idea of eating pigeons – those little waste-scavenging creatures commonly known as ‘rats with wings’.

From Wired:

You see, city pigeons are the feral descendants of birds that were domesticated by humans thousands of years ago so that we could eat them and use their guano as fertilizer, we read in Der Spiegel. They’re still doing their part, i.e. eating and breeding, but we humans have stopped doing ours, i.e. eating them.

Numbering in the hundreds of millions, they could be a new source of guilt-free protein for locavores in urban centers. Instead, we’re still trying to kill off our species’ former pet birds, which (as any city-dweller can attest) doesn’t work.

“Killing makes no sense at all,” Daniel Haag-Wackernagel, a biologist at the University of Basel, told Der Spiegel. “The birds have an enormous reproduction capacity and they’ll just come back. There is a linear relationship between the bird population and the amount of food available.”

Our own wasteful practices are what has encouraged these birds to be fruitful and multiply. Our culture has gotten so prosperous, we routinely throw insane amounts of food away. Wired declares that eating pigeons is ‘green tech at its finest’, given that the birds live off our trash – we don’t have to spend money to feed them. The author of this piece attempted to get information about the safety of eating pigeons, but wasn’t successful. Still, he says he’s ‘65% not kidding’.

Would you be open to eating things not commonly considered appropriate as food? Pigeons? Squirrels?

Link [Wired]
Photo credit: Flickr user weaponofchoice

Kids Nearly Starved to Death by Improper Vegan Diet

Three young children in Scottsdale, Arizona nearly died because their misguided parents were feeding them what they supposedly thought was a healthy vegan diet. When Blair Parker called 911 because his youngest daughter seemed to be having a seizure, doctors discovered that all three emaciated children were much smaller than they should be. The 3-year-old weighed only 13 pounds, the 11-year-old was the size of a 5-year-old and the 9-year-old was the size of a 3-year-old.

Both parents were arrested and criminally charged. The mother may see as much as 30 years in prison after a jury found her guilty of 3 counts of intentional child abuse. The parents say that their diet stems from Blair’s college studies in nutrition.

From Azcentral.com:

He described a daily regimen with the children that included prayer, study, chores, exercise and rigid adherence to diet, right down to what liquids they could drink and when.

“My children might have been short and light in weight, but I never considered they were unhealthy,” he told the jury.

Parker claimed that he could not find a doctor of his own religious faith or dietary beliefs that he trusted. Instead, he consulted with a naturopath who lived in Washington state and who could not actually see or examine the children.

Parker still claims that the children suffered from “malabsorption,” an inability to absorb vital nutrients.

The prosecutor said that Parker obsessed about the children’s bowel movements and gave them enemas that further impeded absorbing any nutrients of the food they ate.

“Vegan children who are fed properly grow,” said Deputy County Attorney Frankie Grimsman.

And in fact, when the children were placed in foster homes, they immediately began to gain weight - while still maintaining vegan diets.

This is why it’s so important to be educated about nutrition, period, but especially when you want to be vegan. You can’t just eat salad all day every day and hope for the best, and when children are involved, it’s all the more important. A lot of people don’t have a great understanding of what it means to be vegan, and how to get all of the nutrients you need.

Clearly, these children nearly lost their lives and the parents intentionally kept their condition from the public by homeschooling them and rarely taking them outside the home. 30 years does seem like a bit much, though – this isn’t too different from ignorant people feeding babies sugar water in bottles instead of breast milk or formula, which, crazy as it sounds, does happen. Clearly, we need better nutrition education in this country!

I hope somebody is feeding those kids big, juicy sandwiches right now.

Link [Azcentral.com]
Photo credit: Flickr user moria

Taking a Second Job Going #2: Indian Villagers Getting Paid to Not Crap in Local River

Talk about a cush job- the residents of Musiri, India are being paid not to crap in the local river. If they use one of the special designated areas (also know as toilets), they can make up $.14 a month!

That might not sound like a lot, but in Musiri broadband internet only costs a penny a month and a cup of coffee at the local Starbucks goes for ten for a penny.

CNN has it:

The government-backed program serves two purposes: It encourages people to discard age-old practices of urinating and defecating in the open, leading to diseases. And the waste products go into research to test their effectiveness as fertilizers.

“We’re motivating people to know the value of their urine,” said Marathi Subburaman, who came up with the novel idea. “The urine that is collected goes into fields for paddy crops, and of course the feces becomes good compost in a matter of months.”

Aid groups estimate that more than 330 million people in India do not have access to proper sanitation facilities. And in the case of Musiri, many residents relieve themselves on river banks, leading to infectious diseases such as diarrhea.

And while both governmental and non-governmental agencies have taken on projects to build toilets in rural areas, they also have had to undertake campaigns to encourage people to use them.

On top of the extra cash, villagers get a bit of a free health check- if they visit the WC more than three or four times a day they are told to go visit the doctor.

Check out the photo, that toilet empties directly into the water below. It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “dropping the kids off at the pool”.

Eww….

Link [CNN] via [Adventures in Capitalism]

Thieves Around the U.S. Stealing Manhole Covers

A sign of true desperation: with the U.S. economy sagging, people have started resorting to stealing manhole covers to sell as scrap metal. The price of metal has skyrocketed lately, so thieves around the country have started stealing the 200-lb covers by the hundreds. Funny thing is, for all the effort it likely takes to haul off an iron manhole cover, you can only get $10-$15 each for them.

From USA Today:

“It’s a sign of the times,” says Sgt. Jay Baker of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office in Georgia, where 28 manhole covers disappeared in April and May. “When the economy gets bad, people start stealing iron.”

It’s the first year he has seen such thefts since he started with the department 16 years ago.

Long Beach has lost more than 80 covers this year. People who have damaged their cars driving over manholes have filed claims with the city, Alsop says.

“Our No. 1 concern” is safety, he says. “A small kid can fall into these holes,” which can be 20 feet deep.

Hey, I guess meth heads gotta get their fix somehow! Seriously though, what’s next? They’re stealing copper wire off construction sites, catalytic converters straight from parked cars all over the place, and now manhole covers. Should I be locking down my metal patio set?

Link [USA Today]
Photo credit: Drugfree.org

Bicyclist Injured After Hitting a Bear in Colorado

Normally, we hear stories about bicyclists having run-ins with vehicles while out on the streets. In this case, however, the obstacle that one cyclist unexpectedly ran into had claws and sharp teeth. Tim Egan, 53, was riding in Boulder, Colorado one afternoon and hit a speed of 45 mph when a bear suddenly appeared in front of him.

From Rocky Mountain News:

This bear looked at me with a look of terror on his face and sort of made a noise,” said Egan. “I looked at him with a look of terror and we went, ‘aaaahhhhh.’”

He cracked some ribs, suffered cuts on his head and had road rash. Egan said he and the bike flipped and flew over the bear, hitting the pavement hard.

The bear ran away after the accident when a deer appeared.

Afterwards, he got back on his bike and pedaled to a hospital.

I guess I’d rather hit a bear than a tree – it’s at least softer – though trees don’t chew on your foot after you hit them.

Link [Rocky Mountain News]
Photo credit Daquella Manera

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