If more customers knew that Dasani water was simply municipal tap water – the same exact stuff that comes out of their own faucets at home – would they pay a premium for it? Probably not, as notorious eco-pranksters The Yes Men found out during a recent trip to Boston.

The Yes Men and “Coca-Cola spokespeople” unveiled a new, more truthful name and label for Dassani bottled water at a park and then spoke to people about whether they would buy it.

Check it out:

From The Phoenix:

The mock press conference, part of Boston-based Corporate Accountability International’s (CIA) Think Outside the Bottle campaign, protested Coca-Cola’s refusal to state Dasani’s origin — public water sources — on its labels, as Pepsi and Nestlé have done with their bottled-water brands.

“This is a classic case of deception,” said Mike Bonanno (a/k/a Igor Vamos), in town that day with main cohort Andy Bichlbaum (né Jacques Servin) for the opening of The Yes Men Fix the World at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. “They don’t want people to know that they’re drinking tap water because it’s pure profit. Basically, they’ve figured out such a great scam that they don’t want it to end.”

Check out the rest of their eco-pranks at TheYesMen.org.

Link [The Phoenix]

Hummingbirds are so fun to watch, with their colorful little wings that move so fast they’re a blur – but it can be hard to see them up close. One wacky new product allows you to see hummingbirds like you’ve never seen them before – an inch from your eyeballs.

From The Daily Mail:

A new helmet with a built-in bird feeder will allow wearers to get amazing face to face contact with nature.

The flighty birds hover in front of the wearer’s face for up to 30 seconds as they drink a sugar-water solution from between the eyes of the feeder mask.

The wearable hummingbird feeder is covered in images of red rhododendrons to further attract the birds and protects your eyes and face from being pecked.

Those who want to try out the gadget need to have patience. The mask is first placed over a can of paint for a few days to allow the birds to get used to it.

It’s one of those bizarre products that’s probably wholly unnecessary – but then again, doesn’t use up much more plastic than a regular hummingbird feeder and gets people in closer (MUCH closer!) contact with nature. And, that’s a good thing, right?

Link [The Daily Mail]

As if plastic banana guards, leaf blowers and mechanized egg crackers weren’t enough, the brilliant inventors of the world just keep on creating unbelievably stupid, wasteful products for the masses to enjoy. The Huffington Post is pretty great at sniffing them out – the Top 10 Most Useless Items of Crapola, the 9 Stupidest Products Of All Time (including the ‘Tiddy Bear’) and now, in honor of No Impact Week, the world’s most wasteful consumer products.

Here’s a preview:

Spinning Ice Cream Cone (pictured above)

In the mood for ice cream but too lazy to move your tongue to lick? We’re not kidding – there is actually a product that “solves” this “problem.”

The Noseaid

For 30 dollars, avoid a nosebleed mess by applying this clothespin to your child’s nose. Pinching things with our fingers is apparently out — or just using an actual clothespin and some cloth.

Because there’s simply not enough random, useless plastic crap in the world. We need it to keep on coming as fast as it can. How did humans ever get by without this stuff?

Check out the rest – including demonstration videos – at The Huffington Post.

Link [The Huffington Post]

What if humans could blend into the environment as effortlessly as some animals can? A photography series by Beijing-based artist Liu Bolin called ‘Camouflage’ explores a fascinating way to do this, without the use of camo print: painting human subjects so that they disappear into a background.

Bolin painstakingly paints his subjects’ faces, hair, hands, clothing and shoes to match a chosen setting, taking up to ten hours per shoot to get it just right. In some photos, like the two shown above, it really takes a moment to spot the people in the photos. Often, passersby can’t even tell that they’re there.

Of the series, the artist says, “In my photography, historical statues, costumes and architecture become symbols of that which confines us. I am expressing the desire to break through these structures. I portray subjects that seem to disappear into these structures and become transparent. The subject is released from social constructs and he is free.”

Link [ArtInfo.com] + [Design Boom]

Some research is just so strange, so goofy, that according to Harvard University, it just shouldn’t be repeated. Harvard-based journal Annals of Improbable Research hands out the ‘Ig Nobel’ awards every year, timed to coincide with the real Nobel awards.

This year’s Ig Nobels included a couple of green concepts that may or may not deserve the dubious distinction – a bra made of two gas masks, and a panda poop-based trash additive.

From The Guardian:

Public health prize

Awarded to Elena Bodnar of Hinsdale, Illinois, for patenting a bra that, in an emergency, can be converted into a pair of gas masks, one for the owner and one for a needy bystander. “It was inspired by the Chernobyl nuclear accident,” said Bodnar, who is originally from Ukraine. “This way, the mask is always readily available.”

Biology prize

Fumiaki Taguchi, Song Guofu and Zhang Guanglei of Kitasato University graduate school of medical sciences in Japan share the prize for demonstrating that kitchen waste can be reduced by more than 90% by using bacteria extracted from giant panda excrement. Taguchi suspected panda faeces must contain bacteria capable of breaking down even the hardiest of foods because of the bear’s vast consumption of bamboo.

Is it just us, or does the panda poop concept actually sound like a great idea? People need to get over this fear of poop, because damned if it hasn’t proven to be incredibly versatile for a range of eco-friendly products and technology lately. And hey, at least the gas mask bra is dual purpose.

The whole list of Ig Nobel prizes is worth a look – for example, the Literature Prize was awarded to the entire police force of Ireland for repeatedly issuing citations to “Mr. Prawo Jazdy”, a ‘name’ that is actually the words “driver’s license” in Polish.

Link [The Guardian]

Most people who buy Hummers do so out of vanity or to make up for certain physical deficiencies. But, Hummer owners themselves actually believe that they’ve got the moral high ground because they’re – get this – defending America’s frontier lifestyle against anti-American critics.

A new study in the Journal of Consumer Research came to this conclusion after the authors researched attitudes toward owning and driving Hummers. They found that Hummer drivers see themselves as patriotic defenders of the American spirit, framing themselves as “moral protagonists” even as they unapologetically contribute to harming the very country they claim to love so much.

From Eurekalert:

“As we studied American Hummer owners and their ideological beliefs, we found that they consider Hummer driving a highly moral consumption choice,” write the authors. “For Hummer owners it is possible to claim the moral high ground.”

The authors explain that Hummer owners employ the ideology of American foundational myths, such as the “rugged individual,” and the “boundless frontier” to construct themselves as moral protagonists. They often believe they represent a bastion again anti-American discourses evoked by their critics.

“Our analysis of the underlying American identity discourses revealed that being under siege by (moral) critics is an historically established feature of being an American,” write the authors. “The moralistic critique of their consumption choices readily inspired Hummer owners to adopt the role of the moral protagonist who defends American national ideals.”

Amazing, isn’t it? Of course, Hummer owners aren’t the only ones that take this stance – conservatives in general employ similar excuses for their desperate attempts to preserve what they see as “the American lifestyle”. To them, being American is apparently synonymous with being selfish assholes who don’t give a shit about the next generation, only about their own desires.

Fuck you and your H2!

Link [Eurekalert]
Photo credit: FUH2

Ever wonder where in the world humans have the absolute best view of all the stars in the sky? Astronomers say they’ve found it – the coldest, driest, calmest place on earth, which is expected to yield images three times sharper than any ever taken from the ground.

A research team used data from satellites, ground stations and climate models to determine the factors that can affect astronomy, like cloud cover, sky brightness, water vapor and wind speeds.

From Science Daily:

The researchers pinpointed a site, known simply as Ridge A, that is 4,053m high up on the Antarctic Plateau. It is not only particularly remote but extremely cold and dry. The study revealed that Ridge A has an average winter temperature of minus 70ºC and that the water content of the entire atmosphere there is sometimes less than the thickness of a human hair.

It is also extremely calm, which means that there is very little of the atmospheric turbulence elsewhere that makes stars appear to twinkle: “It’s so calm that there’s almost no wind or weather there at all,” says Dr Will Saunders, of the Anglo-Australian Observatory and visiting professor to UNSW, who led the study.

“The astronomical images taken at Ridge A should be at least three times sharper than at the best sites currently used by astronomers,” says Dr Saunders. “Because the sky there is so much darker and drier, it means that a modestly-sized telescope there would be as powerful as the largest telescopes anywhere else on earth.”

It doesn’t look like much – just a wide swath of frigid, snow-covered land – but putting an observatory here could provide some stunning images. And, there’s nothing like a really clear view of the stars to make you appreciate the vastness of the universe.

Link [Science Daily]
Photo credit: Flickr user Coda

Ecofeminism, civil disobedience for environmental causes, galactic golf and species extinction: all of this and more is featured on ‘Into the Wild Green Yonder’, the last of a series of straight-to-DVD Futurama movies.

Central to the story is a group of pink-wearing eco-feminists riding around in a ‘Vagiroscope’ battling to save an asteroid of primitive life forms from destruction by a businessman who has created the biggest game of (supremely environmentally unfriendly) miniature golf ever played.

Here’s a quick clip:

If you missed ‘Into the Wild Green Yonder’ when it played on Sunday night and you’re too lazy to Netflix it, it’ll be replaying this Wednesday, September 2nd, at 7pm EST on Comedy Central.

But wait, there’s more! Previous green-themed Futurama episodes include ‘The Problem with Popplers’, ‘A Taste of Freedom’     and ‘The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz’, and they even covered poo power.

Link [Comedy Central]

Nobody’s going to get rich collecting cans and turning them in for cash, but you can definitely get some pocket change, and who doesn’t want some more of that? EcoSalon has a great list of 15 items that you can recycle for cash, helping the environment and gaining some cash at the same time – and many of them are probably sitting in your garage right now.

From EcoSalon:

Printer Cartridges

Hang on to your empty printer cartridges and send them in to be recycled by eCycle Group or similar programs. While you’re at it, get your office in on the action, too. You can also bring them to a nearby Staples, but you’ll receive store credit instead of cash.

PCs and Laptops

Computers become obsolete quickly, and that means more outdated electronics in the landfill. But, it doesn’t have to be. Send in your old laptop or personal computer to Gazelle or search online for similar sites to get money back.

Cell Phones

My puppy recently mistook my cell phone for a chew toy. When I told a friend, she told me that I could send it in to Buy My Tronics for cash – even if it’s mangled beyond recognition.

That’s just three examples – head on over to EcoSalon.com for another 12!

Link [EcoSalon]
Photo credit: kennymatic

“Who cares about those PETA pricks, and who cares about the chickens? They’re just animals!” That’s what ‘Ronald McDonald’ (Andy Dick) had to say about McDonalds’ slaughtering practices to famed celebrity interviewer Jiminy Glick (Martin Short) in a new video from FunnyorDie.com.

Dick makes for quite a frightening, deranged-looking Ronald McDonald as they discuss boiling chickens alive. “What I say to the chickens is, ‘You deserve a break today. In your legs.”

Check it out:

The video is hilarious, but they’re actually calling attention to a real problem. As Ecorazzi reports,

“McDonald’s U.S. and Canadian chicken suppliers abuse birds using a cruel and outdated method of slaughter. Birds often have their bones broken and their throats cut while they are still conscious, and many birds are immersed in tanks of scalding-hot water while they are still alive and able to feel pain.”

And, yes, you can learn more about it at PETA.org.

Link [Ecorazzi]