7 Reasons You Should Sleep Like a Baby Tonight

Still sleeping with the lights on at night after getting the wits scared out of you by our 7 Reasons You Should be Losing Sleep Tonight? Read on – we’re about to rock you, sing you a lullaby and give you some brandy in a baby bottle. Sure, there are a lot of scary scenarios that could violently kill us all. But, there’s also hope in the form of green tech, a whole new economy, the promise of better leadership and the simple fact that we live in the good old U.S. of A. We might all get blown to hamburger meat any day now by a nuclear weapon, but these positive points might just make you feel a little better about what we’re doing in the attempt to save ourselves.

7- Renewable energy will allow us to continue modern civilization in a cleaner way.

Image via Inhabitat

Relax – green energy doesn’t mean we’re all going to be forced to use hand-crank blenders every time we want a margarita. Advances are being made daily in the fields of solar, wind, water, geothermal and biomass energy. Investors are pouring money into these areas, ensuring that research is being done on such innovative concepts as the Delft University kite project. In fact, researchers are even looking toward surprising sources like algae for its energy-producing potential.

People are really starting to think about how we can move beyond the ‘age of fossil fuels’ and into the future. That means clean, green, renewable energy that can power our world in a way that doesn’t pollute the planet and put our health at risk. The reality is, we don’t have to depend upon coal, oil and other harmful forms of energy in order to continue to advance. The point is that we’re learning how to do things in smarter ways.

Feel good about renewable energy by reading the about all of the latest innovations at Inhabitat.com.

6- Water filtration technology means we might be able to desalinate seawater.

Image via EcoFriend.org

Our freshwater resources are endangered, but things are looking up thanks to some incredibly innovative inventors and engineers who are hard at work on solutions. One very promising new option is the Slingshot by Dean Kamen, who also invented the Segway. It promises to produce clean water from sea water, poison, and even urine. Stephen Colbert made him remove Doritos from water on a recent episode of The Colbert Report, and it did indeed work.

Wired has the numbers behind the claims, and they’re looking good – a single Slingshot has the capability of supplying a village with up to 1,000 liters of clean water daily. It’s powered by a sterling engine electrical generator, which can run on anything that burns, from propane to cow dung. It weighs less than 60 lbs., and doesn’t use filters, charcoal, or anything disposable – it works by vapor compression distillation. It will likely sell for between $1,000 - $2,000 per unit.

Feel good about water filtration technology by reading Segway creator unveils his next act.

5- Green collar jobs will jump-start the economy and guide us all to a brighter future.

Image by Alicia Maldonado via The New Mexico Independent

Now that the nation is on the path of sustainability, there are going to be more green collar jobs than ever before, and they’ll be available to all kinds of workers – from construction and manufacturing to engineers and top-level executives. If you’re worried about losing your job because your industry is one of those targeted by the green movement as harmful to the earth, you can be confident that there’ll be a whole slew of new opportunities.

The movement to make America more sustainable and efficient is going to drive urban economic growth, helping to lift communities out of poverty and make the earth a better place for us all to live. Half a million new jobs are expected by 2030 in the wind industry alone.

Feel good about green collar jobs and how they can help America by reading The Green-Collar Job Solution.

4- Today’s youth are more excited about sustainability than ever before.

Image via Glen Waverly Secondary College Eco-Committee

Not since the heady days of the ‘60s have the world’s youth been so fired up about something other than themselves. There was definitely no small amount of apathy among young people in the ‘80s and ‘90s, but youth activism has picked up a lot in recent years, and with good reason – if something isn’t done now, they’re going to have to deal with even bigger problems later on in life. They’re passionate and energetic, two things that the world desperately needs right now as we all try to make the transition toward a greener planet.

The older generations have been holding us back from creating a better world for ourselves because of their own hang-ups – they’re scared of change, they’re convinced that there’s only one way to do things or they’re simply too jaded. Young people, however, are currently growing up in an environment where awareness about how we’re affecting the earth is higher than it has ever been. To them, being green is normal – it’s the right thing to do. That’s what will ultimately help us get out of this mess.

Feel good about young environmentalism by reading WireTap Magazine’s Top 10 Youth Activism Victories of 2007.

3- We live in a first world country, therefore we’re automatically better off than 80% of the world.

Image via Remiq.net

Unfortunately, the richest countries in the world have created the problem of global warming for the rest, but we all have to suffer for it. While the poorest nations of the world will have little chance of survival once the floods, water shortages, natural disasters and crop failures start, we’ll be far more insulated. No matter how bad things get, Americans are better off than much of the world simply by virtue of our citizenship. For the most part, we’re spoiled, fat and rich.

In fact, citizens of any of the countries with the highest standards of living – Norway, Sweden, Canada, Belgium, Australia, Iceland, Netherlands, Japan and Finland- should be feeling fairly good about their chances. Living in a first world country is a huge advantage. So, be happy that when the negative effects of global warming start actually happening, we’ll be relatively safe and warm compared to the rest of the world.

Feel good about living in a first world country by reading Grim Outlook for poor countries in climate report.

2- Barack Obama is going to lead this country in a better, greener direction.

Image via BarackObama.com

It’s been a long eight years. We’ve all suffered under the mantle of greed, warmongering, corruption and unchecked executive powers brought upon us by the Bush administration, and things have been looking pretty bleak for Americans for a while now. So, it’s no wonder that we’re eager for something entirely different: something hopeful. A president who actually has our best interests in mind.

Obama is poised to crack the aging, lily-white Republican veneer of Washington and instead build a government that will fearlessly march forward into a greener, more peaceful and prosperous future. An Obama presidency isn’t just about one man – it’s about a passion that has been ignited across the country, a wave of political enthusiasm unlike anything America has seen in decades. An enthusiastic core of volunteers, organizers and voters will assure his victory in November, and this entire country will be the better for it.

Feel good about an Obama presidency by reading The Blueprint for Change: Barack Obama’s Plan for America

1- Al Gore has saved us all from the scourge of Manbearpig.

Image via South Park Studios

Exthelthior! We can all breathe easier now. No longer are we in the grave danger of being viciously mauled by the Manbearpig. Al Gore has declared that he has killed this monstrous being, which would undoubtedly have destroyed the entire world. And of course we believe him, because he’s Al Gore – Al Gore the HERO. Any man who single-handedly killed Manbearpig is not a loser. And he’s Al Gore, did I mention that?

Feel good about being protected from Manbearpig by watching this South Park episode.

Japanese Train Station Parking Lot Packed Full of Bikes

This is pure awesome – and we need a lot more of this in the U.S.  It’s a bicycle parking lot outside a train station in Japan, a country where this is quite a common sight.  Imagine if Americans were as gung-ho about riding bikes everywhere as the Japanese, the Chinese or the Dutch – we’d all be so much healthier and happier, and our country would be a hell of a lot cleaner.

It would be hard to remember where you parked, though.  “Remember, kids – GOOFY D!”

Link [Flickr] via [Digg]

10 Creative Responses to Junk Mail – From Art to Garden Mulch

Who likes junk mail, anyway? It kills millions of trees, and most of it ends up in landfills or littering the streets.  It clogs our mailboxes and puts us at risk of identity theft.  With the amount of junk mail that arrives daily seeming to increase constantly, you may be wondering what’s the best way to deal with it.  Well, the folks over at ProQuo have gathered 10 creative responses to junk mail – from custom portraits and sculptures to handmade recycled paper and garden mulch.  Here are a few of them – check out the rest at ProQuo.com.

Link [ProQuo] via [BoingBoing]

The 6 Greatest Things Ever Accomplished While High

Cracked.com has compiled a hilarious list of the 5 greatest things ever accomplished while high. Their two major concerns while choosing the items for this list was that the accomplishment had to be “considered great by people who could pass a field sobriety test”, and that music didn’t count. What they ended up with after striking things like the Grateful Dead from the list is this:

#5. Francis Crick Discovers DNA Thanks to LSD - In 1953 in Cambridge, Crick burst through the front door of his home spouting what his wife Odile originally thought was crazy jibberish about two spirals twisting in opposite directions from one another.

#4. Freud and Cocaine Invent Psychoanalysis - The first ten years of Sigmund Freud’s career were like a roving cocaine pep rally. He prescribed cocaine to his friends for headaches, nasal ailments or just to “give (their) cheeks a red color.”

#3. A Coke Addict Makes a Coke-Flavored Cola and Calls it Coke - John Pemberton, the Atlanta pharmacist that invented Coca Cola, claimed that the ingredient it was named after, the Coca leaf, cured everything from depression and nervousness to morphine addiction.

#2. Dock Ellis Trips His Way to a No-Hitter - The day of the no-hitter, Dock Ellis woke up around noon on what he thought was Friday and ate three tabs of acid, presumably because he was tired of Wheaties. But when his girlfriend arrived she was carrying Saturday’s newspaper, which meant he’d slept through Friday or that his girlfriend’s was a time traveler. The sports page had more bad news, he was scheduled to pitch in San Diego in six hours.

#1. Moses Takes ‘Shrooms, Shits Out Ten Commandments - Everyone wants to say how dangerous it is to use psychedelic drugs, but Moses takes a few and comes up with a set of morally sound rules that have held up for thousands of years and, for some, serves as a reason not to murder the guy in front of you who’s taking an annoyingly long time at the ATM.

Great list, but they forgot #6: Stoned Hippies Invent the Environmental Movement Because Man, Trees are Awesome.

Hippie #1: (Exhales smoke) Dude… have you ever thought about, like, how totally rad trees are? They’re like, so tall. And they give us oxygen so we can breathe, man. We wouldn’t even be alive if there were no trees, man.

Hippie #2: Yeah, trees are awesome. Hey man, I heard they’re going to cut down that big tree at the park. We should like, go sit in it. And then they um… won’t cut it down, or something.

Hippie #1: (Dreamily twirls hair, then suddenly turns to look at Hippie #2) Uhhh, what were we just talking about? Pass that back over here, man.

Okay, so the environmental movement was never really ‘invented’… it grew out of books like Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, localized concern over natural landmarks and efforts by groups like the Sierra Club. But, hippies invented the modern environmental movement as a political force and brought it into mainstream consciousness in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, when the youth was in the midst of a cultural revolution also comprised of the antiwar movement, civil rights movement and feminist movement. But if there’s one thing we know about hippies in the ‘60s, it’s that they were almost always stoned. We’re sure that more than a little mary jane was passed around as student groups and organizations sat around in circles making “Give Earth a Chance” buttons.

Link [Cracked]
Photo credit: Classico Postcards

How Not to Play Golf

Guy lugs backpack full of golf balls to the top of a very tall mountain. Guy sets backpack down, and proceeds to tee off said backpack. Guy sends backpack sailing over the cliff of the very tall mountain. Watch the video below:

Mountain Top Golfing Backfires - Watch more free videos

Karma is a bitch, you golf ball polluting mofo.

Link [Break.com]

Some People Honestly Believe the World is Flat

Amazing as it seems in this day and age, there really are ‘flat-earthers’ – and I’m not saying that in the typical way it’s used, to describe someone ignorant or grossly misinformed. There are people who actually believe that the world is flat, and evidence of a round earth is simply a vast conspiracy dreamed up by people who want to take our money… wait, this is starting to sound really familiar.

From BBC News:

Flat earth theory is still around. On the internet and in small meeting rooms in Britain and the US, flat earth believers get together to challenge the “conspiracy” that the Earth is round.

Mr Davis, a 25-year-old computer scientist originally from Canada, first became interested in flat earth theory after “coming across some literature from the Flat Earth Society a few years ago”.

Mr Davis now believes “the Earth is flat and horizontally infinite - it stretches horizontally forever”.

What about all the photos from space that show, beyond a shadow of doubt, that the Earth is round? “The space agencies of the world are involved in an international conspiracy to dupe the public for vast profit,” says Mr McIntyre.

Flat earthers apparently believe that the photographic evidence is fake. They see the North Pole as central and Antarctica as a ring that runs along the edge of the earth. Oh yes, and our disc-shaped earth is also 9,000 kilometers deep. Yes, they’re serious.

Right – and global warming is a hoax, we never landed on the moon, Prince Charles is the antichrist and Bigfoot roams the Pacific Northwest. We get your message loud and clear, flat earthers.

Link [BBC News]
Photo credit: BBC News & Newsweek

National Go Topless Protest Day – August 23rd

So, what’s the deal with it being okay for men to go topless, and not women? You might think that a man is writing this, but not so fast – I’m definitely female. I just think that it’s absurd that men can flash their hairy, sweaty, potentially offensive man-boobs all over the nation and women can’t bare their own. This isn’t about men’s rights to ogle women’s naked breasts on city streets, at the beach and other places where it’s acceptable for men to be shirtless. It’s about equal rights, and the fact that society’s sexualization of breasts shouldn’t make them so ’shameful’ that we feel the need to keep them covered up all the time.

Personally, my main issue with this is where it falls in line with breastfeeding rights. A woman feeding her child in public the way nature intended accidentally shows a little boob, and by the usual reaction you’d think she just played a porno on her laptop in a public square. Discrimination against women who are doing the most basic and natural of acts in a public place is ridiculous, unfair and harmful to babies since it discourages many women from breastfeeding at all.

GoTopless.org, an organization that claims that women have the same constitutional right to be bare chested in public as men, is organizing a ‘National Go Topless Protest Day’ for August 23rd. From the site:

Currently, women who dare to be topless in public in the US are repeatedly being arrested, fined, humiliated, criminalized. On Aug 23rd, 2008, topless women will rally in great numbers across the USA to protest this gross inequality in the law and will demand that they be granted the fundamental right to be topless where men already enjoy that right according to the 14th amendment of the Constitution.

Across America, topless women and men will peacefully rally in the streets, parks, on the beaches of their towns and cities. Activities will start at NOON local time in each city

Topfree performances will be given by various artists to honor Women’s Equality Day and to convey how natural it is to be topfree for women in public just like it is for men. Please write to us if you are an artist who would like to participate in one of our shows.

Check out the GoTopless.org website to get info about events in your area.

Link [GoTopless.org]

Wooden ‘Islands’ Allow Beachgoers to Enjoy Rocky Coast

Architect Vincent Guallart has come up with a way to access jagged, rocky oceanfront property that’s low impact and quite beautiful.  These hexagonal wooden ‘islands’ were built along a rough coast in Spain to allow locals to enjoy the beach comfortably without any major construction.  Guallart says they allow sunbathers and swimmers to enjoy a ‘previously nonexistent platform’.

Guallart is known for edgy, eye-catching designs, like this concept for the centerpiece of Polish city Wroclaw’s bid to host Expo 2012, a World’s Fair.

Link [TrendHunter] + [Guallart]

Brighter Planet and 1Sky Launch Climate Video Contest

Have an impact on the future of the planet – inspire the next president of the United States to take bold climate action. Brighter Planet and 1Sky have announced their Climate Matters Video Contest to give Americans the opportunity to make a difference. The winner will receive a $3,000 Brighter Planet Visa Gift Card, and the second and third place winners will receive $1,000 and $500 Brighter Planet Visa Gift Cards, respectively.

To enter the contest, upload a 30- or 60- second video encouraging bold climate change to the Climate Matters channel on vimeo.com/climatematters. The topic must be climate change. The deadline to upload your video is September 22nd, 2008, and winners will be announced on September 29th.

Here are some of the details:

The Climate Matters Video Contest provides all Americans with the chance to have their global climate change message seen by our next president and other political leaders. This October, the top 10 videos will be featured during a Washington, D.C.-based event for the media, Congress and both presidential campaigns. These top videos will also be broadcast to millions via Link TV, FSTV, and online at venues including: www.think.mtv.com, www.joost.com, www.huffingtonpost.com and www.quarterlife.com.

“We know Americans are inspired to take climate action; they’re already taking steps everyday,” said actress and Climate Matters juror Maggie Gyllenhaal. “I’m excited to see what people create.”

The 10 most viewed videos will be judged by a panel that includes: actress Maggie Gyllenhaal; Rory Kennedy, Emmy award-winning documentary producer; Tia Lessin, the supervising producer of Fahrenheit 9/11 and Bowling for Columbine; Leila and Nadia Conners, the producers/directors of 11th Hour; author Anya Kamenetz; David Jenkins, Government Affairs Director of Republicans for Environmental Protection; Bill Stetson, Producer and Environmental Consultant; Gillian Caldwell, Campaign Director of 1Sky; and Patti Prairie, CEO of Brighter Planet.

Viewers can log in to Vimeo to pick their favorite video and enter a drawing on the channel to win a Cannon VIXIA HDV Camcorder. Contestants can promote their videos to improve their chances of being counted among the top 10.

Check out an introductory Climate Matters video below:

Climate Matters from Brighter Planet on Vimeo.

Link [Brighter Planet] + [1Sky]

Green Blog of the Week: WebUrbanist

If you’ve never visited WebUrbanist before, prepare to spend a lot of time there. It’s got the kind of fascinating material that pulls you in and before you know it, hours have passed while you sat there drooling over Creative Steampunk Art, Design and Fashion and 20 Examples of Hilariously Geeky Art and Graffiti: From Mr. Spock to Stephen Colbert. WebUrbanist features the best urban design, culture, travel, architecture and alternative art on the web with eye-catching photos and snappy, succinct writing.

Better yet, WebUrbanist regularly features green art, design and technology, covering topics ranging from 7 Modern Wonders of Green Technology and Great Green Roofs to Strange Green Vehicles and Creative Green Arbosculpture. It’s all the coolest green stuff, distilled down to display the best of the best.

From WebUrbanist:

We scour the net to find neat new stuff then boil that information down and pack it into an article with relevant images and links, as exhaustive as we can manage on a single subject area. Our team is comprised of web designers, bloggers, architects and other curious urbanists.

WebUrbanist has multiple articles per week. The emphasis is on quality, well-researched and fully sourced articles on whatever the subject is. This is not a blog in the traditional sense (of many smaller posts on a daily basis). It is, rather, a collective online urban magazine which we hope you will enjoy every time you open your inbox or feed reader or visit our site.

Don’t take our word for it – get lost in the addictive posts yourself. Sign up to receive the site’s email updates so you don’t miss out (on the home page).

Link [WebUrbanist]

Extreme Green Sports: Bungee Jumping with Vines

If you thought normal bungee jumping with harnesses and ropes that have been extensively safety-tested is scary, check this out: tribe members (including children as young as 7 years old) jumping from wooden structures using nothing but jungle vines. Oh yeah, and there’s no net of any kind. The jumpers often graze the ground below. The slightest error could cripple or kill them.

I think I’ll stay over here on the ground, thank you.

Link [I am Bored]

Crazy People Base Jumping Off Wind Turbines

Base jumping off wind turbines – I guess it was bound to happen. While some people might think this is totally awesome – dare I say, rad – it makes me want to cling to the ground for dear life. The idea of standing on the top of a wind turbine is enough to squeeze my stomach into painful little knots, let alone the idea of actually jumping off one.

That, my friends, takes some serious balls!

Link [Groovy Green] + [YouTube]

Special Edition Wind Turbine Lego Kit for Vestas

Legos are just about the coolest kid toy ever. One set of Legos lasts virtually forever, and you can make just about anything you can think of out of them. So, of course we love the limited edition set Lego made for Vestas, a wind energy company. The turbine actually spins (but, alas, from battery power). Groovy Green thinks it would be cool to use it to send a message to your zoning board or homeowner’s association:

Town zoning board getting you down? Anti-wind organizations befuddling you with their concerns? Feeling the ache of not being able to install your own personal turbine? Well, now you can shut out the rest of the world and focus on this great new kit from Lego called “The Vestas Windmill Kit”.

Though this set is for Vestas promotional use only and not for sale, we’d love to see more kids’ toys with environmental themes like this. While a lot of fusty old folks afraid of change are fighting the green movement, kids will readily accept it as part of their lives, and that is indeed exciting.

Link [Groovy Green]

Save Money & Waste with a Home Soda Maker

Soda: it’s one of the hardest junk foods to give up.  I started cleaning up my diet years ago in an attempt to cut way back on processed foods, choosing whole foods instead whenever possible, but Diet Coke is the one thing I keep going back to.  I can’t explain why this gross, chemical-laden brown bubbly substance is so attractive, but it is.  I’m not alone – the average American consumes 43,371 cans of soda over 77 years.  Mindboggling, especially when you consider all the waste from those cans and bottles that end up in landfills.

There’s hope for us yet. This strange penguin-shaped countertop gadget actually lets you make your own soda, and control exactly what goes into it.  The Penguin has a carbonator, a carafe and a few manual pumps that turn plain water into seltzer or soda.  You can control the level of carbonation, and exactly what goes into it – plus, it doesn’t use electricity.
It might seem at first like just another piece of junk for your house, and the price is a bit steep, but it would be great to have one less thing you had to buy every week at the grocery store, plus you could reuse a couple of containers over and over.

The Nibble has a breakdown of how the Penguin works.  It’s really pretty simple!

Link [The Nibble] via [EcoSalon]

Carrotmob ‘Makes it Rain’ Money at Greenest Local Liquor Store

Carrotmob, a new environmental advocacy group, decided to use one important fact to our advantage: the fact that corporations will do ANYTHING to make money. The premise? Everyone needs to buy stuff. But we don’t do it in an organized way. If everyone who needed to buy the same type of item got together and pooled their money, we’d have a lot of leverage against the companies that sell those items. Watch the video below to see what happened when Carrotmob pulled a big crowd together to spend a lot of money at the local liquor store that made the strongest environmental commitment.

Carrotmob Makes It Rain from carrotmob on Vimeo.

The Circular Bike

I love that the guy who made this circular bike, Robert Wechsler, just leaves it in public places.  I mean, it’s not like anyone’s going to get far with it.  He should hook that thing up to generate power.

Link [FrostFireZoo] + [Robert Wechsler]

The Best, Most Smart Ass Green Ads

In case you haven’t noticed, we love sarcasm around here. So naturally, we love the collection of smart ass green ads that Green Home has compiled, including the ‘Undo it’ campaign by Environmental Defense and the lovely ‘asshole’ ads by the Greenfamily Youth Association of Environmental Protection in China. There’s also the great ‘Join the zero mile high club’ ad by Method, and the nekkid ‘Planet Green’ commercial about saving energy.

Check out the rest at Green Home.

Link [Green Home]

Make Your Own Gas Station Sign

Wheee! Make your own gas station sign! It might help you quell the urge to do it in real life.  Being a smart ass is fun, but, you know, that could get you arrested and stuff.

Link [Atom.smasher.org]

Monster Smart Car – Does it Get Any Cooler?

When we first saw this we were pretty sure it was Photoshopped, but nope – it’s real. The Smart forfun2 concept car debuted in 2005 at the Athens Motor Show, so it’s been around for a while, but this is the first time we’ve seen it. Where do I sign up? I’d love to roll up behind some pussy ass Hummer in this smart little bad boy.

From the Chrysler press release, via Serious Wheels:

DaimlerChrysler has always had an unusually large range of off-road vehicles - from the M-Class to the G-model and the Unimog. One look at the smart forfun2 (pronounced smart forfun to the second) and you see straightaway that it is based on a Mercedes-Benz Unimog 406 series.

This is what makes it so fascinating: the combination of two vehicles, each of which has achieved cult status in its respective segment. So it’s no wonder that the smart forfun2 awakens the inner child in everyone who sees it.

Link [Serious Wheels]

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