Gil Friend’s Blog
Coolest pack of gum I’VE ever seen
Apple's done it again with the iPod Shuffle, continuing the ephemeralization of technolust. Very, very cool. But not totally cool, as Ted Smith of Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition reminds us: Tell Steve Jobs to recycle his iWaste: Steve Jobs should do more than...
‘trade deficits don’t matter’
[Roland Tanglao]: Note to self: Andy Kessler like Steve Jobs is crazy but what he writes below makes sense in a wacky sort of way. Andy Kessler (author of Running Money), in the WSJ: We Think, They Sweat: ...you start to get a feel for how the world works. A $1.5...
World views, worlds apart
Two very interesting, and very different, big picture views of our current world and current situation have come across my view recently. Both are worth your attention. Meta-historian William Irwin Thompson, writes, with his typical grand sweep, of Al Qaeda, the...
The value of an intact ecosystem
[Reuters]: Coastal 'Green Belts' Seen as Tsunami Life Savers Barriers such as coastal mangrove forests and coral reefs saved lives by deflecting Asia's tsunami and governments should protect such natural bulwarks against the wrath of the sea, a leading environmental...
The value of an intact culture
A relief official on NPR this afternoon was describing the situation of the many aboriginal populations on remote islands in thepath of the tusnami. Though much destruction, apparently very few (if any) deaths -- at least as well as one could tell from reconnaissance...
Plasma, LCD production may pose worker health risk
Engadget picks up a BBC report that workers producing LCD and plasma monitors and TVs face risk of serious lung diseases, though there's reportedly no consumer hazard (other than the usual brain damage from too much teevee). So, great news if you can afford to buy...
Quote of the day
[Jonathon Delacour]: Ticket to Macland: Windows users, it seems to me, have endless patience. They reboot their systems, run virus scanners, go nuts fixing weird conflicts. With that kind of patience, surfing in your browser from site to site isn‰t that bad. But Mac...
Tsunamis, global warming, ‘spin and hype’
Joel Makower blogs on the recent kerfluffle about the tsunami and global warming, Problem is, I couldn't find a single claim -- by an "environmental expert" or anyone else -- made in the past week that connects the Indian Ocean tragedy with global warming... A...
And speaking of ‘free lunches’
[Enviroline]: The U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory (INEEL) and Ceramatec, Inc. of Salt Lake City, Utah have demonstrated the feasibility of using nuclear energy to efficiently produce hydrogen from water. 'With...