Monthly Archives: February 2007

Bad Signs, Good Blog

Here in Toronto city hall continues to not act on taking down illegal signs, even in their own neighbourhood. There are a lot of them, and I mean a lot. It’s rather shocking actually. What’s a Torontonian going to do?

Start a blog about it at IllegalSigns.ca!

IllegalSigns.ca is a team of volunteers who fight illegal billboards and this is our blog. Half the billboards in Toronto are illegal — help us bring the vast, unlawful privatization of our public visual environment to an end.

Please pardon this Toronto-centric post.

A Knight Funds War (on Carbon Emissions)

That odd billoniare Sir Richard Branson has decided to fight carbon emissions while sending spaceships to space and air planes to air. Branson has made millions off of air travel (the worst way to travel environmentally speaking) and other things and now he wants to use those millions to help all of us.

Sir Richard Branson brought his talent for publicity to bear on climate change yesterday, offering a $25m (£13m) prize to anyone who invents an economical way of removing carbon from the atmosphere.

The Virgin group chairman said: “We have no super-hero. We have only our own ingenuity to fall back on.”

The CBC has a news clip on the story (direct link to WMV file).

The New Courteously

I’ve been thinking lately the best way to stop climate change is to change our social norms. One in praticular comes to mind. When entering a premise with double doors wait the extra two to three seconds until the first door closes before opening the second door. This will ensure the hot or cool inside air is not drawn outside. I believe this should be a courteosly to those close to the door to not have to experience such a drastic change in temperature.

I believe we should call this new policy air courteously. To those from the United States Air Security is a better term.

Black Google

Fun Fact: TV’s and computer’s use more energy to project light colors (i.e. white) than dark colors, especially black. If large companies such as Google turned their background from white to black a ton of energy could be saved.