This is another case of time winning against – well whatever you want to call this.
Some 900 years of male-dominated gondola history may be at an end with a court’s ruling that a woman can be a gondolier on Venice’s canals.
Monthly Archives: April 2007
One Hour to Happiness
If you have ever found yourself in need of a quick pick-me-up, this tip sheet is for you!
Here are some sample tips:
6. Do a good deed: make an email introduction of two people who could help each other, or set up a blind date, or shoot someone a piece of useful information or gratifying praise. Do good, feel good—this really works. Also, although we often believe that we act because of the way we feel, in fact, we often feel because of the way we act. When you act in a friendly way, you’ll strengthen your feelings of friendliness for other people.
3. Rid yourself of a nagging task: answer a difficult email, purchase something you need, or call to make that dentist’s appointment. Crossing an irksome chore off your to-do list will give you a big rush of energy and cheer, and you’ll be surprised that you procrastinated for so long.
Good news – just act your age
The sweetest success is in this story about a lady who has begun acting in her 90s.
Starmakers always are on the lookout for a fresh new face and they found one in Mae Laborde, albeit of the wrinkled variety. The 97-year-old Laborde is just four years into her acting career and hotter than ever. Standing 4-feet-10, with snow-white hair, rosy-red cheeks and a sweet-as-peaches-and-cream smile, she’s becoming TV’s ubiquitous grandma.
Urban Farming NYC Style
In the city of the future will be cows, and grass, and clean air! Urban farming is not a new idea as there are already plenty of community gardens in urban centers. The scale that is being suggested by a professor at Columbia University has not been tried before – farming in skyscrapers.
Imagine a cluster of 30-story towers on Governors Island or in Hudson Yards producing fruit, vegetables, and grains while also generating clean energy and purifying wastewater. Roughly 150 such buildings, Despommier estimates, could feed the entire city of New York for a year. Using current green building systems, a vertical farm could be self-sustaining and even produce a net output of clean water and energy.
Via TreeHugger
Oscar the Grouch gets dream home
Everyone’s gotta have a dream. If you were Oscar you’d likely want something like this.
Last year’s trash could become next year’s model home, thanks to the invention of a new type of construction material made entirely from waste products.
“Bitublocks,†created by engineer John Forth of the University of Leeds in England, are composed of recycled glass, sewage sludge, incinerator ash, the by-products of metal purification and pulverized fuel ash from power stations.
“Bitublocks use up to 100 percent waste materials and avoid sending them to landfill, which is quite unheard of in the building industry,†Forth said. …
… Plans also are now under way to develop a “Vegeblock†using waste vegetable oil.