Month: September 2010

Keep Learning for a Good Life

- Adam Clare

For some reasons that I don;t understand people find learning to be dull. If you’re one of those people this post is for you!

Learning is a great way to keep your mind active and acquire new skills to improve your life and ways you don’t necessarily foresee. There’s always areas that you can expand your knowledge in and lucky for us someone has put these into a handy blog post.

Here’s a snippet:

Challenge Yourself
Finally, give yourself a challenge or two. Next time you say, “I can’t”, stop and think. Maybe you really can’t cook … yet. There’s nothing stopping you learning.
Sure, you might find that you just don’t enjoy cooking. But at least you’ll know that you could put together a meal if you had to.
We start at a zero skill level for everything in life. Just because you can’t currently play the piano doesn’t mean that you’ll never be able to. With the internet, there’s a huge amount of content on every topic you can think of – and loads of it will be aimed at beginners.

Keep reading and learning at the source.

Cities Are More Environmentally Friendly

- Adam Clare

Get out of the suburbs and into the city! Especially if you care about the environment.

The cities are where all the good policy around climate change is being enacted. While international agreements are not much more than show cities around the world are fighting hard to ensure that their locales are liveable and sustainable.

Cities have a unique power to drive immediate change involving issues such as public transportation, but they also can help influence prosaic long-term land use planning (think about all those interminable city council meetings) to realize truly sustainable cities. No futuristic visions of cities are needed. For now, the reality is more mundane: asphalt recycling and better insulation in buildings, timers for coffee makers and telecommuting, light sensors, and water conservation.

Local governments are tackling GHG emissions in any way they can: Boston, for instance, has mandated the nation’s first green building code for private projects. In Gainesville, Fla., the city utility pays a premium for solar power from peoples’ homes fed back into the grid. In Babylon, N.Y., homeowners are eligible for loans to make their homes more efficient, and those loans are entirely repaid through cost savings in their power bills.

But to create low- or zero-emission cities — among the only ways to avoid dangerous climate change if the objective is to cut GHG emissions 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, the target set by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — more revolutionary changes are needed.

At least 1,000 cities in the U.S. and around the world are adopting targets and taking action, says ICLEI. Cities are cooperating internationally, offering financial incentive programs for clean power plants and home retrofits, and planning growth and emission cuts as much as half-a-century down the road.

Cities lead the way in action to halt climate change at The Guardian.

Sustainable Bus Shelter

- Adam Clare 1 Comment

Waiting for the bus is not the most exciting thing to do in the world, but it is a very necessary one. (And let’s face it waiting for a bus and reading a book is better than starring at a license plate in front of you during a traffic jam.) Designer Tiffany Roddis has come up with a bus shelter that is better than most and is also good for the environment.
Bus shelter

The stylish new eco friendly bus stop will attract new tourists and new custom to lower pollution from existing car owners. The frustration of late buses and complicated timetables can now be reassured by the new colour coded main head-stream. It’s easy-read route finder can accommodate everyone, comforting users that they can arrive to work, school or general destinations on-time by guaranteed GPS signals.

Here’s Tiffany’s project page.

LED Light Bulbs are Good Illuminators

- Adam Clare 4 Comments

LED light bulbs are far kinder on the environment than old style incandescent light bulbs and they’re selling very well! Looks like good light is shining on the environment.

In the past year, though, lighting manufacturers have introduced LED bulbs in a shape Edison would recognize that put out a decent amount of good-quality light. They still don’t give off light from all sides as incumbent technologies do, but this latest generation of LEDs does a better job dispersing light, which means that you could use one (or a few) for overhead lighting.

The best part is that the prices are coming down. The 40-watt equivalent general light bulb from Lighting Science Group, which is dimmable, costs just under $20. You can buy it online now and in Home Depot stores later this month, along with the LEDs from other manufacturers, including a ceiling down light from Cree.

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Packing Healthy Lunches

- Adam Clare

The CBC has put online a question and answers interview with some dieticians about how to pack a healthy lunch for kids at school.

There is no reason why you can’t pack a healthy lunch for yourself too!

What are common misconceptions?

Cohen: A lot of people think healthy lunches taste boring, that it’s rabbit food or that it tastes all the same.

How can parents create healthy meals?

Cohen: What’s really important to take small steps. With any program you should not turn everything upside-down. The key is to be educated, talk to your kids and make small changes.

For example, use whole-wheat pasta, low-sugar yogurts and add more fruits to your child’s meals.

Instead of saying “healthy lunches,” talk about balanced eating with your kids. Once they start eating healthier and they go back to trying processed foods, they won’t like them as much.

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