Green Giant

Some very interesting green initiatives by my fave love to hate big box behemoth - Wal-Mart. As any of you who know me probably know, I grew up in a Canadian retail family and therefore have a big hate-on for Wally World as we fondly call it. I have many issues with their employee policies around triple-split shifts, inadequate pay and their shady PR practices. I also think they are largely responsible for pushing this "lower price" mentality on people to the point where everyone would gladly drive farther to save nine cents on whatever cheap product it is they want...only to be hugely disapointed when they discover how poorly the product is made to get it to them at that 'great' price or what it's driving those suppliers to do to stay afloat. I also have issues with Wal-Mart coming into small towns and putting all the other small mom and pop shops out of business only to close up and leave town. I have issues with them also bullying employees/stores where unions are trying to be formed to protect worker's rights. I do not shop at Wal-Mart, and haven't for years, because of this and much more.


However, I have to admit that they carry a lot of weight. Wal-Mart is the largest retailer in the world and have a lot of buying power and influence. Take a moment to read this article on Wal-Mart's greening efforts. They've realized that there are financial benefits to going green. I'm not sure I'm ready to drop my boycott and start shopping there yet, but at least they're heading in the right direction, and hopefully setting a green path for other retailers to follow.

Good News and Bad News from Starbucks

To be honest, I don't know how applicable this is in Canada, as I was under the impression that Canadian cows do not get these hormones, but I made need to brush up on my homework. The story here discusses Starbucks move to hormone-free milk (yay!) but how this means they will also not sell organic milk anymore (boo!).

How about we just stick to Bridgehead instead?

Roll Up Your Sleeves, America!

http://www.relocalize.net/u_s_oil_dependencies


By the wonderful Art Spiegelman

Environ-mental

Great article here about a book on greening your life, without the depressing serious 'tude.

Excerpt from the article:

And if if you think you're pretty eco-conscious already, there is still some fun facts to learn. Here's some of my favorites:

• "Some 20 billion diapers are buried in US landfills per year, representing about 7 billion pounds of garbage."
• You can flush dog poop down the toilet but not cat poop (and ironically, it seems you can potty train cats, but not dogs -- drat!).
• "There is a Green Wi-Fi project, which has developed a solar-powered wireless router that can run for up to four weeks even in prolonged periods of gray skies."
• Burning a single gallon of gas produces 20 pounds of C02.
• Lunch boxes are hipper than tupperware.
• "Americans are said to throw away enough aluminum in three months to rebuild our entire commercial air fleet."
• "The average dishwasher uses about 15 gallons of water per load, while the average dish-washer (that would be you) uses about 5 gallons of water per minute at the sink.
• The US airline industry uses 53 million gallons of jet fuel each day.

I don't see it on the Octopus Book website yet, but Chapters and Amazon have it if your local indie book store doesn't.

Guess who's back?

So....I'm back.

I stopped posting here seriously almost a year ago. I blame facebook. I'd just post up links, funny stories and the occasional comment so easily to facebook, that I figured there was no point in repeating it here, as I think most people who read this are people I know. However, I still have been getting statistic reports every week and it boggles my mind that there are still (a few) people who just stumble onto the site. Also, I come across so many interesting articles etc. that I want to share, that I inundate my "friends" on facebook and lose most of the posts as the page only fits so many entries.

So, Stealing Happy Hours is back. I'm sure I should reorganize it somehow...but for now it's going to remain the melange of articles and interesting links and occasional comments on everything from eco-friendliness, to travel, to shopping, to music, to activism, to politics, to humour, to books, to food and photos.

Please send me any comments or suggestions!

Connect

From City Blog today:

We must never lose that feeling of connectedness, a necessity once
described like this by the great American novelist James Baldwin: “The Earth is
always shifting. The light is always changing. Generations do not cease to be
born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they
have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children
cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith
with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."

American author and clergyman Henry van Dyke: "Time is too slow for those
who wait, too swift for those who grieve, too long for those who would rejoice.
But for those who love, time is eternal."

Elie Wiesel wrote this about the blackest night a human being can know: "I
have learned two lessons in my life. First, there are no significant literary,
psychological or historical answers to human tragedy, only moral ones. Second,
just as despair can come to one another only from other human beings, hope too
can be given to one only by other human beings."

Eliot Spitzer, who took office in January and spoke at the 9/11
commemoration for the first time as governor, said:
"We stand on this
terrible threshold remembering all that happened. We feel today as we felt then,
that we belong to one another, not because we are inhabitants of the same city
or same country but because we are all part of the same human story, part of one
community of our fellow human beings. John Donne wrote these immortal words
centuries ago: "No man is an island, entire of itself. Every man is a piece of
the continent, a part of the main, any man's death diminishes me because I am
involved in mankind and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls. It
tolls for thee."

As the poet William Blake wrote centuries ago, "Can I see another's
woe, and not be in sorrow too?"

Steveo's new blog: Selective Focus

Do you like photography? Do you like my brother? If you answers yes to at least one of those questions you should check out my bro's new photo blog here.

Stop Your Junk Mail

What a great idea!

STOP YOUR JUNK MAIL

Did you know more than 100 million trees are destroyed each year to produce junk mail? About 28 billion gallons of water are also wasted, and the energy used to produce and dispose of junk mail exceeds 2.8 million cars.

For $41, 41 Pounds will do all the leg-work to reduce your junk mail by 80-95% for five years, and will donate $15 to a charity of your choice. When you sign up, 41 Pounds will contact direct marketing organizations to remove your name from their lists. This includes credit card applications, coupon mailers, sweepstakes entries, magazine offers and insurance promotions, as well as any catalogs you specify. Save time! Save trees! Save the planet!

The Facebook generation: Changing the meaning of privacy

The Facebook generation:
Changing the meaning of privacy

May 24, 2007

Sabrina Saccoccio

When Nadine Kuehnhold began searching for grade school classmates, her first crush Brent Hewko wasn't yet on Facebook.

Three weeks later he appeared.

"I sent him a message on a Monday telling him how awesome it was to have found him after so many long years," explained Kuehnhold, a young professional in her 30s. "He replied on Friday, and no sooner, because he was on a business trip. We ended up speaking on MSN for eight hours and meeting up the next day at a pub."

The couple that had flirted with love 18 years earlier is now in a relationship.

Kuehnhold said she's fairly open with her private life, and doesn't worry about posting the details of it on her Facebook profile: "Well, I don't have that many issues with it."

She is among a generation of younger people open to expressing themselves online, especially when it comes with such benefits.

This is in contrast to the previous baby boomers, who while young trusted no one over 30. With a picket as an extension of self, they marched in the name of civil liberties, fighting for constitutional rights to be respected. This meant ensuring governments wouldn't abuse their powers by meddling in their private lives.

That generation has grown up to hold credit cards close and mistrust online sales. Their kids, meanwhile, use social networking tools that, in essence, divulge enough info for others to access one's coveted plastic.

Creation of a surveillance society

This notion is troubling to Kathryn Montgomery, a professor in the school of communication at American University.

In her book Generation Digital, published this month, Montgomery takes a look at how new forms of technology affect the lives of children and adolescents.

In times of crisis when civil liberties are often trumped, such as after Sept. 11, access to personal information can be invaluable to governments.

If access to cached files of a teenager's drunken escapades exists, what happens when that teenager grows up and wants to run for office?

"The kind of apparatus that's being put into place by the corporations and the marketers is creating a very, very powerful surveillance society for the future. And I think people may begin to take that for granted," Montgomery explained.

But Montgomery has also found there's a positive side to these tools. Some kids use them to get acquainted with difficult social rituals, like using instant messaging to ask for a date or to break up with someone: "Now it's true that they're not doing it face-to-face, but maybe they wouldn't have gotten up the nerve to be honest about breaking up without it."

A new obsession with image

On Facebook and MySpace, profiles and photos tend to be changed often, sometimes daily or weekly. Pictures posted are self-snapped from above, coyly in the mirror or even while wearing a bikini on the beach.

Pre-Facebook generations posed for photos with high necklines, hands in lap and ankles crossed, while Victorian era photographs show evidence of people not even self-aware enough to look into the camera.

But the current younger generation is self-focused and image-conscious like never before. Growing up already tends to be a narcissistic process; kids go through an identity exploration where they think the world revolves around them.

As with a diary or gossiping on the playground, teenagers are naturally drawn to a tool like Facebook that allows them to vent.

While Facebook is a convenient outlet and even a social conduit, Montgomery explained it should be noted that digital companies create these tools knowing kids will eat them up.
"What I've found from looking into the industry, the way it has developed and the digital content services, is that they're purposely created to tap into these developmental processes. So that in some ways reinforces the self-obsession," Montgomery said.

Facebook has become a place to discuss a recent crush or the teacher getting on your nerves.
A program installed in September 2006 launched an automatic profile ticker of this kind of info. It tracked people's every virtual move — a new favourite band added or even a change in relationship status — and fed it back to their friends.

After complaints about too much info being shared, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg worked with programmers to give control back to the users. By allowing them to set their own privacy levels, they regained control of what information they shared.

Hopefully you were smiling

Still, there are stories of student suspensions and employers declining job applicants after gaining access to Facebook profiles.

American companies have reportedly asked college students to do internet checks of potential employees.

Facebook "friends" can upload photos of you and "tag" them, a process that allows all the people in your network to see them. If a colleague is in your network, suddenly they have new insight into your private life.

A Calgary lawyer in her 20s who didn't want her name published was hesitant about co-worker requests on Facebook. As a professional, she feels more sensitive about disclosing her private life than some of her peers.

"If you're like me, I only accept a certain select few people I have a history with and who are actually friends — people I see on a regular basis. That's why I think it is OK to put some of the pictures up that I have," she said.

Facebook has become the most-used photo-sharing site. In the past eight months, members have jumped from nine million to 23 million worldwide, making it the sixth most-accessed site, with 60 per cent of users logging in every day.

A long way from love-ins and communes. The new generation's culture tends toward self-disclosure, spying, voyeurism — and some noted perks.

"It's weird, to be honest with you," said Kuehnhold of reconnecting with her earliest schoolmates. "I feel closer to them now than I did back in high school or grade school."

Bilingual babies keep ability to discern languages from visual cues

I've always wondered about this...

Bilingual babies keep ability to discern
languages from visual cues

Last Updated: Thursday, May 24, 2007 2:22 PM ET

CBC News

Babies as young as four months old can tell whether a speaker has
switched languages from visual cues alone, but only those who grow up in a
bilingual home seem to hang on to the ability, researchers in British Columbia
have found.
In Friday's issue of the journal Science, Whitney Weikum, a
doctoral student in neuroscience at the University of British Columbia, and her
colleagues report the results of their tests on infants who were shown video
clips of bilingual speakers.
The caregivers wore darkened glasses to prevent
influencing the babies, who were watching silent video clips of bilingual
speakers.

The study is the first to show young babies are prepared to tell
languages apart using only visual information, Weikum said.

The researchers tested infants at four, six and eight months of age
from English-only homes and six and eight-month-olds from bilingual English and
French homes. Each group was shown silent video clips of bilingual speakers, who
recited sentences first in one language and then switched to the other.

At four and six months, babies paid closer attention and watched the
video for longer when the speakers switched languages, which suggests the
infants were able to discern the change from visual information alone.

While six-month-olds from monolingual and bilingual environments could
tell languages apart visually, by eight months of age, only babies from
bilingual homes who were familiar with both languages continued to be able to do
so, the researchers found.

"This suggests
that by eight months, only babies learning more than one language need to
maintain this ability," Weikum said.

"Babies who only hear and see one language
don't need this ability, and their sensitivity to visual language information
from other languages declines."