Every year, every automotive writer in the US goes nuts over the car ads that are premiered at the Super Bowl. It's the single most-watched event in the year, and ads cost a cool $4 million for a 30-second spot.
This is apparently such a big deal that the ads merit being "leaked" before the big game. There are official ads for the ads. And teasers for the ads for the ads. You get my drift: there is a lot of hype surrounding these ads.
Welcome to the January 2014 Natural Living Blog Carnival: Starting the New Year Off Green.
This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Natural Living Blog Carnival hosted by Happy Mothering and The Pistachio Project through the Green Moms Network. This month, our members are reflecting on the successes they had from last year, and setting goals for themselves this year. Check out all of the posts to get ideas on how you can start your New Year off green!
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A new year! And not just any year: the coming Chinese new year rings in the year of the Horse. And not just any horse: 2014 is the year of the Yang Wood Horse.
Yeah. I didn't know what that meant, either, until I read this article by Karen Abler Carrasco of the Western School of Feng Shui, which starts with the following words:
"There might not be a bigger shift of energies in the entire 60 year wheel of Chinese astrology than this one coming up – the shift from two Water years of deep introspection to the fast-paced spurt of extroverted forward propulsion that the Wood Horse brings. Hold on to your hats, folks, and realize that you won’t be able to, nor will you want to, slow your horses in the New Year ahead!"
Here's a car I would drive: the Nissan Note. To be precise, one with that defiantly aubergine body. And the 1.5L diesel that I estimate will get around 60 mpg.
It's a good-looking hatchback with nice lines, room for five, and decent space in the back, although it will certainly not fit a full-size cello across the trunk, indeed not even a 3/4 cello. You can fold down the back seat in a 40-60 configuration; the seats don't fold flat: that's okay to move two cellos, but maybe not a large flat pack from Ikea.
Ah, winter. The season when all cars turn white, regardless of what colour they had when they left the factory.
Could it be chromatic sympathy with the hoary landscape? Ach no, it's more to do with the reality of driving on icy roads. As soon as the first snow falls, out come the trucks piled high with road salt. The spreader gets activated, and the roads are covered with a sprinkling of coarse rock salt, sometimes mixed with sand for added grit, sometimes with more unexpected ingredients like beet juice.
Wait: beet juice?
Okay, hold your Vitamix. Before you start experimenting with spreading veggie juices on your driveway, let's step back a bit. Let's go back to rock salt and ask how that helps snowy or icy roads in the first place.
Who is your favourite for the Australian Open this week? Williams? Azarenka? Nadal? Djokovic? Enjoy them while they last. --Better yet, implore them to stop playing. Before real tragedies happen.
Photo by Vladsinger.
The 2014 Australian Open started under impossible conditions: temperatures have soared all over Australia, and in Melbourne it was 42C today, or 108F. At least it's not humid. But it is, shall we say, non-optimal for athletes to perform at their top. This tournament has been marked with players (and one ball boy) collapsing on the court.
We hear a lot about how bad the pollution is in China: how you can't see across Tiananmen Square; how children can't play outside; how measurements of particle pollution are off scale.
But change is coming, and like so many things in China, it does so in a big way. China is becoming a leader in renewable energy generation. The massive scale at which they deploy wind and solar energy farms play no small role in the precipitous drop of the cost of clean energy worldwide.
It's a transition. A good transition. And the people working to make that transition happen are fiercely proud of their work. Why not? I would be, too.
One young man working in a factory that produces wind generators decided to skip the traditional bridal photos at the park or the temple, and instead took his new bride to a wind farm installed by his company. In their wedding pictures, she is in his arms, radiant, and her frothy wedding dress is trilling to the breeze that powers the turbines. It's hard to find a more auspicious image of a new beginning.
[Click on photo for BBC segment on wind energy generation in China].
As they say, shift happens.
You may also like:
1. Energy Transition: Moving Into a Better Future
2. We Need Good News on Climate Change
3. Ten Ways to Calm Car Traffic
Freeze especially your children's animals.
Before you call the SPCA on me, understand that I'm talking about stuffed animals. Those who get loved so much. Who get carried around, petted and hugged. And - sometimes - left behind in dusty corners. Or get loved by the dog or cat (or, for that matter, serve as a nice comfy pillow for dads).
All that loving makes a stuffed animal collect dander, and therefore dust mites. Pretty soon, the beloved animal turns into a fearsome source of allergens.
While the preferred way to get rid of dust mites is by laundering in hot water, you can't very well do that with stuffed animals - even if you did get permission for such a dastardly deed as drowning them in the washing machine.
But there's another way: dust mites don't survive freezing.
So every winter, I wait for a good hard freeze. Then I organize a "camping trip" for the stuffed animals. It's a grand party: they all get to come and spend the night outside. Blankets are welcome too (it will all get frozen by the morning, anyway).
How to prevent real animals from kidnapping your children's beloved stuffed ones? Why, put the camping trip in the car.
Arrange the animals according to their preferences, each close to its favourite buddies. Admonish them not to make a ruckus. Then wish them goodnight, and close the car door (No, this is the animals' private camping trip, children get to sleep in their own beds. Inside the house).
A die-hard nerd like me isn't typically into "community". The image of the solitary scientist working late nights in the lab on a world-changing idea is iconic in my field, sort of the geek version of the lone ranger.
But in my middle age, I am waking up to the possibility that there is enormous value in community. Even, that community may make the difference between perdition and resilience.
If you look at stories of disasters - the real, on-the-ground stories, not what you see on the evening news which follows a mythical storyline - you find that what makes a real difference in the immediate aftermath of an earthquake or a hurricane is the community that springs up to help neighbours.
Rebecca Solnit's book "A Paradise Built in Hell" shows that amazing feats of altruism are accomplished in the wake of disasters, and supports sociological research that finds that, unlike the Hollywood stereotype, people hit by disaster as resourceful, kind, and very, very generous to neighbours and even total strangers.
“There are 1011 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it's only a hundred billion. It's less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.” ― Richard P. Feynman
One wonders what the Nobel-prize winning physicist may have said about today's US debt, which is counted in the 1013 dollars, or a hundred times more than there are stars in galaxy. One suspects that this "citizen scientist" would have some sharp remarks on the low acceptance in the US of climate science.
The argument against starting that fight sooner rather than later has always been that the amounts of money that need to be spent are daunting.
Fans of Star Trek have delighted in the Audi ad that pits old Spock (Leonard Nimoy in a Mercedes CLS 550C) against young Spock (Zachary Quinto in an Audi S7 hatchback). The CLS is portrayed as old-school luxury, while the S7 is presented as a 23rd century starship. In the end, though, both are trumped by the self-driving Audi TTS (developed at Stanford).
"The Challenge"
Speculation abounds, as it has always, about what the car of the future looks like. "The car of the future will be electric. Powered by fuel cells. By hydrogen. By a small on-board nuclear reactor. It will look all curvy. It will look like a Lamborghini, only more 'space age'. It will be self-driving. It can fly."
Personally, I have no truck with the looks of the future car. I don't care if it looks like a box car. Or rather, perhaps I would prefer it to look like a box car (more on that below). Here is CelloMom's vision of our future transportation - or perhaps more appropriately called wishful thinking.
You know you're in trouble when it's been snowing, you're out on the road - and more than half of the other vehicles on the road are snow ploughs.
Under those conditions the wisest thing to do is to stay at home. Build a snowman or an igloo with your children, bake bread, make some slow food, settle with a good book and a cup of hot chocolate while your children shovel the driveway. Enjoy the day. Take a vacation day if you have to. An employer that requires its employees to struggle their way into work under unsafe road conditions is not a good employer.
If you absolutely must go out into the great white world, remember that your tires are your best friends, more than they usually are.
The storm that has hit the northwestern coasts of Europe today is starting to be known in the Netherlands as St. Nicholas Storm, or sinterklaasstorm (like the Germans, the Dutch also love to string their words together. Back when telegrams were priced by the word, it was cheaper that way).
The KNMI, the Dutch equivalent of NOAA, has called code red, which means you should stay indoors unless you have real business outside. On the coast, winds up to 11 Beaufort are expected, pretty high even in wind-blown Holland. Some flights have been cancelled. Train traffic has been stopped in the northern half of the country. There are reports of cargo trucks being blown over.
This is terrible news for Dutch children, who are eagerly awaiting a visit from St. Nicholas, their patron saint who, as legend has it, makes it to the Low Lands by steam boat, and tours the country's roofs on his white horse on the eve of his saint's day to distribute sweets and oranges from Spain.
