>> Walk Pico Blvd. from end to end with the Franklin Avenue bloggers. The second Great Los Angeles Walk Returns Nov. 17!
>> Santa Monica house prices: $705/ sq.ft.. Find out real estate, crime stats, school info and more for all areas of LA at LALife.
Your turn to help me –
What are you doing for Step It Up? Here’s the 2-parter I wrote ’bout this grassroots environmental action day –
I’m planning to go to the Global Warming Rally in front of the Federal Building at 11000 Wilshire Blvd., mainly because the event’s close to me and easily accessible via Metro 720. The schedule:
11 am - 12 pm: Welcome. Optional yoga. Samples of ACTIVATE vitamin water.
12 - 1 pm: Lunch break. A group’ll walk to Native Foods for take-out.
1 - 3 pm: A speaker from a green company, plus perhaps a free screening of a movie. Both TBD, so I’ve no clue as to how exciting either will be.
3 - 4 pm: Closing ceremony.
I’m planning to go — with Chocolate Chip Zucchini cookies, with farmers’ market zucchini, of course — in hand. Might you be there too, with your own home-baked concoction?
Latest from Emerald City, my enviro-blog at LAtimes.com
First, about the AltCarExpo: The before, the pre-party, and the event itself.
Then some Metro stuff:
>> Metro’s first ‘interactive chat’: Not so interactive or chatty. I thought we’d have an online convo with a whole bunch of people going back and forth, but alas, every comment made went through moderation before popping up. It wasn’t so much a chat as a moderated Q and A.
>> Metro Westside meetings: Yes, the Westside wants the subway. I went to one of these “Early Public Scoping Meetings” at the Beverly Hills Public Library, along with 60 to 70 other people. And all of them, except one Sandy from Westwood, wanted the purple line to run along Wilshire all the way to the beach.
>> Bring the Expo Line to Santa Monica. Now that the public meetings about extending the subway to the Westside are over, meetings about bringing the Expo line from Culver City to Santa Monica — a.k.a. Expo Phase 2 — are starting up.
In other news:
>> Bike as sound system — or mini Golden Gate Bridge — or …. Not content with just plain old biking, people are bike hacking — turning bikes into strange machine-art-sound hybrids and such.
>> Lindsey Lohas and killer possums: YouTube meets funny enviro-videos. Tired of doom and gloom films, or worse, just really really boring docu-type programming on TV? Then waste more time on YouTube, because now we’re getting lil short video series that’re more entertaining and funny.
Plus — a couple linky posts:
>> Daily Downers: Disposable undies, flat green noodles and secret pesticides
>> Daily Downers: Asthma, smog, and auto emissions
A twice-weekly sharing of eco-shwag.
Yet another one. They don’t stop!
This tote’s a roomy and sturdy dirtBag from Happy Monkey Planet.
Organic cotton, made by Enviro-Tote.
Comment or email by Sunday to get into the drawing, which’ll happen Monday. US addresses only.
>> A stolen laptop feels like a stolen life, says one woeful burglary victim. So I’m leaning away from getting a physical hard drive now –
>> A guy lives by the Bible for a year, discovers love for white clothing. “The Bible at one point says that your garments should always be white, and wearing white affected me. I was in a better mood wearing white. I felt happier, more pure, like I was about to play in the semifinals at Wimbledon.” This reminds me to pick up my white trench coat from the drycleaner’s –
>> Every bit of The Daily Show ever’s now online — and meticulously tagged for easy searching. (via Machinist)
>> Fair trade coffee dissected in Fresh Cup. A relatively levelheaded look at the complicated world of fair trade coffee today, with a glimpse at fair trade certification, company-specific models, organic certification, and “just trust me” type marketing. (via Coffee and Conservation)
>> Blogging’ll go extinct in 2023 (PDF) so I guess I’ll have to think about a second career once I turn 45 or so, especially as retirement’ll go extinct in like 2015. The timeline’s based on Future Files: A History of the Next 50 Years. (via kottke)
>> LA County sees a 17% drop in the # of homeless people since 2005. Santa Monica sees an even bigger 24% decrease. “This year’s count also found a 30% decrease in the number of people directly enumerated on Santa Monica’s streets–from 949 in 2005 to 661.” Eric Richardson at blogdowntown doubts the numbers though.
>> DIY-ing keeps you from getting depressed?. Least depressing careers include installation, maintenance and repair fields; most depressing careers include personal care and service work. Blogging is not mentioned.
Latest from Emerald City, my enviro-blog at LAtimes.com
>> Green travel to the airport. Flyaway with me –
>> Ed Begley Jr. wants to help replace your toilet. Ed’s the first host for Home Depot’s “Celebrity Workshop Series,” giving out green DIY tips for your home. The next couple weeks’ll bring you the sexiest of green projects: “Replacing a toilet” and “Creating a compost.”
>> Q&A: Green Hotels in Beverly Hills. Question: Do you know of any “green” hotels in the Beverly Hills area? — Graham. Answer: No
Plus — a couple linky posts:
>> Greenlist: Safer toys, less safe earbuds
>> Greenlist: Nice day
Latest from Emerald City, my enviro-blog at LAtimes.com
>> Our strange relationship with urban wildlife. Latest in strange human-made post-modern nature conundrums: Should we help animal cross over the 405 Freeway by building a special path to the tune of $455,000 to $1.4 million?
>> How to work the farmers market, zero-waste style. I spent all of 15 minutes at the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market on Wednesday — and left with $17 worth of yellow peaches. Clearly, I’m not dealing with the looming end of peach season very well.
>> Your most bizarro eco questions have already been answered. I know the questions that’ve been keeping you up at night: Is it more eco to pee in the shower or the toilet? Will my football fanaticism kill the polar bears?
>> 7 steps to a greenish ghoulish Halloween. 1. Pick up a cute pumpkin at your local farmers market! I got mine for a buck —
>> Water, conservation, and tattle tales. Are we so idiotic that we won’t actually start conserving water until it starts gouging our wallets?
Plus — a couple linky posts:
>> Daily Downers: Milk-curdling screams
>> Daily Downers: Curiosity killed the monkey
>> Greenlist: Gore, Morgan Freeman, Brad Pitt, and more ficus trees
>> Greenlist: Interviews and changing consumerism
A twice-weekly sharing of eco-shwag.
Today’s giveaway is an Ironweed DVD copy of Small Town Gay Bar, a documentary that profiles several gay bars in the Bible Belt, mainly in Mississippi. You see bars that’re doing well, bars that’ve been shut down, and bars that’re getting reincarnated — and their patrons who describe these bars as safe havens of sorts that provide the sole fun outlet in their lives.
You also hear from the gay-hating leader of the Christian Coalition in Mississippi — who wants to convince people once and for all that god doesn’t love everyone, but instead hates and abhors some people. Scary — and fascinating how some people derive meaning in their lives by believing in a god of hatred….
The DVD’s bundled with 2 short videos: Out in the Heartland, a 19-minute documentary that looks at the reactions of families in Kentucky — both gay and straight — when an anti-same-sex marriage amendment’s mounted. Clay Pride: Being Clay in America, is a cute 4-min claymations that uses “clay” as a fluid term to stand for anything “different.” Clay has to deal with coming out as Clay, fear of the Clay Clay Clay, etc.
Comment or email by Friday to get into the drawing for the DVD, which happens Saturday. US addresses only.
Your turn to help me –
So writing on Emerald City, combined with a trip to Chicago last weekend, has totally killed my blogging output here. I can’t seem to catch up — but I miss you –
Anyway — While toting my laptop around halfway across the country, letting it get x-rayed multiple times, I started thinking I really, really need to get an external hard drive to back up my stuff — mainly my music, like the new Radiohead album.
What should I be looking for in a backup hard drive, aside from the amount of memory it offers? The wikipedia article, while v. detailed, is not actually useful in helping me figure out what info’s actually important… I have a Dell XPS M140, if that makes a difference –
