Category: misc

Bottled water – a symbol of U.S. commerce


Charles Fishman of Fast Company magazine talked about his article “Message in a Bottle” with Robert Siegel on All Things Considered Yesterday.
Fishman writes that when an industry that supplies something people don’t need — an industry “built on the packaging and the presentation” — grows and thrives like the bottled-water industry, it’s important to ask how that happened and what the impact is.
Funny how as Americans we pay for something we can get for free while millions around the world don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water.
And I’m not pointing fingers – we have a case of bottled water in the fridge – as well as a Brita filtering pitcher.
Oh and here’s a great fact: 24% of the bottle water market is simply tap water repackaged by Coke and Pepsi. Dasani and Aquafina are the #1 and #2 brands of water and it’s simply re-purified tap water.

(picture above & below – a water drinking well outside Jos, Nigeria – notice the used paint bucket. it’s used to pull water from the well and to drink out of)

Does Wikipedia entry offer insight into Benoit tragedy

CNet has the scoop…

An anonymous edit to Wikipedia could provide a clue about the deaths of former professional wrestler Chris Benoit, his wife and 7-year-old son. Or it could simply be random Wikipedia pranksterism by a University of Connecticut undergraduate.
The changes were made to the Wikipedia article on Benoit, a former internationally recognized athlete who participated in World Wrestling Entertainment, hours before police discovered the bodies in the family’s suburban Atlanta home.
At 12:01 a.m. ET on Monday, the entry was changed to say he missed a championship match because of personal issues “stemming from the death of his wife Nancy.”

Quite interesting. Someone’s gonna get subpoenaed.

Ireland elects Nigerian refugee as first black Mayor

A Nigerian man who arrived in Ireland as an asylum seeker seven years ago has become the country’s first black mayor.
From the BBC:

Rotimi Adebari has been elected as first citizen of Portlaoise in County Laois.
The 43-year-old fled from Nigeria in 2000 because of religious persecution. After a few weeks, he and his family settled in the County Laois town.
In 2004, he was elected in the local elections as an independent councillor and on Thursday he became mayor.

Awesome. Congratulations! Think he’s regretting his decision to move?

If I were a cussin’ man

If I were a cussin’ man I’d say, “*&^*! That’s awesome!”

A couple Modest Mouse fans built up a huge kinkos bill and decided to make a music video using stop action photography and 4133 pictures of their favorite band.

“Myself and a couple have friends have entered the above into the Modest Mouse video competition. Using green screen footage provided by the band we cut a simple music video. We then degraded the images and printed out each frame sequentially. (all 4133 of them) We then nailed each “shot” of 50-100 posters to various structures and posts. Then using a digital SLR camera with a long exposure we frame by frame shot each poster. Oh, and theres a little video projection (again, frame by frame on the SLR) just to mix it up. There is no compositing, no shortcuts, just lots of blood, sweat and tears, and a huge Kinkos bill!”…. Max

PhotoJojo passed along the link as well as some tips on how to make your own stop action video.

Change your Google route

Now this is just too cool…
From Lifehacker:

Don’t like the driving route Google Maps doled out to you? Now you can change the driving directions by grabbing the blue route line and dragging it to create a new destination point, which will in turn create a new route.
As you drag your new destination point, the route changes on the fly to give you an idea of how your new point will change your route. It’s always been a little annoying—especially when you want to send a map to another person—when you know the default directions don’t highlight the best route, so this excellent and easy-to-use feature will certainly come in useful. To undo your changes, just right-click the new destination point and select “Remove this destination.”

Now if I could just get the map to import into my handheld GPS unit I’d be in absolute heaven.

More from Google

Linda McMahon on ABC’s Good Morning America

abcbenoit.jpg
Linda McMahon, WWE CEO, was on ABC’s Good Morning America this morning discussing the Benoit tragedy and the possibility that there may have been tension at home between Benoit and his wife, Nancy, over the education and care of their son Daniel, who was found dead along with his parents Monday afternoon.

Watch the interview online