Treehugger has a summary of the major points in The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, by the Union of Concerned Scientists. It is easy to get caught up in small insignificant issues like recycling a single aluminum can, but this book points out that the major life decisions we make, like where to live, [...]
Bruce Schneier points us to two articles about pointy long kitchen knives being dangerous. Now, as Bruce points out, the call to ban them is ridiculous, but his other comment is more interesting to a minimalist: I do a lot of cooking, and have all my life. I never use a long knife to stab. [...]
Essay a few days ago from To-Done called Geek to Live. Unfortunately, I know exactly what Keith means when he is talking about new stuff like Backpack, the current darling of obsessive task and organization geeks (which is actually pretty cool, although I don’t use it myself): It’s quite often that when a new tool [...]
Wired writes about Spray On Mud: For 8 pounds (about $14.50), buyers get 0.75 liters (.85 quarts) of genuine filthy water, bottled from hills near the company’s premises on the rural England-Wales border. The aim, says the website, is “to give your neighbors the impression you’ve just come back from a day’s shooting or fishing [...]
The NYT describes the millions of dollars Amtrak loses on their food service: Expenses for labor and food run about $83 million more than the food service brings in, according to the railroad’s inspector general. That sum, twice Amtrak’s food and beverage revenues, is without the cost of maintaining the dining cars on long-distance trains [...]
With airlines hemmoraging cash, even the pretzels are now going, saving them about $2 million. I’m looking forward to Greyhound getting into the airline business – they know a thing or two about cutting costs to the bone, especially in the cleaning and customer service departments. Seriously, I’m OK with this. It isn’t like the [...]
We were really disturbed by the non-minimalism inherent in this battery-powered insect smashing tennis racket. Then in boingboing’s followup we learned that electric bug zappers can atomize all the crap (literally) stuck to the outside of whatever you smackzap, and we were really grossed out. Luckily, treehugger comes to the rescue with a much simpler [...]
RAM is fast and expensive, and goes bye-bye when you turn off the power. Hard drives are slow, fragile and suck power, but cheap and keep their data for a loooong time. Never the twain shall meet? The difference is beginning to break down, and we’ll all be happier for it. Large .5TB (500GB) drives [...]
I want an Apple laptop that gives me the smooth Mac experience, but I have to run Windows XP applications, so I’m locked out of the iLife. I expect that I’ll have one laptop that lets me have the best of both worlds in 2-3 years – all the personal productivity and cool toys of [...]
We don’t have a car, and lugging cat litter home is a major hassle. Plus, it generates lots of waste, and get tracked all over our apartment. I’d heard of this before, but Cool Hunting has a blurb about a device to train your cat to use the toilet. Sound like a potentially messy and [...]