dianovo is a relatively new site for green-minded social networking. For Valentine’s Day, they are planting one tree for every ‘eco-valentine’ sent from their site from now until Valentine’s Day. There is a small catch – basically site membership. You have to be a member to send and the e-card needs to result in a new member, but I think the few minutes it takes to sign up are worth getting a tree planted. And by ‘few minutes’ I do mean that – their sign-up involves …

Continuing with my evaluation of how to be earth-friendly and such, I wanted to see how speed affects gas mileage. 55mph has been touted for years as the most efficient speed in terms of gas consumption, so I decided to try driving a whole tank at 55mph (while commuting on roads with appropriate speed limits, of course).
Except I couldn’t do it. I can drive 60mph, but 55mph seems Way Too Slow. Ridiculous, driving-like-a-grandma slow. Every-single-person-on-the-highway-is-passing-me slow. (Caveat: the major highway I take has a 65mph limit …

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I’ve been working on the plans for building our duck house and run for quite a while now, and I’m challenging myself to see how much of the materials I can get for free. Not just free, but from discarded wood scraps and other things destined for a landfill.

Ever since watching Jesus Camp, I’ve been wondering why someone would teach a child that global warming is not real (aside from the pure politics involved). The National Arbor Day Foundation has released updated hardiness zones for planting in the US and, shock of shocks, it’s actually getting warmer in the US. The New York Times chimed in with an article on it earlier this week, stating in it that
Cameron P. Wake, a research associate professor at the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, …

Early last week we got a subscription renewal request from National Geographic – except our subscription hadn’t even started yet. We knew they’re very thorough in their subscription renewal mailings, but this was a new level of efficiency.
OK – the title over-dramatizes our life without mindless tv watching, but it was coincidental that our current subscription started the day I cancelled the satellite tv. They seemed to have paused a bit after cashing our check (a sweet $10 subscription that came out of nowhere) and sent 3 at once. …