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 …

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, …

What would Ma do?
Lately that is the question I am asking myself whenever I am cooking. And, no, I am not talking about my own mother. I’m talking about Mrs. Ingalls, of course. Ever since I finished reading The Long Winter, I seem to be filtering many things through the eyes of Ma. Yesterday’s example: I had a package of blueberries in the fridge that were a good 3 weeks old. For some reason, they hadn’t gotten moldy. They were just mostly very dry and very shriveled. Now, there was …