Searching for Tao, 7573 Kilometres from Home

August 29, 2006 00:37 +0000 | Nifty Links 0

I've not been paying attention to a lot of my RSS feeds lately, but today I found these two gems on GroovyGreen and wanted to share:

No matter what you may think of his vehicular preferences, Arnold Schwarzenegger is definitely an environmentalist... at least in his politics. He's just signed into law new legislation that will encourage and enforce more solar electric power generation across the state of California.

The bill, which cleared the state Senate last week, calls for the installation of 1 million rooftop solar panels on homes, businesses, farms, schools and public buildings by 2018.

Complete story is on Reuters via GroovyGreen.

The second story they had included a cool invention that lets you recycle "grey water", (that's water you run down the drain and bathtub, but not your toilet) and re-use it to water the garden/crops in your backyard. Created as a work-around for water usage bans during heat waves, they're calling it The Ban Beater.

Is it just me or is it kinda sad that water had to be restricted before this was invented? Why the hell aren't all buildings built to flush with grey water in the first place?

Initial story via GroovyGreen.

August 29, 2006 00:28 +0000 | Nifty Links 0

I really don't understand why this whole Snakes on a Plane phenomenon is funny. I do however know that it makes me laugh every time.

Via Ted's blog, I give you All Your Snakes Are Belong To Us.

August 28, 2006 20:28 +0000 | Nifty Links 0

Hey check it out, there's lots of famous Daniel Quinn's out there. Aside from the author and the NDP candidate, there's also the Canadian comedian!

I guess I'm in good company :-)

July 16, 2006 16:29 +0000 | Nifty Links Society & Culture 0

I found this on Bill's blog and wanted to share. I wonder if Nintendo had any idea that they were creating a cultural icon when they created that game...

June 21, 2006 01:26 +0000 | Nifty Links Society & Culture 3

I just saw a brilliant piece on throwawayyourtv.com called Bullshit: Creationism. In Penn's words, it's a biased, but fair look at the "debate" surrounding the wingnuts trying to force "Intelligent Design" to be taught in schools.

The site itself looks kinda neat too, though I just discovered it today. I encourage a peek if you have a few minutes.

June 01, 2006 18:20 +0000 | Nifty Links Society & Culture 0

The WWF has organised an online petition to garner support for it's fight against the Conservatives to keep Canada's commitment to Kyoto real. Please Sign it. Normally, I don't care about internet petitions, but in this case, the names are going to people who have real clout in making policy in this country. In this case, I think it really means something.

Thanks to Colin for the link.

May 29, 2006 15:17 +0000 | Nifty Links Society & Culture 0

If we built memorials at the start of wars instead of at the end, they wouldn't get so big

Thanks Freeway Blogger.

May 29, 2006 01:52 +0000 | Nifty Links 0

At Taavi's birthday party tonight I was introduced to Robot Chicken. I'm not sure if you call it parody or what, but it's fucking hilarious.

On a related note, Noreen sent me these Star Trek parodies that made me laugh my ass off: [ 1 ] "yeah white boy, it's non-fat", [ 2 ], [ 3 ], [ 4 ]

May 26, 2006 02:37 +0000 | Nifty Links 2

Based on the original Badger Badger flash movie, I give you Bananna Phone!.

Link courtesy of Cute Overload.

Edit: Sadly, it would appear that the amount of visits the site has been enduring has caused the Banana Phone to be pulled to conserve bandwidth. The site says that it should be back up in a few days though.

Re-Edit: I missed it before, but the flash cartoon was mirrored here! Gods bless the Internet ;-)

May 20, 2006 17:19 +0000 | Nifty Links Society & Culture 0

Some time ago, someone got it in their head that instead of making access to the water easy, Toronto should build an 8 lane highway right along the waterfront. Now, if you want to visit the water, you have to either find a pedestrian overpass (there aren't many) or walk passt the various stadiums and their parking lots, under the mammoth and noisy gardener and across Lakeshore Boulevard and into the backyards of some of the most expensive condos in Canada to see the water. It's pretty stupid.

And so, the Gardiner has come to be seen as an icon for this stupidity. When people talk about "The Liveable city" or urban design, the Gardiner almost always comes up. So what does a lefty mayor do when elections are coming up?

He fires a canon at it

Sure it wasn't actually armed, and yes it's just a political stunt to solidify his base of activist voters, but it's still damn cool.