Archive for the ‘Education’ Category

Happy Thanksgiving: Turkey Facts as a Tribute to Those who Gave their Lives for our Stomachs

Whether you are eating turkey or tofurkey this Thanksgiving, you cannot deny the great sacrifice that turkeys are making to fill dinner plates across the nation. I figured I would honor their sacrifice here on the eve of thanksgiving, with some fun turkey facts.

  • More than 45 million turkeys are eaten in the U.S. at Thanksgiving (one sixth of all turkeys sold in the U.S. each year). American per capita consumption of turkeys has soared from 8.3 pounds in 1975 to 18.5 pounds in 1997. Ten years later, the number has dropped slightly in 2007 to 17.5 pounds (more tofurkey?)

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Environmentalist, Conservationist, Or Neither?

Darby Nelson, a member of a Minnesota state panel that advises the Legislature on fish, game and wildlife habitat spending, is a classic conservationist.

Almost 40 years after the first Earth Day, the term environmentalist is in some disrepute. Once a badge of honor for public-spirited citizens seeking to protect and clean up air, land, water and fish and wildlife, the word is now often associated with special interest politics. Is it time somehow to restore the term to its original associations or to choose another, like conservationist?

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ET Text Home? Send your own Texts Into Space

Text

Gliese 581 d. Such a catchy name eh? You probably have never heard of it. It is 20 light years away, but in late April 2009 new observations by the original discovery team concluded that the planet is within the habitable zone where liquid water, and therefore, life, could exist.

Some of you may have heard of SETI. SETI or Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, conducts legitimate science research, searching for extraterrestrial life by looking for some signature of its technology. For years people have been sending radio waves into space on the off chance that there will be a response. Beatles songs, TV shows, radio broadcasts have all been shot into space. Now an Australian website is letting you text into space.

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Spider Monkeys Invent Medicinal Tools.

aoooowwwww

For years and years, humans considered themselves the one and only makers of tools. Homo sapien literally means “wise man” because we were so intelligent that it was us humans, and us humans alone, who could even have the brain capacity to create a tool. It was considered the key feature of the genus Homo.

Well, that was until people actually decided to carefully look at other animal’s social behavior. It was not until the mid to late 1900’s that people realized “oops us humans are not the only ones to use tools.” Primatologists discovered chimpanzees creating tools for fishing termites out of their mounds, and stones for crushing nuts from their hard shell. Other researchers discovered that gorillas make beds from foliage, as well as sponges out of chewed up leaves.

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(Free) Green iPhone Apps Reviewed. Part 1: Free Apps

iPhone Cap

Before I get into this topic, please read my article on cancer dedicated to someone special to me, each view constitutes a larger donation to cancer research. http://planetsave.com/blog/2009/07/27/help-me-fight-cancer/

The “green movement” is gaining some steam in the general public, and hey I am all for it.  As long as it doesn’t become a fad that fades away into a footnote like slap bracelets and Crocks. The Apple iPhone is the hottest smart phone going today, and with over 65,000 applications in the iTunes App Store and counting, the usefulness of this pocket device goes up all the time. This can only mean that there will be green apps on the iPhone, and of course there will be some clunkers. With all these apps floating around there must be some gems as well. I’ll give some apps a try and tell you what I think, so you, my loyal reader, doesn’t have to.

(Part 2: Paid Apps, will be coming soon, so check back at PlanetSave.com)

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The EU and MTV Team Up: Copenhagen Prelude


The European Union (EU) and MTV are working together to get young people involved in the climate debate. The major entities started their “Play to Stop – Europe for Climate” campaign this month. Working with international music artists and other international celebrities, this is a major campaign to mobilize the youth around the topic of climate change, and especially for the Copenhagen Climate Conference in December.

The campaign targets 11 EU countries — Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The campaign will involve celebrities from the various participating countries.
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London Grassroots Activists Getting Attention


A new organization, starting off in South London, but open to working in other areas as well, is making links in the green world on the grassroots level and is getting some serious attention.
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Top 5 Reasons why Space Exploration is Important for the World

Hubble

July 20th, 2009 was the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11’s historic flight to the moon, where astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first human beings to walk on the moon. 40 years ago, space flight inspired such awe that astronauts were hailed as heroes and celebrities by men, women, and children alike. 40 years later none of us, besides the most avid space fanatic, would likely to be able to name one astronaut in service today.

Despite the tragedies of Space Shuttle Challenger, and later Columbia, where the world is shocked into being reminded of the inherit dangers of sitting on 1 million gallons of rocket fuel, or re-entering the earth’s atmosphere at 1,870 miles per hour. We all see space flight as mundane because the vast majority of space flights since Apollo 11, have been mostly conducting seemingly routine scientific experiments. Now don’t get me wrong, I believe in the importance of science in space, but these experiments don’t exactly inspire awe in the general population like, oh say, a manned mission to Mars would. We also don’t have the fever of beating those damned Ruskies because they might go to space and blow us all up, which we had during the height of the cold war when Apollo 11 touched down on the lunar Sea of Tranquility.

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Climate Ride — Bicycle from NYC to DC!


Join other bicyclists or support a bicyclist to help combat global warming this Fall. For the second year in a row, bicyclists (and non-bicyclists) will join together for a climate conference “on wheels” — the Brita Climate Ride.
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Nike Engages in Anti-Car Competition: BEAT GASOLINE


Nike has a financial investment in getting people to live more active lifestyles, but it is broadening its agenda a bit with a new campaign to encourage people to “Beat Gasoline” and use more muscle power for their transportation needs. In partnership with Youth Noise, the initiative is sending this video to athletically minded kids, informing them that “air pollution causes 2 million premature deaths in cities around the world” and encouraging them to create and enter a video, and vote on vidoes, for it’s Beat Gasoline challenge. The initiative is distributing strong anti-car information through it’s campaign videos, such as: “DRIVING A CAR IS THE MOST POLLUTING ACT THE AVERAGE CITIZENS COMMITS.” Good criminalistic language there.

The competition has weekly winners and a grand prize winner.

Five Beat Gasoline campaign videos are here:

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