I haven’t bought new clothes in years! And as a lawyer who frequently must dress to impress, you’d think this would be hard, right? Not at all. I have two thrift stores in my areas that I “pillage” every few months. I find designer names occasionally or at the very least, a simple, elegant and professional outfit. The funny part is, I’m often complimented on my clothing.
The way I see it: there’s enough clothing on this planet. Why buy new stuff? Use what’s out there. I also really enjoy going to second hand stores: I feel like I’ve really scored when I find something cool and the money I save can go toward things in my life I genuinely need.
This philosophy has also transferred to other aspects of my life. I just repaired an appliance that I normally would have tossed (it was so simple.) I don’t feel the need for “new stuff” as much in general. I feel alright with what I have.
As the pressure increases to find a strategy over the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, an alternative effort - ‘Project Pantyhose’ – to help absorb the spill is under away.
Waitresses from restaurant chain Hooters will be voluntarily donating their torn pantyhose – to make booms stuffed with hair, fur and fleece to absorb the spill.
Across its 380 sites in the US, Hooters expects to collect of 100,000 pairs of pantyhose, which could ultimately absorb one million gallons of oil in the Gulf, if the booms are re-used eight times, the average life of a boom.
The collected pantyhose will be shipped to environmental agencies and non-profit organisations Indigo Oceanic and Matter of Trust to make the booms. The booms will be grouped together and sent out into the Gulf to absorb and block the oil from reaching the coast, protecting harbours and marshlands.
There are roughly 15,000 Hooters Girls in the US and their uniform includes pantyhose. The life expectancy of a pair of pantyhose worn by Hooters Girls at work is about 2-3 shifts. Hooters said it supports the use of natural fibres as a non-toxic, renewable resource to aid in the oil spill clean up efforts.
All of Hooters are collecting the pantyhose for a 4-week period to create 15 miles of booms.
The restaurant company also serves a number of community projects under its Hooters Community Endowment Fund (HOO.C.E.F.), which raises money for local and national charities such as the Jimmy V Foundation for Cancer Research, Make-A-Wish Foundation, the U.S.O., Special Olympics, American Diabetes Association, Juvenile Diabetes Foundation and Muscular Dystrophy Association. Since 1992, HOO.C.E.F. has raised more than $8 million for these and other worthwhile organizations.
A portion of this money comes from a VIP grand opening party each location holds to benefit a local charity, generating thousands annually.
Bats… these fascinating, furry, flying mammals do humanity a great service by eating uncounted numbers of mosquitoes and other insect pests, so why not help the little guys out by furnishing them with suitable homes to roost in? These 10 bizarre bat houses may look somewhat creepy to us but to our winged friends, they’re home sweet home!
This unusual looking cone-shaped structure was once a pigeon cove located on the grounds of a palace former Iraqi dictator Sadaam Hussein built for one of his mistresses. Today the palace is a U.S. Army post called Camp Liberty (formerly known as Camp Victory North) and the pigeon cove is now a home to a colony of bats. Hey, to the victors go the spoils!
As can be judged by the size of other objects in the above photo, the cone-shaped bat house is rather large. It’s said that when the sun goes down, hundreds of bats stream out from the bat house to go about their nightly bug-eating rounds.
British designer Alex Metcalf crafted a prickly yet practical Bat House in 2007. The artist used wood and slate to provide an old-time “distinctive aesthetic” for the bat house, which is meant to help raise awareness of the need for (and loss of) bats in the Greater London area. As modern residential upgrades and new construction gradually eliminates the attic and loft spaces favored by bats, the creatures are losing an ideal urban habitat.
An environmentally friendly bat house at the London Wetland Centre is now open for business… bat business. The large, breathable structure was designed by architecture students Jorgen Tandberg of Oslo and Yo Murata fof Tokyo, acting on a design concept put forth by local artist and bat enthusiast Jeremy Deller. “It’s great,” commented Deller on the finished bat house, “I wouldn’t mind living there myself.”
The Berkeley Bat House was built with guidance from the UK’s Bat Conservation Trust (BCT) and was designed to house all 8 species of bats found in the locality. Among its many bat-friendly features are an invisible black roof to warm the interior and walls made from Hemcrete, a carbon-locking type of concrete made of hemp fiber and lime.
The Sugarloaf Key Bat Tower, or “Perky’s Folly” as some call it, stands solemnly at Marker 17 of Lower Sugarloaf Key, in the midst of what was to be a thriving holiday resort built by south Florida businessman Richter Clyde Perky. The wooden tower was intended to house bats Perky imported from Cuba and Texas, with the intent that the bats gobble up the multitude of malaria-spreading mosquitoes that plagued the marshy Lower Keys.
The 30-ft tall tower was completed in 1929… not a great year for any kind of investment, let alone a resort for free-spending pre-jet-setters. In any case, Perky soon learned that you can lead bats to a bat house but you can’t make them live there: once released, the foreign bats flew off to the four winds, the bat house remained bat-less, and the budding resort was soon guest-less.
If the “municipal bat-roost” above looks familiar, it should be: it was designed by Dr. Charles A. R. Campbell, the same person who sold the Sugarloaf Key Bat Tower to Richter Clyde Perky from Sugarloaf Key. Campbell’s bat-roosts were more successful at attracting and housing bats, however, probably because unlike Sugarloaf Key, the various Texas locations where Campbell built his bat-roosts were in close proximity to sources of fresh water.
Campbell was a big believer in bats, calling them “one of man’s best friends” and extolling their value in controlling mosquitoes. Before designing his towers, he noted that bats liked to roost in church steeples and incorporated their shape, style, even the cross on top to help the bats feel at home. Another feature of the design was a trapdoor intended to allow easy removal of bat guano, a prized and valuable fertilizer. If you’re wondering just how much guano bats living in one of Campbell’s towers could produce in a year, records show that in 1918 the crop of guano harvested from the Mitchell’s Lake Bat Roost weighed 4,012 pounds!
Though it looks at first glance like a water tower, this is actually a “Bat Tower” located in an ecological park near Iwakura City, Aichi Prefecture, Japan. Most bat houses in Japan are small, often taking the form of a hollowed-out log. Larger towers like this one are much less common.
University of Florida Bat House, Gainesville, Florida, USA
The largest occupied artificial bat house in North America and, perhaps, the world can be found on the shores of Lake Alice at the University of Florida campus in Gainesville, Florida. It’s estimated that each night over 100,000 free-tailed bats in the UF colony consume up to 20 million insects, providing the campus and the surrounding area with free, environmentally friendly pest control.
Tragedy struck the UF Bat House in early August of 2009, however, as the tower’s internal wooden roosting fins collapsed under the weight of as many as 200,000 bats – and their accumulated urine.
John Knox Road Bat House, Tallahassee, Florida, USA
This bat house, located in Tallahassee, Florida, looks old and even somewhat oriental with its red clay tiled roof but it was actually constructed in 1999. The use of very tall supporting poles keeps the bats safe from predators while providing ventilation – guano collection on a large scale is no longer practiced.
The 10′ by 10′ by 23 feet high bat house was built with the support of the Twilight Group, a privately funded non-profit organization whose mission is to provide educational programs about bats and through doing so, promote their conservation. Situated on the John Knox Road marsh pond, the approximately 60,000 Brazilian Free-Tailed bats that roost in the house from October through March find both fresh drinking water and abundant insect foods close at hand. Er, wing.
Want a bat house of your very own? There are plenty of plain-jane bat houses around and of course the bats really don’t care what they look like – but YOU do. That’s where The Bat Castle comes in. Priced at under $100 and made in the USA, this sturdy cypress wood bat house features non-rusting brass fittings and internal netting for your bat-guests to hang onto when roosting. Seats 50 to 60, eerie music optonal.
The Bat Castle may look like a novelty item but it’s approved by those who know one end of a bat from the other. “I like this bat house very much,” reports George Marks, Founder & President of the Florida Bat Conservancy. “The length of it allows the bats to move up and down within the house to find variations in the internal temperature.” Cool indeed, though if it were up to me I’d call it The Bats Motel, heh.
Bat Poles do exist, though sliding down them isn’t recommended. These poles – pipes, more like – offer a no-nonsense solution for those who want to provide their local bats with a safe house but don’t want to disturb the aesthetics of their architecture.
Bat houses have a long history, as our ancestors figured out long ago that bats in the neighborhood meant less bugs biting them. It’s a true tragedy, then, that bats have been decimated by the mysterious fungal disease known as White Nose Syndrome. Giving bats a place to live could help them as a species – the more the merrier, as they say. A bat house, bizarre or not, installed on an outer wall or on a post is a very cool, ultra low maintenance way to do your bit for bats.
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The homebuilding business is always particularly hard-hit by an economic downturn. These developments were abandoned to return to nature when the money ran out. Click Here to Read More
In 2000, the picture of polio around the world looked pretty good: just 1,000 cases were reported that year. Bill Gates saw this as an opportunity: a chance to invest a little bit of his money and not just control a disease, but eradicate it.
Last year, though, that rosy picture looked both bleak and expensive. As Bruce Aylward of the World Health Organization said, “There’s no way to sugar-coat the past 12 months.” During 2009, we saw a resurgence of polio in 20 countries — many of which had previously eradicated the disease.
The Gates/WHO strategy to fight polio was based on the success of the 1979 smallpox vaccine campaign. In this campaign, though Bangladesh was seen as a last stronghold of the disease, the virus was finally eliminated when a policy of forced vaccination was implemented (which many consider a human-rights abuse). The polio campaign used a similarly simple playbook: vaccinate, vaccinate, vaccinate. And for awhile, it seemed that strategy might work. Now, though, it’s failing. Like the case of smallpox, polio is still deeply entrenched in one place: Nigeria. The country made up half of the world’s polio cases last year, in part due to rumors that have circulated about how the vaccine induces sterility, and in part because of the risk of Vaccine-Associated Paralytic Poliomyelitis, which causes paralysis in about one in a million people who receive the oral polio vaccine.
That’s where the Sultan of Sokoto, ruler of 70 million Muslims living in northern Nigeria, comes in.
www.films4change.org (buy 45 minute video) “No Son Invisibles Maya Women and Microfinance” is a documentary shot in HD format using the new Panasonic 200 DVCPROHD. We follow three indigenous women from the highlands into the village of Nachij, stepping deep into their lives and showing how with a small amount of credit they turn dire circumstance into a well of human empowerment that reaches far beyond any regional boundary. Using Nobel Peace Prize winner Dr. Muhammad Yunas’ microfinancing formula, a local micro credit organization finds clients who have been forgotten and would otherwise not be able to get a loan, and puts their trustand money in their hands. From an ancient Mayan culture, the women have learned to manage in the modern world by using the money from the loans to start their own businesses, which becomes the sustaining power of their families. The friendships and family relations within the social groups change and become stronger as women helping women not only saves the lives of their families, but entire villages. Produced and directed by Melissa Eidson, who taught English and Drama in high schools in Harlem and Brooklyn and then at Pratt Institute in New York City. She got into making independent films after working with Mexican and American filmmakers in Mexico, where she has lived with her daughter for the past 6 years. Eidson also had several films at Cannes recently, including El Barrio at the Short Film Corner of the market 2006 and she played the …
When we think of abandoned cities, most of us picture the old west ghost towns of the United States: desolate, dusty places where once life bustled and filled the streets with motion. But there’s another kind of abandoned place today, one that is underlined by the sad state of the current global economy. Housing developments that were once meant to be wonderful new homes for fortunate families now sit desolate and wait for nature to reclaim them.
This abandoned development in Rio Vista, California is perhaps the most visually impressive example of the American dream gone wrong. The 750 homes that were meant to be built here will likely never be realized, and the streets and sidewalks which were meant to support the development’s residents sit desolate and unused.
The development’s infrastructure was laid out and a handful of model homes built. Street lights and signs were erected, yards were plotted out…and then the money ran out. Construction was officially halted on November 20, 2008 due to a massive budget shortfall.
When the money ran out and the construction crews left, the carefully planned community began returning to its wild California roots. Partially-landscaped model home yards soon reverted to scrappy, dry, brown spaces. The homes themselves now sit abandoned and half-finished. For now, the project is on an indefinite hold while the city considers whether to declare bankruptcy.
Sadly, developments that don’t quite play out as planned aren’t at all a new phenomenon. A somewhat similar situation took place in the planned community of California City, California in the late 1950s. Nat Mendelsohn, a real estate developer and professor of sociology, embarked on a mission to found a city that would rival Los Angeles in size and population. He purchased 80,000 acres in the Mojave desert and started developing the land into a city.
The only problem was that residents didn’t flock to the planned community like Mendelsohn hoped. California City did attract some residents, and it boasts a healthy population today. But the mostly-undeveloped areas are spooky and resemble a post-apocalyptic wasteland. It’s composed of decaying city blocks and roads where, although they are all named, cars almost never go. Other parts of California City are very much inhabited, but these parts devoid of life paint out a kind of modern-day geoglyph in the desert sand.
Likewise, the Rotonda Sands neighborhood in Southern Florida did actually attract some residents – but it’s the homes that were abandoned mid-construction and the overgrown, empty lots that tell the rest of the story. Founded in the 1960s as a planned suburbian paradise, the Rotonda development should have flowered into a haven for families and retirees. But only about 3/4 of the development was ever truly developed. The remaining part was left to return to the Floridian wilderness.
The Rotonda development did enjoy a partial recovery in the early 2000s, when developers and homebuyers once again showed interest in building in the deserted part of the neighborhood. But the bursting of the housing market combined with the brutal hurricanes of 2004 once again halted the plans. Today, many of the lovely new homes are abandoned, and many more sit half-finished, simply providing shelter for the Florida wildlife that wanders the grounds.
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Futuristic designs for eco-friendly urban housing and green space often blur the lines between the two, making efficient use of limited space in the city.Click Here to Read More
The Women’s Microfinance Initiative works to provide the capital and training necessary for women in low-income environments to succeed. A group of women in the Washington DC area pooled their resources and started the non-profit microfinance company in order to make small loans to impoverished women in developing nations, who use the money to build small businesses.
With Spring right around the corner, we can’t help but think of all of the delicious vegetables and herbs that are just waiting to spring up in our backyard gardens. For the millions of people who don’t have access to the type of land it takes to grow a bountiful vegetable crop all summer, the Urban Garden gives you a chance to sprout organic produce in a small space.
City dwellers who don’t have the luxury of vast expanses of green space in which to grow veggies typically resign themselves to buying organic produce in the grocery store or growing only the essentials in pots on balconies. A company called The Urban Garden wants to help everyone realize the dream of growing fresh, organic food at home, even if space is tight. Their products are designed to grow the maximum amount of plants in a minimal amount of space.
All of the Urban Garden products consist of compact raised beds. The layered designs help urban gardeners squeeze a large amount of usable ground out of a remarkably small footprint. The boxes even feature “seed holes,” or small openings where single-stem plants can grow horizontally out of the front of the box setup. Weeds aren’t a problem, and the boxes are happy being placed just about anywhere with a southern exposure to the sun.
Available in four different configurations – from the single-level raised bed to the six-level, 54-plant original setup – the Urban Garden is flexible enough to meet the needs of just about every gardener. Even if you think you have a black thumb, the people behind the Urban Garden want you to know that there are plenty of vegetables that require very little skill to grow. For a first-time gardener, choosing easy-to-grow veggies like broccoli, tomatoes and peppers can help you get off to a great start.
While the Urban Garden is an ideal solution for people living in crowded city areas, it’s useful even if you do have yard space to spare. By raising the garden a bit, you eliminate a lot of problems that come with traditional gardening – problems like poor soil quality, overwhelming weeds, and pests (the cedar used in the Urban Garden naturally repels insects) become easily managed with container gardens. And for those of us who prefer organic produce, growing it at home can save an astonishing sum of money over the course of one growing season.
There are plenty of resources out there for DIY-ers who prefer the satisfaction of building something rather than the convenience of purchasing it pre-made. If you’re ready to get your hands dirty constructing your own raised vegetable garden, these instructions from Popular Mechanics will get you started. This Squidoo lens about raised bed gardening is very detailed and has step-by-step photos and illustrations to help you through each part of the planning and building process.
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Easy to Grow Herbs and Vegetables to Save Money on Groceries that can be grown in your apartment, porch, kitchen or dorm. Easy urban gardening tips.5 Comments – Click Here to Read More
A tax on airline tickets will soon help fight HIV/Aids, malaria, and tuberculosis in Africa. We initially heard about the scheme earlier this year when Bill Clinton put his weight behind the plan. Now the scheme that’ll ask for a voluntary contribution of $2 is all go, those behind it hope it will make up the expected shortfall in governmental aid.
Time report that Bill Clinton and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are backing the scheme which will be launched by British prime minister Gordon Brown and the head of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, on Sept 23 as an aside to the U.N. General Assembly. It’s hoped the money will help further reduce child mortality, which as we heard last week is heading in the right direction, but needs more resources in order to meet the Millenium goal of reducing it by two thirds.
There’s no word of whether making people feel better about flying around the world, contributing few million tonnes of carbon to atmosphere, is a thing to encourage; but the millions it’ll raise is certainly good news for the short term.
This story is a great lesson in putting your troubles aside to help someone else. Not always the easiest task, but giving to someone else when you’re in distress can be a great equalizer.
Brian Tapp, a 59-year-old florist from Sydney, Australia, had just been evicted from his shop. One morning last month, as he made a final trip to his flower shop to collect his possessions, he happened to spot a wallet and passport lying by the side of the road.
Most people in his position would be too miserable to give a second thought to helping someone else out. But Tapp put his own troubles aside to help out a stranger, pulling over to pick up the loose belongings before they were run over or stolen. Along with the wallet and passport, Tapp discovered an itinerary for a flight to Bali—which was due to leave in less than two hours.
“‘The first thing I noticed was that the owner of the passport was on a flight leaving at midday,” Tapp told the Sydney Morning Herald. “It was 10:15 when I found it, and I just thought, ‘This bloke’s going to be at the airport in a bit of a state. So I’ll see if I can find him.’”
The would-be traveler, Adam Morison, hadn’t realized that he’d lost his wallet and passport until he’d arrived at the airport, and was devastated by the mistake. By the time Tapp contacted the airline, Morison had turned around to head back home, his hopes of a surfing holiday dashed. But, while driving home, he received a call from the airline, letting him know that a Good Samaritan had found his possessions and was driving to the airport to deliver them to him in person. Morison turned his car around again, and sped back to the airport.
When he pulled up, he found Tapp, “this angel with a beard,” he said. “I still can’t believe it. I’m a perfect stranger, and he’s having a shocking day, yet he’s picked up my passport, my wallet, all my stuff, found a way of contacting me, and has gone out of his way to make sure I get my flight.”
Thanks to Tapp’s good deed, Morison made his flight after all—but Tapp’s work still wasn’t done. When Morison noticed that some of his cash and cards were missing from his wallet, Tapp returned to the road where he’d found it. Remarkably, they were still lying there. “I found the money, a Medicare card, a MasterCard, and his barrister’s identification card,” said Tapp. Though Morison had already departed for Bali at that point, Tapp mailed the items to Morison’s home.
Morison still can’t believe that Tapp would go to so much trouble to help a total stranger, and is now trying to return the favor by helping Tapp pick up more customers for his floral business. But for Tapp, there’s nothing unusual about his generous deed: ‘‘It’s what I’d expect anyone to do,’’ he said. ‘‘I’m a person who really hates losing things, so I can put myself in the place of the owner.
Good Samaritan … Brian Tapp, left, found Adam Morison’s wallet and passport and rushed them to the airport so he could catch his flight in time Photo: Dallas Kilponen
In 2000, the picture of polio around the world looked pretty good: just 1,000 cases were reported that year. Bill Gates saw this as an opportunity: a chance to invest a little bit of his money and not just control a disease, but eradicate it.
