Green Apple Turns Greener

Not only has Apple been putting more and more effort into improving its green credentials, showcasing its credentials with a dedicated section of its website - but it has now also given up its membership in the the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the Chamber's stance on climate change legislation.
In a letter to Thomas J. Donohue, President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Apple's Vice President of Worldwide Government Affairs, Catherine A. Novelli, stated Apple's position and submitted Apple's resignation...

Apple is committeed to protecting the environment and the communities in which we operate around the world. We strongly object to the Chamber's recent comments opposing the EPA's effort to limit greenhouse gases.
Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the Chamber at odds with us in this effort. We would prefer that the Chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue and play a construtive role in addressing the climate crisis. However, because the Chamber's position differs so sharply with Apple's, we have decided to resign our membership effective immediately.

I never need new reasons to love Apple. But what the hell... Awesome.
I'm not naive enough to believe there's no whiff of marketing about something like this - but kudos to Apple for doing it anyway. There's a definite momentum with the company's various efforts that suggests that positive spin and profile is simply part of a virtuous circle of doing the right thing. Will be interesting to see if others follow suit or what waves are made.

The Weather Report, Australia. Orange Alert...

(*Nabbed from The Guardian...)


Australia has been engulfed by dust storms as wild winds sweep millions of tonnes of red dust from continent's drought-ravaged interior and dump it on the coast...

Storms of red dust produced a supernaturally orange and glowing sky over much of Australia's east coast as the country experienced a day of freak weather conditions.
At Sydney airport, where visibility was cut to 400 metres, flights were cancelled while several international flights were diverted to Melbourne, where flights were also delayed. Flights were also delayed at Brisbane airport in Queensland.

As dust ravaged the east coast last night, heavy rains lashed Adelaide in the nation's south where streets were flooded.
Then as morning dawned, two tremors shook Melbourne. Later in the day, hail stones as big as cricket balls pelted parts of New South Wales where heavy rainfalls are now expected and flash-flood warnings have been issued.

The Bureau of Meteorology said it was the worst dust storm since the 1940s, with particle pollution up to 10 times worse than the previous record and was predicting another storm would hit in the next day or two.

Pic Of The Day, Week, Month, Year...

In one of those truly remarkable photos that turn up so infrequently, marine photographer and environmental lecturer Michael Nolan has captued an iconic image that is bound to be used for envoronmental campaigns for years to come (providing we're actually still around and haven't destroyed the place *completely* by then , of course...) - showing, as it appears to, the face of earth mother Gaia herself weeping from the edge of a melting ice cap located on Nordaustlandet in the Svalbard archipelago in Norway.
It's not, of course. But it's a hugely impressive photo and one that deserves to be exploited for the cause of good nonetheless.

Makes those "Jesus in a burnt waffle" photos look pretty bloody silly really, doesn't it.

Mankind Discovers 350 New Species To Wipe Out

Researchers in the remote eastern Himalayas (divided between Nepal, Bhutan and parts of China, India, Bangladesh and Burma) have discovered a whopping 350-odd new species over the last ten years, including Gumprecht's (horrendously) green pit viper as shown in the picture - It's venomous, grows to at least 130cm, and clearly thinks that camouflage is very last year.
More here...

Wooshy-Wooshy-Woo

What is it with pandas? Why are they so unfeasibly adorable? Why do we love them so much, when they seem to be genetically predisposed to their own utter oblivion? (Pandas are all impotent, and they lie on their backs 19 hours a day only to get up, eat bamboo that they can't actually digest, have a fag and go back to sleep... Fact...)
Maybe it's because I was given one on the day I was born - not a real one you understand, that would be absurd even in my family circles - but, because I had one from the start that saw me through my childhood (and even today is stowed away somewhere in a cupboard) that I have a peculiar emotional attachment to the fluffsters and sets of photos like these reduce me to being able to say little other than "Awwwwwwww" for stupid amounts of time. I'm a grown-up for christ's sake...

There was a time when their precarious position in the equation of survival/extinction was symbolic in a very singular way of man's relationship with nature. Sadly now there are hundreds of other species lining up to be the poster-boys of mass extinction. Not only have we largely failed those, like the panda, that needed the most obvious help - but we've managed to needlessly endanger thousands more. Idiots.

Quote Of The Week: Werner Herzog

"Life on this planet has been a constant chain of cataclysms and extinctions. It is obvious that we are going to be next."
Legend Werner Herzog keeping things rosy in this excellent little piece in the New Statesman magazine, promoting his new film, Encounters at the End of the World, which opens in the UK today.

Shell Confirms Status As Genuine Beacon Of Idiocy

With almost sublime timing - coinciding with the release of Age Of Stupid - Shell (who only last year confirmed that biofuels will not solve the world's energy problems) have announced they are dumping wind, solar and hydro power in favour of... er, biofuels.
You can only hope that such irresponsible and blinkered short-termism might be rewarded by customers deserting them wholesale (sadly unlikely), and that any environmental PR guff they put out in future is treated with the utter contempt it deserves.
Being a Dutch company, they may want to keep an eye on those rising sea-levels too. Idiots.


(*Logo gag nicked from London Rising Tide)

Snow Leopard Set For June 8th Release

Fairly reliable sources are now pointing to June 8th as the release date of Mac OSX 10.6 - "Snow Leopard", the next major upgrade of the Mac OSX and notable most specifically for NOT introducing a bunch of spiffy new interface features (the kind of geeky fun we have come to expect from Apple) but instead putting its primary focus on under-the-hood performance improvements and enhancements.

Snow Leopard is expected to make great advances in processing, to include the new Quicktime shown a few posts back, to deliver huge OpenCL possibilities for developers of all kinds of applications, to continue to expand on multi-touch feature support, and to also have a considerably smaller footprint (or paw-print) than previous versions of the operating system, freeing up room for users like me to fill their hard drives with even more crap than ever before.

In the absence of any cool screenshots, I've just dropped in that cute picture above, plus a link to Apple's main info page about Snow Leopard - and also, for those of you who are so-inclined, a link to SnowLeopard.org - The Snow Leopard Trust, the world's leading authority on the study, conservation and protection of the endangered snow leopard out in the real world.

Sony World Photography Awards

Had to post up these... some of the stunning, beautiful and touching entries from the Natural History category in the Sony World Photography Awards...

Bait Ball Symphony #2, by Alexander Safonov, Japan

A Cape gannet diving after fish during the sardine run off the east coast of South Africa.

Waiting for an amber, Motiejus Salkauskas, Lithuania

Amber collecting is an old custom along the Lithuanian coast of the Baltic Sea. Nowadays the custom is rare because the lack of large stones. If collectors are lucky, stones are sold at the local markets as ornaments.

Baby koala, by Lisa Maree Williams, Australia

A joey koala clutches a fake substitute mother at the Australian Wildlife hospital, the largest wildlife hospital in the world, on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland, Australia.

Photos From Cape Verde

I've put up a page of holiday snaps from Boa Vista in the Cape Verde Islands here...
A beautiful place, in a barren windswept kind of a way. Vast beaches, volcanic mountains, a desert and mile after mile of scrub and tundra.
It's peaceful and tranquil; really beautiful actually - although the hotel RIU Karamboa turns out to be a huge 750 room monstrosity, soon to be dwarfed by another RIU hotel in the south of the island on the stunning and pristine Santa Monica beach (to be twice the size of the Karamboa apparently, and surely to have a huge impact on the island's landscape, environment and culture).
And although RIU's "News" magazine goes to great lengths (over several pages) to emphasise its environmental commitment, you do have to wonder just a little when they proudly boast, after all the environmental blurb that they built the Karamboa - and I quote this verbatim - "on the very beach where the famous caretta-caretta sea turtles' egg-laying ritual takes place." Ecology rules, eh...?

It's The End Of The World As We Know It...

(*Up, up and away... we may have to find another planet to go and fuck up by 2050)

I must admit I've been thinking... Why all the fuss over the Credit Crunch? We might as well just get over it, as according to this report from July we're all doomed anyway.
The Earth will apparently become uninhabitable by around 2050 and we'll have to bugger off into space to colonise other planets; which I suppose at least means we can probably have cool sleeping quarters like they do on Battlestar Galactica...
Most important thing is that when we *do* go, we leave every banker, financier, citygit and FSA official behind on whatever remains of this smoking, toxic mudball.
And the Beckhams.
We *must* leave the Beckhams behind too...

Anyhooo - if you fancy doing something a teesny bit constructive between now and then though, then do check out COOL EARTH - a superb project to conserve and protect huge tracts of endangered rainforest by putting them into local guardianship through your funding.
One of the most admirable, constructive and practical conservation projects going on right now.
Go on, go on, go on... "buy" your loved one an acre or two...

It's Officially Autumn

...And another piece of sort-of related news to tip you into some kind of seasonal-affected depression is that today - two weeks earlier than last year - the world (that's *us* basically) will have consumed all the natural resources the Earth will provide for this 12-month calendar year. We're building up "ecological debt" from there onwards.

Find out more here...