environment

Congratulations to Environmental Working Group for launching Pets for the Environment yesterday! From the announcement:

According to the latest research from EWG, I'm the canary in the living room, soaking up more chemicals than you or your children.

New tests confirmed that I'm full of toxic industrial chemicals, and I'm barking mad. You should be, too. I grow 7 times faster than humans, so what happens to pets like me - increased cancer rates, for one - might be happening to people soon.

Did you know that the humans' government doesn't make companies test our toys, furniture, or even our food for safety?

I did a little work on this site (built in Drupal, by the way), but the bulk of the credit goes to the EWG team and Mike McCaffrey.

Clearly, this is a big problem and I look forward to more of EWG's research as this is something that is affecting our cat, too. Code Sorcery Workshop and Macy are definitely on board!

With today's Blog Action Day about the environment, I won't go into a long entry, but instead I want to impart a simple concept that really struck me when I saw a pre-screening of The 11th Hour here in DC in August.

The concept is this: that conventional economics is based upon the assumption that the natural environment is an infinite resource: timber, ores, water, animals to kill, and even places to bury things. While this may have seemed to be the case even 100 years ago, today it is patently not the case at all.

That's it. I try to think daily about which of my actions (and my business' actions) operate under this assumption and how I can correct that. Whether it's by better researching products and services, relying almost entirely on mass transit day-to-day, or making my opinion known to my representatives, this is on my mind every day. Ours and future generations must understand this concept or we are doomed.

For more environmentally-oriented thoughts, see EWG's Enviroblog, particularly today's Blog Action Day entry, Know Your Source, regarding the mainstream media and environmental reporting.

I said in my last post that I was behind and it shows in the number of things that I have to talk about regarding Pukka!

First up, my patch to the open source Vienna newsreader has made it into the stable version, which you can read about here. This helps with getting highlighted text out of Vienna and easily into your Pukka post.

Next, Seth Dillingham has reported on this blog that he has exceeded his fundraising goal for the Pan-Mass Challenge. I was able to donate some copies of Pukka to his effort and I'm glad to see that he reached (and exceeded) his goal!

Third, a few notes about social bookmarking in general and del.icio.us in particular. I have been testing out the preview of the next version of del.icio.us and will be keeping up on any changes that come about as a result of that. I also noticed a great video, which then ended up on the del.icio.us blog, about how to explain social bookmarking to people who are unfamiliar with it -- so check it out if you just don't get why you'd use Pukka.

Next, thanks to a post by Workshop friend Red Sweater Software, I was alerted to an app that recently added integration with Pukka. As of version 1.2.1, EagleFiler can capture post information from Pukka for better archival if you so choose. Neat!

I've also been keeping tabs on Apple's Leopard OS and to my knowledge, Pukka is doing fine on the latest build -- but please report if you find differently! I'm very excited for the Big Cat to arrive and very much looking forward to using some of its features full time next month!

And lastly, on a general business note, I wanted to report that I've been investigating how to better make Code Sorcery Workshop more green and sustainable and a better environmental citizen. I ran across a post by friend-of-the-Workshop Daniel Morrison about his efforts. Like his business, I too have minimal office needs. I also am able to take advantage of working remotely as well as DC's excellent public transportation in order to round out nearly a year now of essentially no driving for work. However, I do fly to conferences (though not many!), so that can always be reduced. I was also happy to learn last month that my webhost of eight years, pair Networks, has gone carbon neutral and is making other efforts to remain sustainable. This is a good trend! You can read more about pair's efforts here.

Whew! I think that's all for now. As I said, vacation is over and I'm back to working hard after playing hard. On a personal note, if you'd like to check out pictures from my 3,500 mile trip across the American Southwest, you can find them here. Enjoy!