The ‘Star Wheel’ was created by Paul Cesewski and weighs 2000 pounds and stands 22 feet in the air. It took Mr. Cesewski 6 months and $7000 to put this together and unlike it’s carival counterpart, it requires no diesel engines to make it go!

So, how does this crazy thing work then? Well, there are three seats inside the middle of the wheel and each rider/driver peddles — the peddlers drive themself around the inside of the wheel causing the outside of the wheel to move forwards!

I read about this and immediately thought I would love to try this thing out… until I saw this video. Not so stable at all, huh? Maybe after a trip back to the drawing board this could be viable!

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Hey US readers, do you Tweet? Are you a Twitterer? A Tweep, as it were? Well, if you’re following me, odds are this movie is right up your alley.

I love the tagline: “Can you save the planet without driving your family crazy?” It’d definitely on my must-see list.

Check out the trailer, then read below to see how you can get free tickets to see the film premiere!

No Impact Man is in theaters September 11, 2009. Click here for theater information.

In the following cities:
New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berkeley, Chicago, Denver, Seattle, Philadelphia, Washington DC, San Diego, Boston, St. Louis, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City

Follow these two easy steps:

1. Follow them on Twitter
2. Tweet the following:

#NIMtix @oscopelabs is giving away tix to No Impact Man in theaters Sept 2009 www.noimpactdoc.com

Winners will be announced shortly.

Good Luck, readers!

This video, taken at this year’s GEL (Good Experience Live) Conference, features a pretty funny speaker named Graham Hill. Hill was asked to give a 20 minute talk about climate change this year and managed to do so in a very engaging way — I watched the entire 20 minute video with absolutely no problems understanding what he was on about, which is more than I can say about a lot of climate change/enviro science videos. This one’s in plain english!

He points out some interesting things — like, what’s the use of creating a product that can be recycled, but not creating the facilities needed to recycle that product? Hill also offers up a plan that could save you $1000, make you healthier, and lose 10 tons of carbon in just one day a week.

Check out Graham Hill’s climate change soloutions now. And if that tickles your fancy, check out the rest of the videos here.

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I’ve recently been quite curious about how global warming is affecting the rest of the world. I know that in Ottawa, we’ve had some pretty odd weather these past few years. This year was full of extremes: Extreme rain, extreme heat, extreme humidity… Certainly a noticable difference in weather patterns as time goes on. I’m no meterologist, but I definitely notice when Chicago has it’s coolest July 8th in 118 years, North Dakota has it’s first snowfall in June in 60 years, a summer of record low temperatures right here in Canada, and a likely-to-be-accurate prediction of a green Christmas.

Well, here’s a video featuring some Greenlanders talking about how they’ve been affected by climate change this year. Some of what they say is sadly what I’ve come to expect but some affects are quite surprising to me.

Have something to add? Let me know in the comments!

Okay, now that I’ve got your attention, I promise not to disappoint. Unless, of course, you were hoping for real monsters. Sorry about that.

This, of course, is an art project. The artist? Joshua Allen Harris. He’s done something incredibly inventive with the air generated by New York city subway vent exhaust — you guessed it — plastic bag monsters!

Want more footage? Click right here!

Note from the road on my mobile phone:

Did you know that right now you can get an extra 250 Scene points for buying select green back to school products right now? It’s true!

Purchasing green products from Chapters right now banks 250 points per product!

And you can use those Scene points to see great movies at Cineplex theatres! How awesome are free movies on a student’s budget?

Excellent!

Check out the Scene website and Chapters for more info.

So why eat organic foods anyway? Why are they better than your average grocery store fare? Well, for one, organic foods are foods that aren’t covered in chemicals such as insecticides, herbicides, fungicides and fertilizers. I, for example, am violently allergic to a lot of preservatives and a lot of these spray chemicals trigger the same reaction: sore stomach, headache, nausea, blurred vision, cold sweat… I could go on. And it can be a bad scene for those who aren’t even allergic to any chemicals, too!

Plenty of EPA-approved pesticides were approved a long time ago –before research linked these chemicals to cancer and other debilitating diseases. Currently the EPA considers 60% of all herbicides, a whopping 90% of all fungicides and 30% of all insecticides to be potentially carcinogenic.

Taste is an individual matter, but many gourmet chefs are choosing to use organic foods in the recipes, due to the superior flavour and quality of these products. A growing number of consumers — including yours truly as part of my attempt to go green — are also claiming that organic food tastes better.

I mean, doesn’t it make sense to you that foods grown naturally in well-balanced soils and ripened by the big, happy summer sun will be healthier and tastier than products raised on a diet of smelly, wildlife and bug-killing chemicals? Then they’re sprayed with preservatives that allow them to sit for months in storage (I could make a really easy movie star joke here, but I’ll leave that one along). What are these chemicals and preservatives doing to your insides? Do you think it’s possible that they’re strong enough to kill pests, make plants grow faster/bigger, and last for weeks on a shelf without having a negative affect on your insides? I don’t know first hand, but I’m sceptical at best.

Try organic food for yourself and see what you think — is it tastier? Does it smell better? Check out the ‘Organic Recipe Friday’ section and try out some of the recipes. I guarantee you’ll find some that you love!

Drop me a line and let me know!

I love looking at design blogs. Not house design or fashion, but more innovative, conceptual design — architecture, technology, gadgets, that sort of thing.

Today I happened across “The Source Project” by Oliver Craig.

Oliver has come up with a really innovative concept that aims at getting the public to give up commercial bottled water in favour of tap water. How does he plan on doing that? (Hey, even I don’t like tap water.) By offering people tap water… with cool, futuristic and esthetically pleasing style.

The way Oliver Craig envisions doing this is with reusable (and neato futurisicly designed) water bottles that you could purchase and then top up for free at water dispensers around the city. And what’s better? Each time you fill up you earn credits/points that are redeemable at participating stores. Cool concept, right? It looks so sci-fi to me, like something right out of Tank Girl (one of my all-time favourite movies, of course).

Kudos, Oliver!

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For those who may be fans of Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers… whhhhy? All joking aside — she’s teamed up with Selena Gomez, Demi Lovato and… *squeeeee* the Jonas Brothers (like, OMGZ!!1!) to record Send It On an eco-pop song that’s part of Disney’s new Friends for Change: Project Green.

All of the proceeds from the iTunes sales of this track go to the Worldwide Conservation Fund. Groovy.

While I’m certainly not a big fan of Disney pop stars, I can appreciate the effort to get involved. Assuming they really are getting involved. What do you think — is this green to save the planet or green to bulk the funding?

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In an interview about their new movie Julia and Julie, Meryl Streep and Nora Ephron spoke to Charlie Rose (PBS) about the great Julia Child herself. Meryl Streep shared this interesting big of info about Julia Child. Here’s the summary from a Google group I was reading:

“Caught Charlie Rose on PBS last night interviewing Streep and Nora Ephron about the film. Both regretted never having actually met Julia and a story Streep told surprised me a bit. I think most of us think of Julia Child as a rather jolly, kind woman, but many years ago Streep contacted her hoping for her support with an organization she’d started for the purpose of encouraging people to raise & eat organic foods. She was quite stunned upon receiving a fairly cranky and dismissive letter in reply from Julia herself…”

“…Streep explained that she contacted Julia because she’d foolishly assumed that as a chef who encouraged the use of the very best ingredients, she’d have an appreciation for organic foods and might wish to publicly endorse the idea. At that time, Streep said the concept of raising/marketing organic foods was pretty new and Child wasn’t interested. She made a point of saying that years later – after Alice Waters came along – Julia changed her mind about “organic” foods and embraced the philosophy.”

I’m surprised as well! I would have totally agreed with Meryl Streep that Julia Child would have been all over a campaign for organic foods. How odd! Good to hear that she’s changed her mind, however.