A Tale Of An Apartment Dwelling Eco-Enthusiast

This is a guest article by Cali Duncan

So, I don’t own my own home. I can’t build a roof of solar panels, install bamboo and cork flooring or purchase all new EnergyStar appliances. Good excuse not to go green, right? WRONG! According to the Green Consumer Index, over 52% of households with a high GCI score are apartment renters (free map download at www.ruf.com/green). That means millions of common folk like myself are in the same residential boat and still keep their mind and habits on the environment.

After learning that my rent will be going up—again—in June, I decided to make a checklist to aid me in finding the perfect green apartment:

(1) Is the building green?—Many great apartments are being built ground-up in sustainable ways. Check the LEED certification on buildings of interest. Those such as the Kalahari in Harlem offer:

• Fiber optic internet service

• Green roofs

• Filtered air systems

• Low VOC materials

• Bamboo flooring

• Solar and wind power

• Bosch low energy washer and dryers

• Hall windows for natural light

(2) Good energy score?—Many local power companies offer apartment complexes a metered get your baby dressed up for the coming halloweenrating program that shuts off air conditioners after so much usage. While I can’t say this is the most fun way to live, it does help on the bills and energy usage during hot months. Also, make sure the heating and cooling appliances are up-to-date and the most energy friendly available.

(3) Travel-friendly?—Choosing a location close to grocery stores, shopping centers, entertainment and even work can reduce your transportation needs. Plus, think of how cute you will look walking home from the grocery store with your multi-use grocery bags (I prefer those at ecireland birthplace of halloweenosumo.com). If shopping centers aren’t an option, consider your location to a public transportation stop.

(4) On-site recycling?—This is a tough find. Most apartments don’t offer an on-site recycling program, but they can always help in small ways. Check to see if there are recycling bins around public areas such as the pool and fitness centers. Any help they offer their surroundings shows they value the cause.

Remember, the habits of the apartment dweller are just as important as those of the complex. Replace burnt bulbs with EnergyStar bulbs, keep your lights and faucets turned off and use energy efficient curtains.

Happy renting!

looking forward to harry houdinis return on halloween

Why James Lovelock Is So Wrong

From memory, Gaia: A New Look At Life On Earth came out on 1978. I didn’t read it until 1990, when I was studying for a Geography degree, then it hit home how little I knew about the world, and how little I was likely to ever know. James Lovelock has always been there at the back of my mind as a dominant figure, an intellectual giant who was responsible not only for bringing to wider humanity the concept of a self-regulating global system that would be able to take care of itself during even the darkest of timscary halloween costumes on all saints evees (and yes, Daisyworld was just symbolic, but a bloody good symbol at that), but also alerting us to the terrible dangers of CFCs, and the horrible potential of positive feedback loops in taking us towards climatic catastrophe. He is the public face of environmental scientific radicalism.

No wonder then, that when he speaks, we take note: even when he makes life difficult for himself in avowedly supporting nuclear power, or just making statements that are plain wrong. No one is perfect, and some people can be forgiven the odd quirk more than others.

Proposing a series of heavily-defended climate refuges, in which Industrial Civilization can remain, locking out the billions who failed to live in the “right” parts of the globe, is not a quirk.

In his latest book “The Vanishing Face Of Gaia”, Lovelock sees the world as already having passed the climatic point of no return - he may be right; in fact he is most definitely right, but only in the context of Industrial Civilization remaining as the dominant cultural influence on Earth. Whether we will definitely see the predicted loss of billions of humans, and the desertification of half of the Earth’s landmass, whatever we do, is another question entirely, but one that Lovelock is seemingly unable to contemplate.

I posed a difficult question to him (via an interviewer) on BBC Radio 5Live last week:

“I have been a follower of your work for a long time, and watched your views harden and become more apocalyptic in recent years. In many ways this is welcome, especially to warn people of the likelihood of catastrophic change, and also to ridicule the ideas of the mainstream environmental movement, who still think we can tinker around with civilization to make things better. I was wondering, though, whether you welcome the views of people like myself and Derrick Jensen, who see Industrial Civilization as the cause, and the removal of Industrial Civilization as the solution to our current predicament?”

The key point was the last one, which would reveal whether Lovelock could see beyond civilization into a world in which humans lost all pretence of domination over the Earth, and instead accepted that only true sustainability would allow humanity to continue as a going concern.

His response can be heard by clicking on this link.

His response is factually wrong: Industrial Civilization is an extreme way of living, and other ways of living are not “stone age” they are just non-industrial; whether hunter-gatherer, kitchen garden, permaculture or a hybrid of these, or any other way of life that is fundamentally sustainable. These ways of life can easily support as many people as are currently on the Earth, but with far less ilooking forward to harry houdinis return on halloweenmpact.

It’s difficult to explain to someone who is so cast in a civilized mould, that everything they believe about civilization may be wrong: even more difficult to convince them of this. After all, when you are civilized, surely that makes you the epitomy of what it means to be a fully developed human being - Homo sapiens sapiens civitas - and so anything else is a step down from your current position. Step down or not, it is surely not a morally defensible position to suggest that you can carry on living in much the same manner as you have become accustomed to - providing you have been lucky enough to have been born in the right place, at the right time, to the right people (you don’t really think everyone living in a Lovelock “Life-Raft” will be allowed to stay, do you?).

But we continue to defend this way of life, and this Culture of Maximum Harm, because it is all we have ever known: we are blinded by our lack of perspective, and are thus prepared to support this behemoth, even though we probably know it will end up killing most of us; just as it has started killing so much life already. No other way of life is more destructive than Industrial Civilization.

Your choice: do you follow Lovelock and the rest of the civilized world into a future where we live in city states, ringed by gun turrets, thronged by the bodies of the unlucky millions; or do you make the leap into a way of thinking that may be alien to you now, but which - when you have a chance to contemplate it - is really the only logical conclusion.

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Keith Farnish is the author of “Time’s Up! An Uncivilized Solution To A Global Crisis.”

www.timesupbook.com

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Download audio file (bbcfiveliveget your baby dressed up for the coming halloween_jameslovelock_kfquestion_240209.mp3)

BackTrack is a Security-Focused Live CD Packed With System Tools

BackTrack was the winner of our recent Hive Five for best Live CD, so we decided to take it for a test drive and show off a few of the features for everybody else.

BackTrack can be installed to a regular boot cd, a USB drive, installed to the hard drive, or even downloaded as a VMware virtual machine. For our testing, we used the BackTrack 3 stable release instead of the Beta 4 version since most commenters directly mentioned version 3 in the original call for contendersannual north halsted halloween parade in chicago.

After inserting the LiveCD and starting the boot process, you'll be prompted to choose which window environment to load up—the distribution includes the more graphically pleasing KDE, or the trimmed-down Fluxbox window manager.

Once you've booted to the desktop you'll notice the default resolution is 800x600, but can be easily changed through the system tray icon to any resolution.

The slick system monitoring application on the right-hand side of the first screenshotravel around mexico on halloween and join the paradet doesn't get started automatically—to open it, you'll need to use the Alt+F2 shortcut key and type leetmode into the command window. You can unlock the position of the monitors through the context menu, and drag them wherever on the screen you'd like.

One of the more interesting features in the Live CD is the inclusion of the excellent and previously mentioned Yakuake drop-down terminal window, which can be launched through the Alt+F2 dialog, or found uthe evalution of halloween in americander the System menu. Once started, simply use the F12 key to toggle the slide-down terminal.
Connecting to any network resource can be done easily with the Network Folder Wizard, found in the menus at Internet -> KNetAttach. You can easily map to a Windows share, SSH, or FTP server using the wizard—which is nothing more than an easy front-end to the Konqueror browser's rich connection support.

Since this distribution is focused on security, you can find a ton of security-focused tools under the Backtrack menu, although there are far too many to mention every one of them here—you'll have to explore them on your own.

One of the more useful security tools for everyday use is the chntpw utility (found in the menus under Privilege Escalation -> PasswordAttacks) that can reset any Windows password easily from the command line. For more on this command, I've previously written an article about changing your forgotten Windows password.

BackTrack 3 is a free download, works almost anywhere Linux does. Be sure to check out the original Hive Five for the rest of the Live CD choices from your fellow Lifehacker readers, or learn how to rescue files with Knoppix.

BackTrack

Perspective Testing - Who Killed John Doe?

Read this scenario then follow the directions at the bottom. We did this as an exercise in class (on coming to a group consensus), but it seems to me that it also offers a glimpse into how people view their world.

Who Killed John Doe?

Read the information below and then complete the sentence at the end.

John Doe, age 54, was dead on arrival. His wife drove him to the Emergency Room at 2 a.m., but even before she pulled into the driveway, his tortured breathing had stopped. Successive attempts by the hospital staff to revive him failed.

John’s doctor said he was sorry. He could the tradition of wearing costumes on halloweennot make houseget your pets dressed up on halloween calls, because there is a shortage of doctors, and he is putting in an 80-hour week as it is. Besides, Mrs. Doe had called at 1 a.m. on Christmas morning. The doctor told her to rush John to the hospital.

The hospital administrator was sorry. When the patient had asked to be admitted earlier that morning, his condition was not acute. The patient had used up his insurance benefits for the year and had no other resources. The hospital had exhausted its charitable reserve funds and was required to limit admissions to paying patients or those whose conditions required acute and emergency care.

The caseworker from the Department of Health and Social Services was sorry. She had explained to the patient that the State health program would cover him only after he had incurred one hundred dollars in medical bills. If he entered the hospital before incurring that amount in medical bills, the entire hospital stay would be disallowed for coverage by her office by law.

The legislators who made the law said they were sorry. They had to balance the state’s budget at a time when highway costs and educational expenses were going up. Originally the bill to establish health benefits would have cost the taxpayers an estimated eighty million dollars a year. By strategic amendments, such as the one that discouraged John Doe’s admission, they saved the taxpayers three-fourths of the cost ofrunning through corn mazes lost and scared on halloween the original bill—nearly $6 million.

The people who elected the lawmakers were sorry. They had not wanted their taxes raised, so they voted for the candidates who promised to contain expenses and reduce waste in government spending. When a few political leaders announced that taxes would have to be increased to continue human services, the voters wrote letters and sent telegrams to their representatives protesting such tax increases.

Mrs. Doe was sorry. She was sorry that her husband died on Christmas morning, and she was also sorry that they had not saved more for their old age or joined the more expensive comprehensive insurance plan offered by the union. She especially regretted: (You complete the sentence)
________________________________________________
(Charles A. Hart, University Associates, Annual for Facilitators, Trainers, and Consultants)

OK, so that was the easy part. Now, considering what you have read, rank the following list from most responsible (1) to least responsible. Post your answers in the comments (copy and paste) and we'll discuss the decisions you make. There is no right or wrong, so please be as honest as possible.

__ Caseworker
__ Hospital Administrator
__ John's Doctor
__ John Doe
__ John's wife
__ Legislator
__ People who elected the lawmaker


Tags: culture, society, personality quizzes, Perspective, Test, Who Killed John Doe?, doctors, death, rankings