nosewheelie

Scoodi, the Rails app I’ve spent a fair bit of this year working on was featured on Brisbane Extra yesterday.

Brad and Kristian do a lovely job of marketing

The suburban landscape has been marred by foreclosures and half-built communities abandoned in the subprime aftermath. But James Howard Kunstler, author of a dozen books, including The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America’s Man-Made Landscape, thinks there’s a bigger threat to those far-flung neighborhoods: the scarcity of oil. As Kunstler sees it, oil wells are running dry and the era of cheap fuel is over. Given the supply constraints, he says the U.S. will have to rethink suburban sprawl, bringing an end to strip malls, big-box stores, and other trappings of the automotive era.

Source: Good-Bye, Cheap Oil. So Long, Suburbia?.

A friend of Scoodi has posted a simple screencast showing how easy it is to give away an item on Scoodi.

Following on a little from yesterday’s post on stuff, here’s a video about how having too much choice may not be a good thing.

Psychologist Barry Schwartz takes aim at a central belief of western societies: that freedom of choice leads to personal happiness. In Schwartz’s estimation, all that choice is making us miserable. We set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them, and blame our failures entirely on ourselves. His relatable examples, from consumer products (jeans, TVs, salad dressings) to lifestyle choices (where to live, what job to take, whom and when to marry), underscore this central point: Too many choices undermine happiness.

Source: The paradox of choice.

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It’ll teach you something, it’ll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever.

Source: Story of stuff.

Today is blog action day, where bloggers do their bit to promote care of the environment. Those that know me will know that I’m a bit of a greenie, I’ve been called a tree hugging hippie before, and try to do my bit to help.

There are lots of things that we can all do to help the environment, from my pet peeves of leaving unnecessary lights and appliances on, to organisations such as Wild Mountains and sites such as Scoodi.

For those in Australia, there is a Federal election coming up. If you care about our planet and species surviving into the future, you should consider your vote carefully. Not all parties are created equally.

Some links for the day:

• Solving the Korean Stalemate, One Step at a Time
• Data transfer with snail faster than broadband
• Oogie goes to Pixar
• Planet enters ‘ecological debt’