Tuna by Chris Jordan

Depicts 20,500 tuna, the average number of tuna fished from the world's oceans every fifteen minutes.

Drive (Reprise)

I know I posted this a while ago, but I still like it. This is a digital media poem I wrote/created after my experience in December 2007 concerning my mental health struggles.

The Publicity Dilemma

This is an excerpt from a commentary posted on the Church's Newsroom in response to recent buzz over the depiction of Mormon temple rites on an upcoming episode of HBO's Big Love. In a word: wordimus:

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as an institution does not call for boycotts. Such a step would simply generate the kind of controversy that the media loves and in the end would increase audiences for the series. As Elder M. Russell Ballard and Elder Robert D. Hales of the Council of the Twelve Apostles have both said recently, when expressing themselves in the public arena, Latter-day Saints should conduct themselves with dignity and thoughtfulness

Not only is this the model that Jesus Christ taught and demonstrated in his own life, but it also reflects the reality of the strength and maturity of Church members today. As someone recently said, “This isn’t 1830, and there aren’t just six of us anymore.” In other words, with a global membership of thirteen and a half million there is no need to feel defensive when the Church is moving forward so rapidly. The Church’s strength is in its faithful members in 170-plus countries, and there is no evidence that extreme misrepresentations in the media that appeal only to a narrow audience have any long-term negative effect on the Church...

Now comes another series of Big Love, and despite earlier assurances from HBO it once again blurs the distinctions between The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the show’s fictional non-Mormon characters and their practices. Such things say much more about the insensitivities of writers, producers and TV executives than they say about Latter-day Saints.

If the Church allowed critics and opponents to choose the ground on which its battles are fought, it would risk being distracted from the focus and mission it has pursued successfully for nearly 180 years. Instead, the Church itself will determine its own course as it continues to preach the restored gospel of Jesus Christ throughout the world."

Full statement here.

New Ride

'73 Schwinn Collegiate

Bottled Water Drinkers Are The New Smokers

"A year ago we quoted Giles Coren of the London Times writing "Mineral water is a preposterous vanity." This modest and self-effacing food critic now takes credit for the government taking action about it.

"For make no mistake, this is all my doing. Since I first made my stand against bottled water in 2006 – incorporating penalty points for serving it into my restaurant ratings, vilifying its producers and mocking its consumers – consumption of the stuff has plummeted (probably) Far more restaurants than ever before offer tap water first and then bottled only as the Bling-Bling alternative. Punters who opt for the Perrier or Badoit now do so with a blush and an apology to diners at the next table.

"In 2008 drinkers of bottled water are the new smokers."

Coren concludes, in his usual style:

"From the restaurants’ point of view it is just a clipping system. It’s more free money. The mark-ups are bigger even than they are on wine. You’ll pay £4 to £5 in most posh London restaurants for stuff no different, no different at all, from what you brushed your teeth in that morning (not leaving the tap on while doing so, I hope). The result is billions of unnecessary food miles, nonbiodegradable waste, millions of tonnes of greenhouse gases, more urban pollution, hell in a handcart." ::Times Online"

Also awesome:

"Mineral water is a preposterous vanity. It is flown and shipped around the world, from France and Norway at best, from Japan and Fiji at worst. It is bottled in glass that is mostly thrown away and is stupidly heavy to freight, or in plastic which never, ever, decomposes and just goes to landfill or ends up in one of the “plastic patches” the size of Texas currently gyring in our oceans.

Food snobs and restaurant critics make a big song and dance about mineral waters they like and don’t like. New York’s Ritz-Carlton even caters to the whim of abstemious punters with a dedicated water list and sommelier.

The vanity of it! While half the world dies of thirst or puts up with water you wouldn’t piss in, or already have, we have invested years and years, and vast amounts of money, into an ingenious system which cleanses water of all the nasties that most other humans and animals have always had to put up with, and delivers it, dirt-cheap, to our homes and workplaces in pipes, which we can access at a tap.

And yet last year we bought three billion litres of bottled water. 3,000,000,000 litres! I have no idea how much that is. But it seems a lot. Especially when we were fooled into buying it because of labels that said “pure as an alpine stream”, “bottled at the foot of a Mexican volcano” or “cleansed for three million years beneath a Siberian glacier”. What morons we are. ::Times online"

From treehugger.com