I still have to come up with a good title..

If yesterday was Jek “Red Six” Porkins day, today we have something a bit more serious and scary to celebrate: Earth Overshoot Day.

The following comes from Global Footprint Network.

August 21st marks an unfortunate milestone: the day in which we exhaust our ecological budget for the year. Once we pass this day, humanity will have demanded all the ecological services – from filtering CO2 to producing the raw materials for food – that nature can provide this year. From that point until the end of the year, we meet our ecological demand by liquidating resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

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WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama is confident in the quality of Gulf of Mexico seafood despite the BP oil spill and will serve some at a party Sunday to mark his 49th birthday, a top aide said.
“Later today at the president’s birthday party, he’s going to be serving his guests seafood from the Gulf of Mexico,” White House energy advisor Carol Browner told NBC. [...]

Earlier this month, BP’s chief operating officer Doug Suttles also said he would eat Gulf of Mexico seafood after the massive oil spill poured 4.9 million barrels of crude into the water and devastated the region following an explosion on a BP-leased rig in April. “I absolutely would,” he said in response to a question about whether he would eat Gulf seafood. “And I would feed it to my family,” he said.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gvLmUfy_bO0k3C_ejlCWLzIYfjjw

Now, quick change of setting, act 2:

Bishop Love reached inside his suitcoat and pulled a small chunk of carnotite — a friable, yellowish, higly radioactive uranium ore — from an inside pocket. He held it up where all could see it.

“That’s carnotite, folks. That’s what we got south of here in those big canyons off the Grand Canyon. Now you know and I know the uranium industry is in a slump these days, the American nucular business is shot to hell, the doggone environmentalists are shutting down the nuke plants, but this ore is so rich, my friends, such high-grade ore, that even with yellowcake down to seventeen dollars a pound this stuff is worth mining. Let the price go down to ten a pound this carnotite will still pay. Europe wants it if we don’t. And Japan, Brazil, them places. This is pay dirt, men. Radioactive gold.”

Murmurs of approval. Love pointed to one of his crew in the front row. The fellow handed him a portable Geiger counter, battery powered, with probe and cord. Love set back the black box-like device on the table, in full view of the audience, switched it on, held up the attached chrome-plated probe in one hand and the lump of sulfur-colored rock in the other. A loud clicking noise began immediately.

“All right, folks, now listen to this music. This high grade or ain’t it?” He touched the probe to the ore. At once all present heard the radiation count rise in crescendo to the frantic buzzing of an infuriated rattlesnake. “Hear that? You people out there in TV land hear that? That’s high intensity radiation. That’s one mad buzzworm in there. Pure U-238. Yessiree bob, this little yeller rock is hot as a pistol, folks, hot as my Aunt Minnie’s old-timey radium wristwatch…”

Murmurs of admiring approval from the audience.

“Yessir,” Love went on, “this here is one hot little piece of power. And am I afraid of it? Am I one little teeny-weeny itsy-bitsy scared of it? Watch this.”

Love lowered the probe. Holding the rock high in one hand, he turned to face the TV cameras and the glaring lights, the important men behind the table, the crowd in the folding chairs. “Watch me now.” Head up, in profile to the cameras, he opened his mouth and placed the carnotite in his teeth, bit off a piece. Chewing vigorously, grinning at everybody and everything, he masticated his tidbit thoroughly, then — swallowed it. Mrs Smith covered her eyes.

Laughter. Cheers. The assembly began to stand again.

“Yes!” Love bellowed, “radiation is good for you! [growing applause.] Uranium is good for you! Uranium is good for Utah and Arizona! The nucular industry is good for America!”

from Hayduke Lives (Edward Abbey)

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There’s action going on in the Mediterranean Sea.

Various conservation organizations are fighting to protect bluefin tuna from overfishing.

As every cause worth fighting for, confrontations will inevitably happen.

Here the chronicles of the current Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd’s tuna protection operations, and my personal opinion regarding their methods.

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All this buzz on social medias.. all this antagonism between saddened ginger Orang-utans and the demonic Kitkat.. but why?

Being a noob on the issue, i started looking around to find some info about what was the real purpose of the “Give the Orang-utan a break!” Greenpeace campaign.
I was afraid that it would have been a simple publicity stunt, using the hatred towards Nestlé as a trendy motivator to volunteer, or cheap actions like that.
I then came across this report, issued by Greenpeace itself, that moved the focal point on a complete new direction:

Not the “Nestlé problem“, but the “deforestation problem“.

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via Twitter..

http://ow.ly/1JXRC Need a break? Prøv #Greenpeaces nye #KitKat spil. #Nestle

..Well, I didn’t exactly need a break, at those early hours i wasn’t even working..

But ye, why not! ..and here what i found:

As you might have heard, a social media warfare has recently occurred between Greenpeace and Nestlé.

Luckily, I’ve been following the case since it’s very start, and it has been very interesting — on a multimedia designer perspective — to see how this clash of Titans took place.
I believe we can learn a lot from this example, about how mishandling of Social Media can backfire, even for a corporation of the caliber of Nestlé.
Moreover, I’m in particular fascinated by the idea of how this technologies are changing the system, if driven by an organized and resolute force, capable of channeling the collective energy into a meaningful unidirectional effort. Read the rest of this entry »

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..no playing around here: In regards to pro and cons of Nuclear Energy, I’m completely uninformed.

My views over this form of energy production are usually a mix of mistrust and fear.
Fear, because we all grew up hearing stories about Chernobyl and similiar, and mistrust, because italian institutions are capable to fuck up with much more stable and mantainable technologies.
I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that a nuclear power plant blew up because they had it built with unsafe cement for some funny economical “situation”..

Anyway, you wouldn’t hear about that until somebody noticed the first three legged chickens with an incredible IQ, trying to play reverse psychology on the old farmers that wanted to make a soup out of them..

I just came across a report from Greenpeace called “Left in the dust“, about Uranium mining areas in Niger.
It seems like a good overview of the whole process, focusing light on what people often ignores (as i did) — the production of the raw material that drives the hypothetically safe and state-of-the-art plants.

Keywords? Contaminated water, noxious, people at risk of leukemia, cancer and respiratory diseases.
Ah, apparently here operates Areva, the French company that Berlusconi just made agreements with.

Here the link to the report.

..and here a video that popped out yesterday..

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..give ‘em hell..!

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In my life I bought 2 DVDs.

First one, an ACDC concert, just after having been at my first Roskilde Festival.

The second instead arrived just a few hours ago, after a long wait since its pre-order.

“The Cove tells one of the most inspiring true stories of our time.
When an elite team of activists, filmmakers and free divers embark on a covert mission to penetrate a remote and hidden cove in Japan,they shine a light on a dark and deadly secret.This unforgettable blablablah..”

Now it’s time to build the right occasion and atmosphere for enjoying what it seems to be a great and important documentary..

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