Disqus - Latest Comments for james

Re: OhGizmo! » Archive » The Agitor, Integrated Beverage Agitator

james — Tue, 25 Oct 2005 10:12:03 -0000

The trick, dear gadget mavens, is to stir your coffee before putting the lid on?

Re: OhGizmo! » Archive » Rear View Mirror: The Classics of Christmas Past

james — Fri, 23 Dec 2005 15:31:28 -0000

Yeah, I didn't include the BigTrak, those funky radio-controlled R2D2 toys, Cox fly-by-wire planes, frisbees, hot wheels, slinky, and a zillion other things. Maybe I'll have to put together the mother of all lists for next xmas. - james

Re: OhGizmo! » Archive » Weighing In On New Luggage

james — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 10:17:37 -0000

Or you could just place your boring old luggage on the bathroom scale. :)

Re: OhGizmo! » Archive » Fabrik [re]drive Is World’s Most Eco-Friendly External Hard Drive

james — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:03:57 -0000

In my case, the "world's most eco-friendly external drive" is my desktop's old hard drive, slapped in a $20 no-name external case. Every time I upgrade my main machine, the drive gets replaced.

There is nothing environmentally friendly about the hard drive mechanism inside this box - it's the same old toxic device that everyone else is lugging around.

Re: We’re Giving Away an Acer Aspire One Netbook!!

james — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 03:13:38 -0000

Hey, David. I promise to give it a good home. :)

Re: Private: Bird Gard Electronic Bird Repeller

james — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 10:11:04 -0000

Epic fail. Why on earth should we all want to keep "flying pests" away from our property? If we all installed these, it would cause untold ecological damage and disrupt nesting habits of millions of birds.

Re: 2000 Car Headlights Animate Honda Commercial

james — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:22:59 -0000

Evan, I hope they paid you to run their ad. ;)

Re: 2008 U.S. Gas Price Year in Review

james — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 13:43:29 -0000

Sherry, the problem is that over 60% of electricity in the USA is generated by burning fossil fuels. And just imagine the additional load that millions of electric cars would place on an already overtaxed electrical grid. To matters worse, there is a huge amount of plastic (a pesky fossil fuel derivative) in each car, and around 50% of the energy consumed by an automobile is spent while manufacturing it.

The only sensible thing to do is for all of us to ride share and limit the use of vehicles. But we won't, not until high prices and scarcity force us into it.

Re: Thousands Injured By “Diabolical” Packaging

james — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 15:59:49 -0000

The advantage (for retailers) is that you have to totally destroy this packaging to get into it. It is psychologically uncomfortable to return a product with a twisted heap of sharp plastic in a shopping bag, which discourages returns caused by buyer's remorse or marginal quality.

The other advantage is that blister packs are a great way of adding lightweight bulk to small products, making them harder to shoplift.

Locked display cabinets seem a much better solution, especially since this could allow retailers to buyand sell things like flash memory cards and batteries in bulk. However, the only way of getting rid of this type of packaging may be legislation.

Re: You Are Entitled to 2,000 Watts, Use Them Wisely (Updated)

james — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:53:35 -0000

This site seems to have confused power and energy. Saying that someone is entitled to "2000 Watts" does not tell you how much energy they will consume.

If I leave twenty 100 W halogen lightbulbs (requiring 2000 W of power) on 24 hours a day, I will consume 48,000 Watt-hours of energy per day (most commonly referred to as 48 kW/h).

I'm guessing that they want us to each use 2,000 Watt-hours (ie: 2 kW/h) over some specific period of time - most likely a month.

Re: Fox TV's "24" Reaches Its Carbon Neutral Goal

james — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:15:58 -0000

Greenwashing. The purpose of a show like 24 is to get as many million people as possible around the world to turn on their televisions for an hour every week. So, yes, they've installed fancy light bulbs, but distribution and viewing of the program wastes gigawatts.

Re: How Many Kids Is Enough?

james — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 13:43:15 -0000

Mmm. And back when Psalm 127 was written, infant mortality was sky high.

The last thing the planet needs is more people competing for scarce resources.

Re: elmoto; Electric Bike for Urban Lifestyle Mobility

james — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 16:14:08 -0000

You say, "you can switch to human powered mode, when out of juice," yet the daftly impractical thing has no pedals.

Just how do you envision this working? :)

Re: Low Tech Alternative To Glass-Door Fridge

james — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 12:11:50 -0000

Wouldn't it be a better idea to write a list of what's missing from the fridge, rather than an enormous list of what's in it? That way you can just copy the grocery list onto a bit of paper and take it to the shop. Like people have been doing for fifty years.

Re: Shake-U-Lator Calculator

james — Thu, 10 Nov 2005 17:38:55 -0000

This one actually seems anti-treehuggerish. Chances are most people already have a cheap battery powered calculator lying around, and replacing a battery is probably less environmentally harmful than buying a new model. Not to mention the proliferation of solar-powered calculators. No shaking, no batteries. An considerably less expensive.

Re: CSIRO's On-Demand, Solar Powered, Hydrogen Device

james — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 11:45:19 -0000

Unfortunately, this still doesn't work. Production of cars requires an enormous amount of non-renewable resources. You need fuel to mine the metal, fuel to transport components and electronics, electricity in vast quantities to make it into car components, and most of the interior is made out of plastic -- oil. As the price of energy escalates, it will simply become too expensive to produce they type of cars we take for granted today, whether they're hydrogen powered or not.

Re: Recycled Aluminum Tic Tac Toe Game

james — Sat, 03 Dec 2005 01:19:30 -0000

Looks like misty beat me to it. It's time to scale back our demands on the environment. Recasting old aluminum into trinketry just doesn't cut it. In fact, this kind of post doesn't cut it on a green site.

Re: The Next X-Prize: Rethinking the Automobile

james — Wed, 01 Feb 2006 11:18:36 -0000

Am I the only one who sees the irony in this? First, the X-Prize Foundation gives an award for the creation of a "space sports car" that belches an amazing amount of pollution into the atmosphere just to give people a short and quite useless joyride.

Next, they do a 180-degree turn and announce a wishy-washy prize related to reducing transportation pollution.

Dear America: The solution is simple. (a) replace your horribly inefficient personal transportation devices with public transport, (b) stop building suburban wastelands so you can actually walk to the shop/school/movies. (c) learn to share. Everyone on your block doesn't need their own personal lawn mower/weedwhacker/bbq/washing machine/vacuum cleaner.

Re: Clif Bar helps Sea Otter Classic go Climate Neutral

james — Tue, 25 Apr 2006 12:22:33 -0000

"Purchasing environmental credits" seems to be the new cool thing for companies to do. Unfortunately, it's more or less a scam: you can't "buy back" smog. If you *really* want to reduce pollution, don't buy individually wrapped candy bars. :)

Re: The Wheel Turns Your Bike into a Moped

james — Wed, 10 May 2006 13:59:27 -0000

There are better ways to power a bicycle than 2-stroke gas engines. Check Heinzmann electric hub motors for a far more compact and clean approach to assisted bicycling. I've ridden a friend's Heinzmann equipped bike, and it offers impressive performance for something so compact.

Re: Ultra-Efficient GeoThermal Heating From WaterFurnace

james — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 10:31:13 -0000

The problem with integrating a geothermal system into a lake is that it's not a viable heating option for the vast majority of us. Sadly, it becomes most appealing to those who own a summer cottage in addition to their city home. Hardly Treehugging at it's best. Even integration with groundwater systems is fraught with problems.

Re: eGo Cycle 2: Great style and fewer emissions than your Vespa

james — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 12:53:00 -0000

This looks nifty, although I'm always slightly concerned about motorized vehicles that can't keep up with traffic. This forces you to drive on the side of the road which is usually cluttered with rocks and debris. It also means that you'll be invisible to drivers and get squeezed to the curb and denied your right of way. Those of us who ride scooters know the importance of "owning" your lane and ensuring that you're visible.

Re: One Man's Case for Residential Solar

james — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 11:52:50 -0000

Reducing one's environmental footprint requires using less in a more intelligent manner. A massive array of solar panels and a state of the art electric car doesn't cut it. Keep your current car (since the energy required to manufacture one is enormous) and ride a bike/scooter. Find the smallest place to live that you can. Only buy what you really need.

Re: Zazzle Print-on-Demand Gets Organic

james — Thu, 08 Feb 2007 12:28:08 -0000

Treehugger, I love you but this kind of post makes me sad. Yes, it's a t-shirt made out of organic cotton. Most of us already have far too many clothes. I understand that you're trying to promote eco-friendly consumerism, but locally printed t-shirts don't require FedEx'ing to my house.

Even better, just do without and give the planet a break.

Re: Now More Than a Million Toyota Hybrids

james — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 16:08:21 -0000

I feel so sad when I read mis-guided posts like this. Yes, it's good that over a million people have chosen a fuel efficient car. However, it would be far better for the world if families would do without a second (or third) car, or keep the one they have for a few years longer. Or consider car sharing (the local car share has a Prius in its fleet, actually).

We have to move beyond thinking that we're being "kind" to the environment by buying a million hybrid cars, to realizing that there are better ways to get around.

Re: Now More Than a Million Toyota Hybrids

james — Thu, 07 Jun 2007 18:04:03 -0000

"Come on now. If these people hadn't been able to buy hybrids, they'd have bought less fuel-efficient cars. That's a good thing, and all those hybrids are getting us closer to plug-ins and EVs."

The world will not be a better place when it is filled with millions of plug-in hybrids and EVs. Rather than taking necessary (and painful) steps to curb our consumption, we are merely trying to take the easy way out by shifting our purchases to "good" cars.

From a personal perspective, my family has taken a slightly more "painful" approach: We've downsized to a smaller (and very efficient) house, we sold our SUV six years ago and bought a Toyota Echo, I take transit instead of buying a second car, and so on. We're trying to "untrain" ourselves as consumers, but it's incredibly hard... especially with a young child.

Re: Is Nano-Generation the Solution We Need?

james — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 20:06:19 -0000

We certainly don't want a world in which every gadget comes equipped with its own power generation source. That adds bulk, complexity and price. It makes far more sense to standardize power inputs on phones, cameras and PDAs and use a SINGLE compact solar panel to charge them as required.

Re: Clarkson Still Not Listening

james — Sun, 08 Jul 2007 20:33:52 -0000

It's worth taking a peek at Paul Horrell's posts on Top Gear blogs - The Green Debate.

The lads have obviously been getting a bit of pressure from the public (and probably also the Beeb itself), and they're doing a bit of thinking:

http://www.topgear.com/blogs/the-green-debate/

Treehuggers in the UK should make their thoughts known loud and strong to the BBC to keep Clarkson and gang on their toes. After all, they need their highly paid TV presenter's jobs to afford fuel for their petrol-guzzling supercars.

Re: Tesla Charging Stations in 3 Hyatt Hotels

james — Sun, 02 Sep 2007 12:35:25 -0000

There is nothing environmentally sound about the Tesla. It's an expensive and extremely fast two person sports car designed for North American freeways and suburbs.

The fact that it's electric doesn't make it a good idea. It takes an enormous amount of fossil fuel to produce one of these vehicles, and I dread to imagine a time when tens of millions of electric car batteries need to be recycled every year.

Re: Survey: How Will \$10 per Gallon Gas Affect You?

james — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 11:15:16 -0000

$10/Gallon oil will impact the cost of plastic, food production and manufacturing. It's not as simple as saying, "Oh, I'll just cough up extra when I fill up the car and combine my shopping trips."

People are smart, and the future isn't all gloom and doom. I suspect we'll see a resurgence of local manufacturing in North America as it become increasingly less attractive to ship wooden spoons half way around the world. Electronic gadgets will become more expensive, and people will buy fewer of them - again, a good thing. Small cars will suddenly become trending in North America (my neighbour was shocked to pay $113 to fill her massive diesel truck yesterday). We'll start paying attention to *real* energy conservation and start clamoring for human scale neighbourhoods. McMansions will become costly white elephants, and so on.

Re: Smart Car: How Smart Is It?

james — Mon, 12 May 2008 17:33:00 -0000

I love the Smart, but its USA release has been hamstrung by overly strict emissions laws that prevented the existing diesel model from reaching the market. The diesel version is a great vehicle that gets 40+ mpg in the real world and was available until last year here in Canada. We're now stuck with the same awkward powerplant as the American models.

Hopefully, they're able to offer a diesel engine again in 2009. In the meantime, it makes more sense to consider a Toyota Yaris.

Re: HP Clearly Explains Life Cycle, Product Energy Use Starting With With Eco Highlights Label

james — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 13:12:22 -0000

I disagree. This label is filled with meaningless marketing-speak, "50% energy savings over an unspecified (and hence unverifiable) traditional printer."

To do a proper comparison, the label should list numbers determined using a standardized procedure. "Power consumption: 2W standby, 24W in use" and "Toner lasts 8,000 pages using XYZ test."

==== author's response follows ====

Check out the HP website for detailed specs. It isn't possible to get every detail on a small sheet of paper without losing context. For an example of what happens when that is attempted, read almost any Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) - these have become vast databases masquerading as "simple" information- often as long as 6 typewritten pages,

Re: Smart Cars: One Owner's Story

james — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:16:45 -0000

The diesel Smart is no longer available in Canada, either. I'm hoping that they're planning to bring it back for 2009 and that the holdup is meeting US emissions regulations.

This problem isn't restricted to the Smart - VW only offers a single diesel vehicle at the moment, and countless other manufacturers have diesel motors that don't reach North America.

It amazes me that my neighbour can drive a massive smoke-belching diesel 4x4 truck, but I can't get a fuel efficient sub-compact that runs on the same fuel.

Re: Is This the Most Eco-Friendly Car Innovation Since the Hybrid?

james — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:54:54 -0000

Car makers spend billions of dollars a year on research. If reducing emissions was as simple as putting a fancy metal filter cap on the end of the tailpipe, they would have done it years ago. Unfortunately, this looks like the technical equivalent of stuffing cotton wool up the tailpipe.

Re: Radio Shack Hops on Buy-Back Bandwagon

james — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 14:58:52 -0000

This just isn't a good deal. The site offered me about $32 for my iPod and only slightly more for a Nintendo DS. It makes far more sense to sell privately through craigslist, Kijiji, or a local free "for sale" board. You'll make more money by cutting out the middleman, and chances are that the end purchaser will get a better deal than if they buy used gear from whoever Radio Shack is selling this stuff to.

Re: NComputing: An Energy-Savvy PC Experience for $70

james — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 10:53:11 -0000

Your text is somewhat misleading. While NComputing's boxes have no moving parts (no hard drive or optical drive, in other words), they are small computers with a CPU and memory.

The difference between this machine and a traditional PC is that this box uses a cheap and slow CPU to generate images and sound, scan the keyboard and communicate with a "real" PC over a network connection. It's a good replacement for a PC in call centers and places where a traditional "green screen" terminal would have been installed 20 years ago. However, it's not great as an all-round desktop replacement. You wouldn't want 30 users sharing a PC while trying to run MS Office or Adobe Photoshop.

It makes far more sense for manufacturers to develop slightly more powerful machines such as the Asus eee PC desktop unit, which incorporate a reasonable processor and solid state storage. They cost a bit more, but they are practical in a single user setting (home, small business) and can be resold. With the NComputing boxes, once they're removed from their little multi-user network, they're just trash for the landfill.

the devices skip the hassles of a CPU, memory or moving parts,

Re: 2008 U.S. Gas Price Year in Review

james — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 10:43:29 -0000

The only sensible thing to do is for all of us to ride share and limit the use of vehicles. But we won't, not until high prices and scarcity force us into it.

Re: Thousands Injured By “Diabolical” Packaging

james — Sun, 18 Jan 2009 12:59:49 -0000

The other advantage is that blister packs are a great way of adding lightweight bulk to small products, making them harder to shoplift.

Re: You Are Entitled to 2,000 Watts, Use Them Wisely (Updated)

james — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:53:35 -0000

This site seems to have confused power and energy. Saying that someone is entitled to "2000 Watts" does not tell you how much energy they will consume.

If I leave twenty 100 W halogen lightbulbs (requiring 2000 W of power) on 24 hours a day, I will consume 48,000 Watt-hours of energy per day (most commonly referred to as 48 kW/h).

I'm guessing that they want us to each use 2,000 Watt-hours (ie: 2 kW/h) over some specific period of time - most likely a month.

Re: Fox TV's \"24\" Reaches Its Carbon Neutral Goal

james — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 14:15:58 -0000