There was an interesting piece on the Brian Lehrer Show this morning about No Impact Man, a guy and his family ("10 legs and a tail") who live in Manhattan and are trying to live the next year with no net impact. There is also an interesting piece in the New York Times about him. There's a bit of the "Super Size Me" self-promotional aspect to the whole thing, but it's obviously a worthwhile message.

A few examples of difficult it is:

electricity (my computers!): bad
biking: good
fruit from South America: bad
locally-grown food: good
trash (take out containers): bad
shitting in a bucket: good
etc.

I'm most interested in it as a guide to some useful ways I can reduce my own impact. Particularly, in buying locally grown food. I've been pushing a lot in my house recently to reduce the amount of trash that we generate, which I think is way too much as it is. I'm willing to allow myself some luxuries, if I can manage to reduce my consumption considerably.

Anyway, it's a interesting read, with lots of good food for thought.

A friend of mine posted on her blog an interesting link that I'd like to pass on. It's to an orginazation called Buy Blue that is trying to compile a list of the political donations of corporations. It's very interesting to peruse through and see where that money your spending is really going. Some notables (for me, at least):

the good: apple, costco, ebay, google, jetblue, netflix, sun, tom's of maine...

the bad: amazon, home depot, intel, ibm, MICROSOFT, UPS, usaa...