I returned last week from a 10-day trip...6 days in South Africa, 1 day in London, and sadly about 3 days spent on travel itself. It's hard to wrap my head around exactly how I want to answer the question "how was it?" It was amazing, and one of those cliched once-in-a-lifetime experie...

One of the most trafficked posts I ever wrote here was about green phlegm. That's right. I was coughing up some, and I was wondering if that was an automatic "Go straight to Dr., do not Pass Go, and be prepared to cough up $$" symptom. As it turns out, there was not complete agreement ...

There are going to be not one, but two "green" inaugural balls this coming Tuesday night. And like Siel from BlogHer: I'm not going to either one :) Siel has great tips on greening your inauguration parties...starting with the very idea of inviting a crowd to watch together, so you sav...

Audubon Magazine features a great article this month on The Low Carbon Diet, aka: Being vegetarian. The columnist, Mike Tidwell, says a few things that I have felt like a broken record saying, mostly about how people who consider themselves environmentalists conveniently leave our dietary choices of...

One of my favorite jokes goes as follows: A man dies and much to his surprise he is met by both the devil and God. They tell him he gets to visit both heaven and hell as a tourist and then choose where he belongs. Well, this was quite surprising to him, but pretty exciting. I mean who knew, right? S...

I recently wrote about non-stick cookware, and how it's an environmental and health issue that I had to add to my list of things to fret about. So, consider that one strike against all the Calphalon cookware we got for our wedding. One strike for: A cool recycling program they run called: ...

Recently the Obama transition team asked Americans to get together, talk about health care in America and report back the thoughts, ideas and suggestions from such meetings. You can read more about the questions the Obama campaign suggested as discussion points here, but they range from defining the...

OK, last week I mini-ranted about something I read about: people electing to have post-mortem plastic surgery, so they'd look good for their funerals. I was not pleased with the phenomenon, saying: "Donate that damn money, you vain, creepy people who would do this." Well, damn if someo...

Now that I have nieces and nephews I have observed the hassle their parents, grandparents and the rest of us go through trying to extract the kids' gifts from their frustrating packaging. And quickly too (as the kids stand by anxiously ...and not too quietly...waiting). Turns out that we're ...

Two stories this week made my jaw drop: 1. The UK televised an assisted suicide Hey, I'm actually for assisted suicide, but I think it's incredibly morbid and exploitive to televise it, sorry.  2. Dead people are getting a little nip and tuck, post-mortem, to look better for their fune...