Susty

The first time I met Bill McKibben, he was giving a speech and I have a vivid memory of him describing the cycle that happens as the ice melts from the world’s glaciers, antarctica and the arctic: all that water evaporates and has to come down somewhere as rain. So with record flooding on the Mississippi and elsewhere, the new free iPhone app Streamflow is a good tool for anyone who needs to monitor river heights during flood events.

“My Water’s On Fire Tonight” is a product of Studio 20 NYU (http://bit.ly/hzGRYP) in collaboration with ProPublica.org (http://bit.ly/5tJN). The song is based on ProPublica’s investigation on hydraulic fractured gas drilling (read the full investigation here: http://bit.ly/15sib6).

What is the greenest house? Should I buy or build? So many questions when it comes to eco-minded construction. Check out this guest post with the six essentials of greenifying your shelter.

Recycle A Bicycle’s upcoming Youth Bike Summit is January 14th – 16th in New York City. The conference is a 3 day gathering geared towards students, educators, and advocates aiming to inspire people from different educational disciplines to explore, network, and learn how bicycling can be a legitimate and safe form of transportation for today’s youth.

ZooBorns reports that Zoo Madrid’s almost three-month-old panda cubs are currently settling in to their brand new crib.

There’s nary an iPhone user who has not found themselves uttering the phrase “Damn you, Autocorrect!” Now that utterance is captured along with user-gernerated autocorrect fails on the new Pop Hangover Network site damnyouautocorrect.com.

Two newborn pandas are the latest additions to the Madrid Zoo. The hairless, pink twins were born to a giant panda Tuesday after being conceived through artificial insemination, and each weigh 150 grams (5 ounces), the zoo said.

Over at the New York Times’ Medium column, our old friend Virginia Heffernan weighs-in on the not-so-niceties going on at ScienceBlogs. Virginia’s firm rebuke of this sci-blog demimonde is a stiff blast of cogency among thickets of toxic rhetoric masquerading as being above the hateful comment threads (that they are literally above).

Just got the Skuut balance bike for the twins. The idea of the Skuut is for kids to first learn how to balance and then progress to riding the big bikes, hopefully bypassing training wheels all together.

The original 1-minute Apple FaceTime ad directed by Sam Mendes featured a couple chatting in American Sign Language (ASL). Now, the new service ZVRS makes it possible for the deaf and hard-of-hearing to communicate with the hearing is coming on line.

The new iPhone comes loaded with new features and apps including FaceTime which allows families to video chat with the phone’s front-facing camera to share life’s most intimate, special moments. College Humor’s parody has dad completely missing out on his son’s life.

Old House Web has a green initiative called “Old is the New Green” all about turning those old houses into fantastic contemporary ones when it comes to the greenitude factors involved in their renovation. In honor of National Preservation Month, Old House Web has partnered with Green Renovation Expert Matt Grocoff and Greenovation.TV to highlight innovative and practical green design and preservation techniques for America’s homes. The video here is a tour of our Grocoff’s 110 year old Folk-Victorian home in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  Matt and family are restoring it in the greenest way possible and in the end that means making it energy neutral.

Through lampooning from Jason Jones on The Daily Show, becoming the subject of a book exposé and after nine years of federal regulatory review, the government green light shines today on the nation’s first offshore wind farm the hotly contested Cape Wind project. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the approved permit for Cape Wind Associates to build the 130-turbine farm in Nantucket Sound.

Cape Wind says it can generate power by 2012 and aims to eventually supply three-quarters of the power on Cape Cod to the approximately 225,000 residents while creating green jobs and tapping s domestic energy source. Exactly a year ago, President Obama made an Earth Day speech in support of wind and the Obama Administration’s Interior Department announced new offshore renewable energy regulations setting the stage for today’s Cape Wind permit approval. That the framework for how leases will be issued and revenue shared has nearby coastal states receiving 27.5 percent of the royalties generated from electricity production. But for all the up-to-the-minute controversy roiling the Massachusetts coastal waters, read more…

Senators John Kerry, Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman release expect to have the backing of three of the five major oil companies for the climate bill to be unveiled Monday. Mother Jones has breaking coverage and the details are fascinating…

We all intuitively know that trust is important in relationships, especially when we find ourselves snooping at our partner’s emails and mobile phones. But much less known is that beneath intuition lies a biological factor. NPR’s All Things Considered looks into the hormone oxytocin which plays a role in the decisions people make as whether or not to trust someone.