The Green Life: Top 5 Green Life Ingredients

For anyone who really wants to green their life, really wants to, I think there are 5 basic requirements… or, to make them sound nicer, we’ll call them ingredients.

Can you live a ‘green’ life without one of these? Well, yeah, but maybe not THE Green Life. Think of it like this: you need some basic ingredients to make a pizza — pizza dough, tomato sauce, and cheese (note that you can use non-dairy cheese, of course). Without one of these ingredients, you can call what you make a pizza, but is it really a pizza?

So, what are the 5 ingredients for The Green Life?

The Big 3

The first three involve things you do every day. Everyday activities have a profoundly stronger impact than once-in-awhile activities. That may be obvious, but it seems like we spend a lot of time talking about once-in-awhile things (clothes, furniture, kitchenware, laundry detergent) when talking about going green.

If you look at the top 3 contributors to global warming and climate change, they are undoubtedly transportation, electricity, and food (though, the order varies based on the assumptions and the location).

Global Warming Effects and Causes: A Top 10 List

One of the biggest issues facing us right now is global warming. Its effects on animals and on agriculture are indeed frightening, and the effects on the human population are even scarier. The facts about global warming are often debated in politics and the media, but, unfortunately, even if we disagree about the causes, global warming effects are real, global, and measurable. The causes are mainly from us, the human race, and the effects on us will be severe.

Global Warming Effects and Causes: A Top 10 List

1. Global Warming Cause: Carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel burning power plants

Our ever increasing addiction to electricity from coal burning power plants releases enormous amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. 40% of U.S. CO2 emissions come from electricity production, and burning coal accounts for 93% of emissions from the electric utility industry [EPA, pg. 10].

Top 10 Benefits of Bicycling

If you weren’t aware, today is National Bike to Work Day in the U.S. That means that even if it is the only day of the year you do so, you should bike to work today!

Of course, biking is such a pleasant experience (for most people) if you get out there and try it out for transportation purposes, you’ll probably find that you love it & want to do it more.

I was wondering what to write about for bike to work day, and have just decided to write on the top 10 reasons you should bike, while including a lot of cool, bicycling pictures. So, here we go:

Apple to Double Down on Secrecy as Alleged New iPhone Design Leaked

Apple CEO Tim Cook said the company would increase secrecy of the products in its pipeline, a speech that occurred on the same day alleged designs of the iPhone 5 were leaked online. Speaking at the D10: All Things Digital conference, Cook said: “We’re going to double down on secrecy on products.” Meanwhile, online photos of what appear to be parts of the next-generation iPhone were published by 9To5Mac.


Could it be a coincidence that Cook gave his speech on the same day the photos were leaked? Absolutely. After all, it wouldn’t be the first time we have seen alleged parts of a future iPhone that turn out to be wildly off-base when the real product arrives.


It’s just that the photos of the purported iPhone 5 casings obtained by 9To5Mac match many of the tipped changes for the next-generation Apple smartphone, expected later this year. They show a greatly reduced dock connector at the bottom, redesigned speaker grills and the headphone jack relocated to the bottom left of the phone -- a first for Apple’s phones.


An additional opening between the camera lens and the LED flash can be observed, which 9To5Mac speculates could be where the secondary microphone (used for noise reduction since the iPhone 4) was moved in order to allow for better audio capture during voice recordings.

More strikingly, the back of the pictured phone has a large metal plate that could be made of Liquidmetal, a material Apple purchased exclusive rights to and is already using for the SIM ejector tool. The antenna band seems to be molded into the metal backplates and the top and bottom of the device still appear covered in glass, probably to allow for better signal reception. The original iPhone had a metal back, but subsequent iterations used plastic and then glass.


What about that bigger screen? Well, the photos don’t reveal much about that, if they actually depict an iPhone 5 prototype casing. It appears the parts have the same width as the current iPhone 4S, but it’s taller, which is in keeping with recent reports that Apple is looking to increase the phone’s height in order to accommodate a 4-inch screen and 4G LTE connectivity (along with a bigger battery).

Computer virus briefly hits Iran's oil industry

A senior Iranian military official says Iran's oil industry was briefly affected by a powerful computer virus that has unprecedented data-snatching capabilities and can eavesdrop on computer users.


Gholam Reza Jalali, who heads an Iranian military unit in charge of fighting sabotage, said Wednesday that Iranian experts had found and defeated the "Flame" virus.


Jalali told state radio Wednesday that the oil industry was the only governmental body affected and all problems had been resolved.


THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.


TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- A senior Iranian official claims Tehran has defeated a powerful computer virus that has unprecedented data-snatching capabilities and can eavesdrop on computer users.


Ali Hakim Javadi, who is Iran's deputy Minister of Communications and Information Technology, is quoted by the official IRNA news agency as saying Wednesday that Iranian experts have already produced an anti-virus capable of identifying and removing "Flame" from computers.


Iran's government-run Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center has said the Flame virus was focused on expionage.


Javadi did not say whether any Iranian government bodies or industries were affected by the virus.