First, Huffington Post has cribbed a list from the Sierra Club: The Greenest Colleges: Sierra Magazine List. The Sierra Club's Top Ten are here. California schools compose half the list. Two colleges each from Washington and Vermont and one from North Carolina fill out the rest. No surprise, the North Carolina school is in Asheville, and it isn't Western Carolina University--it's Warren Wilson College. The complete rankings are here.
Huffington Post has two other stories in this week's edition, both of which reflect HuffPo's politics as entertainment focus, thus qualifying as silly. PETA Plans A Porn Site--yes, you read that correctly. If nothing else, PETA knows how to get attention, even if it isn't always constructive. This is nothing new for the organization.
PETA has done ad campaigns with adult film stars Sasha Grey, Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson. In 2008, the organization's YouTube account was temporarily shut down after posting racy videos of celebrities and others posing nude.In Fighting Global Warming Could Stave Off Alien Invasion: Report, HuffPo links to an article in The Guardian. The gist of the article was "Rising greenhouse emissions could tip off aliens that we are a rapidly expanding threat." Well, that certainly fits the sustainablity with a science fiction slant of this blog!
Speaking of alien invasions, climate change, and science fiction, Think Progress has the following gem describing the response of Fox News and its viewers to the study quoted by The Guardian: Fox Viewers Overwhelmingly Think We Should Prepare For Alien Invasion Before Fighting Climate Change. Watch the video.
Yes, the majority of people responding to the poll said scientists should focus their efforts on increasing jobs (never mind that green technology will increase jobs) but more than six times as many viewers said that scientists should work on weapons to kill aliens than should work on climate change. I don't think there are that many people with the kind of sense of humor that would think that was funny watching Fox; I'm afraid they were serious. Not everything that is silly is really funny.
Finally, Grist is featuring a game from UbiSoft in Cool new game is like SimCity for the whole environment. Here's the video.
Master new technologies and build your empire in Anno 2070. Check out this new trailer for the futuristic strategy game coming to PC.That looks like educational fun, and I might just buy it.
That's it for Silly Sustainabilty Saturday!
Wait! It gets crazier. According to an article from the (possible obscure) journal Acta Astronautica, the Aliens are going to destroy us because of Global Warming.
ReplyDeleteHere is the reference:
How Aliens May Harm Humans, Destroy Earth
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/201455/20110822/space-extraterrestrial-life-nasa-greenhouse-gas-planet-alien-destroy-humanity-nasa-global-warming.htm
Narb does not ordinarily read this sort of drivel, but the article has percolated to the top of the Google News science section, and thus could not be avoided.
Of course, in proper Crazy Eddie tradition, this makes a weird sort of sense. Why not destroy an emerging civilization that is obviously so poorly toilet trained that it puts all its s**t into it's own atmosphere despite the obvious and observable consequences?
But hey, Narb is thinking of running for the Republican presidential nomination, so Science is what Narb says it is. It's much more important that Narb creates jobs so that the everyone will have twelve pack abs.
Word.
Narb, given what the theme of this blog has evolved into, sustainability with a science fiction slant written from a Detroit perspective, the entire idea of aliens destroying Earth because of our unsustainable behavior fits in perfectly. I can raise it to heights even more sublime and ridiculous at the same time by bringing in Paul Krugman, who suggested a fake alien invasion threat to stimulate the economy. No, I'm not kidding.
ReplyDeletehttp://blastr.com/2011/08/nobel-prize-winning-econo.php
Wag the Dalek!