Tag Archive for 'CNN'

Jo Royle, Plastiki Skipper, on CNN Op Ed!

mathew published on May 1, 2010 in art, build, celebrity, technology, transportation and zeitgeist. 2 Comments Tags: , , .

Gooooddd Morninggg SuperForest!

I know you all have heard of the Plastiki!  That awesome plastic ship that is travelling across the Pacific Ocean!  We have written about them before! Here & Here, check those out!  Well Jo Royle, the Plastiki skipper, had a piece published on CNN, and it is awesome!  I wanted to share it with you all today.  Here is my favourite section:

A week later we were exploring the south side of the island, the leeward facing shores of the notorious hostile Southern Ocean. Next stop the Antarctic continent, a land that no nation has claim over and no human can permanently inhabit.

Exploring the remote shoreline I was faced with a staggering accumulation of marine debris, and it broke my heart. How could we as intelligent human beings have such a far reaching impact on a land that didn’t even feel like it belonged to the human race? A land that only a handful had ever stepped foot on.

This experience fundamentally changed my life. I had spent years sailing, and the oceans had taught me how to live resourcefully and sustainably. Now I wanted to give something back to nature. From that moment on the focus of my work shifted, I wanted to discover why we had allowed our environment to be so damaged by our greed and laziness.

Through various sailing expeditions this change of tack has taken me on a new journey, from working with NGOs, such as Friends of the Earth and Earthwatch, to helping my sponsor, Pindar designing and implementing a quantifiable five year environmental strategy. I have since also undertaken an MSc in Environmental Science and Society, and now find myself the skipper of the Plastiki.

The article is awesome, and if you haven’t been keeping up with the Plastiki adventure GO HERE for updates and news and fun galore!

GO READ JO’S ARTICLE!!!!

Love to all you awesome SuperForesters! Have a great Saturday,

Mathew

CNN – NASA Contractor: Give Us Your Urine

jackson published on July 17, 2008 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment Tags: , , , .

According to cnn.com, NASA needs a lot of pee.
This is so funny.

NASA: Give us your urine

“WASHINGTON (AP) — The No. 1 need right now for some of the builders of the nation’s next spaceship: Lots of urine.

A NASA contractor is seeking urine from space-program workers to test the toilets on the Orion space capsule.

Space program contractor Hamilton Sundstrand is seeking urine from workers at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, as part of its work on the new Orion space capsule that eventually would take astronauts to the moon, according to an internal memo posted on the Web site Nasawatch.com.

The need is voluminous: 30 liters a day, which translates into nearly 8 gallons. Even on weekends.

Designers of the Orion, which will park unoccupied in space for up to six months while astronauts work on the moon, have to solve a pressing issue of getting rid of stored urine, said John Lewis, NASA’s head of life support systems for Orion.

“Urine is a mess because urine is full of solids,” Lewis said. Those solids clog the venting system for dumping pee, so keeping the waste disposal system clear is “really a challenge,” he said.

NASA has a long-standing tradition of collecting samples from its workers to help design better space toilets because “you can’t make fake urine,” Lewis said.

The Connecticut-based company building the Orion toilet needs the large volume of urine (about the daily output of 30 people) to work on urine acidity problems, said spokesman Leo Makowski.

The memo seeking daily contributions from July 21 to July 31 was not meant to go public, he said.”

Not meant to go public. So good.

Thanks to cnn.com for the hilarity.

Brazil: Sugar Heaven!

niki published on May 19, 2008 in Uncategorized. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Good Morning!
I was watching a great series last night on CNN: “We Were Warned: Out of Gas”. It was fascinating-looking into the future when we may just run out of gas. We are all talking about it, but they really looked into the scary reality of the situation. What would we do? How would we get our food? How would we travel? How would we function as a society? What are some realistic alternatives?
One place that wont really be effected is Brazil. They have created a real solution. It is working now. It isn’t an abstract idea or something that MAY work in future. It is working. They grow million of acres sugarcane and half of it gets made into sugar and the other half into ethanol. 40% of transportation fuel in Brazil is Ethanol. Within the next year, Brazil will not need to import any oil. That’s it. That is truly amazing.
Check out this video.

And your car will smell like Molasses! Yum!
Why isn’t the U.S. catching on, yet??
We will.
Soon.
Hopefully, soon enough.
Drive Sweet!
Niki