Kayakas!

The Stanwood was a 4158 ton steamship, that had been confiscated from the Germans at the end of the Great War (WW1). It was used for carrying cargo for many years, until one day in December 1939, she caught fire.

The are several stories about her exact final moments, but my favourite is that when she caught fire, she was carrying a cargo of coal. She was towed her away from the harbour and scuttled. The idea was that she would sit on the shallow ledge, 12m below and would be easily salvaged or re-floated, but instead on landing flat on the bottom, she turned over and slid down the bank. She was heavily salvaged, then the remains were blown apart, as she had been deemed a danger to shipping.

Looking for the Thornback Ray

Although some of you might say, “What is so special about a thornback ray?” I personally have never seen one whilst diving. I know there are lots of things that I havn’t seen, and will never see, but I have been told there are some thornback rays in the Carrick Roads, which is the wide part of the river estuary in Falmouth.

The North Easterly winds had been blowing for a while and had turned the sea into a bubbling cauldron, so the time seemed right to have a look in the estuary where the water remained flat. Heading out on a very cold morning on Redeemer, we went to the part of the estuary just off St Just in Roseland. We were going to do a drift dive, mid way between the high and low tides on a spring tide, the water was going to be moving quickly.

[This is part 4 of a series of guest posts by Siel from Green LA Girl. For more, see part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 & part 6. -Ed.] There”s certified organic wine, and wine made with certified organic grapes. The difference? The latter contains added sulfites, the former does not. Adding sulfites, a preservative, automatically makes a wine ineligible for organic certification.

Why add sulfites? Sulfites have long been used as a preservative in wine. Many winemakers say that it”s difficult to near impossible to bring out the flavours derived through aging that people are used to getting in their wines. Some will go so far as to say sulfite-free wines suck.

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There is Living with Less and there is the extreme edition by Lara van der Veen- smaller even than the Micro-Compact or the Tumbleweed Tiny Houses. Looking more like a tetris game than accomodation, it is a “Design of mobile, stackable sleeping units to provide people with a minimal, yet comfortable place to stay overnight. By stacking the required amount of units and combining them with bathroom facilities, a ‘hotel’ can be set up at any place, for any period of time.” There is a vertical area to stand up and change and a horizontal area to sleep but litte else- one goes to a central hotel facility for washroom facilities.

Eco-Chick: Knock, Knock - Knockers - and Knocked Up

Exuberant Pantaphobia: Carnival Of The Green 22 by Lee Schnaiberg

Grist: Don”t Discount Him - An interview with Wal-Mart CEO H. Lee Scott by Amanda Griscom Little. For many enviros, the name “Wal-Mart” has always triggered a shudder. But it”s precisely Wal-Mart”s size and reach that could make it a powerful force for good for the planet, say market observers and a growing number of activists.

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We’ve had a plethora of stunning bicycles grace the pixels here, but the Sandwich Bike might just be the most beautiful so far. If only for it’s intentions. Though its visage is none too shabby either. Designers Basten Leijh, Imre Verhoeven and Pieter Janssen wanted to do good, by designing creatively. As we understand it (and feel free to correct us, if we got confused), their idea is to craft a bike twice as cheap as standard models. This will allow the purchaser to basically buy two for the price of one. He/She keeps one, while another can be shipped to developing countries to provide much needed transport, such as enabling rural kids to cover long distances to school. Their vision being that a donation of mobility, unlike money, will not be subject to corruption. Like, no despot would want to steal bikes from an aid program, now would they? Well, maybe they got that reasoning wrong! For, according to “Core 77″, some evil-doer just stole the prototype from a recent trade show. And when you think about the out-of-the-box design that went into this bike, you do begin to appreciate that unscrupulous fiend’s envy.

TH readers who”ve been with us a while may recall a story we did on the amazing Velo’v scheme in French Lyon, where city residents and visitors have 1,500 bicycles at their disposal. It was very remiss of us at the time not to make mention of Copenhagen and their City Bike program. Their 2,000 treadlies (as we refer to bikes down under) can be obtained for one’s riding pleasure, from 110 bike racks around the inner city of Denmark’s Capital, for the refundable deposit of 20 Danish Krone ($3.25 USD). Copenhagen so identifies with their Bycyklen, that not only do they have TrioBike, and Sogreni designer bike accessories, but they once gave the then US President Bill Clinton his very own ‘City Bike One’. In operation since 1996, the program includes a bike repair shop, that aside from fixing bicycles, provides an employment training scheme that results in 80% of participants later securing a job. ::Bycyklen København (English & Danish), via Green Thinkers.

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With only 800 and some odd days to go until the Beijing Olympic Games, the Chinese government still has plenty of time to sweep some embarrassing problems under the rug. Instead of letting the world see/breathe Beijing’s notorious smog, the city will ban almost 2 million cars in the weeks leading up to the 2008 Olympics.The Chinese government will also shut down factories and power plants and even seed the clouds to induce rain. Despite plans to make the Beijing games carbon neutral and some innovative urban planning, Beijing remains one of the most polluted cities in the world. According to the Guardian, a European Space Agency report has found the Beijing area to have the earth’s highest levels of nitrous oxide. China is home to 16 of the world’s top twenty most polluted cities and is the second largest emitter of greenhouse gasses after the US. :: Guardian