Don’t you just love William Shatner?

Health Hazards in Electronics:

· Some brominated flame retardants, used in circuit boards and plastic casings, do not break down easily and build up in the environment.  Long-term exposure can lead to impaired learning and memory functions. They can also interfere with thyroid and oestrogen hormone systems and exposure in the womb has been linked to behavioural problems.

· As much as 1000 tonnes of a brominated flame retardant called TBBPA was used to manufacture 674 million mobile phones in 2004. This chemical has been linked to neurotoxicity.

· The cathode ray tubes (CTR) in monitors sold worldwide in 2002 contain approximately 10,000 tonnes of lead. Exposure to lead can cause intellectual impairment in children and can damage the nervous, blood and reproductive systems in adults.

· Cadmium, used in rechargeable computer batteries, contacts and switches and in older CRTs, can bioaccumulate in the environment and is highly toxic, primarily affecting the kidneys and bones.

· Mercury, used in lighting devices for flat screen displays can damage the brain and central nervous system, particularly during early development.

· Compounds of hexavalent chromium, used in the production of metal housings, are highly toxic and human carcinogens.

· Polyvinyl chloride (PVC) is a chlorinated plastic used in some electronics products and for insulation on wires and cables.  Chlorinated dioxins and furans are released when PVC is produced or disposed of by incineration (or simply burning). These chemicals are highly persistent in the environment and many are toxic even in very low concentrations.

Greenpeace has an extremely informative section on their website about electronics. Recently they have released their third discussion and break down on where companies stack up in regards to being green. For the Apple-Loving skeptics who demand to know more greenpeace accompanies each accusation with a PDF break down of why they have placed the companies in the respective areas.

Apple for example gets the following information tacked to it

•  Apple refers to its “individually responsible approach” to recycling through its own takeback initiatives and national collective take-back programmes. The definition of IPR needs to more explicit
• No voluntary takeback for every country where Apple products are sold and not for every type of product.
• No information in every country where Apple products are sold, not even in every country with EPR laws
• Although Apple commits to alogen-free printed circuit boards, there is no mention of eliminating all BFRs and no timeline for complete phase out
• No PVC-free or BFR-free product systems. Apple lists only come PVC-Free peripherals on its website

Apple isn’t the only mega company appearing in the “Hall of Shame“. IBM, Toshiba, Panasonic and Acer all make an appearance as well.

Not all hope is lost, Greenpeace also offers resources and guidelines to buying green electronics. And if all this worrying and fretting starts to get you a little worked up, have no fear, you can always go see an Eco-Therapist.

Ashley the midget, my roommate, sent me the funniest video in the entire flipping world.

I’m not filled with a whole lotta love this Monday morning. I may or may not have a midterm in 4 hours. I’m not really sure because I seem to have lost my class outline. Also - I just want the world to know that I hate “grey areas” … you know… when you think maybe you could be something, but you’re not sure because it hasn’t been made clear… And some things are said that suggest one thing, but other things are said that suggest another. I hate grey areas. So here is a pretty song to put me in a better mood before I start.

Today in Canada: Highway closed because of ice on the CN Tower. …I’m still looking for a piece of Canadian news that might actually be more exciting, but I have yet to find it. Somehow in the past week or two I came upon this new website for Canadian news, Daily Canuck. Not only does it have a news feed of good Canadian news, but also a pretty good blog tacked onto the bottom. Yesterday it had a shitkicking hilarious post about Ann Coulter and today one around the stupidity that people spout when the topic of global warming comes up.

The second post mentions David Suzuki - just as a side note, I had a dream last night that my brother and I were driving around our home town Bothwell, and a drunk David Suzuki started following us, and for some reason I was terrified of him. We drove home really fast and locked Suzuki out of our house, when I looked out the window to see if he had left, he was standing on top of his car, with his hand cut off claiming that he had cut it off for the sake of the environment. Weird.

David Suzuki, please don’t cut your hand off.

And if you come to my house drunk I will definitely not lock you out, but let you in and take advantage of you. (double weird.)

In more interesting news (and actually it *is* Canadian, so I was wrong about nothing more interesting happening) a new species of dinosaur has been discovered.

Ryan said the large, plant-eating reptile roamed the earth some 78 million years ago. It was as heavy as a half-tonne pickup, he said, with horns as thick as a human arm.

“If you thought of the largest bull you could think of … that’s probably the size range this animal was like,” said Ryan.

Which is really cool because prior to this discovery there was no real link between a 12 million year old horned fossil and common day horned reptiles - so it filled in a pretty huge evolutionary gap.

My last two (I know, I’m skimping out this week, but I’ve got shit to do.) are enviro based.

Uno - David and Victoria are the least environmentally friendly celebrities… Which shouldn’t really come as a suprise given that they have what… 5 houses, 10 cars… etc. Apparently David is going to be missing out on some huge game because of a recent knee injury.

Dos - Linux > Vista, but for a different reason than I thought, it’s more environmentally friendly.

A widespread switch to Linux could prevent literally hundreds of thousands of tons of waste from going into landfills every year. Every computer not needed would prevent the use of 240 kg of fossil fuels. Spread that out over the 17.5 million computers that wouldn’t be going obsolete every year and Linux could deliver the world a much more sustainable future.

The good news is, the world looks like it’s ready to upgrade from Windows. Most of Asia has switched, as least in part, to Open Source Software (OSS); some countries, such as Indonesia, also think that Linux changes scofflaws into legit users. Cuba has reported a 500 percent increase in Linux installation in two years; of course, they can’t really get Windows due to export restrictions. Big Blue is giving a specific tutorial to switch from Windows to Linux, and two out of three Dell customers are now demanding that The Bird be pre-installed.

Cooool. So when I get tired of XP instead of going to Vista I’ll just get an upgraded version of Linux. The version that I have on my laptop isn’t all that great. It needs about a million updates once it’s installed… and things don’t really work in it. So I need to get a better version. Plus, I think about 4 newer versions of the version I have have been released ever since I got that one… Anyway, I don’t really plan on switching my main computer to Linux anytime soon, but I plan to try newer versions on my laptop over the summer (when I have more time.)

First of all, I would just like to direct everyone to Pharyngula where you can see a mad wicked video of dinosaurs. You all know my love for dinosaurs is a little weird, so you can imagine how excited I got watching that video. My dinosaur documentary watching is going well. But that’s not what I want to talk about in this post.

This post is happening because of a series of events. The first was the break down of my computer a few weeks ago. I had to go and get a new video card (which is working quite splendidly) and for some reason my old one made it out onto the kitchen table… I think I brought it out there to show one of my roommates what a video card looks like.

Anyway, it’s been sitting on our table ever since then, and the kitchen happens to be our regular spot for sitting around and chatting. While we chat someone usually ends up picking up the video card to play with the fan. So Karl and I were sitting there tonight, and we decided that from this video card:

… we are going to make a computer. And its going to be inside of one of Karl’s empty granola bar boxes:

…there are a lot of spare computers sitting out on the side of roads, and around the computer labs at the school. So we’re just going to start stealing parts… bringing them together and eventually we’re going to have a computer, Karl also insists that we use one of these old school giant fans, for the fan:

Karl is one of those people that generally follows through with what he says he is going to do. So. I will keep you all updated on this process because I think our computer is going to be f’n wicked. And by "f’n wicked" I mean a complete and horrible failure. But we’ll see.

Just as another roommate update - Dan’s date didn’t go as well as he planned. I’m pretty sure it’s because a) he didn’t clear up the fact that it was a date before hand and b) he didn’t kiss her! Geez. Kiss Dan, kiss.
I’m really excited for this crap-computer.