Sweatshop Free Shopping

Nerds Are Cool

I remember back in the good old days of this blog I’d do a lot of eco-shopping entries. I’ve since been trying to shave down what I already have. I have always been a pack rat and love to buy stuff. If it wasn’t for the fact that each time I move I am more lazy than obsessed with hording stuff, I’d be one of those guys, you know on Clean Sweep or Cops.  See lazy sometimes is good. I donate stuff to the Salvation Army, or those clothes boxes sprinkled throughout NYC, or drag stuff to swap meets in Queens, or bring them to my job and leave them on a counter outside my office, eBay, etc… Someone, somewhere wants my stuff.

I do have a point to all this. I now find I need to do some shopping for a new backpack. I may document this journey further, but for now I just wanted to share some resources I am using to research said bag. By the way, for those interested, my perfect bag would be an eco, fair trade, non sweatshop, sustainable, long lasting, locally made, recycled, durable, solar energy source, super fresh, comfortable, user friendly, big when it needs to be back pack. I am sure I am missing other specs, but you get my point.

For company ratings on social and environmental issues, see Co-op America’s sweatshops.org.  The Fair Trade Federation also lists companies committed to “fair wages and good employment opportunities to economically disadvantaged artisans and farmers worldwide.”  If they meet these guidelines I have completed part one of this journey.

OK, let me get started, my backpack is almost in pieces.

-Cara

Real Nerds Keeping It Real

This video speaks for itself. Thanks for sending me this Marine.

:]

-Cara

Music Break – Hearbreak Make Me a Dancer

Ladies and Gentlemen, the official video for the new Freemasons and Sophie Ellis-Bextor track ‘Hearbreak Make Me a Dancer’.

Ummm,  love it…

-Cara

Wanna Watch Something Funny?

Kinda…

Sorry to everyone I could only find  this video with annoying ads. I try to avoid this whenever possible.

Kill your MySpace. Delete your profile.

I said it.

-Cara

Something to Watch and Read

Last night I was watching a movie I found somewhere, somehow called, “Ecological Design: Inventing the Future” [1994]. We have known a lot of eco stuff for along time, now we need more action.  I challenge you to find this movie, watch it and be creative with a cool eco-design. That’s right I said it, a challenge.

One super fresh topic covered in the film was the Whole Earth Catalog. The Whole Earth Catalog was published regularly from 1968 to 1972, the founder, Stewart Brand. According to the catalog, “Whole Earth eschewed politics and pushed grassroots direct power—tools and skills. At a time when New Age hippies were deploring the intellectual world of arid abstractions, Whole Earth pushed science, intellectual endeavor, and new technology as well as old.”

To check out some of the older catalogs online, click here.

Technology and ecological design are awesome.

-Cara

Ninjin – The Way Of The Vegetable Assassin

Do not fear. There is a way to avoid the assassin…at least if you live in the Northeast.

Here is a cool link for the seasonal fruits and veggies in the San Francisco Bay Area. You can also use this interactive map to see what’s fresh in any area, by month.

Eat fresh.

-Cara

Fair is Fair

New York Governor David Paterson—the sponsor of the marriage bill currently before the legislature—delivered poignant remarks to the thousands recently assembled in midtown Manhattan. I like this guy.

The New York State Assembly recently passed the marriage equality bill which now heads to the state senate. I think it’s time for marriage equality to come to New York, so I sent my state senator an e-mail through the Human Rights Campaign.

They’ve made it super simple to send a personal message to legislators. With the scare tactics being used by our opponents, we need senators to hear from as many supporters of equality as possible.

This issue is very important to me, and taking action will only take a millisecond. Please join me in writing to your senator today.

Click here:

http://www.hrcactioncenter.org/campaign/nysenatemarriage/step1

Fair is fair.

-Cara

Thought For the Day

Here’s what is on my mind…who is the person that will invent a Facebook-like social network and use it only for good, sustainable stuff and not unleash a fafillion marketing widgets, gadgets, capsules, snippets, modules, minis, badges, webjits, flakes, games, programs, pop-ups and gutter ads for unsustainable crap on the masses? …and no it’s not me, I’m busy!

I killed most all of my social web 2.0 drama like LinkedIn. I figured why am I part of a group called Linked In when all I really want to do is get off the grid. That whole scene is not my deal. I also killed my MySpace. Listen people…Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp…really? If you don’t get that, do some research. I don’t want to be any part of Fox News and all those brothers’ drama. Friendster, what is the point? I slowly killed most of them.

Here is my dilemma, the Facebook still has a hold on me. I think it may be because a lot of people that I had lost contact with and who were a significant part of my life found me on the book of face, more than on any of the other social network sites. It is nice to know all these people are easy to get a hold of, you are reminded whose Birthday it is (see Tony), you can check out what new pictures they have up, what drama they are up to, ETC!!! You know to be able to be a welcomed voyeur of people’s life…that’s good stuff.  :]

So who wants to invent the book of face for good?

-Cara