Geeks have a lot to be excited about this week. Yesterday, Steve Jobs reduced legions of deskbound nerds to drooling, covetous dullards when he unveiled the iPhone, but we Greener streak of Geek also heard a few things worth trumpeting.
At the Detroit Auto Show, General Motors unveiled a concept electric car called the Volt, which can also generate electricity from an engine running on gasoline, ethanol, diesel, or hydrogen cells.
And last night, Michael Dell - Chairman and Founder of his eponymous computer company - challenged his fellow electronics manufacturers to adopt Dell’s extensive recycling program. Currently, Dell will recycle your old Dell equipment for no charge, and will recycle competitors’ equipment for a small fee. Said Dell:
“Today, I challenge every PC maker to join us in providing free recycling for every customer in every country you do business, all the time - no exceptions … It’s the right thing to do for our customers. It’s the right thing to do for our earth.”
Dell also announced a new program, where consumers can elect to have a portion of their purchases go toward planting trees around the world … Which is pretty awesome.
Let’s hear it for treehuggin’ corporate-types!
From the “Things You Wanted To Know But Never Wanted To Ask Anyone” file, the lovingly semi-misanthropic As The Crow Flies gives us a multi-step primer on the proper way to make the Great Outdoors your own personal Littler Hikers’ Room.
There are helpful diagrams, if you’re interested. And when you’re done learning your defecation etiquette, be sure to poke around the rest of the site. Lots of great tips, tales, and tiny hand-drawn scenes.
To paraphrase Mr. Colbert:
Clif Bar Iced Gingerbread: Great on-trail snack, or the greatest on-trail snack?
* note - also makes a great post-lunch snack.
Bill McKibben - the organizer behind the largest Climate Crisis demonstration in the United States - seems like he’s been inspired by that ubiquitous “Think Globally, Act Locally” bumper sticker. For his next demonstration, he’s aiming to run the “first nationwide do-it-yourself mass protest.”
The decentralized event will harness the Power of the Internet to get the message across, and rely on local groups using local landmarks and theatrics:
Americans will gather in iconic places across the country. Some will be familiar at a glance: the top of the Grand Teton, underwater off Hawaii’s coral reefs, on the levees above the Ninth Ward, along a blue line on Canal Street in Manhattan that marks the city’s possible new beachfront. Others will be less famous: the steps of your church, the picnic grove in your city park, the biggest barn in your county. But everywhere people will be saying, loud and clear, that it’s finally time for serious action from Washington, D.C., on the mightiest problem the world has ever faced.
All you need to take part is a crowd — small in small places, bigger in big places — and a digital camera. By nightfall we’ll have a cascade of images for everyone, including local and national media, to look at. We’ll have proof that Americans care deeply enough to act. It should be lovely in every sense of the word.
The goal is to pressure Congress to pledge an 80% reduction in carbon emissions by 2050. The smaller demonstration in Vermont, which had a thousand people walking across the state for three days, succeeded in getting all of the Congressional members and candidates to pledge to fight for the same reduction.
McKibben will write weekly updates of the organization on Grist and the demonstration’s own web site. Set your calendars for April 14th.
A long, tall hike down one of the most beautiful canyons in the Angeles National Forest. Probably the easiest way to reach Timber Mountain, the southernmost of the ‘Three Tees.’ Icehouse Saddle - just a short distance before Timber Mountain - is also a convenient gateway to several other peaks in the area.
Continue reading ‘Hiking Timber Mountain via Icehouse Canyon’
Apparently Fujifilm got bit hard by the environmental bug when they launched Forests Forever, a multimedia tour through the world’s forests.
In an effort to raise awareness of the more sylvan areas around us, the site has incredible pictures from forests on all of the planet’s forested continents. Along with the stunning scenery, the site’s also got tons of information on each forest, along with musings from the photographers and longer essays from other treehuggers around the world.
Oh, and soothing music.
Of course, I spent a long time browsing the California section before getting called back to my Northeastern homeland forests. What can I say? I’m a New Englander. We’re suckers for foliage.
And, like all things Japanese, the site is stylish, elegant, and highly functional. It’s a nice way to get yourself back in the hiking mood if you’re stuck in an office, snowed-in, or saddled with general winter lethargy.
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Only one of the pictures in this collection is directly hiking-related, but I figured most of the people who take pictures on the trail would have a passing interest in these self-described world-shattering snapshots.
It is always fascinating to look at pictures like this and see how they’ve influenced the rest of the media and the stuff you create, even if it’s subconsciously. Does a blurry beachhead photo from the Invasion of Normandy directly lead to an action shot of a cliff-diver? Probably not. But show me a good outdoor snapshot
not influenced by Ansel Adams and I’ll call you a liar. Liar!Of course, any ‘best of’ list is going to create controversy and debate, and everyone can add their own favorite photographer to collection.
Or you can just use this as a good excuse to go get lost in the crunchier Flickr pools. Best Hike, for instance, was smitten with Buck Forester’s amazing shots this morning. It’s well worth the trip.
The Neatorama post linked above is also featured in the current issue of
mental_floss, an incredible magazine that has absolutely nothing to do with hiking. But if you’ve got a thirst for the little-known corners of history and trivia, hoo boy.
Lucky for the blogosphere some of us bloggers actually know people, and have the gumption and wherewithal to investigate stories.
Of course, this site knows no one and is far too lazy to investigate anything that won’t directly lead me to a mountain, but the National Parks Traveler’s got moxie.
He actually picked up the phone and did some investigating on that PEER story I talked about a few days ago. I didn’t buy the “far reaching creationist conspiracy,” and the NPT soundly debunked it. But he also found out the offending book is sold in the ‘inspirational’ section of the park’s bookstore, and is not labeled as a scientific book like the PEER release led us to believe.
It still seems like there’s something else going on here, though. Maybe an old grudge from some of the guys at PEER? I dunno. Why issue a press release that makes statements you can’t back up?
A lengthy, steep hike up one of the tallest peaks in the San Gabriels. You’ll get a great workout, and amazing views off the peak’s nearly-sheer face — a small promontory that reveals the great L.A. Sprawl before you.
Continue reading ‘Hiking Cucamonga Peak via Icehouse Canyon’
Two-Heel Drive linked up to some recommended indoor exercises for those unfortunate folks who don’t have access to year-round hiking. An area that, it seems from my time in temperate winter New England, is becoming smaller, but one that still exists nonetheless…
The folks at Hiking Ideas dig the classic weighted lunge at the gym to keep your hiking legs in shape during the hibernation months. I started going to the gym for the first time fairly recently, and can personally attest to the effectiveness of this exercise, illustrated below by the Ideas guys:
I would, however, add the following graphic to truly illustrate this exercise:
… Because
after you do those lunges, you’re going to be walking around like an old lady. Fair warning.
But if you’re more of a lab rat than a gym rat, GetOutdoors link up to a group of Harvard scientists who’ve figured out how to grow Type IIX muscle fibers in mice, which apparently give them 25% more endurance than their control group cousins. As an added bonus, you don’t have to deal with gym employees trying to upsell your membership.
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