Measuring Your Impact On The Environment

Awareness concerning human impact on the earth's environment has become a topic of serious discussion as the results of global warming become a reality much sooner than predicted. To help measure an individual's contribution to global climate change National Geographic and GlobeScan have created an instrument called Greendex that includes study results and a personal quiz to measure your environmental impact. The index is based on a study of 14 countries wherein consumer habits and attitudes toward making changes in their daily lives have been recorded and turned into usable data.

The data includes a study of 14,000 consumers worldwide, including findings such as choice of transportation, purchasing of food, environmental attitudes, energy use, recycling and so on. Each country then receives a rating and a ranking based on the results of the data. Measurement is tallied according to the responses of individuals as opposed to national findings based on industry, government, et cetera. I believe this is the first global environmental study to be conducted by looking at the results of individual people's responses.

As expected, the United States leaves the largest environmental footprint due to the level of consumption, while developing countries leave the smallest imprint due to lower levels of consumption. The index will continue to monitor and adjust to changes as environmental awareness is expected to increase in the richest parts of the world. The effects of climate change are expected to hit hardest in the poorest areas of the world.

Personally, I rated a 48 on the quiz section which is similar to that of a Canadian (second worst rating on the global scale) so I guess I'm not on the worst offenders list but I can certainly improve.

A tremendous resource for shopping with increased awareness concerning your environmental impact is The Better World Handbook (303.4 Jones) owned by the CFL. The publishers also maintain a website with a wealth of information.

Related CFL Titles:

Embracing The Earth: Choices For Environmentally Sound Living
363.7 HARRIS

The Global Ecology Handbook: What You Can Do About The Environmental Crisis
363.7 GLOBAL

The Green Lifestyle Handbook
363.7 GREEN

Saving The Earth: A Citizen's Guide To Environmental Action
363.7 STEGER

This Moment On Earth: Today's New Environmentalists and Their Vision For The Future
333.72 KERRY

- Christopher Bishop

"A souvenir with social feedback."

The designer at the exhibit.

Designer Sebastian Campion describes himself as, "a creative concept designer with a passion for making experiential, artistic and conceptually strong design that generate new and alternative perspectives on everyday routines and situations." (http://www.guerrilla-innovation.com/about.php)

In my opinion he's certainly done that with his latest project, called "Social Souvenir", an installation piece at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Roskilde, Denmark. Campion conceptualized the exhibit of 300 black t-shirts, each printed with a quote by an artist whose work is featured in the museum, all of which are for sale. Here's the interesting part: when purchasing a t-shirt, you must agree to give your name and address. This information is then entered automatically in Google Maps, allowing the t-shirts to be traced to their new home. As the Social Souvenir website describes it: "During the course of the exhibition, the 300 T-shirts will gradually disappear from the physical museum space only to re-appear on the web."

Ok, so since I'm convinced that stalkers are lurking around every corner I could never do this... but I love the idea of it! Check out the map here.

The paranoid Kimberley Barker

Kimberley Barker reviews The Host

Cool apps for mobile phones

I've recently come across a couple of fun apps for mobile phones and thought that I'd share ;) I know, I know: I'm somewhat behind the times on these, but perhaps there are some old fogies like myself out there who haven't heard about these!


One of my colleagues in the History Department who knows about my love for all things Geek recently told me about the Lightsaber Unleashed app for the iPhone. This app would be cool enough in that it allows you to create your own Jedi character-- complete with photo, bio, and a custom lightsaber-- but the truly fun part is that your iPhone makes lightsaber noises when you swing it. No, I am not kidding! I spent 15 minutes last evening jumping out from behind doors and "fighting" my husband and dogs, and thinking about how cool it will be when the baby is old enough to have battles with me :) The original incarnation of this app was called Phonesaber and was a blatant copyright infringement; not suprisingly, it was removed from the iPhone's app store. It was recently re-released, though, as Lightsaber Unleashed by THQ Mobile, which owns the exclusive rights to all Star Wars mobile games. Read more about the Lightsaber app and its history here.

ShopSavvy is a new app available for the Android mobile phone platform. According to the site Big in Japan "Users can scan the bar code of any product using their phone’s built-in camera. ShopSavvy will then search for the best prices online and through the inventories of nearby, local stores using the phone’s built-in GPS." What I love about this is that it's such a timesaver. Instead of running around comparing prices, or calling the stores, or even looking the prices up online, ShopSavvy quickly does it all for you. Of course the accuracy of this app will depend on how often stores update their inventories... Shopping and saving time are two of my favourite things, so I'm definitely intrigued by this idea ;)

What's your favourite mobile phone app?

Kimberley Barker

Our First Library Video - The Day of the Relevant Library: You Are What You Consume

The Carlyle Fraser Library is proud to announce our first video production entitled, The Day of the Relevant Library: You Are What You Consume, a fun filled adventure featuring Westminster's mascot, The Wildcat, encountering and overcoming a perilous zombie horde with the help of the library.

Zombie themed books in the CFL:

Fic. MARTIN
Gil's All Fright Diner / A. Lee Martinez

Fic. WELL

Monster Island: A Zombie Novel / David Wellington

Fic. BROOKS

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War / Max Brooks

818.602 BROOKS

The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection From The Living Dead

The above image is from The Night of the Living Dead.

- Christopher Bishop

Art Reception In The CFL

Maggie Davis' art class is currently displaying their imaginative and striking work in the CFL. Westminster students, parents, faculty and staff are invited to visit on Friday (11/7/08) to participate in a reception for the artists. Pictures of the work on display are available here.

Maggie wrote the following on here new art blog concerning the project. "The 2D Design students spent the better part of October developing these larger than life imaginary characters. The idea to make such big figures evolved from the face project that Jen-Marie did with her junior high kids. I really admired the freshness of their drawings. She had them start with making a large black charcoal mark in the center of 18 x 24 paper, then she told them it was a nose and they had to create the face based on that mark. A very imaginative way to start a drawing (way to go Jen Marie). So I tried it with the 9th and 10th grade students and it was pretty amazing what they were doing. It was then I realized the drawings need to be attached to bodies and so the project evolved into something much bigger and more complicated than I imagined. To make these figures I had to get large sheets of foam core. The kids spray glued them to the foam core, then I cut the figures out and made stands for them so they would be free-standing. We put them in the high school library last week and will be having a reception for the kids on Friday (11/7/08). They are over-the-moon about their work and have been bringing their friends into the library to see their accomplishments."

- Christopher Bishop

Imaging The Library

When I was four or five my mother took me to the head branch of my local library to register for a library card. The seemingly enormous confines of the library with all of its wondrous materials opened up a new world for me, a world I would have not experienced otherwise given my family's rather meager means. Visiting the library each week was a high point in my young life as I wandered the shelves finding new and fascinating books on so many things which interested me. I equally loved my school library and the wonderfully patient librarian who assisted me during class visits despite my constant need for materials beyond the scope of my reading abilities. My love affair with libraries grew into my present career as a librarian in a library truly beyond the scope of any high school library I have visited.

Today I took a number of pictures capturing the beauty and breadth of the Carlyle Fraser Library to complement a number of links and books celebrating libraries and their aesthetic beauty. This post is for all the library fiends like myself who grew up in libraries and still find something amazing in both the mission and the beauty of a library.

- Christopher Bishop

Websites:

Red Hot and Filthy Library Smut

A wonderful site collecting library images and links to additional resources

Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries

A wonderful geography and architecture blog with a tremendous post on library images

Beautiful Libraries

An in-progress repository of images with some overlooked libraries in America

Beautiful Libraries In The World

A library image slide show

Books Owned by The CFL:

The Most Beautiful Libraries In The World
027 Laub
Laubier, Guillaume de

An inspirational collection of images featuring some of the most stately libraries from around the world. This is the source for beautiful library images.

Encyclopedia of the Library of Congress: For Congress, The Nation & The World
Ref. 027.57 Ency

Anything and everything you ever wanted to know concerning the largest library in the world.

The library In America: A Celebration In Words and Pictures
027.073 Dickson
Dickson, Paul

A wonderful history of American libraries filled with pictures and broken into time periods to highlight the need and place of libraries in American culture.

Burning Books and Leveling Libraries
025.8 Knuth
Knuth, Rebecca

Examples of libraries and literature destroyed by intolerance and war.

Restructuring Words: Wordle and Concrete Poetry

I recently discovered a very fun, free and quite easy to use program called Wordle for creating word clouds. After typing in or uploading text Wordle creates a word cloud giving prominence to words that appear most in the entry. Each word is represented once in the finished product. The fun part is changing colors, font, and layout to individualize your creation. Users can upload there finished creations for others to view, print, or save to their own sites. The uses for both personal enjoyment and class lessons are limitless. I really like this classroom lesson using Wordle to dissect meaning in current event articles.

Wordle reminded me of a form of poetry I have loved since discovering the children's picture book A Poke In The I, concrete poetry. Concrete poetry, also known as pattern, shape, and visual poetry, places emphasis on the typographical structure of the written text to relate meaning even more so than the words contained in the poem. For example, a concrete poem relating the design and emotion of a sailboat will allow the words in the poem to outline and create the look of a boat. Anything and everything we see, feel, or imagine can be transformed into a shape constructed from words. The words we use to describe something become a picture in concrete poetry. For a formal definition visit Poets.org.

Concrete poetry has roots in Greek lettering and the works of authors such as Ezra Pounds, E. E. Cummings, and Lewis Carroll's description of a mouse's tale in Alice In Wonderland. The medium's modern popularization and structure comes from Europe and South America, especially Brazil where a manifesto was written to encapsulate the meaning and direction of the art form. Many of the ideas and resulting images have found their way into graphic design, advertising, and art over the years resulting in a broader understanding of concrete poetry by adherents. If concrete poetry interests you follow some of the links below and look for books online and in larger library collections.

Minimalist Concrete Poetry - A wonderful collection of images from various artists

Wikipedia entry - The article gives a brief but encompassing overview of concrete poetry

August de Campos - A leader in the Brazilian movement of the 1950s and 1960s

Concrete Poetry Creator - Site for making a concrete poem directed at children

Concrete Poems - A site with simple but fun examples

***The image above is from The Optimism of Modernity.

- Christopher Bishop

Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book

The arrival of a new Neil Gaiman book is always a welcome treat for me since I love his writing so much. Gaiman consistently finds a perfect combination between the supernatural and the personal in his writings as he creates characters and settings identifiable to the reader despite situations we may never encounter ourselves. I am always in awe as I read his words, wondering how someone can be so eloquent and witty, so consistently. Thankfully, Gaiman just released a new book.

In a nutshell, Neil Gaiman's new book, The Graveyard Book, tells the story of Nobody Owens, a boy who lives in a graveyard filled with ghosts who guide him and a mentor stuck somewhere between worlds. Nobody, nicknamed Bod, has numerous encounters with supernatural forces in the graveyard while trying to steer clear of the being responsible for him family's death. Gaiman's new book is intended for middle school readers, but anyone who loves both his adult literature and his young adult titles will love the magic and beauty of his writing.

His official young adult website features a video of him reading The Graveyard Book in its entirety. The video is a collection of individual readings he performed on his recent book tour to promote the new title. The man is just as gifted a speaker as a writer so take a look if you can.

- Christopher Bishop

Neil Gaiman Titles Owned by the CFL Include:

American Gods
An amazing study of new culture versus old culture in the guise of Gods living among us.

Anansi Boys
A real page turner examining the contradictions between who we are and who we want to be.

Eternals
An amazing graphic novel adaptation of the classic Joe Kubert comic book dealing with Gods on Earth.

MirrorMask
A wonderful and imaginative exploration of alternate worlds and realities.

Neverwhere
My favorite Neil Gaiman book! A man is sucked into a shadow world and must fight to save both himself and his new guide.

Stardust
Magical perfection.

Collections of Short Stories Including One Neil Gaiman Entry:

Mojo: Conjure Stories
A Quest Lover's Treasury of the Fantastic
Shadows Over Baker Street

Presidential Campaign Misinformation: The Facts and Only the Facts Please

With the presidential election in the United States quickly nearing an end I'm receiving more and more unsolicited emails from friends and family originating from dubious sources, if sourced at all. The emails started months ago with accusations calling Barack Obama a radical Muslim who was sworn in with a Koran after gaining a seat in the Senate. I've also received the obviously photoshopped photo of Sarah Palin in a bikini with a gun. Whenever I receive one of these unsourced and uninformed emails I politley send a rebuttal using one of two websites that reference credible sources to prove or disprove the accuracy of rumors - Snopes.com and Factcheck.org. Both sites have no party affiliation and cover a gamut of political material. Snopes also includes quite a few urban legends that should entertain for the sheer gulibility of some people concerning what they are willing to believe.

So, the next time someone sends you a ridiculous email claiming their cell phone grew legs or Sarah Palin is secretly a modified pitbull created by Cheney, take a look at the sites above to see where the rumour originated and how to discredit the false information.

Photo (http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2007/03/)

- Christopher Bishop