Picture the saddest thing you can think of. Now imagine a sea turtle with only one flipper, who's stuck swimming in a never-ending counterclockwise circle -- over and over, round and round, getting absolutely nowhere. Which sucks worse?
When you're hot, famous, and rich, you get to do whatever you want. Just look at Orlando Bloom. Clearly concerned with his water usage and all-around environmental impact, the actor reportedly doesn't bath or wash his clothes. (And when I say "reportedly," I mean that it was "reported" on Star magazine's website, which means that this information comes from a highly credible yet anonymous "source" -- and could not be more true!)
The iCub robot was already doing pretty well for itself in the creepiness department, but a group of researchers from the University of Plymouth are now working to take things one big step further, by teaching the so-called "baby robot" to talk (as opposed to teaching it baby talk). That will supposedly be done over the next four years, during which time the researchers will work with language development specialists who normally study how parents teach children to speak. Eventually, they hope that the robot will be able to perform basic tasks like stacking wooden blocks, and be able name objects and actions so that it can speak basic phrases like "robot puts stick on cube" or "I want more life, father." What's more, while the research hasn't even begun yet, one of the professors involved sees it as nothing short of a milestone, saying that "the outcome of the research will define the scientific and technological requirements for the design of humanoid robots able to develop complex behavioural, thinking and communication skills through individual and social learning." Unless the robot gets some ideas of its own, that is.
A lot of attention gets paid to going green in the bathroom. Eco toilets, recycling human waste, celebrity wiping habits, a lot of time gets spent on this issue -- and it may be justified. The NRDC estimates that if every household in the US switched just one roll of 'virgin' toilet paper with a roll of the recycled stuff, it would save 423,900 trees.
Are solar panels really worth their eco-footprint? The debate on small-scale renewable energy devices continues to go back and forth as we, the consumers, try do determine whether we're doing harm or good by investing in these nascent technologies. While a professor at UC Berkeley says that solar panels -- in their current form -- are really nothing but a financial sinkhole, Vasilis M. Fthenakis of Brookhaven National Laboratory gives solar manufacturing two green thumbs up. 
Built in partnership of the City of Toronto and a number of corporate sponsors, Zerofootprint Toronto allows residents to complete a short quiz and find out how their personal CO2 emissions compare with their fellow citizens down the street and across the country.
The questionnaire asks about things like how you travel, what you eat, and how diligent you are about recycling, before spitting out your carbon footprint in annual metric tonnes of CO2. Once you've gotten your results and realized how disgusting you are, you can move on to the next section, which gives tips on actions you can take to improve your performance and asks you to pledge to actually do them.
The site also includes forums to chat and exchange ideas with like-minded folks, as well as a marketplace to find local green businesses.
So how'd I do? Well, my number was just north of 15 tonnes per year (versus the national average of 10.1 tonnes and the Toronto average of 8.6 tonnes), mostly because I got on a few planes last year. However, if I don't fly, I'll be back in average territory, and if I stop heating the house, I'll be a carbon superstar.
If a really scary thing ever happens to the entire biosphere, we'll be ready. Sort of. This week in Norway, the Norwegian government opens a vault everyone's calling the "doomsday" seed vault. They built their underground bunker way up in the really cold part of Norway, in the Svalbard islands. These islands must have been the inspiration for that polar bear kingdom in "The Golden Compass", though there are, unfortunately, no armored, talking bears guarding the vault - just regular, non-verbal polar bears, who are plenty scary on their own, thank you. The vault holds millions of seeds underground, packed in foil, at subzero temperatures, which means they could be dormant for hundreds or thousands of years without dying. It was constructed so that these seeds would be protected in the case of disaster (nuclear? asteroid hitting the planet? the Singularity? we've got the straight dope on end-of-the-world scenarios, here). More prosaically, however, the vault could also prove useful in the case of agricultural foul-ups that might render some seeds extinct in their original forms. 
If you're planning on rafting through the Grand Canyon for spring break, you might want to check your travel dates with the Department of the Interior -- it could end up being a pretty wild ride. That's because river authorities are planning a man-made flood for sometime in March. The wall of water will be released from the Glen Canyon dam, raising the flow by 41,000 cubic feet per second -- that's 5 times the normal rate -- for 3 days.
Quick! The glaciers are disappearing faster than ever before -- so before they're gone completely, don't miss your chance to spray paint them with graffiti!
We see far too many fabulous ideas that simply never make it to market for one reason or another, but after a lengthy stint in proverbial purgatory, the Blowfly alarm clock has hit production. The design looks a bit more mainstreamed that previous conceptions, but the functionality remains in tact and looks to be the perfect annoyance to force you to rise in the early AM. Sporting a shiny black base, blue backlit LCD, large-format numbers, and the obligatory mini-copter launcher, this alarm clocks purportedly blasts the chopper into the air whenever you're supposed to awake, and unless you get up, catch the flying object, and place it back into the clock, that awful screeching nose simply will not cease. So if you're the world's worse snooze abuser, and you don't mind stumbling around your room with eyes half closed, you can cure that late arrival syndrome for just DKK299 ($53).
