So tomorrow the Snowsports Industry Assn show opens at the Mandalay Bay in Vegas. This will be my final installment regarding Burton’s Love snowboards as the new snowboard models will be displayed.

I started writing these posts out of interest for the controversy that arose after Burton introduced Love boards with Playboy models on the top sheet, but after the first post I also noticed a dramatic spike in viewers / readers. 

After the third post I also noticed an increased volume of junk comments using words like “naked. Regardless, it was an interesting experiment.

I would like to point out a few items before I close this chapter.

1. First a female shredder’s review of the infamous snowboard. The graphics don’t seem to bother her…

2. MSNBC coverage on this topic… Seems a little late on ‘breaking the story.’  Slow news day?

3. Google Burton Love.. you’ll get about 305,000 results.  Other Burton boards with non-child friendly names such as CONdom / 671,000 results, Dominant / 217,000 and Blunt / 300,000 don’t receive that much more coverage. Why is that? If Love was so darn inflamatory, wouldn’t there be more results? Nobody protested the CONdom and it’s graphics?

4. I read a report recently thay said Social now beats out porn on the Internet.  Social sites are more searched for than adult sites.  If this is true, why did I get more visitors when I wrote about Burton’s Playboy model snowboards?

Well, that’s all…

Part 4 in a 4 Part Series: Part 1 – Naked Ladies: Part 2 – Much Ado about Nothing: Part 3 – More Ado about Nothing: Part 4 – Nothing. Does it End? Yes.

I heard on the radio the other day about a council man in NYC metro area who wants to make volunteering for community service mandatory for high school students (ny daily news piece on it here). In order to graduate they’d need to volunteer for 20 hours of service. That struck me as an odd word combination linked to an odd idea – mandatory volunteerism? 

mandatory: 1. authoritatively ordered; obligatory; compuolsory; It is mandatory that all students take two years of math. 2. pertaining to, of the nature of, or containing a command.

volunteer: 1. a person who voluntarily offers himself or herself for a service or undertaking. 2. a person who performs a service willingly and without pay.

oxymoron: figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in “cruel kindness” or “to make haste slowly.”

I’ve been volunteering for numerous organizations over the last dozen years and there are more groups that I’d like to help in their cause. I do it because I want to; because I want to help move the group ahead. Sure, it’s not always convenient, easy or fun but it IS worth my time or I wouldn’t volunteer.

Is mandatory volunteerism truly volunteering? Does it matter? Does volunteerism need to “come from the heart” for it to be worthwhile or have value?  Eating green beans “because they are good for you” is still good for the body but does forcing someone to volunteer “because it is good for you” really make it good for them?

In a post the other day titled “Yes Virginia, E-Cards Do Affect the Environment,” I mentioned the fact that if you take into consideration the power consumption of your computer and all the nasties that come from building/dumping computers that your dear little electronic greeting card is not 100% Green.

I noticed a post today from the American Museum of Natural History blog on Climate Change that talked about coffee adding to green house gasses and effecting the environment (thanks to tweet from @atAMNH ). It got me thinking (again)….

Every single thing we do – being born, eating, breathing, dying – has an impact on  the environment.  That’s not to say we shouldn’t try to minimize that impact but it’s kinda like bailing out the Titanic boat with a teaspoon.

It seems daunting.  Some questions that crossed my mind in the last 24 hours…

• It’s cold outside. We have old, leaky windows. Normally, I open the blinds in the morning to let in the sun to light the room instead of turning on the light. But, it was so cold I didn’t want to open the blinds and cool the room because the heat would come on. What’s the “more green” enviro-friendly option?
• Friends pride themselves on keeping their old car until it is waaaay beyond dead. It reduces the amount of cars ending up in land fill they argue. On the flip side, the oil burning, oil dripping old rust bucket is adding nasty fumes and leaving an oil puddle wherever it is parked. What to do. What to do.
• I put the beer in the unheated mud room instead of the fridge. That way I’m not opening the fridge door and letting out the cold air. On the other hand, I am opening the house door and letting in cold air so the heat comes on. Should I just drink warm beer?
• We are a bit hyper about identity theft so anything papers with personal info on it goes into its own special recycling bag. Sometimes we shred for an hour straight then dump them into regular paper recycling. Sometimes we end up using the papers to start a romantic fire. Is using electricity to shred (and the fumes from the truck to get the paper to the recycling facility and the power to recycle) worse/better for the world than simply sending those papers up in smoke?

Maybe I’m suffering from some sort of psychosis related to worrying about the environment… For lack of a better word to describe the feeling, I typed “environmental angst” into Google. Interesting article on this topic from the Washington Times was #1 in results.  Maybe my dad yelling “close the fridge door!” at me so often damaged some neurons…or made me think.

Does anyone else have the feelings of confusion and worry about what is the “more green” choice? Does anyone else feel some satisfaction occasionally dropping a “recycle-able” item in the trash can?

Similar posts: e-Cards, flourescant light bulbs, damaging dentistry, enviro-friendly dry cleaning.

Now that the holiday season is over I have a moment to think more about something that was on my mind as the cards arrived in the mail and via the Internet…

Electronic cards -and the people who send them- often mention that this greeting option is “green” or “environmentally friendly.” This always irked me a little. Just as there is an impact from printing and mailing cards, there is also an environmental impact of an e-card.

First, obviously there is power consumption. Browsing for cards, sending them and receiving them all take energy. There’s no way around that… In a similar vein, here’s an interesting article that says two Google searches use enough energy to boil a kettle of water. (thanks to a @jason_elephant Tweet for that one)

Second, if you look at the “life” of a computer and consider a percentage of that life is used making these e-greetings then electronic cards are a percentage of the waste that comes from the death of a computer. Following this logic, they are also part of the environmental impact of building said computers and extracting and producing the core materials. Managing this complete product lifecycle process is called Product Stewardship. Normal references to ”Product Life Cycle” are only concerned with the marketing and sales of the product.

Third, as much as an email footer may encourage you NOT to print, some people print. Paper, toner and more electricity are a result – so is ozone apparently. Ozone is a product of laser printing on many computer printers.

So, just wanted to clear the air on that one. E-cards still cause some negative impact on the environment. Then again, even saying “merry christmas” releases CO2… So, pick your holiday poison.