As hybrid cars get cooler looking and more efficient, there is little reason to drive gas guzzlers these days. However, no matter what your car is running on, the basic facts of fuel efficient driving still remain.
Here are some great tips:
Drive the speed limit. “Every five miles per hour above 55 is like paying 14 cents a gallon more for gas,” Fons says.
Play it cool. You use more fuel when you accelerate hard and slam on the brakes.
Inflate your tires to their maximum rated pressure. Fully inflated tires create less friction with the surface of the road, reducing the amount of work the engine has to do.
Get the junk out of the trunk. Carrying extra weight makes the engine work harder, and that can add up to a lot of wasted gas.
Tune your engine and clean your air filter. Good maintenance means better burning.
Hippocrates believed that the human body has the innate ability to heal itself of disease. This is also the basis of Eastern medicine but the exact opposite of the modern pharmaceutical industry’s claims that there is a pill for every ill.
2 Must watch documentaries that will immediately motivate you to eat better and thus feel better are Food Matters and The Future of Food.
Dr. Linus Pauling, winner of 2 Nobel Peace Prizes, said that “Optimum nutrition is the medicine of tomorrow.” Not pills, not advanced surgery, but food. Bon appetit!
Food Matters and The Future of Food available on Netflix.
Do you leave your computer on all night, maybe turning your screen off as you head off to bed? Many rumors abound as to why it makes sense to do so including the famous, “It takes more energy to boot it back up in the morning”. Well it simply isn’t true.
Here are the facts:
A typical computer uses 300 Watts of energy, the equivalent of 3 very bright lamps!
Turning off your computer when not using could save you up to $219 a year. Even if you are using energy saving down mode, you would still save over $100 if you actually turned it off.
Read more about how energy computers and other electronic devices use at How Stuff Works.
Although scientists are still debating the negative effects of cell phone radiation, there’s nothing wrong with minimizing your exposure as much as possible. Here are some tips:
1. Most Fun: Use a retro handset from Moshi Moshi or Yubz.
2. Most Practical: Use a wired headset
3. Easiest: Use the speakerphone
4. Smartest: Wait until after making connection to put phone to your ear. The most radiation occurs when phone is making contact with cell tower.
5. Cleverest: Teeter totter the phone: phones emit much less radiation when receiving than when transmitting. Every millimeter counts so teeter phone away from your ear as you talk.
6. Safest: Don’t put phone to your ear when in a moving vehicle. Not only does the phone emit more radiation when in motion, but talking while driving is as dangerous as driving drunk.
7. Most Fashion Forward: Don’t put the phone in your chest pocket or pants pocket. Not only do you have an unattractive bump, you are also exposing your body to more radiation than if you put it in your purse or briefcase.
New gift items have arrived and we are so excited to give you a first look.
1. Ladies Who Lunch, Insulated Lunch Tote with Bamboo Handles
A lunch tote elegant enough to use as a purse!
2. Almond Delight, Chocolate and Almond Dipped Cookie Sticks
A favorite snack in Korea, these crispy delights from Lotte Confectionery are simply heavenly.
3. My Own Lunch Bag, Cotton Reusable Lunch Bag that You Decorate Yourself
Colorful Fabric Markers are included to make lunchtime an eco-fun activity.
4.Sushi Snacker, Sheets of Roasted Savory Seaweed
Everyone who loves sushi knows that seaweed is an amazingly delicious and nutritious food. Now enjoy the crispy savory goodness anytime with these roasted seaweed sheets. Just cut with scissors and enjoy alone or with steaming hot rice. Yum!
Raking leaves in the fall is such a huge part of our American suburban culture that most of us don’t think twice about getting rid of all those fallen leaves littering our lawns each year. Last week when I saw a Scott’s commercial advocating mowing the leaves versus raking and chucking, I was intrigued. Could this be a viable alternative or is this just another big corporate attempt at greenwashing?
Here’s the commercial:
Public service or Greenwashing?
Can this be true?
Apparently, research conducted at Cornell, Purdue, Rutgers, Michigan State and other universities since the early 1990’s supports this opinion. Here’s an example of the research:
“Between 1995 and 1998 researchers at Michigan State set mower decks to cut at three inches, then mowed up to 450 pounds of leaves per 1,000 square feet of lawn each autumn (that’s equivalent to about eighteen inches of leaves).
At such a high rate, very little grass could be seen at the end of the mowing season. However, once growth resumed the following spring the remaining leaf litter quickly decomposed. In this study not only was the excessive volume of leaves not harmful, the shredded leaves actually improved lawn quality over time as organic matter and nutrients in the decomposing leaves was returned to the soil.”
Yard waste is the second worst polluter in America’s landfills today (#1 is paper). If leaves can truly be mowed and left on lawns instead of raked, collected and thrown away, this could have a significantly positive impact on our environment.
Great job Scotts! I’m impressed and look forward to experimenting on my own lawn this year.
The Question: If one of the finest classical musicians in the world, played some of the most elegant music ever written on one of the most valuable violins ever made, during rush hour at the Metro, what would 1,000 passersby do?
The Answer: A fascinating look at what we might be missing while we go about our busy lives.
Joshua Bell plays the Metro
In an article called “Pearls Before Breakfast”, the Washington Post sets up a dumbfounding experiment of modern humanity.
The pearl reference hearkens back to the famous words of Jesus who said, ‘Do not give what is holy to the dogs; nor cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn and tear you in pieces.’
I shiver to think what I might have done walking through the Metro that day. Would I have stopped to marvel at the beauty or would I have trampled it with my busy feet.
Among the many amazing revelations that came out of this experiment was the fact that every single child noticed Joshua Bell and tried to stay and listen as every parent pulled the child along and whisked them out the door.
As we head into the weekend, let’s all make an effort to open our ears and eyes and take in the pearls that surround us every day!
“It’s hard to overeat without noticing it. By contrast, soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages can sneak up on you, adding hundreds of calories to your diet each day without ever filling you up.” -NYHealth Dept.
Diet soda may seem like a good way to get your soda fix if you’re already addicted, but it can actually be even worse as I recently experienced when I had Splenda for the first time ever. Let’s just say that my stomach did not agree with this additive. At all. Twice.
After some quick research on the internet, I found that many people shared my reaction to Splenda and who knows how many countless others have less obvious more long term effects. If you really need a fizzy fix, try sparkling water or club soda instead.
I feel very lucky that my kids tried soda at an early enough age that they found the experience painful and unpleasant. They still love other sugary drinks like ice tea and such so we keep a big 5 gallon water cooler in the kitchen so that ice cold water is easily accessible at all times. The most effective policy for us is not to buy it at the store. Even with all the information out there on the negative effects of soda, if it’s in the fridge, I find it very hard to resist!
June is for Dads and you can tell yours how much he rocks with a gift wrapped with love and care. Here’s a variation on the Bow Tie wrap that provides a useful little pocket for a card.
First, put your item or items in the center of a wrapping scarf on the diagonal. Fold 2 opposite corners on top or the item.
Take the pointy corner on top and fold under to create a straight edge across the middle of the item. This is where you can tuck in your card later.
Neatly bring up the remaining 2 corners and tie a snug square knot.
As a finishing touch, I picked a sprig from my wonderfully fragrant mock orange bush to tuck into the gift alongside a card.
This warm silvery wrap is a new arrival called Platinum available in our EveryDay Collection. The adorable “You Rock” Father’s Day card is by Tumbalina.
With the myriad of funny/interesting/addicting things available on the internet, I constantly worry about our kids wasting too much time on the computer. But what about the older generation? My 87 yo father-in-law for example. He’s got a lot of time on his hands. Much of this time is devoted to a daily washing of his car and the compulsive fixing of anything in his home that might be a little loose or squeaky. He also watches a lot of tv.
One of the many funny Twitter graphics from 11points.com
That’s why we thought a computer would be perfect for him. Little did we know what we were getting into.
Have you heard of the term “click commitment”? If you’ve ever tried teaching an older person how to use the computer, you have experienced this. After a frustrating session with my father-in-law, I read a New York Times article called “It’s Better Late than Never” and finally understood why he it was so hard for him to click the dang mouse. In his generation, things that got broken were not easily fixable and usually ended up costing a lot of money and time. Clicking the “back” button was not an easy concept to understand.
Even my own dad who is just shy of 70 often clicks something only to sit back and enjoy the results of his decision to commit to that click. He also has his Yahoo portal site all set up exactly the way he likes it and Twitter and Facebook be darned, no one better mess with the Yahoo!
Part of every healthy lifestyle is staying fit mentally but if you’re anything like me, you have a lot going on in your life and your short term memory is becoming a bit like Dory from Finding Nemo. I’ll often ask my son something only to have him look at me with disbelief, “Mom, you just asked me that 5 minutes ago!”.
Scary.
2 things really caught my interest lately in terms of brain research in adults. The first is an article from the NYT called “The Talents of a Middle Aged Brain”. This interview with author Barbara Strauch confirms that many “older” people have issues with short term memory but surprisingly declares that on the whole, our brains are better than ever between the ages of 40-65.
Strauch says that our ability to logically solve problems and find solutions are at their peak which reminded me of another interesting book I read recently by Malcolm Gladwell called “Blink”. In it, Gladwell touts the merits of thin slicing, which is a term that psychologists use to describe our ability to make quick assessments and snap decisions that are usually right. Gladwell says that we are smarter than we think and based on our subconscious knowledge and years of experience, we should often go with our gut instinct and first impressions.
Obviously, there are plenty of exceptions to this rule of thin slicing and my favorite from the Blink is Gladwell’s illustration of how the American people were duped into electing a tall, regal looking William Harding into the White House only to soon realize that he was terribly unsuited for the job.
I’ve never been a speedy decision maker and often mull things over for way too long. In business however, this is a huge liability where time is money and things have to be decided quickly. I’ve been trying a little thin slicing myself lately and feel like I have a new Turbo button for making good yet quick decisions. It’s still depressing when I can’t remember someone’s name but at least there is an upside to this ever changing brain of ours!
Here’s a great Saturday Night Live skit about a product that is perfect for all of us confused Moms this Mother’s Day. The best medicine for all our ailments is a good laugh after all.
By the way, Strauch says that exercise is the best thing we can do for our aging brains so let’s all get outside, do a little walking and celebrate the power of our wonderfully ripened brains!
Making a proper cup of tea from loose tea leaves is an affordable luxury that can add so much pleasure to your day. However, with all the extra equipment and hassle, you might often find yourself reaching for that lower quality tea bag instead. Take a look at this!
I first discovered the ingenious 3 piece tea mug years ago in Korea and marveled at the beautiful marriage of form and function. A matching ceramic strainer actually plops right into the tea mug and the lid goes right on top of that for proper steeping of the tea leaves.
Loose green tea leaves are hand picked and unoxidized. They contain life-giving nutrients such as cancer fighting anti-oxidants called catechins, theanine, chlorophyll and Vitamin C.
When making tea bags, lower quality leaves are crushed and chopped into small particles called Fanning and Dusts. No wonder tea connoisseurs are only interested in loose-leaf. Loose leaf has so much greater aroma, body and nutrients.
This tea mug set makes it so easy to brew loose tea. When your are finished steeping, you just flip the lid upside down and convert it into a holder for the strainer that will now sit and drain mess free. After enjoying your tea, you can plop the strainer back in the tea mug and steep the leaves for a second cup. Many tea lovers actually like the second brew better! So peaceful. So wise.
Don’t you love discovering great design that functions as beautifully as it looks? The beautiful crackling of the celadon porcelain is a topic for another day but you can read a bit about it here.
These celadon tea mugs are our Spring Special and are available now pre-wrapped and ready to delight you or any tea lover in your life. I hope you enjoy these as much as I do!
My boys sure love them some grapefruit. We buy it by the boxful and devour all through the winter to steer clear of colds and other nasty winter bugs. Since it’s the one thing we always have lots of, we often share the wealth when going over a friend’s house or repaying some debt of neighborly gratitude. Here’s how to make a great little hobo bag from a wrapping scarf for carrying your fruit.
Bagging up about 9-10 regular sized grapefruits will require a Medium sized wrap.
Spread out the wrap and fold in half so that the wrong side is showing.
Take one corner of the wrap and tie a single knot about a third of the length of the side. When making the single knot, try wrapping the fabric around your hand to make a neat knot.
Repeat on the other side with a nice snug knot.
Open the wrap by separating the corners that aren’t tied.
Give the whole thing a little fliperoo and fold the knotted ends into the center of the wrap.
Lift up your newly formed bag by the free corners and give her a little shake down. Gently punch your fist into the bottom of the bag to form the pocket.
Tie the loose ends in a tight square knot. The bag looks deceivingly small. But look at how much grapefruit goodness fits inside!
So much nicer than a yucky plastic bag. Now off to my wonderful neighbor Ann’s who gave me a tub of the most wonderful kimchi a couple weeks ago. Easy peasy grapefruit squeezy. ^^
Wildflowers wrap on sale now at bobowrap.com. While you’re there, check out all the limited time special values.
I’m sure by now you’ve heard of the huge patches of garbage floating about in our oceans. The massive one in the Pacific is estimated to be between the size of Texas and the size of the entire continental US.
Scientists say that in these garbage patches are 4 main polluters.
1. Plastic bags
2. Styrofoam cups
3. Styrofoam containers
4. Soda bottle lids
Albatross chicks fed plastic. Photo essay by Chris Jordan.
Photographer Chris Jordan traveled to the Midway Islands near the center of the Pacific garbage patch and captured images of decomposed bodies of albatross chicks that were fed plastic by their confused parents. Photos of the chicks document the actual stomach contents of birds and Jordan says that he did not touch a single piece of plastic in taking the photos.
Yesterday I heard David de Rothschild, who is sailing across the Pacific in a boat made from 12500 plastic bottles, say that in addition to the 3 Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle), there indeed is a very important 4th R: Refuse.
How many of the above 4 things can you refuse to use today. This week? How about this year.
Let’s take it one day at a time and see just how much we can refuse together before it’s too late.
Is there anything more wonderful than clean crisp laundry that’s been dried in the sun? It’s amazing that we all have the power of the sun right at our fingertips yet most of us don’t consider this option in our busy lives.
A peaceful protest for my right to dry.
Unbelievably, outdoor clotheslines are illegal in many homeowners’ associations around the country including all 35,000 in the sunny state of California. In our state of Connecticut, a bill proposed to give all Nutmeggers the right to dry has yet to be passed.
Which makes me sort of a criminal for line drying my laundry.
Considering that automatic dryers are second only to the refrigerator in amount of energy consumed in homes, it’s time to rethink the issue. Not only is it green, it saves a lot of money too. Winters and rainy spells, we may need to use our dryers, but on a beautiful sunny New England day, it seems like a crime NOT to line dry!
The power of the sun also disinfects clothes and helps keep whites their whitest. Even if it’s just a few pieces, join the movement and hang something out to dry. Take a picture and send it to us this week for a $10 coupon to shop at our eco-friendly online store. BOBO Wrapping Scarves are all hand washable and best air dried.
Hanging out is awesome, but so is hanging in. Call me a prude but I think underwear is still best left indoors if possible.
Do one thing green today and try line drying some laundry using “solar power”. Remember that one green thing will most certainly lead to another.
If you believe it is the inalienable right of every man, woman, and child to line dry, check out right2dry.org and sign the petition. Here are some great ideas and pics from the National Hanging Out Day post on TreeHugger.com
A fun article on how I started my business in the April 2010 issue of Redbook. Many many thanks to Reena Kazmann of ecoartware.com for nominating me! Check it out at your local grocery store or newsstand!
What’s the cheapest haircut you’ve ever gotten? Aside from getting a free cut from Mom, I had never before heard of a “professional” haircut that cost less than $15. When the kids were younger and didn’t have a zillion activities going on on the weekends, we loved to drive into Manhattan on the weekends and sometimes even ventured down to Chinatown for some shopping and dim sum. One day we saw something that stopped us in our tracks.
Typical sign in Chinatown, photo by Nick Carr scoutingnyc.com
$8 Haircut?? $7 for Men and children? It was very hard to believe but we considered it a good sign that the people in the chairs had pretty decent haircuts and there were several people waiting for their turn. The boys all took their turns and ended up with haircuts that were better than any we had gotten in our neighborhood. All the way home, we wondered, how could they do it? How many cuts would they need to do in a day to make a living wage?
Chinatown is truly an amazing and historical nook in Manhattan where the normal rules of modern American society often don’t apply. Check out today’s blog post by Nick Carr, a location scout in NYC whose job it is to find the most intersting and unique locations for feature films. He says that one of his all time favorite spots in NYC is “Bloody Angle”, the nickname given to Doyle Street, one of the few curved streets in Manhattan which was also the site of many gang street battles and murders.
"Bloody Angle" 2010, photo by Nick Carr, scoutingnyc.com
Same location 1909 via Library of Congress.
Hopefully Chinatown will always remain the fascinating place that it is and resist the gentrification and worse the mallification that is spreading all over the country and NYC. Check out Doyle Street on your next trip to the big apple and if you’re feeling really adventurous, you might even try the $8 haircut.
When my sister announced a few years back that she and her fiance had decided to get married in the month of January, we all said “Great!”. When she said that the January wedding was going to be in Aspen, Colorado, we said, “What?!”. Destination weddings in warm balmy places is one thing. 200 guests flying out to Aspen in the middle of winter is another thing entirely!
Having lived and worked in Aspen as a reporter for the Aspen Times, my sister fell in love with the beautiful town and her fiance was and is a ski FREAK-nuff said. Anyway, they had their hearts set on it despite protests from both sides of the family and we all finally gave in.
At the Hotel Jerome gettin my little sister ready for her big day!
Though we did have a few travel related glitches, the wedding “event” turned out to be a magical affair, with snow lightly falling amid the mild and sunny weather that is the signature beauty of a typical Aspen day.
The wedding party outside the church.
Though it seemed like a crazy and completely impractical idea at the time, we were richly rewarded with memories of a truly rarefied moment in time.
Mother of Pearl Lacquer frame now available at BOBOwrap.com.
The tools we have at our fingertips to stay connected and to instantly find information are truly incredible. Yet I know from personal experience how easy it is to abuse these tools and waste a heck of a lot of time. This fascinating video by Frontline really explores how technology is changing not only our behaviors but also our brains. At one point, a professor at MIT talks about her personal experience of a typical technology filled day. Going through emails, organizing her calendar, and doing various other internet related things makes her feel great. Really on top of things. Then she realizes that the day is gone and she hasn’t done anything significant, hasn’t thought about anything hard. (The entire video is a long but riveting 90 minutes.)
When humans adapted to the written word, we soon lost the ability to memorize and repeat vast amounts of knowledge passed down orally from person to person. But it appears that we managed just fine and now use books to replace our diminished capacity to memorize. With technology and mulittasking becoming the norm, we may be losing the ability to focus on one thing at a time and think deeply about things without distraction. Fast Company also recently had a great article about how some kinds of multitasking costs you more time than you save.
We are immigrants to the digital world, but our kids are natives. Are we doing them a huge disservice by allowing them to use available technology at a very young age? Are we unwittingly creating the dumbest generation? Or is this just a natural progression of the human race with changes that are inevitable like those that took place after discovery of the written word?
As a mom of 2 tweenage boys, I constantly worry about the internet and too much “screen time”. When I say no more tv, they move to the computer. Chased away from computers, they move to their ipods or confiscate my Blackberry to play games. Even doing homework on a computer is not safe unless the internet is somehow turned off and they are not constantly interrupted by friends wanting to “chat”.
A big part of the problem was that the kids would take laptop computers to their rooms to do homework and ended up doing who knows what else for who knows how long! Yesterday, we finally took action and officially made a permanent home for our two laptop computers right in the study. Now all computer use is in a public space and the place where I spend the most time is also the place they do their homework. I guess we are all pioneers in this new world of technology and will have to adapt to the digital wilderness as we go!
It’s always fun to reminisce on the past and this interview with Mom and I magazine gave me a chance to do just that. The magazine is geared toward helping Korean Americans adjust to life in the U.S. and they asked me some great questions about my formative years as a newcomer to the great salad bowl of America.
Cover Image of Mom and I Interview, February 2010
Interview in Korea American magazine, Mom and I
Hey whatever happened to Electric Company anyway?? Conjunction Junction, What’s your function… That stuff was genius! I hope it’s still around serving other kids trying to learn English like I was when I was 5.
More favorite shows from my youth:
Little House on the Prarie
Fantasy Island
Speed Racer
Wonder Woman/6 Million Dollar Man/Bionic Woman
Gilligan’s Island
Forbidden shows that I wasn’t allowed to watch but did whenever possible:
General Hospital
Dallas
Favorite game shows:
The Newlywed Game
The Gong Show
Oh the days of innocence! Now I can’t even watch prime time tv with my kids without seeing commercials for Viagra or Cialis. Looking back, I guess all that talk on the Newlywed Game about “making whoopie” was pretty racy. I just hope the junk kids are exposed to these days fly over their heads the way it did for us. Thank God for DVR! What are your favorite shows of yesteryear?
