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‘Diaper-free babies’ fad swells, despite critics
Associated Press
More parents potty training from birth by using ‘elimination communication’
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Thirteen-month-old Dominic Klatt stopped banging the furniture in the verandah, looked at his mother and clasped his right hand around his left wrist to signal that he needed to go to the bathroom.
His mother took the diaper-less tot to a tree in the yard, held him in a squatting position and made a gentle hissing sound – prompting the infant to relieve himself on cue before he rushed back to play.
Dominic is a product of a growing “diaper-free” movement founded on the belief that babies are born with an instinctive ability to signal when they have to answer nature’s call. Parents who practice the so-called “elimination communication” learn to read their children’s body language to help them recognize the need, and they mimic the sounds that a child associates with the bathroom.
(27 August 2007)
Cork vs. screw cap: a fight over the environment
Sarah Skidmore, Associated Press
It’s the main event in the battle over how to close a bottle of wine: Cork vs. screw cap.
To some, it’s a matter of style. To others, it’s an issue of quality. And now, it’s a question of what is best for the environment.
Cork was the standard closure for ages. But winemakers began moving to alternatives in the past decade because of problems with cork that were ruining wines. Screw caps became a popular option and are now seen topping many fine wines, such as some bottles from Napa’s PlumpJack winery that sell for $100-plus.
But some winemakers and environmental groups are urging wineries to return to basics – saying cork is the best choice for the environment.
… Cork is a renewable material – made from the fiber stripped from cork trees that can then regrow. The largest and most profitable use of this harvested cork worldwide is for wine stoppers.
Several environmental groups say the growing popularity of alternatives like screw caps is threatening Mediterranean cork forests, where cork is mainly grown. Cork oak covers about 6.7 million acres in the region and provides income for more than 100,000 people, according to the World Wildlife Fund.
(28 August 2007)
Coalition: Christmas trees are eco-friendly
Bennett Hall, Gazette-Times reporter
Two tree farms push benefits of natural trees over fake ones
The state’s two largest Christmas tree growers are joining forces to convince consumers that their product is the environmentally correct holiday choice.
Corvallis-based Holiday Tree Farms and Yule Tree Farms of Canby planned to announce today the creation of the Coalition of Environmentally Conscious Tree Growers to tout farm-raised trees as an Earth-friendly way to celebrate Christmas.
Natural trees have lost market share in recent years to artificial trees, in part because of a belief that harvesting live trees denudes native forests and that synthetic substitutes cause less environmental impact.
That’s just not true, according to Greg Rondeau, Holiday’s sales manager.
“There’s a lot of misconceptions out there from consumers,” Rondeau said. “One misconception is that (Christmas) trees come from forests, when they really come from tree farms here in the valley.”
(27 August 2007)
I don’t know about the truth of the argument. What strikes me is that the christmas tree growers are using environmental arguments to promote their industry. -BA
Linux, Windows duke it out over energy efficiency
Ted Samson, InfoWorld
The battles for energy efficiency aren’t just being fought by chipmakers, server and PC vendors, and other hardware companies out there. There’s a similar battle heating up on the OS layer between Microsoft and Linux.
Microsoft, Linux, green technologyLinux appears to have an advantage at the moment: Companies are becoming increasingly open to adopting the platform both in the server room and on the desktop. Big-name vendors like IBM, HP, and Novell are giving the penguin a push in the datacenter, framing it as a flexible and energy-efficient platform. The fact that Linux offers greater virtualization opportunities than Windows (a sentiment recently expressed by the VMWare CTO Mendel Rosenblum) only strengthens the platform’s green standing.
Microsoft isn’t resting on its laurels, though. It plans to make power-management tools a central part of Windows Server 2008. Further, it’s advancing its own virtualization strategy.
(28 August 2007)
