Recently in environment Category

I first became aware of the new advertising campaign for Oxfam Unwrapped in Balham tube station a few days ago. There was a picture of Helena Bonham-Carter wrapped up like a christmas present with the slogan "say no to crap christmas presents".

To be honest I was a little confused for a second or two. I couldn't for the life of me see why anyone would see Helena Bonham-Carter as a crap christmas present. Then I realised my mistake. You're supposed to think that she's just been given a crap christmas present and that she's gagged (by a christmas bow that represents politeness) into not saying what she thinks about it. And the way to avoid being seen as someone who gives crap presents to people like Helena is to buy them from Oxfam Unwrapped.

I like the idea of Oxfam Unwrapped a lot. You give Oxfam money and they buy something useful and send it to the developing world. The people who you bought the present for get a card telling them what you've bought and where it's gone. I used it a couple of years ago. I bought a goat for a couple of friends. It was much appreciated.

If you want to avoid the traditional commercialisation of christmas, then you could do much worse than buying your presents from Oxfam

Andy Lester has scanned a letter from the Arkansas Democrat Gazette

You may have noticed that March this year was particularly hot. As a matter of fact, I understand that it was the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. All of the trees were fully leafed out and legions of bugs and snakes were crawling around during a time in Arkansas when, on a normal year, we might see a snowflake or two.

This should come to no surprise to any reasonable person. As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they?

Perhaps this is another plot by a liberal Congress to make us believe that global warming is a real threat. Perhaps next time there should be serious studies performed before Congress passes laws with such far-reaching effects.

I'm speechless.

Update: In the comments Chris points to the Snopes page about this article which reaches the conclusion that this letter is satirical. Still funny though.

I see that some people in the US are describing the effects of Hurricane Katrina as "our tsunami". Now I don't want to minimise what has happened in New Orleans over the last few days in any way, but lets get some bloody proportion here. Look at the numbers. Current estimates of deaths caused by Katrina are running into the hundreds. The best estimate of the number of people killed by the tsunami is 150,000.

I wonder if the Bush family will be changing their opinion on the causes of the hurricane soon?