When was the last time you actually used one of these (for its intended purpose)?

Mass production systems, like habits, once entrenched, can take a long time to slow down and stop (or change course).

Original image from funcage.com

Thanks to Joyce for this.

Luxury is something much of the world seems to aspire to without question. It is sold as the pinnacle of personal success, excess, and self-worth.

Luxury seems to equate waste no matter how you look at it. And huge amounts of waste at that; in the form of disposable goods (I can afford to throw perfectly good things away), disposable people and lives, pointless activities (growing lawn in drought-ridden …

I like fried chicken.

Eating fried chicken now and then is a most enjoyable activity. Eating fried chicken every day or every week, however, will soon become a problem. On a personal level, the amount of waste I generate daily is not really a problem I can immediately perceive. And so on.

Perhaps most of the problems we face as a species today are primarily a matter of degree. …

This frightening mountain of bottled drinking water was snapped at my local supermarket on the weekend.

Surely this a sign of a truly spoilt and self-obsessed society?

Singapore provides perfectly safe, high quality, world-class drinking water straight from the tap. And yet we continue to “enjoy” this appalling “choice” of bottle drinking water.

And people BUY this stuff. In large quantities. They grunt and groan to …

Yes you can!

I spotted this at a supermarket recently. Yes those are little crabs – fried to a crisp, with shell on. Since I had already broken a filling just the day before, I did not buy any so I can’t tell you what they taste like (crabby and splintery?)

It just goes to show how there is a market for probably just about anything you …

Big Oil hires PR agencies to spread lies about climate change. Phillip Morris used PR to spread lies about how cigarette smoking is healthy. The Hawthorn Group PR agency as well as other “service providers” are named in this concisely written Yes Magazine article.

It is appallingly bad behaviour. And yet no one seems to give a damn. “It’s just business…” It seems like the religion of …

If you give a damn about anything, this is a must-watch: The Age of Stupid. You owe it to yourself, your children and your species.

I saw this at a screening this week put on by the UK High Commission in Singapore and WWF Singapore. It put a lot of things into stark perspective for me.

It is time to sharpen the …

The city of Malmö is criss-crossed by canals. Loads of people ride bicycles here even in the depths of winter. This floating bike parking platform installed in a canal next to central station is a great use of space.

(The canal has frozen since I took this picture.)

This is a great reminder to everyone post the Christmas buying craze and as we head into the new year. Let 2010 be the year we reimagine and reinvent the way we live. Consumerism and the materials economy is so post-WWII. The Story of Stuff illustrates this beautifully.

Governments pander to the needs of big corporations – businesses …

The Story of Cap & Trade is a super-clear and worthy summary of the climate change issue. It highlights the role of business-as-usual in the creation of our climate problems, and the continued attempts to perpetuate the problem in the name of selfish profit – profit at the expense of the welfare of the world.

There are undeniably stupid actions being …