Excellent piece from the April 2011 issue of Fast Company, which brought to mind some other interesting writing on the same topic of... water.
The recent article was "Why GE, Coca-Cola, and IBM Are Getting Into the Water Business" by Charles Fishman. Adapted from Fishman's book The Big Thirst: The Secret Life and Turbulent Future of Water, it's an interesting look at how cheap and easy water is becoming more scarce... and what that means for both society and business.
It's really interesting reading and I imagine the book came out of Fishman's 2007 Fast Company article "Message in a Bottle".... with this original piece linked to and written on in this post also about bottled water and the found in plastic bottles industrial chemical BPA.
Solid writing on an important topic.
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query charles fishman. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query charles fishman. Sort by date Show all posts
Friday, April 22, 2011
Friday, August 02, 2013
Interesting Fast Company writing - with features by Jon Gertner & Charles Fishman
There's been a few different pieces from Fast Company recently that struck me as particularly noteworthy with two from the magazine and two the website.
The June issue of Fast Company featured the "100 Most Creative People in Business" and the people and write-ups I found to be most interesting were Carl June at #11, Scott Harrison at #10 and Nate Silver at #1. The pieces on June and Harrison were both very short, but on two people doing important work. Harrison is founder of the highly regarded Charity: Water and June an immunologist working on cancer treatments and who was featured in "Has Carl June Found a Key to Fighting Cancer?" by Jason Fagone for the August issue of Philadelphia Magazine.
The write-up of Silver as the founder of the (moving from the New York Times to ESPN) website FiveThirtyEight was a fairly lengthy feature by Jon Gertner and included some excellent material. Gertner made multiple references to the two concepts in the title of Silver's recent book The Signal and the Noise (which I reviewed last December), with the signal being actual valuable information and the noise everything else. I also found interesting Gertner's note that "Silver enjoys capitalizing anytime he thinks someone is making a decision for the wrong reasons" and it reminded me of a blog post I wrote last year that got into stock valuations and how skewed or ethereal they can be, with Facebook's stock an example of that (just as Silver noted). The final thing that struck me from the Gertner piece on Silver was a fairly lengthy portion about how data analysis (often known as big data) has potential applications for public good, with specific mention of the areas of education and medicine. Noted in the piece were Rayid Ghani who was the chief scientist of the 2012 Obama campaign and Jake Porway who founded Datakind, a non-profit with the Twitter description "Connecting non-profits in need of data analysis with pro bono data scientists who can work to help them with data collection, analysis, visualization, and more."
Another Fast Company Magazine piece I found excellent lately was "The Road to Resilience: How Unscientific Innovation Saved Marlin Steel" from the July/August issue. The feature was written by Charles Fishman, whose writing I've posted on a few times on all the way back to "Message in a Bottle", his 2007 Fast Company feature on the bottled water industry. This latest piece by Fishman profiled a company that used to solely make bagel baskets and has grown tremendously with now the large majority of products being much more expensive baskets for industrial and manufacturing environments. Noted in the piece was an interesting quote from owner Drew Greenblatt with "What I realized is that the customers who are a pain in the neck are really the great customers."
The final interesting Fast Company pieces to note here were two shorts ones posted to the website. "How Vice Hacked Google Glass to Tell Crisis Stories" was by Neal Ungerleider about journalist Tim Pool and his on the job usage of Google glasses. Also was the Sarah Kessler piece "Pixar's John Lasseter on Steve Jobs, Creativity, and Disney Infinity" leading into the launch of a Disney game offering. In terms of Lasseter as a subject, it brought to mind the profile "Father of the Year" on him by Tom Junod for Esquire.
The June issue of Fast Company featured the "100 Most Creative People in Business" and the people and write-ups I found to be most interesting were Carl June at #11, Scott Harrison at #10 and Nate Silver at #1. The pieces on June and Harrison were both very short, but on two people doing important work. Harrison is founder of the highly regarded Charity: Water and June an immunologist working on cancer treatments and who was featured in "Has Carl June Found a Key to Fighting Cancer?" by Jason Fagone for the August issue of Philadelphia Magazine.
The write-up of Silver as the founder of the (moving from the New York Times to ESPN) website FiveThirtyEight was a fairly lengthy feature by Jon Gertner and included some excellent material. Gertner made multiple references to the two concepts in the title of Silver's recent book The Signal and the Noise (which I reviewed last December), with the signal being actual valuable information and the noise everything else. I also found interesting Gertner's note that "Silver enjoys capitalizing anytime he thinks someone is making a decision for the wrong reasons" and it reminded me of a blog post I wrote last year that got into stock valuations and how skewed or ethereal they can be, with Facebook's stock an example of that (just as Silver noted). The final thing that struck me from the Gertner piece on Silver was a fairly lengthy portion about how data analysis (often known as big data) has potential applications for public good, with specific mention of the areas of education and medicine. Noted in the piece were Rayid Ghani who was the chief scientist of the 2012 Obama campaign and Jake Porway who founded Datakind, a non-profit with the Twitter description "Connecting non-profits in need of data analysis with pro bono data scientists who can work to help them with data collection, analysis, visualization, and more."
Another Fast Company Magazine piece I found excellent lately was "The Road to Resilience: How Unscientific Innovation Saved Marlin Steel" from the July/August issue. The feature was written by Charles Fishman, whose writing I've posted on a few times on all the way back to "Message in a Bottle", his 2007 Fast Company feature on the bottled water industry. This latest piece by Fishman profiled a company that used to solely make bagel baskets and has grown tremendously with now the large majority of products being much more expensive baskets for industrial and manufacturing environments. Noted in the piece was an interesting quote from owner Drew Greenblatt with "What I realized is that the customers who are a pain in the neck are really the great customers."
The final interesting Fast Company pieces to note here were two shorts ones posted to the website. "How Vice Hacked Google Glass to Tell Crisis Stories" was by Neal Ungerleider about journalist Tim Pool and his on the job usage of Google glasses. Also was the Sarah Kessler piece "Pixar's John Lasseter on Steve Jobs, Creativity, and Disney Infinity" leading into the launch of a Disney game offering. In terms of Lasseter as a subject, it brought to mind the profile "Father of the Year" on him by Tom Junod for Esquire.
Monday, December 08, 2014
Favorite business writing linked to - on manufacturing and/or resource utilization
As part of the aggregation project I've been working on around my favorite and most impactful business writing, including past posts done in the areas of writing about health care and writing about venture capital, below are the stories that struck me (and are available for reading without subscription) on manufacturing and/or resource utilization:
"Materials That Will Change the World: Graphene" by Peter Diamandis for Medium in Oct 2014 – Diamandis is founder of the X Prize awarded for private spacecraft development and author of the book Abundance: The Future is Brighter Than You Think. In this story, he did a fascinating piece on Graphene as a material noted as having potential applications in the many areas of energy storage, flexible screens, desalinization and filtration of water, medical applications and sensors, photovoltaics and solar cells, computing and electronics and material composites.
"The Road to Resilience: How Unscientific Innovation Saved Marlin Steel" by Charles Fishman for Fast Company in June 2013 – on a company that used to solely make bagel baskets and has grown tremendously with now the large majority of products being much more expensive baskets for industrial and manufacturing environments. Noted in the piece was an interesting quote from owner Drew Greenblatt with "what I realized is that the customers who are a pain in the neck are really the great customers."
"Is Origami the Future of Tech?" by Drake Bennett for Businessweek in May 2012 – on the topic of DNA fold origami manufacturing. It's an amazing idea that departs completely from manufacturing paradigms based on sculpture (take a block and chisel away what's not needed) or piece-together assembly. Instead, Bennett describes a process of manufacturing for objects (both large and nano-sized) based at least in part on the work of mathematician and computer scientist Erik Demaine. "Fold-and-cut allowed you to make any shape in the world, any collection of shapes, even, as long as they had straight sides. One could, in an angular font, create the entire text of this page with the right folds and the right cut. In a paper published two years later, Demaine expanded on this idea, extending it into three dimensions: Any faceted solid, he showed, no matter how complex or irregular, could be folded from a single uncut sheet of paper. Start with a piece of paper big enough, and you could model Notre Dame down to the last gargoyle." The idea seems outlandish, but is actually based on objects in the natural world like flowers or snowflakes (with the idea of folding illustrated by paper snowflakes usually made in school). It was a remarkable concept that seems to me likely the type of innovation Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman had in mind when he said the following from an April 2011 Businessweek story "Facebook is not the kind of technology that will stop us from having dropped cell phone calls, and neither is Groupon or any of these advertising things," he says. "We need them. O.K., great. But they are building on top of old technology, and at some point you exhaust the fuel of the underpinnings." It's not to find fault with communication platforms like Facebook or Twitter, but rather to highlight this case of what could be real true breakthrough innovation in the field of manufacturing.
"TechShop: Paradise for Tinkerers" by Ashlee Vance for Businessweek in May 2012 – on the facility chain where members have access to expensive equipment to build things from plastic, wood, metal or other materials for a $100/month membership cost.
"MakerBot's 3-D Printers Let Consumers Dream up Prototypes of Pretty Much Anything. But Do We Need More Plastic?" by Rob Walker for Fast Company in Jan 2012.
"Alaska’s Billion Dollar Mountain" by Daniel Grushkin for Businessweek in Oct 2011 – on entrepreneur Jim McKenzie and his mining company, UCore. Focus is on Bokan Mountain near Ketchikan, Alaska and the large support of valuable rare earth metals held deep underground. It's an interesting story in the efforts of McKenzie to gain mining access and in how the land reached its current valuation. Previous attempts to mine Bokan were unsuccessful at trying to find and extract uranium and this is exactly what McKenzie was initially interested in and hoping to convince the old prospector (Bob Dotson) who owned the mineral rights to allow him access to. Through spending time with Dotson, McKenzie learned of the rare earth metal potential in the mine and then brokered a deal with Dotson and his estranged children (to whom who he had granted shared rights) to be able to mine Bokan. In 2010, China as the world's largest producer of rare earth metals then made the decision to dramatically cut its exports of these minerals (that go into complicated electronics, jet engines and missiles) and as a result made prices skyrocket and dramatically increased the value of Bokan. It still remains to be seen whether the cost of deep underground extraction will make the investment pay off, but the potential is very much there.
"The Siberian Energy Rush" by Joshua Hammer for Fast Company in Nov 2010 – about Russia pushing natural gas exploration further and further into the Arctic Circle. Written by Joshua Hammer it's a pretty amazing look at a country staking a claim to new territory.
"I Have Just One Word for You: Bioplastics" by Mar Der Hovanesian for Businessweek in Aug 2008 – on biodegradable plastics and the biotech company Metabolix.
"China Invades Africa" by Richard Behar for Fast Company in June 2008 – a special report on the ongoing private / public efforts of China to stake claim to needed resources that are and will be taken out of the continent of Africa.
"Materials That Will Change the World: Graphene" by Peter Diamandis for Medium in Oct 2014 – Diamandis is founder of the X Prize awarded for private spacecraft development and author of the book Abundance: The Future is Brighter Than You Think. In this story, he did a fascinating piece on Graphene as a material noted as having potential applications in the many areas of energy storage, flexible screens, desalinization and filtration of water, medical applications and sensors, photovoltaics and solar cells, computing and electronics and material composites.
"The Road to Resilience: How Unscientific Innovation Saved Marlin Steel" by Charles Fishman for Fast Company in June 2013 – on a company that used to solely make bagel baskets and has grown tremendously with now the large majority of products being much more expensive baskets for industrial and manufacturing environments. Noted in the piece was an interesting quote from owner Drew Greenblatt with "what I realized is that the customers who are a pain in the neck are really the great customers."
"Is Origami the Future of Tech?" by Drake Bennett for Businessweek in May 2012 – on the topic of DNA fold origami manufacturing. It's an amazing idea that departs completely from manufacturing paradigms based on sculpture (take a block and chisel away what's not needed) or piece-together assembly. Instead, Bennett describes a process of manufacturing for objects (both large and nano-sized) based at least in part on the work of mathematician and computer scientist Erik Demaine. "Fold-and-cut allowed you to make any shape in the world, any collection of shapes, even, as long as they had straight sides. One could, in an angular font, create the entire text of this page with the right folds and the right cut. In a paper published two years later, Demaine expanded on this idea, extending it into three dimensions: Any faceted solid, he showed, no matter how complex or irregular, could be folded from a single uncut sheet of paper. Start with a piece of paper big enough, and you could model Notre Dame down to the last gargoyle." The idea seems outlandish, but is actually based on objects in the natural world like flowers or snowflakes (with the idea of folding illustrated by paper snowflakes usually made in school). It was a remarkable concept that seems to me likely the type of innovation Silicon Valley entrepreneur Steve Perlman had in mind when he said the following from an April 2011 Businessweek story "Facebook is not the kind of technology that will stop us from having dropped cell phone calls, and neither is Groupon or any of these advertising things," he says. "We need them. O.K., great. But they are building on top of old technology, and at some point you exhaust the fuel of the underpinnings." It's not to find fault with communication platforms like Facebook or Twitter, but rather to highlight this case of what could be real true breakthrough innovation in the field of manufacturing.
"TechShop: Paradise for Tinkerers" by Ashlee Vance for Businessweek in May 2012 – on the facility chain where members have access to expensive equipment to build things from plastic, wood, metal or other materials for a $100/month membership cost.
"MakerBot's 3-D Printers Let Consumers Dream up Prototypes of Pretty Much Anything. But Do We Need More Plastic?" by Rob Walker for Fast Company in Jan 2012.
"Alaska’s Billion Dollar Mountain" by Daniel Grushkin for Businessweek in Oct 2011 – on entrepreneur Jim McKenzie and his mining company, UCore. Focus is on Bokan Mountain near Ketchikan, Alaska and the large support of valuable rare earth metals held deep underground. It's an interesting story in the efforts of McKenzie to gain mining access and in how the land reached its current valuation. Previous attempts to mine Bokan were unsuccessful at trying to find and extract uranium and this is exactly what McKenzie was initially interested in and hoping to convince the old prospector (Bob Dotson) who owned the mineral rights to allow him access to. Through spending time with Dotson, McKenzie learned of the rare earth metal potential in the mine and then brokered a deal with Dotson and his estranged children (to whom who he had granted shared rights) to be able to mine Bokan. In 2010, China as the world's largest producer of rare earth metals then made the decision to dramatically cut its exports of these minerals (that go into complicated electronics, jet engines and missiles) and as a result made prices skyrocket and dramatically increased the value of Bokan. It still remains to be seen whether the cost of deep underground extraction will make the investment pay off, but the potential is very much there.
"The Siberian Energy Rush" by Joshua Hammer for Fast Company in Nov 2010 – about Russia pushing natural gas exploration further and further into the Arctic Circle. Written by Joshua Hammer it's a pretty amazing look at a country staking a claim to new territory.
"I Have Just One Word for You: Bioplastics" by Mar Der Hovanesian for Businessweek in Aug 2008 – on biodegradable plastics and the biotech company Metabolix.
"China Invades Africa" by Richard Behar for Fast Company in June 2008 – a special report on the ongoing private / public efforts of China to stake claim to needed resources that are and will be taken out of the continent of Africa.
Tuesday, December 08, 2009
Best Magazine Writing: Bottled Water & BPA Articles
Following up on my "Best Magazine Writing: Esquire & Sports Illustrated"... which follows up on my "Stuff of Interest & Authors Enjoyed", I began looking at posts with BusinessWeek and Fast Company links and found some excellent writing from each magazine on both plastics and the bottled water industry.
Three different articles with three different angles... all raising red flags around bottled water and the plastic compound BPA.
From Dec 2007, Fast Company writer Charles Fishman wrote "Message in a Bottle" on the bottled water industry. This award winning article basically was an expose of many of the negative things about bottled water.
In July 2008, one of the earlier posts I did to this blog was titled Impact of Bottled Water on a Town and links to the BusinessWeek story "A Town Torn Apart by Nestlé." Not to get overly "up with small town, down with big corporation" here, but it's nettlesome when you have a company (Nestle for it's Arrowhead water brand) retaining a lawyer on behalf of a town (McCloud, CA) and then the company negotiating with the lawyer. Seems to raise just a few conflict of interest questions.
The first two blog posts and articles are around bottled water and one company that sells it, but the third is around a component that's in many of the bottles themselves. In Feb 2009 I did this blog post linking to the Fast Company feature "The Real Story Behind Bisphenol A." As the blog post and article (in of course much greater detail) covers, the compound BPA (or Bisphenol A) is a building block of many shatterproof plastics and can be found in products ranging from cell phones to drink cans and baby bottles.
The issue comes from the concerns around the product's potential to leech into water and impact the reproductive system... particularly given it's presence in products used by babies with highly undeveloped immune systems.
Three different pieces around three slightly different topics, but all linked together by excellent writing that raises some disconcerting questions about both bottled water and BPA.
Three different articles with three different angles... all raising red flags around bottled water and the plastic compound BPA.
From Dec 2007, Fast Company writer Charles Fishman wrote "Message in a Bottle" on the bottled water industry. This award winning article basically was an expose of many of the negative things about bottled water.
In July 2008, one of the earlier posts I did to this blog was titled Impact of Bottled Water on a Town and links to the BusinessWeek story "A Town Torn Apart by Nestlé." Not to get overly "up with small town, down with big corporation" here, but it's nettlesome when you have a company (Nestle for it's Arrowhead water brand) retaining a lawyer on behalf of a town (McCloud, CA) and then the company negotiating with the lawyer. Seems to raise just a few conflict of interest questions.
The first two blog posts and articles are around bottled water and one company that sells it, but the third is around a component that's in many of the bottles themselves. In Feb 2009 I did this blog post linking to the Fast Company feature "The Real Story Behind Bisphenol A." As the blog post and article (in of course much greater detail) covers, the compound BPA (or Bisphenol A) is a building block of many shatterproof plastics and can be found in products ranging from cell phones to drink cans and baby bottles.
The issue comes from the concerns around the product's potential to leech into water and impact the reproductive system... particularly given it's presence in products used by babies with highly undeveloped immune systems.
Three different pieces around three slightly different topics, but all linked together by excellent writing that raises some disconcerting questions about both bottled water and BPA.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Magazine reading notes 7: 2007 Jan-Jun 2
Time – July 2
Piece on new TV shows including mention of AMC’s “Mad Men” about 1960s advertising executives
Article on “life hacking” about finding good balance with technology. Websites of note: http://www.43folders.com/, http://www.lifehacker.com/, http://www.lifehack.org/
BusinessWeek – June 4
Review of Pure Digital’s “Flip Video” camcorder
BusinessWeek – Jan 15
Article on 529 college savings accounts
BusinessWeek – June 18
Mention of the parenting website http://www.babble.com/
Article about finding out personal salary comparisons. Websites of note: http://www.salary.com/, http://www.vault.com/, http://www.surveymonkey.com/
Interesting website: http://www.stumbleupon.com/
BusinessWeek – May 7
Piece on idea of companies looking for and testing out what’s hip and next in Tokyo
Article on using the right keyboards for online resume filters
The Wave – June
Profile of SJSU professor Gabriele Rico who wrote “Writing the Natural Way”
BusinessWeek – May 14
List of “25 Most Innovative Companies”
Fast Company – June
Article on Portland, OR based clothing company “Nau” that’s focused on “doing business the right way”
Profile of the Richmond, VA based advertising shop “Martin Agency” that recently won the Wal-Mart account (previously did the Gecko ads for Geico”
Mention of the democratic blog http://www.dailykos.com/
Mention of the website http://www.my.barackobama.com/
Sustainability websites: http://www.alternativeconsumer.com/ & http://www.ecorazzi.com/
Money – March
Financial plan for a soon to retire flight attendant who wants to write a book
WWU newsletter
Memoriam for John Utendale of Bellingham
BusinessWeek – June 25
Profile of two internet entrepreneurs who buy and sell domain names
Fast Company – April
Profile of brand design agency ADK that won the business doing the Xbox 360
Money – June
Home inventory website at http://www.knowyourstuff.org/
Usage of “greening the cleaning” products to help the environment
Chase freedom Visa credit card that gives cash back
Benefits of acupuncture (also over other alternative treatments)
Time – May 14
Profiles of interesting people:
David Mitchell who wrote “Black Swan Green”
General David Petraeus
“Green Governor” Arnold Schwarzenegger
Neil deGrasse Tyson… host of the PBS series “Nova Science”
Fast Company – July/August
Charles Fishman article on the bottled water industry. He also wrote the prior Fast Company piece on CLF lightbulbs as well as the book “The Wal-Mart Effect”
Profile on Al Gore and http://www.current.tv/
Story about http://www.facebook.com/ reaching wide usage among professionals
Piece on Barack Obama’s fundraising through http://www.myobama.com/
Piece on new TV shows including mention of AMC’s “Mad Men” about 1960s advertising executives
Article on “life hacking” about finding good balance with technology. Websites of note: http://www.43folders.com/, http://www.lifehacker.com/, http://www.lifehack.org/
BusinessWeek – June 4
Review of Pure Digital’s “Flip Video” camcorder
BusinessWeek – Jan 15
Article on 529 college savings accounts
BusinessWeek – June 18
Mention of the parenting website http://www.babble.com/
Article about finding out personal salary comparisons. Websites of note: http://www.salary.com/, http://www.vault.com/, http://www.surveymonkey.com/
Interesting website: http://www.stumbleupon.com/
BusinessWeek – May 7
Piece on idea of companies looking for and testing out what’s hip and next in Tokyo
Article on using the right keyboards for online resume filters
The Wave – June
Profile of SJSU professor Gabriele Rico who wrote “Writing the Natural Way”
BusinessWeek – May 14
List of “25 Most Innovative Companies”
Fast Company – June
Article on Portland, OR based clothing company “Nau” that’s focused on “doing business the right way”
Profile of the Richmond, VA based advertising shop “Martin Agency” that recently won the Wal-Mart account (previously did the Gecko ads for Geico”
Mention of the democratic blog http://www.dailykos.com/
Mention of the website http://www.my.barackobama.com/
Sustainability websites: http://www.alternativeconsumer.com/ & http://www.ecorazzi.com/
Money – March
Financial plan for a soon to retire flight attendant who wants to write a book
WWU newsletter
Memoriam for John Utendale of Bellingham
BusinessWeek – June 25
Profile of two internet entrepreneurs who buy and sell domain names
Fast Company – April
Profile of brand design agency ADK that won the business doing the Xbox 360
Money – June
Home inventory website at http://www.knowyourstuff.org/
Usage of “greening the cleaning” products to help the environment
Chase freedom Visa credit card that gives cash back
Benefits of acupuncture (also over other alternative treatments)
Time – May 14
Profiles of interesting people:
David Mitchell who wrote “Black Swan Green”
General David Petraeus
“Green Governor” Arnold Schwarzenegger
Neil deGrasse Tyson… host of the PBS series “Nova Science”
Fast Company – July/August
Charles Fishman article on the bottled water industry. He also wrote the prior Fast Company piece on CLF lightbulbs as well as the book “The Wal-Mart Effect”
Profile on Al Gore and http://www.current.tv/
Story about http://www.facebook.com/ reaching wide usage among professionals
Piece on Barack Obama’s fundraising through http://www.myobama.com/
Friday, August 15, 2008
Fast Company Magazine - Sept 2008: Clorox & the Sierra Club... and other stuff of note
Some interesting stuff from the Sept 2008 issue of Fast Company Magazine...
Headlining these was a fairly large piece titled "Cleaning Solution" about the Sierra Club (America's oldest and largest environmental organization) allowing it's logo to be featured on Clorox Corporation's new line of "Green Works" cleaning products in exchange for undisclosed sums of money.
While it's understandable that the Sierra Club would want to maximize revenue (and likely will put said funds to good use), many Club members are raising the question of whether they should be in the product of co-labeling on for-profit products. Additionally, many are concerned about the particulars of this deal (such as what's received by the Sierra Club and how "green" is the "Green Works" line).
Some other things of note out of this issue:
- Update on awards conferred on writer Charles Fishman's 2007 Fast Company expose "Message in a Bottle" on the bottled water industry. This was particularly interesting coupled with a previous post made here about the impact of a Nestle Corp/Arrowhead brand bottled water plant in rural Northern California. Yep, water is good for you... bottled water, maybe not so much.
- Update on former Sierra Club president Adam Werbach who caught a large of "green flak" for consulting with Wal-Mart as chronicled in the 2007 Fast Company piece "Working with the Enemy". Werbach has since sold his consulting company to Advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi where he'll ostensibly ontinue his environmental efforts... while at the same time defending himself about fellow enviros who feel that he has "sold out" to corporate interests.
- "Forces of Nature" about the newly rebuilt California Academy of Sciences in the Golden Gate Park area of San Francisco opening Sept 27, 2008.
- Former Microsoft (and now everywhere tech) blogger Robert Scoble and his "Sky Fighters" piece about competing telescope's available on the web... MS's WorldWide Telescope and Google Sky.
- Article on the popular travel site Kayak.
Headlining these was a fairly large piece titled "Cleaning Solution" about the Sierra Club (America's oldest and largest environmental organization) allowing it's logo to be featured on Clorox Corporation's new line of "Green Works" cleaning products in exchange for undisclosed sums of money.
While it's understandable that the Sierra Club would want to maximize revenue (and likely will put said funds to good use), many Club members are raising the question of whether they should be in the product of co-labeling on for-profit products. Additionally, many are concerned about the particulars of this deal (such as what's received by the Sierra Club and how "green" is the "Green Works" line).
Some other things of note out of this issue:
- Update on awards conferred on writer Charles Fishman's 2007 Fast Company expose "Message in a Bottle" on the bottled water industry. This was particularly interesting coupled with a previous post made here about the impact of a Nestle Corp/Arrowhead brand bottled water plant in rural Northern California. Yep, water is good for you... bottled water, maybe not so much.
- Update on former Sierra Club president Adam Werbach who caught a large of "green flak" for consulting with Wal-Mart as chronicled in the 2007 Fast Company piece "Working with the Enemy". Werbach has since sold his consulting company to Advertising giant Saatchi & Saatchi where he'll ostensibly ontinue his environmental efforts... while at the same time defending himself about fellow enviros who feel that he has "sold out" to corporate interests.
- "Forces of Nature" about the newly rebuilt California Academy of Sciences in the Golden Gate Park area of San Francisco opening Sept 27, 2008.
- Former Microsoft (and now everywhere tech) blogger Robert Scoble and his "Sky Fighters" piece about competing telescope's available on the web... MS's WorldWide Telescope and Google Sky.
- Article on the popular travel site Kayak.
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