via One Good Move.

via One Good Move.

I just came across this site the other week on Motionographer, Nissan’s Journey To Zero. I’m usually not a huge fan of the whole ‘emersive web experience’ type of thing, or most uses of flash, or even websites with music for that matter. But I have to say, the content intention and design of this Journey to Zero site are great.

It includes talks from Richard Saul Wurman who is the Founder and Chairman of TED, and who in 1976 coined the phrase ‘Information Architect’ (this guy is fast becoming another one of our favorite people), and involves contributions from Universal Everything, Markus Eriksson/Subdisc, SU11, IAAH, Wade Davis, and PSFK. Works include videos, motion graphics, a typeface, essays and a call to action for people to download and create video response to the content created by IAAH…

Overall I think it’s really nice to see so many smart and talented people coming together to brand and discuss how we can move toward zero emissions. I know a lot of this sort of corporate giant funded projects can sometimes seem hallow, but it’s still important to have the discussion. Even if you want credit for funding it. Better spend your money on that than on simply fighting legislation or more silly cars.

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And Nissan has spent money to roll out the first production electric car just this year. Another good step. I was fortunate enough to be asked to help animate some of these informational videos for the Nissan Leaf, Nissans new fully electric car. It’s pretty smart for them to go straight ahead into developing an electric car, if an obvious one. It still takes some corporate courage to make the big changes happen. But surely, we all can see that cars that don’t run on gas are the future, so it’s smart to get a production gas free car on the market and the sooner the better. Gives you a leg up on the competition. I still think it’s very unfortunate that no one  had the guts to work harder and push this technology sooner.

Nissan, with these changes has definitely moved from somewhere in the background into the forefront of how to solve some of the issues we have with emissions and transportation. And hopefully this will move other auto-manufacturers to have to do them one better or keep up with some actual acts of environmental responsibility…

Pretty alarming (though not completely surprising) article on Medical News Today regarding cell phone usage.

Lloyd Morgan, lead author and member of the Bioelectromagnetics Society says, “Exposure to cellphone radiation is the largest human health experiment ever undertaken, without informed consent, and has some 4 billion participants enrolled. Science has shown increased risk of brain tumors from use of cellphones, as well as increased risk of eye cancer, salivary gland tumors, testicular cancer, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and leukemia. The public must be informed.”

I would recommend highly getting that phone out of your pocket all day long and limiting time on the phone as well as using some type of headset or earbuds to get the actual device away from your brain.

Or just go all the way and get a pocket full of quarters and start remembering peoples phone numbers again like in the good old 20th century.

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Here’s a link to the Environmental Working Group’s list and ratings for radiation associated with using various cell phones. Looks like the iPhone 3G I use is pretty high on this list. Might have to look into downgrading back to a Motorola Razr which is less convenient for email and gps maps, but will be less likely to give me testicular or eyeball cancer, which I could do without. o_o

(and John Podesta, but watching his part is not so necessary, nowhere near as focused, and i dare say, less interesting.)

A Green World is a Safer One from National Building Museum on Vimeo.

Now, this is a recording of a museum lecture, which means (for those of you who have never been to one) there’s about 10 minutes of introduction and thank you’s to supporting organizations, et cetera, ad nauseum. Just skip ahead. Also, it is a longish talk (Ed’s part is about 35 minutes long).