• studying furiously for exams, drinking commences May 1 at 4:30 pm GMT #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

Image Courtesy NASA

I thought I would celebrate Earth Day by offering some suggestions of ways you can make a positive impact, or at least less of an impact, on the Earth. Many of these are links I’ve rounded up over the past years and tagged on del.icio.us.

Go for a bike ride

First of all, why not leave your car keys on the kitchen counter and ride your bike or walk today? If you’re looking for a new bike, check out the Trek Lime. This has got to be the tastiest looking bike ever. The Lime is perfect for commuting: it shifts gears automatically, offers a “trunk” under the seat, and comes in custom colors. Will someone please buy me the green one?! If you need some ideas for good bike routes near you, check out Bikely, a site that “helps cyclists share knowledge of good bicycle routes.” I’ve been riding a bike exclusively for over 7 months now since I’m without a car and I must say it is pretty liberating. It is much easier than you would imagine to rely only upon your own two feet or a bike to get around your town. Go ahead, give it a try today and scout out a good route to work or school, pledge to walk or ride to school at least twice per week. It is a healthy and relaxing alternative to driving a gas-guzzling vehicle.

Conserve energy

Did you know that the average American home produces twice the greenhouse gas annually as the average car (18seconds.org )? So, once you’re out of the house with your bike, head to your nearest hardware store and pick up some compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) to replace those inefficient, archaic incandescent bulbs that have been around since Thomas Edison’s days. If you change just 5 of your most frequently used bulbs in the house, you can have a huge impact not only on cutting emissions but also on cutting energy costs since you will save over $60 per year. So don’t worry that they cost a little extra, they pay for themselves!

Kenny Luna, an 8th grade teacher and treehugger has come up with a bright idea for CFLs. Mr Luna wants to give every student in America (pre-kindergarten - 12th grade) just one CFL. This would save Americans $2.3 billion over the life of the bulbs! Who needs tax cuts? Remember, that’s just one for every student in the US. Imagine what a difference could be made if every family changed their 5 most-used bulbs.

If you want to really make a difference, purchase carbon-free bulbs. These guys at ECOfuture have taken the CFL to the next level by offsetting the carbon dioxide produced:

All CO2 emissions generated from the use of THE Bulb are offset through a donation to the Carbonfund.org Foundation making THE Bulb the world’s first Carbonfree™ light bulb. All donations are used for the development of renewable energy.

Who said saving the world was difficult?

Take political action

If you are up for some more intensive Earth-saving efforts, I’ll give you a few things to tackle. First of all, you can boycott bottled water as I have done for the past few months. The amount of fuel and water used to make and deliver a bottle of imported water is astounding. Not to mention the profits made from the most basic and widely available liquid on Earth. Secondly, did you know that the UK has a $4 per gallon gasoline tax compared to a paltry 40 cents in the US? I challenge the biggest treehuggers to join Greg Mankiw’s Pigou Club, no membership dues required. Read Dr. Mankiw’s manifesto for gasoline taxes and let me know what you think. Often the simplest solution to reducing oil consumption is the best. Finally, get involved with political action against global warming. It is appalling to me that this even has to be a political issue, but that’s what happens when big energy companies have governments on their side. For further information, visit the Earth Day Network.

So to end on a positive note, I wish you all a Happy Earth Day today and every day. Now turn off your computer and enjoy a great day outside!

I just read David Airey’s post about eliminating “no-follow” tags from comment links and I’ve decided to give it a try. To explain further, a “no-follow” link means that when you leave your web address on a blog comment, it does not reward your site with a reciprocal link back. Search engines such as Google do not give credit to “no-follow” links when tabulating page rank for search results. Links into your site are a very valuable and the more you have, the easier it will be for people to find you in a search engine. For more information, check out 13 Reasons Why NoFollow Tags Suck.

Here’s the bottom line, I will reward comments buy giving a full, bona fide link to anyone who desires to comment here. I encourage and welcome all comments (that aren’t spam) since they add such a rich dimension to the discussion. So comment to your heart’s content and express your opinion!

If you would like to try the do-follow plugin for WordPress right click this link, and save as a file to your desktop. Upload it to your plugins directory and activate the plugin. It’s that easy.

Enjoy your valuable links you’ll receive in return for commenting and thanks again to David!

• Thinking i should write an extensive Blog post about water quality in Galway and disrespect for Corrib… #
• …river level so low that junk in bottom is exposed. Why don’t gov enforce EUR1900 fine? Where are the enviro police? #
• wondering if people avoid justin.tv when in public…privacy is dead #
• speaking of the death of privacy, I just activated new feature http://www.google.com/history #
• rss feeds of Google History anyone? #
• global peak oil between 2008 & 2018 http://tinyurl.com/2ym8hz PDF here: http://tinyurl.com/36mub4 #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• @kevnull cool! i don’t see you though #
• @wilharris watching new show ‘Drive, thank goodness indeed #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

March was a super busy month for posts and April has been a super busy month for school. Sorry for the delay getting this list out but so it goes. I had great fun blogging last month and the following are the top ten most clicked posts for the Month of March 2007. If you’re new to my blog, I think this offers a good sampling of what I write about. What’s your favorite?

1. Irish Slang and St Patrick’s Day
2. Hot Fuzz
3. Get Tubes and a Linkback
4. Free the Wii from evil
5. Who the heck is John Chow
6. A bit of economics humor
7. La Fheile Padraig: St Patrick’s Day
8. Everyone’s a critic
9. About the Author
10. Hacking the New York TimesSelect

• just e-filed my US taxes from Ireland with about 6 hours to spare…ain’t the interweb great? #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• scooby doo in Irish on TG4, hilarious, especially Shaggy’s voice! #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• @baratunde beetle bailey is definitely the worst #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Waiting in queue at the famous Ward’s Corner Store for a ‘bap’ http://www.wardscornerstore.com #
• test of twitter using quicksilver #
• this Leopard delay REALLY sucks! #
• wish I had the 500 #
• just found it here http://developer.apple.com/products/ #
• @baratunde congrats on the gig man! #
• @baratunde digg the Imus story http://tinyurl.com/27dyn6 #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• working furiously to finish my paper. Sorry to my regular blog readers about lack of posts lately. #
• @WilHarris how about: Zed is Dead Media #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

In case you don’t know…that means I’m freakin’ busy.

I am coming down to the last few days of my gasoline tax research paper, which is due this Friday afternoon. I apologize to my regular readers for the decrease in posts lately but I hope you will understand. At least twitter has helped me stay in touch with the Twitter Tools plugin.

With all this writing lately, I think I need a study break tonight and someone has come to the rescue. Jimmy CraicHead, aka John Coffey, recently commented on a few of my posts including this one about craic. He was Googling around and found my blog when planning for his trip to Ireland this week. Jimmy contacted me when he arrived here and now we’re going for a pint tonight at The King’s Head!

I can’t say that I’ve ever met anybody online before but thanks to my blog and twitter, I will be meeting a popular video blogger from Philadelphia. He just rang me and we are grabbing a pint at the King’s Head at 6 pm tonight if anyone wants to enjoy some craic. Jimmy will be interviewing me for his next installment.

What a strange, exciting and connected world we live in these days!

• mac break weekly #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• Starbucks coffee and granola bar…yum! L:Dublin, Ireland #
• saw girl in Dublin Starbucks with St Louis Cardinals hoodie, what country am I in anyway?! #
• Having a ‘real’ Irish stout at the Porter House Brewing Co. Temple Bar, Dublin http://www.porterhousebrewco.com #
• Millions of peaches, peaches for me… millions of peaches, peaches for 3. Look out! #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

• what the hell is leo laporte thinking? The only thing I can figure is he’s getting ready to file a lawsuit against Twitter #

Powered by Twitter Tools.