You know those annoying messages you get sometimes when you try to open a web site?  The most common are probably 404 – Not Found and 408 – Request Timed Out.  Wouldn’t the pain be eased a little with a visual pun.  That’s obviously what Adam Koford thought when he came up with this brilliant set of images.

400 – Bad Request

408 – Request Timeout

415 – Unsupported Media Type

A look at what the future might hold for us.

If you are further interested you can check out The Zeitgeist Movement or The Venus Project website.

Here is a PDF if you are really really interested.

Here are Times Top 10 News Stories of 2008.  Worth a look.

And the Top 10 Green Stories

And the Top 10 Songs

And many others on the site.

According to Time Magazine these were the words of Jon French, a former U.S government official after the abduction of an American kidnapping negotiator who had traveled to Mexico to give a seminar on his techniques.

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1867138,00.html

A bold mission statement from the people at the Canaan Downs NYE Festival.  Quite a lot of festivals are promoting zero waste policies  now.  The Big Day Out has a similar statement here.  PHAT, while not going zero waste does advocate for people to use the facilities they provide for rubbish to help minimise the party’s carbon footprint.

“Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.” – Martin Luther King

How other to achieve peace but by being peaceful?
How other to be truthful than by telling the truth?
How other to be respected than by being respectful?

If you want to be something in life you’ve got to start embodying that quality in the way you live and act.

Thanks to Kev for the quote.

Most of you guys are aware of the big environmental problems we are facing this century.  If not, read up on climate change and peak oil.

Lots of new technologies are being developed to avert future disaster (and that is what I fear we face if we don’t deal with these issues quickly and boldly).  One of these is the use of algae as a renewable, low-carbon fuel.

These seem to have got a lot more press over the past 12 months and consequently have made me more optimistic about getting through these issues without mass social (rioting, famine, poverty) or environmental (storms, flooding, drought etc.) disaster.  That is not to say we’re anywhere near there.  There is much more that government, industries and people like you and me need to be doing.

What can government, industries and individuals do to make a difference towards climate change or to prepare for peak oil?  Name one thing for each and I’ll sort you out a prize.

This will be the first of many posts on the environment.  You can find these all grouped together under the environment category.

The Hack Half Hour

The story below about privacy on the internet reminded me of this show that my Year 9’s and I watched early this year.  Each episode centres around a particular topic with one person being interviewed on their experience of it.  They also have about 30 young people (ok, maybe not young by your standards – late teens to 30ish)  into the studio who add their points of view or experiences.

Here’s the episode list:

1.  Privacy on the internet
2.  Fighting
3.  Buying a house
4. Pornography on mobiles and the net
5. Body Image
6. Gambling
7. The Environment – can individuals make a difference
8. Booze
9. Sex and sin
10. Lock up – Do Prisons Work?

Follow the link above and click on ‘Programmes‘ to get the list of episodes for download.

Drink-drive cases soaring

A couple of interesting news stories:

Sadly, drink driving convictions (the only measure we have of how many people are out there driving drunk) are on the rise in New Zealand.  This is despite multi – million dollar shock – ad campaigns by the government trying to stop it.  Seemingly they are not working.  What should we do from here?

Auckland law firm’s special Christmas party … in Fiji

I added this one because I was amazed that the researchers used the Facebook sites of the staff to help with the story.    Just shows you need to think about what you put on the net and that things that used to be private can be made very public very quickly.  Information that you put up on the internet is being used by journalists, the media, advertisers and your enemies and can potentially be used against you!

Dunno how many of you guys will know this song.  Bored on a Saturday night and with access to a video camera, editing software and broadband internet.  I always knew Paul was destined for big things… wrestling superstar, masked monkey hero, getting his kit off on Youtube…  Glad to see you haven’t changed a bit bro 🙂