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The Daily Show has done several funny bits on the energy bill. This one, on ethanol, is particularly funny.

Fedex doesn’t want you reusing their boxes

What do you do if you need furniture but are living on a limited income? If you're one Jose Avila, you direct your web browser to Fedex.com and order a bunch of boxes. Cuz, apparently, Fedex boxes can be used to make quite sturdy furniture -- from couches to beds to chairs to desks. To help spread the word that "it's OK to be ghetto," Jose setup the website FedexFurniture.com to share pictures and provide details for construction materials.

Enter Fedex and its lawyers with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act in tow.

Head on over to Wired to get the full scoop and to read the exchange between the Fedex legal team and the lawyers from the Stanford Law School Center for Internet and Society, who are representing Jose. After reading, let us know which is the crime: Jose's ingenuity or Fedex's attempt to crush it.

While I'm disappointed that Jose decided to use new Fedex boxes (I'm sure he could have been just as innovative finding used ones) I think his creativity is just another example of how we can reuse products that are often discarded.

And I'm totally disappointed in Fedex. Their antics will only encourage the Freecycle media relations people.

Why aren’t conservationists fighting poverty?

It’s a shame. Conservationists are sitting on the sidelines while the Big Game unfolds before our eyes. A major campaign is under way to change the terms of development, alleviate crushing debt, and help poor people around the world live better lives. Successes are being racked up. And conservation and environmental groups are nowhere to […]

Gambling site gives odds for oil

As news hits of a historic rise in oil prices (to $66 a barrel), America's "largest online sports betting destination" tells us they've turned the world's fuelish issues into a new category. Yup! Right there on the non sports events page -- tucked between "Who will win Tommy Hilfiger's 'The Cut'?" and "Who will win the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards video of the year?" -- you can bet on whether the price will reach $70 by the end of 2005.

What do you think: lie down and weep, or lay money down and reap?

Permafrost melting, methane coming, humanity doomed: more

If you read about melting permafrost in today's Daily Grist and were worried, well ... uh, what can I tell you? Be worried.

As is his wont, Jamais has much, much more over on WC.

Hello Cleveland!

Ohio city is latest to hire sustainability manager Cleveland, Ohio, has joined Seattle, Chicago, Portland, Ore., and other American metropolises (metropoli?) in creating a city-government position focused on going green and saving energy — ideally stimulating job growth in the process. Cleveland’s new “sustainability programs manager,” Andrew Watterson, is getting started with relatively simple and […]

The Sum of Owl Fears

Feds to shoot barred owls to save spotted owls Would you kill an owl to save another owl? It’s not a thought experiment from your Intro to Ethics class: Northern spotted owls — the feathered poster children of last decade’s timber wars — are dwindling in the Pacific Northwest, and bigger, more aggressive barred owls, […]

The Peat Is Gone

Siberia’s fast thaw alarms scientists Siberia is melting. Meeelllting! Ahem. Of particular concern is a 386,000 square-mile expanse of western Siberian permafrost that’s been icy cold for about 11,000 years and sits atop billions of tons of methane, a greenhouse gas 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide. If the permafrost melts, the methane could […]

Dense and Densibility

Densest U.S. cities aren’t the ones you think Advocates of energy-saving urban density usually laud the towering buildings and subways of Manhattan, as contrasted with the car-heavy suburban sprawl of, say, Los Angeles. But the most dense city in the U.S., measured by people per square mile, is … Los Angeles. In fact, despite its […]

WaPo

Looks like that Washington Post story really captured the nation's imagination! If I'm not mistaken it will also be popping up in Daily Grist later today.