Great bin label

Ocean's Helleven

In this bracing talk, coral reef ecologist Jeremy Jackson lays out the shocking state of the ocean today: overfished, overheated, polluted, with indicators that things will get much worse. Astonishing photos and stats make the case. It's just 18 minutes long and it's at: http://www.ted.com/talks/jeremy_jackson.html?utm_source=newsletter_weekly_2010-05-05

Economists

"Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman or an economist." Kenneth Boulding

Workers need a brew to function

Research has confirmed what many tea and coffee lovers have long suspected – a good brew can mean better and safer working practices. Researchers from the London School of Tropical Medicine carried out an experiment to discover whether a dose of caffeine had any effect on the frequency of mistakes being made by employees working unsocial hours which causes them to fall victim to a form of “jet lag” due to disturbed body clock rhythms. The study involved 13 trials investigating the effects of caffeine on shift worker performance and found that those that were given the drug in the form of tea, coffee, “pep” pills, energy drinks and caffeinated foods performed better in a number of tests. Researchers tested the claims against a “dummy” placebo group and found that those given caffeine during the experiment performed better in various tests including memory, attention, perception, conceptualising and reasoning. Lead Researcher Dr Katherine Ker, from the London School of Tropical Medicine, said: “It seems reasonable to assume that reduced errors are associated with fewer injuries, although we cannot quantify such as reduction.”

Resource giving much detail on wind, wave and tidal energy development in the UK

http://www.youtube.com/BWEAchannel#g/u

Podcasts from UK Climate Impacts Programme

Useful collection of podcasts from UKCIP (you'll need to scroll down about 1/2 way to find them)  http://podcasts.ox.ac.uk/openspires.html

Half Price Parking!

Just tripped over this:
http://www.parkatmyhouse.co.uk/

There is no away - waste again...

I'm reminded of the work of the Intitute for Earth Education - http://www.eartheducation.org.uk/ - who in their excellent 'Earth Caretakers' programme, go into schools the night before it starts and put stickers on all the bins saying 'THERE IS NO AWAY'

Waste industry heading for perfect storm

Ex-Biffa director Peter Jones has warned that we're heading for a waste crisis in Britain as landfill becomes full but we lack the infrastructure for more sustainable waste management.
http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?src=nl&id=18044

Simplicity

Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand instead of a million count half a dozen, and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail. Henry David Thoreau

email again...

In 2005, a psychiatrist at King's College in London administered IQ tests to three groups: the first did nothing but perform the IQ test, the second was distracted by email and ringing phones, and the third was stoned on marijuana.

Not surprisingly, the first group did better than the other two by an average of 10 points. The emailers, on the other hand, did worse than intoxicated people by an average of 6 points. ("Can't Get No Satisfaction," New York Magazine, Dec. 4, 2006)

Yet, in a recent survey of 320 professionals, 17% check a few times per hour and 68% check email more or less continually--constantly breaking their focus on the primary task at hand.


http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Optimizing+email:+stay+productive,+not+busy.-a0197492903

How to handle your overloaded inbox

The first step comes from Tim Ferriss’ The Four Hour Work Week and it’s that you shouldn’t feel guilty...

From Ferris: “Recognize that you receive too much information. It’s not your fault. Just accept that there is more information than time, and that it’s increasing every day.”

Ferriss offers “three ways to deal with e-mail overload. You can ‘live by reaction’ and feel increasingly stressed and confused. You can opt out by not reading anything. Or you can practice ‘bit literacy’ by getting ‘some information - the right information - without trying to get all of it.’”

The third option is a great way to go.

Your job probably means you receive a whole host of e-letters and bulletins that you need to whittle through to find the useful ones.

Some is appalling and largely pointless. This stuff should be ditched immediately.

But that still leaves you with a ton of stuff, a more manageable ton, but still enough to stress out your inbox.

So, of this good stuff, you can then divide it into ‘worth scanning’ and ‘solid gold’.”

E-mails worth scanning tend to be from sources that reliably deliver at least some relevant information.”

But...

Solid gold e-mails are from those rare sources that provide useful tips and insights every single time.

Put these ‘solid gold’ emails to the side. Because I am confident the information in them will be useful and informative, I want to give them the time they deserve.

It’s the ‘worth scanning’ emails that I go through first. Quickly scanning them to see if there’s something inside the email that could warrant it being promoted to solid gold status.

If a quick scan fails to pull anything out of the email; it’s deleted.

It’s then time to turn to the ‘solid golds’ and read them, making notes if appropriate or filing them away for later reference.

Get the idea and then move on

However, what’s to be done if you’re still being drowned in email, even though you’ve been so selective?

Follow the Power of One rule. Scan your solid-gold e-mails until you find one good and useful idea - an idea you can implement immediately. Then stop reading.

Remember, you don’t have to know everything - or even most of what there is to know - to succeed at most endeavours.
So, on reading through the email, once you hit upon an inspiring idea you’re done and you can get on with putting that idea into action.
Remember: get rid of the rubbish (and don’t feel guilty), sort the good into ‘worth scanning’ and ‘solid gold’, pick up one important idea, and then move on…