Social Cache.
A Nemo blog. Dealing with uncommon cents.

Now here’s a very simple and concrete way to save some trees…sign up to stop the unwanted delivery of the Yellow and White pages. Here’s the link, it takes about 30 seconds..

Image: The New York Times

In this faltering economy, if you still manage to have an extra $30,000 dollars to blow, there’s a room waiting for you. On the top floor (52nd, to be exact) of the Four Seasons Hotel in midtown New York City, you can live in the lap of luxury with access to a private butler, grand piano, health spa, a remote controlled bidet, a thermostat-adjusted floor, lasers in the bathtub that turn the water different colors and even a toilet that heats your prosterior and flushes with a remote control.

Clearly, this is the hotel room of choice for wayward CEOs with a Centurion Card in hand.

James Nachtwey is preparing to reveal his photographs, which highlight a shocking and under-reported global crisis. Over the past 18 months, the TED community have been working with James to gain access to locations he wished to photograph and to prepare spectacular plans for unveiling these pictures.

“I’m working on a story that the world needs to know about. I wish for you to help me break it, in a way that provides spectacular proof of the power of news photography in the digital age.”

He says to bloggers – “On October 3, the story breaks. You can help.” Bloggers can get links to the URL for the Oct 3rd unveiling of the photographs here.

I wrote on this blog back in March about the success of plastic and paper bag elimination in Ireland. The government there made it a priority to reduce the use of these bags and worked with business to make it happen. Here’s my blog post on the subject.

The campaign was incredibly successful even though it meant adding a tax penalty to both shoppers and grocery store owners to make it work. It has now become as socially unacceptable to be seen using plastic grocery bags in Ireland as it would be to be caught smoking in a maternity ward. It is not hard to switch peoples social behaviour when it is seen to be for a social good. It was made clear to the Irish that the amount of energy that went into manufacturing plastic bags, that were all destined to end up in landfills anyway, was not sustainable. Paper bags were not the answer either as they are just as wasteful of natural resources as their plastic counterpart. reusable shopping bags were the answer and the Irish bought that argument.

The Irish now pack reusable bags in their cars and offices and carry them with them on buses when they go shopping. It’s simple and effective and it is a small step toward energy independence. Portland can do it.

B-Day ride to Bend 08 from Steve Hoskins Jr. on Vimeo.

Two of our Nemo guys, Steve and Morgan, grab the bikes and head Southeast from Portland, climb over Mt Hood, ride through the reservation via Madras, stop off in Redmond and finally hit Bend. Amazing.

An image of the galaxy NGC 1275 and its network of filaments (in red). The center of the galaxy hosts a giant supermassive black hole.