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In India, the Hindu political group Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangha will soon market cow urine soda as a health elixir. From our friends at ZapRoot.

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Instead of the large fish common to the rest of the lake, the bizarre life forms that thrive in the lake’s sinkholes include purple cyanobacteria, ghostly floating pony-tails, and other organisms similar to those found in Antarctic sinkholes and deep-sea, hydrothermal vents.

“You have this pristine fresh water lake that has what amounts to materials from 400 million years ago … being pushed out into the lake,” says team co-leader Steven A. Ruberg of the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

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If this is true, the silkworm that haplessly fell into the empress’ cup on that fateful day met a fate very similar to that of modern day silkworms. When they exit the cocoon after metamorphosis, silkmoths must bore a hole through the cocoon wall, which ruins the precious thread. Therefore, silk factories drop the cocoons in hot water before the moth can leave. This unravels the thread well, but it boils down to bad news for the silkworms.

Still, it’s the fate of almost every silkworm in the world today. Due to thousands of years of selective breeding, the silkworms we know today are no longer suited to survive in the wild. The entire species’ population exists only in silk factories and in the cardboard boxes of school children. So, except for the fortunate few 3rd-grade bookworms, virtually every silkworm will meet the cooking pot. That raises the question: what do you do with so many boiled silkworms?

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We’ve covered bizarre baby gear before, but this one I really can’t understand. Heelarious is the name brand for “her first high heels”.   They come in five styles, including leopard and zebra satin.  These strange shoes were the idea of two Seattle moms who intended them to be funny; however, I don’t find humor in dressing up an infant in stillettos.  Why would my baby need a pair of heels when I don’t even own a pair?

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I’m a mosquito hunter. If you’ve seen the Monty Python sketch, then you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, just scroll down. For me, there’s nothing more maddening than the high-pitch whine of a mosquito in my ear just as I’m drifting off to sleep. On any given night during mosquito season, you can find me prowling the house under-shorts (Shh! Don’t tell.) stalking my prey.

However, this morning I had an epiphany. It took one particular mosquito buzzing in my ear at 6:30 on this particularly beautiful early fall morning to make me understand that mosquitoes aren’t really all bad. Like Cat Stevens before the Qu’ran, “I think I’ve seen the light.” Now, I’m not saying I won’t ever smack another skeeter. But I might also start a new amnesty “catch and release” program in my household because I now have five reasons to love mosquitoes.

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Over 40% of Korean men smoke. And this is the good news. Before the recent wellbeing trend, the number was almost 60%. Smoking seems less common among Korean women.

2. When you eat cow you call it cow. Give yourself 1 point.

Koreans love meat and the don’t mince words when talking about it. You’re not eating “steak” and “prosciutto;” you’re eating “cow” and “pig.” Especially popular are variations on galbi, which ranges from Korean BBQ to stir-fried meat and hot peppers. There are, however, a modicum of vegetarian and even vegan restaurants in Korea.

3. You ride the bus and the train, but you still love Hyundai. Give yourself 2 points.

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Levitating Monorail, Germany. An electric car? Cool. An electric train? Awesome. An upside down electric monorail?? Now that qualifies as unusual public transportation. Believe it or not, this transit system was built over 100 years ago. While Ford was fidgeting with his “quadricycle,” the city of Wuppertal built this transportation marvel that still appears ahead of its time today.

It’s a zero emissions, all electric transit system, and it floats through Wuppertal (the self-styled “German San Francisco”) with over 20 million passengers a year. Photo: Flickr

Mae Klong Train Market, Thailand. Yes, those are train tracks running through that market. One of the shortest train routes in Thailand is also one of the most bizarre. Ambling past windmills and salt flats, the train stops halfway through its route at a river. Right, no bridge. So, people get out and ferry across to a second train, which picks up where the first left off. But wait, it gets better…

In order to arrive at the Mae Klong station, the train must pass right through the middle of a crowded street market. Vendors quickly pull in their stalls several times a day as the train goes by. For an excellent account of the journey, read Steve Van Beek’s article on the Tourism Authority of Thailand website or this article at 2Bangkok.com, or see this video. Photo: Thai-Blogs.

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In a video from Reuters Television, which is available at the bottom of this story, two aluminum panels inside the eel’s tank act as electrodes, capturing the power needed to light the tree. Kazuhiko Minawa, who thought up the idea, spent two months devising a system that would capture the animal’s electric power.

Eel’s use electricity to fend off threats to their well-being, or getting a bite to eat. Actually, the eel isn’t an eel at all, it’s a fish, more commonly known as the Knifefish, a relative of the catfish family. Wikipedia says the fish is an obligate air-breather, rising to the surface about every 10 minutes for a gulp of air and then returns to the bottom.

When hunting, or defending themselves, eels can produce electrical shocks of up to 500 volts and 1 ampere of current, enough to do serious, or even fatal harm to a human. That’s why they wind up in public aquariums and not the home fish tank. You’d need a pretty large one at that, they can grow up to eight feet in length and weigh 40 pounds.

Back to our Japanese aquarium. The eel-Christmas tree inventor told Reuters Television that gathering all electric eels from around the world would light one very large Christmas tree.

Video of Eel-powered Christmas tree from Reuters Video.

Boy, that’ll increase condom sales and I’m sure doctors will certainly enjoy the likely increase in sterilizations, which will be showered with carbon credits for what he termed “greenhouse-friendly” services.

He went on to say the annual emission of carbon dioxide by an Australian individual is about 17 metric tons, which included energy use. In his article for the Medical Journal of Australia, Walters claims, “Every newborn baby in Australia represents a potent source of greenhouse gas emissions for an average of 80 years, not simply by breathing but by the prolifigate consumption of resources typical of our society.”

He hinted that the government should get rid of the $4133 baby bonus and consider population controls like those in China and India. Wikipedia has a good update on those controls which have been in place for years. China’s one child policy involves forced abortions and sterilizations, while in India young women are rewarded with money for not getting pregnant. Family planning and sterilization are among many steps being taken to curb population growth in India.

I doubt much will come of the good professor’s suggestion. Angela Conway, spokeswoman for the Australian Family Association is quoted as saying, “I think self-important professors with silly ideas should have to pay carbon tax for all the hot air they create.” She went on to say, “There’s masses of evidence to say that child-rich families have much lower resource consumption per head than other styles of households.”

Maybe that hot-air tax would work on politicians as well. What a concept!

Anyway, a high-profile doctor in Australia, Garry Egger, is quoted as saying, “One must wonder why population control is spoken of today only in whispers.” His comments were printed in an MJA response article, and echoes concerns by many experts that we’re just putting too many people on this rock.

photo: cosmosmagazine.com

The whole thing apparently started in the 1930’s when the spelling of the name changed from Fjukeby. Embarrassed and finally tired of all the jocularity, a committee of residents pleaded with the National Heritage Board for the change.

So what’s the fuss? Well, according to the article in The Local a Swedish English-language website, the Swedish word “juck”, essentially means the same thing as Fjuckby’s English component. In addition, villagers complained that the present name makes it difficult to sell property there, or run a successful business.

According to Wikipedia, , the town is located about 15km north of Uppsala. The name has apparently resulted in a certain amount of tourist trade to the small community. That hasn’t helped the situation at all.

Unfortunately, the National Heritage Board said it was following the recommendation of the Institute of Language and Folklore to preserve the name Fjuckby. Which begs the question, if it was named Fjukeby in the 30’s, why was it changed, and what’s wrong with changing it back?

Oh, Fjuckby has a population of about 60, and only 15 residents were involved in the petition for a name change. In it’s ruling, The NHB apparently felt they did not represent the majority of residents in the town.

A writer for The Local ended the story with this observation; “If Fjuckby gets its way it is conceivable that Anusviken, Arslet and Dicken may be next in line for a swift reversal of misfortune”.

In case you’re wondering, Fjuckby and Fjukeby both roughly translate as “Windy Village”.

Actually, as weird as it might sound at first, the discovery — published in this week’s online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – makes perfect sense once you consider the typical result of divorce: two people and, possibly, children who once all shared one home now live in two separate 2,000- to 3,000-square-foot households with two sets of refrigerators, two water-heaters, two heating-and-air-conditioning units, etc.

“People’s first reaction to this research is surprise, and then it seems simple,” said Jianguo “Jack” Liu, who conducted the study with Eunice Yu, his research assistant at Michigan State University. “But a lot of things become simple after research is done. Our challenges were to connect the dots and quantify their relationships. People have been talking about how to protect the environment and combat climate change, but divorce is an overlooked factor that needs to be considered.”

Liu and Yu started out with a simple question: how do the world’s rising divorce rates affect humanity’s consumption of resources? They then examined housing space per capita and utility costs to show that divorce eliminates the economies of scale enjoyed by married families.

“Not only the United States, but also other countries, including developing countries such as China and places with strict religious policies regarding divorce, are having more divorced households,” Liu said. “The consequent increases in consumption of water and energy and using more space are being seen everywhere.”

In the U.S. alone, they found that divorce in 2005 led to the consumption of 73 billion more kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion more gallons of water than would have been used had all those couples stayed married. Divorced people also raised the demand for housing by 38 million extra rooms, they found.

In only 12 countries (including the U.S., Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa) around the globe, divorce increased the number of households by 7.4 million between 1998 and 2002, the study reported.

Liu and Yu found that two other trends of modern life — fewer multigenerational households and more people staying single longer — also have a negative impact on the environment. On the plus side, though, they discovered that, when divorced people remarried, their environmental footprint returned to about the same size as in their previous marriage. So, good for you, Liz Taylor!

Liu said the study shows that creating positive environmental policies is even more complex than many governments might realize.

“Solutions are beyond a single idea,” he said. “Consider the production of biofuel. Biofuel is made from plants, which also require water and space. We’re showing divorce has significant competition for that water and space. On the other hand, more divorce demands more energy. This creates a challenging dilemma and requires more creative solutions.”

Are these social factors — couples getting divorced, kids living on their own longer, Grandma and Grandpa staying in their own homes on the other side of the country — really things to consider in tackling problems like climate change, rising energy demands and environmental protection? If so, how?

Community and homeowners associations across the country are trying to ban the use of clotheslines in their communities. According to the article, they seem to think clothes drying in the sun are an eyesore, and could well affect property values. Hello? Who thinks up this kind of idiocy anyway? Obviously, some people have way too much time on their hands.

Let’s start with clothes dryers. They can add up to 6 percent of your electric bill and dump up to a ton of CO2 into the air, per household each year. That’s a good reason to use them sparingly and do like us old folks used to do, and hang the clothes outside. When the weather got too cold or rainy, the laundry went on and mom hung the clothes in the basement to dry. Of course, that might be a problem for homes without basements, but you get the idea.

As ridiculous as this sounds, it’s a fact - state legislatures are being asked to pass laws prohibiting people from hanging their laundry out to dry. I can’t believe in this enlightened age that people would be embarrassed to see someone else’s undergarments catching some rays, but on the other hand I can think of some blue-nosed areas where that might be a problem for some folks. And to think someone’s laundry would lead prospective buyers to think their would-be neighbors couldn’t afford a clothes dryer. What rubbish!

But, if a person is reluctant to display the undies to all who pass by, there’s still the dryer, or better yet, the basement or an indoor rack on which to hang the more delicate apparel.

If you’ve ever slept on sheets that dried in the sun, you can understand how wonderfully clean and fresh they smell as you crawl in for a night’s rest. The same goes for clothing. There’s nothing like sun-dried wash, nothing.

So, what do you think? Are we looking at another effort to deny us our rights in our own backyards, or do the HOA’s and neighborhood associations have a valid point? If it’s already affected you, I’d like to know that too.

Till then, “hang” in there.

Luckily for me, I’m not alone in my views. And additionally, I’m backed up not only by science, but by environmentalists as well.

Now, granted, it isn’t as if I actually make use of the daylight savings. I work from 1am to 9am each day, and have about an hour or two on either side. But there are those who encounter daylight savings as it was originally intended, and many of those – at least in the UK – are causing an increase in unnecessary greenhouse emissions.

Dr Elizabeth Garnsey of the Department’s Institute for Manufacturing (IfM) and Brendan Cronin a student in the Department on the MPhil in Engineering for Sustainable Development are the brainchildren behind the most recent study (pdf) to discuss daylight savings.

What they are positing, through their research, is that unless you live in Scotland, there is virtually no reason why you should put your clocks forward (or back… or forward… whatever). Putting the clocks back results in “more traffic accidents and higher, more costly, evening peaks in electricity consumption than would occur on British Summer Time, also known as GMT+1.”

Consider the logic behind your daily routine. You wake up, and unless you’re a super morning person, you’re pretty much drowsy until your morning-tea/coffee. Due to the current system in the UK though, you get an extra hour of daylight to be drowsy in.

By the time you are a little more alive and finish work, you’re still more likely to go for a walk, hit the gym, and play with the kids. But that is put out of the question because the light has disappeared, because you already had it in the morning.

Looking further and environmentally in to the equation, you see how this impacts the environment. Winter is freezing the door down, you’ve gotten home from work, and the sun’s gone. What’s your first instinct? It is, naturally, to put the heater on, put the lights on. This causes a surge in the power requirements that force the companies to revert to their back up power stations, that are inherently less environmentally friendly; the oil-fired power plants for example.

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From the article:

Craig Venter, the controversial DNA researcher involved in the race to decipher the human genetic code, has built a synthetic chromosome out of laboratory chemicals and is poised to announce the creation of the first new artificial life form on Earth.

The announcement, which is expected within weeks and could come as early as Monday at the annual meeting of his scientific institute in San Diego, California, will herald a giant leap forward in the development of designer genomes. It is certain to provoke heated debate about the ethics of creating new species and could unlock the door to new energy sources and techniques to combat global warming.

Mr Venter told the Guardian he thought this landmark would be “a very important philosophical step in the history of our species. We are going from reading our genetic code to the ability to write it. That gives us the hypothetical ability to do things never contemplated before”.

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Vladimir Putin, Russia today has more money than sense. Your nation is besieged with problems. For example, the average life expectancy for men in your nation is 59, compared to the women at 72. Apparently this is caused by a discrepancy in personal habits, as Russian men suffer extensively from the hair of the dog, Vodka.

Just last week you came out with the ‘father of all bombs.’ Really, can’t you be more creative than that, and stop the juvenile, bullying activity of international one upmanship. Russia is not a world power, deal with it. Sorry, I can’t help but wonder about all the money spent on developing this toy, and the good applications it could’ve been applied too. You have the largest nation on the face of the planet. Yet, you only have a population of 143 million and that is rapidly declining. I heard today where you are going to have a national “GET BUSY,” holiday. Any couple who has a baby nine months later will receive a car as a prize. Your birthrate is 10 per 1000. You have a fertility rate of 1.3 births per woman and in order to maintain a stable population you would need 2.1, somewhere along the way you lost .8 of a child. Your death rate is outrageous at 15 per 1000, due primarily to the alcoholism that runs rampant throughout the men in your society. Your nation’s death rate is expedited by an inadequate health care system, which suffers because of misplaced spending on a military engine. Wow, does that sound familiar.

So here, let me help you out. We need to create a company, ‘Sperm Donors R U.S.’ Send over a fancy Lear jet and pick up ten highly screened men and fly them back to Russia for two weeks. Volunteers, I repeat, Russian women who volunteer and would like to have a child without the annoyance of a husband to raise, will participate in this program. Set it up so two women a day spend twelve hours with each man, of course you had better have a supply of enhancements on hand. Make a competition out of it, better yet a reality T.V. show, you could run several episodes a year. At the end of two weeks the team with the most confirmed pregnancy’s wins, give the lucky ladies three years of tax exemption, providing your citizens pay taxes. When the babies are born, provide two years of baby food and diapers, or a new car. In case of a tie you can have a pay-per-view showdown. In one day, twenty-fours, one woman per hour and the men will ‘get busy.’ You can run a nationally sanctioned gambling event on who will impregnate the most women. Who will last and how long, etc. etc.? At the conclusion send the boys home on a cruise ship, as they will need plenty of rest.

Considering however that you average 13 abortions for every 10 live births, you could simply make it more difficult to obtain an abortion. Not to mention you could offer better benefits for having a second child. Really, a national day for an orgy, the men will be falling down drunk, the women frustrated and the next day, nothing is going to get done accept lying about the great lays of the day before. The inept actions of governments the world over never fails to amaze me.

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Eisenhower’s Farewell Speech: Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative. Together we must learn how to compose differences, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose. Because this need is so sharp and apparent I confess that I lay down my official responsibilities in this field with a definite sense of disappointment. As one who has witnessed the horror and the lingering sadness of war — as one who knows that another war could utterly destroy this civilization which has been so slowly and painfully built over thousands of years — I wish I could say tonight that a lasting peace is in sight.

From the CNN article:

It was the latest show of Russia’s military muscle amid chilly relations with the United States.

Channel One television said the new weapon, nicknamed the “dad of all bombs” is four times more powerful than the U.S. “mother of all bombs.”

“The tests have shown that the new air-delivered ordnance is comparable to a nuclear weapon in its efficiency and capability,” said Col.-Gen. Alexander Rukshin, a deputy chief of the Russian military’s General Staff, said in televised remarks. VideoWatch Russian bomb test »

Unlike a nuclear weapon, the bomb doesn’t hurt the environment, he added.

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I’m leaving Green Options and Planetsave, though not to join Tom and John in their fight against the thetans.

I would like to say it’s to spend more time with my family, but that just makes me sound like a scandal ridden Bush official.

While I probably will get to spend more time with my family now, I’m leaving the company to work on my green home project and a few other side projects. My tenure at Green Options and Planetsave has been one of the most interesting, exciting, and invigorating times I’ve had. It ranks as one of my favorite startups (out of my current total of four) and I’m walking away with a greatly expanded network of friends and contacts, a ton of great experience in green publishing, and an awesome project to jump to.

What would have been called “The GO Home Project” is coming with me. I am buying the entire project from Green Options and taking it independent. I’m still working on a name for it (send it on if you have a good one) and will be building a site for it once that’s nailed down, but we’ll be starting up right away on sheagunther.org.

The short of it is is that me and my family are moving into two tipis to live for a year before building the coolest greenest house on the planet. We have 52 acres in North Yarmouth, Maine; the leading green architect in the state; a partnership with Smart HomeOwner Magazine, and a whole lot of great energy pushing it forward. Both me and my wife Heather will be blogging about living in the tipis and I will be set up in a smaller third tipi as my office. I’m sure I’ll have many a five minute snowshoe commutes to work this winter. We’re going to do our best to create a guide and recorded history of our life and work so as to inspire others to do choose the same green building path.

It’s been a great past year building Green Options and past few months working on the new Planetsave, but I’m super excited about all the fun stuff I’ll be able to take on now that my time is freed up from GO/PS work.

Here’s a few places you’ll be able to follow along on my adventures…

- SheaGunther.org - This is my home site, where I started blogging before I knew what blogging was (back in 2001) and current home of Musings of an Eco-Entrepreneur, the most kickass in-stasis eco-entrepreneur blog on the web. It’s been dormant since we launched Green Options but I’ll be doing a relaunch with a new theme in the next week or two. We’ll be blogging about living in the tipis and I’ll have a separate page for my links/musings drops . If you grew to like my blogs here on Planetsave, you’ll want to head over there.

- Treehugger- Graham Hill was kind enough to set up me up with a writing spot at Treehugger. I have to work out the exact details with their uber editor Michael but I couldn’t be more excited. I’ve been a huge fan of Treehugger since back in the day (back in the day in the green blogosphere means two+ years ago) and have always wanted to write there. They have such a great group of editors, writers, and an amazing reach- about 25X more daily readers than what Green Options is pulling these days.

- Yet to be named website for the Green Home Project. We’ will be documenting the crap out of our experience building the coolest greenest house on the planet on our yet to be named website. Sheagunther.org is a good place to go to keep up while I figure out what this new thing will be called.

- Stumblegods.com- It’s not really officially launched yet, but my buddy Michael (editor and founder of Groovy Green, founder and publisher of Ecorazzi, chief editor guy at Ecotality Life) and I will be sharing our insights about the power of StumbleUpon at our new site Stumble Gods. Our thumbs move masses baby.

- Ecotality Life- I’ve been working as a consultant with the awesome and talented Brooke Lowry over at Ecotality on the relaunch of their blog. We’ll be getting Ecotality Life up in the next week, in the meantime check out the current site. Ecotality Life will be relaunched with a focus on green gadgets and green business and investing and should be a good read.

- Email: sheagunther@gmail.com, Skype: shea_gunther

It’s been rad, I’ll miss a lot of the people at Green Options and Planetsave. I’ve gotta give it up to my main man Jan, the founder of Planetsave (he sold it to Green Options this Spring and works on both GO and PS stuff) and pimp dad advertising sales guru man. HIC! He’ll be assisted by the talented Noelle d’Estries (Michael’s sister) who will bring her savvy news sense (have you seen the Green Report, that’s all her) and keen wit to the table trying to fill the void that my voluminous ego will leave behind.

Keep up the good fight. Keep on saving the world.

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