Green Options

If you’re a fan of the Sundance Channel’s series Green Porno with Isabella Rossellini, you’re probably already aware that the acclaimed show launched its third season on Monday (with a focus on marine animals). But how well do you really know the mating habits of various animal species?

In order to celebrate the new season, we’ve agreed to host another event with the show… this time a quiz (which you’ll find below the jump). Answer the questions below in the comments; if you score 80% or above (that is, only miss two questions), you’ll be entered into a drawing for a Sundance Channel prize package that includes:

• Ella Vickers bags, made out of recycled sails
• 1 Bag at a Time farmers market bags
• A Boku journal made from recycled paper
• Sundance pen
• Sundance Channel t-shirt (made from organic cotton)
• Sundance Channel hat (made from organic cotton)

Ready to get started? Here’s the quiz (and links to videos with the answers… this isn’t that hard)

Apparently, the pine wood snake has a very distinctive schlong: no one who entered our “Name that Schlong” contest confused it with the penis of, say, a blesbok or a dragonfly, or any of the other “members” of the Grand Gallery of Penises. Well done, schlong-namers!

Now, on to the important stuff…

We have a winner!

UPDATE: We’ve got a new Green Porno contest running… check it out.

If you’ve had dreams about Isabella Rossellini wandering through a forest of enlarged animal penises (peni?), either you need to get to the shrink quickly, or you’ve been watching Sundance Channel’s Green Porno series very regularly. If the latter’s the case, let’s see how much you’ve picked up…

Name that Schlong

Take a look at the picture above. The arrow in the picture is pointing out a specific species’ penis. Know what it is?  Name it… in the comments. Need help?  Check out the main contest post at Sundance’s SUNfiltered blog (disclosure: I’m a blogger there).

If you’ve spent any amount of time in buildings with historical significance (and you probably have), you recognize that such structures are more than the sum of their physical parts. The confluence of design, material, and human action that occurred in those buildings allow you to step out of time momentarily, and experience how past generations imagined the combination of form and function as they created a [...]

Many thanks to all of you who entered the drawing for a gift bag from the Sundance Channel! We have a winner: Bryn Miller of Tempe, Arizona will be receiving the bag full of green goodies in the mail shortly… congratulations, Bryn!

Of course, even without the cool green swag, you can still enjoy Sundance’s The [...]

Well, it turns out that getting a list of subscribers out of Feedburner is more challenging than it once was. So… if you’re still planning to enter our drawing for a Sundance gift bag (or you already have), please forward me a copy of one of the daily sustainablog emails you receive after subscribing and confirming your registration. Forward those to sustainablog (at) gmail (dot) com. Please use “Sundance Gift [...]

As you might guess, the timing of my new gig with the Sundance Channel’s blogging team wasn’t accidental… a new season of Tuesday night The Green programming is about to launch. While I’ll be really careful about letting my two blogging roles overlap, I did take Sundance up on an offer they made to us (and other bloggers) last year: we’ve got another Sundance green gift bag to give away this year! So, what’s in the bag? A copy of Josh Dorfman’s The Lazy Environmentalist on a Budget, a set of green mp3 speakers, a t-shirt, and a notebook. Of course, the bag itself is suitable for adding to your collection of reusable shopping bags.

With two seats, two wheels, and a maximum range of 25-35 miles (at 25-35 mph), the P.U.M.A. (which stands for Personal Urban Mobility & Accessibility) won’t work for your next road trip. But this new concept vehicle, a joint project of GM and Segway, may be just the ticket for the driving most of us do on a daily basis.

The vehicle was introduced to the [...]

Do I have you attention? Okay, good. Now, get your mind out of the gutter and instead turn your thoughts to the sex life of insects and other creatures. Isabella Rossellini has created an eight-part short film series titled “Green Porno” in conjunction with Robert Redford’s Sundance Channel.

These eight film shorts premiered back in May on sundancechannel.com, and they have been shown on the Sundance Channel. Starting today they will be made available worldwide through sundancechannel.com/greenporno. Two of the short films, Snail and Worm, are also available on YouTube starting today.

In addition to making these unique and irreverent film shorts more widely available, the Sundance Channel website is launching an interactive quiz, “What Kind of GREEN PORNO Star are You?” Turns out, I’m a dragonfly. According to the quiz:

Free and clean is how you run your life. Free–You’re the founding member of the Mile High Club. You know nothing about the sky being the limit.

True about me? I’m not telling.

Running a bit late again on my preview of tonight’s The Green; unlike last week, though, I did take the time to watch tonight’s episode of Big Ideas for a Small Planet. As usual, I recommend you also take the time to watch it tonight… lots of food for thought packed into 30 minutes.

Tonight’s theme on BIFASP is “Transport,” and it’s a show that will get diehard tech enthusiasts and community activists excited about the possibilities available for getting from here to there with a lighter environmental impact. Unlike some of the previous episodes, “Transport” takes viewers to places they’d probably expect, and definitely know: New York City, Portland, Oregon, and Boston. While New York’s famous for its public transportation, discussions with city transit officials show they’re moving forward rapidly to make an established system more user-friendly and sustainable. In Portland, human-powered transportation is the focus: Portland’s the most bicycle-friendly city in North America, and you’ll not only find out why, but also see how green transport evangelists are shopping its model around to other American locales.

It’s Tuesday again, and for many of us, that means another night of great television on the Sundance Channel’s The Green. Rather than trying to fake it, I’ll readily admit I haven’t gotten a chance to watch tonight’s episode of Big Ideas for a Small Planet in advance… given the quality of previous episodes, though, I’m willing to bank that “Grow,” which will focus on green spaces in urban and suburban environments, will be well worth watching. Following “Grow,” the Sundance Channel will air the documentary Off the Grid: Life on the Mesa.