This year is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, which takes place (as always) on April 22 (it happens to be the birthday of one of the founders, that’s how they picked the date).

To celebrate, according to the L.A. Times, the Burt’s Bees company will be handing out product samples, smoothies blended by the action of a bicycle — and fake “look-like-Burt” beards.

But for all the eco-friendly things that Burt’s Bees may do (the LAT says they’ve “been using recycled packaging long before it got trendy”) I haven’t been able to think about the company the same way since I read about its tumultuous founding.

That guy, “Burt” on the packaging? He was just an old beekeeper, living in a turkey coop in Maine.

Then he met a girl. Then they started selling beeswax products at farmer’s markets and the like, and then they founded a company.

For some reason, he only had a 1/3 share of this company, while his “girlfriend” got a 2/3 share. When they broke up, she bought out his share for a $130,000 house (which he later sold to go back to his turkey coop).

A few years later, she turned around and sold the company — first to a private equity firm, then to Clorox, the bleach company. She made some $300 million.

Feeling guilty, she did send a little bit more money Burt’s way — about $4 million. And he gets paid an “undisclosed amount” for the use of his name and image.

And maybe that’s fair. But I can no longer feel the same way about Burt’s Bees as I used to — it’s missing the very authenticity that it’s striving for.

According to the New York Times feature where I learned most of this (read it here), Clorox is hoping to learn from Burt’s Bees’ environmental practices — to make greener bleach, and a greener company. I can’t judge how that’s going.

But with all the feel-good bike-churned smoothies that Burt’s Bees will be handing out in L.A. (with compostable cups!) they’ll also be handing out fake beards so you can parade around, looking like their corporate image. Are the fake beards environmentally friendly? Who knows, maybe they are.

But I don’t think they’re morally friendly. I don’t get the sense that they’re honouring the back-to-the-land, natural-living ethos of a beekeeper who lives in a turkey coop without electricity or running water. Maybe they’ve paid him enough — $4 million plus an annual image licensing fee is a lot of money — and maybe he’s satisfied. But I’m not.

If you haven’t read the Esquire profile of film critic Roger Ebert, you should. But then you should go over to the Deadspin site, and read a different kind of profile.

Writer Will Leitch didn’t talk to Ebert for this story — well, not recently. When Leitch was a younger man, he actually kept up a running correspondence with Ebert, having first emailed him drunkenly to ask about a rumour that Ebert had once had sex on the university newspaper’s desk.

A later drunken moment, though, ruins everything.

Give it a read — despite everything, Leitch does a pretty good job of portraying Ebert as a person. And a pretty nice, caring person, too.

On Jan. 28, 1986, Jack Moss was 80 miles away from the launch of the Challenger, and waiting to film it on his new home video camera (I don’t think the word “camcorder” had been popularized yet — heck, the devices were pretty rare back then).

This is what he saw:

Then, not really thinking that he had perhaps the only amateur film of the incident, Moss packed it away in his basement. His pastor uncovered it after Moss died:

“It took a while to find someone with an old Betamax video player, then I had to watch four hours of gameshows and sitcoms from the 1980s, but when I found the Challenger film my reaction was that people really have to see this.”

(From the Guardian, via BB)

Howard Zinn died of a heart attack, says his daughter. I hope his legacy, “A Peoples’ History of the United States” lives on.

… and a wall.

(Thanks, Colin!)

Try this one on for size: Walmart puts surveillance cameras in washrooms. (And they weren’t the only ones.)

privacy ≠ wrong

On Christmas Day, a man apparently tried to blow up a plane that was landing in Detroit.

According to the New York Times, “he had had explosive powder taped to his leg and that he had used a syringe of chemicals to mix with the powder to try to cause an explosion.”

The article makes note of the fact that this incident is reminiscent of the eight-years-ago December Richard Reid “shoe bomber” scare.

After Reid tried to ignite his shoes, we all started to have to take off our shoes at the airport.

Since this guy had explosive powder in his pants, I fully expect that our consistent and perfectly rational security apparatus will now require that travellers all drop trou before flying.

Also, I look forward to the day when some wannabe terrorist tries to blow up a plane with his passport.

“Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Or at least, there was, until a terrible inferno consumed him in Brazil.”

From the Asylum.com blog:

At a public unveiling for the year’s Christmas display in the poverty-stricken region, holiday revelers watched in horror as an apparent mechanical error caused St. Nick to catch fire and ultimately burn completely beyond recognition.

More images, capturing the conflagration from beginning to end, here and here.

Stephen Harper was (I believe) the first sitting Prime Minister to offer an official Canadian apology, which he did last year to Canadian aboriginals, saying he was sorry for their cumulative experiences in residential schools.

Greenpeace thinks he’ll have to make another apology, in a decade or so. Here’s their take on it:

From BoingBoing, which quotes ‘Darren‘:

Greenpeace is running a clever ad campaign in the Copenhagen airport in preparation for the Copenhagen climate negotiations that start on Dec. 7. They’re a series of ads featuring Photoshopped images of sad-looking world leaders, apologizing for not addressing climate change when they had the chance. Canada’s Prime Minister looks like the saddest hockey coach in the land.

I hope this billboard stares Stephen Harper right in the face. Greenpeace has also Obama, Merkel and Medvedev, among others that I didn’t recognize, in their slideshow.

The following story is one of the top-five most-viewed on The Guardian:

Canada’s image lies in tatters. It is now to climate what Japan is to whaling

Subheadline: “The tar barons have held the nation to ransom. This thuggish petro-state is today the greatest obstacle to a deal in Copenhagen”

Yes, that’s right — we’re a “thuggish petro-state.” But here’s the money quote:

So here I am, watching the astonishing spectacle of a beautiful, cultured nation turning itself into a corrupt petro-state. Canada is slipping down the development ladder, retreating from a complex, diverse economy towards dependence on a single primary resource, which happens to be the dirtiest commodity known to man. The price of this transition is the brutalisation of the country, and a government campaign against multilateralism as savage as any waged by George Bush.

Columnist George Monbiot also calls Canada “the real villain” (eclipsing the United States) and says “Canada now threatens the wellbeing of the world.”

Yes, this is about climate change and if you don’t agree with global warming then nothing I can say will convince you. But hopefully you care about international opinion. And even if you don’t, hopefully you’ll see that the Harper-led process to evade international climate-change agreements and to develop and commercialize the oil sands has been a scorched-earth political process that is wrecking more than just the climate.

Thanks, Harper. Thanks a lot.

Elena Desserich was diagnosed with pediatric brain cancer when she was five and given four-and-a-half months to live. She made it past her sixth birthday, though, lasting nine months.

Her parents never told her that the prognosis was fatal, but according to this heart-rending story, she must have known — she left heart-decorated notes in crayon, stuffed into cracks and hidden in books, for her family to find after she was gone:

Keith doesn’t remember the first one she left because for awhile, he and Brooke thought her notes were part of the daily household clutter that had accumulated over the years.

“But after you get to 20 or 30 you realize this isn’t just scraps,” he says. “We don’t even know when her notes started. We have three Rubbermaid boxes full.” There could be 300, they haven’t counted.

Elena left them for her grandmother too, and even a great-aunt’s Chihuahua she adored, who stood guard at her bedside until the end.

The original went viral, now so has this version, which I think is funnier.

But still kind of sad.

Wow, I’ve been drunk, but I’ve never been *that* drunk.

I guess it’s not all like Futurama. When baseball legend Ted Williams died in 2002, his family had him frozen. Later, his head was severed and just the head was preserved.

I’ve heard of cryogenics before, but I’m skeptical. Unless you can somehow solve the problem of water expanding when it freezes, then any so-called “preservation” would instead have brain cells bursting apart like a beer bottle in the freezer.

But even that would be better than the indignity that one former crygenics employee says happened to Williams. From an article in the New York Daily News:

Shortly after the Red Sox slugger died at age 83, technicians with no medical certification gleefully photographed and used crude equipment to decapitate the majors’ last .400 hitter.

Williams’ severed head was then frozen, and even used for batting practice by a technician trying to dislodge it from a tuna fish can ….

The technician, no .406 hitter like the baseball legend, missed the can with several swings of the wrench and smacked Williams’ head directly, spraying “tiny pieces of frozen head” around the room.

I’m not sure that I could say I’m eager to read the book — the author wore a wire for three months at the crygenics company and stole photos and internal documentation ot back up his claims — but I’m sure glad that it’s coming out.

Maybe — maybe! — in the far future, the technology will exist to thaw out these frozen heads and bodies. And maybe — maybe! — our descendants will even want to do this for us, and will do so out of the goodness of their hearts.

But I kind of doubt it.

I’ve been drinking beers all night and I am tempted to call this phone number, even though the ad hasn’t run on TV in like a decade and a half.

However, I am still sober enough to know that the number is probably out of service, or it goes to a different service.

But I’d still love to know what the sad story is! Anyone know?

I am really torn on what to make of a new condo being planned in Toronto. According to the Toronto Star, the 42-storey structure would house 315 units, mostly one-bedroom condos. And, they’ll be about $20,000 cheaper than comparable condos in the city.

Where are they saving all that money? By not building an expensive underground parking garage. The Star notes that the planned building will provide only nine (9!) parking spaces for a car-sharing service, but will boast 315 spaces for bicycles. Similar buildings would provide about 140 parking spots.

Now that’s innovative. And, in a downtown area, there’s probably enough density to make it work. The location is right beside a subway station, for example, although it’s 10 blocks from the nearest grocery store.

Unfortunately, the news isn’t all good. That wonderful building is planned for 426 University Ave., currently home to the Royal Canadian Military Institute.

The Institute is a century-old heritage building. From its website:

Today, the heritage building is well known to the public as a city landmark – an Edwardian edifice flanked distinctively by two 19th-century cannons, with substantial space devoted to Museum galleries displaying exhibits drawn from the Institute’s extensive collections. It also houses a 15,000 volume research Library whose holdings include significant books detailing Canada’s military history.

The Star says that the condo development will preserve “elements” of the facade and will provide space for the Institute and its holdings — they even house the seat of Baron von Richthofen’s Fokker Triplane, which is pretty amazing — but in my experience, facades are not the same as the buildings themselves.

From the article:

Though the institute’s board has approved the project, several members at large oppose it.

Member Brian Lawrie told the community council that in 2007 Vaughan had “enthusiastically endorsed” keeping the building intact, calling it a “rare remnant of University Avenue’s early days as a quiet boulevard dominated by trees, not highrises.” He noted that the councillor had done a “180-degree turn” the next year by endorsing the demolition and condo project.

That’s ironic, because just a couple of paragraphs later, a city councillor is quoted as saying that the development brings the building into “better conformity” with its surroundings.

So let me get this straight: a 102-year-old building, which used to be surrounded by other, similar buildings, which have gradually all been replaced by steel-and-glass towers, now should be torn down because it doesn’t fit the aesthetic of the street? Where was that sentiment when the first tower was built, destroying what was then a “quiet boulevard”?

I’m all in favour of the car-free aspect of it. That excites me. But why does it have to come at the expense of heritage?