Benson's Blog

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/12/keeping-up-with-copenhagen.html

Just in case you hadn't heard yet, the Sierra Club will have a huge crowd of folks over in Copenhagen for next week's international climate talks. Top Sierra Club officials attending the talks and available for media interviews include:

-Carl Pope, Sierra Club Executive Director
-Allison Chin, Sierra Club President
-Robin Mann, Sierra Club Vice President for Conservation
-Dave Hamilton, Director, Global Warming & Energy Team
-John Coequyt, international domestic policy expert, Global Warming & Energy Team
-Margrete Strand, Director, Sierra Club's Labor, Workers' Rights & Trade Program
-Other Sierra Club and Sierra Student Coalition activists

Many of our folks will be blogging and keeping us (and you!) posted on how things are going on our Copenhagen page: www.SierraClub.org/Copenhagen

That page is part of our Climate Crossroads community, which you should join for many reasons, not just because of our excellent upcoming Copenhagen coverage. The Copenhagen talks last from Dec. 7 - 18, so stay tuned!

http://thisisindexed.com/2009/12/comedy-or-tragedy/

http://thisisindexed.com/?p=12439

LiveJournal: The First Decade

Just in time for holiday shopping, we're thrilled to announce the release of our ten-year anniversary anthology. Published by Blurb.com, the book showcases a decade of extraordinary talent drawn from LiveJournal users around the world. This must-read compilation features stories, memes, photos, comics, editorials, graphic content, and more, including:

1. Excerpts from Oh No They Didn't (a/k/a ohnotheydidnt), the largest community on LiveJournal, covering celebrity gossip, entertainment news, and pop culture
2. A look at post-Katrina New Orleans from the journal of Poppy Z. Brite
3. Gripping narratives, including a poignant reverie on a blind date
4. Photography that spans the globe, ranging from old-fashioned Polaroids to underwater photography
5. Mouthwatering dishes from food_porn

What began as a late-night inspiration back in Brad Fitzpatrick's college dorm in 1999 has grown to encompass nearly 25 million users worldwide, with journals and communities covering every conceivable hobby, passion, and topic. To get your copy, please visit the Blurb Bookstore. For updates and entries from book contributors, please join lj_turns10.

Tweaks and enhancements

• You can now ban a user from all of your communities and journals at once. To access this feature, hover over the person's userpic and choose Ban user everywhere from the drop-down menu.
• Follow LiveJournal on Twitter!

Give a little to help a lot!

In honor of National AIDS Awareness month, we've added a new charitable vgift. For each red ribbon you purchase for $2.99, we'll donate 100 percent of gross proceeds to IAVI.org (the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative) to support the development and global distribution of an affordable HIV vaccine (we'll cover credit card fees). You can read more about IAVI at lj_cares. While we're on the subject, we raised $740 from our November fundraiser for Love Without Boundaries, which supports emergency healthcare and adoption of Chinese orphans. We thank you for helping us help others.

Photos of the week

We're back with more incredible pictures from our super-talented LiveJournal photographers. Congratulations to ilya_gorokhov, who is the winner of our very first lj_photophile poll.

We hope you'll continue to post, vote, and comment! A gentle request: Please post only one photo at a time and limit size to 350x350 (so images display properly on friends pages). And now, without further ado, get ready to cast your ballot and view more awesome user content after the jump!

( Read more... )

Curtains

Thanks, again, for joining us. Stay safe and snug out there!

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/12/google-strikes-back.html

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/12/top-ten-candidates-to-run-gm.html

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/12/another-coal-plant-scrapped-due-to-costs.html

This is the weekly post from Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club Beyond Coal Campaign. This post was co-written by Nachy Kanfer of the Sierra Club Ohio Beyond Coal Campaign.

If you missed this announcement last week because the news was covering party crashers and Tiger Woods – we're here to update you: Last Wednesday, American Municipal Power announced it would likely not build its proposed 960-megawatt coal-fired power plant in southeast Ohio.

The plant had suffered several cost increases and growing public opposition regarding its environmental impact. The Sierra Club has opposed this dirty facility from the beginning through grassroots activism, outreach to the financial and investment community, media work, and litigation.

The AMP plant was originally proposed in 2006 as a $1.5 billion project that would have provided electricity to municipal utilities across Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Virginia. By late 2009, costs had already increased to approximately $3.9 billion, including financing, while energy demand and market prices had fallen dramatically and efficiency and other alternatives became increasingly available.

Together with our allies, including Ohio Citizen Action, the Natural Resources Defense Council, the Ohio Student Environmental Coalition, and Meigs Citizens Action Now, local residents were instrumental in persuading several communities not to sign power contracts with AMP because of the environmental and economics costs of using coal power. This subsequently generated intense pressure and uncertainty among member municipalities as the plant's price-tag steadily increased.

Meigs County, where the facility would have been located, is already adjacent to four existing coal-fired power plants. One major question remaining is that of economic development and job creation in Meigs County, located in a region of Ohio with higher unemployment and poverty rates than the average. But with a solid commitment to clean, renewable energy, the region could see more job creation and an economic boost.

Grassroots work also generated thousands of written and dozens of oral comments at various Ohio Environmental Protection Agency permit hearings, and sent thousands of emails to Governor Ted Strickland and key statewide decision-makers urging them not to supply public funding. In October, the Sierra Club also published a scathing economic analysis of the AMP coal plant proposal, which received attention in the financial press.

It's yet another sign that even beyond its terrible environmental impacts, coal also does not make economic sense either. The news is something to be thankful for in southeast Ohio, and we hope the state starts taking more serious strides in the direction of clean, renewable energy in order to boost the economy, create jobs, and fight global warming.

http://thisisindexed.com/2009/12/yes-even-bears/

http://thisisindexed.com/?p=12436

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/12/how-you-can-get-retweeted---holy-kaw.html

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/12/top-5-blogging-misconceptions.html

**EDIT Thu Dec 3 23:24:15 UTC 2009 **

Hey Everyone, we are about to run the last alter job that we need to on our database servers. This will effect userpics / scrapbook / vgift images for the next few hours. Have no fear, your images aren't lost, there is just a really intensive process running on the servers which store the information for mogilefs. Thank you for your understanding and all the LJ love...

Hey LJers,

I just wanted to let you all know that we are going to be performing some mogilefs maintenance over the next few days. We will be upgrading our current version to latest stable as well as changing some db config information to better handle the amount of files we are currently hosting. This shouldn't cause a big impact on site stability, but you may see some minor delays with userpic / scrapbook images appearing or other requests associated with our mogilefs. We would love to not have that happen, but unfortunately with some of the steps we need to take we have to cause a delay with images. I figured this was a better solution than taking down all of LiveJournal because well lets face it, we all need our daily LJ fix ;)

Thanks,

http://sierraclub.typepad.com/compass/2009/12/white-house-forum-on-clean-energy.html

Later today at the White House is a Clean Energy Forum, several of our own Sierra Student Coalition (SSC) folks will be there as part of the Energy Action Coalition. From our SSCers' blog post over on Climate Crossroads:

On Wednesday, December 2, four members of President Obama’s Cabinet will host a Clean Energy Economy Forum with youth leaders from around the country at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.  Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar , Labor Secretary Hilda L. Solis, Energy Secretary Steven Chu, and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lisa P. Jackson, and other Administration officials will reiterate the need for a comprehensive energy plan that puts America back in control of its energy future.

So tune in at 4pm ET to watch it on the web.

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/12/how-to-love-the-low-end--.html

http://thisisindexed.com/2009/12/the-persistence-of-memory/

http://thisisindexed.com/?p=12433

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/12/how-to-stand-out-in-the-crowd---holy-kaw-1.html

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/12/10-questions-businesses-must-keep-asking.html

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/12/how-to-stand-out-in-the-crowd---holy-kaw.html

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/12/lessons-learned-from-oprah-winfrey.html

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/11/how-to-write-magnetic-headlines.html

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/11/best-damn-web-marketing-checklist-period-1.html

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2009/11/best-damn-web-marketing-checklist-period.html