Paul McIntyre
July 31, 2008
From the smh.com.au
THE PITCH
Greenwashing and dodgy environmental claims might get a little harder to pull off next year as the country's main advertising body, the Australian Association of National Advertisers, goes on the offensive in August to develop a self-regulatory code that would bury such activity and keep regulators like the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission at bay.
It's unusual for the association to lead the way on such a controversial topic, but it knew something had to be done when "gap" analysis six months ago identified areas that could expose it to risk.
Greenwashing, or selling up the environmental claims of a product, emerged as the most pressing matter. Then the ACCC warned advertisers to be careful in making carbon offset claims and promotions to consumers on products and services.
Now the association, through the public affairs consultancy Res Publica, will press the flesh and take submissions from environmental ferals and conservative rednecks alike about how a green code might take shape.
So far it has consulted one of the more credible critics of corporate greenwashing, the Total Environment Centre, which has backed its plans and taken a central role in the review.
"We need a war on greenwash," the centre's director, Jeff Angel, said yesterday. "Environmental claims and brands should inspire and encourage consumers, not dupe them into thinking they are doing their part for the environment when they are not. It's essential that green products become mainstream, the normal products to buy, but for this to happen consumers must be confident about environmental claims."
Whole article here
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Paris Hilton takes on John McCain
August 6, 2008 - 10:08AM
From theage.com.au
... "But then that wrinkly white-haired guy used me in his campaign ad, which I guess means I'm running for president. So thanks for the endorsement white-haired dude, and I want America to know I'm, like, totally ready to lead."
Hilton then offers an alternative US energy strategy, suggesting that she plans to combine elements from McCain and Democratic rival Barack Obama.
"We can do limited offshore drilling with strict environmental oversight while creating tax incentives to get Detroit making hybrid and electric cars. ... Energy crisis solved, I'll see you at the debates, bitches!"
Whole article here
Paris Hilton video here
See more Paris Hilton videos at Funny or Die
Anatomy of the new creative mind
From: http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion
Ok a bit blah blah after the title "Anatomy of the new creative mind" and it's not the sexiest looking brain, but it is a sexy slicing up.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Particpate in the Future of Melbourne City - the Future Wiki
Melbourne to become one of the world's top 10 most liveable and sustainable cities
"Future Melbourne is the community of Melbourne's long-term plan for the future direction of all aspects of city life. Developed by the community, it sets out the goals for the future, key trends and challenges, and outlines strategic growth areas for the city," Cr Ng said.
Future Melbourne sets out six goals:
1. A city for people
2. A prosperous city
3. An eco-city
4. A knowledge city
5. A creative city
6. A connected city.
A selection of 10 headline targets have been identified to measure progress towards the six Future Melbourne goals for the municipality by 2020. These include:
1. all visitors to and residents of the city feel welcome, safe and engaged;
2. all residents, businesses and visitors easily and affordably access the internet;
3. at least 140,000 people live in the municipality of Melbourne;
4. at least 20 per cent of new housing in the municipality is affordable or social housing;
5. total employment in the municipality is more than 400,000;
6. per capita greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 have reduced by 35 per cent per resident and 59 per cent per worker from 2006 levels;
7. per capita drinking water use by 2020 has reduced by 40 per cent per resident and 50 per cent per worker compared to 2000 levels;
8. metropolitan Melbourne is ranked in the world's top research centres;
9. metropolitan Melbourne is ranked in the world's top five cities for international higher education; and
10. 90 per cent of people travel to work in the Melbourne CBD by walking, bicycle and or public transport.
Future Melbourne Reference Group Chair, Carol Schwartz, said the Future Melbourne draft plan was developed by engaging with Melbourne's many communities. More >>
Find out how to participate here:
Mandela: His 8 Lessons of Leadership
No. 1
Courage is not the absence of fear — it's inspiring others to move beyond it
No. 2
Lead from the front — but don't leave your base behind
No. 3
Lead from the back — and let others believe they are in front
No. 4
Know your enemy — and learn about his favorite sport
No. 5
Keep your friends close — and your rivals even closer
No. 6
Appearances matter — and remember to smile
No. 7
Nothing is black or white
No. 8
Quitting is leading too
Nelson Mandela has always felt most at ease around children, and in some ways his greatest deprivation was that he spent 27 years without hearing a baby cry or holding a child's hand. Last month, when I visited Mandela in Johannesburg — a frailer, foggier Mandela than the one I used to know — his first instinct was to spread his arms to my two boys. Within seconds they were hugging the friendly old man who asked them what sports they liked to play and what they'd had for breakfast. While we talked, he held my son Gabriel, whose complicated middle name is Rolihlahla, Nelson Mandela's real first name. He told Gabriel the story of that name, how in Xhosa it translates as "pulling down the branch of a tree" but that its real meaning is "troublemaker."
As he celebrates his 90th birthday next week, Nelson Mandela has made enough trouble for several lifetimes. He liberated a country from a system of violent prejudice and helped unite white and black, oppressor and oppressed, in a way that had never been done before. In the 1990s I worked with Mandela for almost two years on his autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom. After all that time spent in his company, I felt a terrible sense of withdrawal when the book was done; it was like the sun going out of one's life. We have seen each other occasionally over the years, but I wanted to make what might be a final visit and have my sons meet him one more time.
I also wanted to talk to him about leadership. Mandela is the closest thing the world has to a secular saint, but he would be the first to admit that he is something far more pedestrian: a politician. He overthrew apartheid and created a nonracial democratic South Africa by knowing precisely when and how to transition between his roles as warrior, martyr, diplomat and statesman. Uncomfortable with abstract philosophical concepts, he would often say to me that an issue "was not a question of principle; it was a question of tactics." He is a master tactician.
Mandela is no longer comfortable with inquiries or favors. He's fearful that he may not be able to summon what people expect when they visit a living deity, and vain enough to care that they not think him diminished. But the world has never needed Mandela's gifts — as a tactician, as an activist and, yes, as a politician — more, as he showed again in London on June 25, when he rose to condemn the savagery of Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe. As we enter the main stretch of a historic presidential campaign in America, there is much that he can teach the two candidates. I've always thought of what you are about to read as Madiba's Rules (Madiba, his clan name, is what everyone close to him calls him), and they are cobbled together from our conversations old and new and from observing him up close and from afar. They are mostly practical. Many of them stem directly from his personal experience. All of them are calibrated to cause the best kind of trouble: the trouble that forces us to ask how we can make the world a better place.
Whole article here
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