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Here are some great tips from the National Geographic Channel.  I really like their tip about adding sand or pebbles to your toilet to reduce the amount of water it uses each flush.  With water prices soaring, I appreciate any tips to conserve water and to save money on the water bill each month.

Feel free to add any tips you have discovered in the comments area below.

This quote is brought to you at the good folks at the Foundation for a Better Life. This quote is about learning. Enjoy!

“I beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves…Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now…the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now.”

- Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926), excerpt from Letters to a Young Poet

Geothermal energy is an abundant resource that has not been fully tapped.  Magma is usually located 25-40 miles beneath the Earth’s surface.  However, in some areas, it is only 4 miles beneath the surface.  Once the magma is reached (through drilling) a liquid, like water, is heated and turned into steam. The steam is then transported to a turbine above ground and released.  The steam rises and rotates turbines which generate electricity.  It is a pretty simple process, but it takes a lot of work to set up the plant to process the steam.  One key advantage of geothermal energy is that it runs 24 hours a day regardless of the weather conditions.

In fact, there is so much geothermal energy available that Google has committed itself to exploring the use geothermal energy in some capacity.  It only makes sense for Google to do so since it is such a large consumer of electricity.  (One of Google’s data centers alone consumes more than 100 megawatts of electricity. This is enough electricity to power a city the size of Tacoma, Washington or 82,000 homes.)  In fact, the CEO of Google recently spoke about his interest to exploit geothermal energy at a recent Commonwealth Club event.  The video of his talk about renewable energy is available after the jump.  (Warning: The video is about 45 minutes long. So, make sure that you have some time available to watch it.)

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What does MSC stand for you ask?  It stands for the Marine Stewardship Council and it is an organization that is working to ensure that our we and our children have seafood to eat during their lifetime.  According to a 2005 United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization report, fisheries around the world are headed toward extinction.  The facts are:

1. 1/4 of the world’s fish stocks are overexploited, depleted or recovering from depletion. They have been under excess fishing pressure which has reduced their capacity. There is no possibility of increasing fishing activity, and in some cases the stocks may decline further.
2. Roughly 1/2 of the stocks are fully exploited. They are being fished at or close to their maximum sustainable limits. There is no room for further expansion of fishing activity.
3. Around 1/4 of fish stocks are underexploited or moderately exploited and could perhaps produce more.

So, enough with all of the bad news and onto the good news.  The Marine Stewardship Council has been working to fight this trend by employing a rigorous standard to certify seafood products.  There is more information about their certification standards after the jump.

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This quote is brought to you at the good folks at the Foundation for a Better Life. This quote is about unity. Enjoy!

“Our happiness is completely and utterly intertwined with other people: family, friends, neighbors and the woman who you hardly notice who cleans your office.”

- Eric Weiner; author, national public radio correspondent