I came across this contest today and thought it was pretty funny as well as a good marketing ploy.  Roto-Rooter is has come up with a book of funny/spooky bathroom stories and capitalizing on the fact that two of their own employees are hosts of the popular show Ghost Hunters.

• Enter the contest

Roto-Rooter teamed up with its army of plumbers, including real-life Roto-Rooter men, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of TV’s Ghost Hunters®, to assemble a funny yet frightening vignette-style bathroom reader about plumbing horrors and unexpected things that go wrong in America’s bathrooms.

Chilling Tales from the Porcelain Seat includes strange but true tales from the general public and the plumbers who have seen it all and lived to tell about it! 100 pages of fun stories and photos to enjoy on your throne.

In a recent episode of Help! My business sucks! I heard about RyanAir’s plans to charge for using the toilets on their planes. My initial reaction was shock, but from what I’ve heard RyanAir has a track record of doing things like that. Nothing is free on their flights, not even a measly drink.

Rather than try and skimp and save at every turn, wouldn’t they be better off focusing on PLEASING the customer?! Apparently the only airline that gets what customers want (and gives it to them), is Virgin.

I ran into this in Costa Rica once.  I was traveling through several of the cities and no matter where I went I had to pay to use the restroom. Luckily I had enough cash to pay!

So the question is…

What happens if your on the plane and you don’t have any cash, or a credit card on you, and you have to go? 

The place that I called home for 4 years during my time at Berea College has been officially designated as a “Transition Town”.

Berea joins 133 other communities worldwide that have been recognized by the Transition Network founded in the United Kingdom, for their accomplishments in working to achieve a positive future for their community.

Read more:

http://sustainableberea.org

Yikes! A commercial Iridium communications satellite and a “presumably-defunct” Russian Cosmos spacecraft smashed into one another on Tuesday, more than 490 miles above northern Siberia. It’s the first ever sat-on-sat collision, SpaceFlightNow.com reports.

“The U.S. space surveillance network detected a large number of debris from both objects,” NASA’s Nicholas Johnson says. For now, the International Space Station appears to be okay. But it’s not yet clear whether that debris “poses a risk to any other military or civilian satellites,” the website adds.

According to NASA, of the 6,000 satellites sent into orbit since 1957, about 3,000 remain in operation.

My college got hit pretty hard by the Ice Storm that swept through last week.  Many of the big trees made the campus of 1500 students look so beautiful were damaged or brought down by the weight of the ice.

Here is an video of the aftermath:

WASHINGTON – Kentucky Utilities Company has agreed to pay a fine of $1.4 million and spend about $135 million on new pollution controls for violations of the Clean Air Act at one of its power plants, the Environmental Protection Agency said on Tuesday.

Under the agreement, Kentucky Utilities, a unit of E.ON US, will cut emissions of sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides at its E. W. Brown Generating Station in Mercer County, Kentucky, by more than 31,000 tons per year.

The company will also install controls to reduce particulate matter emissions by approximately 1,000 tons per year.

Source: PlaneTark.org

Finally!  I have had this idea for years and it looks like its starting to catch on.  Read on:

Motoya Nakamura / The OregonianPersonal trainer DeAnna Bellamy (left) and owner Adam Boesel pedal exercise bikes that feed batteries at soon-to-open Green Microgym.

People will do more than burn energy at a gym set to open Sept. 1 on Northeast Alberta Street. They’ll also create it.

At the Green Microgym, human energy will be harnessed from fitness bikes and converted to electricity.

Owner Adam Boesel hopes the gym eventually will run solely on the energy it generates. Boesel, 37, says the gym will be the first of its kind in the U.S. and a good fit in eco-conscious Portland.

Globally, it will join Hong Kong’s California Fitness gym, where exercisers power lights and batteries, and London nightspot Club Surya, where a dance floor converts movement into energy.

Dave Erwin, an environmental studies professor at Portland State University, says that as energy prices soar, more people are concerned about how they affect the environment. People “are trying to turn an energy shortage into an asset,” he says. “It’s a fascinating concept.”

Like other fitness centers, the 2,800-square-foot Green Microgym will have treadmills, bikes and elliptical trainers. But the treadmills, with energy-efficient motors, will use 30 percent less power than normal machines.

And four spin bikes — stationary bikes that don’t use electricity — will produce 200 to 600 watts of energy an hour, says Mike Taggett of Texas, who developed them. Four or five other spin bikes in the gym will be attached to generators Boesel developed. All will feed a battery bank that can be tapped for the gym’s electricity needs, though the power generated will be modest at first.

Other green features? A yoga room with cork flooring and local artwork. Solar-panel awnings. Energy-efficient ceiling fans. And no showers, to save on water-heating costs.

Boesel, a former grade-school teacher, became a personal trainer four years ago out of a desire to see more immediate results and live a healthy lifestyle. Now, he says, “I get rewarded for how hard I work and for how smart I work.”

Motoya Nakamura / The OregonianHuman energy will be harnessed from fitness bikes at Green Microgym and converted to electricity.

For Alberta-area residents, the gym’s environmental friendliness is a definite draw, but they’re more excited about it being in the neighborhood.

“For me, it’s like, wow, there’s a gym at the end of my street,” says Jackie Yerby, a new member. She calls it a “no-excuses gym” because distance won’t be a factor in whether she works out.

DeAnna Bellamy, a Green Microgym personal trainer who just moved to Portland from Chicago, says the facility is “an evolution of gyms.”

“You go to a gym to get healthy. If you can make the Earth healthy as well, you’re kind of killing two birds with one stone.”

– Nicole Santa Cruz; nicolesantacruz@news.oregonian.com