Google Street View Maps

Go check out the new feature at Google Maps, it shows real photo views of a given address or turn by turn photo views of say which exit ramp to take or when to stay in the left lane. Its not 100% complete for all areas but our house was on it. Have fun seeing the pictures of your home, your friends houses, your favorite hangouts, your old stomping grounds...

Go to http://maps.google.com/, type in the address or ask for directions to a location then click on the "Street View" button in the upper right of the map. The little bubble that points out your location will show a little picture of the location click on it to see it bigger or even make it full screen. The picture of our house even had our cars in the driveway at the time! Crazy.

French Fries = Potassium

I saw a couple places this past week how healthy potatoes can be for you. One was an add for something like the Idaho Potato Commission saying that a white potato isn't just a bunch of bad white starch, that it actually contains more potassium than a banana. Then somewhere in the paper I read how boiling potatoes can deplete them of most of their nutrients and that FRIED potatoes actual have more of the nutrients still in them! Unfortunately there's way more fat too. The solution: boil your potatoes whole rather than cutting them up to keep more nutrients intact. Click here for full nutrition facts, you might be surprised.

Toilet Water vs. Ice

My friend Dana was telling me she saw on Oprah a young girl that did a science fair project to see which was cleaner at several different chain restaurants: the toilet water or the ice from the soda machines. Yep, the toilet water was cleaner! If you think about it toilets get cleaned (and disenfected!) on a very regular basis. But how often (if ever) do you think they clean out those ice buckets?

For more on this story click here.

Polar Bears & the Trash Vortex

Polar Bears were recently added to the list of "threatened" species. Click here to see how the Oil Companies responded. Click here to see read what Canada thinks.

On another very sad note, I learned today that there is a HUGE vortex of trash (mostly plastic & sytrofoam) swirling around in the Pacific Ocean. It is located between California and Hawaii, and it is LARGER THAN THE STATE OF TEXAS. Horrible, just horrible. There is one group out of California actually researching the phenomenon and they found that the plastic actually outweighs the plankton at a ratio of 40:1 by weight. As if the trash just being out there isn't bad enough, what you must realize is that sea life is eating this garbage, putting them at great risk. Plus, the "garbage patch" is so large it is shading large areas, reducing the amount of light reaching the ocean floor to grow the kelp, and kelp in turn is a large contributer to removing carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. I learned all this from one of my favorite new shows: G Word on the new PlanetGreen channel.


So if you're as devastated as I am about the "Garbage Patch" news and wondering what you should do about it... one word: RECYCLE!

More links about this tragedy:
Article featuring Charles Moore, captain of the private research vessel Alguita
Continent-size toxic stew
Greenpeace article