2016

I've kept this blog, on and off, since 2006. In 2015 I used it to chart daily encounters, images, thoughts and feelings about volcanic basalt/bluestone in Melbourne and Victoria, especially in the first part of the year. I plan to write a book provisionally titled Bluestone: An Emotional History, about human uses of and feelings for bluestone. But I am also working on quite a few other projects and a big grant application, especially now I am on research leave. I'm working mostly from home, then, for six months, and will need online sociability for company!


Saturday, December 05, 2009

Saving the rainforest 6.0m2 at a time: am I crazy?

I've just installed the green search engine, Ecosia, on my computer (and the fetching green movie in the side-bar, but tell me if this is going to get annoying). The idea is that in partnership with Yahoo, Bing (never heard of 'em) and the WWF, this search engine generates money that saves Brazilian rainforest. I've done my first search (for my own name, naturally), and my browser window tells me cheerily I just save 6.0m2 of rainforest by doing so. Can this be possible? Surely there's some catch?

Most interesting is that they say they power their searches only by using green power. All web searches use tremendous amounts of power, and if I were really serious about this, I'd probably make a concerted effort to perform fewer searches.

Has anyone heard anything about this? Is my green good will being exploited here?

9 comments:

J J Cohen said...

You know what is weird? I have been having the hardest time posting comments on your blog for the past two weeks. Has anyone else complained?

This old world is a new world said...

Actually, some one did, but she's not a regular poster so I assumed the problem was local, not systemic. I have felt a bit as if I was talking to myself, though, so it's nice to hear from you!

Robin said...

Bing is Microsoft's new search engine. It premiered pretty recently. I am surprised that you have never heard of them, Microsoft did all it could to market it as bigger and better than Google.

Pavlov's Cat said...

Also off-topic but I too have had comments problems. Did you set up the Preview function yourself (and if so how did you do it? couldn't find and ref to it in the workings of Blogger -- but maybe mine is inviting others to Preview as well, how would I know?)? The point here being that the problems I have occasionally had seemed to start around the time the Preview button showed up. I was sure, for instance, that I'd left a comment on the post with the glum photo after Abbott was elected by mistake, but when it didn't show up I thought I'd just been absent-minded. Let's see what happens to this one ...

This old world is a new world said...

Robin, I'm a very lazy computer user. I like to get default settings and programmes that work for me and then tend not to see other options till they stop working or grab my attention in some other way, like the green thing.

PC, no, Preview came up with itself all on its own, though yes, about this time. I'm still using the old blogspot template, though, as I've not been able to make a smooth transition to the new one. Maybe it's time for a blog facelift, though? It's initially disconcerting when a blog changes its colours, but it might be fun...

Anonymous said...

I don't know about the green search engine thingy, but I'm going to look into it now. I was surprised to read recently that Kylie Kwong has made her entire restaurant carbon-neutral for a year by spending only $2,500 on a wind farm in China. So maybe one 'green' search can really save six metres of rainforest, who knows?

steptrig said...

So in your "self-google" did you find an American Stephanie Trigg? I've been reading you for a while now. It's nice to see "my other self" having such a rich romantic life while I plod away in middle America!

This old world is a new world said...

Hi Stephanie Trigg! How nice of you to leave a comment...

Yes, I've found a couple, I think. One was a woman retrenched from a bra-making company in the UK, and at least one in the US. Are you the set decorator (who I now see is the interior designer)?

And, can I ask? How did you get your name? I've always been Trigg (never changed it through marital vicissitudes). The name comes from my great-grandfather and his brother, who came to Australia from the area around Saffron Walden in Essex, as agricultural laborers in the 1850s, and settled in south-western Victoria.

And my father named me Stephanie because he had studied a little Greek as a theological student, and liked the sound of "ho stephanos" (the garland) which he sometimes called me when I was little.

Middle name is Joy, after my mother's bridesmaid.

What about you?

steptrig said...

I was born Stephanie Gayle Trigg, was once married to a Hutton but now thank GOD/the Universe/and or Darwin am married to a Smith and am a hyphenate which adds its own problems. No, I'm not the set designer (sigh) I'm a 40ish graduate student of Biology who works as a Respiratory Therapist. I'm not sure what the non-american version of that is, suffice to say I manage the ventilator and do disgusting chores if you are really sick. I have really enjoyed the blog as it is so very different from my own life!