If you’ve ever ridden in a hybrid car, I’m sure you’ve noticed the peculiar silence when the engine starts, and the way it simply “rolls” onto the road – but are hybrids too quiet for their own good? Some pedestrians, and particularly blind pedestrians, say that they are.

Jana Littrel, who is blind, had her foot run over by a Toyota Prius while walking through a bank parking lot in the East Bay town of Albany a year ago. Although she managed to avoid injury, Jana says the incident has put her on edge. So far, no deaths or serious injuries have been attributed to hybrids. Still, The National Federation for the Blind is currently working toward getting hybrid automobile manufacturers to install a “noise emitting device” so that blind pedestrians, as well as joggers, children, animals, and cyclists can be made aware of the oncoming vehicle.

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The auction for you and a guest to meet actor Djimon Hounsou at the premiere of his upcoming film Push and attend a press junket with him in 2009, or take home signed DVDs with personal notes from Djimon, ends tomorrow. Learn more in this video.

All proceeds will benefit Oxfam America. and visit http://www.ebay.com/oxfam to join the ebay auction or and visit http://www.oxfamamerica.org to get involved in the fight to end poverty and injustice.

This is just one of the many charitable auctions Ebay is sponsoring for Oxfam America. Check out the link above to see what other star-studded selections are available.

This Sunday, New York Times photographer Dith Pran passed away at age 65. Pran was known for his work spreading the word about his native land, Cambodia:

Mr. Dith saw his country descend into a living hell as he scraped and scrambled to survive the barbarous revolutionary regime of the Khmer Rouge from 1975 to 1979, when as many as two million Cambodians — a third of the population — were killed, experts estimate. Mr. Dith survived through nimbleness, guile and sheer desperation. His credo: Make no move unless there was a 50-50 chance of not being killed.

He had been a journalistic partner of Mr. Schanberg, a Times correspondent assigned to Southeast Asia. He translated, took notes and pictures, and helped Mr. Schanberg maneuver in a fast-changing milieu. With the fall of Phnom Penh in 1975, Mr. Schanberg was forced from the country, and Mr. Dith became a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge, the Cambodian Communists. [The New York Times]

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I think most New Yorkers have a love/hate relationship with the most exciting, stimulating and most over-crowded, stressful city in America. I know I have spent many hours questioning why I struggle to live here while co-currently questioning how I could ever by happy living elsewhere. ( I think this old blog entry sums up just one of the many frustrations with NYC livin’). This is why I love (not hate) the web project lovehateNYC, which chronicles Rachel Fujita’s personal love-hate relationship with New York City through panoramic time lapse sequences. Fujita is a multimedia artist who has lived in New York for the last seven beautifully capturing the cities changes through her unique online art. To get inspired, nostalgic, and swept away check out http://www.lovehate.us.

And to learn more about New Yorks history visit The Museum of the City of New York. This unique cultural center celebrates NYC’s heritage of diversity, opportunity, and perpetual transformation through exhibitions, public programs, and publications that explore the past, present, and future of New York City. You can also and support the museums efforts by visiting mcny.org.

On 60 Minutes last night Murat Kurnaz, an ex-terror detainee, spoke about the torture he received while in Kandahar and eventually Guantanamo. Kurnaz, a German citizen of Turkish descent, was traveling in Pakistan for religious reasons when he was picked up by police and handed over to the Americans.

The story comes roughly a month before the release of Errol Morris’ new film Standard Operating Procedure. I’ve written about the film a lot here on TakePart, both because it’s a Participant Productions film that I’m very proud of and also because I’m simply a huge Errol Morris fan. What’s especially exciting is that the film not only comes at a critical time in terms of the information it presents, but also that the film is getting a lot of praise, including winning the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival.

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Eat, for This Is My Body, Michelange Quay’s binary heavy film acts more like a poem than a movie. There is no plot to speak of and we instead follow images and sounds that lead us on a journey of post-colonialism of the Haitian variety. The scenes aren’t all disparate though, we see the same characters throughout the piece, and together they help to build a tension that is both erotic and filled with disgust. Those characters include an old woman or matriarch of an old estate (amazingly played by Catherine Samie), a young male servant, a younger woman called Madame and the troop of young black boys she instructs.

The feature film is a first for Quay, who was born in Queens and is a first generation Haitian. The film is filled with a cinematic language that strays from convention and instead offers up it’s own rules of comprehension. The mishmash of images and auditory emphasis on sounds that are wet and bring the focus to the human aspect of things, seem fitting considering how the “story” came to be

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Al Gore may be staying out of fray by keeping mum about his choice for the democratic presidential candidate, but he’s still on the front lines of the campaign to stop global warming. In a 60 Minutes interview last night with Lesley Stahl, Gore discussed his new $300 million dollar bipartisan advertising campaign to increase awareness about global warming. The commercials feature political odd couples including Nancy Pelosi and Newt Gingrich, and Al Sharpton and Pat Robertson, who share at least one thing in common – their concern for the environment.

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Scarlett Johansson has donated 2000 pairs of her newly designed Reebok shoes to help refugees in Sudan as part of the Soles4Souls project.

According their site Soles4Souls facilitates the donations of shoes, which are used to aid the hurting worldwide. Shoe companies, retailers, and individuals can donate footwear (both new and used). The idea behind gifts of shoes is nothing new to the Soles4Souls team, as they coordinated relief efforts for the Asian Tsunami and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, netting over 900,000 pairs donated for these disasters. The team originally operated as www.katrinashoes.org, with several churches partnering in the collection and distribution of footwear.

Check out this video about Soles4Souls

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If you’re anything like me, you’re pretty overwhelmed with what seems like an infinite amount of social networking sites. I mean wouldn’t it be much nicer to see all these “friends” rather than clicking through the profiles of all these “friends?” Well in the meantime social networking sites offer a way to stay connected with old friend while also providing opportunity for artists, activists and entrepreneurs to mingle. Social network sites allow users to promote their work, find people to work with, and create communities that share interests, goals, and ideas.

Different social networking sites are geared toward different goals, from sharing good books to sharing plans to save the world to simply just making new friends. Here are just 10 of the hundreds of social networking sites available:

1) MySpace: Probably the most popular of the networking sites, MySpace offers an interactive, user-submitted network of friends, personal profiles, blogs, groups, photos, music and videos for teenagers and adults internationally. MySpace has greatly helped promote new bands, comedians, and social issues. The site is so popular it’s even become a verb aka “hey totally MySpace me!”

2) Facebook: Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and

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March 29 is Earth Hour Day, and cities and businesses around the world will be “lights out” for one hour in order to raise awareness about global climate change. If you’ve done a Google search this afternoon, you’ll notice that the screen is “blacked out” in honor of Earth Hour. I wrote about Earth Hour earlier in the month - but today is the day! - so here is the update reposted below as a reminder to do your part, and turn off your lights between 8pm and 9pm this evening.

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