Actress Rachel McAdams, when not starring in The Notebook or Mean Girls (which I totally didn’t see, I swear, but didn’t it turn out to be pretty funny?), cares enough about the environment to co-found greenissexy.org, a website devoted to all things eco-conscious.  The site, which she began with friends Megan and Didi, covers a wide range of topics, urging readers to “think big” in response to environmental issues, while also addressing the little things you can do daily to curb some of those greenhouse gasses.

I liked this site quite a bit because the reader isn’t being hit over the head with what he or she MUST DO RIGHT NOW to save the earth, but instead is given a laid back, fun site to click through and learn a little bit.

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Earth Day is tomorrow, and though many of us are actively attempting to help the environment little by little every day, now’s as good a time as any to compile a list of quotes to circulate to provide the impetus for some fresh, green thinking. And so, in no particular order, I present to you the top ten environmental quotes for Earth Day 2008.

1. I think the environment should be put in the category of our national security. Defense of our resources is just as important as defense abroad. Otherwise, what is there to defend? - Robert Redford

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Bill Maher has always been outspoken but when he decided to speak out about his feelings concerning the Catholic Church, many people were not pleased. Maher made comments in reference to the latest child abuse scandels connected with the church:

Maher said: “If you have a few hundred followers and you let some of them molest children, they call you a cult leader. If you have a billion, they call you ‘pope.’ “

After the backlash, Maher offered an apology on his April 18 show:

“So, on that score, you know what, my Catholic friends, I will never make the “pope is a Nazi” joke again. Because, you’re technically right, OK, and also because it distracts from the main point. And the main point I was making was that if the pope, instead of a religious figure, was the CEO of a chain of nationwide day care centers who had thousands of employees who had been caught molesting children and then covering it up, he would have been in jail. ” [Newsday]

I’ve always been a fan of Maher and in watching the clip (click to see it below the fold) I feel that folks might be overreacting

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Grammy-Award winning pop country group Rascal Flatts’s latest music video “Everday” aims to raise awareness for the American Red Cross. Check it out here:

and visit redcross.org for ways to get involved.

After a great opening weekend and lots of praise (especially from The New York Times) Tom McCarthy’s The Visitor is going to play in theaters beyond LA and New York!

This Friday (Today!) the film will open in Arizona, Illinois, Oregon, Washington, Washington DC and even in my non-Manhattan borough of Brooklyn! to find out when it will be playing at a theater near you. And in case you’re like my family and live in Ohio (it’s not on the list linked to above) fear not! The Visitor will be at the Cedar Lee on May 2nd!

Woo-hoo! Watch the trailer below and go HERE to listen to an interview with the director and stars.

A art student at Yale  recently announced in her student paper that she had been inducing repeated abortions on herself and using the blood for her art:

The story about Aliza Shvarts’ project, published Thursday in the Yale Daily News, swept across blogs and media outlets — including the Drudge Report, Fox News and The Washington Post — before Yale issued a statement saying it investigated and found it all to be a hoax that was Shvarts’ idea of elaborate “performance art.”

“The entire project is an art piece, a creative fiction designed to draw attention to the ambiguity surrounding form and function of a woman’s body,” said Yale spokeswoman Helaine Klasky.

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In England, a man recently got hassled about having a “camera license” when he tried to take photos of a woman turning on her Christmas lights:

After explaining he[Phil Smith] didn’t need one, he was taken down a side-street for a formal “stop and search”, then asked to delete the photos and ordered not take any more. So he slunk home with his camera.

“People were still taking photos with mobile phones and pocket cameras, so maybe it was because mine looked like a professional camera with a flash on top,” he says.

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Urban bike sharing ala the kind that’s been implemented in Europe over the last few years is coming to a US city near you! Washington D.C. will be the first city to implement the two-wheeled transportation SmartBike DC program this May, in conjunction with Clear Channel Outdoor and the District Department of Transportation. Other cities, including Chicago and San Francisco, are working toward instituting similar bike sharing programs in the near future.

Bike sharing is a great alternative to cars and overcrowded public transport. Urban dwellers and tourists alike will now be able to enjoy low-cost access to bicycles within the city - no pollution, no congestion, it’s cheap, and you get a little exercise out of it! For those unfamiliar with the concept of bike sharing, one of the major differences between sharing and renting is that sharing operates as a self-service model with automated payment kiosks - no attendants, and it’s geared toward short-term use.

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Michael Klare’s latest book “Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy” just came out. It’s a great look at the changing world and the role that energy plays in shifting politics and the future of the planet.

For those you wanting to read up on energy without leaving your computer or going to the bookstore (you should def order it though - the amazon link is above), I recommend you head on over to TomDispatch.com to read a new essay by Klare called “The End of the World as You Know It…and the Rise of the New Energy World Order.” It gives a nice overview to the topics he covers in the book.

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New York City artists that are known as street vendors and have routinely sold their work in NYC’s Union Square have been fighting for their first amendment rights so they can continue to sell their work:

On Friday, April 4, a Parks Department official approached artists who had set up in the park and told them that, due to the construction of the private restaurant in the north pavilion, they would not be allowed to sell their art on Wednesdays and Saturdays, two of the most popular days for artists to sell their work, and that the artists were to vacate the park.

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