Andy Kondrat
June 27, 2008 | 11:02 am EST
Wow. Speaking of glass ceilings, have you seen the new McDonald’s ad for their premium coffee? The one where two women in a coffee shop get super excited about new McDonald’s lattes. And here is why:
W1: Now we don’t have to listen to jazz all day long!
W2: I can start wearing heels again.
W1: Read gossip magazines! (tosses book away)
W2: Watch reality TV shows…
W1: I like television!
W2: I can’t really speak French.
W1: I don’t know where Paraguay is!
W2: Paraguay?
McDonalds! YAY! Just when I thought you didn’t understand women. You’re right! We all really just want stop all this pretending to be smart stuff and we finally have a place to get a latte where we can be stupid again!
And who really wants to hang around jazz listening, New Yorker reading, Mad Men loving, “smart” women who may even be crazy enough to want to support local coffee shops that serve fair trade coffee??**
Watch the commercial here:
Yesterday, California announced the blueprint it will use to roll back greenhouse gas emission levels to 1990 levels by 2020. Remember, in 1990, MC Hammer released “U Can’t Touch This,” Home Alone was the top-grossing film of the year, and there was still a USSR. So, yeah. Kind of a while ago.
Anyhow, the state had announced this goal two years ago in a piece of climate change legislation, and now we’re starting to see how this all might happen. From the story on Marketplace, the business show on NPR,
A cap-and-trade system with other Western states would let businesses buy and sell the right to pollute.
Read the rest of this entry »
The TakePart Top 10 Weekly Roundup is a compilation of the week’s most notable stories from our entertainment-meets-social-action blogging network. Check out some of our most popular stories of the week, as well as a few TakePart blogger favorites!
Nicole Hughes:
U.S. Media Ignores Link Between Midwest Floods and Global Warming
Top 10 Houseplants for Removing Indoor Air Pollution
* * *
Dubai to Build Rotating Positive Energy Tower
Bioethicist Peter Singer Tackles World Food Shortage
* * *
Jon Popham:
Americacorps Workers Assist Flood Ravaged Town
Australians “Out-Fat” Americans
* * *
Giulia Rozzi:
Oprah Recommends “A New Earth”
* * *
Gina Telaroli:
Peter Singer, possibly the world’s most renowned bioethicist (I mean, how many others can you think of?), found himself on NPR’s Marketplace today to discuss this food crisis we’re in the midst of. Dr. Singer starts with a very simple question: “Why are we in the midst of a food crisis when world production of food per person has actually grown steadily since the 1960s?”
There are a few reasons according to Dr. Singer, not least of which is our new forays into ethanol production, which takes 100 million tons of corn off our tables. But it’s the meat people eat that’s really doing it. Dr. Singer breaks it down old skool:
But most corn isn’t eaten by humans; it’s eaten by animals and that’s the biggest part of the problem. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 756 million tons of grain plus most of the world’s soybean crop are fed to animals and that amount has increased sharply in recent years as Asian nations have become more prosperous and their populations have started eating more meat.
Read the rest of this entry »
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
Read the rest of this entry »
Andy Kondrat:
