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Buy Nothing Day

This is fascinating - an anti-consumerist movement to do nothing on the biggest shopping day of the year. Adbusters has declared Black Friday, "Buy Nothing Day." I'm torn. While the economy could use the boost, it's empowering to take a personal stand and not buy into the madness.

Regobbling: What to do with the leftover turkey.

I liked this recipe for "Leftover Turkey" Soup, courtesy of Cooks.com. Unfortunately turkey just seems unappetizing and dry the day after, but I'm making a concerted effort to waste not. We took about half a turkey back from Thanksgiving at my father's place. I'd like to keep it simple--forego the crazy casserole-concoctions. There's also just reheating it, I suppose.

Can Silicon Valley Save Motown?

The Roadster, a plug-in electric car

Is this a crazy idea? Oversimplified, maybe. Take The Google money and Silicon Valley brain power, that powers Tesla Motors, for example, and answer the Big Three Automakers' slow, dying plea. Their much publicized plug-in electric car, the Roadster, is in short-run production, and at $109K a pop, isn't exactly flying off the shelves.

General Motors' Chairman Rick Wagoner, who claims he's in awe of Tesla in a NewsHour interview tries to introduce the following reality check: "We had about 100 years of an auto industry in which 98 percent of the energy to power the vehicles has come from oil. We're really going to change that over the next time period, things like battery development and applying batteries to cars, as we're planning on doing with the Volt, is an important step, kind of, in the next 100 years of the auto industry."

With all due respect Mr. Chairman, I mean....Netscape's browser proliferated Internet access in 1994. Think of how far we've come since then--mobile technology, countless web applications, gazillions of web site destinations, and just the mere penetration itself--all within a 15 year time frame. F*** a bailout! I vote for a Silicon Valley takeover of Motown. ASAPs.

Once you go Blackle...

Ricardo C. hipped me to Blackle, which is just like Google, only with a black screen. The theory purports exponential energy savings once we reach critical mass. Consider the alternative and spread the word.

Butcher It

I love getting reader tips. My friend Vik recommends butchering one's own meat. It's economical and less wasteful.

Here are some of his guidelines. He's a terrific chef, so you can trust the advice:

1. Cut the meat into pieces based on how you intend to cook the it. I guess this is where a little meal planning might help.

2. Use sharp knives for safety--a serrated blade for large cuts and bones and a small paring knife for finer work.

3. Pack the different cut pieces into Ziploc bags, old plastic produce bags, etc. and freeze; defrost as you need them. I think this is particularly helpful for single people.

4. Save and freeze any leftover bones to make stock.

And here's an instructional video I found from Chow.com that features Ray Venezia, head butcher at New York’s Fairway market.

The eWaste Trail

60 Minutes does an expose on the electronic waste trail of a so-called recycling facility whose containers end up illegally dumped in remote China. Electronic waste, piling exponentially from our consumerist penchant for acquiring new computers and cell phones, is the "fastest growing component of municipal waste worldwide" according to Allen Hershkowitz, of the Natural Resources Defense Council. By fastest growing he illustrates that we throw out about 130,000 computers every day in the United States and over 100 million cell phones annually.