Your Co-worker Has Anxiety. Now What?
What do you do when faced with an anxious co-worker? Dakster knows.
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Tag: Environment
‘Science Comics’: ‘Coral Reefs’ and ‘Dinosaurs’
Kids will be engaged and enjoy learning about dinosaurs and coral reefs with ‘Science Comics.’
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Procrastination Destination: Earth Day!
Even superheroes know the environment is worth saving. Take a break, laugh with John Oliver, learn the science of climate change, and enjoy our beautiful world.
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Kickstarter Alert: Save the World in ‘Eco – Global Survival Game’
Kickstarting now, ‘Eco’ is a multiplayer global survival game. With the ultimate goal of saving the world from the impending destruction of the Earth by an incoming massive meteor, the game is part ecosystem simulation, part world survival, and much of your progress towards achieving the world-saving goal is dependent on group decisions.
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The Technology Is There, So Why Aren’t You in a Zero Emissions Car?
Vehicle fuel efficiency is better than ever and gas prices are low, which means zero emissions vehicles aren’t getting the attention they deserve.
Continue ReadingReview: Environmental Monitoring With Arduino
I love to read through project suggestions and examples for the Arduino and other platforms. It keeps my mind constantly running with ideas for projects. I was recently provided a copy of Environmental Monitoring with Arduino to review and it …
Continue ReadingStudent Winners of Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup Video Challenge Announced
On the heels of the announcement of the winners of the MoonBots 2.0 competition, the X Prize foundation has also announced the winners of the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup Video Challenge Contest for students, associated with the Wendy Schmidt Oil Cleanup X …
Continue ReadingTen Geeky Ways to Green Up 2011
If, like me, you’re concerned about the state of our world from an environmental standpoint, you might be pondering a New Year’s resolution that has more to do with making a change on a global scale rather that on your …
Continue ReadingThe Story of Electronics: Food for Thought for Gadget Geeks
When it comes to gadgets, I tend to be a late adopter, usually due to a combination of (1) being too cheap to spend money on the newest gizmo and (2) being overwhelmed with the number of options when it …
Continue ReadingCloth Diapering Goes High-Tech
Right out of the gate I’m going to say this: I’m a part-time cloth diaperer. When it comes to travel and emergencies (or being lazy), nothing beats the convenience of disposable diapers. Yes, they’re awful on the environment, stupidly expensive, …
Continue ReadingHappy World Oceans Day!
Today is the first official World Oceans Day! First proposed in 1992—and unofficially celebrated since—World Oceans Day was declared by the United Nations to be recognized on June 8th every year starting with 2009. Working together with The Ocean Project …
Continue ReadingIt’s Earth Day Every Day at EPA Web Site For Kids
What better way to celebrate Earth Day than to get your kids involved. A wide range of activities have been planned specifically for today or this week, but what about ongoing environmental awareness and programs? The EPA Student Center helps to fill that role. The EPA Student Center is a web portal run by the […]
Continue ReadingTurn Off Your Lights Tonight for Earth Hour
Earth Day isn’t for nearly a month, but tonight you’ve got an opportunity to help the environment by doing something very simple: turn off all the non-essential lights and appliances in your home for an hour, starting at 8:30pm local time. Earth Hour began in Australia two years ago, and has since spread across the […]
Continue ReadingNational Wildlife Week
It’s National Wildlife Week, and the National Wildlife Federation is urging parents to participate by making time for outdoor play and interaction with the natural world. But for many of us it’s still too cold and wet outside to commune with anything more natural than mud (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Anyway, it […]
Continue ReadingLike The Matrix – for Plants
I sometimes wonder whether my nature and gardening posts are a little too low-tech for GeekDad. Not this time. A couple weeks ago the boys and I took a mini-field trip to a local hydrofarm. On a tiny family farm up a nearly impassable dirt (or mud) road on a secluded hilltop, we saw an […]
Continue ReadingThe Christmas Tree Dilemma: Artificial or Real?
My family celebrates Christmas and, like many households, one of the focal points of our holiday season is the Christmas Tree. We’ve always had a real tree, but for the past few years, the question of whether to go artificial has raised its head. Perhaps it’s because once we had kids, the whole season became […]
Continue ReadingNational Geographic Gets Into Gaming In A Big Way
National Geographic’s web site has always been an excellent resource for kids, packed with videos, online articles, free games and activities. Taking their brand to the next level, National Geographic recently announced a move into the world of commercial video games. This isn’t a tentative, toe in the water kind of deal. National Geographic is […]
Continue ReadingUrban Exploration: The Toronto Zoo’s Lost Monorail
I’ve been going to the Toronto Zoo regularly for 7 or 8 years now -basically once or twice a year since my daughter was born. I went a few times as a kid as well, but there’s a period of probably around 15 or 20 years where I never got around to visiting. That period […]
Continue ReadingGeek Family Trip: Long Point World Biosphere Reserve
With my wife studying for exams, it was up to the kids and I to undertake what was likely our final camping trip of the season. Most of the Provincial Parks will be shutting down until the spring during the next few weeks, so unless a birthday party or two falls off the […]
Continue Reading12-year-old Revolutionizes the Solar Cell
William Yuan, a seventh-grader from Portland, OR, developed a three-dimensional solar cell that absorbs UV as well as visible light. The combination of the two might greatly improve cell efficiency. William’s project earned him a $25,000 scholarship and a trip to the Library of Congress to accept the award, which is usually given out for […]
Continue ReadingHow to Build a Paper Cup Waterwheel
I live in an area — near the confluence of the Hudson and Mohawk Rivers in upstate New York — that was once booming with water-driven industry. Today hydroelectricity is still an important source of energy. In fact, in place …
Continue ReadingWindmills: Coming Soon To A Shoreline Near You?
We recently returned from a camping trip to Port Burwell Provincial Park, on the shore of Lake Erie in Southwestern Ontario. What made this trip a little different from the usual was that besides local wildlife and flora to explore, there was a looming man-made feature of considerable interest. A wind farm has sprung up […]
Continue ReadingReview: Venture Arctic – Can A Video Game Be Green?
If there’s a buzzword that virtually every company has its eye on right now, it’s “Green.” Environmental and ecological awareness among consumers has gone mainstream and now we’re inundated with products ranging from coffee beans to cars that are marketed as being environmentally friendly, ecologically sound or just plain Green. One of the last frontiers […]
Continue ReadingNobody Here But Us Chickens
Spring has arrived on the b-b-balmy shores of Lake Ontario, and the local fauna and flora have gotten down to doing what they do best – making more fauna and flora. It may be that your geeklets aren’t ready for the "birds and the bees" talk (or is it the "circle of life" talk? I […]
Continue ReadingFire In The Bowl!
I was clicking through a collection of photos I’ve downloaded from my camera, but hadn’t quite gotten around to sorting around yet, when I came across this picture. It may not look like much, but it sparked a bit of a commotion last Fall. This photo is of the remnants of a suspected spontaneous combustion. […]
Continue ReadingToday Is National Biodiesel Day
Courtesy of people who have a financial stake in the success of biodiesel, today has been declared the Official Biodiesel Day in the United States, in honor of Rudolph Diesel’s birthday. (Not to be confused with International Biodiesel Day, which is August 10.) Biodiesel is getting big! Between 2004 and 2006, use increased 10 times, […]
Continue Reading“I never eat December snowflakes…”
Most of us have been warned about the dangers of eating snow of a certain color, but research has shown that even a pristine white blanket of the stuff can contain pollutants and, now, bacteria. So what’s a kid (or a kid at heart) to do when faced with a luscious layer of crystalline liquid? […]
Continue ReadingMonterey Bay is a Great Place to Play
For those of you located anywhere in the general vicinity of northern California, I just can’t recommend enough taking the family on a short trip to the Monterey Bay peninsula. While not your typical geeky fare (this trip involved no robots, legos or computers), the 4-day outing we just took there was a huge hit […]
Continue ReadingTeaching Teachers About Wind Power
When science teacher Michael Arquin started educating students about wind power, he had no idea his curriculum would come to influence thousands of teachers and students all across the country. After earning his B.S. in Biology and Environmental Studies from UC Boulder and a M.A.T. in Science Education from Cornell, Arquin, 37, taught for five […]
Continue ReadingFollow-up On The Forecast Earth Summit
In the comments, reader Crystal has sent us a link to the gallerys posted from the Forecast Earth Summit we posted about back in October. The first-ever Forecast Earth Summit presented by The Weather Channel was a great success. Twenty-two teenaged environmental superstars took part in the Summit in Washington, DC, December 7-9, 2007. The […]
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