Earth Hour?

March 31, 2011

Well talk about missing the boat.

Earlier this week there was a global intiative aimed at saving energy and accentuating sustainability. Individuals, socities, landmarks and companies around the world joined the bid to turn out the lights. On the back of it all you can check out the “group pool” of photos which has amassed to a whopping 1,093 items just 5 days after the lights out.

Earth Hour started in 2007 in Sydney, Australia, when 2.2 million individuals and more than 2,000 businesses turned off their lights for one hour to take a stand against climate change. Only a year later, Earth Hour had become a global sustainability movement with more than 50 million people across 35 countries participating.

You can see before and after shots of some really cool locations as hundreds of thousands of people pitched in together to save the great battery.

Check out the pictures here.

The diversity of the places and companies being represented in the album are staggering. Etihad airways made particular mention to the event:

Mr Baumgartner was one of the speakers at a seminar this week organised by Etihad Airways and Abu Dhabi Airports Company (ADAC) at ADAC headquarters to mark Earth Hour, which included an inspirational presentation from Sheikh Abdul Aziz Bin Ali Al Nuaimi of the ruling family of Ajman, popularly known as the “Green Sheikh” for his eco-friendly initiatives.

The seminar was part of a host of initiatives launched by Etihad to promote awareness of Earth Hour and encourage long term commitment to environment-friendly lifestyle changes from its staff.

The airway is branching out services to provide flights to many different locations around the world. Flights to Bierut from Sydney, to Abu Dhabi from Bangkok and hundreds of destinations inbetween. For this size of company with this amount of coverage it’s refreshing to see them taking reponsibility.

“At Etihad, we are committed to action when it comes to mitigating negative impacts of our operations on the environment, including minimising our fuel use and emissions, wisely using our power, water and other resources, and recycling wherever possible. This has led to us working closely with Masdar and other Abu Dhabi companies.”

Next time we’ll make sure we’ve turned out the lights in our own office – just a couple of days too late. D’oh.

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Hockey Canada – Protecting the Youth

March 24, 2011

THE concept that allowing minor hockey players to bodycheck each other at an earlier age — so they could learn sooner how to give and take a hit — would somehow lead to an overall reduction in injuries was always a suspect argument.

Bodychecking is a form of tackling in Ice Hockey in which one player slams into another. Although it often comes across as gratuitous violence it’s a tactic employed in order to change one another’s speed and/or trajectory on the ice. It’s usually a case of gaining possession or stemming the flow of an onrushing attack from the opposition, but it can be used in a variety of ways.

Of all team sports played in the modern day Ice Hockey is one of the most dangerous. Of course there are challengers in the various fields of combat sports and motor sports, but for a sport that has more pressing concerns than damaging opponents or going 150mph over loose terrain it is a strong contender for most dangerous. At the very least it is probably the most violent sport.


Sydney Crosby is one of the games brightest stars. He’s was responsible for the Canadian national side taking the Olympic gold from the Americans in the dying minutes of extra-time, noted on the seasons “all star” team-sheet and he came out on top of the 09-10 season with most goals scored. The spotlight has been on him for a few years due to his successes but it’s not triumph that is holding the attention of the press in recent weeks.

His troubles serve well to highlight the dangers in the game as he looks set to put his stick down for the rest of the season. He’s been suffering repeat cases of concussion because of a number of high-impact tackles..

Crosby suffered two hits to the head in the first week of 2011. The first was in the Winter Classic, an annual outdoor game played in front of 68,000 in Pittsburgh on New Year’s Day. As you can see below, Crosby received a blindside shoulder to the head from the Washington Capitals David Steckel. Standing six inches taller than Crosby, Steckel claimed it was unintentional and he did not receive a penalty for the hit.

Four days later, Tampa Bay’s Victor Hedman rammed Crosby into the boards head first from behind (see below) and Crosby left the game. It wasn’t a called penalty either. As you can see, it was a much milder hit but the evidence is that after one concussion, you become much more susceptible to another one in the aftermath.

Taken from joe.ie where you can see videos of both incidents.

This has raised concerns over the play-style of the game and put the rules under heavy scrutiny. Some fans are for the change to see their favourite players spared season-long absenses and brain damage, whereas the sticklers believe the show should go on as normal, despite the medical implications.

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease of the brain, appears to be now inextricably linked to repeated head trauma. A former Detroit Red Wing and Chicago Blackhawk player Bob Probert, better known for his violence than his skills, died of a heart attack aged 45 last year and a study of his brain revealed last month that he suffered from CTE, a possible explanation for his off-field behavioural problems since retirement in 2002.

In a separate report: Bodychecking slammed: Preventing concussions neurosurgeon Dr Muchael Cusimano is noted as suggesting that NHL players have among the highest concussion rates in professional sports. The fact that hundreds of thousands of people play the game at an amateur level means that the ruling in the professional arena will have a knock on affect – even to our players in England.

Access Legal – a legal service in the UK deals with brain injury and sports injury claims. Claims can be made across any sporting issue, and with regulations blurred these claims can pepper the international sport. It’s not just those with high-flying celebrity status that may need representing when accidents happen on the rink. It’s down to the brains at the top to make the call.

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Donating to Charities

February 22, 2011

This is something that we’re still not sure about as a collective. Recently published findings show that although we’ve remained constant with our donations over the past 20-or-so years, we’re still only giving 0.4% of our “household spending”.

Donations to charity make up 0.4% of household spending, exactly the same proportion as in 1988, according to the research by the University of Bristol and City University London. [...] based on information from 205,935 UK households.

There remains the expected leap-frog between classes, as-well.

The poorest givers donate more of their income to charity than the richest, it was discovered. The richest 10% give 1.1% of their total spending to charity, while for the poorest 10% the figure was 3.6%.

What, though, does this tell us? Charity donations are made up, in part, by donations made without prompting from the charities themselves. There are those that might have run into a larger amount of cash than they’re used to dealing with, or those that have suffered a loss or fallen on terbulent times and come out fortunately that will be willing to give up some of their cold, hard cash to ease the suffering of others. In the most part, though, it is down to the voice of the individual charities to create enough of a buzz that we hear it through the white noise of profiteering organisations that would have us believe that our lives would improve for whatever reason should they recieve our money.

It seems wrong that the “responsibility” should rest on those that are already doing the most for the needy, but that is no more than an afterthought in the day-to-day life of the individual who will be dealing with his/her own difficulties. This is why there is such a struggle for those responsible for changing the way we think about charity and how we can donate.

Companies like oxfam rely on charity to keep on going, so it goes without saying that they’ll strive to keep up the advertising drive, despite announced cuts from the government.

It said: “For Government and policy-makers, levels of individual giving are one indicator of involvement in building the Big Society, and of increasing importance as a source of support for voluntary and community organisations at a time when statutory funding is being cut back.”

With the government taking on more reponsibility for the cause despite telling individual organisations that they’re out in the cold, we are expecting some interesting concepts to come to the fore.

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