The Wild & Scenic Film Festival is now touring around the country. Worse Than Poop! plays tonight in El Segundo, CA, and on April 10 in Staunton, Virginia.
Paris: City of Light, and Awesome Transport
Paris is really not at its best in the summer. It's hot, the Parisians are either on vacation or wishing they were on vacation, and the lines for every tourist attraction are insane. Plus it was grittier than I'd remembered. Truth be told, Elliot wasn't a total fan - but there were a few things he really liked. First, the metro:
Elliot really loved the Paris Metro.
He particularly loved the double-decker RER trains.
We were also smitten with the ignognito but - once you figure out what to look for - totally ubiquitous "autolib" electric city cars. Located at curbside stations all over the city, every 100 meters or so. Silent, clean wheels when you want them. So cool.
Autolib - all-electric city carshare, all over Paris. Elliot approved.
There were also some random cool things to see:
Elliot spotted this Twingo, complete with wheelchair on the back
And one day, we borrowed some bikes and took off for La Villette.
Bike lanes! In Paris! It was awesome.
Bike paths the whole way - and the light was incredible.
At La Villette (the largest science museum in Europe) we visited a bunch of exhibits - including this one, about transportation. It was like instant animation for Worse Than Poop! - you walked up, took your photo, and a machine magically pasted your head onto a transportation device, which then floated by 30 seconds later on a series of screens. All they were missing was the CO2-poop.
Elliot watches as my head floats by on a double-decker London bus.
Bill McKibben Likes Us! (and the Ethics of Flying to a Climate Rally)
With ten days to go in our Kickstarter campaign - and $5,000 still left to raise - I've started feeling a bit desperate. So I wrote to Bill McKibben this morning about our project, hoping he might help to spread the word. It felt like a vain hope - I mean, I've written to plenty of bloggers and journalists already about this project, and most of them don't respond. Plus, I decided to write to the leader of the climate movement two days after some really, truly bad news about the state of the climate came out, and a few hours after his most recent article in Rolling Stone hit the Internet. Getting any kind of a response seemed highly unlikely at best.
So imagine my joyful disbelief this afternoon, when I saw this tweet:
Yes, this is from THE Bill McKibben. And yes, I did tell him we were thinking of attending the climate rally in NYC.
I wrote him back and thanked him, profusely - but what I didn't ask (I hate to bug the guy, he's so busy trying to save the world) was whether or not he thinks that flying across the country to attend a climate rally - ok, THE climate rally - is actually a responsible use of fossil fuels. I have a feeling he would argue that it is. (Read his article - I think you'll see why.) Especially since we would (of course) offset all that carbon. But still. I'm curious.
What do you think? Is it ethical? Are YOU going to be in New York? Why (or why not)?