Companies from your corner hair salon to Wal-Mart are all on the sustainability bandwagon.  When you walk into a shop, it’s now common to be bombarded with signs bragging how “green” a company’s “recycled” and “eco-friendly” products are.  Professional services firms are riding this wave as well, creating “green” committees and including “sustainability” sections on [...]

Two events occurred after I left Korea that I wished I could have witnessed.  First, the 2002 World Cup, though being there in 1996 when Korea the bid with Japan was interesting for Koreans’ collective angst at having to settle for co-hosting that extravaganza.  Second, last week much of Korea was buried in 10 inches [...]

The horrible tragedy in Haiti is affecting many of us.  I’m posting this for a friend who now lives in Singapore–her maid of honor works for the UN and is now missing:

Hello All,

I wanted to contact you all to let you know that the horrible disaster in Haiti has touched Ericka Norman, someone verydear to [...]

This Monday I attended a talk that Dr. Richard Bernard gave at the California Endowment.  Dr. Bernard is a consultant at Fairbank, Maslin, Maullin & Associates, a public opinion firm based in Santa Monica that has worked on many high-profile campaigns in California.  During his 90 minute discussion, he spoke about the political climate in [...]

Going though a period of unemployment and career transition is frustrating.  Here are some suggestions that can make this time more bearable.
During the last several months, I have met many amazing individuals who, like me, aim to transition into a green-collar job.  I also know many talented people with sparkling credentials who have been out [...]

When I lived in Korea during the mid-90s, one of the simple pleasures in life was having everything delivered.  Whether it was the yogurt lady, adorned in yellow vinyl in case the tropical monsoon storms suddenly unleashed their fury; the dry cleaning cantor (when he came to our building, I thought he was loudly chanting [...]

Well, maybe not these.
 
My brother, who lives in Brooklyn, sent these photos through his iPhone as he was taking his dog out for a run.  As much as I love New York, one image that always sticks with me are the piles of garbage that line the streets almost every evening.  When he went out [...]

Over the past year I have chronicled our schizophrenic relationship with food.  On one had, we are finding new healthful ingredients for which we will pay a mint, yet fast and processed foods will not go away anytime soon–and in fact, the recession has been a boon to many fast food operators.  So let’s take [...]

Last week’s rains reminded me of the fragility of our water supply in Southern California.  While the rain is always welcome for its clearing of the air and the resulting soft green carpets that cover Los Angeles, I cannot help but wonder where all that precious water is going.  Most of us are concerned over [...]

I was amused when someone passed on this story of what some park rangers in the province of Drenthe in the Netherlands are using to foil bikers who are off-roading illegally.  They are riding what you may be seeing a lot more of in the next decade:  the electric motorcycle.
 
Electric motorcycles are a nascent market [...]

The frenzy over biofuels has often ended with unhappy results.  Corn-based ethanol in the US served to only increase food prices and cause even more pollution in the Gulf of Mexico.  The quest for palm-oil based fuels has deforested way too much of Indonesia’s forest.  The future does not look pretty if more folks around [...]