Happy 50th, Amnesty

This video to celebrate Amnesty International's 50th anniversary is stunningly beautiful.

Stupid car features

Winner mask

Oh God. A photo-realistic Charlie Sheen mask. Make it stop!

Lego car prank

Taping down the button on your co-worker's phone handset is lame. At Legoland, THEY KNOW HOW TO PRANK.

Accidentally vegan

Lefa has just introduced me to the concept of 'accidentally vegan' - products that contain no animal products but are not marketed or designed for a vegan audience.

I've been vegetarian since I was 17, and personally could never give up dairy products or eggs, but my dear sister IS vegan and so I'm compiling this list for her.

• Aeroplane Quick Set Jelly
• Aldi Breakfast Muffins
• Aldi Curly Fries
• Aldi Dark Chocolate
• Aldi Onion Rings
• Aldi Spekulatius biscuits
• Allen's Jelly Beans
• Anna's Ginger Lays
• Arnott's Salada
• Arnott's Vita Weat
• Arnott's Water Cracker
• Arnotts BBQ Shapes
• Arnotts Lemon Slice biscuits
• Arnotts Nice biscuits
• Arnotts Raspberry Shortcake biscuits
• Be Natural Trail Bars
• Birds Eye Corn Fritters
• Black & Gold Gingernuts biscuits
• Blackwood Lane Marzipan
• Borg's puff pastry and short crust pastry
• Borg's Vegetarian curry pastries
• Cadbury Drinking chocolate
• Calippo's
• ChupaChups
• Coco Pops
• Cola and orange flavoured Chupa-Chups
• Coles and Aldi brand onion rings
• Coles brand Lite Apple Pies
• Coles Brand Red Licorice
• Coles brand strawberry topping
• Coles choc mint crunch lollies
• Coles hot cross buns
• Coles salt and vinegar and BBQ potato chips
• Coles Veggie Spring Rolls
• Cottees thick and rich chocolate topping
• Darrell Lea Licorice
• Dashan Samosas and Vegetable Spring Rolls
• Eskal scottish shortbread
• French Fries Chips in Plain and Salt & Vinegar
• Frostie Fruit Icey Poles
• Fruit Tingles
• Gelativo Dairy-Free Fruit Sorbet <- check packaging, could contain lactose
• Golden Days Sesame Snaps in Plain and Dark Chocolate
• Gravox traditional gravy
• Green's Lolly Gobble Bliss Bombs in original and butterscotch
• Guylian Solitaire chocolates
• Healtheries potato stix, chicken and potato flavours
• Heinz 8 vegetable soup and vegetable barley soup.
• Herbert Adams Vegetable Pasties
• Hob Nob biscuits
• Homebrand/Black And Gold dark cooking chocolate
• Homebrand/Black And Gold vanilla and butter cake mix
• IGA brand BBQ "Pringles"
• IGA Olive Bread
• Lifesavers
• Lindtt Swiss Dark Chocolate Thins
• Lolliland soft jubes, mint leaves, wild berries, raspberries
• Massel Stocks (even beef and chicken flavoured are vegan)
• Massel Supreme Gravy
• Masterfoods Bacon flavoured chips
• Masterfoods traditional tartare sauce
• Mentos
• Mrs Mays nut clusters
• Nannas Lite Apple pies, Lite Mixed Berry and Apple pies
• Odense Marzipan
• Oreos
• Pampas Filo Pastry, Shortcrust Pastry, Puff Pastry (block), Puff Pastry (ready-rolled sheets)
• Pez bonbons
• Praise Lite Mayo + Dijonaise
• Red Bull, V and Mother energy drinks
• Safeway brand garlic bread
• Sakata BBQ Delites
• Sakata crackers
• Sherbies
• Skittles
• SPC spaghetti (tomato flavour)
• Tough Nuts
• Weis Fruit flavoured sorbet
• Whittakers Dark Ghana chocolate
• X-treme Sour Straps

Of course, none of these can be 100% guaranteed vegan, as they are likely to have been created on machinery that processes animal products. But still... pretty cool.

As with most things, there is a Facebook group that constantly crowdsources this information.

Additional:
Although I've always assumed that Vegemite is vegan, I've just learned that this is so for only half of the year. If the best before date has a 'K' next to it, it is (the K stands for Kosher). If not, it contains beef extract in small amounts. Ewwww...

Latest on ICHCB

YouTube Paranoid Android

This is great. My favouritest song in the entire world. Crowdsourced. By amateur musicians. Via the Internet. Love it.

via Travers

Peanuts Doctor Who

Geek alert. Larry Wentzel shows us Doctor Who as drawn by Charles Schulz.

Aid: a view from the street

Our friends over at the ONE campaign in the UK recently took to the streets to find out what the general public already know and think about foreign aid spending. The results are truly inspiring.

Initially, most people thought the spending levels of foreign aid were highly inflated, and that the UK Government's focus should be far more internally focussed. Some even assumed a whopping 40% of the UK's GNI was already being spent overseas!

But when the accurate figure of less than 0.5% was revealed (along with the amazing education enrollments, vaccine distributions and other programs that have already been achieved at this level), it is heartening to see the reaction change. Their messages to their own Government is now 'please do more, and increase aid spending'.

I'd hope that we'd achieve the same result on the streets of Australia - a lot of people don't realise that we only spend 0.34% of our GNI on foreign aid. Whilst the Government have thankfully committed to raising this to 0.5%, we're still a fair way off our fair share (calculated on a global scale) of 0.7%.

What you can do:

• Read more about Australia's current aid spending levels
• Visit the Make Poverty History website and send a letter to the PM and Opposition Leader asking them to raise Australia's aid budget to 0.7% of GNI

First published on Oxfam Blogs

Whole Foods rap

It's gettin' real in the Whole Foods parking lot

This is the greatest thing ever

Discovered by 'Dr' Wilson in Canberra.

Rising food prices are changing what we eat

Australians and people around the world are changing what they eat because of the rising cost of food. We've just received the results of our global food survey, and it seems that 62 per cent of Australians are no longer eating the same foods they did two years ago, 39 per cent of them attributing this to rising food prices.

The survey involved 16,000 people in 17 countries including Australia, Brazil, Germany, Ghana, Guatemala, India, Kenya, Mexico, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Russia, South Africa, Spain, Tanzania, UK and the USA.

Globally, 54 per cent of overall respondents surveyed said they are not eating the same food as they did two years ago – the period before the current food price crisis began – and 39 per cent of those who said their diet had changed blamed the rising price of food.

Interestingly, the two most important factors concerning Australians about what they eat are the cost of food and how healthy and nutritious it is.

“Food is one of life’s greatest pleasures and one of our most fundamental human rights but our diets are changing fast and for too many people it is a change for the worst. Large numbers of people in Australia and especially in the world’s poorest countries are cutting back on the quantity or quality of the food they eat because of rising food prices.” - Oxfam Australia Executive Director Andrew Hewett

Separate interviews conducted by Oxfam in Australia revealed interesting consumer trends including a high proportion of Australians growing some of the food they eat. Among the Australians included in these additional interviews was Masterchef Australia winner and GROW campaign ambassador Julie Goodwin.

“The important factor for me when I am choosing food for my family is that it has got to be healthy. It has got to be nutritious, I like it to be fresh, and I don’t like to serve them a lot of processed food,” - Julie Goodwin.

Similar additional interviews conducted by Oxfam overseas provide further anecdotal evidence that many people in developing countries are either eating less food, eating cheaper items or enjoying less diversity in their diets as a result of rising food prices.

What you can do:

• Find out more about GROW
• Take the GROW survey yourself

First published on Oxfam Blogs

WANT

It must be Father's Day in the US, because BoingBoing have come out with an epic list of last minute gift ideas.

My personal favourites (i.e. the ones I want myself):

• Moleskine Folio Digital Tablet Cover for Apple iPad
• Teraforma Whisky Stones
• Cydwoq Commander Boots
• Yama Northwest Glass 32-Ounce Cold Brew Drip Coffee and Tea Maker
• Cotton Flannel Adult Footed Pajamas w/ Drop-seat

PosterText

Best. Idea. Ever.

PosterText converts the actual written words of your chosen book into a typographical poster depicting a famous scene from that book.

WANT.

EFF Tron shirt

EFF have a new t-shirt available when you sign up as a member: "I fight for the users"

WANT!

Chocolate overload

So today we received a delivery at work. I'd entered a competition to win some mini chocolate puddings. They arrived.
Lots of them.
And I mean A LOT.

This is the first floor fridge.

This is the second.

This is the volunteer and customer service team fridge.

And this is the Australian Conservation Foundation's fridge. We had too much, so a little trip down the road was in order.

Woah.
Chocolate overload.

Bike lanes aren't safe in NYC

So, Casey got a ticket for not riding his bike in the NYC bike lane. When he tried to explain that the bike lane isn't always the safest place to ride a bike, the cop told him that he had to stay in the bike lane at all times.

So he made this video.



I love a passive aggressive video to prove a point. I really do.

How to make beer.

This advertisement pleases me. Not just due to the involvement of a monster truck DeLorean.

TV-B-Gone jacket

This woman is my hero. Worried that she was a tad to conspicuous when waving her TV-B-Gone around in restaurants, she sewed it into her jacket.

WANT!

Also, I'd like a pair of shoes that automatically kicks smokers in the knees, a hat that gags loud mobile phone users and a belt that attacks slow-walkers. Go.

via BB

Why video stores should still exist.

So they can create more masterpieces like this gem discovered by Clem Bastow.

GROW is underway

Yesterday’s launch of GROW in Melbourne went like a well oiled machine thanks to lots of hard work from Oxfam staffers and a fantastic team of GROW volunteers.

We launched our campaign by hosting a forum entitled The Future of Food, which was simultaneously live-streamed on our new GROW campaign website.

Speakers at the event included; Andrew Hewett - Executive Director of Oxfam Australia, Ego Lemos - Community Leader and Musician from Timor Leste, Russell Shields - Food Development Manager of SecondBite, Jennifer Alden - CEO of Cultivating Community and Julie Goodwin, winner of MasterChef Australia, with ABC radio broadcaster Hilary Harper moderating.

Over 100 people representing organisations such as the Australian Council of Trade Unions, Victorian Farmers Federation, Heart Foundation, Australian Conservation Foundation, Gene Ethics, Biological Farmers of Australia, FairTrade Association, Department of Primary Industries, United Nations Association of Australia & local governments, were joined by academics and members of the public to find out more about the GROW campagin.

The live-stream of the forum saw over 250+ people tuning in to watch the live feed and encouraged conversation on Twitter, using the hashtag #FutureofFood, which proved so popular it appeared as a trending tweet.

Our speakers raised many of the key topics within the GROW campaign: waste, support for small-scale producers, the impacts of changing weather patterns and climate change, as well as raising some questions about how the solutions can be found. In particular, Ego Lemos spoke with passion about the impact of single-crop intensive farming in Timor Leste and the changing diets of people as a result. Our Q&A session raised some good questions both from the audience as well as via the Twitter stream.

If you missed out on attending the forum, don't worry - we'll have the video up shortly. In the meantime, you can read back over the conversation that occurred online.

Personal 360 degree virtual reality ball

The Immersive Cocoon provides a space for you that's stuffed to the high-tech gills with motion capture cameras, motion-sensing floor panels, 3D surround sound, 360-degrees of interior display space and even air conditioning.

WANT!

via dvice

Weezer covering Radiohead

This is the greatest thing ever.