What do these three things have in common?

Rule29 just sponsored their second athlete (for the first mention, see here). Our athlete was Kona, Cheech’s mini Dachshund. Although this was a much smaller affair, the wiener races (or formally known as the Dachshund Dash) of Rochester, MN offered us the perfect opportunity to study three things: 1) corporate sponsorship, 2) uniform design, and, of course, 3) how to race a dachshund (or, maybe, how NOT to …) Read the rest of the entry >

If you’re a faithful blog reader, you know that we here at R29 love music. When art and music combine, what could be better?

Merging our love of music with our love of summer art installations, check out New York City’s latest. It’s called, “Play Me, I’m Yours” by Luke Jerram. Basically, 60 refurbished pianos have been installed in public areas throughout the city for impromptu playing. Normally, one would need a street musician license to play in public, but for the time being, music will freely reign in the city air.

In order to give the project legs, a social networking site of sorts has been created for people to post their own photos and videos of the piano playing. It’s a great idea to change up the scenery on people’s everyday commutes, to spark conversation, and to encourage artistic development and expression.

At the end of the display, all the pianos will be donated to local schools and groups throughout the community. Good cause!

Going to NYC any time soon? Plunk out a few notes for us on one of these pianos.

How does music inspire your day? Let us know in the comments.

Don’t get us wrong. This is a tragedy. Oil has now washed ashore in Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, and residents in Florida have complained of the smell from the burns that took place. An estimated 20+ million gallons of crude have leaked thus far, and it’s showing no signs of stopping any time soon. Every effort to stop the leak so far has failed, including a 4-story dome/cap and the Top Kill procedure (for a recap of April’s events, check out our previous post). Two relief wells are being drilled, which are supposed to be the magic bullet. However, until they are done in a few months, there are few options left to stop the leak. (The latest effort is known as the “Lower Marine Riser Cap,” and it involves cutting and removing part of the well in order to install a cap on it. We’re all crossing our fingers that it will work, but not necessarily holding our breath as it’s just been delayed by a stuck blade.)

But we’ve all heard the bad news, and everyone wants the oil to stop leaking. We could play the blame game all day long. Actually, that’s something that we’d like to toss around. Is BP really responsible for what happened? Here’s an analogy to think about, one from another recent debate:

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You all know that we love to keep up on the green news here at R29. So we’ve been following the updates about the recent oil spill off the Gulf Coast. (For a great photographic recap, check out this link.) The concerns about the spill aren’t only environmental. They reach much further into the realms of politics, economics, and livelihoods, not to mention those who lost their loved ones in the explosion.

Here’s a little recap of the events so far:

April 20th: An oil rig 52 miles offshore of the Louisiana mainland exploded, killing 11 people and injuring 17. The explosion was blamed on a defective “blowout prevention mechanism.” Read the rest of the entry >

With record snowfalls and low temps this year, everyone’s wondering about the Climate Crisis — is it really An Inconvenient Truth afterall? Maybe we were all duped by a less-than-founded argument for global warming. Some, like Donald Trump, are so convinced by this year’s winter weather that they have abandoned belief in the theory. Trump even called for Gore to be deprived of his Nobel Prize. That may be a little severe, however, and some scientists say that this extreme weather could actually be caused by the transition of a global-scale rise in temperatures.

And, it’s unseasonably warm in Vancouver this year for the Winter Games, with an average temperature of 44.8 degrees Fahrenheit. So warm, in fact, that snow is being trucked from across Canada for the events! (With record snowfall in Texas last week, this seems quite ironic.) But with freshly shipped snow, the games are going on and medals are being won. Incidentally, the medals this year are all made with a tiny bit of recycled e-waste from Canada’s extensive electronic recycling system. Although there weren’t enough precious metals in the 140,000 tons of recycled electronics to fully comprise the more than 1,000 medals, each gold medal does contain about 1.5% of recycled gold harvested from e-waste. For more info, check out the article here. (A side note about e-waste: If you want to recycle any of your old tech stuff, just drop it off at your nearest Best Buy store. They take just about anything — for free!)

What do you think about global warming and this year’s winter weather? True? Hype?  Let us know in the comments.