Green Porno

From the lovely and talented Lulu: Green Porno! In these short videos produced for the Sundance Channel, Isabella Rossellini brings her old-school elegance and poise to some spiffy bug costumes as she -- with the help of some spiffy cardboard bug dummies -- acts out the mating rites of insects. Yeah, it's weird, but it's funny and edifying too; there's just something riveting about bug sex.  And Rossellini's performances in this series are nothing short of inspired.  Fun fact! Rossellini's son and his buddies are Green Porno extras: 

Bees are so complicated and they are so much of a community that I couldn't really play all [of them]. I needed some actors, so I hired my son and his friends to play the male bees.

A Green Diet

No one likes an evangelizing vegetarian, but I can't resist re-posting this New York Times article about vegetarianism's earth-friendly impact -- written by a non-vegetarian (and passed along to me by my vegetarian sister-in-law). For example:

To put the energy-using demand of meat production into easy-to-understand terms, Gidon Eshel, a geophysicist at the Bard Center, and Pamela A. Martin, an assistant professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago, calculated that if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days.