Faced With a Global Environmental Threat, Local Grassroots Organizers are Getting Results

TV zombies protest Panasonic

In 2002, the Basel Action Network, a Seattle-based non-profit, released a report and documentary called "Exporting Harm: The High Tech Trashing of Asia" that exposed the shameful truth about the fate of obsolete electronic waste: many so-called "recyclers" are shipping our old PCs, TVs and other gadgets to poor communities in developing nations overseas. Images of crude scrap operations contaminating entire villages with an array of toxins (such as lead and mercury) shocked citizens and recycling advocates alike.

Now, six years later, a report published by the Government Accountability Office reaches the same conclusions -- a toxic flood of U.S. e-waste is being dumped on the global poor in Southeast Asia and Africa. The watchdog group for Congress documented how the few laws that are in place to stem the flow are not enforced well by our own U.S. EPA. While this report is certainly discouraging, there is an inspiring story to be told about the enormous progress that has been made in the past several years on the issues surrounding electronic waste and recycling.

This is a story about people and organizations of all types and sizes coming together to make an impact on a global environmental health and justice threat. The international movement pushing for a cleaner high-tech industry has come to Houston -- so you can plug in and get involved today.

Despite its image of a new, clean industry free from smokestacks, high-tech has its own pollution problems. Silicon Valley is home to more hyper-polluted toxic waste sites per capita on the Superfund list than any other area in the nation. Electronic waste already makes up the majority of heavy metals (such as lead or mercury) going to our nation's landfills. Electronics contain many other toxic metals and chemicals. One such family of chemicals, brominated flame retardants, are now present in mother's milk samples and meat and dairy products in Texas supermarkets, at levels shown to cause serious health problems in animal tests.

In the industry's heart, the non-profit Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition has been pushing electronics manufacturers to reduce harmful pollution for over 25 years. This group is among the leaders of the Electronics TakeBack Coalition, along with: Basel Action Network (Seattle), Clean Production Action (NY, MA, Montreal), Center for Environmental Health (Oakland), Clean Water Action (nationwide) and Texas Campaign for the Environment (Austin, Dallas, Houston).

Since 2002, the Electronics TakeBack Coalition has been at the forefront of efforts to create a more sustainable electronics industry and can count many successes just in the past few years. Essential to its first major victory was the advocacy group Texas Campaign for the Environment. Starting in 2002, TCE organized high-profile demonstrations, public pressure and door-to-door grassroots support to convince computer giant Dell to offer free, responsible recycling for all its products -- worldwide. Even today no other high-tech firm offers such a comprehensive recycling program.

Texas Campaign for the Environment and the Coalition applied similar pressure next on Apple. Despite the presence of Vice President Al Gore or their board of directors, Apple lagged behind its competitors or environmental issues. With help from international pressure, the Coalition launched its “Green My Apple” campaign in 2004. The result: Apple now offers recycling programs and has began phasing out some of the most harmful chemicals and metals used in its products. Importantly, Apple and many other high-tech firms also dropped their opposition to legislation requiring all manufacturers to provide recycling. Transforming from adversaries to partners, Dell, HP and Texas Campaign for the Environment joined to pass such legislation in Texas in 2007.
Passing such "Producer TakeBack" laws, state-by-state, has been another success story for the Coalition. These laws have been on the books in the European Union since 2002. In 2004, Maine was the first U.S. state to hold manufacturers accountable for recycling. There are now 16 states with similar laws, plus New York City. Progress is accelerating: nine Producer TakeBack laws have passed in 2008 alone, and nine more are currently under consideration.

Unfortunately, the Texas legislation doesn't cover televisions, and most TV makers do not offer free nation-wide recycling. With the fast-approaching switch to Digital TV in 2009, Texas Campaign for the Environment and the Coalition have been pressuring TV manufacturers to change their policies for the better. In 2007, Sony became the first to respond. The company forged a partnership with Houston-based Waste Management to provide drop-off locations for TVs, Walkmans, Playstations, or any other Sony product. In 2008, LG/Zenith and Samsung have also announced free recycling programs. In fact, the industry coalition (dominated by TV makers) that previously lobbied fiercely against Producer TakeBack legislation has now dissolved, marking a sea change within the industry.

The idea and successful push to hold manufacturers responsible for taking back their products is nothing short of a revolution in the recycling movement. Instead of creating government-run (and funded) programs, making producers responsible means they have a profit motive to design electronics without toxic materials and create products that are more easily recycled. When the manufacturer is responsible for the entire life cycle of its products, it pays to reduce waste, phase out toxins, and redesign products with recycling in mind. This also forces the manufacturers to ensure that their products are really recycled responsibly, since their brand names and reputations are at risk if they are caught exporting e-waste overseas. A true long-term solution, Producer TakeBack uses market forces to drive the entire industry toward sustainability -- and it can be applied to more than just electronics.

Many obstacles remain, but the momentum is clear. Houston Congress member Gene Green has introduced a resolution (HR 1395) as a first step toward halting the export of toxic e-waste abroad; Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown has introduced its Senate companion (SR 663) as well. Texas counts more co-sponsors of the House Resolution than every state save California.

Texas' computer recycling law is underway; you can visit www.texasrecyclescomputers.org and www.texastakeback.org for recycling information. The public pressure campaign to tell TV manufacturers to "Take Back My TV" continues, and you can help hold their feet to the fire by visiting www.takebackmytv.com.

Texas Campaign for the Environment has re-opened its office in Houston after a long absence. With offices in Austin and Dallas as well, TCE is building the community-based support needed to influence local, state and national lawmakers, as well as the public pressure needed to convince CEOs to change corporate policy. The success of its campaign rests with its year-round grassroots organizing efforts, meaning you'll see them out on the streets in your neighborhoods. When they pay you a visit, they hope you'll become another person who is part of the solution.

Zac Trahan
Houston Program Director
Texas Campaign for the Environment
3100 Richmond #290
Houston, TX 77098
713-337-4192
www.texasenvironment.org

The Orange Box reviewed: Valve tells the industry to step it up

By Tyler Barber



Valve's maverick digital distribution service, Steam, is trailblazing the PC scene by offering a centralized community, free matchmaking and convenient downloading. Sharing the love with console owners, the Orange Box is continuing Valve's generous offerings with five games packed onto one disc for $60. For gamers used to stupidly-priced hard-drives, blood-sucking micro-transactions and retro-robberies, the Orange Box is a savior. A game without bureaucratic restrictions. A free man.

Life gives you a crowbar…
Half-Life 2 and HL2: Episode One are amazing games, but they’re showing their age (but more like Madonna than Keith Richards). Their transparent set-pieces, clumsy weapon selection (mapped to the D-pad) and linear battles feel antiquated. But the brand new Episode Two takes the gameplay off-rails, and provides new, larger environments for non-linear skirmishes. The devious Hunters debut with AI programmed to flank and smoke you out of hiding, all while remaining strangely emotive. Episode Two perfects Valve's oscillation between combat and puzzle-solving with what is described as the biggest physics-based puzzle in the series. Which is good, because with so many great console-centric shooters ending in disappointment, Valve needs to deliver a fresh and satisfying conclusion to the HL epic.


Let them eat cake
An hour-and-a-half into Portal has me unnerved. The corrugated windows that feed into empty observation rooms, sterile walls and the hum of the fluorescent lighting escalates to an insanity-inducing silence. Even more distressing, GLaDOS (Genetic Lifeform and Disc Operating System), the disembodied monitor of the "experiment," is starting to sound a few ingredients short of a fruit-cake. Armed with a portal gun, you can shoot two openings onto any flat surface, creating a two-way warp. As the meat of the Zelda-esque puzzles, this mechanic is used in labyrinthine variations coated with a Dharma Initiative vibe. The musings of your over-seer provide the backdrop for the story—yes, a plot in a puzzle game you'll actually care about. What's on average a three-hour tour, Portal might be the shortest contender ever for Game of the Year.


A shooter for everyone?
Leading up to Team Fortress 2, Valve chiseled-away at four versions before fixating on the current Incredibles-meets-Norman Rockwell aesthetic. Pretty and functional, the cartoon-y look helps distinguish each of the nine classes in TF2. Each class varies in speed, health and damage. The Heavy walks slow and has more health, whereas the Scout is extremely fast, but only takes a few rounds to drop. Other classes bring a layer of depth to the online shooter genre. The Spy and the Engineer, for example, have an Itchy and Scratchy relationship—the Engineer builds machine-gun and the Spy, disguised as one of the opposing team's members, disables the turret incognito. What's most promising about TF2 is its allure to those intimidated by online shooters. Classes like the Medic, Pyro, and—to some extent—the Engineer, rely on skill-sets other than twitch shooting. But, with a Holiday season full of online-shooters, it’s yet to be determined if console gamers can open-up to Valve.

I think Michael Stipe wrote a song about this

tHE Large Hadron Collider is fidna make some chocolate!!!
The machine, that is touted as having the potential of creating small black holes has been fired off. Its projected "shoot date" was Sept. 9, 2008 and judging by the artwork on Google.com, everything went as planned.
Cool points here---
Steven Hawking might get such a raging hard-on that he walks into the potential black hole and battles it to the death.
The New World Order's plan of Capitalist Globalization will not actually "go down".
All them sinners is gon' be warshed away!!

Bad points here---
Everyone and everything you know will evaporate like American dignity.

A couple of videos about what this thing MIGHT do and what it actually DOES does.

Sid Meirer's Civilization Revolution reviewed

By Tyler Barber

Publisher: 2K Games | Developer: Firaxis Games | Platform: Nintendo DS, PlayStation 3 & Xbox 360 | Rating: E10+ | Players: 2-4 via Online & Wi-Fi



Final Grade: B+
In three words: Deep, Accessible & Addictive

I was at E3, at a demo of Borderlands and BioShock, when 2K rep came over, asking if I wanted a demo of Sid Meirer's Civilization Revolution.
"No thanks," I responded. "I have a meeting in 15 minutes, and I don't want to be late."
"It only takes 15 minutes," the rep quipped.
"Thanks, but I gotta get going," I said, thinking myself: "Yea, like I'm going to miss my hands-on with Fallout 3 to see the absolute train-wreck of Civilization's PC exodus to home consoles."

And my pessimistic attitude stood firm, until I got home from E3 where a review copy of CivRev was waiting for me. I felt a little bad for declining the demo at E3, so the first night I got home (even though I'd had my fill of gaming) I popped the disc into my Xbox 360, and gave it a try. Next thing I know it's 4 in the morning, and I've just won my first campaign. CivRev is addictive in the "just-one-more-turn" kinda way. Each new turn meant I would have another infantry unit to defend my home base, that I'd be one more turn closer to finishing my nuclear research. Would a great leader abandon their civilization at a time like this? Hell no.

The turn-based system is the sole reason CivRev works so well on consoles. It plays more like a board game where each side takes its turn (think: Risk, Monopoly) than the PC counterpart, which plays without any turns whatsoever. And with that, developer Firaxis Games has struck gold with a winning translation of a revered PC strategy game to the home and portable consoles.

You won't find the immense depth of the PC version, but I wouldn't call CivRev shallow either. There are the 16 civilizations to choose from, and you can still win a campaign through means other than the total annihilation of your enemies. Technological, financial and cultural domination are all other paths to victory, but a main complaint I have with the game is that it doesn't give the player enough cues of how to win with these other ways. And, it's much easier to just farm out the most military units and win with military might.

When you're engaged in combat, there's this great one-to-one/dice-roll mechanic. Your troop's stats will factor into the dice-roll aspect of combat, but there's also this one-to-one system where the actual animation of your troops deal damage. If your troops move in right away, they'll gain an advantage on the offensive, but if they back-up, they'll be handicapped. Likewise, if your troops are on a hill, or defending a home base, they'll gain defensive bonuses. And even the map and characters interact. If one of your archers gets struck by a warrior unit near a mountain or building, he'll fly backward and actually bounce off of the structures.
There's also much less micromanaging. Your villagers collect resources near your home without having to be directed to do so. They'll automatically balance the type of resources they collect, but you also have the options to tell certain villages to mine more technology, gold or food.

Another element that was designed specifically for the console versions is the small size of the maps. And while I don't feel that they need to be bigger, it is a little concerning that you'll always be surrounded by other civilizations competing for the same resources. And, things get claustrophobic quickly if you don't make alliances, or dominate a neighboring civilization early. But at the same time, the size of the maps, or lack of, is also a factor that helps speed up the game -- you can complete a campaign in about three hours, whereas some campaigns on the PC can last upwards of eight to 10 hours.

Given that real-time-strategy games usually suffer when brought to consoles, CivRev is able to side-step the traps of the PC translation. Other console RTS games suffer from the pacing and controls, the size of the characters and maps, but developer Firaxis Games turns the disadvantages of the hardware into advantages, and paves the way for the console RTS' revolution.

E3 08: Sony Press Conference

By Tyler Barber


On the same stage that Jack Palance did his famous one-armed push-ups at the 1992 Oscars, we saw the comic-book artist Jim Lee do the same. Touché Jim, and touché Sony. Last year's E3 was really a bad year for everyone. Each of the big three press conferences had at least one major embarrassing moment, but this year Sony and Microsoft managed to save face 100 percent (read my write-up on Nintendo's press conference to get the dish on their embarrassing moment. Here's a hint: it was the entire show). And while I would say that Microsoft stole the show, Sony wasn't far behind. Their main shortcoming: not showing enough new games, gameplay, and the lack of surprising announcements (also don't forget that little blight called Home).

Sony's Jack Trentton did an excellent job hosting the event and set the tone at the start by basically saying, "every PlayStation console takes a few years to hit its stride, so forgive us for not blowing you away this year." Which is true, historically. If you look at the PS1 and PS2, it wasn't until year four or five that we saw games like Final Fantasy XII, Grand Theft Auto III, and Metal Gear Solid. So with that out of the way, they continued to show a line-up of expected, but exciting titles.

First was what most people are calling game of the show: Little Big Planet. Last year I gushed about this game, and now my enthusiasm has intensified. This year, they used Little Big Planet as a Power Point presentation. That's right, they presented their sales numbers and projections in-game, in a custom-created Little Big Planet level. I've never heard such a long applause for sales numbers in my life. Youtube it.

Later, they went on to to show a few games, mostly trailers, and even brought exclusive developer Insomniac Games on-stage to demo Resistance 2. If you're unfamiliar, this is basically Sony's Halo. That's terribly reductionist, but very telling, in a nutshell. I was none impressed by their showing. The demo was the most removed from visceral that I can imagine a AAA first-person-shooter being. The stage they showed had this giant enemy (like Godzilla-giant) playing cat and mouse with the player through the roof-tops of downtown Chicago. Everything about the demo was bland, and my actual hands-on with the game later in the day didn't reassure me.

Sony also showed a few new upgrades to the PlayStation Network (PSN) where you can now rent movies directly on your PS3, which would be news if Microsoft hadn't done it already a year ago. But we did get a brief look into some exclusive downloadable titles that are nothing like what you'll find on the Xbox 360's Live Arcade line-up. Fat Princess and Flower were the show-stealers. Fat Princess looks like a Gauntlet-esque, online-versus game that has a story-book art style with over-the-top violence. It's cute meets cruel with unique character classes adding to the complexity. Flower, another "Game-of-the-Show" for a lot of E3-goers, is the next game by the creator of Flow. To hear it from the creator is to fully grasp what it is: a visual poem, telling the tale of a flower's dream. Seriously, that's how he describes it. You control the petal of a flower, guiding it through the wind while trying to pollinate and spring to life various plat-life in fields and gardens. If it's a little confusing, Flower is supposed to be metaphorical in design and presentation, understood when you play/feel the game.

And in what I would describe as a bad Thanksgiving family moment where your meth-addict cousin is noticeably absent, and your aunt and uncle assure you they're doing good in rehab -- Sony showed a little Home in a quick and nervous manner. All we saw was a short trailer of Sony's grand virtual-community feature in its latest state, which looks just like it did two years ago. Seriously, I think they could can this project and no one would care.

Sony concluded with a trailer of the next big thing by Zipper Interactive (the guys that make Socom) which was universally recognized as the worst game name ever: M.A.G. (Massive Action Game). M.A.G.'s claim to fame is that it's a 250 player online shooter with persistent character building similar to Call of Duty 4's online component.

At the end of it, I wasn't rushing to play any Sony games; they really didn't show many. But, I wasn't down on them either. If history is to repeat itself, then we will see a giant library of excellent games that you can only find on the PS3. But, what wasn't a factor 10 years ago is the growing monster that is Microsoft's Xbox 360. And what history really shows is that it's the games, not the hardware, that sets the competition apart.

E3 08: Nintendo Press Conference

By Tyler Barber

Zzzzzzzzzz. Zzzzzzzzzz. No, seriously: Zzzzzzzzzzz. I slept through Nintendo's press conference. Or as I like to say: "Min-tendo," because all they make now are minigames. I know that there's already a ton of backlash from Nintendo's showing at E3, and for that I almost feel like I should be the contrary voice. Even after the conference, when the show-floor opened up, I walked into Nintendo's booth to give them a chance, and walked right back out. There was nothing there for me. Of everything they announced -- known quantities like Animal Crossing City Folk, Shaun White's Snowboarding (using the Wii Fit balance board), and the actually good looking first-person-shooter The Conduit -- nothing spoke to me. It's clear that Nintendo is abandoning the "hardcore" gamer for the more lucrative alpha-mom and "casual gamer."

I don't intend to sound like a whining gaming nerd, but when their biggest announcement, Wii Music, was shown I almost puked and swallowed in my mouth. That game looks re-fucking-dick-ulous. It's basically a pantomime music game (DO NOT think: Guitar Hero, Rock Band) that emits horrible atonal music while the player flails around with imaginary instruments. They did say that this game was a hit in the office for four- to six-year-olds, but seriously, if you want to get that audience don't waste my time at 8:30 a.m. I spent the previous night hanging out with grown-up gamers playing grown-up games. Wii Music easily wins the most embarrassing moment of E3 '08.

Echoing the success of Wii Play (the collection of minigames bundled with a Wiimote), Nintendo announced its new controller cash-in with their new one-to-one Motion Plus controller add-on. The Motion Plus allows developers to make games that track the full 3D movement of the Wiimote, instead of what we have now which is up/down, side-to-side (including diagonals) and acceleration inputs. This is great for that Lightsaber game we all want, but it comes at the cost of splitting the market with those who have the add-on and those who don't. The Motion Plus controller will ship with Wii Sports Resort, which will use the add-on in minigames like Fencing and Jet-Skiing.

All I can say is Nintendo is the ubiquitous game maker. It's just a shame they're not making games for those who made them so.

E3 08: Microsoft Press Conference

By Tyler Barber



Peace, freedom, and bacon and eggs: the opening line from Bethesda's new (and hilarious) Fallout 3 trailer cued the Pavlovian-salivation response that remained high (for the most part) throughout Microsoft's E3 press conference. Last year, in Santa Monica, Microsoft came on stage and reassured gamers that '07 was the year of Microsoft. They were hyping up surefire games like Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, and Mass Effect, but what we saw then were mostly trailers, not gameplay. So, to my surprise, Microsoft followed the excellent Fallout 3 demo with on-stage demonstrations of three more AAA games. Maybe you've heard of them: Resident Evil 5, Gears of War 2, and Fable 2? All of the games demoed great, and the hype was high for all.

After the heavy-hitters, they followed up with what was, for me, the most impressive line-up of games for E3: the Xbox Live Arcade (XBLA) downloadable titles (yes, the Playstation Network games are in that category too -- more on them later). First, we saw Geometry Wars 2, which instantly reminded me how bad-ass Geometry Wars Evolved was. In GW2, you now have not only new single player modes, but also 16 mutliplayer modes with both inventive verses and co-operative play. Next we saw something no one anticipated, Glaga Legions, developed by the same Namco-Bandia team that created the excellent Pac-Man Championship Edition. The mid-conference low followed after that with two cock-teases: Portal Still Alive (extra downloadable stages sans GLaDOS) and a strange flash of a screen for the South Park XBLA game.

Where Microsoft did slip, and slip, and slip was in the already-leaked section of their conference. Leading up the event, a marketing firm, Intellisponse, had a flood of information pulled off their site which contained the images of the new Avatars, the karaoke game called Lips and references to the new 3D interface for the Xbox 360 Dashboard. While it wasn't the stuff core gamers salivate over, I couldn't help but wonder if this slew of new features beat Playstation 3's Home to the punch (which was practically absent at Sony's press event). What was exciting was the announcement of a Microsoft/Netflix partnership that allows Netflix and Xbox Live Gold subscribers to stream any movie from the Netflix database. You'll be able to watch these movies along with your friends (who also have the appropriate services) over Xbox Live with full voice-chat functionality. And before amping up again, they showed the audience more "casual" titles, which are a response to the success of the Nintendo Wii. We're in the Movies came off as sort of embarrassing, but later when I actually played it, turned out to be fun.

To wrap up the show, Square Enix took the stage to showcase three role-playing-games that they've been working on for the Xbox 360: The Last Remnant, Infinite Undiscovery and Star Ocean: The Last Hope. They all looked great, and just as Microsoft was ending the press conference, they pulled a Steve-Jobs-one-more-thing stunt: Final Fantasy XIII coming to the Xbox 360 in North America and Europe. No release date, or new footage, but enough to get everyone talking.

Of the big three, Microsoft's press conference came out ahead. Sure they had the luxury of going first, but neither Sony nor Nintendo showed as much gameplay, nor did they have the amount of surprises that Microsoft did. And yes, I am partial to the Xbox 360, so maybe that influenced my outlook, but I think anyone would have a hard time making a case for the other two as victors in the media blitz that is E3.