Jay at Arthur Magazine pointed out a sweet muck-racking documentary film called The Coconut Revolution that you can watch free in its entirety here. Here are the first few minutes of the film:

This is an incredible modern-day story of a native people’s victory over Western globalization. Sick of seeing their environment ruined and their people exploited by the Panguna Mine, the Pacific island of Bougainville rose up against the giant mining corporation, Rio Tinto Zinc. The newly formed Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA) began fighting with bows and arrows and sticks and stones against a heavily armed adversary. In an attempt to put down the rebellion the Papua New Guinean Army swiftly established a gunboat blockade around the island, backed by Australian Military personnel and equipment. With no shipments allowed in or out of the island, the People of Bougainville learned to become self-dependent and self-sustained.

Much to my delight, a great new restaurant – Elevation Burger – just opened within a few steps of my work. So this place, I’m kind of embarrassed to admit, is a chain. However, it’s a very small (~10 restaurants and growing) chain with organic fast food, baby! I know, it’s a bit of an oxymoron, but if you can bury away your inner ideologue, you’re going to totally enjoy it. 100% organic, grass-fed beef burgers make eating ‘em just all that much less guilt-ridden. Plus, they have some killer vegan and veggie burger options and olive oil-fried french fries. Add on super friendly kids working there and a clean, well-designed aesthetic and you’ve got a combo for one hell of a cool burger joint. Check ‘em out.

First, the Eisenhower Interstate Highway System in mass transit map style:

Update: Jackson West at Laughing Squid found the artist behind the map:

Boulder, CO artist Chris Yates created an abstract, London Tube-style map of Dwight Eisenhower’s Interstate highway system which you can buy as a print for $12 plus shipping.

(via Notcot, Amy Kathryn)

And then, sorta related – a graphic estimating how many years we’d have left on this planet given that we continue to consume resources at the rate we do today:

(via Caitlin Hill)

My pal Jay at Arthur Magazine recently mentioned a book that’s being passed around amongst my friends here in Philly recently (indeed, I picked up a copy for Audrey’s birthday just last week).

It’s called The Urban Homestead: Your Guide to Self-sufficient Living in the Heart of the City. Though we don’t have a lot of free space to plant a big garden at our place, we’re very interested in finding better ways to live both here in Philly and wherever the future might take us. I feel like this book will be a good guide with some enlightened ideas for better living.

Oh, and as any good author team worth their salt, Erik Knutzen and Kelly Coyne are blogging about urban sustainability issues topics, too. One recent post gives some resources on creating your own self-irrigating planters.

Might be a good buy for all ye urban dwellers out there, especially in places like Detroit where things are getting so bad, people seem to be buying abandon houses for $100 a pop! Sounds like it’s time for some ‘recolonization’ up that way, huh?