Abusing the 'save the planet' movement

We recently received a nicely printed invitation from an organisation to be 'kind to the planet save paper' by having their client reports emailed to us rather than having them send printed copies.

Noble idea, but I happen to need printed copies of those reports to be kept as tax records. So how much is this organisation saving the planet by having ME print the documents locally, rather than them printing them and posting them to me.

I'd rather they just say, 'hey, printing reports for all of our customers takes a lot of time and resources, so how's about helping us improve our profitability by YOU printing these documents?' At least they would be telling the truth.

'Snail Mail Gets Literal'

Saw a wonderful, quirky article on the fashion/technology page of Time magazine's August 4, 2008 issue. Some UK artists have attached radio frequency id tags (RFID) to the shells of what looks like garden snails, and people can send emails that are encoded onto the RFID of a snail at one end of its tank, and read later when the snail (ultimately) makes its way to the other end of the tank. Once read at that end the email is posted back on the internet.

(The information super snailway?...)