Informational Geometry

Happy Earth Day! I have been trying to wrap my brain around the Green trend for the past few years. I care very much about lasting sustainability. Indeed my entire career as a UX designer is all about trying to make the interfaces of software work well, for people, over a long period of time . When I look at the world around me I see a lot of UNsustainable systems which shout to me how obviously unusable they are, and suddenly I feel an urge to log a bug somewhere to get it fixed... before the software crashes... but there's no good place to log those bugs... The truth about being green is that it's not very easy being green. Trying to be green is like trying to use Microsoft Word to edit a photograph. The world around me is just not set up to let me be green. Think about it, how many excuses can you come up with to NOT be green? Do you Recycle? Drive less? Compost? Use compact fluorescent light bulbs? Buy local? Fertilize your lawn organically? Save water? Purchase electricity...

What's not to love about a good, fresh salad? I love eating my veggies in all forms, but there's nothing like a crunchy, tangy, sweetly dressed salad - which must occupy my lunch and dinner table on a regular basis. Until last week, I used to love the spring mix salad so conveniently available at every super market, until I read Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma . I was amazed to learn that for every one calorie in spring mix lettuce, it takes fifty seven calories worth of "energy" to get it to my plate. That's right, for every ONE calorie of lettuce you eat, it took FIFTY SEVEN petro-calories just to get it in your front door. A typical spring mix salad serving has about 250 calories, but costs a whopping 14,250 calories of fuel (in gas, transportation, refrigeration, and automation). This is exactly the problem that Veggie Trader (my newest site) is trying to address, sustainability . It seems like a no-brainer to me, a foodie. Lettuce is lettuce ...