Okay, my 16-year-old son might have thought I was a little whacked when he saw that this video made me cry, but come on! Don’t you always cry when the beautiful and jubilant bride walks down the aisle?

How could anybody have had more fun or expressed their true love and unique personalities better than these two? Best wishes to Jill and Kevin for many years of happiness together!

And just to show the song’s versatility, another group has created a sequel using the same song for the entry into the courtroom for their last day together.

Rawk on, you funsters!

There’s a popular adage that says something like “Printer ink is the most expensive liquid on earth.” Go ahead, Google it.

The return shows pages of results proving the theory, including one article from the Financial Times that says that HP ink cost $8000 per gallon (published in 2004). While in truth, most high-end designer perfumes actually cost more,  that’s still a lot of money for a fluid that’s relatively inexpensive to manufacture and hasn’t changed much from what the Chinese invented thousands of years ago.

The good news is that most consumers are not buying ink by the gallon. In fact, most cartridges only contain from 5 to 20 milliliters of the black stuff we rely on to feed our machines. Working backwards from $8000 per gallon, a high-yield black ink cartridge that promises 800 copies contains about $40 worth of ink. The smallest ones contain less than $10 worth of ink.

The bad news is that most ink cartridges do not tell you on the packaging how much ink is actually inside the cartridge: instead they offer suggested page output. Basically, you’re paying for a product, but there is no way to know how much you’re actually getting until you open the box and look inside, where the volume is sometimes printed on the foil wrapper

So, when you’re shopping for cereal or soda, don’t you want to compare the value of your purchase in a way that tells you if the more expensive package is actually a better value? What if you paid more for a box of cereal only to open it and find it contained less product than a similar sized box of a competitive brand? What if your toasty oats came in similar-sized boxes, and you had no way of knowing how many bowls of cereal either box provided? How could you comparison shop one brand of toasty oats between Cereal Company A and Cereal Company B without knowing what’s actually inside the box?

Printer refill cartridges are like that. I happen to own two printers: One is an HP black laser printer, which I use for day-today-printing. The other is an HP color inkjet that I use for my kid’s school projects, maps, printing web pages, and occasional photo printing. Each recommends a specific HP replacement cartridge.

I am holding a brand-new original equipment (OEM) HP Q2612A black toner box: There is nothing on the outside of this box that tells me how much I can expect this cartridge to yield, except for some small type hidden under a label (which I had to tear off) that says “For declared yield see … www.hp.com/go/pageyield.”  Because I am sitting at home while I write this, I can click on the link to discover a long ISO testing page with lots of technical language that basically says they’ve tested the cartridge according to ISO scientific methods and according to those tests, they believe the cartridge will return a specific and consistent yield. But nothing on this box allowed me to comparison-shop it against the remanufactured toner cartridges offered in the store and online. » Read more

Have you heard the term “Flash Mob”? According to Wikipedia,  a flash mob  is a “large group of people who assemble suddenly in a public place, perform an unusual action for a brief time, then quickly disperse.” So you’re standing around at the mall, and suddenly all the other people engage in a spontaneous pillow fight. Or emerge in groups to begin dancing with each other. Or sing.

The first flash mob was organized in Manhattan in May 2003, but was unsuccessful because the targeted location was tipped off in advance about the plan. According to Dan Hall, brand manager for experiential agency ID, these early flash mobs were seen as such an impressive medium for generating PR that they were soon being implemented by advertisers as a way to gain attention for their message. More recently, the phenomenon has even been exhibited with crowds of zombies.

In an article at AllBusiness, Hall says “Flash mobs are a tremendously powerful medium to surprise otherwise marketing-savvy consumers into recognising and interacting with a brand face to face.’ Through their presence in the spontaneous event, “They allow people to be part of a shared experience they can tell others about.”

T-Mobile has capitalized on the flash mob concept in an ongoing advertising campaign that has used choreographed dances and karaoke events to “bring to life the fact that there are often unexpected, wonderful, exciting things that happen that you want to be able to share.”

What would you do if you were standing in a train station and people around you suddenly started dancing? Would you join in? Would you grab your cell phone and start recording? Would you be frightened? Check out these two videos: The first is a performance of “Do Re Mi”, performed by more than 200 dancers in the Central Station of Antwerp. The second is a video that explains how T-Mobile created their own Flash Mob with 400 dancers in Liverpool Station.

Have a great weekend!

I was home alone late one night nearly 20 years ago, killing time with MTV on in the background when this video from the Indigo Girls began playing.   I had never heard of the duo, and had no idea who they were, but I loved the concept of the video, and the message of the song.

Titled “Galileo,” the song references the circle of reincarnation, making light of the possibility that our day-to-day circumstances could somehow be linked to our previous lives… a fear of flying caused by a previous life’s plane crash, or making compensation in this life to right wrongs we committed in the past, basically “serving time for mistakes made by another in another lifetime.”

I went on a quest to find out more about the band and discovered the Indigo Girls,  an American folk rock duo consisting of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers. Since then I’ve become a lifetime fan of their music and thoughtful lyrics that tell moving and important stories. When I need to find consolation, I listen to their songs to help me identify what’s in my heart.

Beyond the themes of their music, they are also very politically active. According to their page at Wikipedia,  they have championed the causes of the environment, gay rights, the rights of Native Americans, and the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. For many years they incorporated a recycling and public outreach program into their road tours by including Greenpeace representative Stephanie Fairbanks in their road crew. They helped Winona LaDuke establish Honor the Earth, an organization dedicated to creating support and education for native environmental issues. Amy and Emily have also appeared at the annual SOA Watch rallies, the March for Women’s Lives, and several other rallies and protests.

They’ve just recently released a new album, titled “Poseidon and the Bitter Bug” and are touring this summer across the United States and Europe in support of it. As part of their tour, the Indigo Girls have partnered with Rock for a Remedy and are collecting food for people and pets at each venue; these donations then make their way to neighboring families who are struggling keep food on the table.

I hope you will enjoy their music as much as I have. Normally, I embed the music video player directly into our Friday posts, but embedding has been disabled on all the Indigo Girls music videos I can find at YouTube.com. Please click to watch the Indigo Girls perform Galileo and maybe discover other Indigo Girls music as well. You can also find them on Facebook.

Have a great weekend,
Brandy

We discovered this video when @PieceofGreen tweeted about it at Twitter.com. We followed the link to treehugger.com.

They said: “Although he passed away before his time, Heath Ledger left an impressive legacy behind–but it’s not just his top-tier acting work that should be remembered.” As one of his last activities Ledger  directed the animated anti-whaling music video for Modest Mouse’s song “King Rat.” Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see the project completed, but the finished video can be viewed via YouTube by clicking the window below.

The video starts innocently enough with a lovely tune and carefree images of whales piloting a boat to sea. As the intensity of the music grows, so do the images, until its simple, satirical animation makes clear the hideous violence committed on whaling boats. shivver

Also, according to Treehugger.com, if you download the video on iTunes during August, the proceeds will go to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society — the infamous anti-whaling group.

More on Whaling at Treehugger.com:
Whale Hunting Ban Effective
Whale-Watching Report: Whales are More Valuable Alive than Dead