Earth Day, April 22--tips from a writer
• Refill your printer cartridges, and donate them to a good cause when refilling is no longer an option;
• Purchase office supplies made of recycled, and recyclable, materials;
• Opt for energy-efficient electronic gadgets;
• Bring your own coffee/tea mug.
• Grow something outdoors. Many writers find that their creativity blossoms when they garden.
• Ride a bike to your favorite writing spot.
• Use a refillable water bottle to stay hydrated. The human brain is approximately 70% water by weight.
• Read something that inspires you. My selections for this week are Thoreau’s Walden and Going Green - True Tales from Gleaners, Scavengers, and Dumpster Divers, edited by Northern Colorado Writers member Laura Pritchett.
On Thursday, in observance of Earth Day, I’m going to turn off my computer, go outside (weather permitting), and write with pen and paper. Yep, real old school. And if I get stuck, I’ll play solitaire using an actual deck of cards.

The Icelandic volcano eruption is a perfect storm, a combination of wind and ice conditions that has turned an ordinary eruption into a crisis. Last month, the same volcano erupted harmlessly. But last week, magma found a second pathway to the surface, this time beneath a glacier. When hot magma touched ice, it instantly created a burst of steam and produced glassified silicates. The sudden expansion of steam created a colossal explosion that sent billowing clouds of glassified silica ash three to five miles into the air over Europe. The ongoing eruptions of the volcano, which continue unabated, are caused by a series of steam explosions as magma continues to encounter glacial ice. There are 35 active volcanoes in Iceland, and one eruption has been known to set off another. The worse case happened in 1783, with an eruption lasting eight months. That eruption killed off much of the livestock and agriculture in Iceland, which in turn caused the death of about 25% of the island's population. The eruption also eventually killed tens of thousands of people on the Continent. Benjamin Franklin was in Paris at the time and was one of the first to connect the rapid change in local weather that collapsed European agriculture with a volcanic explosion. 1783 became known as the horrible "year without summer." Europe plunged into a period of poverty that lasted for years. Some historians believe that this may have contributed to the French Revolution of 1789.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB20001424052748704671904575194100682717346.html

College professors are anything but LOL at their students' recent writing habits. Not only are instructors not laughing out loud -- shortened to LOL in text messages and online chats -- at the technology-oriented shorthand that has seeped into academic papers, many of them also sternly telling students to stop using the new language even in less formal writing. The breakdown in language skills is an odd phenomenon given how much time children and young adults spend in front of the computer, said Marcia Linn, who teaches about technology in education at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Education. "Writing has actually increased as an activity," she said. "Standards are another issue. Maybe we haven't quite thought it through well enough in an academic setting." Many students communicate constantly via text and instant messaging, so it can be difficult to leave the tech lingo behind in class, said Mohammed Shahid Beig, a senior and student-body president at Cal State East Bay. The phenomenon appears to be widespread. Instructors at Sonoma State, Holy Names and San Francisco State universities have grumbled about text-speak showing up in assignments, and the president of the statewide faculty senate for community colleges, Mission College professor Jane Patton, said she has heard the same complaints. College always has been a place for students to learn how to communicate appropriately, Patton said, and teaching them to can the tech-speak is merely the latest step in that education. The shorthand often consists of shortened variations of common words -- "u" instead of you, or "ur" for your. Text speak may be appropriate for a quick note to a friend, but professors are increasingly stymied by how casually students are using the terms. The introduction of such casual language into term papers is a sea change from the days when nearly all students addressed their instructors as "professor" or "doctor." More faculty members ask students to call them by their first names, but many are drawing the line at texting shorthand or even emoticons. http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_14856449

An emoticon is a textual expression representing the face of a writer's mood or facial expression. Emoticons are often used to alert a responder to the tenor or temper of a statement, and can change and improve interpretation of plain text. The word is a portmanteau of the English words emotion (or emote) and icon. In web forums, instant messengers and online games, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which came to be called emoticons as well. The National Telegraphic Review and Operators Guide in April 1857 documented the use of the number 73 in Morse code to express "love and kisses" (later reduced to the more formal "best regards"). Dodge's Manual in 1908 documented the reintroduction of "love and kisses" as the number 88. Gajadhar and Green comment that both Morse code abbreviations are more succinct than modern abbreviations such as LOL.

Visit famous art museums
The Louvre: http://www.louvre.fr/llv/musee/alaune.jsp?bmLocale=en
The State Hermitage Museum http://hermitagemuseum.org/html_En/index.html
Smithsonian (19 museums, 136 million items) http://si.edu/