clean coal ad makes coal look shady

peabody energy, the world’s largest coal company, just launched an ad campaign advocating ‘clean coal‘. although some people argue that the term ‘clean coal’ is an oxymoron and marketing scheme because there is no way that coal can be clean, others insist that the group of technologies that lie under the clean coal umbrella are a desirable way to reduce harmful byproducts associated with burning coal.

regardless of all that, LOOK AT THIS AD! what is going on here?!

while i certainly won’t purport to know whether or not clean coal is a complete sham as some environmentalists say it is, i can say beyond a shadow of a doubt that this ad is ridiculous. i mean, was the goal to portray yourselves as the marketing scammers that everyone is saying that you are? personifying the lump of coal is, possibly, the most out of touch with humanity strategy i have ever seen. was the focus group that tested this ad stonehenge? while thisisreality.org, where i first saw this ad, compares peabody’s coal lump person/dude/lump to joe camel, noting the propaganda behind both characters, at least joe camel was actually cool! he had a motorcycle, leather jacket and look here, he’s even wearing a tux. was he also riding a horse one time. wait, i don’t think camels ride horses, so scratch that.

just putting sunglasses on something does NOT make it cool. it just makes you look more suspicious!

wow. that really got me heated. am i alone here? does anyone else think that this is ridonkulous?

hp - what is up with them?

it’s highly commendable that hp encloses a pre-paid envelope with their ink cartridges that you can use to mail your used-up cartridges back to them, but has anyone noticed that hp and many other printer cartridges come wrapped in a pretty sturdy plastic (?) softpak encased in a huge cardboard box? it doesn’t seem like there is any reason for the box to be almost two times the size of the actual cartridge.

i tried to contact hp about this conundrum, but check out their contact page: http://welcome.hp.com/gms/us/en/contact_us.html

does anyone know why they’re incommunicado right now when i need to speak to them more than ever?

why is this a site?

swyyne has always been an experiment for me. with all of the other super eco sites out there, i've been feeling like i want to contribute something just a bit different. so for now, here are my random musings.