My new post over on Worldchanging was actually inspired by the above Anil Dash tweet that showed up in my Twitter feed on July 11th, aka launch day. It kinda snapped me out of my gadget-induced trance. Don't get the wrong idea -- I still waited in line for 2.5 hours to get me my 3G. And I loves her. But it did make me curious about the environmental impact of my new phone.

So I did some digging. The second-generation iPhone actually turns out to have made some solid improvements on the green front over its first iteration. Earbuds are now PVC free and the circuit board is produced sans bromine. Probably most importantly, the 3G's battery is no longer soldered in, which makes it easier to both keep the phone in working order and break it down when it comes time to recycle. Part of what I talk about at Worldchanging is why we don't hear Apple using these green good points as selling points for their stuff.

The nods to Apple in Pixar's "Wall-E" movie include the deliberate modeling of the character EVE after an iPod and the fact that the title character makes a Mac welcome sound when he finishes charging his batteries.

After watching the movie last night, I'm more interested in making some sense of its wacky politics, but I can't seem to turn up much webby goodness on that front. I get it -- Americans are fat and like to consume stuff with nary a care about the consequences -- but beyond that I'm a little lost. What I've come up with is that it's either totally technodystopian or the complete opposite.

(If you've seen the movie, one word: "Mo." I love that little guy!)

Freedom is an application that disables wireless and ethernet networking on an Apple computer for up to three hours at a time. Freedom will free you from the distractions of the internet, allowing you time to code, write, or create.

Over the course of a riveting 75-minute discussion of the birth of Gandhian non-violent activism, I found myself becoming increasingly distressed as I watched students cruising Facebook, checking out the NY Times, editing photo collections, texting, reading People Magazine, shopping for jeans, dresses, sweaters, and shoes on Ebay, Urban Outfitters and J. Crew, reorganizing their social calendars, emailing on Gmail and AOL, playing solitaire, doing homework for other classes, chatting on AIM, and buying tickets on Expedia (I made a list because of my disbelief). From my perspective in the back of the room, while Dalton vividly described desperate Indian mothers throwing their children into a deep well to escape the barrage of bullets, I noticed that a girl in front of me was putting her credit card information into Urban Outfitters.com. She had finally found her shoes!