Here's one that applies to both businesses and consumers.

Businesses: Is all of your packaging 100% biodegradable or recyclable?

If not, why not?

Products themselves are complicated beasts, with a wide range of design considerations to take into account. It's not impossible to make your existing products recyclable or biodegradable, but for some manufacturers, doing so would involve considerable redesign and retooling. So, step back a bit.

These days there are countless packaging options out there - many of which may be much greener than what you're using. For example, air-filled recyclable shipping pillows, instead of foam peanuts, or doing away with those hated clamshell/blisterpacks, which are not only an environmental hazard, but a consumer hazard too -- the US Consumer Product Safety Commission estimated that there were 6,500 (!) emergency room visits related to plastic packaging in 2004.

About five minutes worth of research online revealed at least three alternatives to standard clamshell packaging here, here, and here. I know from personal experience that manufacturers have access to dozens of supplier directories, and get bombarded with catalogues and sales packages on a weekly basis. It wouldn't take very long to source something new -- just takes a commitment from you.

Consumers: Do you make purchasing decisions based on packaging?

I know, I know. It can be very tough to know what the "right thing" is when shopping, especially at the grocery store. Is it fair trade? Is it low in sugar? What about sodium? Is it organic? It doesn't help that many organizations muddy the waters... for example, grocery stores in Canada are currently touting their organic meat options, but the stuff comes in foam trays (which aren't recyclable where I live) and plastic wrap (also not recyclable.) Wine comes in glass bottles (heavier, bigger carbon footprint in terms of shipping), or tetrapaks (not recyclable where I live).

I've started making my purchasing decisions based on the "least harm" principle. I long ago gave up buying processed cheese slices, not only because I prefer real cheese, but because it means I no longer throw away 24 plastic wrappers a week. I avoid snack bars for the same reason - granola bars are yummy, and the box is recyclable but the wrappers aren't.

Have a good look at your shopping cart or the products you use all the time... bread bags (and tags), light bulbs (cardboard vs. blisterpak), yoghurt containers, clothing... Start with one product and see how you can do better.

If you have any doubt that the so called battle of the sexes was getting more complicated and confusing, you only have to look at a newspaper. No, not the personal ads section. Dating has always been complicated and confusing. This is because no one has ever enacted "truth in advertising" legislation for first dates.

I mean you should look at the headlines and the columns, and you'll see that things are so muddled that some combatants don't even know what side they're supposed to be on.

For example, the now-retired Senator Kay O'Connor of Kansas once went on record saying that if it came up again, she wouldn't support a move to give women the right to vote. Indeed, she firmly believes that the erosion of family values all started with allowing women to vote, which in turn led to all sorts of awful things like women going to university, having careers, or worse, getting elected to the US senate.

Meanwhile, Dr. Raj Persaud, a psychiatrist in London, has floated the idea that men should be banned from power. He based the idea on results from studies that suggest that the more women there are involved in politics, the less likely a country is to wage war. Of course, he might change his mind once he's read the results of a new study, which showed that when men are shown pictures of good looking women, they can't think straight and end up making bad decisions.

What does all this mean? Well, there are four possibilities:

1. Senator Kay O'Connor will probably never win any of those trailblazer awards from organizations that honour women's achievements.
2. Dr. Raj Persaud has never heard of Margaret Thatcher, Mary Queen of Scots, or Boudica.
3. Parents of high school and college age guys everywhere can't believe someone did a study to prove what they knew already.
4. We really need to get a handle on which of the male/female "differences" are truly hard-wired and which are just cultural.

So the interest of advancing gender relations, I now present some preliminary observations on male/female traits:

Leaving the toilet seat up - Given that men, with a sufficient amount of electro-shock training, can be cured of this habit, it's probably not genetic.

Compulsive or recreational shopping - Although this trait is supposed to be deeply rooted in the female psyche, amazingly it only seems to manifest itself in women who A) have lots of disposable income and B) are exposed to lots of ads telling them that recreational shopping is deeply rooted in the female psyche.

Watching sports - Traditionally, men are supposed to be inclined to follow professional sports, while women are not. This is because traditionally, the 'big game' provided a really good excuse to put off mowing the lawn, pruning the hedges, or fixing the stove. Check the audience in any stadium now and you'll find a near 50/50 split. This is because women have discovered that a big game provides a really good excuse to put off doing the bills, cleaning the bathroom, or fixing dinner.

Going out - Men have for years complained that they can be ready to go out in 10 minutes or less, while women can take up to an hour or more. This is not because women are naturally indecisive or slow. It is because men have not been expected to tuck the kids into bed, give final instructions to the babysitter, check that the burners on the stove are off, make sure the tickets are in her purse...

Men are tough, women are the weaker sex - I think we can safely say that neither sex is genetically predisposed to being either tough or weak. This is because some women actually volunteer to have bikini waxes, while some men cannot handle a simple cold without large quantities of drugs.

Asking loaded questions - Recently men have complained that women often ask loaded questions like "Do I look fat in these pants?" to which there is no good answer. Men do the same thing. The male cultural equivalent is, "Do you wanna piece of me?" usually said to another male in a bar after a collision. Again, there is no good answer.

Of course, perhaps there is no good answer to loaded questions involving gender differences either.

We writers like to take up causes and point out injustices whenever we can. We do this so that we can rationalize a job that requires us - requires, I say - to sit in comfy computer chairs and slurp caramel machiatos.

So it is with a great deal of caffeine-fueled righteous indignation that I bring the plight of the lowly garden gnome to your attention.

I wrote about these poor creatures a few years ago and sadly, even though 2004 supposedly marks the Year of the Gnome, not much has changed for this group.

Every year, thousands of innocent gnomes are hunted down in their natural habitat, the forest, and taken prisoner. They are then sold by the truckload by well known home improvement retailers, which I won't name in this space for fear of lawsuits, but which may as well be called Gnome Depot.

City dwellers buy them and put them in urban gardens, turning them into, well, metrognomes. It's a hard life - gnomes are forced to inhale car exhaust, listen to the constant roar of traffic and noise, and endure the changing seasons without so much as a toadstool for cover. Many have been injured in lawnmower accidents or poisoned by fertilizers and weed sprays.

"Few other groups in this day and age are allowed to suffer such indiginities with society's implicit permission," says one of a growing group of radicals, writing under the gnome de guerre 'Larry.' "When will our people rise up and whack our oppressors on the ankle?"

Even worse, gnomes must face this hardship alone. Rarely are gnomes ever placed in gardens in pairs, and they're never, ever allowed female companionship.Indeed, the so-called International Association for the Protection of the Garden Gnome was so horrified that anyone should think of female gnomes that it fined a fellow named Reinhard Griebel £45 for raising the issue in 2002.

"It's tough out here, all by yourself," says one gnome, an aging veteran of the Toronto landscape. His face is lined with cracks and his pointy red hat on his balding head only just covers that worst of hairstyle offenses, the gnomeover. "And what are you going to do if you escape? It's not like you can go find yourself a wife and go gnomesteading."

Indeed, the annual round up of male gnomes from the forest has many ecologists wondering how much longer the exploitation can continue before gnomes become extinct in the wild. "We still know very, very little about these people," says Dr. Paul Imer, a member of the Gnome and Garden study group. "We've not even had a chance to study their DNA, you know, their gegnome."

What would it take to turn life around for these oppressed garden creatures? "Gnome rule," says Larry without hesitation. "Our goal is to set up a provisional government within a year, staffed by by those who have escaped their captors or that have been liberated by our human sympathizers in the Garden Gnome Liberation Front. Then we will set up a search and rescue group called Gnome Free for the systematic emancipation of the rest of our oppressed brothers."

Personally, dear readers, I'm torn on this issue. Usually I am all for freedom and liberty. However, if Larry's group succeeds, well...

... then I'll have nothing to write gnome about.

This week, I will tackle a subject that has baffled some of the brightest thinkers of our time. The issue of the missing "dark matter" in our universe? No. Child poverty? Not that either. I will try to explain: the US electoral system.

Why is this such a difficult topic? Well for one thing, scientists can't explain the epidemic levels of obesity in the US, because Americans are constantly exercising their right to vote. Indeed, a 1995 study suggested that US citizens were asked to cast their ballot approximately once every 3.5 minutes. And this was before the invention of online polls that ask crucial questions like: Should Rudy be voted off the island?

What are Americans voting for? Well, once every four years there is a presidential election, with congressional elections held at the same time. Elections for the House of Representatives are held every two years. Senators have six-year terms, with one-third elected every two years. Meanwhile State governors serve four-year terms with about half up for election every two years. All of this means three things:

1) The "Founding Fathers" - the people who set up this system - anticipated that revolving doors would be installed in every US government building.

2) These same people all had shares in companies that produced campaign promo items like bumper stickers, t-shirts, and US flag bunting.

3) It's no wonder 95% of Americans have no idea who their local representative is.

But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's start with something simple, like presidential elections. There are two parties in the US, one called the Democrats, the other called the Republicans. The first party has as its symbol a donkey, a pack animal known to bray a lot, and to be stubborn and gloomy. The second party is symbolized by an elephant, a war beast known for knocking down trees and stomping small things. Of course, one shouldn't read into these things too deeply.

One becomes the leader of a party by going through a marathon process called "the primaries." Leadership candidates campaign hard, state-by-state, to win delegates who will later attend a convention and select a leader. Many people believe that a successful candidate wins primaries by having a strong platform and discussing the issues. Actually, a successful candidate wins primaries by having a well-stocked campaign bus bar and fridge. This keeps the reporters assigned to cover your campaign happy and well-fed, which in turn prevents them from filing cranky stories with headlines like: "Candidate Flubs Breakfast; Expected to Drop Out of Race Tomorrow."

Rather than hold all state primaries on the same day, the campaign is waged over a period of several weeks. This means that states further down on the schedule don't get to choose between all of the candidates, just the ones that haven't dropped out because they A) collapsed in exhaustion, B) ran out of money or C) forgot to restock the bus fridge. This holds true for every state but Vermont, which votes for a dropped out candidate anyway.

Once the two parties have selected their leaders, they square off in a campaign to become president. The candidates engage in serious, informed debate, and then respectfully ask the voters for their support. No, wait, that's Finland. In the US, the candidates spend millions of dollars on TV advertisements that air every 32 seconds for about six months. Voter turn out is high in the US simply because the citizens will do anything at that point to make the pain go away.

The voting process itself is quite complex. First, because it is a secret ballot, citizens must register as either a Democrat or a Republican. They then go to a polling station where they enter a booth, confront a machine and pull a lever. Critics have compared US voting machines to Las Vegas slot machines, but really, that's not a fair comparison: the user at least has some chance at winning when they play the slots.

Finally, all the votes are tallied. Well, except the ones from people named Chad, people overseas, and anyone in Vermont because everyone knows they're going to vote for a dropped out candidate anyway. All the remaining votes are shipped, either by donkey or elephant convoy, to something called an Electoral College, which declares one of the candidates the president. No one quite knows what goes on there, but because it is a college, many suspect it involves large quantities of beer.

There. Now isn't that all much clearer?

This week, we will examine a wild and dangerous world, where scary creatures battle each other ferociously for survival using tooth and claw. No, no, I do not mean the British political scene.

I mean the actual animal kingdom where scientists are finding out all sorts of interesting things about our fellow critters. For example, a recent study on dinosaurs suggests that some of the largest dinosaurs ever known may have been able to float.

Apparently, palaeontologists have wondered for years as to why the brachiosaurus didn’t collapse under its own weight, somewhat like Donald Trump’s ego. They have also been curious about the fact that they have found plenty of preserved brachiosaurus footprints, but only from the front feet. Canadian studies of skeletons reveal they may have had an inflatable sac inside their bodies which allowed them to float and punt along in shallow water. This means two things:

1. I was severely short changed by the public education system. Nobody ever told me that we’ve only found the front footprints of these dinosaurs. Not only is that one heck of a cool mystery, just think of all the pictures I could have drawn in primary school showing brachiosaurs doing handstands.

2. Some dinosaurs came equipped with driver’s side air bags.

If true, this study has profound implications on our theories of how the dinosaurs died. Clearly, the air bag was the beginning of the end. After that came cup holders, encouraging the consumption of fatty, over-caffeinated drinks. Then came the DVD players which were highly distracting. This means the dinosaurs might have died in one big multi-species pile up, which would be ironic, given how we use “fossil fuels” today.

Meanwhile, researchers in England have discovered how pigeons find their way home. Do they have tiny natural sensors in their brains, attuned to the magnetic forces of the Earth? No. (Actually, it has yet to be proven that pigeons have brains.) Do they use tiny pigeon maps, carefully preserved over the generations and neatly folded into those little tubes we keep strapping to their legs? Nope.
They follow the roads.

Using satellite tracking, scientists were absolutely stunned to find that pigeons use our highways as guides. In one release, they followed the road to the first junction where they all turned right, and then a couple of junctions on, they all turned left. At least one pigeon, obviously British born, even flew in a circle over a roundabout before making his turn.

Scientists have yet to determine how pigeons decide which road to follow, although there’s some speculation that it might have to do with the number of clean cars on it at any given time. Researchers also aren’t sure why pigeons have adapted so readily to following cars either; it may be they’ve overheard us saying they’ve flown the coupe.

Finally, US biologists now think that rattlesnakes may be caring, social animals with rich family lives. Granted, the family atmosphere might be like that in the British parliament, but the point is, snakes are more interesting than we thought.

The US study has shown that snakes tend to hang out with their relatives more so than with strange snakes. In scientific terms, this means they exhibit kin recognition. In layman’s terms, it means they know their family hisstory.

As yet there is no connection between rattlesnakes and driving or highways, except that snakes make particularly long and squishy bits of road kill. Also, pigeons try to avoid rattlesnakes, as they don’t want to be the Sunday dinner around which the happy, social snakes gather.

Next week our feature topic will be: Strange, Irrational Animal Dominance Behaviours - The American Electoral Process Explained.