A first grader who found his grandmother’s loaded gun at school last spring pointed it at another student. The 9-mm handgun belongs to his grandmother, Vicky Nelson, the district’s transportation director, who is permitted to carry the weapon as part of the district’s concealed-carry plan adopted last year to arm administrators and select staff members to protect students from potential gun violence. (more…)
I sometimes ridicule product concepts for which I can’t think of a single use, and wearable solar tries the imagination.
OK, suppose you’re alone, out on a long hike, and you get lost. You’re making so many calls out of desperation for help that your cell battery is depleting. Could happen.
Who doesn’t like a cool graphic, when it is both beautiful and inspiring at the same time?
Fortunately, there are several long-term trends that lead us to believe that sustainable ag has a real chance for success, one of which is the development of so-called “superfoods.”
From a piece I wrote for a client a couple of weeks ago: (more…)
Horrifying indeed. And that quote came from Ansel Adams half a century ago, when things were actually starting to look pretty good: the publication of Silent Spring, the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the early warnings that climate change would eventually cause catastrophe, and so on. (more…)
Here’s an article called “California governor signs law hoping to limit police shootings,” which is explained as follows: “The measure signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom will change California’s existing standards to require that deadly force may only be used when necessary.” (more…)
I’m normally not a fan of solar-powered gadgets, because in most cases there’s a more convenient way to accomplish the task at hand using a minimum of energy, and the device in question has more value as a novelty than a practical tool. In this, however, I admit that this is cool; especially in off-grid situations, solar-powered ovens make sense.
As presented in this extremely well made video, it appears that the UK is wrestling with some of the same taxation and broader economic issues as we face here in the States. (more…)
As I’ve written dozens of times in the past, regenerative braking for electric vehicles is mostly bs. When we calculate the amount of kinetic energy that we covert to heat in our cars’ and trucks’ braking systems and compare that to the weight and expense of the new system, we almost always come up negative (unless we’re constantly braking, e.g., postal trucks). (more…)
Kudos to graphic artist Mike Luckovich for this masterpiece (larger version below).
The qualities that elevated humankind out of the Dark Ages are indeed dwindling in supply. (more…)
What happens when you process a few tens of millions of gallons of North Carolina’s super-abundant hog waste into biomethane gas and organic fertilizer? We’re about to find out. My latest client is well on its way to building such a plant, ultimately incorporating additional products in the form of electricity and other renewable biofuels such as biodiesel and bio-jet fuel.
