02.11.11
Posted in Environment, technology at 11:14 pm by site admin
Check out this article on how carbon captured underground is escaping..
One proposed strategy for reducing the effects of carbon emissions is to try to capture the carbon as it is emitted and to bury it underground. But the technology is controversial. And a story from Saskatchewan is adding support to opponents of the technology. A farm couple whose land sits atop a carbon capture site commissioned an independent report into their land quality, and say that it appears to indicate that the so-called “captured” carbon has actually leaked into their land.
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11.16.10
Posted in Environment, society at 11:15 am by site admin
For the sake of a sesame seed, you drop the watermelon.
Check out <a href=”http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2010/11/15/china_trip/index.html”>this article</a> talking about the apparent cliche between China’s quest for sustainable development and the indulgence of luxury (that they also condemn the west for).
But even more revealing was a comment the ambassador made a little later. In China, he said, greenhouse gas emissions were a result of economic activity aimed at “development.” In the West, it was all about “luxury.”
Of course, just moments earlier, our group had driven past a Lamborghini dealership in downtown Beijing, just a few blocks from a Gucci store so imposing that it made the Forbidden City palace structures I can see from my hotel window look paltry. On the macro level, I can’t disagree with Ambassador Chen. China is still a developing nation where per capita incomes, while growing fast, are far below those enjoyed in advanced industrialized nations. But you can’t spend 10 minutes in Beijing without coming to the conclusion that China is hell-bent on pursuing exactly the same development arc as any other decadent, luxury seeking Western country. It is a cliché to note this, but the city is utterly transformed from 20 years ago. Millions and millions of bicycles have been traded in for sleek sedans.
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07.06.10
Posted in Environment, Restaurants at 2:29 pm by site admin
Check out this article at nytimes.com titled Tuna’s End. Gist is: Man is over harvesting the oceans. Shallow water fishing has given to deep sea fishing. Countries now compete for fishing quotas in every major body of water, leaving no quarter for fish to thrive. Not many fish species left…
Here are two reasons that a mere fish should have inspired such a high-strung confrontation reminiscent of Greenpeace’s early days as a defender of whales. The first stems from fish enthusiasts who have for many years recognized the particular qualities of bluefin tuna — qualities that were they land-based creatures would establish them indisputably as “wildlife” and not just another “seafood” we eat without remorse. Not only is the bluefin’s dense, distinctly beefy musculature supremely appropriate for traversing the ocean’s breadth, but the animal also has attributes that make its evolutionary appearance seem almost deus ex machina, or rather machina ex deo — a machine from God. How else could a fish develop a sextantlike “pineal window” in the top of its head that scientists say enables it to navigate over thousands of miles? How else could a fish develop a propulsion system whereby a whip-thin crescent tail vibrates at fantastic speeds, shooting the bluefin forward at speeds that can reach 40 miles an hour? And how else would a fish appear within a mostly coldblooded phylum that can use its metabolic heat to raise its body temperature far above that of the surrounding water, allowing it to traverse the frigid seas of the subarctic?
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05.24.10
Posted in Environment at 8:47 pm by site admin
Check out this article about the new trend to grow vegetables in your backyard upside-down.
The advantages of upside-down gardening are many: it saves space; there is no need for stakes or cages; it foils pests and fungus; there are fewer, if any, weeds; there is efficient delivery of water and nutrients thanks to gravity; and it allows for greater air circulation and sunlight exposure.
While there are skeptics, proponents say the proof is in the produce.
Tomato and jalapeño seedlings sprout from upside-down planters fashioned out of milk jugs and soda bottles that hang from the fence surrounding the Redmond, Wash., yard of Shawn Verrall, a Microsoft software tester who blogs about gardening at Cheapvegetablegardener.com. Mr. Verrall turned to upside-down gardening last summer as an experiment.
“I put one tomato plant in the ground and one upside down, and the one in the ground died,” he said. The other tomato did so well, he planted a jalapeño upside down, too, and it was more prolific than the one he had in the ground. “The plants seem to stay healthier upside down if you water them enough, and it’s a great way to go if you have limited space,” he said.
The article references briefly the idea of building your own.
In addition to plastic soda bottles, milk jugs and five-gallon buckets, upside-down planters can be made out of thick heavy-duty plastic trash bags, plastic reusable shopping totes, kitty litter containers, laundry hampers and even used tires. Web sites likeInstructables.com and UpsideDownTomatoPlant.com show how it can be done, and YouTube has several how-to videos. Variations include building a water reservoir either at the top or bottom of planters for irrigation, cutting several openings in the bottom and sides for planting several seedlings and lining the interior with landscape fabric or coconut fiber to help retain moisture.
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05.18.10
Posted in Environment, society at 11:04 pm by site admin
Check out this article talking about the presence of carcinogens all around us in today’s technologically modern era.
Some 41 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives, and they include Democrats and Republicans alike. Protecting ourselves and our children from toxins should be an effort that both parties can get behind — if enough members of Congress are willing to put the public interest ahead of corporate interests.
One reason for concern is that some cancers are becoming more common, particularly in children. We don’t know why that is, but the proliferation of chemicals in water, foods, air and household products is widely suspected as a factor. I’m hoping the President’s Cancer Panel report will shine a stronger spotlight on environmental causes of health problems — not only cancer, but perhaps also diabetes, obesity and autism.
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03.23.10
Posted in Environment, society at 7:46 pm by site admin
Check out this article about Jevons’ Paradox and the dangerous of efficient energy use:
Nearly a century before the geologist M. King Hubbert began calculating peak oil, the economist William Stanley Jevons discovered, to his horror, peak coal. In The Coal Question, published in 1865, Jevons raised the questions which haunt sustainability advocates to this day: “Are we wise in allowing the commerce of this country to rise beyond the point at which we can long maintain it?” He estimated Britain’s coal production would reach a peak in less than a hundred years, with calamitous economic and Malthusian consequences. The engine of coal’s demise would be the same invention that was created to conserve it: the steam engine. But it made burning coal so efficient, that instead of conserving coal, it drove the price down until everyone was burning it. This is Jevons’ Paradox: the more efficiently you use a resource, the more of it you will use. Put another way: the better the machine–or fuel–the broader its adoption.
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02.18.10
Posted in Environment at 12:07 pm by site admin
Check out this link about the blobfish. This is probably the crazies thing I’ve seen in a while.
Its hideously deformed body is quite boneless, a gelatinous orb hovering in the deep, covered in slime and mucus. But there’s something even worse.
Its face.
Most fish don’t really have faces. You’ve heard people refer to “fish eyes” or “fish lips,” or they say, “Oh, shut up, you old fish face.”
But the blobfish actually has a face. Not a fish face, but a human face, complete with lips and a big, bulbous nose.
A blobfish looks like some fat, drunken judge and may be highly intelligent. And therefore quite dangerous.
It frowns. It leers. Sometimes, it even drools.
“That’s gross!” said an editor around here who didn’t believe me. But once she saw the photos, she began gnawing the knuckles on her right hand in sheer, abject terror.
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02.29.08
Posted in Environment at 10:06 am by site admin
Check out this article discussing how rain and snow may form because of bacteria in the atmosphere.
One might rethink playing with snow or walking in the rain as a new study by scientists from the Louisiana State University revealed that snow and rain might form mostly on bacteria in the clouds.
Scientists have long known that the ice crystals in clouds, which become rain or snow, need to cling to some kind of particle, called ice nucleators, in order to form in temperatures above minus 40 degrees Celsius.
Microbiologist Brent Christner at Louisiana State University sampled snow from Antarctica, France, and the Yukon and found that as much as 85 percent of the nuclei were bacteria, he said in a telephone interview with the Associated Press.
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02.20.08
Posted in Environment at 8:21 pm by site admin
As most people know there is a lunar eclipse tonight. However, its rainy and overcast here, so it looks like its a no-show tonight.
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01.03.07
Posted in Environment at 9:19 pm by site admin
Check out this link to learn how to build your own low impact woodland home.
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Posted in Environment at 9:17 pm by site admin
Check out this site with some creative ways of recycling old stuff and/or creating novel things. Check out:2. Cd cases into a mini greenhouse and 18. Old candle cases into picture frames.
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12.31.06
Posted in Environment, health at 12:37 pm by site admin
My weekly wrap up of health related articles. First large cholesterol leads to long life. Larger cholsterol particles in the blood are less likely to get stuck in the lining. Less buildup, less heart attacks and strokes.
Second, live stock pollute and take up space. Live stock generate 18% more pollution than automobiles and other modes of transportation. Live stock also generate 37% of all human-induced methane, and use 30% of the earth’s entire land surface. And for those of you that still drink milk, check out MilkSucks.com. A dairy cow produced 100 pounds of milk a day!!!! 10 times more than they would produce in nature. And coming out of the other end, the cow produces 120 pounds of waste every day — equal to that of two dozen people, but with no toilets, sewers, or treatment plants. If thats not personal enough for you, unlike french fries, potato chips, and chocolate, milk can make you break out.
Got zits? Try wiping off that milk mustache!
Will drinking milk make you greasy, grimy, and pimply? Some doctors suspect that the fat, animal protein, sugar, and hormones in milk irritate the skin, causing break-outs.
Dr. Jerome K. Fisher conducted a clinical study of 1,088 teen-age patients over 10 years and reported to the American Dermatological Association that milk was a principal contributor to some patients’ acne. Dr. Fisher found that their acne tapered off as their milk consumption did.
Dr. Fisher noted that dairy products often contain large amounts of butterfat and milk sugar, both of which, he believed, aggravate acne. He also suspected that the high volume of hormones produced naturally in the milk of pregnant cows may break down into androgen when consumed, which in turn stimulates the production of sebum, the waxy substance secreted by the sebaceous glands that clogs pores and creates acne when the pores become infected.
I’m not sure if dropping milk (all forms), has helped me reduce my acne. It could be b/c i’m a bit past my ‘hormonal years’ or whatever, but in anycase, being milk free works for me. The skin is your body’s largest organ. So eating a good diet, w/vegetables and fiber, keeps your insides running smoothly and keeps randomness from bubbling to the surface.
Next on my list, a new tattoo ink that can be removed. The ink is encased in tiny little beads that can be destroyed in a single laser light treatment. So this is good news for everyone out there wanting ‘I love [fill in name here] forever’ tattooed on your bods.
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11.22.06
Posted in Environment at 9:26 pm by site admin
Check out this article on scientific american talking about sustainable use of water. Nothing exceptionally new here, but the article does provide some new details. For example, global warming will decrease ice caps on mountains, and thus reduce river flow and also lower the water table. So this is bad news for regions relying on rivers underground water supplies. Since supplies are limited, more water in one region, means less in another. An interesting point in the article:
The Yellow River no longer flows to the sea.
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11.14.06
Posted in Environment at 10:17 pm by site admin
Check out this article discussing residential ‘micro-combined-heat-and-power’ units are efficient furnaces that create electricity. It is a furnace that turns natural gas to heat and uses the byproduct heat to warm the home. The article states its triple the efficiency as power over the grid. Estimated cost is $6,000 more than traditional furnaces with a pay-off of 6-7 years. Pretty cool for those living in colder climates. Probably not something for where I am.
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10.22.06
Posted in Environment, health at 9:49 am by site admin
Heres a short article on chemicals in modern products (Shampoos, lotions, drugs, environmental pollutants that, while semi-harmless to adults, disrupt the endocrine systems of children. While there has been talk about estrogenic compounds being present in many products (e.g., soy) and also as a nasty by-product in some manufacturing processes, this is the first time that I’ve seen references to natural oils disrupting endocrine systems.
While Dr. Tiwary is quick to admit that his unpublished findings must be interpreted with great caution, some of his sex hormone levels changed by almost 40 percent after he used the shampoos. In some cases, substances other than sex steroids may also disrupt normal sexual development. In Boston at the annual Endocrine Society meeting in June, Clifford Bloch of the University of Colorado School of Medicine presented several cases of young men who had developed marked breast enlargement from using shampoos containing lavender and tea tree oils, which are widely used essential oil additives that present no problem for adults. (Unlike Dr. Dedekian’s cases, these cases were not a result of passive transfer from parents. The boys themselves used the shampoos.)
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10.09.06
Posted in Environment at 9:38 pm by site admin
Check out this article with a brief discussion on how mankind is straining the earth. The whole peak oil and farm land discussions aren’t new. I’m not sure if these are newer issues or not, but I’ve been reading more and more about fresh water and fishing. The article did point out the waste in trade:
Nef highlighted the energy wasted in trade. In 2004, for example, Britain exported 1,500 tons of potatoes to Germany and imported the same amount. We sent 10,200 tons of milk and cream to France and imported 9,900 tons.
so how much do we actually waste? The article says the US-lifestyle would require 5 planet earths. Too bad astronomers haven’t been able to find any more earths out there. Perhaps we need to renew our look at the moon or mars. (No fish on the moon…..)
Consumption is particularly profligate in the West, where individuals consume air-freighted food, buy hardwood furniture, enjoy foreign holidays and own cars. Global Footprint estimates the world would need five planet Earths to sustain a global materialistic society such as that in the US while almost three would be needed for the UK.
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08.07.06
Posted in Environment at 2:56 pm by site admin
Check out this story at the latimes.com about the destruction of the ocean ecosystem. Its a decently long and extensive article. Basically it talks about how man has been harvesting the sea, starting with fishing and then working his way down the food chain, coupled with pollution, waste, and run-off is altering the delicate balance of the ocean’s ecosystems.
In many places — the atolls of the Pacific, the shrimp beds of the Eastern Seaboard, the fiords of Norway — some of the most advanced forms of ocean life are struggling to survive while the most primitive are thriving and spreading. Fish, corals and marine mammals are dying while algae, bacteria and jellyfish are growing unchecked. Where this pattern is most pronounced, scientists evoke a scenario of evolution running in reverse, returning to the primeval seas of hundreds of millions of years ago.
To some this may be nothing new; to others this may be the much needed wake up call. Now I wonder if people are actually aware of the extent of what is happening. When you take this as part of the larger whole, you’ll see that between global warming, the growing energy crisis, and the destruction of the environment (deforestation, pollution of lakes, rivers, and oceans), that we are moving down a path it may take hundreds of years, if not thousands, to recover from. The sad thing is that it is hard to quantify a problem like environmental extrenalities. How much would you pay to see crystal blue oceans? How about clean air to breath?
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06.27.06
Posted in Education, Environment, Evolution, Humor at 9:28 am by site admin
King tut’s glass beetle came from outer space. The glass beetle is piece of yellow-green glass, carved in the shape of a scarabe beetle found in the tomb of King Tut, who died in 1323BC. Fish with asymmetric brains multitask better. They can hunt for food and avoid predators more efficiently than those with more symmetric brains. This matters because humans (and well as all vertebrates) have some degree of asymmetry in their brain, with males having a higher degree than females. This is of course why many men have a hard time combining connect logic (left) with emotions (right). If thats too much thinking for you, check out this link on the 10 strangest japanese gadgets. My favorites would be the sauce dispensing chopsticks (my guess would be that one does soy and the other does ponzu?), the shower cap (its up there on the WTF?!?), and the MP3 toilet. If your not much of an indoors person, check out how to makeFire from Ice. This is perfect for your next vacation in the Artic.
If you need something closer to home, read about how Immaturity Levels Rising. This is a good read, here is a teaser:
A “child-like flexibility of attitudes, behaviors and knowledge†is probably adaptive to the increased instability of the modern world, Charlton believes. Formal education now extends well past physical maturity, leaving students with minds that are, he said, “unfinished.â€
and heres the ugly:
The faults of youth are retained along with the virtues, he believes. These include short attention span, sensation and novelty-seeking, short cycles of arbitrary fashion and a sense of cultural shallowness.
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05.14.06
Posted in Environment at 4:46 pm by site admin
Check out the IRIS Seismic Monitor. It shows past seismic events on a world map.
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