What is it about humans that make us so inclined to constantly improve everything about our culture? Darwin said it was competition. This new study says it is collaboration.
It’s quite possible that both may be right. Continue reading
HEAR THAT WHISTLE BLOWING? IT JUST MIGHT BE YOUR OWN TRAIN
Like a heavy train starting from almost a full stop, I’ve been delighted to hear about the recent decline, albeit a slow one, in unemployment rates throughout our country. We’re going on some four years of economic doldrums, but it would seem that a recovery is underway. Across the pond in Europe, however, unemployment is on a steady rise, and in many countries it stands persistently at levels that are far above what we ever experienced here. Ouch. Continue reading
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GETTING THE LED OUT … CHECK OUT THE ZEPPELIN OF WIND TURBINES
In my last post I referred to a sobering article from Smithsonian Magazine that showed a big, bad outcome in less than 20 years if we don’t start using some cool new inputs. And now I’ve run across this. And it is cool folks … soaringly cool.
What’s not to love about tapping into natural resources like wind to produce the electricity that we just can’t seem to get enough of? Well there are a few things, actually, such as the wind doesn’t always blow when and as hard as we’d like. Or that wind farms to some are kind of an eye sore. Or perhaps even more disturbingly, wind farms sometimes have the effect of working like a Cuisinart food processor on birds. Continue reading
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DIFFERENT INPUTS PRODUCE DIFFERENT OUTCOMES
In the 1890s it was common for the New York Times to devote a ton of front-page newspaper real estate to the most pressing issue of the era. The scourge? Horse dung. Where were they going to put the millions and millions of pounds of hooey produced by the thousands of draft horses that made NYC move every day? There were predictions that by the 1920s Manhattan was going to be uninhabitable. And then the 1920s came around and guess what: hardly any more horses and no messy poop problem either. Continue reading
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WHAT’S BETTER THAN CLEAN CLOTHES? CLOTHES THAT CLEAN OF COURSE
It seems like the second I wrap up a blog post about some cutting-edge design I think the public should be aware of, I find another one I want to share. This one is especially cool (just like the rest, I suppose!): Clothes that reduce gasses in the air that contribute to climate change.
Filed under Naked Civics
PRICE OF ENERGY GOT YOU ALL HOT & BOTHERED? DON’T SWEAT IT … CONVERT IT
In a world looking for just about every place to conserve energy, it’s amazing how much of it we waste simply through the production of heat that is not recaptured. Think of how hot the brakes get on your car for instance. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to capture those electrons and power your booming stereo or air conditioning? Continue reading
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A CARROT BRINGS PUBLIC POLICY INTO FOCUS
Like many of you, I’ve been watching the stories of the sorry working conditions associated with my iPhone. Apple’s Chinese manufacturer, Foxconn, had its deplorable labor practices outed and it spread, as it always does, across the planet and into the ears of nearly every current and potential Apple customer. Continue reading
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