Solar water disinfection
http://www.sodis.ch/index_EN
A two liter plastic bottle can be made into a water treatment system simply by filling it with contaminated water and exposing it to the sun. Sodis is an organization that promotes this technology around the world.
The disinfection process can be speeded by turning aluminized mylar snack food bags inside out and making them into reflectors as two young students in Belo Horizonte, Brazil discovered: http://calais.phase2technology…
Solar bottle bulbs for daylighting
http://www.elliottlemenager.co…
Continue reading Trash Technology and Recycled Solar: Plastic BottlesIn 2002, during a long electrical shortage, at Uberaba, São Paulo, Brasil, Mr Alfredo Moser discovered a way to gather sun light in the house through plastic bottles hanging from the roof. First shown at the Globo Reporter in the 25th May 2007.
Alfredo Moser was pressed by a scarce electricity substitution and found out that he could light his house with a bottle of water filled with water and a protection cap made of camera film.The bottle is just refracting sunlight very effectively and produces an equivalent light power compared to a 50/60W lamp. In a rainy day, even without much light and direct sun, one still have some light. Scientist have now visited Moser and are looking into ways to take this concept to maximize its potential.
“The Blue Ribbon Commission on America’s Nuclear Future, in association with state regional groups that work on high-level radioactive waste policy, will be hosting public meetings to solicit feedback on the draft commission report (pdf alert: http://www.brc.gov/sites/defau… ). The participant host groups include; the Western Governors’ Association/Western Interstate Energy Board, the Southern States Energy Board, the Council of State Governments-Midwestern Office, and the Council of State Governments- Eastern Regional Conference.
“The meeting[s] will be held to present the draft Commission report (issued on July 29, 2011) and hear feedback from state, local and tribal perspectives – as well as from interested members of the public. The meeting will begin with a briefing from Commission staff on the draft report, followed by comments from elected and appointed state and regional representatives. The latter portion of the meeting will be devoted to facilitated and interactive breakout sessions open to all who attend and will conclude with a public comment period.
“All public are welcome to attend. Pre-registration is strongly encouraged but not required. Information about registration will be available in the near future. The meetings will not be video webcast. Transcripts of the meetings will be available on the website, along with all written comments anyone chooses to offer. Comments can either be made directly to the website at http://www.brc.gov or by email to: CommissionDFO@nuclear.energy.gov. Comment deadline is October 31, 2011.”
September 13, 2011
Embassy Suites
1420 Stout Street
Denver, COPreregister at: http://brc-wga.eventbrite.com
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Harvard Medical School Conference Center
77 Louis Pasteur, Longwood
Boston, MAPre-registration http://brc-ma.eventbrite.com
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Marriot Marquis
265 Peachtree Center Avenue
Atlanta, GAPre-registration: http://brc-ga.eventbrite.com
———————————-October 20, 2011
Hilton Garden Inn, 815 14th Street N.W
Washington, DCPre-register at http://brc-dc.eventbrite.com
———————————–October 28, 2011
Radisson Plaza Hotel, 35 South Seventh Street
Minneapolis, MNPre-register at http://brc-mn.eventbrite.com
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My policy is zero emissions, 100% recycling for all wastes, including low level and high level radioactive waste, and my immediate concerns for “America’s Nuclear future” are 1) how quickly we can move commercial spent fuel from wet storage, which requires a constant supply and circulation of cooling water, to dry cask storage which does not; and 2) how many of the 35 US boiling water reactors like Fukushima have spent fuel pools above buildings outside the radiation containment structures and how soon can that be remedied? Neither of these issues are top priorities in the present Blue Ribbon Commission report as they are looking at a different scale and timeframe.
Continue reading Public Hearing Schedule for “America’s Nuclear Future”: Boston, 10/12/11Two prominent Democrats on the town of Lenox’s Select Board proposed and seconded a formal motion in a ‘new business surprise’ item on August 31, 2011. The motion, if passed, would have closed public discussion of wind energy at upcoming public forums that were intended to focus on both wind and solar plans, thus limiting the municipal energy options that the public could learn about.
It so happens that the town’s Democratic Party Town Committee is meeting this evening. Might the Democratic Town Committee address and publicize its position on wind energy? One of the Select Board members who advanced the anti-wind motion is the Democratic Town Committee Chairman.
The Case for a Green-Rainbow Party Town Committee.
Continue reading Democrats Against WindMark Miller is the Green-Rainbow candidate for state representative in the Third Berkshire District (Pittsfield). In the November 2010 election he got 45% of the votes. In the October 18 special election he's running to win.
Here's a link to his first campaign video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…
Peter Vickery, Campaign Manager
413.222.8760
peter@petervickery.com
A) Narrative:
Riding home from the courthouse with my wife and one of my daughters after escaping the clutches of the media was a welcomed relief after my first day as an accused felon. But I couldn’t escape.
On the radio,the broadcaster was telling those who had heard and those who hadn’t that Councilor Turner not only was arrested but also was stripped by the Council President of all his committee responsibilities and had been invited to an executive session of the City Council the following Monday. Well, at least I’ll have a relatively quiet weekend to figure out what to do, I thought.
What I forgot was that the media never sleeps. When I got home, they were there and even though I wouldn’t talk to them, they stayed there until all our friends had left. Bright and early the next day, they came back. Different people but with the same insistence on my answering their needs until I asked the police to put up a Do Not Cross per order of the police barrier.
Throughout the day, calls from friends and family gave needed reassurance that I continued to have their support. Particularly helpful were calls from Steve Kirshbaum, School Bus Drivers Union
steward and International Action Center leader, and Aaron Tanaka, the organizer for the Boston Workers’ Alliance, an organization of unemployed workers that I had helped to organize and that was operating out of my District Office. Their question was whether I wanted them to organize a rally at City Hall on Monday. My immediate response was yes.
Cambridge, Massachusetts is the East Coast’s Berkeley, California. Its crunchy reputation — from hippie/granola to People’s Republic — is well-earned on average, but, well, a bit off-target and way out of date. You see, since rent control was thrown out by the end of 1994, Cambridge has seen a dramatic erosion of its working class communities. And going back to 1940, when the Plan E / City Manager form of government was first instituted, the elites have found it easier and easier to pull the strings on policies of social upheaval and community destruction.
While no substitute for reading Bill Cunningham’s historical backgrounder Which People’s Republic?, he manages to sum it all up in one sentence:
In Cambridge, these policies have uprooted poor and working class communities in order to cultivate, on the same soil, the University City.
And for all the feel-good progressivism that pervades this city, there is an underbelly of corruption, liberalism, and exploitation that stink up the place. The racial diversity is lovely, but quietly growing apartheid conditions and a fierce, latent racism mean that such feel-good sentiments are dangerous illusions. And while it’s lovely that we are sister cities with so many others around the world, we are on a path of social destruction here at home. I am proud and grateful to live in a city that has an active, funded Peace Commission, but I am ashamed to live in a city with a more active, better-funded city government that colludes to protect the elite university, biotech, and developer interests at the expense of its own people.
So it is with a bit of glee that I observe the unfolding drama around the wrongful-termination lawsuit that is haunting City Manager Bob Healy and the complicit City Council. It’s rare that all the corruption, hypocrisy, and racism hiding under the veneer of all the many positives that Cambridge has going for it bubble to the surface in one instance.
Continue reading Oh Cambridge, you came and you gave without takingHave seen talk among Greens and others about a move to draft Feingold to primary Obama. Not happening. Quite the opposite:
“When I said on election night last year that it `was on to 2012,’ I meant it. As I said those words I was especially thinking of the need to re-elect President Obama. I will be working to re-elect him and hope to play a significant role in that effort.”
For some,of course, this will simply be another indication that even the most progressive Democrat suffers from that Original Sin that causes them to buckle and knuckle under: My Party Uber Alles (not that Greens don’t do preciusely the same thing). My take: sane progressives know how important it to maintain what we got while creeping forward (at a pace that dismays us all, but that’s reality).
In any case,scratch him from your wish list (and mine–he’s the only one in the Democratic Party whom I felt could have pulled it off–not that we would have won).
Continue reading Feingold: “I’m Not Running for Anything”Until recently, I had not thought of sheriff offices as places for “Greens.”
But last week, at the US Green Party Annual National meeting in Alfred, New York, I saw the energy and excitement around Cheri Honkala’s candidacy for Sheriff of Philadelphia. I had seen her name here and there before, including on this website, but I had not really understood who she was or why she was running for sheriff as a Green – or why this was important for Greens in general.
Cheri Honkala has a long track record of advocacy for poor people. She is very concerned about the large numbers of people being thrown into the street due to foreclosures – a hot topic among Green advocates these days. As Sheriff, she can do something about this: “Cheri Honkala vows to serve the interests of the people instead of the interests of the banks by ‘Keeping Families in Their Homes’ until the economic climate in Philadelphia changes.”
This video of the speech she gave at that meeting says a lot:
Continue reading The Need for Green Sheriffs