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Straw Centrifuge Pump

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v…

A lot of modern junk – plastic bottles, cups, refills, rubber slippers, pens etc can be reused in many creative ways to make joyous learning aids.  Children could make more than a dozen delightful pumps using all kinds of odd stuff.  For instance, push two film cans on the ends of a 15 cm piece of old bicycle tube to make an air pump.  The opening/closing valves are made using bits of sticky tape.  This high quality pump can easily inflate a balloon!  Or else make a scintillating sprinkler within a minute.  Poke a broom stick in the middle of a plastic straw.  Make two half cuts 2 cm away from the centre.  Bend the arms and secure them in place with some tape to make a triangle.  Twirl this triangle in water to make a most delightful centrifuge or sprinkler.

Arvind Gupta has been building science teaching toys from trash materials since 1978 and for the Children’s Science Centre at Inter-University Centre for  Astronomy & Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune University, Pune 411007 Maharashtra India since October 2003.

On his website

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com

you can find hundreds of toys children can make for themselves with easily available materials

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com…

He even has video demonstrations of many designs

http://www.arvindguptatoys.com…

“The best thing a child can do with a toy is break it !”

“And somewhere there are engineers

Helping others fly faster than sound.

But, where are the engineers

Helping those who must live on the ground?”

Continue reading Trash Technology for Education and Survival
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My (short) video here:

People’s Rally for Clean Air  Boston MA 5 20 2011 from michael horan on Vimeo.

No reason to reinvent the wheel when Josh Lynch has already provided a good summary:

Today I got to stand next to more than 50 Massachusetts mothers, children, workers, community leaders, and people of faith to kick off something truly unique – a “crowd-funded” citizen’s campaign to hold Senator Scott Brown accountable for voting to gut the Clean Air Act. At 12:00pm on the sidewalk in front of the JFK Federal Building in Boston, also known as Scott Brown’s district office, we held banners and puppets of Scott Brown and his fat cat supporters “Coal” and “Oil, signs, and a blow-up of the new ad our friends and neighbors funded.

The text of the ad read: “Senator Brown: On April 6th you voted to gut the Clean Air Act. Was it because dirty energy companies and their corporate front groups poured more than $1.9 million into your campaign last year? Are you working for people or Big Polluters?” Interested in joining us in funding the ad? Check it out here.

Right after the rally Marla took our message up the JFK elevators to Senator Brown’s office, delivering word of the rally along with 103 postcards and 240 letters from members of the Massachusetts Council of Churches and Mass Interfaith Power and Light. The messages called on Senator Brown to support the EPA’s ability to regulate carbon dioxide next time a vote comes up on the Clean Air Act and ensure low income people have access to weatherization and green jobs.

At 6:30pm tonight at a podium inside the Newton Marriott Hotel Scott Brown will host a “Women for Brown” fundraiser (with a $1000 minimum) alongside the brand new Women For Brown coalition, a group created to respond to the League of Women Voters’ ads calling Scott Brown out for his April 6th vote to gut the Clean Air Act. We know what Scott Brown is going to say at that podium tonight: “Today in front of my office the political attack machine was at it again, playing politics as usual with the public.” He’ll talk about the “special interest groups” who are attacking him for trying to defend jobs. Yes, he will raise some money tonight. But the more Scott Brown digs in his heels, the more votes he will lose.

Today’s rally was no “political attack machine,” as Brown calls people who criticize him. Today’s rally was everyday-Massachusetts – a state where you don’t get to draw a line between jobs and the environment, the economy and climate change. People here across the political spectrum and in all corners of the state understand the threat of climate change and know that the jobs of tomorrow and today are in clean energy.

Continue reading Boston Area Environmental Activists Pillory Scott Brown in the Streets

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Senate Ways & Means FY2012 budget came out out today, looking a lot like the House and governor’s budgets. Compared to last year,  cities & towns would see $65M less in local aid and schools would see $81M less in C70.

According to the quick on the draw Mass Budget and Policy center :

The Fiscal Year (FY) 2012 Senate Ways & Means (SWM) budget proposes $834.0 million in local aid to cities and towns (Unrestricted General Government Local Aid), a decrease of $65.0 million, or 7.2 percent, from the current FY 2011 budget. This proposal is identical to the House and Governor’s FY 2012 proposals.

The hit to our cities and towns is even worse when you look at K-12 Chapter 70 Aid:

The FY 2012 SWM budget proposes to fund Chapter 70 education aid to local and regional school districts at $3.99 billion, a decrease of $81.5 million from current FY 2011 funding levels (which include $221.1 million in federal recovery money that was available to districts in FY 2011). This proposal is essentially identical to the House and Governor’s proposals.

That’s $146.5 Million for just those two cuts to public services in the proposed budget. There are many more cuts besides these, but  here’s the real kick in the backside to go along with those first two:

According to the State Department of Revenue , $146M also happens to be the amount our legislators propose to reward Fidelity&Co for still another round of Massachusetts job cuts! http://bit.ly/hYFvmL

Apparently it is more important to reward infidelity than to sustain our cities, towns, and schools.

Anybody still think our priorities are our legislators? Whatever happened to spending public dollars on public services for the public good?

….

Continue reading Senate proposes to reward inFidelity, punish cities, towns and schools
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If you ever had any illusions that you live in a democracy, the testimony at the DiMasi trial should lay them to rest.  The trial is trying to decide if DiMasi goes to prison.  But as State House News reporter Kyle Cheney noted “It was the rare moments of agreement between prosecutors and defense attorneys that were often the most jarring: If you want to win the speaker’s ear, no matter how worthy the cause, hiring a well-connected lobbyist is a must. If the speaker wants something in the budget, it will appear in the budget – or in a bond bill, or in a supplemental spending bill – Ways and Means Committee be damned.”

Continue reading A Clear Message From the Courtroom
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Representative Horan and Senator Rosenberg:

I was unable to submit my testimony to the Redistricting Comm. because my statement was too long!!!

The # of characters in my testimony was 10,815. The maximum amount of thought and opinion is 2,000 characters.

This is an example of your shameful procedures. Please fix this.

Below is my testimony. Please add my statement to the list of those who wish to publicly testify to the committee.

Thanks,

Mike Heichman    mikeheichman@verizon.net    617-265-8143

Continue reading TESTIMONY TO THE MA JOINT COMMITTEE ON REDISTRICTING

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Every now and then I sit down to write a parody, only to find out it has already been written. Sometimes by the very group I intended to parody! But this latest initiative of the group Coal is Killing Kids and the Yes Men portraying the coal industry as seeking to reach out to American youngsters with asthma “to help them keep their heads high” so surpasses what I could have ever have imagined that it literally takes my breath away.

Peabody Energy (formerly Peabody Coal) is depicted offering free cartoon-character-decorated inhalers to children living within 200 miles of a coal-fired power plant, plus an entire $10 towards the life-time cost of the inhaler medicine the kids now require thanks to the coal plant’s emissions.

In this alternate cartoon universe, the coal industry demonstrates its concern for those who are suffering asthmatic reactions not by cleaning up its act but by offering a one-time remedy for a chronic disease!

Back in the real universe, however, their actions are even worse.  

Continue reading Clean Coal Stands Tall In Defense Of Childhood Asthma
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Mother’s Day Proclamation: Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts,

whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by

irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking

with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be

taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach

them of charity, mercy and patience.

We women of one country will be too tender of those of another

country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs. From

the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with our own.

It says “Disarm, Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance

of justice.”

Blood does not wipe our dishonor nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons

of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a

great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women,

to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the

means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each

bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,

but of God.

In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a

general congress of women without limit of nationality may be

appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at

the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the

alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement

of international questions, the great and general interests of

peace.

Julia Ward Howe

Boston

1870

Continue reading Happy Mother’s Day!
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From the Green-Rainbow Party

May 5, 2011

BOSTON – This year’s state budget has revealed a yawning gap between the priorities of state legislature and the priorities of the people of Massachusetts, according to Nat Fortune, who will testify today as a Green-Rainbow Party representative at a State House hearing on budget measures.  Fortune noted that while schools, health care, social services, and environmental protection are being severely cut this year, legislators have seen fit to largely protect tax giveaways to businesses with strong lobbying presence on Beacon Hill.

“How did spending public tax dollars on public services for the public good become a lower priority than subsidizing private industries?” asked Fortune.

Continue reading BIPARTISAN BUDGET AGREEMENT REVEALS BEACON HILL’S MISPLACED PRIORITIES
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