cars
sastyk | October 4, 2011My friend Alice hosted an urban permaculture class at her house a few years ago. She lives in an brownstone in a downtown neighborhood of Albany with her husband and two young kids, and the occasional housemate. Two permaculture design teachers and a host of enthusiastic students came together to create several designs for how she might optimize resource use and productivity at her home. She and her family chose one of the plans, and set to work on a number of inside and outside projects, including transforming her small, sunny backyard into an urban garden, full of food producing plants.…
sastyk | September 14, 2010If you've ever done a long car trip with four kids - 10+ hours up and back, with multiple stops along the way, you know just how I feel.
The trip was wonderful - I got to talk about food and agriculture right in front of Thomas Jefferson's own vegetable garden, got to let my kids see enormously cool things they would otherwise have had no chance to view, and had a wonderful time visiting friends and family. We made some wonderful, wonderful new friends - including our hosts in Charlottesville who were insane enough to take in our whole family, sight unseen!
99% of the time, I take Amtrak…
drorzel | July 28, 2010Back at the start of the summer, I asked a question about automotive thermodynamics: On a hot day, is it better to open your car windows a crack when making a short stop, or leave them closed? For a long term-- say, leaving your car parked outside all day-- I hope everyone will agree that leaving the windows slightly open is the better call, but the answer isn't as clear for a short stop. There might well be some time during which the open-window car heats up faster as warm air from outside gets in, while the closed-window car holds in the air-conditioned goodness longer.
It occurred to me…
sastyk | July 28, 2010Pursuant to my previous post, today's project in the decision making process for Eric and I (we'll finally see the inside of the house tomorrow) is to find how long the commute to Eric's job and our synagogue is. These two things make up about half of our total driving - only half simply because we are very fortunate, and Eric has managed to work his academic schedule so he's only on campus three days per week.
We realized last night that the house is further from SUNY Albany and our synagogue in Niskayuna than we'd realized - we'd figured it would be about the same since the house is only…
sastyk | March 2, 2010One of the pleasures of blogging here has been the focus that this community has on issues of public health. Doing everything we can to maintain the health and well-being of populations through a shift into a different model of life is an issue that is deeply important to me - I don't always agree with everyone who writes here on these issues (and, of course, they don't always agree with each other ;-)), but I am struck with admiration of the degree of concern for the public welfare expressed by my Science Blog Colleagues.
Which is why I'm being so presumptuous (since I am a science writer,…
cagapakis | January 28, 2010Riversimple, a small UK-based company, has designed a tiny, relatively cheap, and remarkably open-source hydrogen fuel cell car. The car will not be available for sale, but people will be able to lease it, with the lease agreement including maintenance, fuel, and the eventual recycling of the car. This unique business model allows for the company to manage sustainability for the life of the car. Check out the video below to see the car in action:
Hydrogen, of course is still hard to make, and there aren't many sustainable hydrogen production options. My lab is working on ways to make…
razib | June 1, 2009G.M. to Seek Bankruptcy and a New Start:
It also places the government in uncharted territory as a business owner, as it takes a 60 percent ownership stake in the company during its restructuring.
The commanding heights are back. We're socializing the means of production. Meanwhile, California is going back to the 19th century:
Nearly all of the billions of dollars in cuts the administration has proposed would affect programs for poor Californians, although prisons and schools would take hits, as well.
There wasn't even a mention of bankruptcy, but many American states did go into default in…
terrasig | August 3, 2006Thanks to all for coming over and sharing your MTV memories earlier this week. Our SciBling editor and cat-herder, Katherine, came across with a very vivid list of great memories and Orac was able to bitch about being ever so slightly older than me. Then, Karmen surprised me by intimating that cable TV actually existed in Colorado in 1981, at least at her Grandma's house.
I said I was going to tell you some of my general recollections of MTV, but I have very specific memories of this very week 25 years ago thanks to my personal archivist, number one fan, and all-around keeper of my life…