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September 2014

People

Lights goes off-grid to get her Mojo back

Hanging out with hippies in a New Mexico hot spring isn’t the first place you might picture Canadian electropoop singer-songwriter Lights — finding inspiration for her week-old new disc, Little Machines.

The 27-year-old songstress — born Valerie Poxleitner– had a case of writer’s block due to increased expectations after the release of her 2009 debut, The Listening, her 2011 sophomore album, Siberia, and its 2012 acoustic version.

So she set off for Taos, N.M., last August to get her mojo back.

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Pro-democracy protesters go off-grid to evade police crackdown

HONG KONG (CNN) — It was 10 PM on Sunday and 22-year-old Michelle Li, a dancer, saw Facebook updates of police tear gassing pro-democracy protesters in downtown Hong Kong. Within minutes, she followed online postings to the protest site itself — and soon had tear gas fired at her as well.

Only then did she peel her eyes from her mobile device. “While we were waging battle, we screamed out news to each other,” she tells CNN. “But before and after, I’d update people on the internet.”

It’s a high-tech response to a high-stress situation. Armed with top-of-the-line phones on some of the world’s fastest mobile networks, Hong Kong’s young protesters are able to organize themselves at a lightning pace older generations of activists could have only dreamed of.

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Garlic festival

ORANGE, MASS, 28 Sept — Thousands of people began making their way to a field in the middle of nowhere Saturday to enjoy the 16th annual North Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival — a two-day celebration of music, garlicky cuisine, crafts, arts, family games, improv theater and garlic.

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Community

The ultimate bachelor pad on wheels

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Brett Sutherland built the ultimate bachelor pad on wheels to suit his need for a home, balancing cost with useability without sacrificing style, this is one of the best looking tiny homes on wheels I have seen. Brett didn’t care for the tiny homes he had seen before, he felt like they were too cramped for his liking, wanting lots of head room for air flow, especially in his bedroom loft area, the design he created looks great and is very functional, there is lots of air movement as well as light.

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Professor Camilo Mora predicts 5 BILLION deaths through global warming by 2050
Land

Alaska to be the next Florida?

Climate change will make the most desirable places to live currently, uninhabitable by the middle of this Century – according to a scientific paper in Nature magazine last year, and recently picked up by the New York Times snoozepaper.

California and the Southwest will be hit by drought and wildfire. The East Coast and Southeast will suffer appalling heat waves, hurricanes, and rising sea levels.

Policy makers and city planners are calculating when the future climate will depart from its normal variability. How much time do we have to act? A decade? A century?

“If you do not like it hot and do not want to be hit by a hurricane, the options of where to go are very limited,” said Camilo Mora, a geography professor at the University of Hawaii and lead author of the paper in Nature predicting that unprecedented high temperatures will become the norm worldwide by 2047.

“The best place really is Alaska,” he added. “Alaska is going to be the next Florida by the end of the century.”

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Retired Engineer pimps his RV

Thomas “Tim” Lemieux lives in an unlikely showcase for green energy: a 1997 Winnebago recreational vehicle.

Scale a narrow ladder up the side of the motorhome, and a compact rooftop solar farm comes into view. Photovoltaic panels adorn the top, and even the front hood.

They are linked to a series of batteries that help distill and cool water for drinking. Excess water and power feed an evaporative “swamp” cooler that keeps the cabin comfy.

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The battle for DC power starts in Pittsburgh

2014 OCT 4 Investment Weekly News — PITTSBURGH-

Is Pittsburgh to be home of a second War of the Currents?

In the late 1880s, Pittsburgh native son George Westinghouse (using the work and genius of Nikola Tesla) won the campaign to base the United States’ electric power grid on alternating current (AC). Thomas Edison, a proponent of direct current (DC), tried to paint AC as dangerous, but as things stood at the time, an AC grid was cheaper and more efficient, could carry electricity over longer distances, and was easier to build-so it prevailed.

The University of Pittsburgh’s Bopaya Bidanda, John Camillus, and Gregory Reed think that it might be time to redirect our attention to direct current.

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New hybrid generator

UK Digger and Tractor manufacturer, JCB has launched its first hybrid diesel-electric generator set, supposedly intended for the off-grid market. But it does not allow for renewable energy inputs.

JCB claim to have developed an “intelligent,” hybrid generator. Based on the QS generators, there are 24 high-capacity, deep-cycle battery cells stored in the base of the unit. The batteries are charged by the generator itself during periods of higher load, when the engine is operating most efficiently.

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How to keep solar generators running at night

* Promises more effective thermal heat storage than current methods

* Company expects quick market penetration

* Says can match fossil fuel-fired power plants on price

NEGEV DESERT, Israel, Sept 22 (Reuters) – An Israeli solar power company, Brenmiller Energy, says it has developed a new, more efficient way to store heat from the sun that could give a boost to the thermal solar power industry by enabling plants to run at full capacity night and day.

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Community

Picking the wrong plant

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Since having such a wet rainy season, as compared to the previous several rainy seasons, I have seen many more species of wild plants growing, specifically wildflowers. Normally I’m not interested in growing flowers, I don’t want just a pretty face, I generally require any plants I plant and tend to do something useful for me, it needs to be edible and/or medicinal…

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Greedy power companies in Queensland

By David French – journalist on the Queensland Times (a greedy newspaper)

RATHER than embracing change, the owner-custodians of Queensland’s power industry have treated it as a cash cow. They have milked the assets for cash, failing to invest in generation, and over-investing in distribution. Those lurks ended, now they are going to hive off the poles and the wires.

At the same time the overall industry has been the domain of engineers and unions, none which (generally and sadly) is particularly well versed in understanding the characteristics of markets.

Let me help all participants with a few facts:

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Community

Bobbage bridge update

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Strange name for a title, Bobbage, well if you have followed me for any length of time, you will know that Bobbage is what we call the thing that PB (Primitive Bob) does, he takes things that most would toss in the trash and makes the most wonderful (and wondrous) things with it. Today we will talk about the bridge he is building for us.

This isn’t just any bridge, not a small garden bridge, but one that will not only take foot traffic, but will hold up to trucks driving across it, one at a time of course. :)

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