Check It Out

Links to cool places or things.

There are 1,515 posts filed in Check It Out (this is page 58 of 152).

Renewables critics sound off :: WRAL.com

Fossil-energy advocates are desperately pleading with the NCGA to revoke our state’s clean energy standards called REPS (Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard). Thankfully, they have an uphill battle as large-scale solar projects become a property-tax bonanza for the rural areas where they get built, instantly boosting the property values without requiring any public infrastructure investment.

I used to be worried about attempts like the Koch-backed American Energy Alliance but not anymore. They are this century’s buggy-whip makers, propping up a rapidly-dying industry: coal.

The writing’s on the wall for dirty-energy producers. Clean energy is kicking their ass and it’s only going to get worse for them. Hey Koch brothers, you have no chance of stopping the clean energy revolution, you’d be better off learning how to take advantage of it.

Raleigh, N.C. — Opponents of renewable energy programs held an hour-long roundtable at the Legislative Building on Wednesday about their concerns.The event was sponsored by the American Energy Alliance, the political lobbying arm of the Institute for Energy Policy, a conservative think tank funded by Charles and David Koch. The event moderator was Tom Pyle, president of the AEA and the IEP, and a former Koch Industries lobbyist.

Source: Renewables critics sound off :: WRAL.com

Trying to follow what is going on in Syria and why? This comic will get you there in 5 minutes.

I was not aware until now of the role climate change has played in the Syrian crisis. Pentagon studies have long argued the destabilizing nature of climate change will lead to increased conflict as people fight over diminishing natural resources. We can expect more of this as our environment continues its collapse.

Wars are complex. They come out of nowhere and all of a sudden, people you’ve never heard of are killing each other on the evening news. Here’s what you need to know about the war in Syria — and it’s not oil or religion. It’s something that we’re all creating together.

Source: Trying to follow what is going on in Syria and why? This comic will get you there in 5 minutes.

10 Military Habits That Make Service Members Stand Out

We all know the tell-tale signs of a military service member: high-and-tight haircut, camo backpack, polo shirt and cargo shorts combination, unit t-shirts or hats, decals on cars, and of course, “Affliction” t-shirts. These are all easy ways to spot military folks in public places. And while many of us try not to stand out, there are still subtle indicators. Most civilians would never notice these things, but they are dead giveaways to those who have served. Here are the top ten.

Source: 10 Military Habits That Make Service Members Stand Out

The Preeclampsia Puzzle – The New Yorker

A good article about preeclampsia.

In June, 2000, Ananth Karumanchi, a thirty-one-year-old kidney specialist at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, read an article in Nature about preeclampsia, a poorly understood disorder that affects about five per cent of pregnant women. In the developing world, preeclampsia is one of the leading causes of maternal death; it is thought to kill more than seventy-five thousand women each year. In the United States, where treatment is more readily available, few women die of the disease, but complications—including rupture of the liver, kidney failure, hemorrhage, and stroke—can cause lasting health problems. (In rare cases, patients with preeclampsia develop seizures or lapse into a coma; this is called eclampsia.) The only cure is delivery. “If a woman develops preeclampsia near term, then she is induced to have a delivery or undergoes a Cesarean section,” Benjamin Sachs, the chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Beth Israel Deaconess, told me. “In most cases, as soon as she is delivered we know she will get better. But, if preeclampsia develops early in the pregnancy, then we have a huge challenge, because we have two patients: the mother and the baby. If you deliver the baby early to spare the mother, then you put the baby at risk for the complications of prematurity; if you wait, then the mother can have severe complications and go on to eclampsia.”

Source: The Preeclampsia Puzzle – The New Yorker

100 Men Of Color Greeted Kids On Their First Day Of School To Make Incredibly Powerful Point

Inspiring.

There’s a certain stereotype that follows men of color collectively, wherever they go, no matter what they do. It’s the notion that they’re deadbeats, thugs or just simply not that involved in their community.

DeVaughn Ward and Pastor AJ Johnson know these stereotypes all too well, so they planned an event that puts those notions to shame — just in time for the first day of school. After seeing a group of men in Georgia greet kids on their first day, Ward and Johnson knew they had to bring the idea to their hometown of Hartford, Conn.

The men created a call-out group on their social media pages called “Calling All Brothers” and asked the men of color they knew to tag others. Their goal? Form a group large enough to greet the children of Martin Luther King Jr. Elementary School on their first day. And do it wearing suits.

Source: 100 Men Of Color Greeted Kids On Their First Day Of School To Make Incredibly Powerful Point

McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Open Letters: An Open Letter to 17-Year-Old Boys Who Just Discovered The Doors.

Dear 17-year-old Doors discoverers,

Well, this was probably unavoidable. You are about to think some very dumb stuff about poetry, women, and dead Native Americans. This is a tradition, or affliction, that has been passed down to at least three generations of 17-year-old white boys and then foisted upon 15-year-old-white girls for just as many decades— girls your own age are way past this shit, stick with the sophomores. You are going to abuse the word “shaman” in ways that will violate international torture conventions. You’re going to think that something important and meaningful is happening to you, even though you haven’t left your room for three days. You are going to sit at the feet of the master of total self-regard, one James Douglass Morrison, the “Lizard King,” and think yourself the Prince of Salamanders and heir to a throne carved from your own bullshit.

Source: McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Open Letters: An Open Letter to 17-Year-Old Boys Who Just Discovered The Doors.

Aphantasia: A life without mental images – BBC News

Interesting.

Close your eyes and imagine walking along a sandy beach and then gazing over the horizon as the Sun rises. How clear is the image that springs to mind?

Most people can readily conjure images inside their head – known as their mind’s eye.

But this year scientists have described a condition, aphantasia, in which some people are unable to visualise mental images.Niel Kenmuir, from Lancaster, has always had a blind mind’s eye.

He knew he was different even in childhood. “My stepfather, when I couldn’t sleep, told me to count sheep, and he explained what he meant, I tried to do it and I couldn’t,” he says.

Source: Aphantasia: A life without mental images – BBC News

The Strange Saga of the MH370 Plane Part — NYMag

Speaking of MH-370, remember that Boeing 777 wing flapiron that washed ashore last month on Reunion Island? It turns out the ID plate on it is curiously missing, and the wing part appears to have been marinated somehow to artificially boost its barnacle growth.

This mystery gets stranger and stranger.

Tomorrow marks one month since a piece of a Boeing 777 washed up on the Indian Ocean island of La Réunion, but French investigators are no closer to confirming that the part came from missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. In fact, leaks from within the investigation suggest that the part might not have come from the plane at all.

Source: The Strange Saga of the MH370 Plane Part — NYMag

Cold Fusion Heats Up: Fusion Energy and LENR Update | David H. Bailey

A friend forwarded this HuffPost story on cold fusion research and I was surprised to learn that a Raleigh-based company called Industrial Heat is said to have working technology.

Perhaps the most startling (and most controversial) report is by an Italian-American engineer-entrepreneur named Andrea Rossi. Rossi claims that he has developed a tabletop reactor that produces heat by an as-yet-not-fully-understood LENR process.Rossi has gone well beyond laboratory demonstration; he claims that he and the private firm Industrial Heat, LLC of Raleigh, North Carolina, USA, have actually installed a working system at an (undisclosed) commercial customer’s site.

According to Rossi and a handful of others who have observed the system in operation, it is producing 1 MWatt continuous net output power, in the form of heat, from a few grams of “fuel” in each of a set of modest-sized reactors in a network. The system has now been operating for approximately six months, as part of a one-year acceptance test. Rossi and IH LLC are in talks with Chinese firms for large-scale commercial manufacture.

Source: Cold Fusion Heats Up: Fusion Energy and LENR Update | David H. Bailey

Tam Hunt: Do Electric Vehicles Lead to Environmental Benefits?

Here’s a very comprehensive rebuttal of Stephen Holland’s recent UNC-G study concluding that electric vehicles are only marginally better for the environment.

A number of studies have come out in recent years questioning the conventional wisdom that electric vehicles are better for the environment than efficient traditional cars.

A recent study from a team that included Stephen Holland of the University of North Carolina Greensboro as first author makes a remarkable statement, that “electric vehicles, on average, generate greater environmental externalities than gasoline vehicles.” The study compares electric vehicles (EVs) with gasoline vehicles and finds EVs wanting.

I’ll examine this study in some detail here to show why EVs are, in fact, very good for the environment.

Source: Tam Hunt: Do Electric Vehicles Lead to Environmental Benefits?