Solar Trees

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There is an old joke in Oklahoma, that in the summer time, you can tell the best parking place not by which one is closest to the door, bu which one has the best all day shade!

Envision Solar makes a solar array mounted on a central pole. On the top of the canopy is mounted the solar and under the canopy is SHADE! In addition, the central pole can be equipped with Envision Solar's CleanCharge solar charging stations using the Coulomb ChargePoint for both electric and plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.

Every parking lot in the sunbelt could use these to great advantage. In fact, Dell headquarters in Round Rock, Texas (north of Austin on IH 35) installed enough to provide 50 covered parking slots. And provide 130 kW of energy. Pretty neat.


Seems to me, my gentle snowflakes, that if I ran the Sonic Corp, since I already have the covered parking slots, I would look into this application pretty quick. Cheaper energy, government tax credits (both Federal and state), impress my customers with my "green" efforts, what's not to like? I don't know the franchise structure, but if each Sonic is individually owned, and if I were one of the owners, I would look into this for my local franchise.
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Your Tax Dollars at Work

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Now, this is what stem cell research should be about!

A technique pioneered in the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Laboratory of Dr. Jeremy Mao, the Edward V. Zegarelli Professor of Dental Medicine at Columbia University Medical Center, can orchestrate stem cells to migrate to a three-dimensional scaffold infused with growth factor, holding the translational potential to yield an anatomically correct tooth in as soon as nine weeks once implanted.

Dr. Ira B. Lamster, dean of the College of Dental Medicine, stated: "This research provides an example of what is achievable when today's biology is applied to common clinical problems. Dr. Mao's research is a look into the future of dental medicine."

This research was supported by NIH [National Institutes of Health] ARRA Funding via 5RC2 DE020767 ...

Or we could just all be more like sharks.
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Profits For TransOcean From the Gulf Coast Oil Spill

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It seems that TransOcean has already turned a tidy profit from the explosion of the DeepWater Horizon rig.

AND the insurance policy has already partially paid off!

LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Transocean Ltd. ... , the owner of the rig leased by BP PLC ... which is currently leaking oil into the Gulf of Mexico, made a $270 million profit from insurance payouts after the disaster, the Sunday Times reports.

The amount, revealed during a conference call to analysts, was made because its insurance policy for Deepwater Horizon rig was greater than the value of the rig itself, the paper reports. The Times says Transocean has already received cash payment of $401 million and the rest is due in the coming weeks.

I will bet that the policies insuring the lives of the men who died have not yet paid their beneficiaries.

So, once more the top 1% of the Have Mores wring more and more blood out of those Americans who actually make things and make things work.
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Hallibuton Shares

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Nice of them to share.

Interesting

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Well, well, well.

A former Shell Oil executive told FastCompany.com that a solution to cleaning up the Gulf Coast Oil spill is right under BP’s noses.

John Hofmeister, the former president of Shell Oil, and Nick Pozzi, a former pipeline engineering and operations project manager say that BP could use their very own supertankers to suck up the spilled oil in the gulf and possibly salvage it for sale down the line. The tactic was proven effective during a Saudi spill in the 90’s — it sucked up 85% of the renegade oil. BP has tankers already sitting in the Gulf of Mexico

Hofmeister thinks BP is turning a blind eye to their solution because they don’t want to tie up their supertankers in the cleanup efforts.Using their tankers for cleanup would mean tying up a huge part of their money-making process, not to mention they’d have to unload them of the oil that they’re holding first.

Greed is good. ..... Really?
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Just Another Rant--

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Goehring? Really? Goehring? And people are listening to him? Really?

If the progressive movement--and liberals in particular--are so relentlessly evil and have consistently taken America down the wrong path, what about the myriad things that make all Americans' lives--liberal and conservative alike--so much better?

• minimum wages
• maximum hours
• civil rights
• women’s rights
• Voting Rights Act
• regulation of banks and stock brokerage firms
• Child Labor Act
• regulation of the stock exchanges
• labor rights – collective bargaining - at least before Reagan and WalMart
  
• National Parks and monuments -Death Valley, Everglades, Blue Ridge, Boulder Dam, Bull Run, Mount Rushmore, Cape Cod
• Tennessee Valley Authority
• Rural electrification
• the GI Bill providing education to thousands upon thousands of veterans
• Housing loans for vets
• FHA housing loans
• The SBA (Small Business Administration)
• Unemployment insurance
• legal alcohol
• Medicare
• Peace Corp
• Social Security
• National Endowment for the Arts
• health and safety on the job (just think, those 11 roughnecks and 29 miners who died, would be alive now, if safety regulations had been followed)

– Samuel Gompers-- "We want more schoolhouses and less jails; more books and less arsenals; more learning and less vice; more leisure and less greed; more justice and less revenge; in fact, more of the opportunities which cultivate our better natures.”

Big business is not in the business of seeing human beings as anything more than interchangeable cogs in a machine to be used and discarded at will. The top 1% of the Have-Mores have wrung, and will wring, more and more blood out of those Americans who actually make things and make things work.

The Conservatives do not seem to be for anything. Think of John Boehner speaking from the floor of the House: They are the people of NO!
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A Prairie

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Emily Dickinson:

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,

One clover, and a bee,

And revery.

The revery alone will do,

If bees are few.”

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So, What Are They Waiting For?

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Yuka Yoneda, over at inhabitat gives us the Top 5 Green Ways to Clean Up Oil Spills.

CONTAIN IT WITH A GIANT UNDERWATER DOME

It may sound insane but desperate times call for desperate measures and BP engineers have begun working on an enormous dome that they propose could be lowered over the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. They are hoping that the dome could contain the 1,000 barrels of oil floating towards the Louisiana coastline, but admit that it will take at least 2 weeks – precious time that we can’t afford – to construct. [They are actually working on something like this right now.]

SOP IT UP WITH MUSHROOMS AND HAIR

Mushrooms and hair – not a combo that you’d like to find in a sandwich, but mats made from the mixture offer a totally organic and effective way to sop up oil on water. The technique isn’t just speculation either – it was actually utilized in the Cosco Busan oil spill of ‘07!

UTILIZE BACTERIA TO EAT UP THE OIL

Did you know that the key to ridding the oceans of oil may already lie in underneath its surface? Bioremediation — using naturally present microorganisms to clean up oil spills — makes use of bacteria living in the ocean who actually “eat” the oil when it enters their natural habitat. Adding sulfate or nitrate fertilizers to the microorganism population causes them to multiply beyond their natural state and eat up the toxic metals invading their home at up to five times the rate that they would without assistance.

SOAK IT UP WITH HYPER ABSORBANT PEAT MOSS

A Norwegian company has come up with a totally natural way to soak up nasty oil slicks – good old’ peat moss! The super absorbent moss they’ve developed can be scattered on the spill to absorb the oil, and then scooped right out of the water along with the oil.

MAKE OIL-ABSORBING MATS OUT OF PET HAIR AND PANTYHOSE

Most pet owners have a LOT of animal hair and fur floating around their homes. San Francisco-based non-profit Matter of Trust is asking dog and cat owners and groomers to donate their pets’ locks (as well as their own) to stuff inside of used pantyhose to create mats and booms that are perfect for soaking up oil.

Ahhh, First Amendment Rights

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"Oil-covered birds on fire. Another name for dinner."
-- Rush Limbaugh
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