Life Straw Water Purifier
With over 1.1 million people in the world who don’t have access to clean drinking water, water-borne pathogens are a huge problem for the environment and for human health. Fortunately a clever little design has come to the rescue in the form of the Lifestraw The cigar-sized plastic tool is both a feat of engineering and an inexpensive way to deliver potable water to those who need it.
Lifestraw delivers the most basic needs and purifies water from potential pathogens like typhoid, cholera, dysentery and diarrhea, becoming one of the icons of humanitarian product design- by the time the water hits your lips, it’s completely safe and potable. The Lifestraw is one of the highlights of the Cooper Hewitt’s
Design for the Other 90% exhibition, which highlights products, architecture, and technology that benefits under-privileged demographics across the globe.
Labels: News, Resourcful
China's No Car Day
Ever so often in the states we try to have a 'no purchase gas day', 'plant a tree day' or 'no smoking day', but imagine if we attempted something this extreme. September 22nd marks the first annual “
No Car Day” in China, a national campaign hoping to reduce exhaust emissions and ease traffic congestion by limiting the number of private vehicles on the roads. Over 100 cities in China will participate, leaving residents to travel by foot, bike or public transportation. In Shanghai, a third of the city’s vehicles will be ordered off the roads and private cars will be banned from driving through areas of downtown.
In 1994, authorities in Shanghai began auctioning license plates to limit the number of vehicles in the city, but the number of cars in the city continues to rise despite rising costs (one license plate recently sold for
RMB 47,000, US$6,200). While it will be hard to limit the cars on the road outside of the specified downtown areas, officials remain optimistic about No Car Day. “We hope everyone in Shanghai will contribute a little for more environmentally friendly living conditions,” said city government spokeswoman Jiao Yang.
Labels: News, Resourcful, Transportation
Things to Come
Call it a coincidence, or call it what you will, but did anyone pay attention to President Bush's speech the other night? Thursday night, the President addressed the nation, explaining the steady progress U.S. and coalition forces are making in Iraq, but also warning of the disasters that could occur if we are driven out of Iraq before our work is done. Tellingly, he mentioned Iran five times, noting that "
Iran would benefit from the chaos and would be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region" if the U.S. cuts and runs from Iraq.
This is unfortunately true, and is the exact reason why the U.N. and other U.S. allies wanted another approach to Iraq before we come a ridin into town waving our guns in the air. Turns out those little buggers will side with a terrorist organization offering 100 virgins and seniority in the next life over dirty magazines and hand gel in this life. Go Figure.
It is worth noting that General David Petraeus mentioned Iran 10 times in his testimony to Congress last week. Iran is obviously arming, training, funding and encouraging our enemies to kill American forces and strangle Iraqi democracy in its infancy. Just like we did with Iraq towards them not to long ago. Will Iran pay a price for these acts of war? Take into effect what was
released before labor day clearly, the administration is increasingly drawing attention to Iran blaming them for complicity in the deaths of our forces.
Maybe it is nothing, but I think that it is worth noting. A war with Iran is a big deal. The U.S. and it's coalition forces already have their handful. Not to mention that this could likely mean another cold war or direct war with Russia. Can anyone who reads this under the age of 26 say D_R_A_F_T. It's good to be wrong sometimes, but it is even better to Pay attention.
Labels: News, Question, Resourcful
Test Marketing
A friend of mine brought to my attention posted under Interesting Times on
The New Yorker a couple of days ago, and i thought that it was worth mentioning. I think that I should make note that I hope that the writer is completely off track, but I kind of have a churning in my gut that tells me that he may not be that far off. Let's hope his timing is premature, although the subject matter may be inevitable.
Instead of trying to come up with some paraphrase for what was written I will post the actual content taken from
The New Yorker August 31, 2007
Test Marketing
If there were a threat level on the possibility of war with Iran, it might have just gone up to orange. Barnett Rubin, the highly respected Afghanistan expert at New York University, has written an account of a conversation with a friend who has connections to someone at a neoconservative institution in Washington. Rubin can’t confirm his friend’s story; neither can I. But it’s worth a heads-up:
They [the source’s institution] have “instructions” (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this—they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.”
True? I don’t know. Plausible? Absolutely. It follows the pattern of the P.R. campaign that started around this time in 2002 and led to the Iraq war. The President’s rhetoric on Iran has been nothing short of bellicose lately, warning of “the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.” And the Iranian government’s behavior—detaining British servicemen and arresting American passport holders, pushing ahead with uranium enrichment, and, by many reliable accounts, increasing its funding and training for anti-American militias in Iraq—seems intentionally provocative. Perhaps President Ahmedinejad and the mullahs feel that they win either way: they humiliate the superpower if it doesn’t take the bait, and they shore up their deeply unpopular regime at home if it does. Preëmptive war requires calculations (and, often, miscalculations) on two sides, not just one, as Saddam learned in 2003. When tensions are this high between two countries and powerful factions in both act as if hostilities are in their interest, war is likely to follow.
It’s one thing for the American Enterprise Institute, the Weekly Standard, et al to champion a war they support. It’s another to jump like circus animals at the crack of the White House whip. If the propaganda campaign predicted by Rubin’s friend is launched, less subservient news organizations should ask certain questions, and keep asking them: Does the Administration expect the Iranian regime to fall in the event of an attack? If yes, what will replace it? If no (and it will not), why would the Administration deliberately set about to strengthen the regime’s hold on power? What will the Administration do to protect highly vulnerable American lives and interests in Iraq, Afghanistan, and around the world against the Iranian reprisals that will follow? What if Iran strikes against Israel? What will be the strategy when the Iranian nuclear program, damaged but not destroyed, resumes? How will the Administration handle the international alarm and opprobrium that would be an attack’s inevitable fallout?
If this really is a return to the early fall of 2002 all over again, then I’m fairly sure that no one at the top of the Administration is worrying about the answers. "
Labels: News, Question
