Russ Root made an efficient move last year – to a new home he had built in Goshen, Conn. While it is considerably bigger than his former house, in Chenango Forks, N.Y., it will cost far less to cool and to heat. That is because he did something he had thought about ever since he built his last house, 15 years earlier: he installed a geothermal system instead of an oil-guzzling boiler. Now all the heat to warm his house is supplied by the earth beneath him. It’s pumped up, through plastic piping, in water circulating in his backyard six feet underground – where the temperature stays at about 45 degrees – and distributed by a fan through the house’s ductwork as air warmed to around 95 degrees. The bill for Mr. Root’s geothermal pump, its ground loop of piping and the house’s ductwork was just over $21,500. While a geothermal system, including labor, typically costs more than a comparable furnace and air-conditioning system, the price was about the same for Mr. Root, because the extra expense of digging and looping – $1,500 in his case – was more than offset by a $2,000 rebate from Connecticut Light […]
Dust down the slogan, it’s needed once again: Save The Whale. Twenty years on from the introduction of the international whaling moratorium that was supposed to protect them, the great whales face renewed and mortal dangers in 2006. A double threat is looming for the world’s largest mammals, many of them endangered species, in the coming year. In the biggest whale slaughter for a generation, more than 2,000 animals are likely to be directly hunted by the three countries continuing whaling in defiance of world opinion, Japan, Norway and Iceland. And in a crucial political move, this year the pro-whaling nations look likely to achieve their first majority of votes in whaling’s regulatory body, the International Whaling Commission (IWC). The first development will be brutal, bloody and shocking to many people who might be under the impression that whaling is a thing of the past. But the second may be even more significant for whale welfare in the long term, for it would pave the way for an eventual resumption of commercial whaling, which the 1986 moratorium put on indefinite hold. Japan is leading the way on both counts. Its whaling fleet is firing harpoons right […]
My best wishes to each of you. May 2006 be the most wondrous year yet, filled with joy and wonder. — Stephan
It doesn’t matter how brainy you are or how much education you’ve had – you can still improve and expand your mind. Boosting your mental faculties doesn’t have to mean studying hard or becoming a reclusive book worm. There are lots of tricks, techniques and habits, as well as changes to your lifestyle, diet and behaviour that can help you flex your grey matter and get the best out of your brain cells. And here are 11 of them. Smart drugs Does getting old have to mean worsening memory, slower reactions and fuzzy thinking? AROUND the age of 40, honest folks may already admit to noticing changes in their mental abilities. This is the beginning of a gradual decline that in all too many of us will culminate in full-blown dementia. If it were possible somehow to reverse it, slow it or mask it, wouldn’t you? A few drugs that might do the job, known as “cognitive enhancement”, are already on the market, and a few dozen others are on the way. Perhaps the best-known is modafinil. Licensed to treat narcolepsy, the condition that causes people to suddenly fall asleep, it has notable effects in healthy […]
SEATTLE, Washington — Roughly every three seconds, the equivalent of a large dump truck load of lava — 10 cubic yards — oozes into the crater of Mount St. Helens, and with the molten rock comes a steady drumfire of small earthquakes. The unremitting pace, going on for 15 months now, is uncommon, said U.S. Geological Survey geologist Dave Sherrod. Experts say it is unclear what the activity signifies or how much longer it will continue. “One view of this eruption is that we’re at the end of the eruption that began in 1980,” Sherrod said. “If it hadn’t been so cataclysmic … it might instead have gone through 30 or 40 years of domebuilding and small explosions.” St. Helens’ violent May 18, 1980, eruption blasted 3.7 billion cubic yards of ash and debris off the top of the mountain. Fifty-seven people died in the blast, which left a gaping crater in place of the perfect, snowclad cone that had marked the original 9,677-foot peak known as “America’s Mount Fuji.” St. Helens — now 8,325 feet — rumbled for another six years, extruding 97 million cubic yards of lava onto the crater floor in a […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
