Wind power should account for 20% of U.S. energy needs within a decade – compared with virtually nothing now – as the country’s energy needs are increasingly taken care of by sources of alternative energy, former Texas oilman-turned-wind-power-entrepreneur T. Boone Pickens told Congress last week. Speaking before the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, the legendary investor warned that crude oil prices could rocket past the $300 a barrel level within the next 10 years as global reserves decline. Pickens also was there to lobby for the construction of energy transmission lines from his Texas-based wind power Pampa Project, currently under construction, and an eventual $10 billion alternative energy project that has the potential to become the world’s largest wind farm. At a time when the U.S. economy is facing its first nationwide energy squeeze since the gasoline shortages of 1974 and 1979, Pickens is politicking for wind power. Oil prices recently hit new records near $150 a barrel, before backing off slightly, although consumers continue to worry about summer gasoline prices and winter heating-oil costs. It could end up being a global competitiveness issue, as well, since China is making wind power a priority; […]
SEATTLE — Just blocks from the University of Washington, a line of people shuffle toward a food pantry, awaiting handouts such as milk and bread. For years, the small University District pantry has offered help to the working poor and single parents in this neighborhood of campus rentals. Now rising food prices are bringing another group: Struggling college students. ‘Right now, with things the way they are, a lot of students just can’t afford to eat,’ said Terry Capleton, who started a Facebook group called ‘I Ain’t Afraid to be on Food Stamps’ when he was a student at Benedict College in South Carolina. Some of the students are working their way through college with grants, loans and part-time jobs. Others are just reluctant to ask parents for more money. ‘More and more, it’s just the typical traditional student, about 18 to 22, that’s feeling this crunch,’ said Larry Brickner-Wood, director of the Cornucopia Food Pantry at the University of New Hampshire. ‘There’s definitely been an increase in usage and demand. We’re seeing more and more students that have never used the pantry before.’ In the past year, the price of groceries has jumped […]
Three years after the president of Harvard, Lawrence H. Summers, got into trouble for questioning women’s ‘intrinsic aptitude’ for science and engineering - and 16 years after the talking Barbie doll proclaimed that ‘math class is tough’ - a study paid for by the National Science Foundation has found that girls perform as well as boys on standardized math tests. Although boys in high school performed better than girls in math 20 years ago, the researchers found, that is no longer the case. The reason, they said, is simple: Girls used to take fewer advanced math courses than boys, but now they are taking just as many. ‘Now that enrollment in advanced math courses is equalized, we don’t see gender differences in test performance,’ said Marcia C. Linn of the University of California, Berkeley, a co-author of the study. ‘But people are surprised by these findings, which suggests to me that the stereotypes are still there.’ The findings, reported in the July 25 issue of Science magazine, are based on math scores from seven million students in 10 states, tested in accordance with the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The researchers looked at the average […]
Two months ago in the Oval Office, President George W. Bush, coming to the end of a two-term presidency and presumably as expert on Israeli-Palestinian policy as he is ever going to be, was accompanied by a team of no fewer than five advisers and spokespeople during a 40-minute interview with this writer and three other Israeli journalists. In March, on his whirlwind visit to Israel, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, one of whose primary strengths is said to be his intimate grasp of foreign affairs, chose to bring along Sen. Joe Lieberman to the interview our diplomatic correspondent Herb Keinon and I conducted with him, looked to Lieberman several times for reassurance on his answers and seemed a little flummoxed by a question relating to the nuances of settlement construction. On Wednesday evening, toward the end of his packed one-day visit here, Barack Obama, the Democratic senator who is leading the race for the White House and who lacks long years of foreign policy involvement, spoke to The Jerusalem Post with only a single aide in his King David Hotel room, and that aide’s sole contribution to the conversation was to suggest that the candidate and I […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
