Wednesday, August 17th, 2011
Stephan: I think this is one of the best good news stories I have read in many months. Every train company in the world will watch what is going on in Belgium. This is not a theoretical solution; this is an operational reality.
Thanks to Sam Crespi.
SCHOTEN, Belgium — Trains already have a reputation for being a very clean form of transport but Belgian commuters can now boast railways which are partially powered by solar energy.
A public-private consortium consisting of Belgian rail management company Infrabel and solar developer Enfinity has installed 16,000 solar panels on the roof of a 3.4 km (2.1 miles) long tunnel between Antwerp and the Dutch border, creating enough electricity to power 4,000 trains a year.
The unique feature of the project, which is designed to produce 3.3 gigawatt hours a year, is that the energy produced does not flow into the national grid but is used directly by the trains.
Enfinity says that by cutting out the middle man, the grid operator, it can offer electricity about 30 percent cheaper.
Infrabel benefits from being able to sell cheaper electricity to its customers, which include the Belgian railways and private high-speed operator Thalys.
Enfinity and the other investors, such as the councils of the towns of Brasschaat and Schoten which border the tunnel, expect to see a return on their joint investment of 15.7 million euros ($22.12 million) within nine years.
Enfinity says the solar panels used in the project are made by Chinese company Jinko Solar […]
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Tuesday, August 16th, 2011
STEPHEN ROBERT, - The Nation
Stephan: This is more polemic than my usual choices for SR, but the immediacy of Stephen Robert's imagery and the clarity of his reasoning trumps that consideration. This is one of the best pieces I have read on the reality of the Israeli-Palestinian situation.
To what Robert says I would add this: The Jews, a people much of whose history has taken place in the ghettoes in which they were forced to live, have done to the Palestinians exactly what was done to them.
I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts where my parents headed our local synagogue, Hadassah and the United Jewish Appeal. My first trip abroad after university, in 1962, included a week-long visit to Israel, where I was awed by its accomplishments, as well as by its vulnerability. After the Six-Day War in 1967, I basked in the courage and military prowess of my fellow Jews. The eloquence of foreign minister Abba Eban, defending his beleaguered country at the United Nations, still fills me with pride. In the years since, I’ve been a contributor and fundraiser for the UJA-Federation of New York, a governor of the American Jewish Committee, which is dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism, and a founding director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. I’ve made five additional visits to Israel since 1962, the last this summer as part of a humanitarian aid trip to East Jerusalem and the West Bank. As a Jew who has been an ardent supporter of Israel since its independence, it pains me to record what I saw there. But it is my love for Israel and for the Jewish people that drives me to speak out at […]
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Tuesday, August 16th, 2011
ROSIE MESTEL, - Los Angeles Times
Stephan: If this holds true it will fundamentally change our society in myriad ways. It puts me in mind of the change created by antibiotics when Selman Waksman coined the term in 1942 in reference to drugs like Prontosil. Or the introduction of The Pill.
Viruses are tricky for a host of reasons: There are many different types, so a drug that fights one may not fight another. They use our cells’ own machinery to replicate, so often drugs that would fight them would be toxic to our bodies.
Plus they replicate in huge numbers, and often sloppily — producing many new forms. If one of those rare new forms happens to be resistant to an anti-viral drug, it will have a selective advantage and multiply — and pretty soon you have a drug-resistant strain on your hands.
It obviously would be really useful if scientists could come up with a potent antiviral therapy that could be used against a broad array of viruses. Researchers at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory think they’re on the way to doing just that. (They published their results in the journal PLOS One.)
The strategy takes advantage of a molecule called double-stranded RNA, which is produced by many, many viruses when they infect mammalian cells. Uninfected, our cells usually don’t make this double-stranded RNA, and to some extent our cells have evolved to recognize this structure and respond. Just not potently enough. The drug created by the MIT team can enter mammalian cells and […]
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Tuesday, August 16th, 2011
LEE FANG, - Think Progress
Stephan: This organization is the active face of the corporatocracy. Think about what it is proposing. Either social progressives are going to mount a unified response or we are headed down a dark tunnel. If you read Rick Perry's book you see this vision translated into direct political action.
How about this? Perry believes we should return to Senatorial elections in accordance with Article I of the Constitution, section 3, 'The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, chosen by the legislature thereof for six Years; and each Senator shall have one Vote.' This was found to be a structural flaw in the Constitution and the 17th Amendment changed it to electing senators by popular election. The reason the change was made was it became clear that when the old system was used the power of the few increased to the expense of the many.
The Far right doesn't just want to change policies, it wants to revert to an older discredited form of government, because it makes it easier for an elite to make policy.
As this trend makes clear, your health and well-being are a distant second priority at best.
As ThinkProgress reported yesterday, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce – one of the largest and most influential big business lobbying groups in the world – fired a letter off to Cass Sunstein, administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, telling him to block the regulation of extremely toxic chemicals in consumer plastics. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the dangers of such chemicals, the chamber letter declares that that EPA ‘lacks the sound regulatory science needed to meet the statutory threshold for a restriction or ban of the targeted chemicals.
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Tuesday, August 16th, 2011
, Politico Staff - Politico
Stephan: The next time someone tells you that raising the taxes of the rich will stop the creation of jobs, and similar arguments, tell them to read this.
Warren Buffett, the third wealthiest man in the world with a net worth of about $80 billion, is demanding the U.S. government make the rich like him pay higher taxes and says they should no longer be protected like endangered ‘spotted owls.
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