Stephan: Here is some good news that has the potential to change your life in the way that the introduction of plastics changed the lives of your grandparents. A major deal.
3-D printed groid models such as this one were used to test the strength and mechanical properties of a new lightweight material. Credit: Melanie Gonick/MIT
Many scientists consider graphene to be one of the most potentially useful materials ever created. The atom-thick chain of carbon atoms are strong, light, and promise many applications, from energy storage to pollution removal to waterproof coating.
While graphene has been studied since the 1940s, scientists have had considerable trouble constructing it into a structurally useful form on a three-dimensional level. But now, scientists at MIT have figured out how to build up graphene into useful, 3-D shapes with the potential to be lighter and stronger than steel.
The new research marks an important step forward for the material. The hexagonal structure is essentially an “unrolled” carbon nanotube only an atom thick, usually only functional on a two-dimensional level. Despite this limitation, graphene is more than 100 times stronger than steel, and converting that two-dimensional strength into a structure usable for three-dimensional building materials has for years been something of a holy grail for graphene researchers. And now, scientists may be one step […]
Stephan: Louisiana is going to be profoundly impacted both by its self-destructive policies allowing oil companies to dredge canals through its wetlands, and because of sea rise occurring as a result of climate change.
New Orleans according to most assessments is doomed. And all of this is made even sadder by the fact that in recent years most of those in power in what amounts to a plantation economy are climate deniers and are doing little to prepare this state for what is coming.
Louisiana showing the effects of sea rise.
Louisiana—which faces faster levels of sea-level rise than any other land on Earth—could lose as many as 2,800 square miles of its coast over the next 40 years and about 27,000 buildings will need to be flood-proofed, elevated or bought out, the New Orleans Advocate reported. (emphasis added)
These dire predictions were pulled from a new rewrite of the state’s Coastal Master Plan for 2017 released Tuesday by the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority.
The plan, first introduced in 2007 post- Hurricane Katrina, acts as a 50-year blueprint for restoring the Pelican State’s rapidly disappearing coastal wetlands and protecting the state’s natural resources and communities. Louisiana’s Legislature unanimously approved the 2007 and 2012 versions.
The new plan, which is now out for public review and must be voted up or down by the Legislature, calls for 120 new projects, including a $6 billion proposal to protect or vacate properties in areas that are at risk of experiencing a 100-year storm. The plan also aims to restore 800 to […]
Stephan: There is no other country on Earth about which this can be said. Aren't you proud? We're number one. This is where America's psychotic relationship with firearms has taken us: In the year just past, toddlers killed more people than terrorists.
The problem speaks to the ubiquity and normalcy of guns in the U.S. and childrens’ access to loaded guns, shooting — sometimes fatally — either themselves or others.
Guns can be found in one in three homes with children — around 1.7 million of those children have easy access to loaded guns, which owners failed to lock away.
“America’s got a real problem,” the Brady Campaign video declares, followed by parody. “We need to lock them up. Not the guns — that’s just un-American. The toddlers. Round them up. Deport them. Get them out of our country. And keep them away from our guns.”
The Brady Campaign’s movement is a play on a successful National Rifle Associationslogan: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”
Stephan: For all of us who own houses it looks like a nasty surprise is coming. This is the time to let your Senators and Representative know your feelings about the tax plan the Republicans and Trump are cooking up.
Credit: AP/Michael Conroy
Realtors are worried that the House Republican tax plan will gut incentives to buy homes and drive down home values.
In a letter last week to Congressional leaders, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) said the proposed Tax Reform Blueprint spearheaded by House Speaker Paul Ryan could result in “potentially devastating problems” to the housing market.
A 35-page outline of the plan was released over the summer. The plan calls for standard federal deduction to be nearly doubled. Most itemized deductions, however, would be eliminated, including the deductions on state and local taxes paid.
The plan would preserve the mortgage-interest deduction, but assign the House Ways and Means committee to evaluate its provisions to make the incentive “more effective and efficient” in helping people achieve homeownership. The housing lobby is fearful that the deduction will be severely capped beyond the current limit on $1 million of mortgage debt and $100,000 on home equity debt.
In the letter, NAR said the totality of the Republican plan “would have the unintended consequences of nullifying the long-standing tax incentives of owning a home.”
NAR said eliminating tax incentives on property could […]
Jordan Weissmann, Senior Business and Economic Correspondent - Slate
Stephan: Here is more detail on this change in taxes under the Republican plan as it affects personal homes.
On Wednesday, I published a piece arguing that the Republican tax plan would hurt home values by effectively killing off the mortgage interest deduction for middle-class families. A few readers have suggested that might not be such an awful policy move. So I want to elaborate on why it is.
To quickly review, the Republican tax blueprint that Paul Ryan rolled out this past summer calls for simplifying the IRS code by eliminati
ng a number of breaks and nearly doubling the standard deduction to $24,000 for joint filers. Technically, the plan would keep the mortgage interest deduction in place. But with such a high standard deduction, very few people would choose to itemize. That would kill the tax advantage of having a mortgage, leading home prices to fall. People who paid more than $24,000 a year in mortgage interest would still get some benefit from the deduction, meaning that the luxury housing market would be comparatively unaffected.
I find this pretty terribly misguided. The mortgage interest deduction is a deeply flawed piece of policy that has […]
