Here's a new website worth taking a peek: www.sefora.org, Scientists and Engineers for America. A group who are trying to activize (um activate?) because of what has been happening to science in the public eye and the administration. They are dedicated to removing theology from science teaching, and ideology from…
To say that the corrupted interests of massive corporations have twisted and perverted the social and political system into a flimsy chessboard sounds, of course, paranoid and highly cynical. No wonder then that casual observers of the democratic process scoff at claims of widespread corporate corruption as an outlandish conspiracy…
Last week, at Washington University, I attended a lecture by architect Edward Mazria, who speaks nationally and internationally on the subject of climate change and architecture. Mazria’s organization, Architecture2030 is dedicated to “slowing the growth rate of greenhouse gas emissions and then reversing it over the next ten years.” His proposals are getting lots of attention among architects.
As he states at his website, it is imperative that we deal seriously with CO2. It will
require immediate action and a concerted global effort. As Architecture 2030 has shown, buildings are the major source of demand for energy and materials that produce by-product greenhouse gases. Stabilizing emissions in this sector and then reversing them to acceptable levels is key to keeping global warming to approximately a degree centigrade (°C) above today’s level.
Mazria began his talk with a PowerPoint presentation that largely paralleled Al Gore’s presentation in “An Inconvenient Truth.” Here’s how he sizes things up currently:
Two profound, life changing events are converging to create the most significant crisis of modern time— the warming of the earth’s atmosphere by burning fossil fuels, and the rapid depletion of global petroleum and natural gas reserves. As these events intensify over the coming years, they will dramatically change how we live and how we relate to the natural world.
Here’s how Architecture2030 illustrates the warming of the earth (see the Architecture2030 site for better resolution):
As you can see, CO2 levels (the upper blue line) have never been as high as they …
Would you like to see an actual photograph of a human soul entering an embryo at conception? Here it is (with permission of the artist at Pixwit): To see the full-size high-rez photo, along with numerous other fascinating images, check out the collection at Pixwit.com. Each image is accompanied with a…
Yesterday I met an anesthesiologist who brought up the topic of backgammon at a deposition. I mentioned to him that, many years ago, a friend tried to teach me how to play backgammon. At first, I thought it was essentially a game of chance. When the friend and I first…