Boot Out the Looters

 This is the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. Nine men managed to enter the museum on Saturday, January 29th, 2011, and break a few things belonging to King Tutankhamen of the 14th century B.C.  So sad.  I took this picture when I went there last year.  Pity we were not allowed to take our cameras inside the museum. I hope the present unrest in Egypt does not take away from this world all the priceless treasures in this building and other parts of the country.  I'd like to go back there again some day.  There was so much to see and such little time!!
Tourism is Egypt's main industry; it's ancient peoples are such an inspiration to all of us. I hope we can keep everything and everyone safe.

Time on their hands

This school year, there were 90 pregnant girls in Frayser High School, Memphis, Tennessee.  That is absolutely tragic!!  These kids need to be involved in other extra-curricular activities.  The township should be responsible since, clearly, there isn't much of an age difference between the parents and the students either and so the parents are in no way competent to take responsible decisions.  Also, these  student mothers and infants are very likely to become a burden on the State. The township could also consider all-girls public schools?  How is it that a deeply religious South fails in teaching its communities the importance of marriage as a condition to parenthood? Churches have to wake up to this issue as well.

More on this from Sylvia Gayle, on Saturday, January 15, 2011:

This is absolutely ridiculous. Don't they have a sex education program that makes them take care of an egg or doll? Where are these teenagers parents? I do not intend to offend anyone's morals, but I also blame the extreme religious values of the South. There are some cases that abortions should be allowed. Up North we don't have these problems, maybe one pregnancy every 500 students. These children need to be educated, by both their parents and their school system, as well as their church.

Guns off their hands

On Saturday, January 8, 2011, Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, an Arizona State Democrat was shot in the head at an event held outside a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona by gunman Jared Lee Loughner (22) who later opened fire into the crowd killing 6 people and wounding 18 others.  Loughner has had a history of mental instability and was even suspended from Pima Community College because of his erratic behavior; however, he had no problem getting his handgun legally.   Giffords, who is pro-gun and called gun ownership an "Arizona tradition" is now, ironically, a reason for us to enforce stricter gun laws.  Madmen simply should not tote guns.

Fog Harvesting

Image by: Evan Leeson/ecstaticist

Small communities in Chile, Peru  and South Africa are harvesting fog for their water needs.  Fog harvesting is an ancient technique of collecting water -- dates as far back as 2,000 years ago when people collected fog water dripping from trees.  Serious harvesting started only a hundred years ago.  The idea for a mesh fog collector probably came from observing dew on a spider web.  Apparently, humidity changes the structure of the protein fibers of a spider web creating knots in them.  The water droplets slide down the smooth part of the fiber in-between the knots and collect at the knots.

Robert Schemenaeur,  Emeritus research scientist in the Department of the Environment in Canada developed the first fog catching project in Chungungo, Chile at the edge of the Atacama desert.  A fog collector consists of ultraviolet-resistant polypropylene mesh, stretched horizontally between two upright poles. The net is positioned at right angles to the prevailing winds. As fog passes through the net, it forms larger water droplets. The droplets run down the mesh and drip into gutters. The water then flows into pipes, which feed into a reservoir.
The project provides 40 liters of water per person per day.

Encouraged by the success of this project,

two German conservationists, Kai Tiedemann
and Anne Lummerich, tried the same technique in

Bellavista, Peru a settlement close to its capital city Lima.  Lima gets only a few drops of rain a year but a thick fog covers the city eight months in a year. The Germans who run an NGO called the Alimón enlisted the help of the members of the community in building these meshes, planting the trees, laying the gutters and creating a reservoir/tanks for the water.  Alimón is a Spanish term for 'working together'.  This project would not be possible without the participation of the entire community.  For more on the work of this NGO click here.


The 200 people that live on the steep slopes of Bellavista had no running water and are considerably poorer than the residents that live downhill and enjoy municipal water.  They spent one-fourth of their incomes on water which was delivered to them in trucks.  Fog harvested water has very little impurities and is much cheaper. A single net alone catches about 560 liters of water.  “At the beginning,” Lummerich said, “the people from the village thought Kai carried the water uphill during the night to fill the tanks, because they couldn’t believe there was so much water.”

Funnel shaped contraptions tied to Tara/casuarina trees also collect fog water; they drip down into gutters or tiled channels and transported storage tanks.  What is wonderful about fog harvesting is that people actually plant trees and there is no threat to the environment. 

It is also heartening to know that communities bond when there is a common cause.


The fog harvesting pictures on the blog are from this National Geographic website


Update 4/7/2013: Thanks to Permies.com for featuring my post on their forum!!  

Cop Cuts in Camden, NJ

Camden plans to lay off half of its police officers and a third of its firefighters this fiscal year. What is to happen to this city that had the highest crime rate in the country in 2008? Although 2009 saw a little improvement, the city is still the second most dangerous place in the US. It has a population of about 78,000 and these alarming crime statistics:

Crime	2004 TOTAL	2005 TOTAL	2006 TOTAL	2007 TOTAL	2008 TOTAL	2009 Year to Date (November)
Murder	49	35	33	45	53	30
Rape	56	47	66	67	66	55
Robbery	822	702	771	781	813	690
Agg Assault	897	898	818	865	832	915
Burglary	1,159	1,020	1,178	1,128	1,218	919
Theft	2,775	2,332	2,424	2,311	2,680	2,036
Auto Theft	1,357	955	1,180	1,161	993	922
Arson	172	142	129	115	120	122

(Source:  Camden Police Department, UCR Status Report and Walter Rand Institute for Public Affairs, Rutgers University)

Camden against Downtown Philadelphia Backdrop

And what of the police officers, firefighters and other city workers who will be laid off?  How will they support their families and their mortgages?  Camden depends considerably on state aid; it has no tax base to raise revenue or cover its deficit.  From 2002 to 2010, the city was forbidden to raise property taxes.  PILOTs  or payments in lieu of taxes, were approved by state appointees so that large corporations in the city did not pay much taxes.  The New Jersey state budget cuts have further crippled the city.  Since the state takeover in 2002, not much effort has been put into luring investors here; the city has now been dropped like a hot potato. Whoever comes here these days, visits the aquarium or the Rutgers University (never after dark); the glory days of Campbell Soup, Lockheed Martin and RCA have long since been erased from its memory.  All we can look forward to are days of lawlessness.  Gangs will get a firmer foothold, and people who want a better life will just move. 

Camden--Near Drop

I think the government should now think in terms of planned demolition of the city.  Urban planning to bring about urban renewal. Maybe that will provide more jobs?  Companies could be persuaded to build around the Rutgers University campus providing employment to new graduates thereby extending the safety zone in the city.  Schools hours could be extended, so children's activities could be supervised.  They would have no time for gangs and would learn a little civic sense.  Salaries are a small price to pay for the overall mental and economic health of the community. Society needs growth--maybe this is the way to help it grow.

Thoughts?

HAPPY THANKSGIVING

Thanksgiving is fun for everyone except the turkeys.

Each year, the President of the United States "pardons" two turkeys on Death Row. Here is the story of the first official turkey pardon.

The National Turkey Foundation and the Poultry and Egg National Board, since 1947, have presented the President with a turkey each year at a White House ceremony.  And the Presidents have always eaten it.

JFK was an exception; he said, "Let's just keep him". In 1989, the senior Bush started the practice of pardoning turkeys--two a year.  Till 2004, the pardoned turkeys were sent to Kidwell Farm (also ironically called Frying Pan Park),  a petting zoo in Virginia.  But now they go to Disneyland as the honorary grand marshals of the Thanksgiving Day parade. They are even given names.  This year's chosen ones are Apple and Cider.

 President Obama pardons a turkey 2010

I don't see what difference it makes to pardon two turkeys a year when, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, more than 45 million turkeys are cooked and eaten in the U.S. at Thanksgiving!!

TEACHING TO CHEAT

One of the funniest things that I ever saw is this video on Youtube on how to cheat in an exam.  It involved a scanner, a coke bottle and some glue.  Mystified?  Well, here it is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91lQK5SCzlQ

First of all, it bothers me that the author of the above video gives it a serial number.  There are many more of these.  And then, I think the students could better utilize their time simply memorizing what would fit on the teeny Coke bottle label. 

Yet another student teaches to cheat by writing notes on a stretched rubber band. What?  Are they going to write on the heads of pins next? 

Professor Quinn of the University of Central Florida in Orlando, caught 200 of his 600 business-course students cheating in a midterm exam. 

He offered the students an ultimatum: Come clean and take a four-hour ethics course, and your records would be wiped clean. If they chose not to come forward, they'd run a risk. 

The risk of expulsion, that is. The move to make these students attend a class on ethics was a stroke of genius.

 Also, all 600 students had to redo their midterms.

Student Konstantin Ravvin accused the university of "making a witch hunt out of absolutely nothing, as if they want to teach us some kind of moral lesson." (Mind you, a moral lesson!! Who needs that?)
"This is college. Everyone cheats, everyone cheats in life in general," Ravvin said. "I think you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone in this testing lab who hasn't cheated on an exam."

Really, the Professor has nothing to worry about.  Those that do not learn the "moral lesson" his way, will learn it the hard way.  And then maybe they will learn that they are, in fact, only cheating themselves.  As Kiki Kho, a producer of similar "cheating" videos said, the viewers don't really have to follow the videos.  If they do, it is all their own fault.