Eideard

What do you need to generate a lot of electricity from photoelectric solar cells? A lot of surface area. What is a lot of the surface of the United States covered in? Roads. Put those two ideas together, and the idea of turning the nation’s highways into solar farms doesn’t sound too odd, does it? Well, maybe it doesn’t until you consider that you’re talking about taking electronics – electronics that are typically somewhat delicate and rather expensive – and purposely putting them on the ground where heavy vehicles will zoom over them at high speed…

Replacing crushed stone and tar with LEDs and capacitors seems so unlikely that when Solar Roadways was awarded $100,000 to construct a small, 12′ by 12′ prototype system in 2009, infrastructure blog The Infrastructionist gave the effort its “Dubious Green Scheme” award and labeled Solar Roadways not just “harebrained” but “totally batshit crazy.”

As it turns out, that initial panel impressed the Department of Transportation enough that Solar Roadways has now been given $750,000 to take it to the next step: a solar parking lot. Constructed out of multiple 12′ x 12′ panels, the smart parking lot will do more than the asphalt alternative. It will warm itself in cold weather to melt away snow and ice. A layer of embedded LEDs can be used create traffic warnings or crosswalks. Electricity leftover from those tasks could be used to charge electric vehicles or routed into the power grid. The electrical components will be embedded between layers of hardened, textured glass – this may sound fragile, but is already tough enough that some areas use the material for sidewalks.

Parking lots, driveways, and eventually highways are all targets for the panels. If the nation’s system of interstate highways was surfaced with Solar Roadways panels, the results would be more than three times the amount of electricity currently consumed. Of course, at $100,000 per 12′, costs would need to come down significant bit before that could happen.

Obviously, the editors never compared the cost of building solar roadways to typical American highway boondoggles. The record is held by a project near and dear to my heart – Boston’s Big Dig. A three-and-a-half mile tunnel that ended up costing over $14 billion.

Plus he’s extrapolating from the first 12′ x 12′ panel. The parking lot project will reduce square foot cost as will further ramping up towards capacity production. All of which he doubtless knows.

Her sister, Waltraut, awaits her return

A runaway cow named Yvonne is on the loose in Germany and the manhunt — or moohunt — for the Bavarian bovine has captivated the country.

The freedom-loving cow ran away from a little farm in Bavaria in May and has managed to hide successfully in the forests of southern Germany ever since — despite her sturdy 1,500-pound (700-kilogram) figure.

Locals have reported a few sightings of the brown dairy cow with the white head, but every time search teams have tried to capture her, Yvonne had already hoofed it from the area. A helicopter equipped with a thermal camera used in search-and-rescue missions returned Thursday empty-handed.

Searchers have tried to lure Yvonne into the open with food, with the bellows of her son Friesi and her sister Waltraud, even with a prospective mate named Ernst. Scores of volunteers are combing upper Bavaria’s woods for her.

The six-year-old animal would have never made national headlines if it hadn’t been for a near-collision with a police car days after she broke away. The rural district office in Muehldorf reacted by labeling the big-eyed bovine a public danger and ordering her shot on sight.

That prompted animal-rights activists to rally to her defense. A Facebook page calling for Yvonne’s rescue had more-than 23,000 “likes” by Friday, and Germany’s biggest-selling newspaper, Bild, has offered a 10,000 euro reward on its front page for anyone who helps find Yvonne.

In the wake of all the attention, the order to shoot Yvonne has been suspended.

A animal sanctuary in Bavaria has bought Yvonne — sight unseen — from the farmer she escaped from and is now in charge of trying to find her. Hopefully they’re better at it than the silly buggers who have been trying.

UPDATE: Yvonne has surrendered and has been taken to the Gut Aiderbichi animal sanctuary to live out her days.

Graves marked by numbers in Kupwara district

More than 2,000 corpses, believed to be victims of Kashmir’s long-running insurgency, have been found buried in dozens of unmarked graves in the divided region, an Indian government human rights commission report has said.

The graves were found in dozens of villages on the Indian side of the line of control, the de facto border that has split the former kingdom between India and Pakistan for nearly 40 years. “At 38 places visited in north Kashmir, there were 2,156 unidentified dead bodies buried in unmarked graves,” the inquiry found.

Though campaigners and community leaders in Kashmir have long said such graves exist – and often provided extensive documentary evidence to back up their claims – the report is the first official statement confirming their existence…

Up to 70,000 people died in the 22-year insurgency in Kashmir, which pitted armed separatist groups, many backed by Pakistan, against New Delhi’s rule.

The worst of the violence occurred during the mid-1990s when a vicious struggle pitted thousands of militants against Indian security forces supplemented by locally-hired irregulars. Human rights abuses were routine with militants intimidating local communities and killing so-called spies while Indian authorities resorted to abductions, torture and extra-judicial executions on a wide scale. The graves appear to date from this period.

Kashmir is India’s only Muslim-majority state and the struggle rapidly took on a religious dimension. The victims in the mass graves had been buried by local communities.

Police originally described the bodies to villagers as “unidentified militants”. This claim is disputed by the report, local media said , which also calls for a forensic investigation involving DNA identification of remains…

A US diplomatic cable leaked by WikiLeaks and published by the Guardian last December revealed a briefing to the US embassy in Delhi by representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross which described continuing torture and arbitrary detention by security forces.

Sigh. No government can mask anti-human practices for long. Time either proves accusations right or wrong – and governments which intend democratic practices, past, present or future had better learn to open the door to investigation.

Guardian Eyewitness is always one of the best daily journalist photo blogs.

In this photo, residents of Clapham Junction, south London, gather outside looted shops to help clean up the streets following appeals on social networking sites.

Stanley Wong, Florence Leow eat curry with friends including Liang Meizi from China
Daylife/Reuters Pictures used by permission

It takes a lot to start a mass campaign with political overtones in Singapore, but there’s no better catalyst than food. Tens of thousands of people in the Southeast Asian city-state said they would cook or eat curry on Sunday in a protest highlighting growing anger over increased immigration.

The campaign began after an immigrant family from China complained about the smell of curry from a Singaporean Indian neighbor’s home and local officials brought about a compromise.

A Facebook page devoted to the row after reports were published in a local newspaper has drawn over 57,600 members, many of who said they were cooking curry on Sunday in a show of solidarity with the Indian family.

“Because we live in Singapore and Singapore is such a cramped place, neighbors should understand each others’ culture,” said Stanley Wong, a 37-year old accountant who helped organized the Facebook page…

“The case could create problems with the integration of foreign nationals,” said Florence Leow, a freelance writer in her 40s who also was one of the organizers of the event. “Through this event we hope to cook and share a pot of curry and get to appreciate and embrace our culture.”

The influx of immigrants is a sensitive subject in Singapore, where only about two-thirds of the people are citizens. Many Singaporeans say the city-state’s relatively easy immigration policies are attracting too many foreigners, making it more difficult to find jobs and pushing up prices of homes.

The Facebook page for the curry cook-in has about 4 times as many followers as the four candidates in the coming presidential election. Most folks who’ve commented about the event – at least those I bumped into while choosing which reporting to source as a link – feel what’s important is getting to know each other’s cultures more than anything else.

My Italian grandfather’s naturalization papers are one of the items permanently on my desk. The Scots-Canadian contingent came here when even less seemed to be required. They all fit into a society concerned with growing the economy and industries nationwide – instead of being run as a fiefdom for corporate thugs who only cared about the highest possible profits from whatever country they set up shop in – that year.

Nhut Nguyen and his target, Yvonne Stern

A Houston jury found a Vietnamese immigrant guilty Tuesday of aggravated assault in an alleged murder-for-hire plot.

There were three attempts on the life of Yvonne Stem of the Houston suburb of Bellaire, The Houston Chronicle reported…

Prosecutor Kari Allen, in closing arguments, called Nhut Nguyen’s contention he was not trying to kill Stern “hogwash,” the newspaper said.

“The gun was jammed,” Allen said, showing jurors a picture of the 9mm semi-automatic pistol police found near Stern’s home, a round still lodged in the slide. “That’s why Mr. Nguyen did not kill Mrs. Stern.”

…The Chronicle said the first round went through the glass front door of the Stern home as Stern and her teenage son went to answer the doorbell on April 15,2010. The gun jammed after Nguyen tried to fire off another round, officials said…

Yvonne Stern’s husband Jeffrey remains charged with two counts of solicitation of capital murder. Michelle Gaiser, with whom Jeffrey Stern was having an affair, also is charged with trying to hire hit men to kill Yvonne Stern.

Yvonne Stern was shot in the abdomen in the third attempt on her life… After that, she filed for divorce, but the couple has since reconciled and she has appeared with Jeffrey Stern at his court dates.

Why – oh why – has this woman reconciled and moved back in the with the crud who tried to have her killed?

I understand “love is blind”. That has nothing to do with “love can be self-destructive and stupid!”

Cetti’s Warbler

Once heard only rarely outside the north Kent marshes, the loud voice of the Cetti’s warbler is now delighting a whole new set of listeners, from the isle of Anglesey to the banks of the Humber. The bird has moved 150 kilometres further north within the UK in the last 40 years, in response to the changing climate.

Cetti’s warbler is not alone – the little egret has now colonised Britain, which had previously been too cold for the bird; and the comma butterfly can now be found in Edinburgh, at least 220 kilometres north of its former central England home.

These changes, in response to global warming, have happened two to three times faster than was previously expected, according to a new study from the biology department of York University, published…in the peer review journal Science. Although such responses to global warming have been predicted, the study is the first to show that animal and plant species have moved furthest in the regions where the climate has warmed the most.

Species have tended to move towards the poles, fleeing in search of their more accustomed temperatures as climate change has resulted in warming of their normal habitats, according to the new research. The phenomenon is one of the clearest examples of climate change in action.

Chris Thomas, professor of conservation biology at York University and leader of the project, said: “These changes are equivalent to animals and plants shifting away from the equator at around 20 centimetres per hour, for every hour of the day, for every day of the year. This has been going on for the last 40 years and is set to continue for at least the rest of this century. “

RTFA. Lots of details, lots of examples. No doubt the article in Science – as it becomes available free on the Web – will add a great deal more.

In recent years, I’ve noted several examples from local observations here at Lot 4. Redwing Blackbirds which used to pass through spring and fall on migrations – now stay for the winter. We acquired mockingbirds here this year – for the first time – no surprise at this latitude; but, in combination with the altitude, it’s new. I’ve noted a new species of lizard typically found closer to Sonoran desert – but, not in New Mexico’s high desert plains – that showed up here about three years ago. I was really worried about that one – afraid they might push out our native Blue Tail Skinks; but, they seem to be competing OK.

Click to enlarge

Scientists have produced what they say is the first complete map of how the ice moves across Antarctica.
Built from images acquired by radar satellites, the visualisation details all the great glaciers and the smaller ice streams that feed them…

It should aid the understanding of how the White Continent might evolve in the warmer world being forecast by climatologists.

“This is like seeing a map of all the oceans’ currents for the first time. It’s a game changer for glaciology,” said lead author Dr Eric Rignot. “We are seeing amazing flows from the heart of the continent that had never been described before”…

The map incorporates billions of radar data points collected between 1996 and 2009 by satellites belonging to Europe, Canada and Japan.

Ice drains from the interior via huge glaciers that calve icebergs into the sea…Ice velocities on the new map range from just few cm/year near places where the ice divides into different paths, to km/year on fast-moving glaciers and the ice shelves that float out from the edges of the continent.

RTFA for history and details. Interesting stuff.

Click to enlarge!

A new piece of artwork by Richard Sargent, featuring a huge crowd of robots from movies, television and more. Can you find WALL-E among them?

You might win a signed poster print of Richard’s ‘Where’s WALL-E?’ art! How many characters can you identify? Use the guide picture to name as many as you can. The most correct answers will win a poster. Answers to richard@hopewellstudios.com. Closing date for entries 31st August 2011. Entries will be judged by name and origin of each character; in the event of a tie a winner will be chosen at random.

Thanks, Ursarodinia

How’s your cousin doin’ since I gave him that job as tax collector?
Daylife/AP Photo used by permission

Texas Gov. Rick Perry has leapfrogged to the top tier of Republican presidential candidates largely on the strength of one compelling fact: During more than a decade as governor, his state created more than a million jobs, while the nation as a whole lost 1.4 million jobs.

Perry says the “Texas miracle” rests on conservative pillars that he would bring to the White House: minimal regulation and government, low taxes and a determination to limit the reach of Uncle Sam.

What he does not say is that much of that job growth has come because of government, not in spite of it.

With a young and fast-growing population, a large and expanding military presence and an influx of federal stimulus money, the number of government jobs in Texas has grown at more than double the rate of private-sector employment during Perry’s tenure.

The disparity has grown even sharper since the national recession hit. Between December 2007 and last June, private-sector employment in Texas has declined by .6 percent, while public-sector jobs increased by 6.4 percent, according to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. Overall, government employees account for about one-sixth of the workers in Texas…

Analysts call the growth in government employment in Texas a natural consequence of the state’s surging population, which has grown by more than 20 percent in the past decade to 25.1 million. That increase has caused local governments and school systems to hire more teachers, budget analysts, compliance officers and cops.

Time to repeat the old saw: Republicans would have invented hypocrisy if Christians hadn’t beaten them to it. Rick Perry is little different from Ron Paul in believing the same old piddle-down economics that didn’t help working people under Herbert Hoover, Ronald Reagan or either of the Bush liars. He lies about the same programs as Michelle Bachmann – who criticizes stimulus programs and agricultural subsidies while standing at the head of the line to get money, sometimes for her constituents, sometimes just for herself and her family.

Nope. Same old song. Even the accent is the same as George the Little.