alfreda89: (Blankenship Reeds)

I have been busy beating out brush fires, and so have not figured out how I want to write about this podcast.  I started listening to it because I was in the car driving a lot, and I'm a magpie for information.  I never grow tired of learning.  This report was stringing together a lot of interesting things, starting with an open pit copper mine that became the Berkeley Pit, one of the worst of the Superfund sites.  This is not a new report--but I think it is worth your while.

At the end, I was moved to tears, because for the first time in a long while, I thought there was a chance that maybe, just maybe, we will figure things out before we destroy ourselves.

So I offer to you "Even the Worst Laid Plans" from Radiolab.  Their blurb is as follows:

Soren Wheeler takes us to Butte Montana--where an open pit copper mine’s demise leads to a toxic lake filled with corrosive runoff. Reporter Barret Golding goes to visit the pit lake, and writer Edwin Dobb tells Soren the story of a pile of dead snow geese who made an ill-fated landing on the water. Soren also talks to husband-and-wife chemists Andrea Stierle and Don Stierle, whose startling discovery reveals the secret life inside a death trap.

The discovery the Stierles made may be the seed of a way to clean huge areas of the world, of a new business, of a new way to think about biochemistry.  It's a reminder that there may, indeed, be a medical solution to every condition lurking somewhere on the planet.

If we can only find and recognize it before we burn it down.

alfreda89: 3 foot concrete Medieval style gargoyle with author's hand resting on its head. (Oxblood Lilies)
I once knew a roofer whose daughter set up an experiment with a 100 watt light bulb as a heat source, and tested composition roofing materials from white through black. Here someone has done the experiment with a house.

I had to arm-wrestle my builder into submission to put a gray mixed composition roof on our house. I wanted white (with medium gray stone bricks, black and dark gray trim, reddish mahogany front door) but even my then-spouse wanted something other than white -- or black.

Our 5 ton A/C unit kept both floors comfortable, using a central stairs column as a heat draw (along with a roof vent). We rarely had an electric bill over $100 a month. And that was eight years ago. I have friends paying over $500 right now, and two couples who are in trouble over their utility bills. Both parties work, only one has a child to keep cool.

http://www.antirad.com/rooftest/

This house taught me the different between a tree on the west side, and no tree. THe temp dropped 15-20 degrees in the master bath after the chinaberry tree got high enough to block the sun. (Yes, I know, chinaberries, ugh -- but the ashe to one side is probably big enough now that they can cut down the chinaberry.)

June 2025

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