Category: Environment & Sustainability
Environment and Sustainability
In case you have not been following what is happening with the scoring of the Solar Decathlon happening right now in Washington, DC and to which UIUC has an entry, go to this web site http://www.solardecathlon.gov/blog/archives/tag/solar-decathlon-2011 There are 19 entries this year, including many from foreign counties--check out China and New Zealand.
Take time to look at the pictures and click through the 20 school that made it to the decathlon and look at the incredibly creative designs these students have produced. If I had not been in DC two years ago to actually see the whole process, it would be hard to imagine how smart and clever these teams are, whether they end up first or last in the scoring.
If you go to this web site, you can look at the scoring, which is changing every day, and click on the individual schools http://www.solardecathlon.gov/teams.html
I hope that many of you took time to watch the UIUC build the 2011 entry. Right now Illinois is 13th out of 19 entries.
If we are going to see a genuine economic recovery we are going to have to rein in entitlements. No, I don’t mean cutting the bottom out of the social safety net we established in the 1930s with the New Deal and expanded some thirty years later with the Great Society. Yes, we will have to make some changes to the Social Security system if we expect it to continue to provide the safety net for older and disabled Americans that it has provided for the last three quarters of a century. But Social Security, Food Stamps, and Unemployment compensation are not the kind of entitlements that I am talking about. We have to do something about the entitlements that support the lifestyles of the people who stand on the top of the economic ladder, not those of us who are losing their grip on the bottom rung.
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LED light bulbs are finally available in most local hardware stores, but when should you buy an LED bulb over a CFL bulb?
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The effects of “wall street “on our community can be found in every corner of life. Your car, produced by a company that used wall street money to finance its plants and operations, your purchase/lease financed by a company that packaged and sold your loan to a wall street banker to bring in new cash to lend to new car buyers.
While we protest in the streets that socialism has arrived, or that TARP and the auto companies bailout has destroyed our nations character, foreign entities are tapping the US financial system for billions of dollars weekly to buy companies and start industries in the UNITED STATES!
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