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The U.S. House Urban Caucus’ Urban Parks Taskforce organized a briefing on urban parks and their role in creating green spaces which can revitalize neighborhoods, improve health, and create jobs. Parks also play a major role in fighting childhood obesity, providing safe and healthy places to play. Caucus members heard from Joe Hughes, Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology; Susan Wachter, Professor of Financial Management, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania; Eddie George, former NFL player and landscape architect; and Salin Geevarghese, Senior Advisor, Office of Sustainable Housing & Communities, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The National Recreation and Parks Association (NRPA) and ASLA played key roles in putting the panel together.

Introducing the briefing, Representative Chaka Fattah, Democrat from Philadelphia, who is chair of the caucus, said a new consensus is forming among the administration and legislative branch: urban parks can’t be separated from broader urban revitalization efforts.

Representative Albio Sires, Democrat from New Jersey, sponsor of the Urban Revitalization and Livable Communities Act (HR 3734), which now has 114 House co-sponsors, said when he arrived from Cuba in his youth, local parks were his refuge. In his community, parks provide a crucial space for working class families and a foundation for ”important social structures.”

Sires said parks need both to enable both ”passive” activities (sun-bathing, dog walking, or sitting and reading the newspaper) and “active” activities (frisbee-throwing, jogging, touch football). “What’s active, what’s passive — we need to plan these out and integrate into park design.” In addition to the health benefits, he argued that parks are crucial to economic revitalization. ”If you fix up a park, you’ll see the houses nearby get fixed up. Businesses come back.”  

However, Sires said small city mayors still need to continually hunt for funds wherever they can get them, “pulling a little from here and a little from there,” to get their local park projects off the ground. To increase the federal funds that can be used for park investment, he led the development of the Urban Revitalization and Livable Communities Act.

The panelists made arguments for increasing investment in urban parks:

Joe Hughes, Professor, Georgia Institute of Technology: After studying the role parks can play in resolving the real estate crisis, Hughes found that under-performing commercial real estate in urban areas could be transformed into urban parks. Vacant properties, if turned into parks, become productive assets, instead of economic drains on local communities. “Parks play a role in market restoration, value creation, job creation, green space development, and neighborhood stabilization.”

In the case of Atlanta, which has had a high rate of bank failures, a five billion investment in transforming underperforming real estate into urban parks could create 100,000 new jobs. Additionally, the plan could yield higher property values (and, therefore, higher tax revenue). To make his case, Hughes pointed to a study that shows homes less than 1,000 feet from a park are worth 11 percent more than other homes. “Parks are critical drivers of economic development. We should be thinking at a big scale about how to transform our urban core.”

Susan Wachter, Professor of Financial Management, Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania: “Parks help create communities of lasting value,” which Wachter says is the true measure of neighborhood sustainability. “Parks bring nature to the city, create safe spaces, enable social interaction, sequester carbon.” Most importantly, Wachter added, parks can create environmentally and economically resilient communities.

She cited a “before and after event” study done in Philadelphia that isolated the effects of investments in various forms of green infrastructure. The return on investment (ROI) was high for homes near the improvements. Planting trees raised nearby property’s value by 10 percent. Improved streetscapes yielded up to 28 percent gains. While residing next to a vacant lot dropped property values by 20 percent, stabilizing the empty lot led to a 17 percent increase. Being located within a business improvement district (BID) improved property values by 30 percent. “Planting trees alone can help create a virtous cycle of reinvestment.”

Eddie George, former NFL player and landscape architect: “I am all about healthy people and healthy spaces.” George said parks are linked to economic development, combat the urban heat island effect, and provide critical stormwater management services. In Columbus, Ohio, George’s firm is revitalizing the downtown, pulling down a vacant 9-acre shopping mall. “The City Center Mall outlived its usefulness. It was designed as a fortress and cut off connectivity. The demise of the mall led to increased disinvestment in the area.”

The new 9-acre park George is designing in the mall’s place, Columbus Commons, will tranform the space into a sort of Millennium Park for the city. The park, which will open in 2011, will offer mixed-use spaces and ground-level retail. There will be green roofs on parking garages.

George argued that maintaining parks will cost local governments. “Many cities can’t afford this, but we need to invest.”

Salin Geevarghese, Senior Advisor, Office of Sustainable Housing & Communities, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD): Geevarghese said the issues were all interconnected. “People don’t see these things as separate and don’t live these things separately.” As a result, EPA, HUD, and the Department of Transportation forged a partnership on sustainable communities (see earlier post) to deal with the cross-cutting issues related to transportation, green space, and housing. 

Echoing arguments made by Ron Sims, Deputy Secretary of HUD (see earlier post), Geevarghese said where you live, “your zip code,” can predict how healthy you are, how educated you are. “How can we disentangle that?” He thinks that community ownership is intimately linked with community safety, and that requires investment in community infrastructure, including parks.

Also, Geevarghese thinks the concept of green jobs need to be reformulated to include parks and recreation, or “conservation,” jobs. 

The panelists agreed on a range of other points:

• The federal government should be involved in local urban parks because urban parks are just another form of infrastructure. Historically, the federal government has invested in infrastructure to get the country out of severe economic downturns.
• Green infrastructure is not just about environmental sustainability, but also about creating communities of value, and reversing disinvestment in urban cores.
• The private sector needs to be more involved in urban park financing and development.
• Non-profits also need to be at the table. Representative Chaka Fattah said that foundations have played a “energizing role” in revitalizing parts of Philadelphia.
• At the regional and even local levels, the transaction costs involved in getting everyone to the table are high.
• Local leaders need to understand that parks have economic benefits. George said “it’s not just about spending more money. Park projects are investment.”

Learn more about the legislation

Image credit: Columbus Commons / Eddie George, EDGE

If you’ve been reading Gas 2.0 for awhile now, you probably know I am a big Jeep fan. I like my Wrangler for its versatility and reliability. It is also a great conversation starter, because it seems like every other vehicle I see is a Wrangler (what else might you expect from a farm town). My Wrangler gets terrible gas mileage though, and I have secretly longed for a diesel engine or even an electric motor.

The Ecos Fun! is not a Wrangler. Nor does it appear very versatile, seeming more like a glorified golf kart. But Ecos claims the Fun! has a 100 mile range and a top speed of 70 mph, all starting at $24,995 — very reasonable if you ask me. And it sorta looks like a Jeep.

(more…)

The Dumbarton Oaks Garden and Landscape Studies Program, which is affiliated with Harvard University, organized a lecture on the restoration of two of the most important Mughal empire landscapes — Humayun’s Tomb in New Delhi, and the Bagh-e Babur in Kabul, both UNESCO World Heritage sites. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture, an Islamic philanthropy, has spent the last few years undoing the damage caused by colonization and, more recently, urbanization. Natish Nanda, an Indian architect, who organized the restoration work, said the threats to cultural heritage are real. “Right now, no historically relevant Mughal Garden exists in Pakistan today.” Restoring Mughal landscapes means creating a plan for sustainability and addressing the economic and social factors that support cultural landscapes.

Aga Khan’s Cultural Trust believes gardens are a part of modern life, and need to better integrated into contemporary society. In India, Mali, Egypt, Pakistan, Afghanistan, there are key examples of Mughal garden art that need to be preserved. One park that was recently restored in Egypt now “brings more visitors than the Great Pyramids.”

Mughal landscapes originated in Persepolis, Iran, in 7BC. Inspired by Koranic descriptions of paradise, the gardens attempted to offer visual representations of heaven.

Humayun’s Tomb, New Delhi: The tomb of Humayun, one of the Mughal emperors, predates the Taj Mahal by two centuries. This site in New Delhi is one of the densest set of Muslim buildings in the world. During the era when the tomb was built, it was auspicious to be buried near saints. Given a Sufi saint is buried in the area, Humayun decided to create his tomb there as well.

The site is imbued with colonial history. After the failed Indian Uprising in the mid 180o’s, the last Mughal emperor and his sons fled to Humayun’s Tomb. Once the British had put down the uprising, which Indians view as the first critical step in the independence movement, they executed the emperor’s sons and exiled him to Rangoon, Burma.

With British coming over to view the site of Mughal’s final defeat, the local colonial administration decided to turn Humayun’s Tomb into a tourist site. To demonstrate their mastery over the Mughals, the British intervened in the landscape design, replacing the Islamic landscape design with English country gardens. Since then, there have been four efforts to restore the gardens to their original Mughal design, yet each successive effort ended up doing more damage by moving water channels and altering the original design.

In 1999, Aga Khan’s philanthropy completed an MOU with the Indian government to restore the site to its original design. Nanda said the site “had been beautified, but not restored.” Excavating the site, the trust found the early fountains. They recreated almost 180 groundwater recharge pits, dug out wells, and restored the rainwater system. Lemon, lime, and hibiscus plants were brought back. All sandstone used was hand-chiseled.

Bagh-e Babur, Kabul: In Kabul, the tomb of the Babur, the original emperor of the Mughal empire, was created in 1508. It’s been the site of numerous battles in contemporary Afghan history. Nanda said when he first visited the site in a few years ago, he was dismayed at the degradation of the place Babur wished to be buried. Recently, the garden had been the site of a battle between two warlords. “It looked like a madman has shot bullets into every wall and every tree.”

Restoring the tomb and gardens created opportunities for employment. “The great thing about conservation work is that it involves lots of jobs.” They first rebuilt the walls surrounding the site — this involved creating almost a mile of mud walls by hand.

The gardens were then restored to their original design. Nanda said this is “cutting-edge restoration,” and won the approval of UNESCO. While the restoration doesn’t represent the original tomb and garden, “it represents the original intent.”

Like other orchards in the region, the garden is broken into a grid and features zones with different types of fruit plants — cherries, apricots and quinces now grow in the gardens, drawing some 15-20 thousand people for picnics each Friday.

Nanda said the restoration work on both sites is incomplete. Aga Khan believes the sites need to be integrated into the communities through education, training and job programs, so they can stand on their own and survive long-term. There are plans to make Humayun’s Tomb in New Delhi accessible to more New Delhi residents, particularly students. The Bagh-e Babur now has events spaces and a pool nearby that earn revenue to pay for the garden’s upkeep. Every business associated with the gardens must be included in economic sustainabilty plans if the restoration is to take hold, Nanda argues.

Additionally, plans are underway to turn a New Delhi British tree nursery into a national, 70-acre publicly-accessible arboretum. “Right now, it’s still a government tree nursery, and there’s no public access.” The goal is to turn it into an educational park. A landscape master planning process underway will restore the original New Delhi habitat.

Read more about Humayun’s Tomb and Bagh-e Babur.

Image credit: Mitesh Vasa Blog

Article Tags: Book, Roy Spencer

Today (April 20) is the official release date of my new book entitled: [Amazon Link] “The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World’s Top Climate Scientists“, published by Encounter Books.

About one-half of Blunder is a non-technical description of our new peer reviewed and soon-to-be-published research which supports the opinion that a majority of Americans already hold: that warming in recent decades is mostly due to a natural cycle in the climate system — not to an increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuel burning.

Believe it or not, this potential natural explanation for recent warming has never been seriously researched by climate scientists. The main reason they have ignored this possibility is that they cannot think of what might have caused it.

You see, climate researchers are rather myopic. They think that the only way for global-average temperatures to change is for the climate system to be forced ‘externally’…by a change in the output of the sun, or by a large volcanic eruption. These are events which occur external to the normal, internal operation of the climate system.

Source: drroyspencer.com

Read in full with comments »   

We’ve all seen this scene being played out in the local park: When a guy walks a cute dog, people don’t hesitate to approach him to strike up a conversation about schnauzer breeds. Or there’s the guy-with-a-baby scenario, in which the baby-hauling dad is perceived as friendly and non-threatening (not to mention irresistible to some women).

Now, new research from France suggests that male Barbary macaques may be onto the same “baby effect” strategy. The study found that male macaques with an infant were more likely to make male monkey buddies, as the presence of a tiny, defenseless baby immediately breaks down barriers.

The study, which is due to be published in the journal Animal Behavior, is also the first to demonstrate that infants can serve as social tools for some primates, writes Discovery News.

Study coauthor Julia Fischer told Discovery News that when a male Barbary macaque comes across another male with a baby, it sets off a “bizarre ritual.”

Fischer said the males “sit together, embrace each other, then they hold up the infant and nuzzle it. Their teeth chatter and lip smack while making low frequency grumbling noises.”

The researchers found that the monkeys with babies not only attracted other males for this ritual, they also ended up with quite a few pals this way–which had benefits for these monkeys’ social status. Discovery News writes:

Males who worked their networks in such a way tended to rise up the monkey social ladder. For example, one male rose from fifth to second place after acquiring “the highest number of male partners.”

What if a social-climbing monkey doesn’t have his own kid? No problem. The study showed that monkeys sometimes borrow babies, and proceed to use the infants as friend magnets. But it’s not all fun and games for the bambino-carrying monkeys. The researchers found that, much like human males, the male monkeys got stressed out when the kids started bawling.

Related Content:
80beats: Maternal Monkey Love: Macaque Moms Coo Over Their Babies
80beats: Monkey See, Monkey Do: How to Make Monkey Friends
80beats: Do Tricky Monkeys Lie to Their Companions to Snag More Bananas?
80beats: When Baby Monkeys Throw Public Temper Tantrums, Moms Often Give In
80beats: Female Monkeys Chat More Than Males to Maintain Social Ties

Image: Andreas Ploss

Just in case you didn’t get the memo, The Artist Formerly Known As Courtney Love is “sick” of talking about her dead husband Kurt Cobain.

Love — who now wishes to be called Courtney Michelle — married the Nirvana frontman in 1992 and later gave birth to their daughter Frances Bean, now 17. Depressed and addicted to heroin, Cobain committed suicide just two years later, leaving Frances fatherless and Courtney devastated. Nonetheless, the troubled Hole star has always spoken fondly of their brief marriage, but after 16 years — Courtney says she’s simply tired of answering questions about the Grunge God.

Courtney told UK music magazine NME this week: “I am not his spokesperson on Earth. I don’t know what he’d be like now, he could be into society girls, he could be into fat girls, he could be homosexual. We don’t know, he died at 27.”

[JURIST] The US Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled 7-2 in Jerman v. Carlisle that a debt collector’s legal error does not qualify for the bona fide error defense under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA). The US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled that although the defendants violated the FDCPA by giving erroneous legal advice, they qualified for the FDCPA bona fide error defense. In reversing the decision below, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote for the court:
The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA or Act) imposes civil liability on “debt collector” for certain prohibited debt collection practices. Section 813(c) of the Act provides that a debt collector is not liable in an action brought under the Act if she can show “the violation was not intentional and resulted from a bona fide error notwithstanding the maintenance of procedures reasonably adapted to avoid any such error.” This case presents the question whether the “bona fide error” defense in &setc; 1692k(c) applies to a violation resulting from a debt collector’s mistaken interpretation of the legal requirements of the FDCPA. We conclude it does not.Justice Antonin Scalia filed a concurring opinion. Justice Anthony Kennedy filed a dissenting opinion, joined by Justice Samuel Alito.Petitioner Karen Jerman filed an action challenging the debt collection practices of the Carlisle law firm, claiming that they violated the FDCPA when they used allegedly deceptive forms to notify her of a foreclosure on her home. Specifically, Jerman claims that defendants violated the FDCPA by representing to Jerman that her debt would be assumed valid unless she disputed the debt “in writing” even though the FDCPA does not require a written dispute.

Filed under: Marketing/Advertising, Chrysler, Design/Style

What image enters your mind when you think about Chrysler? For us, it’s the Pentastar logo. Perhaps that’s because many of us Autobloggers are children of the ’80s when the iconic five-pointed logo was unabashedly emblazoned on everything from minivans to Lasers to New Yorkers.

More recently, Chrysler has abandoned the Pentastar brand in favor of a couple of winged logos and a version of the brand’s old golden-hued wax seal. These logos are much more modern than the Pentastar, but none of them are as memorable or anywhere close to being as well established as the admittedly dated Pentastar.

With a bankruptcy and new savior in the form of Italy’s Fiat still fresh in our memories, perhaps now would be a good time to rethink Chrysler’s brand positioning and corporate marketing materials. In fact, the automaker has already done just that, revealing the latest version of its winged logo late last year.

But is Chrysler going down the right path with its latest reinvention? Our colleagues at AOL Autos wondered if the brand might be able to do a bit better. To find out, AOL Autos commissioned three design firms to redesign the storied automaker’s brand, and the results are as interesting as they are diverse. See for yourself in the image gallery below and be sure to check out the full article with background information and more images. So… got a favorite?

[Source: AOL Autos]

A new Chrysler needs a new logo, no? originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 21 Apr 2010 10:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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I have read, many times, that families should eat together. Lots of sociologists, psychologists, behaviorologists, lots of “ologists,” with published books and columns and radio talk shows, say so. I can only conclude that none them ever had children.

When it comes to "ologists,” I like paleontologists. They like to be outside, they like to dig in the dirt and they don’t make me feel as though I missed some well-attended parenting lecture last month.

Despite that lapse, I do know some things. I know that family dinners are overrated, and I know dinosaurs.

We have 37 plastic dinosaurs, 19 dinosaur magnets, three automated dinosaurs, two remote-controlled dinosaurs, an extensive dinosaur library of children’s books (including dinosaur board books for toddlers), one dinosaur sleeping bag, dinosaur T-shirts, DVDs, puzzles, three sets of dinosaur pajamas, a deck of dinosaur flash cards and a T-Rex plushy. We also eat a lot of dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets.

I put four nuggets each on three plates and a bottle of ketchup on the dining room table. I walk back into the kitchen wondering if they can do it. Can they eat a meal, a single meal, without fighting?

At the point when my youngest is screeching like a Pterodactyl because her brother is on top of the table trying to take the last Stegosaurus nugget from her, and the dog is lapping up the spilled milk, and my oldest is screaming at her brother not to hit the 2-year old, I intervene.

“Okay, everybody freeze," I say. “William, get off the table. Sarah, calm down. Emma, give me the nugget.”

My voice gets even louder: “Sit down. Everybody. Now!”

I pause. I look each one of them directly in the eyes. But for the sound of milk dripping on the floor, all is silent. It’s my move. I have no idea how to handle this. I’m not sure what to do. So I go back to the paleontologists.

“Okay, Allosaurus vs. T-Rex, who wins?”

My son pauses, my older daughter reflects. I can still hear the milk drip, drip, dripping as it hits the floor. The 2-year old quiets and furtively glances between her older siblings as she sucks the breaded coating off a Pterodactyl’s head. I can see my son’s mouth begin to slowly form to speak the “All” sound in Allosaurus.

Still, they pause.

Then, my son starts screaming “Allosaurus! Allosaurus! Allosaurus!” My older daughter points at him and fires back that no way could an Allosaurus take out a T-Rex because an Allosaurus is at least 25 percent smaller. My daughter declares herself the T-Rex and the winner.

My son then jumps on the table and tells her he is faster and more ferocious. He throws back his huge head filled with serrated teeth, bars his sharp claws and roars.

“You sound like a lion not a dinosaur.”

I declare dinner over, and we all start marching up the stairs impersonating a crazed T-Rex to the theme from Rocky.

After the two younger children are in bed, my daughter says to me, “You know Mom, there is no way Allosaurus and T-Rex could fight, because Allosaurus lived in the late Jurassic period and T-Rex lived in the Cretaceous period.”

“I know,” I tell her. “I know dinosaurs.”

Maraya Steadman, who lives in a Chicago suburb, is a stay-at-home mother of three children. She can be reached at [email protected].

SOS Rally Day is our opportunity to display our collective strength and to voice our concerns about the issues we care about directly to our legislators.  Tell your legislators to support comprehensive tax reform and a revenue increase to support school funding.

Luke Timmerman wrote:

AVI Biopharma CEO Les Hudson has been ousted as part of a boardroom shakeup. The Bothell, WA-based biotech company (NASDAQ: AVII) said today that chief financial officer David Boyle will take his place as interim president and CEO through an agreement with activist shareholders.

AVI Biopharma director K. Michael Forrest is also stepping down from the board, and being replaced by Anthony Chase. That leaves AVI Biopharma with a seven-member board made up entirely of independent directors. Christopher Henney, the former CEO of Seattle-based Dendreon, and fellow director Michael Casey are not running for re-election at this year’s annual meeting, so two new faces will soon be joining the company’s board.

The shuffling at the top was part of an agreement with a group of shareholders composed of George Haywood, Cheryl Haywood, Rockall Emerging Markets Master Fund Limited, Meldrum Asset Management, Con Egan, and Conor O’Driscoll, according to an AVI statement. The company didn’t explain why the change was necessary, and only described it in the vaguest of terms. A company spokesman didn’t immediately return an e-mailed request for comment.

“This agreement reflects the Board and management team’s focus on serving the best interest of all AVI shareholders and building on the strong foundation we have in place,” said Michael Casey, chairman of the AVI board, in a statement.

AVI Biopharma has a long and somewhat tortured history. As I pointed out in a breaking news story last July, it is one of the oldest companies in biotech, having sputtered around since 1980 without ever developing an FDA-approved drug, burning through more than $250 million in investor cash, and never becoming profitable. But the company showed some new life last year, raising more than $50 million from investors during the year, adding capital from government grants, and moving to the Seattle area to recruit more staff.

Since Hudson joined in February 2008, he has pushed forward AVI’s technology for precisely blocking specific strands of RNA as a new mode of developing drugs. AVI is using this science to work on experimental treatments for Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and against really dangerous potential bioterrorist agents that conventional drugs can’t stop—Ebola and Marburg virus.

The company is eagerly awaiting detailed results from an early-stage clinical trial later this year for its Duchenne muscular dystrophy treatment, which I previewed in this feature back in February. But this hasn’t been enough to float the boat for investors. AVI Biopharma stock sold for $1.23 in early trading this morning, down just a penny on the news of Hudson’s departure, and still a far cry from the company’s 52-week high of $2.73.

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UNDERWRITERS AND PARTNERS

4/20/2010.  Chicago, IL.

Former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich’s news conference on Tuesday.

according to update by the American Chemistry Council. …

… “The report, prepared by Moore Recycling Associates Inc., Sonoma, Calif., found that in 2008, more than 361 million pounds of post-consumer rigid plastics were collected for recycling nationwide, an 11 percent increase from the previous year. The report also found that in North American markets, much of the recycled material was used to make products such as pallets, crates, composite lumber and gardening items. ” …

Via Recycling Today: Rigid Plastics Recycling

Local legislators in Michigan counties battle over a bill that will expand on water protections established by the 2008 Great Lakes Compact.

Photo Courtesy NASA

A proposed bill that declares Michigan’s groundwater a “public trust” has set off a storm of controversy, with opponents claiming that the legislation would expose property owners to new state fees, and supporters arguing that it will protect against outside interests siphoning off the state’s water.

The latest skirmish came last week, when a panel of the Oakland County Board of Commissioners narrowly passed a resolution asking the state legislature to vote against the bill. The resolution claims that the legislation would interfere with traditional water rights and limit the ability of farmers and lakeside homeowners to use the resource. It passed by a six-to-five vote along party lines in the southeastern Michigan county, with Republicans opposed to the bill and Democrats in support, respectively. The full board is scheduled to vote on the resolution Thursday.

The legislator at the center of the upheaval, State Rep. Dan Scripps (D-Leland), said that the bill’s intent is to strengthen property rights rather than reduce them.

“I’m trying to end the idea of groundwater as a commodity,” Scripps told the Traverse City Record-Eagle in March. Scripps told Circle of Blue that he introduced the bill in September because 2008’s landmark Great Lakes Compact did not go far enough to protect the rest of the state’s waters.

“Groundwater, surface water, Great Lakes water—these are public resources that should be protected in the future,” he said.

Since its introduction, House Bill 5319 has been praised by water rights experts, pilloried by the conservative Mackinac Center for Public Policy, and argued over in numerous letters to the editor in newspapers across the state.

Meanwhile the move by Oakland County politicians has been “sharply criticized” by Clean Water Action, a national citizens’ group working for clean, safe and affordable water.

“What the vote today says is that the groundwater that feeds Oakland County’s streams, keeps Oakland County lakes alive and is the circulatory system for our entire Great Lakes ecosystem doesn’t deserve to be safeguarded from a state government that is sometimes all too willing to allow our waters to be sold for profit and exported to thirsty countries like China,” Cyndi Roper, Clean Water Action’s special projects director, said in a news release. “We strongly urge the Board of Commissioner to reject those who want to turn Michigan’s waters over to corporate interests so, like our jobs, water can be outsourced in unlimited amounts to China and other places.”

Jim Olson, an environmental attorney from Traverse City, Michigan, and one of the region’s foremost authorities on water law, called for the passage of Scripps’ bill in a commentary in the Detroit Free Press.

“If public trust principles are not reaffirmed then the water commons that supports all life and economy here will be diminished in flow, level and quality, and claimed by special or foreign interests under international treaties such as NAFTA… In other words, industries and the jobs they produce, like farming—Michigan’s second largest industry—will be forced to compete with the infinite demand for water anywhere in the country, continent or world,” he wrote.

Half of the world’s population will be without safe drinking water in less than 30 years if current levels of water waste and pollution are not curbed, Olson noted. He said recent surveys have estimated that the world’s freshwater demands will outstrip the supply by more than 30 percent.

Scripps has introduced a new bill that he hopes will calm fears of new state fees on water, according to the Michigan Messenger. Introduced last week, the bill forbids state and local governments from imposing “any taxes or fees on water withdrawals from water wells on residential property.”

Sources: Detroit Free Press, Michigan Messenger, Traverse City Record-Eagle

Read More: Congress, Michigan Legislature Asked to Fix Leaks in Great Lakes Compact

Erin Kutz wrote:

Qualtré, a maker of motion sensors for consumer electronics such as cellular handsets, navigation devices, and gaming controllers, has closed an $8 million Series B round of funding, the Marlborough, MA-based company announced today. Matrix Partners and Pilot House Ventures participated in the round, which will go to product development, sales, and operations, and brings the company’s total funding raised to $13 million.

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42 Year old Mike Michalak is changing careers. Michalak’s been an options trader for more than a decade, but he says he’s ready to find something else, maybe a position as “a financial analyst or in the banking environment”. But the last time Michalak’s had to go on a job interview, was 15 years ago, and he’s nervous about it…so he called in a coach to help him score the big job. Its what many job seekers are doing these days, to get an advantage, or just stay in game of today’s super competitive job market. “Having a great interview is so critical, and the only way to have a really great interview is to have someone who can coach you through that interview process. This is the only opportunity you’re going to have to make that first great impression and in order to do that, you have to be coached through the interview and prepared for that” says Vickie Lenchner of HR Staffing.

The tough economy and lack of job openings has lead to an increase in the number of interview coaches nationwide. Terry Kozlowski, of jobinterview911.com, holds seminars and gives mock interviews to prepare clients on how to best answer the tough questions that might come up during the interview process. “Interviewers will sometimes just pick a question out of the blue just to try to throw you, and just to see how you think under pressure, so you gotta be prepared for the predicatable questions and as much as you can, be prepared with your own stories and your own life experiences to handle the unpredictable questions that come your way” she says.

A fast talking, 23 year old, Joyce Yin turned to Kozlowski for help, while she looks for her first job in the non-profit sector. She’s a barely 5 foot tall, ball of energy, with a lot of enthusiasm, but says she had to learn from a coach how to calm down and keep her nerves in check when she’s being interviewed “I feel like my heart is beating so fast, its like in my throat and its about to come out because i’m so nervous, because I’m already an energetic person, so to have all that other energy just makes me kinda like fffzzzz” Yin says, as she demonstrates her emotions by shaking her hands in the air. Nervousness is normal, says Lenchner, you just have come to the table well prepared and ready to put your best foot forward. Kozlowski says one of the most important tips she gives to those preparing for that big interview: “Practice, practice, practice”.

CLICK HERE TO SEE MORE TIPS AND SUGGESTIONS FROM INTERVIEW COACHES LENCHNER AND KOZLOWSKI:

Square Enix seems to be bolstering its stable of releases even further with something called “Chocobo’s Crystal Tower”. The company has recently filed a trademark for it over in Europe.

With energy experts forecasting substantial increases in solar power in the coming decades, scientists at GE Global Research are working with Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest electric utility, to understand how large amounts of solar can best be integrated into today’s grid. The first-of-its-kind study, which was approved earlier this month by the state’s regulators and is part of the utility’s ongoing smart grid efforts, will focus on methods and technologies to make the grid more reliable and efficient in a setting in which solar power is generated and delivered in close proximity to its customers.

Here comes the sun: The team at the Arizona Public Service Solar Test and Research Center studies a wide variety of solar technologies, such as this array made up of many different types of photovoltaic panels. Photo: APS

As Kathleen O’Brien, Project Leader for GE and an Electrical Engineer in GE’s Smart Grid Lab explains: “Much of the focus has been on new cell developments and system improvements to make solar more cost competitive, but the larger question is how to reliably integrate the higher penetrations of solar power expected. Through this study, we hope to gain more insight and answers.”

Kathleen says her team will also look at the effect fluctuating solar power production has on the power network’s stability and how new features on GE’s Solar Inverter technology — which plugs solar power into the grid — can improve stability. The work in Flagstaff, Ariz. has been green-lighted by the U.S. Department of Energy — which recently awarded APS, along with four partners including GE, a $3.3 million High Penetration Solar Deployment grant to pursue it. In the project, APS will integrate 1.5 megawatts of solar power — about one-third each from residential, commercial, and solar park sites. That’s enough power for about 500 homes.

Middleman: GE’s Brilliance Solar Inverter was adapted from the technology used with GE’s fleet of over 13,000 1.5 MW wind turbines. It turns the direct current generated by solar cells into the alternating current that we use with our appliances. It also has advanced grid functions that meet critical needs for utilities, such as regulating voltage and adjusting for voltage dips — known in the industry as “low voltage ride-through.”

The solar power in this study is known as “distributed energy” because it is generated and delivered in close proximity to its customers and is often decentralized from the larger electric grid network. The researchers say that’s an important distinction for this demonstration project — as it will help the teams simulate what will happen when larger amounts of solar power eventually impact the grid from many locations. Although 1.5 megawatts of solar by itself is not a lot of power, it will represent a substantial amount for the study area’s distributed energy system.

As Kathleen writes on the GE Global Research blog today: “This evaluation is more complex than it sounds because both the load (the amount of power being drawn from the feeder) and the source (the amount of power being created by the sunlight) are constantly changing.”

* Read the announcement
* Hear straight from our scientists on their blog

Learn more about our solar technologies in these GE Reports stories:
* “From the lab: ‘Why it’s time to take solar seriously’”
* “Cracking the thin film solar code in GE’s 4 global labs”
* “The GE Genius Series: Catching rays with ‘solar sails’”
* “Sipping on sun-water at SOS Children’s Village in Haiti”
* “Smart grid wind technologies breeze into solar”
* “Reflecting on solar’s bright side at industry confab”
* Read more Global Research stories on GE Reports

Today, New York Times economics writer David Leonhardt has a good column on why it might be a good time to buy a home in some unlikely parts of the United States.

Leonhardt shows that the rent ratio — the price of the home divided by the estimated annual cost to rent one like it — in many metro districts has fallen enough to signal that it is a good time to consider purchasing a home rather than renting one. Housing market experts believe that if the rent ratio is lower than 20, a home is of good enough value to consider buying. If the number is higher than 20, a purchaser is counting on real estate prices to rise to make up the higher aggregate cost of paying a mortgage. (During the worst of the housing bubble, homebuyers in places like Ft. Myers, Fla., were bidding on homes with sky-high rent ratios in the 40s.)

Leonhardt’s analysis shows that homes seem to be a decent deal in markets like California’s Inland Empire and Las Vegas — the very markets that stoked the worst of the housing crisis. But those parts of the country are suffering from high, high unemployment and a long real-estate hangover. And Leonhardt’s analysis does not take into account the fact that many mortgage experts believe those markets still have a ways to fall. I took the markets the Times column indicates might be a good deal — with rent ratios below 20 — and overlayed the data with information from RealtyTrac indicating the proportion of houses that received a foreclosure notice last month. In places like Washington, D.C., and Seattle, just one in 1,800 homes received a foreclosure notice. But in Las Vegas, one in 69 did, meaning a whole lot of houses might be coming on the market soon.

Indeed, the foreclosure crisis looks like it might worsen in many already hard-hit markets this summer and fall. The blue line on the graph below shows the rent ratio. The purple line shows the proportion of homes in the midst of foreclosure last month — and indicates markets that look likely to gain some capacity in the next few months.

So people looking to buy new homes might want to think twice before sinking their savings into one of the markets with a long purple line here, like Las Vegas or Riverside or Miami. On the other hand, the real estate markets in cities like Indianapolis, Dallas and Washington look considerably safer.

Article Tags: Alan Caruba

It is no accident that April 22, Earth Day, is also the birth date of Vladimir Lenin, an acolyte of Karl Marx, the lunatic who invented communism as an alternative to capitalism.

Earth Day is naked communism.

To begin, it substitutes a worship of the Earth, Gaia, for the worship of God, creator of the universe and the instructor of moral behavior for mankind.

The Earth does not demand a moral code of personal behavior. Indeed, the lesson it teaches is “the survival of the fittest “and an indifference to suffering. The “natural events” mankind fears most all involve the potential for significant loss of life and for injury.

The Earth is a beautiful place, but it is utterly merciless. Man has learned to adapt to it and, by adapt, I mean to use its resources to build shelter and protection from it, to plant and harvest crops from it, and to domesticate some of its species while hunting and fishing for others for food.

Source: factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com

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