Articles by JMG
Let's live on the planet as if we intend to stay.
All Articles
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An absorbing news story
A nice bit of engineering problem solving! Anything that discourages people from switching from incandescents (5 percent useful light, 95 percent wasted energy) to compact fluorescent bulbs while we wait for the prices on good LED bulbs to come down is a bad thing.
One thing you hear from the nutjobs is how terrible the mercury in CFL bulbs is, and what an EPA nightmare you will have on your hands if you break one of these in your house.
A clever solution is pending: Providing a small bit of mercury absorbing treated cloth with the bulbs so that, in event of a break (rare -- I have many of these bulbs, and have moved them several times without breakage), you simply put the cloth over the break and it sucks up the mercury, and you recycle the cloth so the mercury is recaptured. Neat!
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Republican Congressional candidate says main priority is energy reform
While Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith (R.) tries to fuzz his ties to the GOP and his unswerving devotion to the Bush agenda (in between lurches to the center around election time), at least Oregon voters in the First District have a choice that's actually interesting: either Democrat David Wu, considered a huge disappointment and one of the least effective members of Congress (he's so lame that even the Oregonian, who typically only stops endorsing incumbents after they've been six feet under for months, endorsed his primary opponent) or this guy.
I don't know if that guy's got any of the right answers, but he's sure got the right questions.
