kids
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Terrifying recycled playground will eat your children
Let's say you want to build a playground for refugee children from Myanmar. And let's say you also want to recycle some rubber tires. You could tie the tires to ropes and make swings out of them, like kids have done pretty much since the tire was invented, or maybe you could put them on the ground to make an obstacle course. Or, hey, you could fashion them into a sort of Gigeresque nightmare squid! That one sounds good, let's do that.
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Critical List: Solar installations increasing; giant snails invade Miami
The number of non-residential solar panel installations is growing.
Disasters connected to weather or climate made more than 30 million people in Asia refugees last year, the Asian Development Bank reports.
Oil industry consultant Daniel Yergin wrote a new book about energy. It'll probably annoy you.
A professor in Canada made a machine that could suck carbon out of the air. -
Teaching kids to love nature and buy less stuff
Kids are getting the sort of education that guarantees they'll soon be fighting each other, Hunger Games-style, for Earth's dwindling resources. The solution is to cram everyone in America into Berkeley, California, say the authors of the new book The Failure of Environmental Education. (I'm paraphrasing.)
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Teenage genius improves solar panels using math and trees
You gotta heart teenage geniuses: this one, Aidan Dwyer, age 13, figured out a way to make solar panel arrays more efficient after taking a walk in the woods. Here is his basic thought-process, broken down for us non-geniuses:
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Singapore aims to become a city in a garden
Singapore wants to go from being "a garden city" to "a city in a garden." That could mean benefits for residents' health, children's development, and water and air quality.
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McChange doesn't come easy
McDonald's announced that it will include apple slices and a smaller French fry serving in its Happy Meal. How significant is the announcement?
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British kids build greenhouse out of plastic bottles
What do you do with the empty plastic bottles that you really shouldn't have been drinking out of, anyway? These British school children spent a year and half collecting 1,500 of them and used the bottles to construct a greenhouse, in which they are very successfully growing tomatoes.
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Don't eat your broccoli: Junk food industry determined to target kids
Government agencies are set to release voluntary suggestions for how Big Food could less slimy in its advertising. The industry is pushing back.
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Republicans: We must protect children from energy efficiency
Republican Rep. Sandy Adams wants to limit funding for Department of Energy websites that educate kids about efficiency. She doesn't know how much money that will save, but by god, we must stop children learning at any cost!