A lick of lead in these vintage toys? (Photo: ercwttmn via Flickr) For those of you who are irrepressible thrifters, the thought of “what’s the lead content of this vintage (fill in the blank)” may have crossed your mind while you’re appraising some promising specimen. So how to determine whether something is contaminated with lead?… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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… And Colbert Weighs In You may recall this story surfacing over the summer: A police squad raided Rawesome, an organic food co-op, guns drawn, because it was allegedly selling raw milk. Besides scaring the crap out of the management and organic shoppers, it created a stir in the organic food community. There’s been renewed controversy over the fact that the FDA designates raw milk’s to be illegal, and the severe — and wholly inappropriate — overreaction by the LAPD shown in the video certainly raises the stakes. Luckily, a certain uber-conservative satirist is on hand to sort the whole mess out: Video of the raid an… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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photo: Gopal Aggarwal / Creative Commons Yesterday my fellow TreeHugger Sami posed the question ‘ Does Telecommuting Encourage Travel? ‘ To which I respond, so what if it does? Travel is good. From the act of movement itself, to the experience of new places, people, cultures and ideas, travel is a good thing. Strike that. Travel is a great thing. … Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Lenders seized more homes this summer than in any three-month stretch since the housing market went bust in 2006. But many foreclosures may be challenged in court because of allegations that banks evicted people without reading the documents. (Oct. 14)
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Fluid Bed Gasifier Plant. Credit Advanced Plasma Power In Jim Kunstler’s World Made By Hand, the former motorheads in town mine the dump for resources. There is a lot of valuable stuff in dumps; it has been cheaper to bury stuff than to recycle or compost it. They are also filling up, and nobody wants new ones in their backyard. In Belgium, Advanced Plasma Power is building a plant at a h… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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Disabled children perform during the pre-closing show of the XIX Commonwealth Games closing ceremony at The Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi on October 14, 2010. Photograph by: Prakash Singh, AFP/Getty Images DELHI – The 2010 Commonwealth Games, surprisingly successful against all odds, ended Thursday with a stunning and sentimental closing that had as much security as pomp after British media reports indicated terrorists may have targeted the ceremony and the Metro transit lines to Nehru Stadium. “They picked a wrestler and weightlifter as extra security,” quipped gold-medallist grappler Ohenawa Akuffo, chosen along with gold-medallist lifter Christine Girard, as honorary…
Continue reading …Focus Design’s SBU self-balancing unicycle hits 2.0: faster, stronger, sleeker, zanier
October 14, 2010 No Comment
And here you were thinking Focus Design had thrown in the towel after producing just one self-balancing unicycle . Silly you, huh? Nearly two years to the day after the aforesaid company cranked out the goofiest transporter since the Segway , along comes the SBU v2.0 to rekindle our hope in humanity. According to the outfit, this newfangled edition is sleeker, safer and more powerful, and better still, it should be “much easier to learn.” Focus is also tossing out a somewhat ambiguous guarantee, noting that it’ll most certainly be “an instant crowd-pleaser.” The newly designed motor packs 1,000 watts of power (compared to 350 watts on v1.0), and the more powerful battery will keep you cruising on Ventura Boulevard for at least a few more minutes than before. Control freaks will appreciate the addition of three gyro sensors (to monitor pitch, roll and yaw), lowered foot pegs and a regenerative braking system. This marvel of modern engineering is expected to start shipping next month, with just $1,499 and a willingness to try something your mother wouldn’t recommend standing between you and… well, something that your mother would never recommend. Vid’s after the break. Continue reading Focus Design’s SBU self-balancing unicycle hits 2.0: faster, stronger, sleeker, zanier Focus Design’s SBU self-balancing unicycle hits 2.0: faster, stronger, sleeker, zanier originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Image credit: Keith Johnson From massive solar installations in Nevada to environmental education tours , many Native American communities are implementing innovative and exciting sustainability initiatives. Now one farmer on the Pine Ridge Lakota reservation in South Dakota is hoping to create an ongoing permaculture teaching and demonstration project to promote s… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …This is going on both in Illinois and New York: The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether the state of Illinois missed the deadline for mailing absentee ballots to members of the military and other overseas American voters as part of a new federal overseas voting law. Cris Cray, Director of Legislation at the Illinois State Board of Elections, says not all of Illinois’ 110 jurisdictions were compliant with the 2009 Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act (MOVE). The law requires every state to mail their absentee ballots 45 days prior to Election Day to overseas troops, government employees and other Americans who want to vote from abroad. Cray says she is currently compiling data from each of Illinois’ jurisdictions to determine which were compliant and which were delinquent. Cray said it’s possible the ballots may not be counted because the state was tardy in sending them out. Of course, military ballots tend to lean pretty far to the right. They would be fairly reliable votes for GOP candidates, but if they can manage to keep them from counting, Democrats will benefit. This reminds me of the 2000 Florida recount when Al Gore’s lawyers went to court and managed to get thousands of military ballots thrown out because they didn’t have a postmark on them, something that isn’t required for military mail coming from ships and posts overseas. It probably cost George Bush a significant number of votes and hurt his margin of victory.
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A teenager from Nepal just over two feet high is standing proudly as the world’s shortest man. Khagendra Thapa Magar had his status certified by a Guinness World Records adjudicator on his 18th birthday Thursday. (Oct. 14)
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