Tag Archives: Good Fact

Oscar the Grouch gets dream home

Everyone’s gotta have a dream. If you were Oscar you’d likely want something like this.

Last year’s trash could become next year’s model home, thanks to the invention of a new type of construction material made entirely from waste products.

“Bitublocks,” created by engineer John Forth of the University of Leeds in England, are composed of recycled glass, sewage sludge, incinerator ash, the by-products of metal purification and pulverized fuel ash from power stations.

“Bitublocks use up to 100 percent waste materials and avoid sending them to landfill, which is quite unheard of in the building industry,” Forth said. …

… Plans also are now under way to develop a “Vegeblock” using waste vegetable oil.

Only the Cool Survive, er Care

Cool People Care is a site that tries to get people doing small good acts everyday because everyone has the time to do it. They have a feature called “5 minutes of caring” that is just that, take five minutes and show you care about the world.

If people are told how they can make a difference in less than 5 minutes a day, they just might do it. And, just like tiny water droplets make a tidal wave, if you get enough people to care for 5 minutes a day, you’ll change the world.

A good site indeed!

Tinman smiles….ethics for robots

You’ve seen/read I, Robot …well everyone talks about doing it, but now someone’s actually doing something about it. Our robots, in the future, are going to have ethics! There’s something very “Star Trek” about this story – very “Data”. Or in this case Alex Hubo.

” South Korea is drawing up a code of ethics to stop humans misusing robots — or vice versa.”

Sustainable Housing in Chicago

In Chicago, they have recently built a building providing subsidized housing that is LEED certified. This building is conceptually great as it helps people while helping the environment. A model that every city should adapt!

He notes that the building, designed by Chicago architect Helmut Jahn, is specially designed to use wind power. The roof curves at the edges, like the top of a loaf of bread. As the wind flows over the curve, it accelerates on its way into the turbines.

The roof also houses solar hot-water panels. Rainwater runoff from the property collects in an underground cistern, into which also drains filtered gray water from the building’s showers. This is the first large-scale gray-water system in Chicago. The collected water is used to flush toilets and irrigate outdoor gardens.

In all, the green-design elements added about $1 million to Near North’s construction costs, which totaled $14.1 million. The expected payback period for the added costs is 16 to 18 years

Cluster Bomb Ban

Hopefully most people have seen this in the mainstream press, but if not that’s OK because here it is!
Quite a few nations are saying no to cluster bombs!

Forty-six countries agreed Friday to push for a global treaty banning cluster bombs, a move activists hope will force the superpowers that oppose the effort — the U.S., China and Russia — to abandon the weapons.

Organizers said the declaration was needed despite the absence of key nations at a conference in the Norwegian capital to avoid a potential humanitarian disaster posed by unexploded cluster munitions.