Look at all the trouble these 56 men started!
Bottled Water – Why?
The stuff isn’t any better that what comes out of the tap in
most U.S. cities. Of course there are
exceptions, but maybe we should be fixing them and not filling the world with useless plastic bottles.
According to the
Associated Press, Nestlé Waters will treat the city’s tap water and bottle it
under its Pure Life brand. The plan is to extract about 35 million gallons of
water in its first year to produce 264 million half-liter bottles.
Unsurprisingly, many
people are wondering why it is necessary to bottle water in the middle of a
desert when Arizonans can just drink it from the tap.
“Arizona is in drought
conditions and with more people moving here each day it is imperative that we
do everything we can to conserve water,” a Change.org petition signed by nearly
45,000 people states. “Even on the City of Phoenix website, we are reminded
that the future of our city water supply is uncertain.”
We Can All Be Spider Man (or Woman)
Not sure about
wrapping myself in spider web, but if Patagonia thinks It’s OK…then I’ll
give it a try.
Spider silk’s
qualities are nearly mythical. Its tensile strength is comparable to steel’s.
Yet it is lighter, and can be as stretchy as a rubber band. Those traits in
combination make it tougher than Kevlar. To give you an idea: If the spider
webs that shoot from Spider Man’s wrists were real spider silk, the superhero
could genuinely have pulled the runaway train to a halt in that dramatic scene
in Spider Man 2.
So it’s no surprise
that the race is on to create a synthetic version.
“We make protein
microfibers, and they are inspired by nature, starting with spiders,” says Sue
Levin, Bolt Threads’ chief marketing officer. “But we can riff off that in
literally infinite directions.”
A real spider
generates silk in specialized glands in its abdomen, and creates the silk
strands using a spinning organ called a spinneret. Some spiders produce up to
seven types of silk, each with its own purpose and attributes.
Synthetic spider silk
could be used for everything from automobile parts to medical devices to
performance outdoor gear, which is the area that’s attracting some of the most
attention thus far. Bolt Threads recently announced a $50 million round of
funding, as well as a new partnership with the outdoor brand Patagonia, which
demonstrates a major vote of confidence in its technology.
Neither Bolt Threads
nor Patagonia will give details on what products they’re working on just yet,
but Matt Dwyer, Patagonia’s director of material innovation, promises when
something does come out, it will be “awesome.”
“We think they’ve
cracked the code,” he says. “For them to have come up with this capability… is
just the kind of stuff that blows your mind.”
The War on Science
Right now it looks like ignorance is winning and sadly it is the media that is aiding the forces of ignorance. Could be that the
public’s right to know has been subverted by corporate interests.
Every so often a book
comes along that changes the way you view the world. The War on Science: Who’s Waging It, Why It Matters, What We Can Do About It by Shawn Otto is one of those rare books. If you care about
attacks on climate science and the rise of authoritarianism, if you care about
biased media coverage or shake-your-head political tomfoolery, this book is for
you.
In the week following
the Paris climate accord, both the Democrats and the Republicans held
presidential primary debates. Yet just days after 195 countries reached an
historic agreement to begin rebuilding the world’s economy around clean energy,
no journalist in either debate asked a single question about it.
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