Busy Roads Could Be Energy Source

It seems as though roads could become the source of a lot more energy. Several recent student designs have proposed that major roadways be retrofitted with various forms of wind energy collection devices.

Read more at engadget.com ...

Giant Wind Turbine Powers 4000 Homes

Enercon, Germany's largest wind turbine manufacturer, now makes the most powerful wind turbine in the world, the E112. This giant turbine was upgraded, so that instead of generating 4.5 megawatts, it now produces 6 megawatts — that's enough to supply power to 4000 homes in Germany. It's named the E112 because it has a rotor diameter of 112 meters (about 367 feet).

Read more at treehugger.com ...

Cars, Trucks, and SUVs

Trying to keep your car or truck in top condition?

See the Manufacturer's Recommended Maintenance Schedule as well as Recalls and Technical Service Bulletins for your car by completeing this form at Edmunds.com

Huh?

Whatta ya mean by that? Another example of the casual misuse of language ...

'Pat Tillman’s situation was similar to mine but completely different,' Lynch told Newsweek.com. “He didn’t have the opportunity to come home and tell the truth and set the record straight like I did.”

New Details on Making of Jessica Lynch Myth - Newsweek The War in Iraq - MSNBC.com:

And the Idiots Shall be Rewarded

Perhaps you read some version of this story from ESPN --

FORT COLLINS, Colo. -- A 4-year-old boy was recovering
Sunday from a deep cut to his head after Colorado State wide
receiver George Hill collided with him during CSU's spring game.

Hill was catching a touchdown pass when his momentum carried him
into Caden Thomas on the sidelines Saturday. Caden was among
several kids playing on the sidelines as part of a kids' festival
at Hughes Stadium, said Caden's father, Mike Thomas. More...

I can't help but wonder what the kid's dad was thinking! Does he understand football is a game of very large people moving at high speed and a white stripe on the grass is not a protective barrier?

These people have been the subject of a great deal of media coverage including a national TV appearance on CBS's The Early Show.

... the phone at the family's Fort Collins home rang. It was CNN Headline News. During the next couple of hours, everyone else called, too, and by lunchtime the Thomases were headed to the airport. More from The Rocky Mountain News ...

Once again, we're going to reward irresponsible behavior with "fifteen minutes of fame".

I'm a Father (so to speak)

This morning I discovered a mother duck nesting below my dining room windows behind the shrubbery. It appears to have at least 5 or 6 eggs in its nest.

I'm concerned, though, because it appears to have a blue plastic ring of the type found on screw-top drink bottles around its neck.

Obviously, it must be a pretty much full grown adult, so I'm hoping it isn't going to grow anymore and be be choked by the ring. It wouldn't let me get near enough to try to remove it.

I'm going to have to find out how long it takes for the eggs to hatch, when I can expect a batch of little waddlers.

Responding to School Attacks

Schools need to teach students to be aggressive - TODAY: People - MSNBC.com

By Mike Celizic

TODAYshow.com contributor

TODAY

Updated: 12:05 p.m. ET April 18, 2007

Cowering under a desk and waiting for help to come is no longer an option. American schools must teach their students to respond aggressively to attacks by people bent on mayhem.

"I would hope that the administrators and folks that are making the decisions would understand that it’s difficult to negotiate with a bullet," security consultant Allen Hill told TODAY. "A person that comes into your facility with a gun intends to kill and do you harm."

The founder of Response Options, a Texas-based security company, said, "Get past this paralysis of fear over liability issues. Our country is so litigious and concerned about doing the wrong thing and about doing the politically correct thing that we don’t do anything."

"Get up and move," he advised. "Do whatever it takes to create chaos and mayhem. Disrupt them. Make them go into a protective mode themselves. We feel that we can become actively aggressive for our own benefit, whether that’s actively running out of the classroom, having to face the gunman and take him down, breaking out windows and escaping that way."

You can’t wait for something to happen and then try to form a response, he said. It’s got to be done in advance.

Read more / watch video...

Court case could affect school sports

Court case could affect school sports - USATODAY.com

By Joan Biskupic, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — A dispute that traces to a football scrimmage on a grassy high school practice field in suburban Nashville is now in the nation's highest legal arena, where the dueling parties say it could have consequences for student sports nationwide.

In the backdrop of the case to be argued at the Supreme Court on Wednesday are concerns about the exploitation of budding athletes and the soundness of rules set by state athletic associations.

More broadly, the case could affect the latitude that school or other government-related associations have to impose conditions on individuals in their programs.

"There has become so much emphasis on high school sports that there are now practices year-round for soccer or other sports," he said. "There's pressure to specialize for the purpose of earning a college scholarship. There's a move on the part of high school administrators to avoid this specialization, because it's healthier for students and families."

Read more ...

Differences between schoolteachers, professors on what students should know

By Mary Beth Marklein, USA TODAY

State learning standards may help high school teachers focus their coursework, but college faculty say they're focusing on the wrong things, says a report that finds a "significant gap" between what high school instructors teach and what college faculty think entering freshmen ought to know.

"States tend to have too many standards attempting to tackle too many content topics," the report says. The report examines science, math, reading and English.

"High school teachers are working very, very hard at following and teaching their state standards," she says, but college faculty "felt it was more important for students to learn a fewer number of fundamental but essential skills."

High school teachers put more weight on advanced content, while college instructors said "a rigorous understanding of fundamentals" was more important. More than half (55%) of faculty ranked "basic operations and applications" most important, compared with 40% of high school faculty. Among material most desired by college faculty but covered the least in high school were algebraic problems such as solving quadratic equations and factoring.

Read more ...

The Testing Business

SATs Scored in Error by Test Companies Roil Admissions Process

By David Glovin and David Evans

Nov. 3 (Bloomberg) -- Jerry Lee Faine Elementary School in Dothan, Alabama, starts each day with two hours of reading and vocabulary. After that, there's arithmetic. ``If you can read, you can do anything,'' says Principal Deloris Potter, a spry woman of 59 who has run the school since 2002.

...11- year-old Alexis Szoka took dozens of practice exams last year leading up to the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test. She wound up a nervous wreck. ``My daughter has such test anxiety, she can't take a test anymore,''...

Potter, trusting the work of her teachers, was confident of passing grades in April 2005 as students began two weeks of mandatory standardized testing in reading and math. That July, state education officials told Potter her school had failed the Alabama Reading and Mathematics Test. The state warned it might fire teachers if scores didn't improve, she says. A dozen students transferred after the substandard rating. Faculty morale plunged.

Read more ...

Gasoline use up 2.8% since early time change

By Barbara Hagenbaugh, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — In a bid to save energy, Congress moved up daylight-saving time by three weeks this year. But so far, the change appears to have backfired after Americans last month used record amounts of gasoline as they got out to enjoy the extra hour of sunshine.

Average daily gasoline demand for the three weeks after the time change rose 2.8% from the same period a year ago and was the highest ever for the period, according to the Energy Department.

Some observers say the surge is linked to the earlier start for daylight-saving time, which began March 11 instead of the customary first Sunday in April.

"Daylight-saving simply pushes us out of our houses," says Michael Downing, author of Spring Forward: The Annual Madness of Daylight Saving Time. Downing, a critic of daylight-saving time, argues that the extra hour of light at day's end leads people to drive to places, such as golf courses, parks and shopping malls, that they otherwise wouldn't.

"We simply know that when Americans go to the mall, they don't walk," he says.

Read More ...

Yokohama Tires

Yokohama Piece-of-Crap Tires

Eight months and 10,200 miles ago, I bought a new Suzuki Aerio SX AWD equipped with a set of P195/55R15 Yokohama Geolander tires.

Today (reminder: 8 months, 10K miles) I had to replace all four because they were worn nearly smooth.

I advise you, in my opinion, to never buy these tires. If you want an Aerio (by the way, a terrific little car), be sure to get some other sort of tire on it.

The Daylight Saving change: no savings, no point

By Ken Fisher | Published: April 03, 2007 - 11:41AM CT

The US government's plan to boost energy savings by moving Daylight Saving Time forward by three weeks was apparently a waste of time and effort, as the technological foibles Americans experienced failed to give way to any measurable energy savings.

While the change caused no major infrastructure problems in the country, plenty of electronics and computer systems that were designed with the original DST switchover date (first Sunday in April) failed to update. The inconvenience was minor, and the potential savings were great. Or so we were told by the politicians behind the move.

Read more ...