Everyone loves a good popsicle, but everyone also hates the sticky goo you get on your hands if it’s not eaten fast enough.
Lifehacker passes along a simple solution for everyone, that may come in super handy with all the church VBSs coming up soon.
Slide the wooden stick of an ice pop through a coffee filter so your hands stay mess-free.
Wa-lah! Save yourself some fuss with a bag full of coffee filters this summer.
Via DMN’s Religion Blog:
Solar panels – hundreds of them – are to be installed on one of the buildings. Here’s a story from Catholic News Service:
By CAROL GLATZ and ALICIA AMBROSIO
Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY. Expanding its mission from saving souls to saving the planet, the Vatican is going green.
A giant rooftop garden of solar panels will be built next year on top of the Paul VI audience hall, creating enough electricity to heat, cool and light the entire building year-round.
“Solar energy will provide all the energy (the building) needs,” said the mastermind behind the environmentally friendly project, Pier Carlo Cuscianna, head of the Vatican’s department of technical services.
And that is only the beginning. Cuscianna told Catholic News Service May 24 that he had in mind other sites throughout Vatican City where solar panels could be installed, but that it was too early in the game to name names.
Even though Vatican City State is not a signatory of the Kyoto Protocol, a binding international environmental pact to cut greenhouse gases, its inaugural solar project marks a major move in trying to reduce its own so-called carbon footprint, that is, the amount of carbon dioxide released through burning fossil fuels.
The carbon dioxide-slashing solar panels will be installed sometime in 2008 after prototypes, environmental impact reports and other studies have been completed, Cuscianna said.
In a May 23 article in the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, Cuscianna wrote that safeguarding the environment was “one of the most important challenges of our century.”
The Italian engineer said appeals by Popes Benedict XVI and John Paul II to respect nature inspired him to help power the Vatican’s energy needs with renewable resources.
He recalled how, in his 2007 World Day of Peace message, Pope Benedict warned of “the increasingly serious problem of energy supplies” that was leading to “an unprecedented race” for the earth’s resources.
Cuscianna also found inspiration from Pope John Paul’s 1990 peace message, dedicated in its entirety to the need to respect God’s creation.
“We cannot continue to use the goods of the earth as we have in the past,” the pope wrote, calling for “a new ecological awareness” that leads to “concrete programs and initiatives.”
Cuscianna took the initiative and helped draw up and deliver to the Vatican governor’s office a feasibility study of going solar.
He said the Paul VI hall was chosen first for a number of reasons: Cooling and heating the large audience hall makes it one of the top energy guzzlers in the Vatican, and its roof was in need of repair.
When the project is finished, more than 1,000 solar panels will cover the football field-sized roof.
While not revealing how much the solar project will cost, Cuscianna said “it will pay for itself in a few years” from the savings on energy bills.
Whatever solar power the hall is not using will be funneled into the Vatican’s energy grid and benefit other energy needs, he said.
The solar rooftop garden is not the first environmental project the Vatican has undertaken. In 1999, as part of preparations for the jubilee year, the entire lighting system of St. Peter’s Basilica was upgraded to be low-impact. Strategically placed energy-saving light bulbs were installed inside and out, cutting the basilica’s energy consumption by an estimated 40 percent.
In 2000, the Vatican unveiled its own electric motor vehicle recharging station, where electric wheelchairs, scooters and cars could “tank up.”
Unfortunately, the idea of replacing polluting, gas-powered cars with a network of electric vehicles within the Vatican stalled. U.S. Cardinal Edmund C. Szoka, the former archbishop of car-capital Detroit, had pushed for the cleaner switch while he was head of the commission that governs Vatican City State.
Pope John Paul, however, regularly used an electric car at Castel Gandolfo toward the end of his pontificate when he was no longer able to move easily around the grounds.
Cuscianna said the Vatican has a commission that studies environmental issues and potential eco-friendly practices. Programs facilitating recycling, composting and waste reduction have not yet been established.
An expansion of the Vatican’s use of renewable energy resources would not only reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, Cuscianna said, “it could be a condition that makes Vatican City more autonomous” and less dependent on Italy’s power grid.
With Italian news headlines warning of yet another sweltering summer and potential power brownouts and blackouts, greater energy autonomy for the Vatican through the sun sounds like a cool idea.
05/25/2007
Copyright (c) 2007 Catholic News Service/U.S. Conference of Catholic
CNET has an interesting guide to indoor lighting of the future…
A new era of lighting is dawning, designed to meet the needs of a power-hungry and resource-challenged 21st century. There have never been so many options for illuminating the indoors.
“My crystal ball says that in five years, the home is going to be a mix of incandescents, LEDs and fluorescents,” said Michael Siminovitch, director of the California Lighting Technology Center at the University of California at Davis.
As prices drop for alternative lighting in the coming years, consumer options will proliferate. Today’s technological innovations make Edison’s work look like the stuff of a middle-school science fair. Compact fluorescents are looking lovelier, white LEDs last a decade, organic LEDs make ceilings and countertops glow, and fiber-optic tubes can pipe true sunshine from roof to cellar.
“The lamp aisle in stores is already a mile long,” said Siminovitch. “It’s gonna be confusing.”
What are you using in your home? Have you made the switch to LED’s or compact fluorescents.
We’re slowly switching all our bulbs to fluorescents in our townhome. I also try to open the blinds in the daytime to let more light in when it’s needed. Just be sure you open the right side of the house. You want to let some light in but keep the heat out.
While Laurie and I were in Pagosa Springs we stumbled upon (after looking for a good 15 minutes) a small micro-brewery that was simply awesome.
It had a great atmosphere, friendly staff and we got a personal tour by the owner and founder. Not bad for a Wednesday afternoon.
I told Laurie we should open our own micro-brewery in Waxahachie. I don’t think she was super thrilled with the idea. Although she did enjoy the root beer Pagosa Brewing Company made.
Now, Open Cola has released their “secret” formula so that you too can make your own soda.
From DIY:happy::
The formulas that make up Coke and Pepsi are closely guarded trade secrets – perhaps the most popular and well known trade secrets in existence today. If you want to drink a Cola, you gotta shell out the big bucks (literally, these days) for one of the big guys.
OpenCola is working to change that, having released their Cola formula under the GNU license. Now you can start your own underground neighborhood Cola brewery and give the sauce to your friends and family. The inventors of the drink (is inventors the right word here?) invite people to come a change the formula in hopes of making a more perfect beverage.
So now we just need a root beer recipe and a contract with Blue Bell Ice Cream and we can open our own soda shop.
Wah-la.
Here’s a recipe for root beer too.
Get the formula here
Oh and as DIY:happy points out:
“Many of the oils needed for flavoring can burn skin. Use caution when preparing. They can also dissolve the plastic lining of a refrigerator; store with caution.â€
My mate Thomas, from across the pond, has an insightful post on imagination vs. memory.
He brings out a number of good points.
How many times have you heard a great idea, or had one yourself only to be shot down with, “Well we’ve never done it that way” or “Well this is how we’ve always done it.”
I know it can happen every day in a church, business or government setting. I’ve heard many friends complain that they’ve come into a job, anxious and ready to make an impact, they look around, come up with some new imaginative ideas, only to get shot down with similar comments.
Working for two different newspaper companies and being the “new kid on the block” I experienced this a lot. It seemed that 90% of my ideas (at one paper especially) were shot down only because “You don’t know anything about newspapers. When you’ve been in the business as long as I have you’ll know better.” And because of the unwillingness to change, print newspapers continue to see a decrease in their subscriptions and rack sales.
Sure, I may not know as much about newspapers as someone who’s been in the business 20 years, but I do know about my generation and I know they’re not reading newspapers.
Thomas writes:
My friend Stewart over at Scream Without Raising Your Voice made an interesting point in a recent post. He spoke of his church needing to look to imagination rather than memory.
This struck a chord with me… On Sunday, at the Salvation Army in Bellshill, we held a business meeting to discuss some options that have come to light with regards to the new building for the corps.
We can either move within the main street… or move to a nearby location… either way, we’ll need to move from our present position…
What we need is imagination… the ability to design the future of Bellshill… create something new rather than rely on what has been.
Thomas said his church hit roadblocks along the way while trying to find a new location for their church and much of the debate was based on what’s happened historically, not what’s happening now or in the future.
Thomas quotes from Edward de Bono:
Any new idea that does not raise a howl of protest is probably not a good idea. Those who are comfortable in the use of the old idea find it difficult to see the inadequacies of the old idea. If you have to imagine new benefits and you cannot achieve this effort of imagination, you have no choice except to resist the new.
I like that. Granted, just because your idea raises a howl of protest doesn’t mean its a good idea and also realize that just because there’s protest doesn’t make it a bad idea either.
I’m reminded of Paul’s instruction to Timothy:
Get the word out. Teach all these things. And don’t let anyone put you down because you’re young. Teach believers with your life: by word, by demeanor, by love, by faith, by integrity. Stay at your post reading Scripture, giving counsel, teaching. And that special gift of ministry you were given when the leaders of the church laid hands on you and prayed—keep that dusted off and in use. – I Timothy 4:11-14
Finally, Thomas adds:
Imagination is checking out all possibilities… not accepting things as is. Its about looking behind the loin cloth of some classical statue… instead of accepting what should be there.
Well, I’ve decided Nigeria is not the place for me this year.
I don’t know why (or why not) but I just haven’t had a peace about going back this year with the “Crazy Texas Team” and the CWF.
Maybe God has something else lined up for me – school, another ministry, I don’t know.
But while I was in Nigeria last year, I kept asking myself, “Why is there not more solar power being used.”
Africa is prime for renewable energy sources. We were constantly fighting with the power going out throughout the day or evening and so many others don’t even have the option for electricity.
But now a guy in Houston has put together a new light for Africa, BoGo.
It’s a solar powered flashlight. Seriously. Watch the video:
The flashlights run for 5 hours on a 10 hour charge. What a way to change a continent.
For $25 you can get your own flashlight and Mark Bent will send one of the flashlights to the African charity of your choice or a member of the US Military serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.
I’d like to challenge everyone to buy the flashlight and give it to the “Crazy Texas Team” to take with them at the end of September. I’ve sent an email to a couple people on the team, so hopefully they can sign up and be a partner as well, so everyone that is purchased can get another one sent to the group but until then you can pick another African charity to give your second light to as well.
If you’d like more information, let me know.