Dueling climate control bills
Waxman-Markey is the creme of every liberal’s crop of life control legislations.A This thing affects every single aspect of life as you know it.A Surprisingly, it’s not gotten anywhere.A “Cap and trade” has sort of become synonoums with “taxing”.A Now, I a cynic.A I think Waxman-Markey is loonie.A I have yet to have one single person explain to me …
Nancy – GotSmog.com – The Pollution-Reducing Blog
Former KTRK 13 anchor Minerva Perez talks to Mike McGuff about new show, U2
Minerva PA rez is a familiar face to television viewers in places like Houston, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Antonio and Austin among others.
Nancy – GotSmog.com – The Pollution-Reducing Blog
The Evolution of Kitchen Home Appliances in an Age-Free Environment
The "new" retirement would wisely be referred to as "unretirement," a decades-long, active, involved extension of life. Home will be headquarters during this exciting stage of life, and the kitchen will be command central. From untraditional housing styles to universal design, the kitchen will be the first true age-free space.
Kitchen-Centric Housing
Retirement age is dropping steadily and even people in their twenties and thirties eagerly contemplate their move into the phase of life that used to mean the end of all that mattered. Not so in the 21st century; unretirement can bring new freedoms, lucrative ventures, broader horizons, personal fulfillment and global connections – and all this as you sit at the kitchen table enjoying a morning coffee. Kitchens will continue to come in all shapes, sizes and price ranges. They will always be loved as much for their flaws as their charm and convenience.
Housing styles and development patterns that isolate residents and create urban sprawl will be replaced by designs and plans that are both environmentally sound and people friendly. One trend will shift couples and single homeowners towards compact, green new homes and away from energy- hungry monster houses. These scaled-down residences will not just be smaller, they’ll be smarter. For instance, some homeowners may concentrate food production in the kitchen through hydroponic or soilless gardening in glassed-in extensions that double as dining rooms. Kitchen-centric, multi-unit housing will become more common with home-like variations that include:
- cluster homes constructed around central courtyards that function as common outdoor eating areas and kitchen gardens,
- co-housing communities which integrate separate family units with communal recreation and eating areas to strengthen community connections, and
- mingle-style high-rise units with private bed-sitting rooms radiating off central kitchens and living areas to offer affordable, elegant lifestyles.
Our First Age-Free Environments
Too often thoughts of the future focus on how technology will change our lives, ignoring an important fact: we’re going to change, too. Every aspect of life will be touched as the demographic revolution represented by almost 10 million Baby Boomers moves through life. Kitchens will be our first age-free spaces as they transform into multi-purpose, multigeneration work and entertainment spaces where safety and functionality are paramount for all sizes, shapes and abilities of users. Children and grandchildren, parents and grandparents, the able-bodied and those with disabilities must all be comfortable socializing, cooking and eating in these activity centres.
Age-Free environments have flexibility designed in. Universal Design, an emerging concept that will soon become commonplace, stresses the elimination of all barriers to functionality and enjoyment for everyone. These Age-Free features range from wide hallways, levered door handles and adjustable-height counters to visually-cued ergonomic design applied to everything from control knobs to furniture. All of which furnish a kitchen that allows the joy of cooking to be the focal point.
Voice-activated appliances with robotic features for repetitive tasks like cleaning and equipment maintenance will be among future innovations that save time, effort and money. Comfort will be ensured by advances in computer-chip embedded products and materials like chameleon wall surfaces which change colour on demand to match mood and weather, and heated floors that recognize the walker and automatically adjust room temperature to suit that person’s preprogrammed preferences.
Room for Improvement
Home owners and tenants will continue to strive for a personal balance of affordability and luxury in their homes. Not every family or community will have access to the same levels of technology and sophistication of design-there will still be room for improvement. Here are a few improvements that may be available to you:
- Food shopping will shift from a time-consuming physical task to an automatic electronic undertaking. Home appliances that continuously monitor freshness and inventory levels will automatically place orders with grocery warehouses and food distributors to ensure you never run out of anything.
- Bulk ordering and cooperative arrangements for purchasing food and other goods will cut costs and support essential local infrastructures within subdivisions, condominium complexes and neighbourhoods.
- Systems and equipment will have back up capacity to protect food during power brown outs and failures. Some kitchens may be designed to double as a self-contained safe living environment in times of natural disaster, pandemic or interruption of municipal services.
- Your refrigerator, through its wireless connection to the health monitor you’ll wear, may keep track of calories, salt or other health issues for you and make suggestions or issue warnings when you open the door. Particularly outside urban areas, online medical services will reinforce the connection between nutrition and wellness using the kitchen as the health hub. No aspect of home and housing will see as many changes as the multi-purpose kitchen over the coming decades. Since the origins of the word "kitchen" relate only to cooking, these evolving spaces may eventually even earn themselves a new name.
Kitchenaid.ca provides kitchen home appliances, accessories,product information, recipes and promotions for all your home appliance needs. http://www.kitchenaid.ca/
Article Source: ArticleSpan
Nancy – GotSmog.com – The Pollution-Reducing Blog
Supply and demand dictates balance between oil and berries
“My father rode a camel. I drive a car. My son flies a jet plane. His son will ride a camel.” – Saudi saying Near the east coast of Saudi Arabia is Ghawar, the largest oil field in the world.
Nancy – GotSmog.com – The Pollution-Reducing Blog
Improve Your Working Environment
With today’s fast-pace living and business environment, there are more people who sink into day-to-day routines. Very early in the morning they have to wake up and go to work, facing busy traffic along the way. In the office, they are back to do the entire routine job like making reports, attending daily and weekly meetings, and so on. When the sun sets, they go back home, have dinner, rest and sleep. The next day, they are back doing all the same things yet again. And so on…
These routines will even be increasingly more mundane and boring if their work and office environment are just "so-so", without variation. The office becomes identical with long sleeve, tie, shoes and other things that are formal in a corporate environment.
Now, imagine how exciting it will be if once a week you can dress differently and come to office, let’s say with cowboy dress code or beach wear. Unconsciously, these small things will affect the working spirit of the people and interestingly, the company does not need to come out with any cost at all to these kinds of variation. What is needed is only creativity and initiative.
You do not have to think very hard on how to make the environment and the working atmosphere in your office to be more exciting. Just do all these simple stuff, like to have an outing together with all employees, give bonus to the employee who work well or to choose an employee as "the best service provider" and give him or her one extra day-off, or just to have a lunch or dinner together once a month with "unique" dress code. Besides giving a special touch to the working environment, this kind of activities can be the drive that pushes the spirit and enthusiasm of the employees.
As you can see, those stuff mentioned above do not need a huge amount of money to be implemented. With creativity and unique ideas, you can turn your working environment into a more exciting and refreshing place, not only an office with routines that are boring and tiring!
Improving your working environment will go a long way in improving the efficiency and effectiveness of your business operations. With improved efficiency and effectiveness, profits of the business will definitely improve as time passes by.
Go ahead. Be daring to make some changes so that there is an improvement in your working environment. The mood will surely change. Guaranteed!
You can visit the website below to learn more about entrepreneurship… http://www.agiftfromafriend.com
Article Source: ArticleSpan
Nancy – GotSmog.com – The Pollution-Reducing Blog
SAD Fate In Store For Rocky Mountain Aspens?
Aspen’s famous trees are at risk. Photo by Jennifer Hattam. Every year around this time, “leaf peepers” from all over the world descend on Colorado’s mountain towns to gape at the white-trunked aspen trees as they don their fall colors, setting the hillsides ablaze with bright swaths of yellow and orange foliage.
Nancy – GotSmog.com – The Pollution-Reducing Blog
Global Warming: We Need Smarter Activists
Recently, a speech given by the Danish Energy Minister was interrupted by acouple of pirates.
Nancy – GotSmog.com – The Pollution-Reducing Blog
WISPIRG calls on Feingold to support green-energy bill – Daily Cardinal
The UW-Madison chapter of the Wisconsin Public Interest Research Group took part in a nationwide ?call-in? with their Big Red Go Green global warming campaign Thursday at Library Mall. The campaign is part of an effort to get U.S. Sen. Russ …
Nancy – GotSmog.com – The Pollution-Reducing Blog
ASU seeks more funding for energy research
Arizona State University officials are hoping Congress will approve an array of energy proposals and appropriations bills that would provide millions in funding for renewable-energy programs.
Nancy – GotSmog.com – The Pollution-Reducing Blog
Road Flushing And Making Sure That Your Environment Is Safer
There are many ways of cleaning a road or a street. The most common of course is to have individuals pick up the litter or do some sweeping on the streets or the roads. This was how things are used to be done. Over time however, this type of work became harder and harder to do as the roads became bigger and bigger. As such, doing road cleaning this way became less and less safe and therefore things needed to evolve. The changing environment has forced people to rethink of the way they clean their streets and this is the reason for those big street sweeper trucks that now clean up the Greater Toronto Area.
Over time, another way of cleaning the streets has come out. Noting that it was easier to clean up the streets right after the rain, road flushing has become one of the best ways of cleaning the streets. Road flushing in the GTA has become commonplace because of the necessity of it. This place is filled with great natural resources and the environment is simply wonderful. There are a lot of nice spots in the area because the environment is relatively calm despite the increasing population. However, the roads have become dirtier and dirtier and this basically ruins the environment in the Greater Toronto Area as well as the rest of Ontario.
Moreover, when the rains come, all the garbage in the street gets pushed to the sewer system and the possibility of clogging is very likely. When this happens, it could be a big disaster in Ontario as not only will sewer water get to the streets, the rains will also increase the water level of the adjoining rivers and lakes and together with the sewer water, it would definitely fill up the streets with dirty and quite possibly, contaminated water. This makes the place highly unsanitary and a lot of people can get extremely sick because of the situation.
Road flushing helps prevent this type of the problem. Road flushing is not merely pushing away the garbage from the streets. There is actual cleaning involved in road flushing and what it helps prevent is sewage clogging. The dangers of sewage clogging are well known. Not only will the flood waters not be pushed out from the streets and cause flooding, the type of water that is involved is the thing that people must be afraid of the most. Sewer water is highly contaminated and highly dangerous. Mere exposure to this type of water can give people a lot of problems.
Cleaning the streets is one of the highest priorities of any local government and road flushing is one of the best ways to do it. They know that while the procedure may be simple and sometimes even look like it is not important, not doing so can prove disastrous. Cleaning the streets is very dangerous especially if one were to do it the old fashioned way. People can be put in harm’s way by doing it this way and therefore the newer methods of road cleaning is a welcome alternative. Not only are they able to do the job quicker, they are also more effective.
Nir Dotan is a writer and promoter of road flushing and road flushing
Article Source: ArticleSpan
Nancy – GotSmog.com – The Pollution-Reducing Blog
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