Friday, June 24, 2011

Friday Hope Blogging


Saudi women are demanding the right to drive:

More Saudi Arabian women drove their cars in the streets of capital Riyadh Wednesday, continuing a campaign — largely rooted in social media — to push the kingdom into overturning a ban on female drivers. At the same time, one of the European Union’s top diplomats sent a long-requested message of support for their campaign.

The ILO has adopted a treaty that protects the rights of domestic workers:
Labor groups around the world celebrated last Thursday after the United Nations’ International Labour Organization adopted a historic treaty that increases protections for millions of domestic workers.

Household service employees, many of whom are migrant women or girls from underprivileged areas, are now provided fundamental labor rights that were previously not guaranteed due to the nature of their informal work.

In Spain, a solar plant is providing electricity 24 hours a day:

The innovative molten salt heat transfer technology deployed at the Gemasolar greenfield independent power project helps avoid fluctuations in power supply through a system that is capable of 15 hours of energy production without sunlight. This accordingly allows for generation of electricity 24 hours a day for many months of the year, even during the hours of darkness or poor daylight during winter.

A highway will not be built through Serengeti National Park:
In what is a victory for environmentalists, scientists, tourism, and the largest land migration on Earth, the Tanzanian government has cancelled a commercial road that would have cut through the northern portion of the Serengeti National Park. According to scientists the road would have severed the migration route of 1.5 million wildebeest and a half million other antelope and zebra, in turn impacting the entire ecosystem of the Serengeti plains.
The DoI has extended the ban on uranium mining in the Grand Canyon watershed:

The announcement quells fears that a two-year mining prohibition issued by Salazar in July 2009 would expire, opening the door to new mining claims and resulting mine development. Public lands around Grand Canyon National Park have been ground zero for new uranium mining that threatens to industrialize iconic wildlands and permanently pollute aquifers feeding Grand Canyons springs and streams.

Siemens has built a hybrid-electric airplane:

Siemens just unveiled the world's first hybrid-electric aircraft, the DA36 E-Star. It uses an unique power train to do the seemingly impossible: take off and land on nothing but batteries.

Shocking new evidence suggests that vaccines may actually work:
Vaccination against rotavirus, a major cause of severe acute gastroenteritis in children, dramatically decreased hospitalization rates for the infection among infants in three US counties, according to a new study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases....
Gotta run, sorry. Consolation: The Lost Collection (via things). Ge0-Cosmos. Pencil sculptures. Header vignettes. Photos of snowflakes. Heirloom technology. Scenes from La Vie Électrique. The Sathorn Unique. Photos by Metehan Özcan. The Lonely Beat. And photos by Sanna Kannisto.

Here's a cartoon, too.



(Image at top: "A San Diego beach scene drawn with an eight color palette of bacterial colonies expressing fluorescent proteins derived from GFP and the red-fluorescent coral protein dsRed. The colors include BFP, mTFP1, Emerald, Citrine, mOrange, mApple, mCherry and mGrape. Artwork by Nathan Shaner, photography by Paul Steinbach, created in the lab of Roger Tsien in 2006.")

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am appalled by the ban on women driving, but it makes sense in the context.

grouchomarxist said...

Thanks for the Robida illustrations! Here's hoping that one of these days, the Wesleyan Early Classics of Science Fiction series going to follow up their wonderful translation of Le Vingtième Siècle -- which might well be the very first graphic novel -- with a release of La Vie Electrique.

Phila said...

the Wesleyan Early Classics of Science Fiction series going to follow up their wonderful translation of Le Vingtième Siècle -- which might well be the very first graphic novel -- with a release of La Vie Electrique.

Is that series still underway? I was under the impression it had petered out....

grouchomarxist said...

Could well be -- I'm usually the last to find out about such things.

If so, too bad, but maybe someone else will take up the torch. Or I could stop being a lazy sob and learn to read French.

grouchomarxist said...

Ok, having way too much time on my hands, I just had to go investigate: The Wesleyan Early Classics of SF series still appears to be going strong. So far this year, they've published an anthology of early Latin American SF, and they're planning to release a volume with three novellas by J.-H. Rosny this December.

Good news for all us SF antiquarians, even if LVE isn't on the list.

(Word verification: randeb -- which I'm guessing is a teenager named "Muffy" who chose Atlas Shrugged as the theme for her coming-out ball.)

grouchomarxist said...

Btw, The Lonely Beat is an awesome site -- and I've only worked my way through a quarter of the singles.

Phila said...

Good news for all us SF antiquarians, even if LVE isn't on the list.

Good news indeed! Will have to toss 'em on my wish list. Thanks for the info!

I already have two of the Rosny stories in (I think) an Arno reprint. Which raises the eternal question: Do I keep two copies of (almost) the same material, or cast aside a nice old hardback in favor of a glossy new softcover?

Hooray for luxury problems!

Phila said...

Btw, The Lonely Beat is an awesome site -- and I've only worked my way through a quarter of the singles.

Glad you like it! Check out Office Naps too...it's by the same guy.