Green

Environmentally friendly, green ways of living

There are 363 posts filed in Green (this is page 22 of 37).

Greenway ride to lunch

Today Kelly wanted to take advantage of the beautiful Mother’s Day weather to ride our bikes someplace for lunch. We opted for the Quizno’s sub place on Six Forks Road. Rather than pile our bikes in the van and haul them to the greenway, this time we let our kids ride with us through the neighborhood to the greenway.

It worked like a champ! We got to Quizno’s within 30 minutes and greatly enjoyed the novelty of getting there without a car. We enjoyed a fun lunch on the restaurant deck before moseying over to Borders to browse books. Then it was back home via the greenway. Easy! The kids didn’t even balk at the long, slow climb up Dennis Avenue: the home stretch.
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Climate talk at UNC

I gave a talk at UNC yesterday on climate change from a national security perspective. This wasn’t an official “Operation Free” event but it came about from my association with Operation Free. I was invited by the North Carolina Conservation Council to speak to interested students on climate change. The talk was sponsored by Earth Day Revolution.

About 40 students showed up: pretty respectable considering it’s finals week! I was a panelist with three experts (I was going to say “other experts” but that would put me in their league). My ten-minute talking time was taken up with five minutes of the Pew Climate Patriots video, leaving me five minutes to tell my story. Well, it turns out five minutes isn’t enough – I had so much to say that when I returned to my seat I was kicking myself for not covering some items. Still, my speech seemed effective and I was told later that I did an outstanding job.
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Chinese switch to cadmium as poison of choice

Remember how I said there was no Chinese word for OSHA? It turns out safety-conscious Chinese toy manufacturers continue to poison our kids, this time with cadmium:

In the study, the AP analyzed cadmium content in commonly available children’s jewelry and found most of the pieces had significant cadmium content. One of the pieces contained 91 percent cadmium. That’s not parts per million; that’s percent. That’s toxic waste.

This just goes to further my view that Chinese culture encourages one to cheat, just as long as one doesn’t get caught.

High speed rail gets even closer

I’ve been following the Southeast High Speed Rail project for quite some time now Last week, President Obama announced that $545 million is on its way to North Carolina to kickstart the rail project. That’s great news for the state.

The majority of the money will go to improve the track between Raleigh and Charlotte, which is the most used rail route in the state. There’s also $25 million to go to the project to revive the tracks between Raleigh and Petersburg. All in all, it’s a great investment in the future of transportation in North Carolina: rail travel!

Raleigh’s untamed greenway: Walnut Creek Trail

Walnut Creek Greenway

The beautiful morning and the promise of a sunny afternoon in the mid 70s got us itching to go for another family bike ride. After considering a trip out to Durham’s American Tobacco Trail greenway, we opted instead to explore one greenway we’d never tried before, Southeast Raleigh’s Walnut Creek Trail.

Our goal was to start at the easternmost point possible and go as far west as we could. Worthdale Community Center seemed to be the trail’s official starting point but after reviewing the maps I decided the 8/10ths of a mile from there through the surrounding neighborhood to the paved greenway was not worth riding. I know what homes and sidewalks look like: I wans the trail!

We thus drove to the end of Little John Road and parked at its dead end. The residents of the house next to us gave us long looks through the storm door, making me think that they didn’t see many greenway users parking here. Though I felt the neighborhood was completely safe I decided that parking on the narrow neighborhood street was being too disruptive to the neighborhood. Next time I’ll look for a lot at one of the nearby community centers.
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In like McGuinn

Guitar legend Roger McGuinn is also an accomplished techie, and maintains a blog devoted solely to his various gadgets. Last month, Roger shared his journey into solar power.

What started with the purchase of a small solar panel to charge his cell phone led to him to fully convert his home to solar power. In doing so, he didn’t give up anything but a power bill: he’s got enough juice to power his two refrigerators and 5-ton air conditioner.

An amazing set of alternative-energy rebates and deals are being offered this fall to North Carolina residents. I’ll post about these soon but the deals have me seriously considering following Roger’s lead and putting panels on our roof.

Fzzt!

Three days ago yet another of our Bright Effects CFL bulbs dropped dead. This time I saw its spectacular death, as light flickered brilliantly through the dying bulb. Then there was an alarming smell that I soon recognized: the smell of a fried capacitor.
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Capacitors have long been a problem in my electronics. I bought a video camera back in the 1980s with capacitors inside that were allegedly counterfeit. Just a few years into its life the camera’s electronics literally melted off the circuit board, rendering it useless. Most of my other CFLs died due to bad ballast electronics, too. I haven’t pried my dead bulbs open yet to check but it wouldn’t surprise me of all of them didn’t meet their maker due to bad capacitors (at least the one in February did).

One day, I hope a bulb manufacturer will create a replaceable ballast module like I’ve suggested.

Another CFL bulb stops working

Yesterday we lost yet another of our supposedly long-lasting CFL bulbs. This one was an interior floodlight made by Bright Effects and sold by Lowes. It apparently got hot enough to crack the bulb’s base. Yes, bulbs that hang upside-down do get hotter at the base but bulbs designed to hang upside-down should be designed with this in mind, and CFLs operate cooler than incandescent bulbs, anyway.

These bulbs are supposed to last seven years but this one made it just 15 months. I’m going back to Lowes again to complain. This is the third bulb from that batch that’s died early.

Getting tanked

I thought I was slick when I positioned my 330-gallon “Lake Turner” rain tank next to my garden. I was even slicker when I hooked up a timer to it a few weeks ago so that it automagically watered my tomato plants. However, my feeling smug stopped yesterday when I realized there was no water flowing through my drip hose.

Oops. It sure looked slick, though! No wonder some of my plants were looking a bit withered.

It turns out the timer I used was dutifully opening at the set time but the water pressure from the tank wasn’t enough to push through it. I switched to a different kind of timer yesterday and suddenly had a pleasing stream of water going to my ‘maters.

The moral of this story is to “measure twice,” as they say!

Raleigh’s Sewer Monster is clump of tubifex worms

OIn our way out of town Wednesday we saw a city sewer inspection team in our neighborhood, inspecting the neighborhood sewer lines with a robot camera. The crew chatted with the kids and me about their robot camera, showed us one of the cameras, and explained how it all worked. The kids loved it and so did I.

Little did I know that video from another robot camera was making waves just then on the Internets. A YouTube video shows what looks like a strange creature living in Raleigh’s sewers. Over half a million viewers have checked out this supposed creature as it lives below Raleigh’s Cameron Village shopping center.

It turns out the “blob” is actually a bunch of tubifex worms, according to the City of Raleigh’s website. Tubifex worms are amazingly hardy creatures.