Remember all the hubbub a while back about Al Gore’s house? He said at the time that his house was being renovated to become more energy efficient, and it seems he’s a man of his word:
Al Gore, who was criticized for high electric bills at his Tennessee mansion, has completed a host of improvements to make the home more energy efficient, and a building-industry group has praised the house as one of the nation’s most environmentally friendly.
The former vice president has installed solar panels, a rainwater-collection system and geothermal heating. He also replaced all incandescent lights with compact fluorescent or light-emitting diode bulbs.
“Short of tearing it down and staring anew, I don’t know how it could have been rated any higher,” said Kim Shinn of the U.S. Green Building Council, which gave the house its second-highest rating for sustainable design.
…snip…
Shinn said Gore’s renovations are impressive because his home, which is more than 80 years old, had to meet the same rigorous standards as new construction.
“One of the things that is tremendously powerful about what the Gores have done is demonstrate that you can take a home that was a dog, and absolute energy pig, and do things to correct [that],” Shinn said.
December 13th, 2007
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Environment, Climate Change |
19 comments
Per reader request. Knock yourselves out.
UPDATE: A list of players implicated is here, via the NYT.
December 13th, 2007
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Sports, MLB |
12 comments
So I get this email saying that someone has a blog they want me to check out. No big deal, happens, even to relatively small blog fish like us, every so often. I usually ignore them, mostly out of a lack of time. I figure if it is interesting enough, I’ll stumble across it in the natural course of my reading. This was different for two reasons. One, the emailer actually offered me advice on getting rid of the track back spam. Second, and more importantly, she was upfront about the blog being a publisher publicity blog. But she also said that they tried to be different. I’m a huge book geek, so the combination of good will form the good advice and curiosity got the better of me. And I am glad it did.
The Beacon Broadside is a publisher’s blog, no doubt about that. But they aren’t just a publicity blog, not in the usual sense. The posts are mostly by their authors, and they are usually pretty interesting. There is one by Carol Joffe (who, by the way, wrote a fantastic book. It literally changed the way I looked at abortion politics and Roe v. Wade) about abstinence only sex education. There is a very interesting piece about Chanukah in Israel and the meaning of the holiday by a foreign rights agent. There is a good overview of the differences in the national culture and the meaning of the Romney and Kennedy religion speeches by the author of a book on the Religious Right and its focus on the judiciary. What there isn’t is a lot of hard sell, buy me now, here’s a contest desperation masquerading as marketing. They have their authors write about subjects that interest them and let their writing do the marketing. It’s a very good idea and should be a template for how publishers do blogs.
So it goes on the blog roll, both becasue the concept is interesting and, so far, I’ve liked the posts I have read.
December 13th, 2007
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Bloggin, Writing |
2 comments
You can find out anything you already know:
Many hundred thousand good-nights, dearly beloved daughter Veronica. Innocent have I come into prison, innocent have I been tortured, innocent must I die. For whoever comes into the witch prison must become a witch or be tortured until he invents something out of his head and–God pity him–bethinks him of something. I will tell you how it has gone with me. When I was the first time put to the torture, Dr. Braun, Dr. Kotzendorffer, and two strange doctors were there. Then Dr. Braun asks me, “Kinsman, how come you here?” I answer, “Through falsehood, through misfortune.” “Hear, you,” he says, “you are a witch; will you confess it voluntarily? If not, we’ll bring in witnesses and the executioner for you.” I said “I am no witch, I have a pure conscience in the matter; if there are a thousand witnesses, I am not anxious, but I’ll gladly hear the witnesses.” Now the chancellor’s son was set before me . . . and afterward Hoppfen Elss. She had seen me dance on Haupts-moor. . . . I answered: “I have never renounced God, and will never do it–God graciously keep me from it. I’ll rather bear whatever I must.” And then came also–God in highest Heaven have mercy–the executioner, and put the thumb-screws on me, both hands bound together, so that the blood ran out at the nails and everywhere, so that for four weeks I could not use my hands, as you can see from the writing. . . . Thereafter they first stripped me, bound my hands behind me, and drew me up in the torture. [2] Then I thought heaven and earth were at an end; eight times did they draw me up and let me fall again, so that I suffered terrible agony. . . .
To support torture is to knowingly condemn innocent people to abuse and punishment that they do not deserve. It is to knowingly accept lies and exaggerations as the truth. It is to knowingly pervert justice by using those things you know to almost certainly to be lies and exaggerations as the basis for court proceedings.
There is a word for people like that: monster.
December 13th, 2007
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Torture |
one comment
