- When your village needs power but you live in the middle
nowhere and don’t have the technology run lines and hoist the poles to make it
happen, what is a person to do? Follow the example of Anastase Tabaro, a self-taught engineer in
rural Rwanda who had just six years of elementary-level education as a child,
and construct a hydroelectric system that provides power to some 700
households, that’s what. Tabaro found a way to bring power to homes in and
around his village in rural Rwanda after studying how to build the system for
more than two decades. Now 59, he began his research in 1990 with the goal of
selling power to his neighbors, none of whom had access to electricity at that
time. Using parts he cobbled together over the years, he was able to build a
turbine and construct a barrage dam that he channels water from to power a
generator. "I grew up in [neighboring] Democratic Republic of Congo
and my village had electricity," he explained. "Then my family moved
to Rwanda and our village had no electricity. I felt I couldn't live without
electricity so I started to research by myself." His project has grown
steadily and news of his ingenuity has reached the capital city of Kigali,
where the Rwandan government decided to support the project by installing
electrical poles in the village to supply electricity to a dozen homes,
including the church. It’s a solid PR ploy by The Man, even though it is thanks
to Tabaro that it is no longer necessary in Ngororero to cut wood for cooking
or to use fuel for lighting. Locals flock to Tabaro’s home to – ironically –
charge their cellphones, for which he charges them 20 cents apiece. With
available power also comes more entertainment options and some villagers even
bought televisions and DVD players now that they have electricity supplied by
Tabaro's system. Overall, the government estimates that only 14 percent of
Rwandans had access to electricity in 2011………
- There are just some causes that no matter where you live,
what your socioeconomic status may be, what race you belong to or which gender
you are, you are morally obligated to oppose. Bristol (Conn.) Mayor Art Wood
understands this reality all too well and it’s why he has taken a stand against
a truly evil, immoral cause threatening to bring ruination to his hazy little
hamlet: the fight against breast cancer. October is National Breast Cancer
Awareness Month and thankfully, Ward is doing his part to make sure that
message does not get out. When Bristol firefighter Chris Hayden, whose aunt is a
survivor of two cases of breast cancer, designed pink T-shirts for firefighters
to wear, someone had to step in. Had Wood not acted, the firefighters may have
followed through with their threat to participate in a campaign by the International Association of Fire Fighters.
The IAFF's "Care Enough to Wear Pink" campaign urges
firefighters to wear pink T-shirts to work every Thursday this month. Ward
rejected the idea and dammit, he has a good reason. The IAFF voted this summer
to censure Ward over his use of pension fund money to pay for retiree health
care, all right? Umm, I mean, he believe the city already supports too many
causes and charities. The city supports the United Way and firefighters already raise money for muscular dystrophy research, so
obviously one good cause is enough for both. Even after resident Tracy Beland
made an impassioned plea at a council meeting Tuesday night, Ward boldly
refused to stop being an ass hat, er, um, to back down. He insisted adding new
causes would create "difficulties" and no one is more committed to
being simple, er, simplicity than Ward. "We all want to stand up for the
cause that's dearest to us," Ward said. "The potential exists for conflicts
in which causes each department will select at a given time. I don't for a
second want you to think there's not concern and compassion. I hope I've
explained sufficiently." Fire departments across the nation are participating
in the campaign because their mayors are not ass hats and hundreds of
firefighters are paying $20 to buy the shirts to wear to work, with proceeds
benefiting cancer research. The meeting was Ward’s chance to correct what he
called “mistruths” after his decision became a national topic late last week,
but he only seems to have dug himself a deeper hole. "This has really
galvanized everybody here," Local 773 president Sean Lennon said Tuesday.
"We were trying to do something nice and he turned it into political
mockery." Well said, Sean………
- Has Halloween come early to Pullman, Wash.? No, but with
“Pirate” Mike Leach coaching the Washington State football team, there is
definitely a more festive and energetic atmosphere around the program than in
recent years. Leach came to town with a reputation as a sort of football mad
scientist, with plenty of quirks and eccentricities, from his affinity for
pirate culture to his law degree and proclivity for giving out dating advice to
college students who have called in to talk radio shows he has hosted in the
past. He’s also known for breathing life into stagnant offenses, but seems to
have bitten off too much to chew with the Cougars. Washington State has fired
out of the gate 2-4 and failed to look consistently impressive on either side
of the ball. Leach believes he knows exactly where to place the blame: a lack
of leadership from the team’s seniors. "Some of
them have had kind of this zombielike, go through the motions, everything is
like how it's always been, that's how it'll always be,” he explained during his
weekly news conference on Monday. "Some of them quite honestly have an
empty-corpse quality. That's not pleasant to say or pleasant to think about,
but that's a fact." To quickly recap, that’s one corpse reference and one
zombie reference, although Leach did admit that some of the seniors have been
great and that not all are like the living dead. "Some of (the seniors)
have been great, and some of them have been very poor," he said. If the
downward progression continues or if the roster is completely infected by the
zombies on the team, Leach may not last 10 years at Washington State the way he
did in his previous stop at Texas Tech. Then again, he did inherit a program
that has not had a winning season since 2003 and was 9-40 over the past four
years under Paul Wulff. Shaking off that sort of malaise takes time and it isn’t
surprising that the Cougars have lost their past three games and generated just
227 yards of total offense in Saturday's 19-6 loss to Oregon State. "We
just need focused people. Rather than have fragmented focus, right now we're a
team that if we face any adversity, we get discouraged," Leach said. Discouraged
and like mindless, undead people walking the earth with the sole goal of eating
human brains……..
- Ladies, if you’re still waiting for your guy to propose,
consider dropping a copy of the findings from a new study led by Yale
University scientists in his lap. Apparently there is a ginormous diamond in
outer space, just drfiting aimlessly (possibly like that guy of yours). The
Yale dorks discovered the diamond, about as twice as big as Earth and with
eight times more mass. They dubbed the rocky planet a “Super Earth” and said it
orbits a star 40 light years away in the constellation Cancer. The planet
itself was first identified in 2004 and it is known as “55 Cancri e.” It moves quickly and
becomes extremely hot, with an estimated temperature of around 3,900 degrees
Fahrenheit. However, it takes just 18 Earth-hours to orbit its star and orbits
about 25 times closer to it than Mercury does to Earth’s sun. Back in May, ,
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope detected light emanating from the planet, which
led some to believe 55 Canri e was a water world. The Yale findings,
accumulated by a team under the direction of lead researcher Nikku Madhusudhan,
suggest otherwise. Madhusudhan, a postdoctoral fellow in physics and astronomy,
described the surface of the giant “gem” as “likely covered in graphite and
diamond rather than water and granite.” He also pointed out that this first
glimpse of the rock world shows it has “a fundamentally different chemistry
from Earth.” Different or not, the research represents the first time that
astronomers have identified a likely diamond planet around a sun-like star and
specified its chemical make-up. Diamond planets have been a source of intrigue
for astronomers for years, especially since scientists theorized in 2005 that
carbon-rich planets might exist. Those speculations gave way to Madhusudhan’s
project and the speculation that one third if this planet’s mass is pure
diamond. Obviously, that means that distant rocky planets can no longer be
assumed to have chemical constituents, interiors, atmospheres, or biologies
similar to those of Earth…but you already knew that. Still, that planet would
look badass on a ring on your finger, ladies…….
- Look at Tom Hanks, mixing it up and diversifying his résumé
by making his
Broadway debut playing a tabloid journalist in "Lucky Guy", a new
drama by the late Nora Ephron. Hanks really should boost his list of
accomplishments because the guy hardly ever works or gets a role these days.
Hanks’ working relationship with Ephron has included "Sleepless in Seattle" in
1993 and "You've Got Mail" in 1998. She passed away in June at the
age of 71 of complications from leukemia. As for the musical, it opens next
year and is based on a true story. “Lucky Guy” dramatizes the rise and fall of
former tabloid columnist Mike McAlary as he covers the police scandals of a
polarized, crime-ridden 1980s New York. In a sad parallel, McAlary also passed
away far too young, at the age of 41, like Ephron. Producers for the musical
confirmed Hanks’ casting and although he has won two best actor Oscars for his
performances in "Philadelphia" and "Forrest Gump,” his stage
acting has been limited to small Shakespeare productions in the 1970s. Ephron
had an eclectic background of her own, beginning as a tabloid reporter before
becoming known as a writer of essays, books and screenplays. Her hallmark work
remains 1989's "When Harry Met Sally," but those who know “Lucky Guy”
best have characterized it as a drama steeped in Ephron’s well-known acerbic
tone. Her first Broadway was 2002’s "Imaginary Friends," a work
mostly slammed by critics. She bounced back somewhat with "Love, Loss, and
What I Wore," which she co-authored with her sister Delia, and perhaps “Lucky
Guy” can keep that good fortune going……….
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