The First Snow of the Season!
Posts tagged ‘environment’
Nov 23
Sunday Reading: I Can’t Believe It’s Not Honey!
Hey everyone, we’re one week closer to Thanksgiving (fooooodddd.) Also, amongst numerous sex scandals that seem to have attracted everyone’s attention, real news actually happened out in the world. I’m here to share some it with you. Or I’ll just give you random stories. Kind of whatever I feel like. Bound to be interesting though.
POLITICS: In what is the next of the seemingly endless number of Republican Primary debates, the candidates continued to espouse their ideals, defending against flip-flopping and sex scandals. More entertaining than watching that is playing this game, which has you guess who said a certain quote from Wednesday night- Survivor contestants or Republican presidential contenders.
ENVIRONMENT: Oberlin College is well known for its longstanding commitment to “green building,” building some of the greenest college buildings in the country. Now a professor at the college, David Orr, is architecting a plan that will “greenify” the town of Oberlin as well, “creating a resilient community for a post-fossil-fuel era.”
FUNNY TUMBLRS: This is not news. However, I am now obsessed with two Tumblr sites that I believe everyone should now be obsessed with. 1) Animals Talking in All Caps- hilarious pictures with captions of animals that have pretty human-like conversations and 2) Yelping with Cormac McCarthy- a series of Yelp reviews from a mock- Cormac McCarthy.
NEW YORK: When the only department store closed in Saranac Lake, a small town in the Adirondacks, the residents of the town had nowhere to go nearby to acquire the basic necessities. Over the past five years, members of the town have collected money and raised enough capital to open their own department store, choosing to invest in their own town development rather than allowing a large corporate store like Walmart to build.
HONEY: More than three-fourths of the honey sold in U.S. grocery stores isn’t really honey, according to testing done for Food Safety News. Many tests indicated that the “honey” sold in stores had the pollen filtered out, a process that provides little benefit to the producers other than masking the origin of the honey. Apparently, a significant amount of honey sold in the U.S. is smuggled in from China. Who knew?
NASA: A Russian Soyuz rocket is set to lift off Monday with one American and two Russian astronauts, headed for the International Space Station. This marks the beginning of a new era for NASA, which discontinued its space shuttle program in July.
And your video of the week:
Nov 11
Middlebury Submits Bid To Compete in 2013 Solar Decathlon
Still riding high from their fourth place finish at the 2011 U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon, the Middlebury team has already begun to look ahead to the next Solar Decathlon competition. United States Senator from Vermont Patrick Leahy announced via Twitter early last week that the Vermont Congressional Delegation was supporting Middlebury’s proposal to compete in the 2013 decathlon.
#VT's Congressional Delegation supports the proposal by @MiddSD to compete in the 2013 @Solar_Decathalon #SD2013 #Midd—
Sen. Patrick Leahy (@SenatorLeahy) November 02, 2011
Founded in 2002, the Solar Decathlon is an international, biennial competition to design and operate the most attractive and functional energy-efficient, solar-powered home. At the 2011 competition, Middlebury placed first in Market Appeal, Communications and Home entertainment, placing fourth overall and won the PBS “Sunny Ideas” people’s vote.
Oct 4
Irene Recovery: What You Can (Still) Do To Help
Students Assist in Hurricane Irene Recovery (Photo Courtesy of Tiffany Sargent)
As the new academic year began for Middlebury College Community, so did a new chapter in Vermont History – the beginning stages of recovery from the damage of Hurricane Irene. Reports of damage to Vermont from Irene inundated the news in late August as images of covered bridges collapsing and flooding shocked the nation. As Middblog previously reported at the time, Vermont was declared a federal disaster area while the Middlebury locale luckily escaped without any damage.
Students may have noticed road closures on their way back to campus, seen pictures of the incredible volunteer response of Athletic Teams on campus for pre-season on the Middlebury College website homepage, or noticed the incredibly thorough Irene coverage of The Campus’ first issue, on the front cover , staff editorial, and Reader Op-Ed from Senator Sanders. As of September 27th, hundreds of Middlebury faculty, staff, and students had already volunteered over 2,800 hours.
But the recovery is far from over.
Sep 22
Solar Decathlon House Ready for Presentation
The completed home, titled: "Self-Reliance"
UPDATE 9/28: After the results of the first six categories have come in, Middlebury sits in 6th 5th 4th! place, scoring high in both home entertainment and architecture.
UPDATE 9/25: Here’s a link to the scoring website, you can keep track of how “Self-Reliance” is doing in all ten categories. You can also vote for Middlebury’s home for the People’s Choice award by voting here.
—-
If you aren’t already aware, Middlebury’s Solar Decathlon team is in D.C. and ready to present their newly constructed solar home after months and months of preparation. The team started reconstructing the home in D.C. last week, and after a successful round of inspections, were the third team out of 19 to be deemed ready to present in this prestigious national competition.
Middlebury Magazine checked in with the team just a few days ago, check out their video and report. Additionally, the team has been taking beautiful videos and blogging the entire process, so definitely go over to their website if you are interested.
It is a really incredible project; I’m continually impressed with the standards Middlebury students set for themselves. We’ll be following the judging closely, so check in soon for updates, or keep an eye on their blog or twitter, @MiddSD for updates from the team.
