July 10, Insects that break down Plastics, Suellen Rocca A Hurricane Proof Island, Bees, Poetry, and Uses for White Vinegar and the Difference between Baking Powders, and more
Now summer is in flower and nature's hum
Is never silent r'ound her sultry bloom
Insects as small as dust are never done
Wi' glittering dance and reeling in the sun
And green wood fly and blossom haunting bee
Are never weary of their melody.
Is never silent r'ound her sultry bloom
Insects as small as dust are never done
Wi' glittering dance and reeling in the sun
And green wood fly and blossom haunting bee
Are never weary of their melody.
–John Clare (1793–1864)
There is something we have
been in love with
all our lives ~
can not name,
have not forgotten...
all we know is that it fills us.
~Ingrid Goff-Maidoff
France.
Important Artworks to see at the Louve, the largest Museum in the World, that are not the Mona Lisa.
I am concentrating on things such as the golden rule. This is my big thing; I am trying to live by it. The main thing is do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Sure, everybody knows it, but nobody lives by it.
Sonny Rollins
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Jazz saxophonist; On protests, pandemic, and music
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Suellen Rocca Has Died
The Chicago Imagist and member of the legendary 1960s “Hairy Who” group has died at age 76. Late in her career, she taught art at Elmhurst College, telling students,
“You need to look, because after we think we’ve seen things we don’t look at them anymore.” (ARTnews)
The Chicago Imagist and member of the legendary 1960s “Hairy Who” group has died at age 76. Late in her career, she taught art at Elmhurst College, telling students,
“You need to look, because after we think we’ve seen things we don’t look at them anymore.” (ARTnews)
Sa’di, Poet from the 13th century
Sa’di’s remarkable poetry is perpetually modern and full of ‘benevolent wisdom’ on how to live. Joobin Bekhrad revisits the life and work of ‘the cheerer of men’s hearts’.
Sa’di’s remarkable poetry is perpetually modern and full of ‘benevolent wisdom’ on how to live. Joobin Bekhrad revisits the life and work of ‘the cheerer of men’s hearts’.
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200622-a-13th-century-persian-poets-lessons-for-today?xtor=ES-213-[BBC%20Features%20Newsletter]-2020July3-[Culture%7c+Button]
Yet Sa’di loved the race of men,—
No churl, immured in cave or den
In bower and hall, he wants them all,
Nor can dispense
With Persia for his audience;
They must give ear,
Grow red with joy and white with fear;
But he has no companion;
Come ten, or come a million,
Good Sa’di dwells alone.
No churl, immured in cave or den
In bower and hall, he wants them all,
Nor can dispense
With Persia for his audience;
They must give ear,
Grow red with joy and white with fear;
But he has no companion;
Come ten, or come a million,
Good Sa’di dwells alone.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Hurricane proof country…Dominica, Carribbean Island, leveled by 3 Hurricanes, responds to Climate Change
Matching Students with Scholarships and keeping track of them.
Founded at Drexel by Christopher Grey and Fellow students, Nick Pirollo and Breyson Alef.
Grey worked relentlessly to overcome obstacles of Homelessness and no internet access, writing 500 word essays on his old-school phone. He amassed 1.3 million dollars in scholarships he utilized all 4 years of college and wanted to solve the problem he faced by access to available scholarships. “He saw a problem and wanted to fix it.”
also check out College Hunch to organize the process
Current Changes
Roosevelt, National Parks, Hunters and Statues
Incredible and simple cleaning agent when a Chemical Reaction takes place between these ingredients, here are the facts about the Chemical makeup and what else they do in the Kitchen to help with Baking, cooking and cleaning.
The chemistry of baking
White Vinegar
Baking Soda
Baking Powder
Bright clouds,
Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven–
Their bases on the mountains–their white tops
Shining in the far ether–fire the air
With a reflected radiance
Motionless pillars of the brazen heaven–
Their bases on the mountains–their white tops
Shining in the far ether–fire the air
With a reflected radiance
–William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
Horned owls sat in treetops. Mice scurried here and there. ... The young of the solitary bees were feeding on pollen in the dark. The whole world was a nest on its humble tilt, in the maze of the universe, holding us.
Linda Hogan
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Chickasaw poet; from Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living Word
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Can we learn wisdom watching insects now,
or just the art of quiet observation?
Creatures from the world of leaf and flower
marking weather’s variation.
or just the art of quiet observation?
Creatures from the world of leaf and flower
marking weather’s variation.
–Vivian Smith (b. 1933)
BEES
Scientists are making progress with better plastic eating bacteria.
Molecular biologist Christopher Johnson was schmoozing at a party not long ago, talking with another guest about his research, as scientists often do. Johnson works on breaking down plastics, which tend to be highly resistant to such things.
The woman he was speaking with at this particular pre-wedding soiree replied that she felt overwhelmed—hopeless—about the whole situation: how we can't seem to stop using plastics, how they crowd landfills, how their microparticles permeate the oceans.
Overwhelmed, Johnson thought. Hopeless.
“I’m a world away from that perspective,” Johnson says, recalling his reaction.
Civilization isn’t doing a great job of cleaning up after itself, partly, Johnson and his team believe, because there’s never been a great economic incentive to. But if you can take those plastic building blocks and assemble them into something more valuable than the original—such as auto parts, wind turbines, or even surfboards—you can change recycling’s calculus. Companies can do well for themselves by doing good for the world.
That’s because plastics aren’t just happening to Johnson. He’s happening to them.
Much of the accidental enzyme team works at the National Renewable Energy Lab in Golden, Colorado. The campus nudges against the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, which slope up quickly out of nothingness into 14,000-foot peaks. Solar panels occupy the roofs of nearly all of the buildings. Inside the Field Test Laboratory Building, where the group works, a ROYGBIV spectrum of utility pipes runs along ceilings and walls. Labs full of refrigerators, incubators, and high-powered microscopes hum behind card-access entryways. And, in a small meeting room on the ground floor, a matrix of screens backlights four scientists.
They, along with colleagues in Florida, England, and Brazil, form a kind of dream team for this particular bio-based recycling research: Nicholas Rorrer creates polymers. Gregg Beckham tries to figure out how bacterial and fungal chemicals break down compounds such as cellulose, the main ingredient in plant-cell walls and many veggies. Bryon Donohoe studies how cells with polymer-eating enzymes work. Johnson engineers new kinds of cells that secrete those enzymes. Those areas of expertise are each key to exploring how bacteria indulge an appetite for plastic—and how to manipulate them into being better snackers.
Johnson is a research scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and this past year, he and his colleagues created a biological enzyme that can chew efficiently through throwaway plastics like those that make water bottles and soap containers. The team is optimistic they can engineer a world where humans keep using this overabundant material—without winding up literally or figuratively overwhelmed by it. In that world, as part of a broader, robust recycling system, microorganisms will digest polymers into their chemical components so they can turn a profit as new and better products.
Currently, recycling doesn't actually turn plastic into anything, chemically speaking: It just grinds the waste into smaller pieces, like shredding paper into strips. Manufacturers then reconstitute those pieces into lower-quality plastic. In bio-based recycling, as those in the field call it, plastic-eating organisms give you back the building blocks to make new materials and, eventually, goods.
Johnson’s group, in particular, captured the public’s imagination because its discovery was accidental and made for a great story. Skeptics feared the effort might backfire—that rogue GMO chompers might start gobbling the wrong polymers. Like the dashboard of your car. As you’re driving. It’s an extremely remote possibility but not completely misguided.
The crew first learned of the concept when the March 2016 issue of Science magazine brought news that researchers in Japan had discovered a strange species of bacteria in samples of soil near a bottle recycling plant in the city of Sakai. It could chomp through polyethylene terephthalate, commonly known as PET, which manufacturers widely use to make plastic bottles and containers.
Ideonella sakaiensis is just one organism that can use plastic as fuel. Brian Klutch
No matter how many times I tell my local Thai restaurant that I don't want plastic forks with my take-out, I open the bag to find handfuls of unnecessary eating utensils in there, every time. Roland Geyer, an industrial ecologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, has similar problems. "Sometimes at the supermarket I have to fight to not get plastic bags," he says.
Plastic is cheap, strong, and versatile. As a result, we use it for nearly everything—handing it out like candy and then throwing it away, of after a single use. When future archaeologists dig up the remains of our society, they will probably know us by the layer of plastic garbage we've strewn all over the planet.
Geyer and his colleagues have quantified just how much plastic crap humanity has made since we started mass producing it in the 1950s. After analyzing data from trade associations and other industry sources around the world—an effort that took years of detective work, Geyer says—they concluded that all of the plastics we've ever made total about 9.1 billion tons.
That’s the weight of 25,000 Empire State Buildings in total, or about 2,400 pounds of trash for every person currently alive on this planet. And it's not as if we can blame those who came before us for most of the waste.
“Half of those 9.1 billion tons we’ve made only in the last 13 years,” says Geyer. “That, for me, is the most surprising number.”
Happy Hot Days of Summer. Humidity everywhere, living in a cloud.
Thanks for Stopping by!
Eliza
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