||Sandwich|| & [Drink]> blog
A Sandwich of Topics, Easy to DigestArchive for Cutting Edge
Kamal Meattle : How to Grow Your Own Fresh Air [TED]
Kamal Meattle shows how having 3 specific types of plants in your living space can greatly increase oxygen levels, hence your overall health and productivity. @ 1:56 Kamal also claims that if you lived in a bottle these plants would produce all the air you need.
The Three Plants are:
- The Areca Palm
- Mother-in-Law’s Tongue
- The Money Plant
Build Your Own Solar Panels
Solar systems are expensive if you can’t build the solar panels yourself. Presently solar electricity cost so much it will take you 20-30 years to pay off.
PBS- The Market Maker: Eleni Gabre Madhin Creates First Commodity Market in Ethiopia [Full Episode]
Trailer:
While in college future economist Eleni Gabre-Madhin watched the famine in her home country Ethiopia, where about a million people died of starvation. The most messed up part about it was that in the northern part of the country there was a surplus of food which was thrown away.
In the video we get to watch her as she goes back to Ethiopia to set up a commodity exchange so that Ethiopian farmers get access to the market all across Ethiopia- and with enough time, the world. This is an amazing documentary (and the only one I know of) showing a person developing a national commodities exchange from scratch.
If you want to see the whole video in full screen, go here:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/the-market-maker/full-episode/5293/
“Magnetic Electricity” Discovered
via Makezine via BBC
Magetricity
“Researchers have discovered a magnetic equivalent to electricity: single magnetic charges that can behave and interact like electrical ones. The work is the first to make use of the magnetic monopoles that exist in special crystals known as spin ice. Writing in Nature journal, a team showed that monopoles gather to form a “magnetic current” like electricity. The phenomenon, dubbed “magnetricity”, could be used in magnetic storage or in computing.”
Looks like hard drives will be able to hold a lot more memory. Imagine 100 Terabyte Drives? That’ll be able to hold all the books, programs, music, movies, we’ll ever need!
William Kamkwamba on Daily Show with Jon Stewart
After having to drop out of school to help his family due to famine in Malawi, William Kamkwamba went to the library and found a book called “Using Energy”. From this book, the 14 year old created his own windmill to harness energy in his small African Village.
During the interview, Jon Stewart calls him the closest real life version of MacGyver. The story William tells at the end had me cracking up.
The book mentioned, “The Boy Who Harnessed Wind” is currently #10 on Amazon.
