Author Archives: Tamera4915

One Weird, Nobel Prize-Winning Trick That Could Halve America’s Lighting Bill

by Tamera4915 Posted on October 8, 2014

Mother Jones

On Tuesday, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the winners of the Nobel Prize in Physics. In the first of the prestigious awards to be handed out this week, Japanese scientists Isamu Akasaki, Hiroshi Amano, and Shuji Nakamura were honored for their invention of the blue light-emitting diode commonly known as an LED. The $8 million prize “rewards an invention of greatest benefit to mankind”—and LEDs have crossed the bar.

Invented just twenty years ago, blue LEDs paved the way for many now-common devices, like television LCD-screens, Blu-ray discs, and laser printers. But more importantly, they give off white light in a new, more efficient way, reducing energy consumption the world over.

Johan Jarnestad/The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences

“I (was) not too sure whether I could win a Nobel Prize,” Shuji Nakamura said in a telephone interview after he was informed of the award. “Basically physics, it means that usually people was awarded for the invention of the basic theory. But in my case, not a basic theory. In my case just making the device, you know?”

In traditional electric lighting, most of the energy is lost when it is converted to heat. But LEDs convert electricity directly to light.

The invention was based on over three decades of work and research. And since their discovery in the early ’90s, the technology has rapidly improved: state of the art LEDs are now over four times more efficient than florescents and almost 20 times more efficient than regular light bulbs. Because they last so much longer, LEDs are also less wasteful.

Lighting accounts for about a quarter of the world’s energy consumption. The Climate Group, a nonprofit pushing LED use worldwide, reports that illumination is responsible for over 1,900 million tons of CO2 emissions every year. They calculate that number could be reduced by up to 70 percent, just by replacing traditional streetlamps with LED powered versions.

Created by The Climate Group

Last year, the US Department of Energy released a report saying LEDs could halve the country’s usage of electricity for lighting by 2030. The savings would equal the output of fifty 1,000 megawatt power plants, and reduce greenhouse gas emissions as much as taking 40 million cars off the road—not to mention cutting energy bills by $30 billion.

Of course there are still technical developments and obstacles to be overcome before this vision is realized. But it is not far fetched or far off, thanks to the latest Nobel laureates. To learn more about the science behind their world-changing invention (or to send them a quick congratulatory note!) you can head to the prizes’ site.

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One Weird, Nobel Prize-Winning Trick That Could Halve America’s Lighting Bill

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Watch: Patrick Stewart Satirizes Fake Obamacare Horror Stories With Stephen Colbert

by Tamera4915 Posted on March 4, 2014

Mother Jones

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English actor Patrick Stewart appeared on The Colbert Report Monday to lampoon the ongoing series of fake Obamacare horror stories. Stewart plays “actual Louisiana resident” Chuck Duprey, an “average American Joe” and “supposed non-actor.” When howling about his health insurance woes, he says that his problems are “ALL BECAUSE OF THE AFFORDABLE CARE…line?”

Watch:

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Video Archive

(The Colbert segment ends with “Chuck” dying while shouting, “repeal…and…replace!”)

On Monday night, Stewart tweeted this pic:

Stewart went on The Daily Show last year to talk about his famous lobster costume and how Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Toronto Mayor Rob Ford are basically comedians with “bad script writers.” Stewart has also worked with the Ring the Bell campaign (a movement that calls on men and boys to help end violence against women), and stars in several Amnesty International videos on violence against women, including this one in which he discusses growing up in a violent household:

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Watch: Patrick Stewart Satirizes Fake Obamacare Horror Stories With Stephen Colbert

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The Right to Vote Is Too Important to Be Denied to Ex-Felons

by Tamera4915 Posted on February 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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Roger Clegg is seriously unhappy about Eric Holder’s call for the restoration of voting rights to felons who have served their sentences:

He conveniently ignores the reason for felon disenfranchisement, namely that if you aren’t willing to follow the law, then you can hardly claim a role in making the law for everyone else, which is what you do when you vote….The right to vote can be restored, but it should be done carefully, on a case-by-case basis, once a person has shown that he or she has really turned over a new leaf. The high recidivism rates that Mr. Holder acknowledges in his speech just show why that new leaf cannot be presumed simply because someone has walked out of prison; he’ll probably be walking back in, alas. A better approach to the re-integration that Mr. Holder wants is to wait some period of time, review the felon’s record and, if he has shown he is now a positive part of his community, then have a formal ceremony — rather like a naturalization ceremony — in which his rights are restored.

Let’s concede the obvious up front: Released felons are more likely to vote for Democrats than Republicans, so there’s an obvious partisan motivation on both sides of this debate.

That said, I favor restoring voting rights to felons, and I’m willing to meet Clegg halfway. I’d be OK with waiting some reasonable period of time1 before restoring voting rights, but I think restoration should be the default after that time has elapsed. That is, after, say, five years, you automatically get your voting rights back unless there’s some specific reason you don’t qualify. And those reasons should be very clear and spelled out via statute.

My position here is based on a simple—perhaps simplistic—view of political freedom. I believe that liberal democracies require three minimum rules of law: free speech, the right to a fair trial, and universal suffrage. At the risk of stating the obvious, this doesn’t mean that nothing else is important.2 But I do mean that if you have these three things, then the odds are very strong that you qualify as a free country. Countries that enforce these rights differ considerably on a wide variety of other metrics and still strike us as mostly free. But I can’t think of a country that fails on any of them that we’d consider mostly free.

In other words, I believe the right to vote is on the same level as free speech and fair trials. And no one suggests that released felons should be denied either of those. In fact, they can’t be, because those rights are enshrined in the Constitution. Voting would be on that list too if it weren’t for an accident of history: namely that we adopted democracy a long time ago, when the mere fact of voting at all was a revolutionary idea, let alone the idea of letting everyone vote. But that accident doesn’t make the right to vote any less important.

A probationary period of some kind is probably reasonable. But once you’re released from prison and you’ve finished your parole, you’re assumed to have paid your debt to society. That means you’re innocent until proven guilty, and competent to protect your political interests in the voting booth unless proven otherwise. No free society should assume anything different.3

1What’s reasonable? Let’s just leave that for another day, OK?

2No, really, I mean that. There’s other important stuff. Honest. But these are the big three. Even freedom of religion can vary a lot within liberal democracies, with a minimum floor set by the fact that most religious expression is protected as free speech. Other important rights—including property rights—can largely be protected as long as majorities can freely express their views and freely elect representatives who agree with them.

3This is doubly true in a country like ours, where incarceration is so rampant and so racially unbalanced.

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The Right to Vote Is Too Important to Be Denied to Ex-Felons

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