A group of MIT engineers have designed a way to desalinize water using solar energy. The premise was to help out rural and low-income villages overseas gain access to safe drinking water. The project has been a success and they have been able to create about 2,100 gallons of drinking water in a day.
The group was awarded first place Desal Prize last month in the Securing Water for Food Challenge.That awarded them a $140,000 grant. The group plans to use that to create an $11,000 system that could save at least one village in India. About 21% of India’s communicable diseases result from unsafe drinking water. Most of the water that is available to them is considered brackish groundwater, which is high in salt.
When salt is dissolved in water it breaks down into positively and negatively charged ions. The process of desalinization can act like a magnet that attracts these ions to remove it from the water making it drinkable.
Most processes that try to desalinize water take an enormous amount of energy to do. That can get very expensive. That’s the main reason that California has abandoned its desalination plants along the coast. However, this new technology could very easily help Californians with their drought issue and lack of drinkable water. The fact that California is very sunny and could also harness the power of the sun makes this an amazing option for that state. I would think these engineers would be approached by Californian officials to be able to purchase their system to implement into California so they can give access to fresh drinking water to their residents.
I see this is as such a great idea and a game changer, not only for remote nations outside of the U.S. but also for us here on American soil. Kudos to this group for their accomplishments.
“At least I got Maced and not shot.”
Taye Montgomery, 10, was at a demonstration in Minneapolis with his mother when he was pepper-sprayed by a police officer. After the incident, Taye told protestors to remain peaceful because, “at least I only got maced and not shot.”
Taye had led a peaceful protest during the day shouting into a bullhorn, “We all need to love each other.” Later that night as he was accompanying his mother, he was sprayed in the face with a chemical without warning. Police officials say that the crowds were becoming unruly and were annoying motorists and blocking roads. It is unclear whether Taye and his mother were unruly at that evening’s protest.
The protests came about by a verdict that was made to not charge the officer who was accused of shooting a teenager to death in Madison, Wisconsin this past March.
When Taye’s mother was asked why she brought her 10 year old boy to a protest that took place at night, she said that she just wanted to be a part of something that could “create change.”
The mayor of the city and the mother talked about what happened and both support residents’ rights to protest because, “it was what our country was built upon.”
I just really hope that when crowds get together to create change, they stop intimidating and putting themselves in a position where they are drawing negative attention to themselves, if that’s truly what happened. Of course, people are going to be upset if protesters/demonstrators are infringing on their right to not be involved. That’s pretty natural; we all want to be heard, especially on issues that are personal to us in some way.
I think Taye had it right when he was trying to spread the word of loving one another earlier that day. That is a lesson we all need to hear and practice.
‘Boston Bomber’ Gets Death Penalty
The Boston Bombing was a tragedy. Lives were ruined and changed forever in one instant. Tsarnaev, a jihadist immigrant from Russia, along with his brother, cold-heartedly planted a pressure cooker bomb that destroyed life as many used to know it.
You could say that ‘justice’ was served. Terrorism cost Tsarnaev his life for the lives he affected. He will be now put to death after inevitable appeals. The jury took about 14 hours to decide his fate. There were many people who thought life in prison would be a fate worse than death, but instead the death penalty was chosen.
The jury, in fact, had to be ‘death qualified’ before they were chosen to serve. That means that they had to be willing to implement the death penalty if warranted. Some say, that is not representative of the general public who overwhelmingly supported life in prison instead.
It was found that Tsarnaev was callous and unremorseful for his actions that took innocent lives. That’s why he is sentenced to die.
Another point this article makes is that Tsarnaev and his brother were jihadists who came to America to seek revenge against the wars that we have raged in Iraq and Afghanistan, for the lives our American Government has taken from them.
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev Gets Death Penalty in Boston Marathon Bombing By
In a world that needs to come together to love one another and see the beauty in the diversity of creation of which we are, it seems so heartbreaking that we are still in an eye-for-an-eye mentality. If we step back and take a look at the larger picture, it is just perpetuating the violence. The American Government wants something, it callously and unremorsefully sends its troops to terrorize and murder people who are different from the majority of us here in the States.
Many Iraqi and Afghanistan local nationals only see us for what we represent in their country. They have mostly rejected our culture, our clothes, our way of life. Showing them that we are all cold, callous, and show no remorse for the destruction and death we have caused on their homeland has given them the impression they need to grow hatred in their heart towards us.
Then, ‘radicals’ or terrorists sneak into our country and try to seek revenge. What follows? We perpetuate the cycle of revenge by continuing it. There is no mending of the fences. The general American public buy into how Muslims, Jihads, & ISIS members are our enemy. Some are very violent and destructive; that I won’t discount. However, if we aren’t looking back at ourselves for what our country is promoting out into the world, we are all just as guilty of thinking we are not contributing the same. Coming from their side, we are their enemy because we have been on their soil killing them, disrupting their culture and way of life, and killing their loved ones.
The violence and murder from both ends needs to stop. We need to stop this cycle and try to apologize to each other over leaders who are cold and callous who are using its citizens as pawns.
It’s never the leader of the country ‘getting their hands dirty’, it’s those they influence to believe what they need them to in order to carry out their tasks. Of course, the leaders do get their hands dirty, administratively, by authorizing attacks or whatever but they are not putting their lives in danger by being the ones on the ground pointing guns and people they don’t personally know and pulling the trigger because they may be a terrorist. Americans should never have to be put in that situation.
I have compassion for those who are there and have been there that truly believe Iraq and Afghanistan people are the devil. They are only believing the brain-washing propaganda created to grow hatred in their hearts. Not all Muslims are the same. Not all Middle Eastern or Russians are the same. People are people and we are all connected. We all need to show love regardless of what’s happened in the past.
We also need to understand that those who attack us and seek revenge on us are only following the propaganda given to them by their own governments that teach them to hate us. It’s also in the only presence of Americans they know…soldiers who come to their land and kill their people.
I’m sure loads of people hate Tsarnaev for what he did, but he wasn’t the origin of the hate. People he identified with were killed by our government that sent troops there to hate their land and their people. We can’t blame the troops, but the hate didn’t necessarily originate from them either. Keep following that flow back to the origin of why all this is happening and is continuing to happen. It all comes from people way way way up above where most of us are at creating a situation and a reaction for us to follow.
Having hate in our hearts only let’s ‘them’ win.
We are far greater beings than we have been told, far greater beings than most of us realize.
In Light and Love,
Lindsey