Thursday, July 21, 2011

Toilets!

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation just announced a couple of new programs to help address sanitation around the world. The first is a $3M grant to 8 universities across the world to redesign a toilet that would not rely on electricity or piped in water, and that would deal with wastes in a more productive way (composting?) with a target cost of 5 cents per day per person. Also $42M in support for different initiatives and projects for waste conversion to energy and other higher-tech applications.

http://www.gatesfoundation.org/press-releases/Pages/safe-affordable-sanitation-110719.aspx

I'm curious where exactly this $42M is being given to, as well as what the universities will come up with! It really is such an important topic, linked to human health, the environment, and soil fertility.

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Religious Freedom

Hilarious! A guy won the right to wear a pasta strainer on his head as a religious garment in a government ID (driver's license) in Austria. He is part of the Pastafarians, a group that started as a joke making fun of intelligent design and the irrational belief of people who believe in creationism (they worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster in the sky).

A guy I know wrote this article about it on Huffington Post:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/frank-fredericks/when-does-religious-freed_b_897631.html