Masdar Development

The ambitious goal of this 6-million-square-meter development is to create a carbon-neutral, zero-waste walled city within a city. Foster + Partners is completing the master plan, or the layout of the area and its buildings, for its client, the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Co. Power to the whole locale will be supplied by a large photovoltaic system, and the entire city will be car-free; walking is encouraged by placing buildings close to each other so residents won't need to drive. Future plans also include wind farms to supply sustainable power. Early designs were unveiled this year; completion of the complex will roll out in phases, with an end date yet to be confirmed.

Source: BusinessWeek
Image: BusinessWeek

Holiday Blues

"I'm supposed to be happy! So where is the happiness?"

Barbara she said she was depressed like this every holiday season and denied that she was suicidal. Life, she said, was still worth living. And her husband and kids loved her. So she didn't have any zest for the holidays, but even with low energy she would drag herself through the motions.

The Thanksgiving turkey would be cooked on time. The Christmas gifts would all be purchased with some modicum of thought. And the Christmas ham would make everyone else apparently happy and content. All except for Barbara.

She pretended everything was okay and tried to be a wonderful actress, smiling at everyone and making the appropriate small talk so as not to sour the atmosphere for everyone else.

Barbara is like untold numbers of others who suffer from holiday blues, a mild to moderate form of apathetic depression.

Do you share this problem with Barbara? At a time when more energy is called for, she had less energy available. Getting out of bed to tend to a thousand holiday tasks seemed like an onerous chore that she couldn't possibly complete to meet all of the holiday deadlines.

Food doesn't really taste all that good to her, but she eats more just because it is there; typically a superabundance of cookies, cakes, and pies that seem to appear all over the place. And when the Christmas gifts finally are opened, they don't have a lot of appeal to her - even when she picks out something special for herself and for someone else to give to her.

So what is going on? Why can't Barbara, and thousands of others like her, enjoy the holidays? Why be the one secretly wishing that the holidays didn't happen or just wishing them to be over with?

The holidays are loaded with intense feelings based on irrational thoughts that vary in degrees of consciousness. Some are the residue of childhood experiences or relationships. Others are determined by our immediate or more global cultural settings.

"Everyone is having fun except me!" They are all invited to more parties. They are going to get more gifts. They can buy all the stuff in the mountain of catalogues delivered almost daily to your door. If you're like Barbara, you get to hear about the wonderful gifts your kids friends are going to get. They are able to waltz off for more vacation fun.

"No one appreciates how much I do for them." Taking care of unappreciative others, to some degree overlooked during the rest of the year, is now highlighted during the holiday season. There is more "taking care of" that needs to be done during the holiday season. In this syndrome, you get to do the dirty work of shopping for people's gifts, some of whom you don't really care about. And they merely take it for granted that you will send them a present.

Not least, if you're like Barbara and many thousands of others, you get to clean the house for the holiday visitors. You get to do all the food shopping, food preparation, and the after-dinner cleanup. You are the one who has to host relatives and others who are unpleasant or boring. You even get to stand in line to do the post-holiday gift exchanges. And like the rest of the year, there is little emotional payoff - even for the increased effort holiday season effort.

"The holidays just aren't fun. Why bother?" For some, the holidays present the emotional equivalent of "lumps of coal" in our holiday stockings, the threat most of us heard and laughed at as kids. Our parents loved us, and we knew that in the end we would get at least a few of the nice things that we wanted. But for some the "lumps of coal" threat came true in the form of a childhood lack of love from unfeeling self-concerned parents.

So if this is you, what can you do to fight the holiday blues?

** Try to keep your wits about you. Remember that the holidays are a time- limited stress period. Counting days may seem cold and calculated. But day by day the numbers do grow smaller. And the relief of early January can be envisioned on the horizon like a beacon of hope.
** It also makes sense to cut back on what you think is expected of you. Trim your list of Xmas cards and gifts. Don't obsess about it. Make decisions! Shift some people from the gift list to the holiday card list. The impact will be only a minor ripple on the character of your relationships with them.
** For holiday dinners, you are not required to cook every last item. Buy some of the dishes at the supermarket People will still have a great meal, and you will feel much better if some of the burden is taken off of you.
** Buy gift certificates on the phone or on line. You will be amazed at the energy and time that you will save. As a rule other people aren't really offended that you didn't take the time and effort to buy them a special gift. They get the advantage of not having to exchange a gift. Even better they don't have to hold onto an unwanted gift in order to show you at some later date how much they appreciate what you have given them.
** If you went to the gym before, keep on going. If you didn't exercise before, any kind of exercise will do. You don't have to make time for an hour long cardiovascular workout to help you feel less depressed. Even ten minutes a day will be helpful in producing the brain endorphins we all need to feel better.
** And don't beat yourself up for eating too much. No matter what your resolutions may be, during the holidays you will eat more than you usually do. If you can limit your weight gain to less than five pounds, you deserve a gold star. Go back to your regular weight control efforts after the first of the year.
** If you spot someone who seems down, even someone who is not that close to you, talk to them. Did you ever say to your grocery clerk, "You seem stressed today. Are you OK? You will be surprised at the positive response you are likely to get. You may end up feeling better as a result of your kind gesture.

I always advise my patients who are already suffering from depression not to reduce their antidepressant or tranquilizer medications until after the holidays - January or even February - as a kind of emotional insurance policy.

Because the stressors are all over the place, the holiday blues seem to come out of nowhere. But a little thought and preparation can spare us a lot of unhappiness.

Harvey Widroe, a longtime practicing psychiatrist, is the author of the recently published, "The Smart Dieter's Cheating Guide: Eat and Watch Pounds Melt Away," with Ron Kenner (Outskirts Press)

Source: The American Reporter
Images: Mostlywater.org

5 Ways To Save Energy

This time of year, homeowners' thoughts often turn to ways of keeping their heating bills in check as the weather cools.

If the brisk air isn't enough to motivate you, the federal government is kicking in a little incentive. Tax breaks for installing and replacing energy-efficient doors, windows, water heaters, and heating and cooling systems are set to expire at the end of the year.

But boosting your home's energy efficiency need not empty your savings account or hand your house over to contractors for a week.

"Different homeowners need to do different things, in different orders," said Peter Van Buren, of TerraLogos Green Home Services in Baltimore.

Here are five things every homeowner can do now to cut energy bills this winter.

Unholster the caulk gun and make ready the weather-stripping. So boring, so basic and so absolutely necessary, say energy-efficiency experts. Air leaks around windows and doors, in particular, can be huge energy wasters. They're easy and inexpensive to fix. Other common trouble spots include outdoor faucets, dryer vents and vents for bathroom and kitchen fans.


Swap out a few light bulbs. Shorter days mean increased need for lighting. As bulbs go out in your home, replace them with compact fluorescent bulbs, which use 75 percent less energy than their incandescent counterparts. As a bonus, they also last up to 10 times as long, so you'll make fewer trips up and down the stepladder to replace them.

Install a programmable thermostat. Why heat the house when no one is in it? But by allowing you to sync the heating and cooling systems with your daily and weekly habits, an Energy Star programmable thermostat can save you about $150 in the first year of operation. Most models sell for less than $100, so the return on your investment is quick. Pick one that's easy to use.

Unload your old clothes washer. Get a new one with the Energy Star rating and save more than $100 a year on utilities, compared with a washer made before 2004. Qualifying washers use 40 percent less energy than standard washers and about half as much water. But you can hang on to the old dryer until it expires -- most dryers use similar amounts of energy and none has earned the Energy Star rating.

Hire an energy auditor. A professional inspector can pinpoint the energy wasters in your home and suggest the most cost-effective improvements.

Source: IndyStar.com
Images: EnergyStar.gov

Iraq War Was Really For Oil?

Our elder statesman of finance, Alan Greenspan, has been delivering some critique to the policies of President Bush's economic policies. It seems the latest of his finger pointing is claiming the Iraq was was really for oil. Something many Americans already believed since Hussein was a threat to our "security" oil supplies in the Middle East.

But why wait now to say something? Is it because he has a guilty conscious for not saying anything while he was in office? Is it because now that he's a "regular" citizen that he's beginning to see things from America's point of view? No.....wait, okay. It looks like Greenspan is turning Hollywood. Instead of leaking a sex tape, Greenspan (not that anyone could watch an entire tape of Greenspan getting it on) decided to be on the controversial side. And for what?

Well tomorrow it looks like he's publishing his "long-awaited" memoirs. Marketing agents know that controvery receive's FREE publicity. Look Greenspan, we were not born yesterday. I'm not "waiting" for your memoirs. Why couldn't you speak up while you were in office? Seems like your motives to create larger sales is because of the lacking in the crotch area. I'm not a big fan of Bush either, but don't be a wimp and wait until your out of office to say something America needed to hear thousands of deaths ago.

Testing.....Testies.....

Just wanted to fyi to be a little patient with this site. I'm testing out a new style of blog posting that will enable to clearly communicate myself more freely on important topics that promote change and enable for us to think sans handcuffs.

Thanks!!

Google Wants Lunar Landing

The group whose $10 million prize spurred privately financed rocketeers to send a small piloted craft to the cusp of space in 2004 has issued a new challenge: an unmanned moon shot.

With the audacious new contest comes a much bigger prize - up to $25 million, paid for by Google, the ubiquitous Internet company.

The "Google Lunar X Prize" was announced Thursday in Los Angeles at Wired magazine's NextFest. The contest calls for entrants to land a rover on the moon that will be able to travel at least 500 meters, or 0.31 miles, and send high-resolution video, still images and other data back home.

The X Prize Foundation saw the new contest as one of "the grand challenges of our time that we can use to move people forward," said Peter Diamandis, chairman and chief executive of the foundation.




The prize for reaching the moon and completing the basic tasks of roving and sending video and data will bring the winner $20 million, according to the contest rules. An additional $5 million would be awarded for other tasks that include roving more than 5,000 meters or sending back images of artifacts like lunar landers from the Apollo program.

Carnegie Mellon University immediately announced that a roboticist on its faculty, William Whittaker, would be pulling together a team to seek the prize.


Why would anyone sign up for a challenge that will almost certainly cost more than the prize will bring? John Logsdon, the director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University, said, "There are a variety of reasons to do it, including ego gratification, including loss-leader reputation building, including a fascination with doing things in space. I don't think they're driven by the amount of the prize."

Logsdon said the goal was realistic once a launch vehicle is obtained. "Russia and the U.S. did that sort of thing 40 years ago," he said. "The technologies aren't easy, but with all the experience in industrial robots and sensor devices, I don't see any reason why you couldn't put together a robotic machine that could meet these requirements."

The $20 million grand prize will be available until Dec. 31, 2012, and then will drop to $15 million for two years.

The new contest follows the path of the original Ansari X Prize, which was won by SpaceShipOne, a manned spacecraft designed by Burt Rutan's Scaled Composites and financed by Paul Allen, a co-founder of Microsoft.

That prize was paid for through a special insurance policy secured by Anousheh Ansari, a telecommunications entrepreneur in Texas and a board member of the X Prize Foundation who has since orbited the earth aboard the International Space Station. Rutan is designing a second-generation spacecraft called SpaceShipTwo that will be used by Richard Branson's space tourism company, Virgin Galactic.

The new X Prize, Diamandis said, grew out of research performed last year for NASA as a contest that the space agency would sponsor. The research suggested that six or seven contenders could be expected to try for the prize, but NASA ultimately backed away from financing the project, Diamandis said.


Then, in March, Diamandis pitched the idea to Google's co-founder, Larry Page, who sits on the board of the X Prize foundation. "Sounds like a lot of fun," he told Diamandis. The multimillion-dollar project, Page said, would be "doable," but his Google co-founder, Sergey Brin, would have to sign on as well. This also happened quickly, Diamandis recalled.

NASA has announced plans to return astronauts to the moon as early as 2020. But without the need to keep humans alive or to make a return trip, the X Prize trips will be simpler.

A number of successful entrepreneurs from the world of computing and the Internet, like Allen, have pursued childhood fascination with space with efforts to create real spacecraft. Elon Musk, a founder of PayPal, has developed rockets through his company, Space Exploration Technologies, and Jeffrey Bezos, the founder of Amazon.com, is developing rockets at a facility he owns in West Texas.

Roger Launius, who heads the division of space history at the National Air and Space Museum of the Smithsonian Institution, expressed enthusiasm for the new competition, which he said "might unleash a kind of furor of innovation" and heighten interest in space exploration.

"It's certainly a challenge that is worthy," he said. But he also expressed worries that the robotic adventurers would head to the site of the Apollo 11 landing, a prospect he said was troubling since "the last thing I want to see happen is to see Tranquility Base disturbed."

Source: International Herald Tribune
Google Logo: Google.com
Lunar Team Image: Cnet.com