Word: ago
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
This is the season when we are reminded that you can safely and reliably count just about anything other than people. Census comes from the Latin censere, which, tellingly, does not mean count so much as estimate, and 2,500 years ago in Rome, people were already squirrelly about being estimated. The penalty for refusing to reveal how many people were in your household, how many slaves, how much livestock, was forfeiting it all and becoming a slave yourself. The Bible tells the story of God getting so mad at King David for ordering a census (granted, it was because...
...other words, we're going to need Michael Beard, a rotund, balding, 50-ish English physicist coasting on a Nobel Prize he won two decades ago. As Solar begins, Beard is in the waning days of his fifth marriage, hanging on as the chief of a government center on renewable energy, where climate change takes up less space in his mind than adultery. "Beard was not wholly skeptical about climate change," McEwan writes. "But he himself had other things to think about." (See pictures of the effects of global warming...
...February, President Barack Obama told the crowd at a Henderson, Nev., high school that not so long ago, the U.S. made barely 2% of the advanced batteries used in the world's electric vehicles. Now, thanks to a multibillion-dollar federal investment, American companies are positioned to increase production tenfold - and potentially control 40% of the global lithium-ion-battery market by 2015. "We've created an entire new industry," Obama said...
Sakti3 is another company trying to create a breakthrough. The company was launched a few years ago at the University of Michigan by an ambitious young engineering professor, Ann Marie Sastry. Sakti3 is developing solid-state (as opposed to liquid) lithium-ion batteries that Sastry believes will enable cars to travel twice as far as batteries do now, allowing the cars to be used the way internal-combustion-engine-driven vehicles are. Her firm is developing prototypes to deliver to automakers later this year. Sastry's 20-employee firm, based in Ann Arbor, has generated millions of dollars in government...
Nearly 50 years ago my father, who died March 20 at 90, wrote The Quiet Crisis to warn Americans against the overuse of natural resources and the loss of open spaces. He urged the adoption of a new land consciousness to protect the environment and argued that the ideals inherent in the preservation of wilderness, watersheds and recreation areas must be given the same value as the benefits derived from exploiting our abundant resources. Such convictions were consistent with his commitment to public service and social justice. During his time at the Interior Department, he also required the Washington Redskins...