Miscellaneous

U.N. Sec. General Visits NREL

Last week, while most of the east coast was bracing for Hurricane Irene, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon visited the Department of Energy’s NREL facilities in Colorado on Thursday. The Secretary General spoke highly of the work being done at NREL, and expressed his desire to learn from NREL’s example, saying: “I’m here at NRELRead… Read more »

Got Sewer Gas Smell?

One of the most common complaints we received at the city where I used to work was sewer odors in homes or businesses. The callers always assumed it had to be caused by the city sewers, and therefore, they always requested that we flush our lines to solve the problem. So the city had adoptedRead… Read more »

Metra warns customers not to laminate passes

Metra (IL) will no longer accept passes that customers have laminated because the plastic coating disables anti-counterfeiting features on the paper tickets. The concern surfaced when four counterfeit passes — all of which were laminated — were discovered on the Union Pacific North Line, which operates between Chicago and Kenosha (WI). “We consider these ticketsRead… Read more »

No break on MetroCards because of hurricane shutdown

In light of an unprecedented shutdown of all Metropolitan Transportation Authority (NY) services because of Hurricane Irene, some customers were wondering whether the MTA would issue discounts or extensions on their $104 unlimited MetroCards. The answer, according to New York Times reporter Michael M. Grynbaum, is No. The MTA started shutting down service at noonRead… Read more »

It’s Time for a Tech Rebellion in Government

Rebellion abounds today, how can Government’s capture the passion and sustain the movements? I wrote this piece earlier this Summer for the Lower House of Congress in Mexico in anticipation of my publishing deal for my upcoming book, “Rebel Technology”. I wanted to publish it again given the events in Libya and what will potentiallyRead… Read more »

A Time for Change

These are unprecedented times of pressure for government agencies, forced to reduce spending and to cut budgets, while at the same time being asked to provide citizens with exceptional levels of customer service. The Executive Order on Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service calls for executive departments and agencies to use technology to improveRead… Read more »

News of the Week

Here is a brief list of some of the interesting sustainability news articles from this week: Chrysler teams with cellulosic-ethanol firm ZeaChem U.S. Energy-Related Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 2010 Solar power plant switches to PV from thermal MIT Weighs the Lifecycle Impacts of Concrete And you’ll find more headlines at CEILeadership.org! Original post

A global perspective on child health

After publishing data sets from Kent on child health, we have been looking from inspiration on how to present and reuse such information. A wonderful example of using data visualisations to tell a story of global demographic trends has been compiled by Hans Rosling’s excellent Gapminder organisation here. Using national statistics on child mortality andRead… Read more »