My Eagle Scout project consisted of building a large bat house at McFarland Park near Ames, Iowa. The structure is made to accommodate hundreds of bats, although I don’t know if it has ever been occupied. It was built and installed around 1995/1996, and much has been learned about how to make bat houses since [...]
UPDATE: Keep Indianapolis Beautiful has developed an Indianapolis recycle and reuse guide that now includes a map. It is far more comprehensive than mine, so I am redirecting visitors to my map to theirs.
I’ve created a Google Maps application that shows recycling locations in Indianapolis for various categories of recyclable material. The map currently contains [...]
Cell Phones for Soldiers sells donated cell phones and uses the money to buy calling cards for troops overseas. This is what you need to do to recycle your old cell phone:
Erase your cell phone data – instructions provided by ReCellular
Print a pre-paid shipping label from Cell Phones for Soldiers
Put it in the mail and [...]
I see two main reasons why people buy bottled water:
They think it is cleaner – In some circumstances this may be true. In developing countries that do not have an infrastructure to deliver clean water – bottled water is a convenient alternative. In the US, however, this is rarely an excuse. Tap [...]
Solar power for your home is a very attractive idea, with one huge obstacle. It costs tens of thousands of dollars to purchase and install the panels on your roof.
The Citizenre Corporation has a program called Citizenre REnU which provides solar power to homeowners. The homeowner does not pay for the panels [...]
Wired’s recent article – The Information Factories – is a must read. The article discusses the new data centers that are being built by Google and the other major search engines. The scale of these data centers is not as big as the idea behind them, however. An incredibly scalable parallel server [...]
Factory farms are massive animal farming operations. These farm animals are raised in horribly inhumane conditions. Many of the animals are kept in cages where they are not even allowed to turn around or lie down. Hormones and antibiotics are used recklessly on these animals, and likely end up in the meat intended for humans. [...]
