Is Greed Trumping Expertise in Ebbing The Flow?

Excuse me BP, but I have a couple of questions. I know you are kind of busy and all but, are you trying to save that well?

I am not an petroleum engineer but it seems to me with all your failures – Top Hat, Top Kill, and Top Throw Down Some Tires, whatever, you keep wanting to tap the oil gushing out of the broke pipe! (more…)

The Global Seed Vault, opened this year on the far-northern Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, is a backup for the backups. It’s badly needed as around half the seed banks in developing countries are at risk from natural disasters or general instability.

Superman had it right: if you want to keep something safe, build a mountain fortress above the Arctic Circle. That’s the thinking — more or less — behind the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Almost every nation keeps collections of native seeds so local crops can be replanted in case of an agricultural disaster. The Global Seed Vault, opened this year on the far-northern Norwegian island of Spitsbergen, is a backup for the backups. It’s badly needed — as many as half the seed banks in developing (more…)

May 2008

The new city council is meeting for the first time.  Mayor Dixson asked Steve
Hewitt to give the administration update.  Steve lets the council know that
the business incubator is fully funded.  Kim Alderfer, Recovery Coordinator,
and Steve visit the business incubator site only to find that 3 days of rain
has slowed all activity.

Tyler Schmidt is running for student body president.  Shane Engelken is also
running for student body president.  They put their flyers together, hung
them in the most unique areas and are getting their speeches ready. (more…)

End of March

Marilyn Brown signed a contract on July 7, 2007 with Alfred Soleck, a Oklahoma
contractor from her mother’s church, to build her home.  After starting the build
and needing more and more of the money up front, he left them high and dry. Mr.
Soleck was arrested in Oklahoma on federal charges that included 6 criminal counts
of home repair fraud.  Volunteers have been helping the Browns in building the
house and when the volunteers have to leave, well, its one day at a time. (more…)

(This is a long one kids, so grab a cup of coffee and enjoy)

January 2008

Two architect students from the University of Kansas’ Studio 804, drive
4 1/2 hours to determine if Greensburg would be a viable candidate for
their annual project to build a house using architecture as a way of turning
around neighborhoods. They are concerned about committing here because of the
distance and time. Studio 804 is composed of 22 graduate students, all
graduating in May. The students go out and seek funding for the project, but
it seems they seek from the effected community itself, (gee, thanks). Back
at the University a Studio 804 meeting is held with the 22 students and their
professor discussing if Greensburg can really go that green, can the town
pull it off, the project’s not a charity, it needs funding, can the town (more…)

As promised, for those of you who do not get the Planet Green channel:

Two episodes were shown:

The first – “The Tornado”

On May 4, 2007 the town was hit by an F5 tornado, 10 people were killed in this town
of 1500. The entire infrastructure was annihilated and most of the residents left
homeless. A town that before the tornado, faced the very real possibility of
disappearing into the pages of history, as have many small agricultural based towns
in America. So why build a town back exactly the way it was if it’s future outlook is
dismal. The community decides to make it’s mark by rebuilding as energy efficient and
as green as possible. This was to be a daunting task especially monetarily as many
of the residents were under-insured if insured at all. (more…)