Picture a light bulb in your mind, and it’s likely that the image will reflect the incandescent bulbs modern society has used for over 100 years. Although some of the materials have changed, today’s incandescent bulbs look a lot like the glass globes Thomas A. Edison created to keep his filaments needed in a proper vacuum.
Today we’ve discovered that while cheap and familiar, traditional light bulbs are grossly inefficient, wasting most of their energy as heat rather than light. To combat this inefficiency, the market has embraced compact fluorescent bulbs that use far less energy over their lifetimes while providing a similar or better quality of light. These energy efficient light bulbs may save us money, but they don’t have the classic look of the light bulbs we know and love. That’s why Luke Anderson decided to re-design a lamp to celebrates the beauty of Edison’s early bulbs without wasting power.
CFLs have a curlycue shape because they’re trying to fit a long fluorescent tube into a small, light bulb-sized space. Edison used a globe shape because it gave the filaments plenty of room to work. These bulbs were larger and because they allowed us to gaze directly on the tangle of filament within, like works of art. Anderson’s design combines the beauty of those early bulbs with the energy saving nature of modern LEDs. The result is a tube-like LED housed in a glass globe. He calls it the “Alva” in homage to Edison.
“There are several companies today that sell reproductions of early Edison bulbs, but they are still too bright to look at and enjoy,” Anderson writes on his Kickstarter page. “With Alva I have been able to create a lamp that looks like an large Edison light bulb. It is bright enough to read by while not being so bright as to hurt one’s eyes.”
Apparently, there were lots of people who shared Anderson’s desire for a retro light bulb that would toe the line between light fixture and electrified sculpture. Alva’s Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign blasted it’s $4,000 goal out of the water, instead gathering a whopping $29, 265. It won’t be cheap, but there are five more days to join as a backer if you’d like an Alva of your own.
This is the first building to be constructed at the UW-Bothell campus in 10 years. The 74,000-square-foot building will house 11 science labs, several classrooms, gathering space, and a 200-person lecture hall. This will allow UW-Bothell to serve an additional 1,000 students each year, and graduate nearly 350 students annually into the work force.
With sustainability as a major focus, the construction team is targeting energy use of 30 percent better than a typical building of this type. The heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) will use a passive beam system, which will require substantially less energy and less maintenance than typical. Operable windows will provide an energy-free cooling and airflow option. Displacement ventilation will condition public assembly areas.
Efficient lighting will include high-performance linear fluorescents, compact fluorescent downlights and LEDs. Daylight harvesting will automatically reduce artificial lighting as daylight allows. Occupancy sensors will turn lights off in unoccupied spaces. The construction process will be sustainable as well, for example reducing paper by 75 percent through digital documents and online coordination. The team is targeting LEED Gold certification.
Whether he liked it or not, Rodney King had been linked over the past 20 years with unresolved issues of the post-Civil Rights era, police and minority relations, and his own “Can we all get along” plea to end the riots that consumed Los Angeles in 1992.
His apparent backyard pool drowning death on Sunday, June 17, came six weeks after observance of the 20th anniversary of the riots that left at least 53 people dead and more than $1 billion in property damage.
King rose to notoriety following a 1991 high-speed chase, ending with four LAPD officers caught on camera beating King. The officers were acquitted a year later, prompting outrage that led to six days of riots in Los Angeles.
King had agreed this spring to personal appearances and interviews as he promoted his book “The Riot Within: My Journey from Rebellion to Redemption.” He professed to be uncomfortable with all the attention, but also was willing to appear as himself on such shows as “Celebrity Rehab” in 2008.
A camera crew from the VH1 show accompanied King to Riverside County Superior Court in August when he faced a Moreno Valley DUI charge that was later reduced to a reckless driving plea. Several people approached King outside the courthouse requesting autographs.
King said then that he had a medical marijuana prescription, due in part to injuries he suffered during the then 20-year-old incident with police. He also told a fan he was “working daily” to improve his life.
“A lot's changed since 1991,” King said then. “My history makes me think about it a lot. I'm not comfortable around police. I'd rather meet them on a different basis.”
On Sunday, Rev. Al Sharpton said in a statement that King’s call for reconciliation was how he should be remembered.
“Through all that he had gone through with his beating and his personal demons he was never one to not call for reconciliation and for people to overcome and forgive,” Sharpton wrote. “History will record that it was Rodney King’s beating and his actions that made America deal with the excessive misconduct of law enforcement.”
Attorney Harland Braun, who represented one of the police officers, Ted Briseno, in a federal civil rights trial over the beating, told The Associated Press that King's name would always be a part of Los Angeles history.
“I always saw him as a sad figure swept up into something bigger than he was,” Braun said. “He wasn't a hero or a villain. He was probably just a nice person.”
In interviews during this spring, King said most of the $3.8 million he had been awarded in civil judgments against the LAPD was gone, spent on himself, attorneys and relations.
He was engaged to marry one of the jurors in that civil awards case, Cynthia Kelley. She made the 911 call to Rialto Police after she was unable to retrieve King from the deep-end bottom of his backyard pool.
When King spoke in an interview for The Press-Enterprise that was published May 1, he focused on the quieter life he was trying to lead, his plans to marry Kelley, and why he decided to move to the San Bernardino County city of Rialto in 1999.
A strong posse of security personnel led by Superintendent of Police N. Bhaskaran conducted a raid on a “gambling den” located in an interior place near Ulundurpet on Saturday night.
The policed rounded up 27 persons, including a Vice-Chairman of a Town Panchayat Thandavarayan (said to be owing allegiance to the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam), the land owner Singaravelan (57) and his son Tirupati (30). In all 19 vehicles, one single barrel muzzle loading shotgun, Rs.2.40 lakh in cash and 14 cell phones were seized.
Mr. Bhaskaran told The Hindu that on receiving an anonymous call about the illegal activity going on in the farm house, he along with 40 police personnel, including two Inspectors, set out to nab the culprits.
He said that the den was located two kilometres deep inside a secluded spot and the four-wheeler could go only up to one kilometre and from there the access to the place was through a single pathway.
Mr. Bhaskaran said that in his service he had not seen such a gambling den with large number of cars and several moneyed persons coming on weekends.
There were 14 cars, four two-wheelers and one autorickshaw. Soon after reaching the parking lot the SP posted some of the personnel there to guard the vehicles and to prevent anybody from giving a slip to the police.
The SP further said that getting the scent of police movement those in the farm house switched off the lights and ran away making the police to chase them in the unchartered territory, in pitch darkness, where at least two ground-level farm wells and one prawn farm were located.
Some of the persons even challenged the police for having entered into their territory and threatened the latter with dire consequences. With great difficulty the police had to operate and yet certain persons escaped under the cover of darkness.
Those rounded up hail from places as far as Chennai, Tiruchi, Salem, Puducherry, Villupuram and Cuddalore. They were habituated to play the banned games such as “mangatha, ulle veliye and rummy” with high stakes, running into lakhs, throughout Saturday night and until Sunday dawn.
It was also learnt that criminals indulging in jewellery heist too used to frequent the place. There were also reports about the winners of the card games facing danger from the organisers.
The organisers used to have their own security guards and it was they who would pick up the visitors and drive them through the single path to the farm house where gambling was taking place.
They were booked under the provisions of non- bailable offences, including the Arms Act and the Gambling Act, and remanded in judicial custody, Mr. Bhaskaran said.
There's cracks in the doors of the Sumter County Historic Courthouse so wide that the sun shines through. Parts of the antique columns are chipped off and the mortar joints that are supposed to hold the bricks together are filled with holes.
And some of the building's water pipes are so corroded, they look more like tree branches.
But just one year short of its 100th birthday, a restoration project has started on the Historic Courthouse.
"We want to restore it back to its historic glory," said Douglas Conway, project manager, pointing to pieces of wood peeling from some window panes.
The Historic Courthouse was completed in 1913. Since that time, a number of attachments have been added to its east side and more floors have been built.
The restoration is part of a $7.3 million renovation project that will implement changes to the entire courthouse as well as the county's jail and other nearby areas.
The project is necessary to bring the entire building up to codes. The floor of at least one room will have to be leveled to provide better access for the handicapped. Some exit signs in the Historic Courthouse are made of paper.
But aesthetics is a big focus.
"We want it to look as close as it did in 1913," said Chris Wert, assistant public works director.
The restoration of the Historic Courthouse will be daunting. With the floor that needs levelling, construction crews will pull up the wooden planks and place them back down once the room is finished. Officials at times have to go online to find replicas of the period pieces they need to replace, such as the antique street lamps with the acorn light bulbs. One seems as it was broken in half and later welded together.
The mortar joints will be grinded and filled back in an attempt to hold on to the sand-colored bricks with black speckles that were part of the Historic Courthouse and to maintain a water-tight building.
Bricks of the additions come close, but have a subtle change in color.
"We really want to make a good impression," said Conway, pointing to a catalogue of egg-and-dart ornamental devices that match the top of the columns of the Historic Courthouse.
While criminal trials are held in the newer additions of the Sumter County courthouse, several court offices and civil trials are in Historic Courthouse.
Part of the State Attorney's Office and clerk of courts for Sumter County will be housed there once the renovation is completed.
Some parts of the Historic Courthouse will remain off limits such as a balcony off one of the courtrooms that still has the same tiger-oak pattern tables it had in 1913.
June in Kodiak is a month of endless light. Even after midnight, the sun softens more than sets. But one hundred years ago, late in the afternoon on June 6, 1912, daylight was snuffed out completely. There was no sound to warn Kodiak's eight hundred residents of Novarupta's eruption one hundred miles to the north, though the explosion was heard as far away as Juneau and Fairbanks. The only hint was a massive black cloud, fanning upwards and outwards as it traveled across Shelikof Strait. Lightning and thunder are rare here, so people were alarmed by the flashing, rumbling sky that afternoon. But they expected the cloud to pass over, and when the first soft powder began to fall, they scooped it up with teaspoons, thinking they might want to save some, unaware the town would soon be buried in ash.
By 7 p.m., the ash fall was so thick that it blotted out the sun. People couldn't see lanterns an arm's length away. They fought to breathe the ash-choked air. Lightning struck the wireless telegraph tower on nearby Woody Island, burning down the town's sole source of communication. Ship radios failed because of static electricity. Kodiak was cut off from the world.
Cabins struck by lightning caught fire and burned to the ground, unseen by those just a few hundred feet away. Roofs collapsed, and houses filled with landslides of ash. Hildred D. Erskine, a teacher at the territorial school in Kodiak and W.J. Erskine's sister-in-law, wrote, "No one who has not passed through such a horror-producing cataclysm can realize what it is to have the feeling that you were going to be buried alive, all the while being hemmed in by a blackness such as you had never previously known and from which there seemed to be no escape."
On June 8 th, after two days of darkness, people followed the summoning church bells and the whistle of the Revenue Cutter Manning, docked in front of town, holding wet rags over their mouths against the smell of sulfur. Some carried lanterns; some traced their way along fences or roped themselves together. Men on board the Manning kept colliding as they worked to shovel ash from the deck. The ash sliced their eyes.
"The people came aboard panic stricken," wrote Nellie Erskine, W.J.'s wife, "The next day was another tough one for us. Captain Perry came and said if we don't get this ship cleaned out we will all be sick. The filth on the berth deck is frightful." Nellie sent for supplies like muslin and cornstarch from the warehouse. "The children had not been washed or their diapers changed for five days."
For two days, those living on Woody Island hid indoors, listening to thunder and the "thumping on the windows of some little birds that had been attracted by the lamplight, trying to find refuge from the storm," George A. Learn wrote in the Orphanage News Letter. They had no way to communicate, and were in dire need of fresh water and medical attention when they were finally picked up by the fishing boat the Norman. Another hundred villagers were evacuated to Afognak Island from the Alaska Peninsula. George Kosbruk was a child living near Katmai during the eruption and remembered the rescue ship arriving. "We all boarded the boat. To where? China? We had no slight idea of where they were taking us. We felt pretty safe though. Looking back, our home was disappearing where we had enjoyed our life."
Crossing Shelikof Strait, the water's surface was hidden by a seemingly solid stretch of floating pumice. "Just previous to the darkness, pumice stone began to fall, some stones fall just as big as the biggest potato you could possibly imagine," recalled Harry Kaiakokonok. "Boat was like coming across dry land. All those stuff was floating on bay, about six feet deep. Dead whales and sea lions and salmons were all mixed up in those stuff floating on top of the bay."