Pale Blue Dot
Oil Spill? Just Add Hay
By Peter Stein
|May 16, 2010 02:23 PM
Cleaning up the oil spill is presenting BP with quite a challenge. Florida resident Otis Goodson might have happened upon a relatively simple solution. Adding hay to a water-oil mix captures the oil and leaves the water clean. This idea is starting to gain traction, and criticism that this method could not be applied to the gulf oil leak is largely unfounded. It's almost too simple not to work. Let's hope that BP arrives at a workable solution soon.
"Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us... Every 'superstar,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there - on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."
-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
As our best scientists constantly remind us, we live in an age of unprecedented possibility. But as the Stephen Hawkings of the world push forward, on the brink of unimaginable enlightenment, a countless sum of nameless others find themselves in the pits of meaninglessness, spending their days bagging groceries, manufacturing ceiling tiles, or begging for spare change on the sidewalk.
Here, we investigate each extreme of human accomplishment, asking what the latest developments in science, health, and technology mean for humans and our relationship with the Earth - "the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known."
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Slate: "Users hate Facebook's approach to personal information. They'll get over it."
Editor:
Becky Waite
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Writers:
Daniel Butterly
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Alexander Kell
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Andrew Lohse
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Wyatt McKean
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Will Sampson
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Calvin Woodring
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Taking "quantum mechanics" back from the humanities majors
The joys of being low-tech

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