ted

Malta - a Lilliput state with potentates separated from and above the people?


Memorial plaque
Memorial plaque
Malta is the smallest country among EU member states. It has only about 400000 inhabitants and the area is only 312 square kilometers. The Maltese people are very proud of their country and are very right to be so. During WW II the Maltese people were very courageous and it was then the Maltese people was rewarded S: t George’s cross 1942 by the king of England, which cross since 1943 is a symbol on the Maltese flag. The president of the United States of America, Franklin D. Roosevelt, has expressed his gratitude to the Maltese people, which can be seen on a memorial plaque on the wall of the predidential palace in Valletta. 
However, the majority of Maltese do not seem to travel a lot and therefore are rather ignorant about other countries. Malta is just a rock in the Mediterranean, but, of course, historically an important rock. Yet, you can hear Maltese people quite seriously say that Malta is the most beautiful country in the world. Of course, what is beautiful is a very subjective. Still, very few people, but the Maltese, would say that Malta is the most beautiful country in the world. I have also heard that the Maltese wines as well as its vegetables are the best in the world! There might be a few countries which would like to contest that. Maybe it is beacuse of this ignorance that the Maltese people accept the behaviour of their potentates.

The government, backed by its loudspeaker, The Times, does everything to give the impression to the Maltese people that Malta has an important role to play in EU and in the rest of the world. If prime minister Gonzi for instance travels to some conference abroad, the articles in The Times have headlines giving the impression that the other prime ministers were there just to listen to Mr. Gonzi. Malta also has a Head of State, a President with his own flag and a car with a special license plate. His wife is called Malta's first lady! Even the The Commissioner of Police has his own flag as well as the Archbishop. The corruption is widely spread. But there is of course a reason for all these cars and flags and mumbo jumbo; the government wants to give the people the impression that Malta has a bigger role to play in EU and in the world than it really has and therefore one also must have men in formal high positions with attributes. One must remember that Malta, although a sovereign state, is not bigger than a middlesized european town and ought to be be governed more in accordance with that and not like United States of America..



Archbishops BMW license plate
Gozo bishops Toyota license plate
The catholic faith is state religion in Malta. The archbishop as well as the bishop of Gozo has company cars, the latter a smaller one than the BMW that is archbishop Cremona's company car. Do not for a moment think that these cars have ordinary license plates. No way, they have plates of a silvery material in the shape of a bishop’s miter. If you do not believe me, look at the pictures. And, of course, the archbishop has a more expensive car than the Gozo bishop (The Observer wonders what Jesus would think of that!).To a foreigner from a more secular state this looks really ridiculous. Of course also the prime minister’s car have special plates. As far as the Head of the State, the President, is concerned, it is more understandable. He is, after all, a symbol. If the president and the prime minister want to attend a mass in Valletta they travel by these cars about 200 meters to the church. This is just window dressing. One could argue that they travel by car for security reasons; no way, anyone could go close to these potentates. All this is also a part of implementing the belief in people that Malta and its potentates are very important, separated from and above the people. They act like royalties more than the royalties in the Netherlands, Belgium and Sweden.

President Abela's car and flag
To a foreigner all these attributes are kind of sweet and touching, except for the corruption. Malta is a Lilliput with its attributes similar to those in operettas. This is sweet, but, of course,  fulfills a not so honorable cause, namely to keep the people in a feeling that Malta is something it is not.





ted

"Three Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Designing Languages"

The transcript of Three Things I Wish I Knew When I Started Designing Languages, a talk given by Peter Alvaro somewhere or other, is up at Info Q.

Peter Alavaro's main research interest is in taming distributed systems. He starts his talk with the provocative thesis, "In the future, all radical new languages will be domain-specific languages." He talks of the evolution of his ideas about dealing with distributed systems:

  1. Little interest by designers of programming-language designers in filling huge difficulty of debugging in context of distributed systems;
  2. PLs often make handling of data somewhat implicit, even with functional programming, which he says is dangerous in distributed programming;
  3. To talk about the flow of data properly, we need to talk about time;
  4. Two things that influenced him as a grad student: Jeff Ullman's claim that encapsulation and declarativity are in tension, and Fagin's theorem (the existential fragment of second-order logic characterises NP);
  5. Idea that distributed systems can be considered as protocols specified a bit like SQL or Datalog queries;
  6. Triviality with query languages of characterising the idea of place in distributive systems: they are just another relation parameter;
  7. Describing evolution of a system in time can be done with two other things: counters and negation, leading to Bertram Ludäscher's language Statelog. But this way of doing things leads to the kind of low-level overexpressive modelling he was trying to avoid;
  8. "What is it about...protocols that they seem to require negation to express?” Turns out that if you drop negation, you characterise the protocols that deliver messages deterministically.

He summarises by saying the only good reason to design a programming language (I assume he means a radically novel language) is to shape your understanding of the problem. No regrets of being the only user of his first language, Datalist, because the point is that it shaped all his later thought in his research.




ted

The Third Stooge Already Plummeted

Guy 1: Cleaning gutters with a leaf blower. Guy 2: Holding him up with JUMPER CABLES.




ted

Sally Forth Sunday: Did Ted Already Know? (No.)

Note: Written and illustrated months before, well, everything happened.




ted

Tombstone Wanted Dead Or Alive

I've seen a few tribute videos to this classic western (One of the best as far as I'm concerned) done to Bon Jovi's Wanted Dead or Alive. For this one I did a twist




ted

What to consider to get listed on dmoz

When you submit a website to search engines, most search engines automatically crawl websites looking for links and popularity of the sites they crawl to determine how they list on search engine results, one site that doesn’t is DMOZ. Also known as the Open Directory Project or ODP, this directory is entirely monitored by people (volunteer editors), this means that you have to submit your site and wait for somebody to physically look at your site. This process can take weeks, months, or even in a few cases years, so why bother with this site at all?






ted

Five-year-old stopped on U.S. highway wanted to buy Lamborghini, police say

A trooper stopping a car with a suspected "impaired driver" on a U.S. highway on Monday was bemused to find a 5-year-old in the driver's seat, the Utah Highway Patrol tweeted.




ted

Thread Talk: Variegated for the Laundry

I’ve had some inquiries lately about variegated floss that can be used for embroidered items that will be regularly laundered. …




ted

This Playhouse Was 3D-Printed From Concrete!

Designer Andrey Rudenko was able to use a 3D concrete printer to make layer after layer of this little castle. His next goal? A complete two-story house.




ted

Financial Success Within a System-Oriented Life

One of the most powerful strategies I’ve found for improving my life is the idea of systems. Basically, rather than setting a goal for yourself, you develop a system of some kind, a set of daily actions that gradually nudge you toward that goal. For example, instead of saying “I’m going to lose 100 pounds this year,” you ask yourself, “What can I sustainably do each day to lead to gradual but significant weight loss over the course of this […]

The post Financial Success Within a System-Oriented Life appeared first on The Simple Dollar.




ted

My Go-To Mother’s Day Gift Keeps My Mom and I Connected, Even Though We Don’t Live Close By

It's also perfect for last-minute gifting. READ MORE...




ted

Velocity, mass, momentum and energy of an accelerated object in relativity

Analytical derivation of relativistic velocity, mass, momentum and kinetic energy of an accelerated object. For Special relativity the momentum of an object of rest mass m0 and velocity u is expressed by equation (1) which is infinite when u equals c. Is it physically meaningful that the momentum of an object becomes infinite while its...




ted

Self-directed support: a radical policy?

Has self-directed support been the transformational and radical policy that it was set out to be?

Dr Charlotte Pearson and Professor Nick Watson spoke to Stuart Muirhead from Iriss about their research on the policy - what the results reveal about the implementation of self-directed support in Scotland.

Charlotte was one of the authors of our 2012 Iriss Insight, Self-directed support: preparing for delivery.

We also produced a recent evidence summary titled, Self-directed support and workforce development, which explores how the social care workforce in Scotland can be further developed to deliver self-directed support.

Transcript of episode

Music Credit: Make your dream a reality by Scott Holmes




ted

People's experiences of self-directed support in Scotland

Hannah Tweed from the ALLIANCE and Dianne Theakstone from Self-directed Support Scotland spoke to Iriss about the joint research they are undertaking on user experiences of self-directed support in Scotland.

This Scottish Government funded research intends to encourage and develop policy and best practice across the social care landscape.

Transcript of episode

Music Credit: Make your dream a reality by Scott Holmes.

 

 




ted

Tech Giants Join the CC-Supported Open COVID Pledge

Momentum continues to swell in support of the Open COVID Pledge, with the announcement today by Amazon, Facebook, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, IBM, Microsoft, and Sandia National Laboratories, that they are pledging their patents to the public to freely use in support of solving the COVID-19 pandemic. Following in the footsteps of Intel, Fabricatorz Foundation, and … Read More "Tech Giants Join the CC-Supported Open COVID Pledge"

The post Tech Giants Join the CC-Supported Open COVID Pledge appeared first on Creative Commons.






ted

We're seeking a talented Service Designer

Iriss is seeking a Service Designer for its Pilotlight programme to support the continued development and delivery of self-directed support (SDS) in Scotland. 

Pilotlight works with co-design teams of people to design pathways to self-directed support.  Now in its fourth year, the Pilotlight programme uses a design approach to demonstrate how to design support for seldom heard groups, provide more personalised and appropriate services and increase the marketplace of support providers.

read more




ted

Interim Director appointed

Bob Parry, previously Associate Director at NHS Education for Scotland (NES), has taken up the post of interim Director at Iriss following Jackie McKenzie's departure in March 2016. Bob has held a number of senior positions latterly in the NHS in supporting workforce development and education, and leading work in supporting the integration of health and social care and in academia as Dean, Faculty of Health and Social at University of Hull. 

Bob took up post on 2 May 2016 and will be with us as plans for the recruitment of a new Iriss Director get underway. 




ted

Lives sentenced. Experiences of repeated punishment

Little is known about the effects of repeated imprisonment. Very few research studies have examined how those who are punished by the criminal justice system experience and interpret their sentences. Research that does exist, like my PhD, has largely focused on one single sentence. But people who have served many sentences (in other words, who have long punishment careers), are likely not to experience criminal punishments in isolation, but in the context of their wider lives and previous sentences. The aim of the Lives Sentenced project is to address this gap in the knowledge base by examining the life stories of 35 people with long punishment careers




ted

People affected by dementia programme. Individual awards pilot projects: Argyll & Bute and Edinburgh. Evaluation report

This evaluation report is based on feedback from people living with dementia and carers who received an Individual Award from the Life Changes Trust. The Individual Awards Pilot Scheme was run in Argyll & Bute and Edinburgh in 2014-15 and aimed to provide a small amount of additional financial empowerment to a number of individuals whose lives have been affected by dementia, to help improve their well-being and quality of life. A secondary aim of the pilot scheme was to find out what people would spend the Award on when given relatively broad choice, and what benefit that might bring in the short and medium terms.




ted

Impact of antiretroviral therapy on liver disease progression and mortality in patients co-infected with HIV and hepatitis C: systematic review and meta-analysis

Systematic review produced by the EPPI-Centre in 2015.This systematic review aimed to evaluate the effect of HAART and ARV monotherapy on liver disease progression and liver-related mortality in individuals co-infected with HIV and hepatitis C, including in patients with haemophilia.




ted

Rethinking Respite for People Affected by Dementia

The ‘Dementia: More Than Just Memory Loss’ report, was published in 2016, and set out some of the key issues affecting people with dementia in Wales, in particular: • A widespread lack of knowledge and understanding of dementia amongst professionals and the wider public. • A lack of flexibility to effectively meet the needs of people living with dementia and their carers. • A lack of co-operation between services creates unnecessary difficulties and barriers for people living with dementia and their carers. The authors of the report called for a range of actions to address this, and there has been some progress, however, despite a range of changes across society at a policy, practice and community level, there is still a long way to go to transform services and drive the cultural change needed to effectively meet the needs of people affected by dementia.  The author of this report has consistently focused on the importance of meaningful outcomes for people with dementia and their carers, to ensure that their lives have value, meaning and purpose. This is fundamental to ‘Rethinking Respite’ and to delivering the Welsh Government’s vision of ‘a dementia friendly nation that recognises the rights of people with dementia to feel valued and to live as independently as possible in their communities as outlined in the new Dementia Action Plan for Wales. 





ted

The Untouched Picture of Kim Jong-Un Started a Supreme Photoshop Battle

North Korea released a smiling picture of Kim Jong-Un and were VERY specific about pointing out the fact that the image was untouched. Obviously the first thing the internet did when they got a hold of the image was to touch it up a bit. The results were glorious.




ted

The Queen of England Wore a Bright Green Outfit So, Naturally, the Internet Treated It Like a Green Screen

Queen Elizabeth wore a neon green outfit to her 90th birthday party. What could go wrong? Oh right, the internet...




ted

The Shadow Team Gets Roasted For Being Shady During The Iowa Caucus

Meet the Shadow team in charge of developing an app meant to help tally the votes from the Iowa caucus on Monday night. The purpose of the app was to help the process run more smoothly, but in the end it proved to be a complete and utter disaster, as precinct chairs supposedly couldn't get the app to actually work, in turn causing a delay in reporting.

The delay was blamed on "inconsistencies" in reporting, but honestly, who really knows what the truth is.

The team is reportedly run by people who worked on Hilary Clinton's presidential campaign in 2016. Additionally, 2020 candidate Pete Buttigieg's campaign paid the tech firm over $40,000 in 2019 leading many to suspect foul play.

But this is America, and we can't possibly have problems with corruption, right?

As of right now, we still don't have all the results from the caucus, so while you continue to anxiously refresh the New York Times page, have some hot Twitter takes on the people (rats) behind Shadow, Inc.




ted

Trump Gets Roasted And Meme'd For His Orange Tan Line

President Donald Trump was photographed on Friday returning to the White House from a trip to North Carolina and let's just say...he's looking a bit like a mandarin orange. People have been meme-ing and roasting the photo, which shows a very defined tan line of the orange variety on his face. Trump of course called the photo "fake news," and while we have to partially agree that the original was likely altered a bit, it's still amusing to see the reactions nonetheless!




ted

Welcome to Liberated Syndication

This default podcast has been automatically generated by the libsyn system. Feel free to delete it at any time. Welcome to Liberated Syndication, and happy casting




ted

Self Management Awards 2016 Shortlisted Nominees Announced - Self Management | The ALLIANCE



The judges have now submitted their scores, they have been counted and verified and we can now reveal the 2016 Self Management Shortliste




ted

Number of vulnerable adults reported by police in Dundee soars - The Courier


The number of vulnerable adults reported to protection agencies in Dundee by police doubled to more than 2,300 in just two years.




ted

Exhausted




ted

Thursday assorted links

1. Tips for slowing livestock growth due to plant closures. 2. “The Arizona Department of Health Services told a team of university experts working on COVID-19 modeling to “pause” its work, an email from a department leader shows.” 3. Florian Schneider has passed away. 4. Source code for the Imperial College model.  And Sue Denim […]

The post Thursday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.




ted

Friday assorted links

1, “New York acted as Grand Central Station for this virus…”  (NYT) 2. An “economics of epidemiology” paper incorporating Lucas-like mechanisms. 3. Who is at most risk from Covid?  A new study based on very good NHS data. 4. Further new data on transmission.  And useful overview of how Covid-19 “works.” Maybe it seems a […]

The post Friday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.




ted

Saturday assorted links

1. How to ration access to scarce, reopening resources. 2. Will Australia do best?  And America’s coronavirus report card (my Bloomberg column).  And the correct Dan Wang link from yesterday (Bloomberg). 3. Derek Lowe on antibody approaches. 4. Crude empirical work suggesting non-essential businesses can be reopened without bringing big problems on net. 5. Yemeni […]

The post Saturday assorted links appeared first on Marginal REVOLUTION.





ted

55 Quotes About Achieving Goals To Help You Stay Motivated

Setting and achieving goals is a process with different phases that will require lots of focus, commitment, and hard work. In order not to get distracted or overwhelmed, there is a need to stay constantly motivated on the journey to reaching your goals. Below are collections of quotes about achieving goals to help you sustain [...]Read More...




ted

PM Studios "Stay Safe" Sale - Featuring Switch/PS4, and Limited Run Games.

PM Studios online store is back and they made a new sale featuring new reprints, overall deals and restock on rare out-of-print titles from Limited Run Games.

 

https://twitter.com/PMStudiosUSA/status/1253401043414781959

 

Also all orders over $49.99 will get Cytus Alpha Limited Edition Original Soundtrack CD for free with the Coupon "FREEGIFT".

 

Kinda sick move they did now.

 

https://www.pm-studios.com/store

 

Edit: Price list.

 

Reprints/Pre-Orders: 
 
Horizon Chase Turbo (Switch) - $29.99
Ministry of Broadcast (Steelbook Edition) (Switch) - $39.99 
 
Deals:
 
Deemo (Switch) $39.99 - $19.99
Opus Collection (Switch) $39.99 - 19.99
Horizon Chase Turbo (First Print - PS4) $29.99 - $14.99
Hover (Switch) - $29.99 - $24.99
WILL: A Wonderful World Limited Edition (Plush, 120 page Artbook, etc) : $79.99 $69.99
WILL: A Wonderful World - Artbook: $29.99 - $24.99

Limited Run Games products:
Mercenaries Series Double Pack (PAX Exclusive): $69.99
Mercenaries Wings Limited Edition (PS4 - LRG) : $59.99
Mercenaries Wings Limited Edition (Switch - LRG): $59.99
Musynx First Print (Vita - LRG): $29.99
Deemo: The Last Recital (Vita - LRG): $29.99
  • -->




    ted

    Trump On Pence Staffer That Tested Positive For COVID19: 'I Don't Know What Happened'

    After it was revealed Friday that Mike Pence's spokesperson, who is Stephen Miller's wife, Katie Miller, tested positive, Trump gave an illogical and moronic response to the media about her and coronavirus testing in general.

    Trump said, "She tested very good for a long period of time, and then all of a sudden today, she tested positive."

    That's the way any virus spreads, especially one as infectious as COVID-19. One day you don't have it, and the next, if you're not protecting yourself, you've got it.

    Trump said he and Pence tested negative after her results came back.

    "So she tested positive out of the blue," he said.

    A person doesn't test positive out of the freaking blue. They were contaminated by somebody else. It's Basic Science 101.

    Trump continued, "This is why the whole concept of tests aren’t necessarily great."

    Trump has admitted how much he hates the idea of testing Americans in general, not because they are unreliable, but because it affects the number of cases that are reported, and makes him look bad.

    What a swell guy.

    Then he made another baffling statement that makes no sense in any reality. Trump said, "The tests are perfect, but something can happen between a test where it’s good and then something happens and all of a sudden…”

    read more





    ted

    Haunted Gallery

    Exclusive offer from Giveaway of the Day and ToomkyGames! No third-party advertising and browser add-ons! In Haunted Gallery, a hair-rising hidden object game, the famous exorcist Gwendolyn Rose is going to have to save the world again! This time the road leads her to the Haunted Gallery. Each painting in the gallery is a magic portal to a distant and abandoned place. The Gallery is connected with the real world by invisible threads. The problem is that an evil essence called Custodian has seized power over this sacred place. Help Gwendolyn defeat him!




    ted

    EK Releases the Long-Awaited Reflection Distro Plate for Lian LI O11D XL

    The EK-Quantum Reflection PC-O11D XL D5 PWM D-RGB is a custom water cooling reservoir, routing, and pump solution that seamlessly fits into the front of the case. This waterway is also equipped with a physical flow indicator that gives a nice visual representation of the pump's speed.

    The post EK Releases the Long-Awaited Reflection Distro Plate for Lian LI O11D XL appeared first on ThinkComputers.org.




    ted

    Book week 2019: David Adger's Language Unlimited

    Welcome to the second review post of Book Week 2019. See the intro to Book Week 2019 to understand more about what I'm doing this week. Next up we have:

    Language unlimited
    the science behind our most creative power

    by David Adger
    Oxford University Press, 2019


    This is a book for people who like to think about HOW THINGS WORK. It's a serious work of popular science writing, which carefully spells out the mysteries of syntax. And by mysteries, I mean things you've probably never even noticed about language. But once they're pointed out, you have to sit back and say "Whoa." Because even though you hadn't noticed these things, you know them. Remember a few years ago, when the internet was hopping with posts about how we subconsciously know which order to put adjectives in? That's kid's play compared with the stuff that Adger'll teach you about the things you know but don't know about.

    Adger (who is Professor of Linguistics at Queen Mary University, London) describes the situation carefully, clearly, and engagingly, using copious examples and analogies to communicate some really subtle points. (I particularly liked the explanation of form versus function in language, which drew on the form versus the function of alcohol. Chin-chin!) He draws in evidence from neurology, psychology, and computer science to both corroborate his points and to introduce further questions about how language works.

    As I said in the intro to Book week, I have not read all the books I'm reviewing absolutely cover-to-cover. In this case, of the ten chapters, I read 1–3, 7, and 10—and skimmed through the other chapters. The early chapters make the case that there's more to linguistic structure than meets the eye and that human linguistic abilities must consist of something special—they must be qualitatively different from the types of cognition that other animals use and that humans use in non-linguistic communication. Later ones cover issues like how children experience and acquire their first language and what happens when computers try to learn human language. Throughout, the examples feature Adger's partner Anson and his cat Lilly.  I almost feel like I know them now. Hi Anson and Lilly!

    Adger makes clear from the start that his book makes a particular argument in favo(u)r of a particular way of explaining language's mysteries—and that particular way is a Chomskyan way. This means that he makes the case for a Universal Grammar that underlies all human language. I was struck by his willingness and ability to take this all the way for a lay audience. By chapter 9, he is explaining Merge, the key tool of Chomsky's Minimalist Program

    Now, here I have to say: this is not the kind of linguistics I do. It's not just that I'm not a syntactician—though I have, from time to time, dipped my toe into theories grammatical. It's also that I lost faith in theoretical monotheism when I moved from a very Chomskyan undergraduate degree to a more ecumenical linguistics department for my (post)graduate studies. When I arrived for my PhD studies, the department wanted to know which syntactic theories I'd studied, so they could determine which courses I needed to take. I could not tell them. After four years of studying Chomskyan linguistics, I thought I had spent four undergraduate years studying "Syntax". No one had told me that I was studying a theory of syntax, just one among several theories.

    Ever since, I have tended to agnosticism and s{c/k}epticism when it comes to syntactic theory. (This is probably how I ended up as not-a-syntactician; I don't know that it's possible to have a career in grammatical studies without adhering to one theoretical church or another.) Being a lexicologist has meant that I don't have to take sides on these things. And so I play around with different theories and see how they deal with the phenomena I study. When I listen to the evangelists, I listen warily. I tend to find that they oversimplify the approaches of competitor theories, and don't learn as much from them as they could (or, at least, sometimes don't give them credit for their contributions). This is all a very long explanation of why I skipped to chapter 7—the chapter where Adger responds to some non-Chomskyan ideas (mostly personified in the chapter by Joan Bybee).

    So (mostly BrE*) all credit to Adger for spending a chapter on this, and for citing recent work in it. I generally thought his points were fair, but I did what I usually do in response to such theoretical take-downs: I thought "ok, but what about..." I do think he's right that some facts point to the existence of a Universal Grammar, but I also think it's not the only interesting part of the story, and that it's premature to discount arguments that explore the possibility that much of what happens in language learning is based in experience of language and general cognitive abilities. But then, I would think that.

    I definitely recommend the book for people who are interested in the scientific approach to language, but I'd skip the final chapter (10). It is an oddly tacked-on bit about sociolinguistic phenomena, precisely the kinds of things that are not even approached in the theory the rest of the book has been arguing for.

    I congratulate Adger on this strong work that makes extraordinarily abstract concepts clear.





    P.S. Since I'm not doing Differences of the Day on Twitter this week, here's little chart of use of all credit to (frequency per million words) in the Corpus of Global Web-Based English, for good measure.





    ted

    Grade II listed Victorian home undergoes a green renovation

    London-based firm Will Gamble Architects has breathed new life into a dilapidated building in the small village of Gretton, U.K. The complex consisted of a Grade II listed Victorian house, a disused cattle shed and a set of ruins of a former parchment factory. Although the project presented several challenges, the architects managed to strategically incorporate the existing structures, as well as several reclaimed materials found onsite, into the new design in lieu of complete demolition.[...]




    ted

    This luxe, solar-powered, prefab home was completed in 6 months

    High-end luxury meets energy efficiency in the Jesolo Lido Pool Villa, a 320-square-meter Venetian villa in the Italian seaside resort of Jesolo. Designed by Milan-based architecture firm JMA, the holiday home was prefabricated, installed and furnished in just six months. The high-performance building envelope has been engineered to guarantee near net-zero energy usage throughout the year.[...]




    ted

    LEED Gold-targeted library and community park has otherworldly appeal

    Toronto-based architecture firm RDHA has completed the Springdale Library and Komagata Maru Park, a new inclusive gathering space for Brampton, a city located about 45 minutes west of Toronto. Designed as a visual contrast to the flat suburban environment, the architects created an undulating landscape of hills that is reinforced by the building’s mountainous form. Surrounded by walls of glass and solar shades, the green-roofed library is powered by geothermal energy and is expected to achieve LEED Gold certification.[...]




    ted

    Greenhouse gas emissions expected to hit record decline

    While your home energy bill may have increased while you shelter in place, the planet’s overall energy use has taken a significant downturn. According to the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) first quarter report, global carbon emissions could be down by 8% this year, the biggest drop the agency has ever seen.[...]