Good morning, Gnusies! If you’re like me, you’ve been studiously avoiding [censored] things as much as keeping an eye out for better things. So I bring you an offering of better things.
Let us start with some music. One of my fellow Gnusies posted a video of this particular piece being played for a couple of enthusiastic pachyderms; this one is the one I prefer to listen to, if only to not have my eardrums blasted.
From the “The Kids are All Right” files:
As the 14-year-old was making his chocolatey mix, [William Cabaniss] had a brainwave. He could raise funds for his local food bank—Second Harvest Food Bank of East Tennessee—by making and selling every baker’s best friend: vanilla extract.
Since then, William has made over $9,000 dollars in profits, providing over 27,000 meals for those in need.
He says, “If I can only help one person, I will be satisfied that I have made a difference. However, I would like to do this for as many people as I can. No one should have to worry about hunger. This is my goal for Vanilla Feeds Tomorrow.”
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Since May, William has been creating his own website, designing his own labels, and researching how to make and ship vanilla. He’s also been running the Vanilla Feeds Tomorrow Instagram and Twitter accounts.
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Buying a 8 oz. bottle of homemade Pure Vanilla Extract from William and his family means providing 42 meals for people who are hungry. The website is here if you’d like to buy some or make a meal donation. Happy baking.
From the “Teach Someone to Fish” files.
Okay, fine, you can’t teach trees to monitor themselves, but apparently we’re about to be able to equip them with inexpensive sensors to vastly reduce the manpower needed and increase the effectiveness of monitoring for forest fires. And the trees are going to power them. So it counts in my book.
A team of scientists at Michigan State University has developed a remote forest fire detector and alarm system powered by nothing but the movement of the trees in the wind.
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Believed to be the first of its kind, the device, which is the size of a soup can and costs just $20 to produce would likely be much cheaper than manned patrols searching from fire watch towers, and more reliable than satellite monitoring which may be hindered by weather or fire smoke.
“The self-powered sensing system could continuously monitor the fire and environmental conditions without requiring maintenance after deployment,” said lead author Changyong Cao, a mechanical engineer who directs the Laboratory of Soft Machines and Electronics at MSU.
For Cao and his team, the tragic forest fires in recent years across the American West, Brazil, and Australia were driving forces behind this new technology. Cao believes that early and quick response to forest fires will make the task of extinguishing them easier, significantly reducing the damage and loss of property and life.
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Cao and the study’s co-authors hope to field test a production device to monitor forest environmental conditions and test scenarios, making use of materials that mimic a real fire. The team also aims to add additional functionality, allowing the device to be adapted for the weather and environmental conditions where it is deployed.
As with many things, lots more info at the source.
Many of you are aware of my admiration for the company Patagonia, for a variety of reasons. There’s another company that I’ve been keeping an eye on.
From the “People over Profits” files — multiple articles:
Faced with the COVID-19-induced collapse in revenues, [Dan] Price met with his 185 employees, including 50 in Boise, and explained the company’s plight. Nearly every employee agreed to a voluntary pay cut of between 5% and 100%.
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In the 16 years Gravity Payments has been in business, it has never laid off any employees, Price said. He didn’t want to do that this time, either.
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Nor did he want to jack up payments to the company’s 20,000 customers by $100 a month.
“That would have given us an extra $2 million a month, which would have solved our financial crisis,” he said. “Our employees unanimously rejected that idea and said they’d rather take the pain themselves in a pandemic rather than have any kind of insult or injury to the small businesses that rely on our services.”
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Workers have now had their full salaries restored, and the company paid them what they lost in July from the pay cuts.
Price tells the story about one staff member who works in Gravity's call centre.
"He was commuting over an hour and a half a day," he says. "He was worried that during his commute he was going to blow out a tyre and not have enough money to fix that tyre. He was stressing about it every day."
When his salary was raised to $70,000 this man moved closer to the office, now he spends more money on his health, he exercises every day and eats more healthily.
"We had another gentleman on a similar team and he literally lost more than 50lb (22kg)," he says. Others report spending more time with their families or helping their parents pay off debt.
"We saw, every day, the effects of giving somebody freedom," Price says.
Price seems to have hit on a truth that somehow eludes many in our cutthroat capitalist system—happy, satisfied employees are good for the bottom line. In Price's words, "When someone can actually focus on work without outside stresses, the company also benefits."
All three articles are well worth reading.
Anybody want to know what happens if you slow down the speed of light?
Now you can find out.
More from the “The Kids are All Right” files:
Josh, from Telford in Shropshire, made the call [to 112, one of Europe’s analogs to 911] last month when he found his mum lying unconscious on the floor.
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"This was an incredible thing for Josh to do. His quick thinking saw him ring the number on his toy ambulance as he was worried about his mum," [local West Mercia police commander Supt Jim Baker] said.
"He was very brave and stayed on the line while we were able to get to the family's home and make sure his mum got medical assistance."
And on the health newsfront — non-COVID-related:
The World Health Organization is celebrating the news that the African continent is finally free of the wild poliovirus, 24 years after Nelson Mandela helped Rotary International launch its Kick Polio Out of Africa campaign.
“Today is a historic day for Africa, which has successfully met the certification criteria for wild polio eradication, with no cases reported in the region for four years,” said Professor Rose Gana Fomban Leke, who heads The African Regional Certification Commission for Polio eradication (ARCC).
The success comes after an exhaustive, decades-long process of documentation and analysis of polio surveillance and immunization of the region’s 47 member states, which included conducting field verification visits to each country.
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Thanks to the dedication of governments, the WHO, Rotary International, UNICEF, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, polio cases have been reduced worldwide by 99.9% since 1988. Only Afghanistan and Pakistan still have cases of the wild virus.
That’s a wrap for me! Some music to take us out!
