St. Croix Mardi Croix 2013

This piece isn't going to be about the parade that happens every year on the North shore of St. Croix but it will have pics from that day throughout.

Lots of items are in the news lately and its time to notice some of the positive changes that are happening. It is always hard to find the positive but i'm going to give it a whirl today just because we need something positive.

Have you noticed that renewable energy is becoming cheaper than fossil fuels. No? Well in Australia a research firm called Bloomberg New Energy Finance has found that wind farms there are producing energy at AU $80/MWh while coal plants are producing at AU $143/MWh and gas is at AU $116/MWh.

Australia has a carbon tax that is applied to those fossil fuels that pollute unlike us here in the US with no such charge. In the US we tend to sweep under the rug the fact that fossil fuel consumption increases disease and health care costs, contributes to pollution and global warming, and deflates property values. We put no dollar value on the negative effects connected with fossil fuel use and instead the civilian population eats the costs. Our taxes pay to keep our Navy where the shipping lanes are most vulnerable and our soldiers are on alert to "protect" countries that produce the resources we need. If we were to add in these costs wind power would be on par with coal and gas.

Do you want to improve your moral behavior? Well according to researchers at Boston College just thinking about being moral may make you more moral.

If you get a good nights sleep regularly your memory can benefit according to a study done by the University of Berkeley. Apparently they were trying to figure out why sleep and memory were related to a decline in the elderly. They put electrodes on to discover what was happening and found that sleep is an important factor in memory. Improving cognition appeared when the subject had a better nights sleep.

Establishing good sleep and exercise habits, having good social interactions on an every day basis can improve our memory. But according to Dr. Seruja  usually when we think we are having a senior moment and our memory is faulty its not that we are forgetting it is that we just aren't paying attention, we have lost focus. He says if you are forgetting regularly throughout the day then you should be worried. But it seems there is a very simple antidote to memory problems and that is get a good nights sleep.

Thoughts about the future sometimes rage around the intertubes. Here are a few of them i picked up along the way.
1. Digital currency...coming sooner than we think
2.Robots will do the farming
3.Planes will fly pilot free
4.Populations will start to decrease
5. We will all wear devices that record and transmit everything we say and do.
6. You will be able to log on directly from your brain.
7. You will be able to touch each other through your phones
8. Fusion will be a reality
9. You will be able to buy bionic eyes
10. We will all be branded with chips that track our every move.

We need more of these around St. Croix...folks in South Carolina are getting Solar Trees built by Envision Solar in parking lots...2,300 trees that move and track the sun will supply 35 Megawatts of electricity and also be charging stations for electric cars.

See ya next week.