In Mark Jaccard’s new book, *The Citizen’s Guide to Climate Success,* he argues that the key is to stop obsessing about notions like peak oil.
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Friday, February 7, 2020
Houston man who spent nine years in jail declared innocent by judge
Otis Mallet was released from a Houston, Texas prison on Monday after a judge declared him not guilty of a drug offense for which he has spent the past nine years behind bars.
“What a miscarriage of justice we have all witnessed with your case, Mr. Mallet,” Judge Ramona Franklin said, according to The Houston Chronicle, before ruling that Mallet, 64, was “actually innocent” of a drug delivery charge.
READ MORE: Houston woman faces 30 years for shooting captured on Facebook Live
Jonathan Landers, Mallet’s attorney, along with Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg, had filed paperwork a day before the judge’s ruling to get Mallet released. In the paperwork, they cited detailed information on how the case was based on information from police officer Gerald Goines, whom they found had lied, failed to disclose critical information, and perpetrated a “fraud.”
Ogg said the case offered “tremendous” significance in the continuing probe into Goines, a disgraced Houston police officer, and his previous cases.
“Now we know he was lying and using the district attorney’s office as a tool to convict people wrongfully as early as 2008,” Ogg said, according to The Houston Chronicle. “Anybody who was convicted as a result of Gerald Goines’ testimony, or involvement in a case that is significant or relevant, will now be given a presumption when they file their writ that Goines’ testimony or evidence in their case was false.”
Mallet was arrested in 2008 after Goines said that he had purchased drugs from Mallet and his brother, Steven, while undercover. This testimony came under fire after Goines was involved in a separate January 2019 incident where he claimed to be leading a drug raid at a home that ended in a shootout, causing the deaths of homeowners Dennis Tuttle and Rhogena Nicholas. Police later found that Goines lied about making a drug buy that resulted in the raid, The Houston Chronicle reported.
That discovery prompted investigations by the Houston Police Department, the FBI and the Harris County District Attorney’s Office, and also the review of 14,000 cases that Goines and his squad were involved with. Goines is now facing murder charges in Texas and additional federal charges as well.
When prosecutors reexamined Mallett’s case, they found inconsistencies and lies, according to the 20-page joint court filing Ogg and Landers submitted to Franklin. In it, they wrote that Goines’ testimony was the “cornerstone” of the state’s case against Mallet.
Nicole DeBorde, who is representing Goines’, said she looked forward to their day in court and blamed Ogg for taking part in a “media stunt.”
“The DA’s office is using this as way to bolster their position in the other case,” DeBorde told the Chronicle.
READ MORE: LAPD officers accused of wrongfully identifying innocent residents as gang members
Fiesta Missionary Baptist Church Pastor L.J. Comeaux attended the hearing to support Mallet. Mallet serves as a deacon at Fiesta Missionary and his pastor told the Chronicle that since the arrest and his subsequent conviction, he and his family have experienced a “lot of prejudices.” Comeaux further shares that despite it all, Mallet and his family have shown courage in standing up for truth.
“This is a great example of an injustice and how justice can take its course and things can come out right for a good family,” Comeaux told the newspaper. “All the evidence was against him, but it’s a shame that it took the death of somebody else for justice to come to him.”
The post Houston man who spent nine years in jail declared innocent by judge appeared first on TheGrio.
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Bill Cosby thanks Snoop Dogg for profanity-laced IG video ripping Gayle King
Bill Cosby thanked Snoop Dogg yesterday for ripping Gayle King in an Instagram video because she brought up Kobe Bryant’s rape case during an interview with the fallen NBA star’s good friend, Lisa Leslie.
READ MORE: What the response to Gayle King’s Lisa Leslie interview reveals about “dragging culture”
Cosby, or someone on his behalf, lashed out at King and Oprah Winfrey in an Instagram post and blamed Black women for putting down Black men.
“It’s so sad and disappointing that successful Black women are being used to tarnish the image and legacy of successful Black Men, even in death. Are these people that in need of fame, ratings and/or money? On behalf of myself, Camille and my family, thank you, thank you and thank you,” the Instagram post read. “My heartfelt prayers are with Kobe and his family, as well as with Michael Jackson and his family. May their legacies live on forever.”
Cosby is serving a three to 10-year prison sentence on several counts of aggravated indecent assault.
King interviewed Leslie and asked her a wide range of questions about Kobe Bryant’s career, his post-NBA next chapter, how he mentored other people and King also asked a few questions about Bryant’s rape case from 2003. Leslie told her that she has always believed Bryant to be innocent and that if reporters wanted answers to questions about Bryant’s rape case, they should have asked him while he was still living.
After King’s interview, several rappers, including Snoop Dog, Boosie BadAzz and 50 Cent lit into King on social media. They accused both King and Oprah Winfrey of using their platforms to blast Black men.
But not everyone applauded Snoop’s move. Marc Lamont Hill found Snoop’s tirade to be misogynistic and unnecessary.
“The word for today is “nuance.” You can have a critique of Gayle King —though folk should actually watch the whole interview— AND hold Snoop accountable for the misogynistic way he engaged her,” tweeted Hill.
The word for today is “nuance.” You can have a critique of Gayle King —though folk should actually watch the whole interview— AND hold Snoop accountable for the misogynistic way he engaged her.
— Marc Lamont Hill (@marclamonthill) February 6, 2020
“Thank you!” responded #34 Forever. “There was no reason to call her out her name. And I’m not supporting the idea that we can’t hold black men accountable when they do wrong. Even in context, what Gayle did makes no sense but calling her names and threatening her doesn’t help Kobe’s legacy either.”
Thank you! There was no reason to call her out her name. And I’m not supporting the idea that we can’t hold black men accountable when they do wrong. Even in context, what Gayle did makes no sense but calling her names and threatening her doesn’t help Kobe’s legacy either.
— #34 Forever ♌️ (@ariana263932280) February 6, 2020
King also released a video yesterday blaming CBS for promoting the clip about the rape case and taking it out of context from her entire interview.
The post Bill Cosby thanks Snoop Dogg for profanity-laced IG video ripping Gayle King appeared first on TheGrio.
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Viola Davis Will Star as Michelle Obama in Showtime Series
Actress Viola Davis will showcase her acting chops as former first lady Michelle Obama in an upcoming series for Showtime.
Jana Winograde, president of entertainment at Showtime Networks Inc., announced that Showtime has given a series order for the first season of the hour-long drama First Ladies. Davis, an Oscar, Emmy, and Tony® winner, will also serve as the show’s executive producer.
The series will focus on the personal and political lives of America’s charismatic, complex, and dynamic first ladies. The initial season will be devoted to Eleanor Roosevelt, Betty Ford, and Obama.
“Throughout our history, presidents’ spouses have wielded remarkable influence, not only on the nation’s leaders but on the country itself,” said Winograde in a press release. “First Ladies fits perfectly within the Showtime wheelhouse of drama and politics, revealing how much personal relationships impact both domestic and global events.”
“Having Viola Davis play Michelle Obama is a dream come true,” Winograde added, “and we couldn’t be luckier to have her extraordinary talent to help launch this series.”
First Ladies will be produced by Showtime and Lionsgate Television. It will also be executive produced by Julius Tennon, Oscar winner Cathy Schulman (Crash, Five Feet Apart), Jeff Gaspin (Rhythm + Flow, L.A.’s Finest), Brad Kaplan (Mr. Church), and author Aaron Cooley (Four Seats: A Thriller of the Supreme Court), who created the series and will write for the show.
Davis won an Oscar and Golden Globe for her performance in the 2016 feature film Fences, based upon the play for which she won a Tony Award. She also earned Emmy, Golden Globe, and SAG awards for her lead role in the ABC drama How To Get Away with Murder. Her career also includes Oscar, Golden Globe, and SAG-nominated performances in The Help and Doubt as well as a BAFTA nomination for Widows. Davis is a four-time NAACP Image Award winner and 16-time nominee, beginning with her performance on the Showtime series United States of Tara.
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Thursday, February 6, 2020
Simple, solar-powered water desalination
A completely passive solar-powered desalination system developed by researchers at MIT and in China could provide more than 1.5 gallons of fresh drinking water per hour for every square meter of solar collecting area. Such systems could potentially serve off-grid arid coastal areas to provide an efficient, low-cost water source.
The system uses multiple layers of flat solar evaporators and condensers, lined up in a vertical array and topped with transparent aerogel insulation. It is described in a paper appearing today in the journal Energy and Environmental Science, authored by MIT doctoral students Lenan Zhang and Lin Zhao, postdoc Zhenyuan Xu, professor of mechanical engineering and department head Evelyn Wang, and eight others at MIT and at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.
The key to the system’s efficiency lies in the way it uses each of the multiple stages to desalinate the water. At each stage, heat released by the previous stage is harnessed instead of wasted. In this way, the team’s demonstration device can achieve an overall efficiency of 385 percent in converting the energy of sunlight into the energy of water evaporation.
The device is essentially a multilayer solar still, with a set of evaporating and condensing components like those used to distill liquor. It uses flat panels to absorb heat and then transfer that heat to a layer of water so that it begins to evaporate. The vapor then condenses on the next panel. That water gets collected, while the heat from the vapor condensation gets passed to the next layer.
Whenever vapor condenses on a surface, it releases heat; in typical condenser systems, that heat is simply lost to the environment. But in this multilayer evaporator the released heat flows to the next evaporating layer, recycling the solar heat and boosting the overall efficiency.
“When you condense water, you release energy as heat,” Wang says. “If you have more than one stage, you can take advantage of that heat.”
Adding more layers increases the conversion efficiency for producing potable water, but each layer also adds cost and bulk to the system. The team settled on a 10-stage system for their proof-of-concept device, which was tested on an MIT building rooftop. The system delivered pure water that exceeded city drinking water standards, at a rate of 5.78 liters per square meter (about 1.52 gallons per 11 square feet) of solar collecting area. This is more than two times as much as the record amount previously produced by any such passive solar-powered desalination system, Wang says.
Theoretically, with more desalination stages and further optimization, such systems could reach overall efficiency levels as high as 700 or 800 percent, Zhang says.
Unlike some desalination systems, there is no accumulation of salt or concentrated brines to be disposed of. In a free-floating configuration, any salt that accumulates during the day would simply be carried back out at night through the wicking material and back into the seawater, according to the researchers.
Their demonstration unit was built mostly from inexpensive, readily available materials such as a commercial black solar absorber and paper towels for a capillary wick to carry the water into contact with the solar absorber. In most other attempts to make passive solar desalination systems, the solar absorber material and the wicking material have been a single component, which requires specialized and expensive materials, Wang says. “We’ve been able to decouple these two.”
The most expensive component of the prototype is a layer of transparent aerogel used as an insulator at the top of the stack, but the team suggests other less expensive insulators could be used as an alternative. (The aerogel itself is made from dirt-cheap silica but requires specialized drying equipment for its manufacture.)
Wang emphasizes that the team’s key contribution is a framework for understanding how to optimize such multistage passive systems, which they call thermally localized multistage desalination. The formulas they developed could likely be applied to a variety of materials and device architectures, allowing for further optimization of systems based on different scales of operation or local conditions and materials.
One possible configuration would be floating panels on a body of saltwater such as an impoundment pond. These could constantly and passively deliver fresh water through pipes to the shore, as long as the sun shines each day. Other systems could be designed to serve a single household, perhaps using a flat panel on a large shallow tank of seawater that is pumped or carried in. The team estimates that a system with a roughly 1-square-meter solar collecting area could meet the daily drinking water needs of one person. In production, they think a system built to serve the needs of a family might be built for around $100.
The researchers plan further experiments to continue to optimize the choice of materials and configurations, and to test the durability of the system under realistic conditions. They also will work on translating the design of their lab-scale device into a something that would be suitable for use by consumers. The hope is that it could ultimately play a role in alleviating water scarcity in parts of the developing world where reliable electricity is scarce but seawater and sunlight are abundant.
“This new approach is very significant,” says Ravi Prasher, an associate lab director at
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and adjunct professor of mechanical engineering at the University of California at Berkeley, who was not involved in this work. “One of the challenges in solar still-based desalination has been low efficiency due to the loss of significant energy in condensation. By efficiently harvesting the condensation energy, the overall solar to vapor efficiency is dramatically improved. … This increased efficiency will have an overall impact on reducing the cost of produced water.”
The research team included Bangjun Li, Chenxi Wang and Ruzhu Wang at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Bikram Bhatia, Kyle Wilke, Youngsup Song, Omar Labban, and John Lienhard, who is the Abdul Latif Jameel Professor of Water at MIT. The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology, and the MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design.
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