Cool News from a Friend

2 Replies

I met Steve Cavanaugh several years ago when we were both coaching our daughters' Challenge soccer teams for Twin City.  Not long after that he and the boys on the White Lightning made the mistake of letting me join their over-40 soccer team in the PASL, a dubious decision for which they continue to pay.  Let's just say I've seen Mr. Cavanaugh on many a green field around Winston-Salem, so it seemed kind of appropriate when I received an email about the recognition his firm received from Google for a green-initiative project they were involved with here in North Carolina.  Below is a video about Google's program – the swine farm project in Yadkin County that Cavanaugh & Associates designed starts at about the 2:20 mark – and below that is the text of the press release from Cavanaugh & Associates.

Google Inc., Endorses Bio-Energy System on NC Hog Farm

Winston-Salem, NC -Yesterday on YouTube, Jolanka Nickerman, Google's director of carbon offsets, announced Internet giant, Google, will invest in high-quality carbon offset credits generated from a swine farm that was transformed into a green-energy animal waste treatment facility designed by Cavanaugh & Associates, P. A. Headquartered in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Cavanaugh, in partnership with Duke University and Duke Energy, developed this $1.2 million prototype system at Loyd Ray Farms, a 9,000-head hog finishing operation northwest of Yadkinville, N.C.

In an effort to bolster sustainable agriculture by reducing green house gas (GHG) emissions and creating alternate revenue sources, Cavanaugh was commissioned by Duke University to develop a biomass renewable energy project that generates electricity from the methane gases produced and captured by the innovative swine waste management system.  Methane is captured from a digester and used to fuel a microturbine to generate electricity. Methane is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide, as a green house gas, and this project is designed to capture and combust all the methane generated by the farm's waste treatment system. In keeping with the innovative approach to managing waste produced on this hog farm, Loyd Ray Farm is the first swine facility in North Carolina to generate REC credits and produce enough electricity to power over 35 homes a year. 

Like Duke, who credits the greenhouse gas emission reductions (otherwise known as carbon offsets) toward its voluntary carbon neutrality goal, Google is a proponent of green energy and investing in alternative energy projects like the one found at Loyd Ray Farms. Google announced today that it is purchasing carbon offsets from this project.  Both Duke University and Cavanaugh hope this is the first of many swine farm biomass energy projects in the Southeast.

"Loyd Ray Farms is a testament to the importance of  creating sustainable agriculture and Cavanaugh's commitment to Stewardship through Innovation when it comes to finding ways to keep North Carolina moving forward," said Cavanaugh's CEO, Steve Cavanaugh. "Because this is our home too, Cavanaugh welcomes creative partnerships with companies like Google who support the idea of using animal "waste" as an alternative fuel source. It's truly a win-win scenario for us and our environment."

For more information on the Loyd Ray Farm project or to obtain a detailed description of the project in PDF form, please contact: Gus Simmons, PE, Principal in Charge/Designer:gus.simmons@cavanaughsolutions.com or 910-392-4462.  

 

Yes, Tennis Players are Picky

Leave a reply

Below is a great video of 13-year tennis pro Michael Russell being tested to see if he can pick his racket out of a bunch of very similar rackets.  In one case he could tell a 1 gram difference in the weight of a test racket compared to his personal racket.  Everything else – model, string tension, etc.- was similar. 

For someone who plays regularly I'm a weirdly unpicky player when it comes to things like strings. Most players know exactly what kind of string they want, but I care mostly about tension. I've come across a couple of strings that I don't like but for the most part I don't pay much attention.  99% of regular players do care very much, but I've never felt my game was fine tuned enough for it to make much of a difference.

BTW, I had the chance to see Russell play in the qualifying rounds of the Winston-Salem Open two weeks ago and it was amazing to see how much steadier he was than his opponent.  The guy is a hitting machine, and I was very pleased to see him put on a great show versus Andy Roddick earlier this week in a night match in Ashe Stadium at the US Open.

Anyway, enjoy the video.

The Waffle House Index

5 Replies

Talk about a brand identity.  FEMA has what they call the "Waffle House Index" to gauge how severely an area has been impacted by a natural disaster:

Green means the restaurant is serving a full menu, a signal that damage in an area is limited and the lights are on. Yellow means a limited menu, indicating power from a generator, at best, and low food supplies. Red means the restaurant is closed, a sign of severe damage in the area or unsafe conditions.

"If you get there and the Waffle House is closed?" FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate has said. "That's really bad. That's where you go to work."

Waffle House Inc. has 1,600 restaurants stretching from the mid-Atlantic to Florida and across the Gulf Coast, leaving it particularly vulnerable to hurricanes. Other businesses, of course, strive to reopen as quickly as possible after disasters. But the Waffle House, which spends almost nothing on advertising, has built a marketing strategy around the goodwill gained from being open when customers are most desperate…

In a recent academic paper, Panos Kouvelis, a business-school professor at Washington University in St. Louis, pegged Waffle House as one of the top four companies for disaster response, with Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Home Depot Inc. and Lowe's Cos.

I definitely recommend reading the full article.  Great look at the power of planning and adaptation.

What Were They Thinking?

Leave a reply

"What were they thinking?" might become a regular feature on this blog since the exponential growth of social media seems to have spurred an equally explosive growth in "people are stupid" stories.  To wit:

JC Penny's "I'm too pretty to do homework" t-shirt – The t-shirt reads, "I'm too pretty to do homework so my brother has to do it for me." 

Beer Pong Fundraiser for MADD – Many thanks to my friend Paul Jones for sharing this story on Twacebook (he shared on Twitter and Facebook). From the story: "How about Beer Pong and Mothers Against Drunk Driving? No, really. That's what the Newark Bears independent baseball team tried to connect without the dots recently… Did I mention the nickname of Newark's beloved Can-Am league team is the "Boozy News Bears"? And then, there's that."

There truly is a sucker born every minute – "A Spartanburg woman told deputies that the iPadshe bought from two men in a McDonald'srestaurant parking lot turned out to be a block of wood painted black with an Apple logo. Authorities say the men gave her a closed FedEx box, and she didn't discover she had bought a block of wood until she got home."

Having a Mike Rowe Moment on Live TV

Leave a reply

If you haven't seen Mike Rowe get covered in poo on Dirty Jobs you've probably been living in a cave for the last 10 years.  This reporter for the DC Fox affiliate had his own Rowement when he was covered with a "mystery foam was raw sewage pouring into the sea and being whipped into a froth by the hurricane's winds." I sure hope our own Fox affiliate photog Lenslinger was able to stay to the leeside of any flying crap as he covered Irene.

Reporter Gives Update Covered In Sea Foam: MyFoxNY.com

 

Average Joe Sponsorships

Leave a reply

Came across the video below that's all about a bike company deciding to sponsor 30 average, every day bike riders. This would be like Nike sponsoring 30 schlubs like me who play pickup basketball a couple of times a week and I think it's genius. The company gets a pretty cool viral marketing campaign and 30 of their customers get to feel like superstars.  

On a related note I've often wondered why people pay extra money for clothes with some designer's name splashed all over it.  If we had an ounce of sense we'd demand that they at least discount the items that have the logos splashed all over them since we're essentially walking billboards for the brand.  Yeah I know it's all about showing that you're cool enough to be in the cool-kid shirt club, or that you have enough scratch to afford to buy the cool-kid shirt club shirt, but I still think it's absurd.

Wearing Your Food

Leave a reply

In the past if you said someone was wearing their food you'd almost certainly be implying that they were sloppy eaters. These days that's far from a certainty.  Why?  Well, it seems that wearing your food is the thing to do in 2011. If you don't believe me just check out the following:

FrenchFryLipBalm

French Fry Lip Balm

Spam-chapstick2

Spam Lip Balm

Bbqcologne

BBQ Cologne

And of course Lady Gaga's meat dress.

Head Scratcher

1 Reply

Sometimes a news story will truly have you scratching your head.  This story about a man in Burlington who disappeared in early May but was just discovered in his shed this week is one of those:

The death of the 57-year-old man is being investigated, but police say it appears to be a suicide. He was found in the shed, where he apparently hanged himself. The shed is located in the middle of a dog lot, said Burlington Police Assistant Chief Chris Verdeck…

The man's wife reported her husband missing to police May 4. She last saw him around 1:45 p.m. on April 29 at their home.

"He had a history of being gone for weeks on end. I guess she figured he was gone and was going to come back," said Verdeck, explaining the wife's delay in reporting her husband missing.

A patrol officer who took the initial report searched the house, including the basement, but he didn't search the shed in the back yard. The detective who followed up also didn't search the shed. A detective went back to the home Tuesday after the wife went to the police department to talk about the case. During the conversation, she mentioned that she didn't think anyone had looked in the storage shed, said Burlington police Capt. Steve Smith.

Police went back out to the property and found the man's body in the shed. It appears he had been dead for awhile. The medical examiner was contacted and the man's body was taken to the state Medical Examiner's office in Chapel Hill for an autopsy, Verdeck said.

Later in the story we learn that the shed is part of a dog lot and that the police had to call animal control to handle the dog so they could search the shed.  Apparently the wife fed the dog all this time, but otherwise didn't deal with it and thus didn't go into the shed herself to look for her husband. 

One of my recurring bad dreams is that I am injured/stranded in some way and no one notices.  The idea that my wife wouldn't find a way to search all of our property for me, even before calling the police, just gives me the creeps.

Failure is an Option

Leave a reply

In this post Lex shares these thoughts from Barry Ritholtz on what might happen if too-big-to-fail banks are actually allowed to fail.  My favorite line from Ritholtz is this: "Real Capitalists know failure is part of the process. I suspect we may have another chance at a banking reorg. Let’s hope we do it correctly this time."