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Add the U.S. military to the list of groups opposed to McDonnell's drilling plan. Of the three million square miles that he wants to open to drilling, only six percent of that area wouldn't interfere with military activities, and even that bit would need some restrictions.
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Twenty years ago, many climate scientists believed that increased CO2 emissions would have the upside of making plants grow bigger and healthier, since they take in carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. As it turns out, no. The benefits are minute, with the downside being that they have decreased nutritional content, since excess CO2 inhibits plants' abilities to process nitrate. If existing CO2 emissions trends continue, wheat yields may drop by up to 20% in forty years.
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Universities love to build new structures designed to imitate their original buildings. But often it's a failure—the result is clearly an architectural counterfeit. UVA does a pretty good job of this. Virginia Tech does a wretched job of this. In this opinion piece, Lawrence Biemiller lays out some guidelines for how to do it well, but clearly prefers that it not be done at all. Good architecture is timeless.
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“Should Your New Buildings Look Old?”
It really bugs me when tons try to revitalize their downtown areas to look like old-timey towns; trying to capture that “When America was better” feel. Again, it doesn’t work. It’s like some bastard cousin to the strip mall. All these little towns are looking alike, but worse, it’s like some lame hipster version of what a town should look like. (People in the 1920’s weren’t trying to make their buildings look like those from the 1840’s.) It never looks right because the same materials aren’t used.