Big Dig

The Big Dig is a project that rerouted Interstate 93 through an underground tunnel through the middle of Boston. It costed around 22 billion dollars and took from paper to finished product around thirty years.  Its purpose was to reduce the jumbling of east-west traffic with north-south traffic and when finished was successful in lowering vehicle hours of travel.

Good Town; Bad Town

There are both good locations  and bad locations for people to settle and build up a city.  There are many examples of bad locations for various reasons; New Orleans for its sinking below sea level in the marshlands, Los Angeles for the San Andreas fault and scarce water, and the city of Pompeii in Ancient Greece for being built in the shadow of a volcano.

 It seems that there are more cities built in poor locations than good ones.  One would have better luck building a theoretical planned city in an equally idea place.  This planned city would be built close to water in a zone with minimal flood possibility.  It would be in a temperate climate built away from fault lines and areas prone to severe storms.  The city infrastructure would be planned to have an efficient grid system emanating from a center point and spreading outward with mixed residential, industrial, and commercial areas.  for this city to be perfect it would have an endless renewable power supply which is something we have yet to invent.  This city is not in existence but it could be in the near future with some planing and  further research in alternative energies. 

Implications of Ethanol

In hopes of using ethanol as a fuel source one much acquire a way to either mass produce it synthetically or derive it from and existing source.

From a practical stand point the easiest way would be to take it from something that already exists in nature.  In America, corn is used for the "easy" source of ethanol.  Continuing research is done to try and maximize amount of ethanol that can be derived from corn.  In recent studies with corn and nitrogen fertilization it was concluded that increased amount of nitrogen fertilization did not increase the amount of corn the plant produced.  When faced with increased nitrogen the plant put more focus on creating cellulosic mass as opposed to carbohydrate mass, which makes up the corn fruit.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/es103252s

Vampiric Standyby Power

The term "vampire" power describes the phenomena where devices that are plugged into an outlet in the off position but still cause a power drain.  This can be caused by almost anything plugged into an outlet such as: TV's, computers, video games consoles, various device charging cables, or any device that has a standby function.
Some steps have already been taken to fix this.  For example, government regulates that all devices have some kind of standby mode that only uses only 1 watt of power.  This does nothing to prevent charging cables though. This video show an outlet plug that attempts to fix this problem.

Vampire power is just another example of how inefficient our energy system is.

Two Materials

The first material I researched is Gutta percha.  Upon first review of this material it turned out to be a genus of tropical trees from Southeast Asia.  Its sap is a natural latex which hardens itself once dried out enough but remains unbrittle. The sap was once used to insulate telephone wires, even in the U.S until better insulators were discovered.

Also Gutta percha is used in root canals as a filler because it is an inert substance and wont change or react with anything.

The next material I decided to research is Palladium. While it was not in the timeline in the text it was discovered along with Platinum because they are typically mined together and separated in the smelting process.  Palladium is a very underrated and little known metal, but its uses are vast and important. It is used as a conductor in computer chips, a catalyst in many reactions such as the Wacker Process, and its used in the catalytic converter.

Government Programs

I do not know much about the government or government agencies, particularly because it does not interest me.  Now I could sit here and make funny jokes like we should get rid of all Healthcare because its making people live longer, and therefore facilitating our populations rocket climb towards its carrying capacity, but to seriously attempt to answer this question, in my personal opinion, I would have to say the government should decrease funding towards military departments. Cutting this program entirely would be stupid, for our safety as a country, but in my little knowledge about what is currently going on it seems like the money could be spent more efficiently. 
One area the government funds that could be bother maintained and expanded is the protection of wildlife areas, in particular the flora in those areas. I feel like plants are often overlooked when it comes to conservancy, but are much more important to our planet than something like the Bald Eagle or the American Alligator, which have been helped extensively.  If those tertiary fauna were lost something would come in to replace them, not perfectly but it would work(interspecific competition would indeed change), but if you take out the bottom (flora) it would topple like a pigs fortress in Angry Birds. This is just something that interests me and I would like to see our government do more to help.