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Photo: Zane Jobe / offtheshelfedge
No, that's not photoshopped - that's a potash evaporation pond in the middle of the Moab desert, Utah.
Why the brilliant blue colors? Stephanie Pappas of LiveScience writes:
LinkTo get potash out of the ground, miners pump water from the nearby Colorado River through wells into an underground mine, according to mining company Intrepid. The water dissolves the potash salts buried 3,000 feet (914 meters) below the surface. The now-briny water is pumped back up into the shallow ponds seen here, where the sun evaporates off the water, leaving salt crystals behind.
The ponds get their bright blue color from a dye, much like food coloring, added to the water. The color helps the ponds absorb more light, speeding up the evaporation process.
Next up for Grammy, Sen. Orrin Hatch! The Mormon senator from Utah has just penned his newest single, "Eight Days of Hanukkah":
In Tablet, a magazine on Jewish life, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote that he met with Hatch 10 years ago when he worked for the New York Times Magazine. The two were listening to some of Hatch’s Christmas music, when Goldberg asked about a Hanukkah song.
Goldberg says Hatch got back in touch with him nine years later and a new Hanukkah song was born.
“I have always felt that the song canon for Hanukkah, a particularly interesting historical holiday, is sparse and uninspiring, in part because Jewish songwriters spend so much time writing Christmas music,” writes Goldberg.
USA Today’s On Politics blog has the story and video clip: Link
Last year, the state of Utah mandated a four-day work week for state employees. The salaries and number of hours each worker put in remained the same as the workday became longer, but offices were closed on Fridays.
After 12 months, Utah’s experiment has been deemed so successful that a new acronym could catch on: TGIT (thank God it’s Thursday). The state found that its compressed workweek resulted in a 13% reduction in energy use and estimated that employees saved as much as $6 million in gasoline costs. Altogether, the initiative will cut the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 12,000 metric tons a year. And perhaps not surprisingly, 82% of state workers say they want to keep the new schedule.
Even those who do not work for the state have benefitted since offices are open later Monday through Thursday. Other states and businesses are looking at the results and may possibly try the schedule out. Link -via Digg
