After being threatened the by Republican cost-cutters, the Senate defense appropriations subcommittee recently voted to continue funding the Navy’s “Great green Fleet” alternative energy program.
In 2009, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus announced the Navy’s “Great Green Fleet” initiative with the goals of decreasing the Navy’s consumption of energy, decreasing its reliance on foreign sources of oil, and significantly increasing its use of alternative energy. In July of this year, the Republican Congress attempted to sink the “Great Green Fleet,” declaring it wasteful and too expensive. Secretary Ray Mabus countered calling it vital for the military’s energy security. The experimental bio-fuels being developed in the program cost roughly $26 per gallon as compared to the less than $4 that the Navy often spends for fuel.
Continue reading
Barbados Bound
Two hundred and twenty years ago today on August 4th, 1790, Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton established the Revenue Cutter Service, predecessor to the United States Coast Guard. (In 1915, the service merged with the United States Life-Saving Service and adopted its current name.) So happy birthday to the US Coast Guard, the nation’s oldest seagoing service.
One of the joys and pains of buying beer these days, is that there is are so many interesting craft beers to choose from. Some are marvelous, some are unremarkable, while a few are wildly over-hopped, which some American craft brewers think is cutting edge. (It isn’t. It is simply bitter.) Recently, there has been a interesting shift of focus away from hops alone toward 
In 1730, the third year of the reign of King George II, two brothers, Ralph and Robert Clarke, bought shares in a 300-ton sailing vessel. Their enterprise would become 
Earlier this month, 
Last April