Only 2% of Malawi had electricity in 2002, and a 14-year-old sent home from school over $80 in fees built a 5-metre tower from blue gum poles, a broken bicycle and a tractor fan — the dynamo lit four bulbs and two radios, and the village that laughed at it queued to charge phones 27AUG26

 

THIS is one of those good news stories that are not publicized often enough so I am happy to share this here. There are links to more stories, good and bad news, from Science Blog at the end of this post.....

Only 2% of Malawi had electricity in 2002, and a 14-year-old sent home from school over $80 in fees built a 5-metre tower from blue gum poles, a broken bicycle and a tractor fan — the dynamo lit four bulbs and two radios, and the village that laughed at it queued to charge phones

A teenager expelled for unpaid fees scavenged scrap metal and bicycle parts to build a windmill that transformed his village—and proved that ingenuity thrives where resources don't.

By Brendan Brown

Published August 27, 2026 · How we edit

The famine came first. In 2001 the rains failed across Malawi, the maize crop collapsed, and by the following year families in the farming village of Wimbe were living on one meal a day, then less. Among them were the Kamkwambas, tobacco farmers with seven children, and when the school year came due, the roughly $80 in fees for their only son, William, was money that did not exist.

So at 14, William Kamkwamba was sent home from secondary school after a few weeks. In a country where, at the time, only about 2 percent of the population had electricity, and rather less than that in rural districts like his, a farm boy without schooling had a predictable future, and it ran on kerosene, sunlight and hand labor.

What saved him was a small village library stocked by an aid program, and one book in it.

The book with the windmills

Unable to attend classes, William kept sneaking an education, borrowing books from the library near his old primary school. Most were in English, which he barely read, so he studied the diagrams. One battered American textbook, called Using Energy, had photographs of wind turbines on its cover, towers with spinning blades, and the text explained that they could pump water and generate electricity.

For a hungry farm family, that sentence was not abstract. Electric light meant studying after dark. A pump meant a second maize crop in the dry season, and an end to hunger as an annual gamble. William later put the calculation with brutal simplicity: with a windmill, they could finally be released from the misery of the dark, and of hunger. Malawi had plenty of wind. The book said the machine was possible. He decided to build one from whatever the village could supply.

Junkyard physics

The supply list read like a scavenger hunt through rural poverty. From a scrapyard across from his old school he pulled a broken bicycle with one wheel, a rusted tractor cooling fan, and an old shock absorber. He melted plastic pipes over a fire and flattened them into blades to extend the fan’s reach, drilling holes with a nail heated in the coals. His father’s maize-mill machinery gave up a ball bearing; bottle caps became washers; and after months of saving and help from a friend, he got the crucial component, a bicycle dynamo, the little bottle-shaped generator that rubs against a wheel to power a headlamp.

The design logic was pure improvisation on a sound principle. Wind turns the blades, the blades turn the bicycle wheel, the wheel’s chain-and-sprocket gearing spins the dynamo fast enough to make useful current. With his cousin and his friend he raised a tower of blue gum tree poles, about five metres tall, lashed and nailed together, and hauled the machine to the top.

The village had watched all this with open scorn. Neighbors, and at times his own mother, thought the boy dragging scrap through town had lost his mind; the word that followed him around Wimbe was misala, crazy. A crowd of a few dozen gathered under the tower for what most expected to be a public failure.

William connected the wires to a small bulb. The wind picked up, the blades spun, and the bulb flickered, then burned steadily in his hand.

The queue at the crazy boy’s house

The machine worked, and then it kept working. Wired into the family house, the windmill ran four light bulbs and two radios, and William added a car battery to store power for calm days, plus homemade light switches and a circuit breaker built from nails, magnet wire and melted rubber. The family that could not afford school fees now had the only electric light for miles.

The laughter converted instantly into a queue. Neighbors who had called him crazy began lining up at the house to charge mobile phones, which were spreading through rural Malawi years ahead of the grid. William, characteristically, responded to demand by upgrading: taller towers, better blades, more machines, including a windmill dedicated to pumping water for irrigation, the original dream that had started with a hungry season.

From Wimbe to everywhere

For five years the windmill was purely local legend. Then in late 2006 a Malawian newspaper wrote up the boy engineer of Wimbe, a blogger spotted the story, and the internet did the rest. William was invited to the TED conference in Tanzania in 2007, where he told the story in halting English to a standing ovation, and the education that $80 had interrupted resumed on a global scale: the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, then Dartmouth College in the United States, class of 2014.

His memoir, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, became a bestseller and, in 2019, a Netflix film directed by and starring Chiwetel Ejiofor. William has spent the years since on exactly the problem he started with, working on projects that teach young Africans to build their own solutions with what’s at hand.

The original windmill’s arithmetic remains the sharpest part of the story. The gap between a bright teenager and an engineer turned out to be one library book and a scrapyard. What the fee system priced at $80, the wind delivered for free, and the village that laughed queued up to plug in.

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1On 18 August 1868, French astronomer Pierre Janssen pointed a spectroscope at a total solar eclipse over Guntur, India, and saw a bright yellow line that matched no element known on Earth — helium would not be found in a laboratory here for another 27 years.The Artful Age2In 2015, ZeroFox flagged peaceful Black Lives Matter organisers as threat actors in Baltimore. In July, ICE gave the same company $15 million to monitor doxing threatsDirect Message News3One of ageing research’s most counterintuitive findings is that biological-age markers may not move steadily in one direction. They can rise within days under the stress of surgery, pregnancy or severe illness, then fall again during recovery—suggesting that at least part of what we measure as ageing is a fluid physiological state, not simply damage accumulating year after year.

Written by

Brendan Brown

Contributing writer at Science Blog.

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Voters fire book banners in Texas school board elections! & Texas voters oust book-banning school board members in major suburban shakeup 6MAI25

 THERE is hope for Texas, election results like this prove when provided with the facts and especially when their children are at risk voters will do the right thing and vote out fascist authoritarians and "christian" nationalist. This from Daily KOS and MSN.....

Voters fire book banners in Texas school board elections

Tuesday, May 06, 2025 at 9:48:07p EDT

Afshi Charania and Angie Wierzbicki won trustee positions in the Fort Bend Independent School District on May 3, 2025. Both pledged to work against book banning policies promoted by the trustees. Formerly, the book banners held a 5-2 majority on the board, but the election of Charanis and Wierzbicki means that the board is now tilted 4-3 in favor of pro-student and pro-educator trustees. Unlike some elections which require 50% or more to avoid a runoff, the results shown are final.

Texas suburban voters removed hard-line book banners from a number of suburban Houston school boards. See article. 

In Fort Bend County Independent School District (FBISD), Afshi Charania and Angie Wierzbicki won election as trustees. Charania defeated incumbent Rick Garcia who supported what district librarians described as the “most restrictive” book policy. Wierzbicki defeated Cheryl Buford, who was hand-picked by outgoing board member David Hamilton who championed book banning. (I made a very modest effort to help by distributing Afshi and Angie door hangers to about 120 homes.) 

In Katy ISD, board president and book-banner Victor Perez lost to former principal James Cross. In Clear Creek ISD, Rebecca Lilley defeated incumbent book banner Scott Bowen. In Humble ISD, Brittnai Brown won election over Ken Kirchhofer and Tracy Shannon. Shannon, who declared herself to be in favor of banning 1,000 books, was backed by the Republican Party. Fort Bend, Katy, Clear Creek, and Humble ISD are all in the Houston area. 

Texas voters oust book-banning school board members in major suburban shakeup

Story by Faith Bugenhagen

 • 1d

Voters in suburban Texas, including the Houston area, came out handily over the weekend to vote out school board trustees touting book removals across districts and elect first-time candidates in opposition of such removals—a clear protest against titles flying off school library and classroom shelves.

In one of the most closely watched races, Katy ISD board president Victor Perez lost his seat to longtime educator and former principal James Cross. During his tenure, Perez led a hardline conservative push to remove books deemed sexually explicit or related to gender identity and sexuality, and backed a contracted policy requiring teachers to inform parents if a student asked to use a different name or pronouns. 

In a string of emails, Perez pushed for Sherman Alexie's Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian to be taken off district shelves despite a committee in place to make such decisions. When reminded by Superintendent Ken Gregorski that the book had already been challenged and determined appropriate for instruction by a book review group, Perez wrote in an email that the book "is clearly promoting the idea that white people are racist and oppressors."

In Fort Bend ISD, incumbent Rick Garcia, who supported passing what district librarians described as one of Texas's "most restrictive" book policies, lost to new-comer Afshi Charania. Charania has served on the FBISD Facilities Steering Committee, the Fort Bend Chamber of Commerce and the local Homeowners Association, among other organizations.

Although Trustee David Hamilton announced he would be resigning his seat on the board before the contest, Saturday's election dealt him a devastating blow.

Hamilton, who spearheaded the book policy, which prohibits any title that "advocates or promotes" racial, ethnic, sex-based or religious stereotypes, sexual activity or illegal actions by minors like drug usage, backed Cheryl Buford. Buford received Hamilton's hand-pick to take over his work within the district.

Buford was defeated by FBISD parent Angie Wierzbicki, who spoke out against the book policy at a board meeting last year and rebuked Hamilton for being behind many of the district's book review requests.

Wierzbicki said of Hamilton's action, "If that is not driving an agenda—I don't know what is."

Challenger Brittnai Brown claimed victory against incumbent Ken Kirchhofer and opponent Tracy Shannon—who previously stated she was behind more than 1,000 book removals in the district. Despite Shannon collecting support from the GOP, she could not win against Brown.

New-comer Rebecca Lilley defeated Clear Creek ISD Scott Bowen, a staunch supporter of the crackdown on titles in his local public library. Bowen was endorsed for re-election by notable GOP names, including state reps. Dennis Paul, Terri Leo Wilson and state senator Mayes Middleton.

Trends of victories in 2022 for Christian Nationalist phone company Patriot Mobile-backed candidates halted Saturday night, with most of the candidates propped up by the conservative PAC losing within significantly wide margins.

The pattern started with Keller ISD, a known hyper-conservative board built by Patriot Mobile, where all of the candidates favored by the board’s Patriot Mobile-backed group lost. All three Patriot Mobile-favored Mansfield ISD candidates, Craig Tipping, Keziah Valdes Farrar and Bianca Benavides Anderson, were also defeated.

In Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, Trustee Tammy Nakamura, who led the charge against books and kept a list of "poisoned" educators she wanted to run out of the district, failed to hold onto her seat despite PAC's $50,000 in support.

Another group, CAZ consulting firm, led by Chris Zook Jr., leader of the pro-voucher group Texas For Educational Freedom, lost heavily Saturday night after providing services to several Houston-area candidates. CAZ usually wins big in such elections, having worked to support candidates like Conroe ISD's self-described "mama bears" in past contests.

Other extremist groups, such as the True Texas Project and Moms For Liberty, also threw their hats in the ring by recommending candidates for the suburban school board contests. All but five of the 25 True Texas Project candidates lost, and Moms for Liberty candidates were defeated in Liberty Hill, Humble and Katy.

"Voters across Texas clearly and consistently punished the people who have been restricting students' reading and learning," said Frank Strong, Co-founder of Texas Freedom to Read Project. "They delivered a message: Texans are sick of book bans, sick of attacks on educators and librarians, sick of leaders waging culture war battles at the expense of good governance."

While incumbents and challengers supporting book removals and other hot-button culture war issues lost across the board, candidates who community members say will either maintain the conservative status quo or endorse such issues won in Dripping Springs ISD, Eanes ISD, Northwest ISD, and Spring Branch ISD. 

HOWARD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LAW LIBRARY

What Pittsburgh Can Teach The Rest Of The Country About Living Well 18DEZ13

BEING Pennsylvania born and raised, and still a Yankee though I've lived in Northern Virginia for the past 27 years (left Warren County, PA in 1986, a victim of ronald regan's economic miracle) I am compelled to share this good news story about Pittsburgh. I have always enjoyed the city and have been impressed with the improvements I have seen over the years, especially because so many people have scoffed at the thought of Pittsburgh as a city in the "classic" sense, I have heard too many mention Pittsburgh and The Deer Hunter or filth from steel mills in the same breath. I was actually in Pittsburgh last week, and walking in the Squirrel Hill area in the evening I didn't have any concerns for my personal safety and I found good local restaurants too. I get to retire in 11 years (with any luck sooner than that) and will not be staying in NOVA. Pittsburgh is a place I am considering. My only "issue" with the city? I am NOT a Steelers fan....And the "signature sandwich" mentioned in the article? You gotta experience it at Primanti's in the Strip District, after hours.... This from HuffPost.

 
Our Living Well, On Location series explores cities and countries from around the world. How do other people pursue health and happiness? We're going coast to coast, country to country to find out.
As a city whose signature sandwich comes with fries on top, we wouldn't blame you if Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania wasn't the first place to spring to mind as an icon of healthy living.
But over the years, as Pittsburgh has evolved from a steel city of the industrial boom into a modern mecca of culture and education, many consider it a hidden gem. In fact, it has even been named as Forbes' most livable U.S. City. What's more, a 2012 survey found that residents in the Pittsburgh area rated their happiness as a 7.8 out of 10, compared to the 7.4 national average. While Pittsburghers still have room for improvement in the health department (despite some gains, they have one of the highest air pollution rates nation-wide, for one), there are more than a few things to be gleaned from Pennsylvania's second-largest city. Read on for nine lessons Pittsburgh offers on living well.
The housing is affordable.

Steel City residents enjoy some of the most affordable housing in the United States. According to the Chicago-based Interest.com, Pittsbugh is the fifth most affordable metro area when it comes to housing, based on a ratio of median household income ($50,489, compared to a national median of $51,371) to median home price ($137,000, compared to a national median of $203,500), the Pittsburgh Post Gazette recently reported. "When you crank all the numbers through the system, you find the median family in Pittsburgh can rather easily afford the median house," Interest.com managing editor Mike Sante told the Post Gazette. "By definition, that makes Pittsburgh a pretty affordable city."
And affordable housing has been linked to serious health benefits, including decreased risk of stress-related diseases and boosts in mental health, not to mention that it can free up financial resources for healthy, wholesome food and health-related expenses.
Their hospitals are world-class.

Pittsburgh is home to some of the best hospitals in the country. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) has been ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the No. 1 hospital in not only the Pittsburgh metro area, but in the entire state of Pennsylvania. The hospital is also ranked among the top 10 nationally for multiple specialities, including ear, nose and throat, geriatrics, neurology and neurosurgery and psychiatry. Among the 43 hospitals in the metro area, other top-ranked facilities include Western Pennsylvania Hospital, Allegheny General Hospital and Magee-Womens Hospital of UPMC.
The city's thriving medical community also includes the University of Pittsburgh's School of Medicine, which is currently ranked 16th in the nation for the best research medical schools.
They're whip-smart (not to mention cultured).

A 2013 ranking of "America's Smartest Cities" from Movoto put Pittsburgh in the number one spot out of the 100 most populous U.S. cities. The ranking took into account the number of universities and colleges, libraries, media outlets and museums per person, as well as education level and public school rank. The number of universities in the city was the prime factor that contributed toward its top spot (click here for the full breakdown of the results). Carnegie Mellon University, for instance, is ranked 23rd in U.S. News and World Report's most recent ranking of national universities. Other schools within the city limits include The University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University and Carlow University.
Pittsburgh also ranked in the top 20 for media outlets, libraries, public schools and museums. And it turns out, a day wandering through the Andy Warhol Museum or the Carnegie Science Center may be a boon to health: One 2011 study suggested that the more cultured people are (defined by how often they had attended a museum or art exhibit, seen a concert, film or play, spectated at a sporting event or gone to a church event in the past six months), the more likely they are to report good health and high life satisfaction, TIME reported. The effect was especially profound among men, who had a 14 percent greater chance of reporting good health if they went to museums or art exhibits than those who didn't, compared to 10 percent for women.
They root, root, root for the home team.

No matter which Black and Gold team is your favorite -- the Steelers, the Pirates or the Penguins -- Pittsburgh knows a thing or two about sports fandom. In fact, the city has secured a total of 14 professional sports championships. The Steelers have won six Super Bowls, and the Penguins have taken home three Stanley Cups. (And while the Pirates have struggled over the past couple of decades, they did make the playoffs this year.) In 2011, Sporting News ranked Pittsburgh sixth in their Best Sports Cities list.
Waving those Terrible Towels might actually have some health benefits, too. "Sports fans are quite active physically, politically and socially," Daniel L. Wann, Murray State University psychology professor and author of Sports Fans: The Psychology And Social Impact Of Spectators, told CNN. "Pretty much any way you look at it, the more you identify with a local team, the more psychologically healthy you tend to be." On a whole, fans tend to have a higher self esteem and feel less lonely than their sports-eschewing counterparts, according to CNN -- and Pittsburghers embrace team spirit with the best of them.
It's a great place to retire.

Livability's 2013 ranking of the best places to retire put Pittsburgh in the number five spot, with safe neighborhoods, plenty of fitness and recreation centers, a hearty population of older adults (13.8 percent of the population are over 65) and a low cost of living to thank. According to the findings: "Pennsylvania is one of the few states that doesn't tax retirement income, and seniors find home costs and grocery items to be well below prices found in neighboring states."
The results also cited the city's top-notch hospitals, cultural opportunities, sporting events and outdoor space -- things Pittsburghers of all ages can appreciate.
Pittsburgh invests in green space.

Accessible green space has been linked to a myriad of health benefits, including improved cardiovascular and mental health, and increased physical activity. What's more, research published earlier this year showed that walking through green space could help to put the brain into a state of meditation, Hufffpost previously reported.
Despite its "Steel City" nickname, Pittsburgh is firmly committed to green space: Its parks include the 561-acre Frick park, Highland park, Riverview park and Schenley park. The city is also home to some less conventional green spaces. In 2006, Schenley Plaza, which was used as a parking lot for decades, was transformed into a "green oasis" in the middle of the Oakland neighborhood. The project won the Silver Award for Environmentally Sustainable Projects from the International Awards for Livable Communities and the IDA Pinnacle Award for Public Space from the International Downtown Association, both in 2009. In 2011, construction began on the restoration of the much-deteriorated Mellon Square, which the Pitsburgh Parks Conservancy calls Pennsylvania's "first modern garden plaza built over a parking garage and a forerunner of green roofs."
The city is among the country's most secure.

A 2013 ranking from Farmers Insurance Group put Pittsburgh in the number three spot for their list of the "Most Secure Places To Live In The U.S." The analysis included cities with a population of 500,000 or greater, evaluating each on a variety of factors such as economic stability, extreme weather, air quality, environmental hazards, life expectancy, crime and unemployment, among others.
Pittsburgh is a reading capital.

Pittsburgh is full of bookworms. According to Amazon.com's third annual ranking of the most well-read cities, released earlier this year, Pittsburgh landed in the top 10. The list was compiled by looking at sales for all books, magazines and newspapers in both print and Kindle form on the website, from June 1, 2012, according to a release from Amazon.
All that reading could boost Pittsburghers' health: Research has linked being a bibliophile with a host of benefits, including decreased stress levels, a sharper brain and even improved empathy.
Their employees are happy.

Nationwide, Americans are heading for burnout, with 16 percent reporting that they hate their jobs in a recent survey.
But in January 2013, the site Career Bliss ranked Pittsburgh in the top five cities with the happiest workers. They looked at more than 36,000 employee reviews over the course of about a year -- workers were asked to rate 10 factors, including relationships between the boss and co-workers, work environment, growth opportunities and a sense of control over daily tasks, Forbes reported. With an overall score of 3.96 on a five-point scale, Pittsburgh employees ranked the company they work for, the culture of the company and available growth opportunities as the highest.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/18/pittsburgh-health_n_4339476.html