Scrolls from Sir Charlie

For the past few years, I have not been in traditional public school as often as most other families. A few years ago, my immediate family and I took six months off of work and school for a six-month-long sabbatical.  We visited many famous places around the world around Asia and Europe. Also, last spring, I took off two weeks from school to go on a trip with my grandmother to England, France, and Holland. I took off the rest of the school year after the trip and homeschooled mainly using Khan Academy. I mainly practiced Algebra 1, so that I could take Geometry at the high school as an eighth grader. In truth, I really disliked doing multiple hours of math every day, but I had to in order to stay out of the Healey school for math the following year (this year). Currently, I am liking Geometry as well as the teacher, Mr. Morgan. He is a very nice guy with an odd sense of humor. You can't really tell whether he’s joking sometimes or if he believes what he’s saying, however, ...

Yesterday my grandmother and I went to the Massachusetts State House to go to a hearing on carbon pricing. We also went to a presentation for legislation on four  bills. These four bills were on toxins in everyday items, such as toxic flame retardants in children's products and residential furniture, these toxins are extremely bad for our healths and can cause mutation, and sometimes even cancer. Another bill was an act to disclose what toxic chemicals are in children's products, personal care products and cleaning products. The third bill was an act to require environmentally safe cleaning products, so that the things that are used to clean places do not harm the environment around them. The last act was a bill requiring disclosure of solvents used by dry cleaning. The solvents used in dry cleaning is usually perchlorate which can be harmful to both the employees and also the customers who are getting their objects cleaned. I think the most interesting bill is the bill ba...

In our house, we recently installed solar panels to reduce our carbon emissions and also save about 45% of our annual costs for our house’s electricity. My Dad wrote a few questions for me to answer that would attempt to persuade much more people to add solar panels to their own houses, and also to try and persuade others to add them to their own houses. Why does solar work for our house? Solar works for our house because we have multiple roof areas mostly south facing that have sufficient sunlight to make a good amount of electricity to be worth the money that they cost. What is the design? There are 19 panels on the one side of the roof and 5 on the other side of the roof above Mom, and Dad’s bedroom How much does it cost? It costs $20,000  when they are installed, but nothing every year afterward. How much electricity will it produce? Our solar panels will produce about 5946 kWh every year for 25 years. What other financial benefits? We will save ...