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9/11/2023 (#16 this year)
The Autumn Festival is in town this week. Are you going to go? I know it is nearly themiddle of September, but it doesn’t feel very autumnal1 to me. There are a lot ofdragonflies about, but not as many as usual and it is still so hot. I went to the HBC trash
pickup on Sunday with 9 students. We had a great time and picked up a lot of trash, butI got really sunburned. While you are reading this, my legs are still stinging2. Hopefully,
it will start to cool down soon. I think autumn is probably my favorite season of theyear. Maybe I will see you at the Autumn Festival. It is always pretty crowded, but thefood is excellent and there is a lot of variety.
10 differences

Last week’s answer

Something you didn’t know about robots:
1. The word “robot” comes from the Czech word “robota”, which means “forced labor3”.
2. We always think of robots that look like us. These are called androids. Most robots
are just machines that can do a task automatically.
3. As the population of Japan ages, we are going to need more and more robots. TheJapanese government is investing a lot of money into robots that can care for theelderly and robots that can work in agriculture4.
4. There is a Japanese rock paper scissors robot that can win 100% of the time. It is, ofcourse, called Janken. It actually wins by cheating5. It has much faster reactions6 than
any human and it can see what shape your hand is forming.

Recyclables Sorting Robot
We obviously need to recycle far more than we do at the moment. Oneof the problems is that people don’t separate out things in different types ofmaterials. Because of this, a lot of things that are recyclable are thrown away.
Only 9% of plastic is recycled in America. If there was a way of sorting out allof the recyclable material, a lot more waste could be recycled. Well, now thereis. A company in America called Amp Robotics has made some robots that can
do just that. So far, there are two robots, but they are going to make a lotmore. The two robots are called Sorty McSortFace and Sir Sorts-a-Lot. If you
don’t understand the joke behind these names, please come and ask me. Bothof the robots have arms, and they are placed above conveyor belts7. They use
a camera to watch a stream of trash that moves along below them and AI
software analyzes8 everything they see. It can recognize different materials
and when it sees something that should be recycled it can grab9 it. You mightsay, “what is so special about that? I could do the same thing!” Well, the robot
can pick out 80 items per minute! And it can do it for 24 hours a day. That’s
115,200 pieces of recyclable trash a day. Almost 250,000 for both robots
together! One of the reasons the robot is so accurate10 is because it has adatabase of every product that is sold in America. When the camera scans theconveyor belt, the AI software compares what it sees against a database of all
known products, and it immediately knows what materials were used to makethe product. These are only two robots. Amp Robotics and many othercompanies are working on more and better robots to help us recycle.

1.autumnal 秋ぽい 2.sting チクチクさせる 3.forced labor 強制労働 4.agriculture 農家
5.cheat ずるくする 6.reaction 反応 7.conveyor belt コンペヤーベルト 8.analyze 分析する 9.grab つかむ 10.accurate 精密なOne thing we can do to help the environment

World record
Here is another record that I don’t think any of us will
be able to beat. There is a French climber called Alain
Robert. He climbs skyscrapers around the world, and hedoesn’t use any safety equipment1. He has no harness,no rope, and nothing to stop him if he falls. He has theworld record for the tallest building climbed. Heclimbed the Burj Khalifa, which is the tallest building inthe world. It is 828 m high. It took him a little over 6hours to climb to the top. He has climbed more than 150buildings so far. Sometimes he has permission2 to climb
the buildings, but more often he is arrested3 when hegets to the top because the police
are waiting for him. He is usually
released from prison pretty quickly
and he has sponsors that pay thefines4 for him.

I can’t change the world, but I canchange the world in me.
– Bono#1 Take Shorter Showers
There are three reasons why taking shorter showers can help theenvironment. The first reason is obviously because we shouldn’t use morewater than we have to. As the world warms up, there are going to be moredroughts5 and we are going to need to conserve6 as much water as possible.
The second reason is because getting the water to your shower needs a lotof electricity. The water has to go from the reservoir to a water treatment
facility7. After it has been cleaned, it goes along a series of pipes until itreaches the one that leads to your house. All of this needs electricity
because the water has to be pumped along these pipes.
The third reason is because it uses a lot of electricity to heat the water forthe shower. If you have an 8 minute shower every day, you use about 65
liters of water. If you have a cold shower, then you are only using the water.
If you have a hot shower, then the water has to be heated and heating 65
liters of water produces about 750 grams of CO2.
So, what can we do. First, we can take shorter showers. If you can cut yourshower time down from 8 minutes to 4 minutes, you can cut about 10,000
liters of water and 300 kg of CO2 every year. Second, we can turn thetemperature of the shower down a little. Third, we can use more efficient8
showerheads. There are
showerheads that aerate9
the water. They produce
bubbles and make it feellike more water is coming
out of the shower, whichmeans you can use lesswater.

1.safety equipment 安全装置 2.permission 許可 3.arrested 逮捕される 4.fine 罰金
5.drought 干ばつ 6.conserve 保全する 7.water treatment facility 水処理場 8.efficient
効率の良い 9.aerate 空気を入れる