[Rural solar plant] schemes are of little help to industry or other heavy users of electricity. Nor is solar power yet as cheap as the grid. For all that, the rapid arrival of electric light to Indian villages is long overdue. When the national grid suffers its next huge outage, as it did in July 2012 when hundreds of millions were left in the dark, look for specks of light in the villages.

‘We was a-talkin’ of keel-hauling,’ answered Morgan. / ‘Keel-hauling, was you? And a mighty suitable thing, too, and you may lay to that. Get back to your place for a lubber, Tom.’

While it may be politically advantageous (and empirically accurate) to reject the racially binaristic thinking of the 1960s civil rights era, it is nevertheless the case that blacks remain the poorest racial minority in the United States per capita, […]

Under these circumstances, fair weather, with just scattered cumulus clouds in the afternoon, will prevail for about 2 or 3 days with very little, if any, rainshower activity