The father of Western medicine, Hippocrates, had a clear idea of what a doctor should look like - "clean in person, well dressed, and anointed with sweet-smelling unguents".
While LGBTQ activists were able to win marriage equality by portraying queer people as "just like everybody else," that movement became the face of an often narrow and squeaky-clean idea of LGBTQ people as mostly white couples aiming to join mainstream society by mimicking heteronormative lifestyles that is, getting hitched and raising kids.
Such a natural, clean idea.
It's such a clean idea, you know?
"I would never allow my guests to clean themselves out, because one person's idea of clean is not the same as the next," Ms. Karpinski said.
To find out more about clean energy innovation, I interviewed Nick Parker, the creator of the concept "Clean Tech": Question 1: Nick, how did you come up with the concept "clean tech" and how is it connected with the idea of clean energy?
And plenty of people still snipe at the government's idea of "clean" and "safe .Gerald Pollett, director of Heart of America Northwest, which has been criticising the Hanford clean-up for 15 years, labels as "ridiculous" the idea that leaving some radioactive waste in the 177 concrete tanks and then filling them with grout or concrete can ever be really safe.
Do Americans hold the core ideals of private property so high that they would be willing to give up on the idea of clean, drinkable water?
Airport expansion would be a non-starter, as would any more money on carbon capture and storage, and the oxymoronic idea of "clean coal".
However, the gusto with which many Chinese people have embraced the idea of clean energy was most evident however in a display of a sanlunche – the boxed three-wheel scooters that are a familiar sight in Beijing's alleyways – fitted with wing-like solar panels.
Until this industrial ecology changes, the idea of clean oil company will remain an oxymoron.
