Good Profile of Shai Agassi

One of the smoking hot leaders of environmental business. Shai Agassi's concept for an electric car system is generating tons of interest. Wired has a nice full detailed profile. Check it out

Kinetic Motion Energy storage device

Ok, Winter and I have talked about this for a long time and I've been more on the "con" side that the "pro" side but this charger is really cool! Maybe I'll have to rethink my position.

McCain VP Pick

First of all, I'd just like to confirm the awesomeness that is my correctly picking McCain's VP (although I was way wrong in my Obama pick, my thoughts were that the probability was: Gore, Sebelius, Schwietzer, Richardson, Biden). Secondly, isn't this article on how Sarah Palin rose in the republican consiousness nutzo??

Good Obama Acceptance Speech

Really good speech, not as much soaring rhetoric but it did exactly what I've been looking for. One of my major complaints about Obama is that he hasn't been able to connect (for me) the message of change and his specific policy proposals but this time he did it and did it well.

More to come on VP stuff later

Hell hath frozen over

John Kerry's convention speech was actually really good

Really funny

I love this site, props to HBO for the marketing coup

Archeological Discovery

Mayan underworld "discovered" (I'll be looking for independent confirmation of this). I just have one questions: how soon will the Indian Jones movie arrive?

Neat new energy storage idea

A newish idea for wind energy storage. I'm not sure if it's a good idea or not but it should be looked into.

Another Apple Sucks Article

Slate theorizes on why Apple doesn't seem to care that it's products increasingly suck.

Cute cake

Frozen Han Solo as a cake - so cute!!!

Cute political ad

I'm sorry, I try not to give into Obamamania too much but this ad is actually pretty good.

David Brooks nails what we should be looking for at Dems convention

Another great article from David Brooks. Someday I'd love a chance to talk with this guy.

Alvin is being replaced

NYT has a profile of the new submersible that is replacing Alvin. Some of the construction photos are really neat.

Abandond Building Photos

Neat series of photos of an old hydroelectric plant from boingboing

Neat Long Term Back Up Post

Long now blog has a post on backing up languages for 10000 years.

Cool!

Appropriate tech solar power, nifty!

Copy and Paste for the iTouch/IPhone

Wired has an article on a new ap to copy and paste

I'm torn about this

On the one hand the idea that this is out there I find really disturbing (what if there are errors? What about the potential for abuse?). On the other I found myself actually wanting to use it on a few people that I know, but feel suspicious of.

Energy saving software for your computer

I'll have to download this and give it a try.

Sad analysis of the Genocide in Darfur

I was reading this article and "I Kissed A Girl" came onto the music program I'm listening to..... and my brain exploded.

It made reading the article so much sadder.

New developments in solar tech

I wasn't going to post about this because there's been some skepticism from the scientific community but I haven't seen an outright refutation of the science yet so I might as well post. From MIT a "major" new development in solar energy storage.

Interesting city law

LA wants to ban fast food restaurants in certain areas for health reasons. Seems a bit draconian to me, on the other hand health care costs to affect all of us. Also treating "food like cigarettes" would start an interesting legal trend. I haven't made up my mind about this.

Internet diagnosis

So we've been hearing about the critical internet "flaw" for a while now and here are some details.

New diseases

I remember in my college biology class my teacher talked about new forms of disease emerging has demographics changes. I don't think contagious cancer will be a problem for us soon, but imagine how horrible it would be if it came. I've been following the Tasmanian Devil face cancer for a while and it's always deeply disturbed me. Just sit back and imagine what would happen if something like this happened to humans? Now Hapers has an excellent article on the subject.

Microsoft Tries to catch up

I've been having the feeling for years that Microsoft is behind the technological trend. This news about how they're developing a different kind of OS, one that isn't tied to an individual PC, is interesting. I'll keep my eye on this.

The end of globalization?

A series of posts from Worldchanging, Gristmill, and NYT, all theorizing that increases in energy prices could reverse globalization. I'm pretty skeptical, globalization is a powerful trend. Thomas Barnett has another take here.

Gassification idea

I really love this guy. His posts are always long and well thought out. Here he has one on how high oil prices might change international shipping. Interestingly he suggests coal gasification as a replacement if, and only if, the oil price gets high enough to make that worthwhile. I think I really need to find the coal gasification break-even oil price. Is it $5? $10? $20? I'll research.

Micro-nuclear plants? Sounds creepy to me

The idea of having a "hot-tub" sized nuclear power plant scares me a little bit but it might be neat (assuming the companies claims are true).

Environmentalists get excited

Mr. Williams-Derry seems to be a little bit over-excited about this new solar low interest loan program to California residents. Nonetheless it might help encourage more solar power.

New Energy Mapping tool

Renewable energy maps have been available for a long time, but you had to know where to look and what to look for. This new mapping tool helps makes things easier. I like

COOL ZOT

Shazam!!!!

Somewhat interesting NYT op

Check out Thomas Friendman's new column. I just like the sentence "climate change means “global weirding,” not just global warming"

Very creepy article about natural mind controling animals

This just gives me the shivers. I've heard about the parasite that controls sheep but I hadn't heard about most of the critters in this gallery. A critter that controls humans could make a great horror movie plot (and it sort of has, but most of them are about aliens controlling humans, not something from Earth).

Depressing statistic

About 1% of the US population is now in prison. Something is wrong...

Vertical Farming

Interesting video about vertical farming. I've linked to vertical farming articles before and I'll continue to until we hear more about it. It sounds like a real pie in the sky kind of idea but I think it'll be really important because as things stand cities have somewhat unsustainable supply chains. That will only get worse as more and more people move to the cities.

CNN covers an interesting trend in the increase of human generated electrical power.

Facinating Story

This is an amazing long article about trolls and internet bullying. Some of the people interviewed really come off as villainous (i.e. I can see them as bad guys in a James Bond movie).

Pretty

This video is very well put together and very pretty.

I'm not sure what to think of this

This video is very....odd. Also I'm tired and in pain so I apologize for bad grammar in this and other posts from today.

Lots of Posts coming

So I've been sick over the last several days and haven't posted at all. Never fear though! I have a whole bunch of things I want to post about over the next couple of days.

Neat biomass energy tech development

So I've been following the development of algae based bio-energy for a while and this was a really clear and concise article that explains how it could be cool (watch the video that he links to, even if it is biased).

I feel like this could be important but I'm not sure why

I feel like there's some opportunity for biomimicry devices or new technology after reading this but I can't see it yet. Anyone else?

I like this way of looking at problems

So here's a neat summation of how to do a certain kind of innovation (engineering innovation as apposed to random? Not sure about the difference, I'll have to think about it) via KK.