Daily Kos - Kucinich Bill Bans Extrajudicial Killing of U.S. Citizens Earlier this year, The Washington Post and The New York Times revealed that the Obama Administration was continuing a Bush-era policy of including U.S. citizens on lists of people to be assassinated by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). These citizens have had no trial.
Bad Astronomy - BREAKING: Republicans derail the COMPETES act In a 261-148 vote that went almost exactly along party lines, the America COMPETES act was defeated. Over $40 billion dollars was designated in that bill to go toward science and technology innovation, and to provide a lot of jobs to meet our nations needs for the future.
Bad Astronomy - Climate change attacks followup Many recent assaults on climate science and, more disturbingly, on climate scientists by climate change deniers, are typically driven by special interests or dogma, not by an honest effort to provide an alternative theory that credibly satisfies the evidence.
Daily Kos - NAS: Urgent Action Needed On Climate Change At the behest of Congress, the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering just completed a series of comprehensive reports on Climate Change.
Last night, the Wonk Room published a summary of the provisions of the American Power Act, the comprehensive climate and clean energy legislation being introduced today by Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT). This post delves deeper into the legislation's specific provisions. The following table compares key elements of Obama's campaign promises from 2007 and 2008, the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act as passed by the House of Representatives, and the elements of the Kerry-Lieberman draft legislation, as based on leaked summaries.
Fun!
Important scientific elements in Kerry-Lieberman are the rapid mitigation of super-greenhouse gases and black carbon, as well as natural resource adaptation programs. By the end of 2025 the legislation has shifted to resemble the refund-based auctioned-allowance system promoted by President Obama and advocates of cap-and-dividend.
So does it meet the criteria in "What to look for in the bipartisan climate and clean energy jobs bill"? That would require that the bill help ensure that by the 2020s that we have
° substantially dropped below the business-as-usual emissions path
° started every major business planning for much deeper reductions
° goosed the cleantech venture and financing community
° put in place the entire framework for U.S. climate regulations
° accelerated many tens of gigawatts of different types of low-carbon energy into the marketplace
° put billions into developing advanced low-carbon technology
° started building out the smart, green grid of the 21st century
° trained and created millions of clean energy jobs
° negotiated a working international climate regime
° brought China into the process
Yes, I think it does.
There really is no Plan B. Certainly leaving this to the EPA and a few states won't achieve most of those, especially the crucial international deal.
Sadly, the conventional wisdom is that even this moderate bill has no chance - and I certainly think it doesn't have very much chance if Obama doesn't start pushing for it as hard as he pushed for healthcare.
BBC NEWS | Technology | Enter Stephen Fry's Twitter universe Stephen Fry - wit, writer, raconteur, actor and quiz show host - is also a self-confessed dweeb and meistergeek. As he confesses "If I added up all the hours I've sat watching a progress bar fill up, I could live another life."
How did dinosaurs sit down? That question has an answer: they crouched like birds. A 198 million year old fossil trackway from Utah has preserved a pring of a theropod dinosaur taking a break, resting with hands curled inward and knuckle down, and legs bent. Except for the forelimbs, of course, it's very birdlike.
Good Math, Bad Math : It Never Stops: Another Silly Creationist Argument This isn't a valid proof. Given contradictory premises, you can draw a line of logical inference to any conclusion. But it's a meaningless exercise. The same flawed inferences can "prove" that God can't exist; or that God must exist; or that time can't exist at all; or that 1 = 2.
THE FOIE GRAS WAR - New York Post I honestly don't know enough to decide what I think of the foie gras conflict... but I know it must be delicious :)
A top congressional Republican on Sunday criticized President Barack Obama's expected decision to reverse the Bush administration's limits on embryonic stem-cell research, calling it a distraction from the country's economic slump.
Why are we going and distracting ourselves from the economy? This is job No. 1. Let's focus on what needs to be done," Rep. Eric Cantor, the Republican whip in the House of Representatives, told CNN's "State of the Union."
Which is what? Try to block every effort the dems make? Screw these guys.
"Frankly, federal funding of embryonic stem-cell research can bring on embryo harvesting, perhaps even human cloning that occurs," Cantor said. "We don't want that. That shouldn't be done. That's wrong."
These guys kill me. "We shouldn't fund this research that could help tons of people because people might do something wrong that would have to be backed by other changes in the law and probably will never happen anyway." That's basically what they're saying. Actually, what they're saying is "we're either idiots, liars, or both, and we'll do anything to make it sound like we're trying to do something useful now that we're a useless minority party with no idea how to recover politically."
With the EO, Obama will make it possible for medical researchers to have access to far more lines of stem cells, allowing them the freedom to see just how valuable these cells can be. Stem cell research is very promising in opening up our understanding of - and finding potential cures for - such diseases as Parkinson's, Huntington's, diabetes, and even cancer. We're a long way from there, of course, but now researchers will get their chance to find these and other medical breakthroughs.
You can read about the stem cell controversy if you'd like - I'm sure it will come up on the talking head shows, and I'm sure many of them will be spinning like pulsars trying to make this seem bad. But while I suspect a lot of the heads will talk about the destruction of human embryos for stem cell research, they won't mention that these embryos - really just a tiny blob of cells numbering less than 150 in total - would have been destroyed anyway, since they were created for in vitro fertilization but wound up not being needed. Yet they never seem to protest the fertilization technique itself. It's baffling. I'll be very curious to see what will be said about all this on the blogs and in the news.
In other words, you almost never hear any complaints about in vitro, even though it destroys tons of embryos... but of course, that would require logic and critical thinking, not to mention going after an already established treatment. What these people do, it seems, is try to go after something before it's mainstream. Going after something like IVF would be politically stupid, though I'd argue going after stem cell research is, too. According to this site, By the end of 2002, nearly 300,000 babies conceived through assisted reproductive technology had been born. Considering the fact that several eggs are fertilized for each patient, that could mean that millions of embryos have either been destroyed or just plopped into a freezer after these treatments were complete, never to be seen again. Where's the outrage?
An 'Astounding Time' for Planetary Discoveries - washingtonpost.com The recent discovery of methane in the atmosphere of exoplanet HD 189733b was the kind of breakthrough that the astrobiology institute and many others are looking for -- even though the methane almost certainly has chemical origins, as on Jupiter and Satu
Saudi woman sentenced to death for "witchcraft" She is accused of casting a spell that caused a man to become impotent, and threatening to cause people to be possessed by dogs. She is to be be headed.
Science, Evolution, and Creationism How did life evolve on Earth? The answer to this question can help us understand our past and prepare for our future. Although evolution provides credible and reliable answers, polls show that many people turn away from science, seeking other ...
Bors Blog: World History With The Pope Funny comic response to pope benedict saying atheism has led to the greatest forms of cruelty and violations of justice
On the Origin of Species - Condensed and Abridged Charles Darwin's On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life ...in 9,387 words
SkyView Virtual Observatory SkyView is a Virtual Observatory on the Net generating images of any part of the sky at wavelengths in all regimes from Radio to Gamma-Ray.
Evolving Thoughts Humans evolved to deal with the environment they grew up with, not the global or the long term. We do not have the native capacity to think beyond this year's crop, hunt or election cycle. It takes effort to do this. And to do this, we need science.
wzdd: Gorillas: our meat-banana-eating, alien-fighting vegetarian idols Someone brought up the point that always comes up in Fark flamewars on vegetarianism, which is that humans have canine teeth and other instruments of destruction which wouldn't be necessary if we didn't evolve to eat meat. Ergo eating meat is natural, erg
Evolution Racist Racing Model Stumbles By and large, racial categories are cultural fictions vaguely supported by quirky historical circumstances. On close examination they are not real.
Gristmill: The environmental news blog | Grist Below is a complete listing of the articles in "How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic," a series by Coby Beck containing responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming. There are four separate taxonomies; arguments are divided by:
Pharyngula: The Creation Museum This week, the creationist Ken Ham and his organization, Answers in Genesis, are practicing the Big Lie. They have spent tens of millions of dollars to create a glossy simulacrum of a museum, a slick imitation of a scientific enterprise veneered over long
The Infinite Quest is an animated serial based on the British science fiction television series Doctor Who. It is being aired in 13 weekly parts startin... more The Infinite Quest is an animated serial based on the Brit
Bible drawn into sex publication controversy | Oddly Enough | Reuters More than 800 Hong Kong residents have called on authorities to reclassify the Bible as "indecent" due to its sexual and violent content, following an uproar over a sex column in a university student journal.
The (Bayesian) Advantage of Youth. Many-to-Many: A couple of weeks ago, Fred Wilson wrote, in The Mid Life Entrepreneur Crisis prime time entrepreneurship is 30s. And its possibly getting younger as web technology meets youth culture. After some followup from Valleywag, he addressed the questio
Evolution for Creationists Over the years I have discussed evolution and creationism with a number of theists, and they often have many misconceptions about exactly what evolution is. I would like to try to set the record straight here, as well as provide a useful introduction
The situation as I see it is difficult, but clear. NO one should have nukes. They shouldn't exist. Now, we don't live in happy fairy land, so obviously someone is always going to try to make nukes. However, I do think there are a few rules we could follow for a good solution:
1.) The United States and all other nations who are willing to do so should completely get rid of all nuclear weapons. This provides a good example to the nations who might build and use nukes. Face it, the reason Iran wants nukes is because it knows that we, Israel, etc might one day strike. I don't think even the Iranians are crazy enough to just attack another country with nuclear weapons unless it feels threatened by that nation.
2.) Even if another nation or terrorist group IS crazy enough to attack us or someone else with nukes, what good does it do for us to have them as well? We shouldn't retaliate against any country that nukes us with more nukes - what the hell good would that do? How would that fix the problem? All we'd do is kill hundreds of thousands (or millions with current technology) of more innocents. How would that help anything? And if a terrorist group nuked us, it REALLY wouldn't do us any good to have nukes, because how would we respond? Attack the country that terrorist originally comes from? That hardly makes sense
No, the best solution is for everyone who is willing to destroy all nuclear weapons in their arsenals. It's the right thing to do, and I'd bet dollars for donuts that it would deter other nations from building them. And as I said, even if it didn't, it wouldn't change the fact that we should NEVER, EVER, EVER use nukes against anyone, even if their governments attacked us first.
This American Life Sure, you know the big ones: don't murder, steal...something about graven images? We help you with the others through stories and interviews, each dealing with a different commandment. Military chaplains discuss "Thou Shalt Not Kill." Middle school studen
David Byrne Journal: 4.1.07: Your Government Working for You The Copyright Royalty Board is proposing a large increase in the performance royalty rates for non-interactive streaming services. This means web radio, cable radio and satellite radio will pay more to SoundExchange in royalties. Presumably those ro
Pharyngula: Congress controls the sun? As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they?
Perhaps this is another plo
Found: The New Earth | the Daily Mail It's got the same climate as Earth, plus water and gravity. A newly discovered planet is the most stunning evidence that life - just like us - might be out there.
Above a calm, dark ocean, a huge, bloated red sun rises in the sky - a full ten times the s
There is no war between science and Christianity The scientists who challenged this Absolute Truth came to bitter ends. Although the vast majority were Christians themselves who had no desire to harm the Church, their findings were completely unacceptable to the popes, saints and theologians who were al
MPR: The Memoirs of Frank Stanton The Memoirs of Frank Stanton is an audio autobiography of the man who was president of CBS for more than 25 years in its heyday as the "Tiffany Network." Stanton also took on Congress in a battle for First Amendment rights for broadcast journalists.
Pharyngula: Congress controls the sun? As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate. Or did they?
Found: The New Earth | the Daily Mail It's got the same climate as Earth, plus water and gravity. A newly discovered planet is the most stunning evidence that life - just like us - might be out there.
There is no war between science and Christianity The scientists who challenged this Absolute Truth came to bitter ends. Although the vast majority were Christians themselves who had no desire to harm the Church, their findings were completely unacceptable to the popes, saints and theologians who were al
MPR: The Memoirs of Frank Stanton The Memoirs of Frank Stanton is an audio autobiography of the man who was president of CBS for more than 25 years in its heyday as the "Tiffany Network." Stanton also took on Congress in a battle for First Amendment rights for broadcast journalists.
...he intervened to prevent President Bush from plugging an electrical cord into the hydrogen tank of Ford's hydrogen-electric plug-in hybrid at the White House last week.
(...)
However, as Mulally followed Bush out to the car, he noticed someone had left the cord lying at the rear of the vehicle, near the fuel tank.
"I just thought, 'Oh my goodness!' So, I started walking faster, and the President walked faster and he got to the cord before I did. I violated all the protocols. I touched the President. I grabbed his arm and I moved him up to the front," Mulally said. "I wanted the president to make sure he plugged into the electricity, not into the hydrogen. This is all off the record, right?"
However, the video shows that it didn't happen that way at all. "The extension cord was near the correct end of the vehicle and he didn't touch the President."
Why did the Ford CEO "exaggerate" the incident? Because he doesn't support the hydrogen plugin hybrid? And wanted to create an incident that exposed the impracticality of consumers with the skill level of duuhbya filling up a car with hydrogen?
Or did he actually believe an extension cord could be plugged into a hydrogen tank? That would mean he knew as much about his own company's product as duuhbya does.
...
This technology is available to ford, gM, chrysler, toyota, honda, Subaru and every other automaker right now. And would be even cheaper with mass production. No dangerous, astronomically expensive, uninsurable 3000 psi gas stations needed. NASA even has trouble filling up with hydrogen.
Now do you see why I think the ford CEO created this "incident" to discredit plugin hybrids? 10% of present oil consumption in vehicles would be very bad for the oil business.
Of course, it could be much simpler than that. He could have just been exaggerating. Maybe he's just an idiot. Maybe he was just mistaken? Or maybe he's just looking for praise of some sort of cabinet position?
The Frontal Cortex : Electrons Have Free Will? What, then, is determining the outcome of the experiment? The obvious yet absurd answer is that the particles themselves are determining the outcome. As Conway and Kochen write, "No theory can predict exactly what these particles will do in the future for the very good reason that they may not yet have decided what this will be!" Of course, most of these sub-atomic choices - the mathematicians call them "ineffectual flutterings" - won't affect very much beyond their own trajectory.
The Greening of the Right No, it's not Iraq. And it's certainly not the monetary policy (after all, the Republican Party could hardly carry on without its core theme of ensuring an ever widening economic gap). It's that other thing. You know, the thing that includes all the air we breath, and water we drink, and the planet we live on. That thing. That's where Republicans are starting to bend. Now that Richard Pombo is getting a chance to spend more time plunking varmints back at his ranch, the Republicans look like they may be about to surrender -- or at least make a major retreat -- in their war on the environment.
A Strange Loss of Face, More Than Embarrassing - New York Times What happened to the android is a mystery, one that is more than mildly intriguing to fans who knew Mr. Dick as a futurist who advocated freedom and compassion for robots in an evolving world, and that has been debated in the technology press.
Daniel Quinn - If They Give You Lined Paper, Write Sideways "My readers showed me with their questions and comments that my ideas really were alarmingly alien. The way I think about things, it seems, evolved in such a way that just doesn't match the way most people think about things. I don't know how it happened. It took me years to realize that it even had happened.
For the past four or five years I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to produce a meaningful answer to the question 'How do I arrive at the strange, unexpected answers to the questions people ask me?'
Seed: PZ Myers on How the Cavefish Lost Its Eyes The Mexican blind cavefish raises the challenging evolutionary question: Does disuse lead to degeneration or disappearance of a feature? Here, an answer Darwin would have loved.
Green Santa It seems Santa, who was recently voted one of the top 100 green heroes, may be unable to make a successful lift-off this year, due to the melting of his runway.
Wired News has a story about Brooklyn Brewery, whose beer may be colored brown, but it's actually quite green.
The brewery produces 1,658,000 gallons per year, and it is now 100% powered with wind. According to the story, they aren't directly being powered by wind, they pay a premium to their energy provider. I do this at my house, using North Carolina's option called NC Greenpower.
This is pretty great, since the brewery uses 285,000 kilowatt-hours per year. Brooklyn does even more great stuff, though.
It's just one of many socially conscious programs that the $12 million beer company runs to make its beverages environmentally friendly.
It also pays farmers in New Jersey to swing by and pick up the "spent grain" -- the remaining husks that are left over after brewing. The farmers then feed the nutritious grains to their livestock, making good use of Brooklyn Brewery's waste.
They're not the only brewery taking these steps:
New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado, has developed a unique method that uses its waste to power its factory.
After producing its libations, New Belgium puts its waste water inside closed pools filled with anaerobic bacteria. The microbes feed on the water, rich in nutrients from the brewing process, and produce methane gas, which is then pumped back to the factory where it becomes electrical and thermal energy.
Right now, New Belgium meets 30 percent of its energy needs -- between 40,000 and 60,000 kwh per month -- through this cogeneration process. The remaining 70 percent comes from wind, which means no fossil fuels are burned making New Belgium's various beers.
The used water, once cleaned by anaerobic microbes, is used in the factory for cooling and cleaning. Then the water is retreated and returned to the municipal system.
That's really cool, and we should continue to support this sort of corporate responsibility.
This Friday, March 17, is the greenest holiday of all - St. Patrick's Day! What better week to host The Carnival of The Green? Learn about the carnival at City Hippy and Triple Pundit, who created the carnival. Well, in the St. Patrick's Day spirit, none of these bloggers are going to get pinched no matter what they wear; they're plenty green!
Social Issues
Enrique at Common Ground has some great stuff about Fair Trade. One thing you can say for Fair Trade: Consumers like it. Amid the annoyance of roasters and retailers, Fair Trade sales continue to double annually, major corporations continue to adopt the label, and critics pay dearly for its seal of approval.
Dawn at Frugal for Life asks: bottled or tap water? Which is better both for your health and your pocketbook? Some would say the cost is worth the health benefits for bottled. Others say our water is just fine coming out of the tap.... You decide.
Sandean (Jerry) in this post looks at the system of water delivery in the U.S. as a form of socialism that dares not speak its name. He compares this with some historical examples and maintain that our system of water infrastructure has some problems, but on ballance "water socialism" is better than water capitalism.
Laurie at Slowly She Turned points out that Walmart is doubling its organic food offerings, but she does NOT see this as a good thing. She suggests we support our local farmers now more than ever. Laurie is heavily involved in the Slow Food movement in Greensboro, NC.
Rebecca Carter at Greener Miami is starting her Week of Trash project today, in which she will be analyzing her trash for the week. She starts preparing for the week by looking at her method of disposal: plastic grocery bags.
Judy Kingsbury, The Savvy Vegetarian, says: These - three - posts make up one long conversation about breastfeeding. At first I thought, this doesn't fit Carnival of the Green, but thought again: what's more green than breastfeeding? All organic and perfectly in tune with nature. Happier, healthier Mom & Baby. No plastic bottles or gmo soy based formula, less pharmaceuticals.
Marigolds2 (Mary Ellen), environmental writer for The Blue Voice group political blog writes about Havana's and South Central LA's community gardens as examples of sustainable community solutions to catastrophe/poverty, examples of what Heinberg calls "Powerdown" and "Building Lifeboats."
I like this one, because I've been wondering about this. Tracy posts EcoStreet's Guide to Green Cleaning: the best green cleaning products, and some home-made alternatives.
Camdenlady (Cathryn) says: "This week, I've been sorting out my pension fund, and what I'm investing in. Some of the fund is going directly into stocks and shares which have a strong environmental ethic, so I've been looking at renewable energy and waste management. I've found three interesting stocks, and bought shares in them a few days ago. A post in two parts.
Agroblogger introduces "The Green Theme." The Green Theme is a concept being used at the Open Sourcing blog over at Agricultural Innovations. At the beginning of each month, when a new theme is unveiled, I will start the ball rolling by discussing the theme's general topic, and challenging other bloggers to join in on the debate.
Finally, The Luck O' The Irish is with me as I announce The Forest Image Registry Project, which is particularly the brain child of Harlan Weikle a.k.a. The Naked Vegetarian. Also involved, so far, are myself, Andrew Turner of Green Roof Resource, and Jeff McIntire-Stasburg of Sustainablog.The Forest Image Registry, F.I.R. began as an awareness-building project on the eve of the piecemeal sale of our National Forest lands in early 2006. Using satellite imaging and mapping technology the project will build a visual record of the forestlands as they are today, before private development.We would like to encourage Americans to send copies of their personnel photos, images of the forests they've visited. Adding your pictures to the F.I.R. project, sharing them freely with the world will perhaps help us learn to appreciate America's National Forests before they are changed forever. Send submissions to submissions@forestimages.org Another way to submit images is to upload your images to your own Flickr! account and tag them (forestimages, firforest=ForestName, or geo:lat= geo:lon=, etc).
If you want to read other issues of the carnival, the last one (#17) was at EnviroPundit, and #19 will be next Monday at Baloghblog.
Introducing the "Headlines from the Green Blogosphere" Tool In it are contained the best feeds from the blogosphere that I personally read and approve. The tool is completely free of charge, as long as no alterations are made. We do not insert ads (except for the First Sustainable text link), and we do not charge
Recording a Renewable Record: Kelley Stoltz Stoltz's newest album, Below the Branches, is the first album to incorporate the Green-e label on its product packaging, signifying that the album was recorded using 100-percent renewable energy.
United Nations to Organize List of Green Women This week, the Women's Environmental Network (WEN) drew our attention to a new list, to be compiled by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
TDS More of the Mess in Messopotamia Jon Stewart has some fun with the smiley faces coming out of Iraq, while Molly Ivins says you call this progress.
Keith Olbermann / Bill O'Reilly Continued he story continues. Mike, Fox Security, Al Franken, Howard Stern and he whose name may not be spoken all have something to say about Big Bad Bill.
MassLive.com: Search The local company developing an engine that will reportedly get nearly double the mileage obtained by gasoline and diesel engines is set to show off its technology to the big guys.
Wal-Mart doubling organic food offerings Wal-Mart Stores Inc. aims to be the mass-market provider of organic food, and will have doubled its organic offerings over the next couple of weeks, Wal-Mart's head of dry grocery told Reuters on Monday."
Sanyo has announced that its new washing machine, the Aqua AWD-AQ1, made to convert air to ozone which is then used to clean your clothes, will be released on March 11 for about 262,500 yen (around $2,200).
The Aqua AWD-AQ1 uses air wash technology, already used in industrial washing, to wash, dry and purify your laundry.
Oxygen (O2) in air is converted to ozone (O3) using an ozone creation device, and is sprayed on clothing inside the drum. Ozone has a strong oxidation action, which either destroys or disassembles the cell walls of bacteria. This allows for eliminating bacteria, odors, and dirt (organic matter). The oxidated ozone simply returns to oxygen, making it easy on the environment.
The Aqua AWD-AQ1 will feature different wash cycles such as "Zero Detergent Course," "Ozone Steam Course," "Mold Guard" and "Shelf Dry," but its main feature is [b]the ability to recycle water by injecting ozone microbubbles into it. The recycled water can be used again for the next wash cycle or as dehumidification water when drying clothes. The only downside is that the purified water can't sit there for longer that 2 days before being re-used.[/b] Basically, it can only be recycled if the washing machine is being used every day (or every other day). So while the Aqua AWD-AQ1 might be good if you do laundry every day, it might not be as convenient if, like me, you do your laundry only once a week. Nonetheless, I think this is a really good step towards more environmentally friendly home appliances.
The Forest Image Registry, F.I.R. began as an awareness-building project on the eve of the piecemeal sale of our National Forest lands in early 2006. Using satellite imaging and mapping technology the project will build a visual record of the forestlands as they are today, before private development.
We would like to encourage Americans to send copies of their personnel photos, images of the forests they've visited. Adding your pictures to the F.I.R. project, sharing them freely with the world will perhaps help us learn to appreciate America's National Forests before they are changed forever.
Slate Magazine has a new idea - Textcasting. They have a podcast called the "Slate Explainer" podcast, where they answer questions that are on everyone's minds, from government to technology. Well, they've been attaching the full text script of the podcasts to the mp3s themselves to be read on the Ipod while you're listening to it. Andy Bowers has the story.
If you'd like to try reading text on an iPod, go to our podcast page and subscribe to the iTunes feed of the "Explainer" podcast. Once you've downloaded the files, you'll need to push the iPod's center button a few times to get to the text, and then use the scroll wheel to move down.
We plan to keep putting text in the audio podcasts, and we may even try a text-only podcast in the near future (since June and I can only read so many features a day). Keep an eye on this space.
Buy Local Food and Farm Toolkit (PDF) 38-page report that offers step-by-step instructions on how to get sustainable food in schools, as well as realistic ideas on what each of us can do. (Oxfam America, July 2002)
Cost of Climate Change It has taken some time for the economics of climate change to enter the mainstream. While scientific knowledge in this area has leapt ahead, economic advances have been much slower.
Your old cell phone could help save a gorilla How does this save said gorilla? Well, it will cut down on the mining of the coltan in the Congo. Coltan, which is short for columbite-tantalite, is a black mineral that is used to coat a variety of components on cell phones and computer chips.
Personal Tech Pipeline In a development that could help speed up the widespread adoption of hybrid vehicles, researchers at MIT have announced the development of a new car battery technology that allows for 10-minute charging and discharging.
Senate Rejects Wiretapping Probe The Bush administration helped derail a Senate bid to investigate a warrantless eavesdropping program yesterday after signaling it would reject Congress's request to have former attorney general John D. Ashcroft and other officials testify about the program
scalia on the constitution Republican-appointed Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia thinks you're an "idiot" if you try to read things into the Constitution
RIAA et al. says CD ripping, backups not fair use "Presumably, consumers concerned with the ability to make back up copies would choose to purchase music from a service that allowed such copying. Even if CDs do become damaged, replacements are readily available at affordable prices. "
onegoodmove: Hunting Crashers Check out Fletch's latest video he writes, I took the quail hunting scene from Wedding Crashers, pasted Dick Cheney's, Harry Whittington's & other political people's faces over the various characters and let the scene play out. (flash video)
Notes: Removing all mail from your gmail account It requires Perl and the Mail::POP3Client from CPAN. Run it without parameters for usage, but it's really simple: x-gmail-expunge.pl LOGIN PASSWORD.
ShirtsOfBamboo We are confident that you will fall in love with the comfort of bamboo.
BantheBulb.org The author, Dr Matt Prescott, argues that the technology of the incandescent bulb is so inefficient, that if they were introduced today, it would be unlikely that they'd be allowed into the marketplace.
KtB - The Right to Blaspheme We are watching that clash of civilizations in real time as Muslims across Europe and the Arab world take to the streets to protest twelve editorial cartoons that appeared in a Danish newspaper in September.
Bullies Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy Democracy in a Cartoon So they have thin skins. That shouldn't stop us poking fun at them. The Case For Mocking Religion Christopher Hitchens Since when does belief in a god trump the belief in freedom of spee
this EV World article Based upon production and [estimated ultimate recovery] data for the fields discussed above, technology appears to have little impact on ultimate recovery. Technology has allowed producers to achieve high production rates but that has led to high decline
Green Nuclear Waste? research led by Thomas Schulenberg of the Karlsruhe research center may be just the answer. And his process can harvest energy to boot while the waste is being deactivated (technically, "transmutated"; now there's a scifi word).
See, I know what we're going to need to do for a generation to come. We need to get on a path away from the fossil fuel economy. If we want to be less dependent on foreign sources of energy, we must develop new ways to power automobiles. My administration is committed to finding those news ways, and we're working with industry to do so.
Great! I'm very impressed.
America as enough coal to last for 250 years. But coal presents an environmental challenge. To make cleaner use of this resource, I have asked Congress for more than $2 billion over 10 years for my coal research initiative
Even though a few reviewers didn't love it, I think it's pretty great, especially considering what I paid for it. I ordered mine from eXpansys for $60, but it looks like they've raised the price back to about $100 again, which is the same as what Better Energy Systems charges.
So far, I've had pretty good luck with the Solio. Sure, it's not perfect; you do have to have pretty good sun coverage to get a real charge and you do have to be facing at least kind of towards the sun, but what do you expect for something that's still as non-standard as solar chargers? I'm sure my location helps me out, though. According to the solar intensity maps on their website, North Carolina gets a solid 4 out of North America's maximum of 7. Also, it's early spring right now and not winter, which can't hurt.
Anyway, I'm lucky enough (minus the partial blindness) that I drive East in the morning and West in the evenings and for about 30 minutes both ways, so the Solio gets at least an hour of pretty direct sunlight just during my daily commute. Then I let it sit in my windshield all through the day, where it probably gets at least the equivalent of another 2 hours of full sunlight on a good day. It's at least enough power that I haven't had to plug my iPod into a wired power source in the last week, except the fire wire port on my computer to transfer some tunes, and I use the thing pretty heavily on my commute and during work.
The really important thing about the Solio is that it has an internal battery. You don't have to charge the iPod directly; you can charge the Solio itself and then charge the iPod from it whenever you feel like it. Also, you're not just limited to charging your iPod. There are extra connectors to charge many popular cellular phones, and soon, they'll be releasing a female 12v car adapter connection and USB connections, so you'll be able to charge just about any small device that you normally can charge with your car. Sorry, not laptops yet; they're working on a more powerful version for bigger devices.
All in all, I love my Solio. I especially love the idea that when I go hiking or camping I can use it to charge my iPod, electric lanterns, and whatever else completely ruins the idea of leaving the daily hustle and bustle in order to enjoy nature! However, at least I'll be doing it in an environmentally conscious manner. The Solio is made from all recycled, recyclable, and environmentally friendly materials. According to their website, the Solio is intended to achieve a net energy benefit over its lifetime. To reach this goal, energies needed for raw materials and production have been minimized. Better Energy Systems has also planted tree's in a bio-diverse sustainable forest to offset the carbon dioxide produced in the manufacture of the Solio.
Toshiba Corporation today announced a breakthrough in lithium-ion batteries that makes long recharge times a thing of the past. The company's new battery can recharge 80% of a battery's energy capacity in only one minute, approximately 60 times faster than the typical lithium-ion batteries in wide use today, and combines this fast recharge time with performance-boosting improvements in energy density.
The new battery fuses Toshiba's latest advances in nano-material technology for the electric devices sector with cumulative know-how in manufacturing lithium-ion battery cells. A breakthrough technology applied to the negative electrode uses new nano-particles to prevent organic liquid electrolytes from reducing during battery recharging. The nano-particles quickly absorb and store vast amount of lithium ions, without causing any deterioration in the electrode.
The excellent recharging characteristics of new battery are not its only performance advantages. The battery has a long life cycle, losing only 1% of capacity after 1,000 cycles of discharging and recharging, and can operate at very low temperatures. At minus 40 degrees centigrade, the battery can discharge 80% of its capacity, against 100% in an ambient temperature of 25 degree centigrade).
Toshiba will bring the new rechargeable battery to commercial products in 2006.
Pretty cool for laptops and phones, but just think - what about CARS? We could bring back the electric car, and it could charge in only a few minutes for a much longer trip.
Last night, on a radio show called "America Speaks," I heard several callers tell the host that Terri Schiavo's case was a case of murder. Ok, fine, that's their opinions. However, I also heard that her husband didn't want her to "be rehabilitated" because "he probably tried to kill her, and that's why she's in this state." In case you didn't already know, Schiavo was a bulimic, and her heart failed after she made herself vomit consistently for quite a long time. I can't say whether or not her husband ever abused her, but that's not why her freaking heart failed. Also, she has basically no cerebral cortex any more. It's all but gone. Therefore, this idea of "rehabilitating" her is pretty farcical... that's why it's ridiculous to state that he's afraid of her waking up and telling everyone what a horrible husband he was - because she can't.
I kept trying to call into the show and say, in a good redneck accent, that "I know her cerebral cortex is liquified, but I think with god and Bill Frist's help, we can rebuild her. We have the technology." It was busy every time I tried, though.
The most frightening thing I heard on the show was from the host. Apparently, the host of "America Speaks" has a petition circulating that insists the courts be barred from declaring laws unconstitutional! That's right. That's what he said. According to him, it's "frustrating" when the legislature and the President make a decision and the "activist judges" override it as unconstitutional. In response, he thinks they should, you know, not be able to so rudely "check and balance" the other two branches of government like that.
The show ended on quite a wonderful note. The very last caller, right in the last minute of the show, called and simply said "well, I think these judges killing this woman are the same ones that are trying for gay rights."
Speaking of the Schiavo case, I really don't think it's any of my business what happens to her. No, it's not the government's business either, but the government has no way to intervene now (hopefully) so we'll leave that at that. There's enough conversation going on about the details of the case that I can just let others discuss them. The interesting stuff is the morals and beliefs surrounding the case and the hypocrisy it's brought to light.
Tom Delay, one of the most outspoken critics of Schiavo's feeding tube being removed, had his own father euthanized in 1988. Tom Delay is a dirty dirty dirty liar.
The patient then was a 65-year-old drilling contractor, badly injured in a freak accident at his home. Among the family members keeping vigil at Brooke Army Medical Center was a grieving junior congressman - Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas).
...
In 1988, however, there was no such fiery rhetoric as the congressman quietly joined the sad family consensus to let his father die.
"There was no point to even really talking about it," Maxine DeLay, the congressman's 81-year-old widowed mother, recalled in an interview last week. "There was no way [Charles] wanted to live like that. Tom knew - we all knew - his father wouldn't have wanted to live that way."
But, given the vehemence with which he has been fighting to prolong Terri's life, it is a little surprising to learn that Robert decided to turn off the life-support system for his mother. She was 79 at the time, and had been ill with pneumonia for a week, when her kidneys gave out. "I can remember like yesterday the doctors said she had a good life. I asked, 'If you put her on a ventilator does she have a chance of surviving, of coming out of this thing?'" Robert says. "I was very angry with God because I didn't want to make those decisions."
A Buncombe County man is expected to make a first appearance before a magistrate in federal court in Asheville this morning on charges of sending an e-mail threat, allegedly offering a $250,000 bounty for Michael Schiavo's death and $50,000 for that of a judge in the case.
Richard Alan Meywes of Fairview was arrested Friday. Authorities say they believe he wrote an e-mail that claimed to pass along word that a multimillionaire was willing to finance murder for hire.
War : Cutting The Cord: Fund People Rather Than War
According to the Program on International Policy Alternatives (PIPA), 65 percent of people surveyed would like to cut the Pentagon's budget and shift that money over to domestic programs such as education, health care, alternative energy, and environmental concerns. Also according to the poll, two of every three Americans favors cutting this year's "supplemental" funding for the Iraq and Afghanistan by an average of $30 billion. Supplemental is used very strongly here, since Iraq and Afghanistan have been costing taxpayers $55-60 billion every year.
Now, it's pretty obvious that our government isn't just going to say "oh, the majority want us to cut the Pentagon's budget? Great!" They're going to ignore us as they do on every other issue and continue to fund illegal wars, proxy wars, and unjust military conflicts all over the world while leaving the people of this country high and dry. Well, there are other ways to get your point across and to pull the rug out from under these bastards. One of the best, though most dangerous (or so it would seem) is War Tax Resistance.
War Tax Resistance is exactly what it sounds like - refusing to pay money to the government that will be used to fund military conflicts and other unjust actions. Henry David Thoreau said, during one of the many blights on our history that is the Mexican-American War, "If a thousand [people] were not to pay their tax bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them and enable the state to commit violence and shed innocent blood." That remains as true today as it ever was.
Now, of course there can be consequences to these actions, and for those of us with less balls (like myself), just refusing to pay taxes at all is pretty frightening. Although only one person has ever been jailed for war tax resistance since the 1940s, it still is daunting. Sure, I'm a comfortable, complacent bastard, I know. However, there are other ways to resist war taxes without getting thrown in jail. You can usually only pay a portion of your taxes or pay all but a symbolic amount and enclose a letter with your payment explaining your actions. This probably go unnoticed or unmentioned, but you're not likely to get in ALOT of trouble over it.
A great way to resist war taxes with negligible effects on your own livelihood is phone tax resistance. Hang Up On War is a group who explains this process and the risks involved, which are basically null. According to their website, with persistence, when necessary asking to speak with a supervisor, contacting the company frequently (so as not to allow the bill to accumulate too much), most telephone tax resisters have succeeded in getting the company to credit the tax. Some have taken to writing the CEOs of their phone company on a regular basis about these problems.
However, other companies, such as AT&T and Working Assets Long Distance, have been more cooperative. AT&T has a form that resisters can fill out, authorizing the company to withhold billing of the federal tax for "war tax" reasons, while noting that this nonpayment will be reported to the IRS.
I've found a simple solution, however - just get rid of your phone bills altogether by switching to a broadband phone company such as Vonage. I'm becoming a strong advocate of such services, and I just realized that this is yet another reason. As of yet, at least, services like Vonage aren't regulated by the government because they don't use the phone networks. This is an excellent way to protest AND save yourself money at the same time!
At any rate, perhaps one day the billions and billions of dollars that are stolen from us and used to kill people who have done nothing to us will be redirected to more humane causes, but for now, we should resist and let the powers that be know that we won't stand for it.
UPDATE: In the comments of my StringCans post on this topic, David Gross has posted a link to his website where he documents his experiment: living below the tax line in order to pay no income tax. This is a very brave thing he's doing, and I hope you all appreciate the magnitude of that act. He's doing something far more selfless than anything alot of us have likely done. Thanks, David, for the inspiration.
Politics : White House Gaggle Admits Its First Blogger
FishBowl DC has done it! After trying for about five days, MediaBistro: FishBowl DC has gotten a press pass into the White House. If you don't count Gannon/Guckert as a Blogger, which I certainly don't, they're the first.
I documented a few of Garret's tries, because it was interesting to me that though Mr. Gannon/Guckert got a press pass and Scott McClellan and others said it was "easy," FishBowl had to try for days to even get a response, much less the actual pass.
However, whether this is a publicity stunt for the internet by the White House or an actual victory, The New York Times now has an article up that announces a new big hit for the Blogging world: Garrett M. Graff of FishBowl DC now has a White House press pass. This is also a big deal for me, because he's my age - 23. That gives me hope that young Bloggers can start making some big hits. Let's also hope that, unlike conventional journalists, maybe they'll risk losing that pass by asking actually difficult questions.
Now, after some three billion years, the Darwinian era is over. The epoch of species competition came to an end about 10 thousand years ago when a single species, Homo sapiens, began to dominate and reorganize the biosphere. Since that time, cultural evolution has replaced biological evolution as the driving force of change. Cultural evolution is not Darwinian. Cultures spread by horizontal transfer of ideas more than by genetic inheritance. Cultural evolution is running a thousand times faster than Darwinian evolution, taking us into a new era of cultural interdependence that we call globalization. And now, in the last 30 years, Homo sapiens has revived the ancient pre-Darwinian practice of horizontal gene transfer, moving genes easily from microbes to plants and animals, blurring the boundaries between species. We are moving rapidly into the post-Darwinian era, when species will no longer exist, and the evolution of life will again be communal.
In the post-Darwinian era, biotechnology will be domesticated. There will be do-it-yourself kits for gardeners, who will use gene transfer to breed new varieties of roses and orchids. Also, biotech games for children, played with real eggs and seeds rather than with images on a screen. Genetic engineering, once it gets into the hands of the general public, will give us an explosion of biodiversity. Designing genomes will be a new art form, as creative as painting or sculpture. Few of the new creations will be masterpieces, but all will bring joy to their creators and diversity to our fauna and flora.
Read the rest of this one-page column, if you dare. He talks about the end of evolution like it's a good thing. Scares the shit out of me.
You may have read 
The really important thing about the Solio is that it has an internal battery. You don't have to charge the iPod directly; you can charge the Solio itself and then charge the iPod from it whenever you feel like it. Also, you're not just limited to charging your iPod. There are extra connectors to charge many popular cellular phones, and soon, they'll be releasing a female 12v car adapter connection and USB connections, so you'll be able to charge just about any small device that you normally can charge with your car. Sorry, not laptops yet; they're working on a more powerful version for bigger devices. 
