Sunday snippets

Thank you, President Carter.

President Bill Clinton being called the first black president was no compliment.

Mysterious ancient wooden statue, 11,000 years old.

Hawaii Flips Switch on World’s Largest Ocean Harvesting Clean Energy Plant

Wednesday weirdness, women and wimps

Poor Florida. Giant African Snails are invading. We need to find out if they're edible...

A hedge fund CEO who supports privatization of public schools wants to "help" with the teachers' pension funds...

Overuse of fertilizer is killing us... on the other hand, it allows us to feed our ever burgeoning population.

Anyone remember bash.org?  Best hits.

Women should know their bodies belong to them.

Ramping Up Renewables: Energy You Can Count On

Gabby Giffords speaks out about the senators who "filibustered the bipartisan gun background-check proposal".

Duh, deo and doo doo

Solar panels could destroy U.S. utilities, according to U.S. utilities

Discussion of funny videos on Reddit.

Dangerous deodorant

Falling frozen vultures.

The way you walk may make you a victim.

Deep doo doo from the man who knows all about shit.

From belly buttons to Jesus.

I never thought I'd be able to write that sentence....

The science of belly button bacteria.

Beijing rejects North’s envoy request

BEIJING - Pyongyang has allegedly asked Beijing to send them an envoy in order to improve their soured relations, but Beijing turned it down, seen as a warning regarding the regime’s recent warmongering rhetoric.

Because small government means being able to insert it into your private parts.  Republican Attorney General: Oral And Anal Sex Should Be ‘Crimes Against Nature’ In Virginia

Remembering Roger Ebert.

Reaping What You Sow: Are White Supremacists Preparing to Fight a new Civil War?

The Very Smell of Olive Oil is Good for You

Demotivational cat

Breakthrough in hydrogen fuel production could revolutionize alternative energy market

Gulf Of Mexico Dolphin Deaths Point To Continued Effects Of BP Oil Spill, Group Alleges

How much does going solar actually cost you and how long does it take to pay for itself.

Tennessee GOP’s Plan To Shove Jesus Down Our Throat Goes Hilariously Wrong

Weird, wise and wonderful... and simply stupid

21 Pictures That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity

Dog

The dangers of privatizing things that governments do.

Solar cell breakthrough taps previously unused energy source

11 Bizarrely Wrong Beliefs Americans Have About Themselves

Throwing trash into a volcano as an experiment. I'd be freaked out.





11 facts about the Affordable Care Act

Krugman:

None of this should be happening. As in 1931, Western nations have the resources they need to avoid catastrophe, and indeed to restore prosperity — and we have the added advantage of knowing much more than our great-grandparents did about how depressions happen and how to end them. But knowledge and resources do no good if those who possess them refuse to use them. And that’s what seems to be happening. The fundamentals of the world economy aren’t, in themselves, all that scary; it’s the almost universal abdication of responsibility that fills me, and many other economists, with a growing sense of dread.

Drink more soda and save the world?

But... how would the corporations make money?

The truth about renewable energy: Inexpensive, reliable, and inexhaustible

Renewable energy actually reduces electricity prices for businesses and consumers. 

Infrastructure to connect renewable energy is a great investment. 

Integrating variable renewable resources is easier and cheaper than we thought.

Why has integrating so much wind so fast been relatively painless? 

Geographic diversity: The wind blows at different times in different places across MISO’s 12-state footprint, smoothing out the variation at any single location. 

Better forecasting tools make it easier to accurately predict wind-turbine output. 

Transmission expansions and upgrades are being approved and constructed, giving operators greater flexibility to manage all resources and consumers more choices and competition. 

Grid operators around the country and the globe are gaining experience and learning from each other as they successfully integrate ever larger amounts of renewable energy into their systems.

America has far more than enough renewable energy resources to meet its entire electric demand.

Eclipsing intelligence...

The solar eclipse in pictures.

France bans Monsanto corn.

Street art.

The man who wishes the Google would ignore...

Congress is getting dumber, if you couldn't tell by now.  Especially in their dealings with them wimmen folk.

From lemons to lemonade: Reaction uses carbon dioxide to make carbon-based semiconductor:

(Phys.org) -- A materials scientist at Michigan Technological University has discovered a chemical reaction that not only eats up the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, it also creates something useful. And, by the way, it releases energy.

Ok, I'm ready! Let me go pick some lemons in my backyard... oh.  Rats.

Demanding that this gulf spill push us to a new place

To accept new alternate energies, to grow beyond oil.

It's time.

Because they think they have their boot on our necks?

We should just accept what's happening in the Gulf of Mexico because we need to drive our cars?

LONDON – Oil executives sent a strong challenge to Barack Obama on Tuesday, warning at a major oil conference that the American president's ban on risky deepwater drilling would cripple world energy supplies.

As a BP executive standing in for embattled CEO Tony Hayward was heckled by protesters, other industry leaders used the gathering to rally around the British company, arguing that eliminating deepsea rigs in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill was unsustainable.

Obama slapped a six-month moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf as part of his struggle to show that his administration is responding forcefully to the disaster. The decision halted the approval of any new permits for deepwater drilling and suspended drilling at 33 existing exploratory wells in the Gulf.

Then I think it's time we changed our energy sources, don't you? (How about driving one of these? Electric cars. You can even make your own! Scooters. Bikes. Mass transit.) We have a lot of options that have been ignored while we've been in the clutches of Big Oil.

It's time we talked about a divorce.

And it's about time!

Stand with the President for a clean-energy future

The next generation will not be held hostage to energy sources from the last century. The American people are ready for clean energy.
Add your name as a strong supporter of comprehensive energy and climate reform:
I stand with President Obama to pave the way for a clean-energy future that:
• Combats climate change;
• Creates a new economy powered by green jobs; and
• Ends our dependence on foreign oil.

Well... Crap!

Fueling Cars with Feces. The “Q microbe,” as it came to be known, is no ordinary bug. It can ingest—and produce ethanol from—virtually anything that contains cellulose, including human and animal sewage waste. So Qteros, the company Leschine founded to exploit the microbe’s abilities commercially, struck up a partnership with Applied CleanTech (ACT), an Israeli firm that generates alternative energy from wastewater solids. ACT’s sewage-recycling system transforms solids into “recyllose.” It turns out the Q microbe has a sweet tooth for recyllose, converting the cotton-like substance into ethanol for use in automobiles.

Jeff Hausthor, Qteros’ lead researcher, imagines a uniquely local market for this new biofuel. Obviously, waste materials are a burden to farms and municipalities, both financially and ecologically. But by putting the Q microbe to work, small-scale ethanol plants situated around sewage processing plants could become a reality.

How about home ethanol tanks to run our appliances?.... you'd just have to serve a lot of beans with dinner!

Omg!

RCA Airnergy Charger Harvests Electricity From WiFi Signals

The Airnergy Charger is amazing.

This little box has, inside it, some kind of circuitry that harvests WiFi energy out of the air and converts it into electricity. This has been done before, but the Airnergy is able to harvest electricity with a high enough efficiency to make it practically useful: on the CES floor, they were able to charge a BlackBerry from 30% to full in about 90 minutes, using nothing but ambient WiFi signals as a power source.

The Airnergy has a battery inside it, so you can just carry it around and as long as you’re near some WiFi, it charges itself. Unlike a solar charger, it works at night and you can keep it in your pocket. Of course, proximity to the WiFi source and the number of WiFi sources is important, but at the rate it charges, if you have a home wireless network you could probably just leave anywhere in your house overnight and it would be pretty close to full in the morning.

I think I'll buy 3000 of these...

What you can do with this here newfangled technology!

Google and a Blackberry help a dad deliver a baby.

The Copenhagen Wheel makes your bike a hybrid:



Hacking a Predator drone!

Look what high taxes on energy can do

In Denmark:



Could we possibly do it here?

Exactly.

Hamsters!

An alternate energy source!:

Hamsters in jackets harnessed for energy. Scientists have managed to harness the energy-producing power of hamsters by fitting them with tiny detector jackets.

Why aren't they just running off of the wheel? That thing makes a huge racket all night and could generate enough electricity for a small city.

And your point is?

Phila of Bouphonia:

And Saudi Arabian oil minister Ali Ibrahim Al-Naimi on the deadly perils of investing in alternative energy:

While the push for alternatives is important, we must also be mindful that efforts to rapidly promote alternatives could have a chilling effect on investment in the oil sector.

Right. Exactly. Thanks for noticing.

Repower America

Sign the petition:

As a constituent, I am writing to urge you to champion clean energy in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.

This economic recovery package contains programs that are important down payments on the path to repowering America. These investments will create high-paying new jobs for millions of Americans, demonstrate the readiness of clean energy across the country, and provide long overdue solutions to the climate crisis.

Tackling our economic, security and climate challenges will not be easy or instantaneous, but the next few weeks are a critical first step.

Whether this first step is taken is in Congress' hands. I hope I can count on your support.

Put them on every roof in every town in every county

Across the United States.... how about the world?

You can become a solar power producer with your own Premier Power turnkey system. Along with the benefit of slashing your electric bill to almost $ 5.00, you can spin your meter backwards and seamlessly connect to your utilities grid. Sell your electricity back to your utility company and receive a return on your investment.

Actually I'm aware that there are other cheaper and more environmentally friendly solar power products being developed right now, but we need to start somewhere.