Makes me want to buy two

The Kochs Are Plotting A Multimillion-Dollar Assault On Electric Vehicles

Art to Mars to ruined library

Master forger comes clean about tricks that fooled art world for four decades

Mars crater image beamed back by Nasa rover Opportunity

Nasa scientists say crater, formed by an impact billions of years ago, is the largest yet encountered

Dads Reveal How Having Daughters Has Changed Their View Of Women

Sales of plug-in cars

Finding beauty in neglect.

Hope and humor

An all electric car

Contentment.

Standing up for veggie gardening!



And, as always, Phila of Bouphonia's Friday hope blog.

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.

Things that are trying to kill you

Besides clowns...



Fireplaces

Those who are sure Climate Change is FALSE!

6 Life Saving Techniques From the Movies (That Can Kill You)

People who don't like electric cars.

And adding insult to injury...AFTER you are dead.

In the heart of the lands of Big Oil

Electric cars?

The United Arab Emirates is planning a bunch of “personal rapid transit” devices: driverless taxis that run on electricity and could hit the streets of Masdar as early as this year.

Built by Systematica, the PRT system will help keep Masdar (a planned city in Abu Dhabi) completely car-free. The vehicles travel at speeds of roughly 7 meters per second, with the longest routes planned for about 2.5km, and will be located two stories beneath street level. Riders will pay about the same price they'd normally drop on an equivalent taxi ride.

How about this for an idea...

Stop making cars that suck?

WASHINGTON – Detroit's Big Three automakers pleaded with Congress on Tuesday for a $25 billion lifeline to save their teetering industrial titans from collapse, warning of economic catastrophe for the nation as well as their once-proud companies if they are denied.

Distributorcap of Distributorcap NY has an excellent overview.

Laura Flanders of GRITv has a video.

Update 11/22: Alyx of LOLFed:



(found via Bryan of Why Now?)

Blog sprinkles

Electric cars


Painter Bob Ross


Lol Bush from the Guardian:




The unraveling of the FBI's case against Bruce Ivins.


Coal emissions and profits are up.


Fill in the blank, you trollop! (More) (and even more with pictures)


McCain's mother sued his first wife.


DistributorCap NY has an excellent ongoing discussion about our broken Constitution.


Proof that eggplant kills.


Newt's bloated head needs a tire gauge.

We can thank the car companies for the oil fix we're in

Look at the background of this cute Norwegian car called a Think: (my bold)

Think's journey to the world market has been similarly full of detours. The company (previously called Pivco) began in 1991 and by 1998 had built more than 1,000 small and charismatic electric runabouts, sold mostly in Norway (where you still see a few on the road). Then, in 1999, the company was bought by the Yankee giant Ford Motor Co., which was scrambling at the time to comply with California's Zero Emission Vehicle mandate, essentially requiring automakers to build fleets of electric vehicles. Ford renamed the company Think Nordic and began a complete redesign of the car. When, in 2003, the American automakers succeeded in modifying California's mandate, Detroit's flirtation with electronic vehicles ended. General Motors Corp. famously killed the EV1 program, and Ford sold Think to a Swiss electronics firm.

"The lawyers stopped us," says Ole Fretheim, the factory's manager. Think went bankrupt in 2006.

The irony is that Ford had already poured $150 million into the Think City project, engineering among other things the car's rigid steel space frame, the crash structure. If and when it comes to the U.S. market -- the company opened an office in Menlo Park, Calif., earlier this year with plans to sell cars stateside in 2009 -- the Think City will be a rarity: A full-speed electric car meeting U.S. and European crash standards.

"The car was 95% complete when Ford stopped development in 2002," says Fretheim. In the long run, he says, the down time might have been a good thing. "When we started work again we had better options for batteries."

95% complete. We almost were there and the automakers tubed it. Why? Why? Why?

In response, here are five electric cars you can buy right now. (link via NTodd at Dohiyi Mir)

Another electric car

A California company known for its funky, electric commuter cars says it will break into the high-performance market with a 320-horsepower, three-wheeled sports car by 2009.

Industry insiders wonder what these people have been smoking.

ZAP says it will begin producing the Alias by the middle of next year, a timeline that many say is exceedingly optimistic -- if not impossible -- given that the company only recently invited suppliers to design components for the $30,000 car.

I don't care what it looks like. Give me a reliable electric car and I'll put solar panels on my roof, my driveway and my kids. Imagine being able to completely cut out the Big Oil companies. Think of Cheney turning three different shades of purple....

It would be worth it just to see that....