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- Canadian Oil Sands Flyover
An aerial/telephoto exploration of the Canadian Oil Sands operations. Two trillion barrels of oil in the ground. Pyramids of sulfur and coke. Lakes of oil stretching to the horizon. At $200k/yr, it's easy to understand how one might get roped in, gold rush style. - Clean energy will unfortunately be political
Conservative thinktanks step up attacks against Obama's clean energy strategy, as revealed by ALEC bills and other PR documents. This morning at the World Renewable Energy Forum, in response to a (long winded) question about how we might re-frame the energy discussion in light of the unfortunate hay which was made from Solyndra's failure, US Energy Secretary Stephen Chu re-iterated that clean energy should not be a political issue -- that it's just common sense. That may be true, but it doesn't mean it will remain apolitical. As Pericles once said... "Just because you do not take an interest in - The Dangerous World of Underground Chemistry
A look at the increasingly outsourced world of underground pharma. Domestic black-market chemists handle R&D and distribution, and the actual manufacturing is done in China. Seems that way with everything. - Google Street View for building energy efficiency
Essess is doing drive-by thermal imaging in high density urban areas across the US, hoping to target possible building energy efficiency opportunities. Another company is using urban satellite imagery to choose the best rooftops for solar energy siting. Big Brother may be watching you... but at least occasionally he's got the right idea. - The Neapolitan Mob’s Most Dangerous Family
A character sketch of Paolo di Lauro, one of the Neapolitan Camorra's former leaders. Southern Italy it seems, like some parts of Mexico, operates with more than one quasi-state organization governing in parallel. A tacit negotiation between the official and unofficial systems, which sometimes erupts into violence -- ironically, at those times when the so-called "criminal" organizations have become weak.
- Canadian Oil Sands Flyover
Twitterfeed
- Incredible photo essay on the Athabasca Tar Sands operations: businessinsider.com/canadian-oil-s… 4 days ago
- At a great talk about individual cities as the right scale for renewable energy systems innovation at #wref2012 1 week ago
- Heard rural Wyoming folk talking local Chinese coal/gas investments, hacking of their SCADA water system. I live in a @GreatDismal future. 1 week ago
- The tar sands have to stay in the ground. Stop the pipeline… again. And again. And again, if necessary. act.350.org/sign/kxl/ 3 months ago
- Roughly 2/3 of all the humans who have ever reached the age of 65 are alive today. 4 months ago
Incoming Memes
Tag Archives: philosophy
Into Eternity by Michael Madsen
I am now in this place where you should never come. We call it Onkalo. Onkalo means hiding place. In my time it is still unfinished, though work began in the 20th century when I was just a child. Work … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged civilization, design, energy, engineering, film, future, history, nuclear, philosophy, review, reviews, time, waste
2 Comments
Markets and Morals
A good talk from Chautauqua on the interaction between markets and morals. Some interesting examples of morally ambiguous markets: countries paying one another to take on refugee acceptance obligations and the outsourcing pregnancy to impoverished surrogate mothers in Gujarat, India. … Continue reading
Posted in linkstream
Tagged chautauqua, economics, ethics, fora.tv, india, markets, philosophy, politics, pregnancy, refugees, surrogate, video
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Links for the week of May 29th, 2010
If you want to follow my shared links in real time instead of as a weekly digest, head over to Delicious. You can search them there easily too.
Posted in linkstream
Tagged africa, agriculture, art, bicycle, bioinformatics, biology, biotech, boulder, california, colorado, drugs, economics, economy, energy, ethanol, genetics, golden, green, humboldt, jobs, kickstarter, law, marijuana, philosophy, photos, science, southafrica, sustainability, synthetic, venter
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Links for the week of November 20th, 2009
If you want to follow my shared links in real time instead of as a weekly digest, head over to Delicious. You can search them there easily too.
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Tagged anasazi, art, backpacking, biology, blm, canyon, career, cedarmesa, change, children, climate, coffee, cop15, copenhagen, design, drugs, education, fractal, gradschool, grandgulch, law, mandelbrot, marijuana, math, philosophy, portland, school, science, technology, tools, twitter, ucsc, utah, visualization, web2.0, wilderness
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Links for the week of August 20th, 2009
If you want to follow my shared links in real time instead of as a weekly digest, head over to Delicious. You can search them there easily too.
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Tagged advocacy, agriculture, apple, astroturf, backup, backups, bicycle, cars, cities, climate, criticalmass, design, economics, energy, flickr, food, framing, freegan, gardening, green, hiphop, information, infrastructure, internet, law, mac, oil, organic, osx, parking, pasadena, petroleum, philosophy, photos, planning, policy, portland, propaganda, publishing, python, research, science, society, sustainability, technology, timemachine, tools, transportation, travel, urban, volunteer, waste, wwoof, youtube
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On the Pareto frontier in salary-vacation space
Dear (Prospective Employer), Thank you for your monetarily very generous offer of employment! Honestly, it’s not obvious to me how I could spend $X a year, as I am currently living quite comfortably on about one Nth of that amount. … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged economy, employment, interview, investing, jobs, letters, negotiation, personal, philosophy, professional, salary, vacation
6 Comments
The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb
I finished reading Taleb’s second book, The Black Swan. He openly admits that it’s not really a new book, but a re-writing of his first book, Fooled by Randomness, which I loved. He’s gotten really incredibly lucky with the timing … Continue reading
Tagged books, economics, finance, non-linear, philosophy, probability, reviews, science
4 Comments
Shared Links for May 12th
Forecast: On Climate Change, Cooler Temperatures Bring Hotter Air – Augh, we are prisoners to so many perceptual fallacies. Recency and narration loom large among them. It turns out that the average temperature of the last 12 months is a … Continue reading
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Tagged agriculture, architecture, bicycles, cities, climate, design, economics, fallacy, food, gardening, germany, government, green, parking, philosophy, policy, politics, popper, potatoes, propaganda, science, society, statistics, sustainability, taxes, transportation, visualization, wealth
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Shared Links for Mar 2nd
Long Beach’s State Senator Lowenthal Takes on Parking Requirements – Wow, how awesome would this be? Massive state wide overhaul of our insane parking requirements? Will be interesting to see the vote… (tagged: parking transportation policy california ) Report on … Continue reading
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Tagged california, education, environment, green, open, openaccess, parking, philosophy, policy, politics, privacy, science, surveillance, sustainability, technology, transparency, transportation
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