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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… 5 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: science
Leveraging digital design in synthetic biology
Automatic Design of Digital Synthetic Gene Circuits from PLoS Computational Biology. They seem to be saying look, real biology isn’t generally digital, and all that continuum behavior means we need a bunch of new and complex tools to do anything … Continue reading
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Tagged bioinformatics, biology, computational, design, genetic engineering, plos, science, technology
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Education will not be fixed, it will evolve
It seems like there have been calls to “fix” our education system in the US for decades. The Apollo program’s Saturn V engines were largely built by young engineers and scientists. Their educations were influenced by the Sputnik-inspired National Defense … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged anki, education, engineering, fablab, hackspace, khanacademy, kids, learning, online, policy, school, science, technology
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Code 46 and the dearth of thoughtful science fiction
I recently watched Code 46 again. When I first saw it a few years ago I didn’t like it very much, but this time it seemed more interesting. The storyline doesn’t hold together very well, and from a scientific point … Continue reading
The Yeti Homeland Project
I’m not sure what to make of our willingness to participate in the terraforming of the Earth. To explore it, I’ll consider an alternative history in which Antarctica was marginally habitable, and colonized a million years ago by woolly hominids … Continue reading
Posted in journal
Tagged antarctica, change, climate, conspiracy, energy, gas, greenhouse, ice, public, science, sustainability, yeti
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Links for the week of December 3rd, 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 activism, apocalypse, architecture, assange, assassination, carbon, cars, climate, coal, design, energy, government, greenpeace, internet, iran, israel, law, lifecycle, nuclear, passivhaus, politics, privacy, rail, research, science, stuxnet, sustainability, technology, terrorism, transparency, transportation, travel, wikileaks
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A Thousand Splendid Power Plants
Xcel Energy’s Valmont East Terraforming Station in Boulder, CO. As a side effect, it powers all the lights you see in the background. James Watt’s industrial revolution was fired by coal, is fired by coal, and shall be fired by … Continue reading
Links for the week of October 12th, 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.
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Tagged america, demographics, economics, gdp, maps, money, politics, science, socialism, society, statistics, sweden, usa, wealth
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Links for the week of September 28th, 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.
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Tagged architecture, atmosphere, bicycle, buildings, cars, change, climate, economics, efficiency, energy, non-linear, passivhaus, policy, science, transportation
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Links for the week of August 13th, 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.
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Tagged architecture, argentina, data, dumpster, energy, freegan, government, maps, money, nasa, NIH, photos, policy, research, science, sustainability, war
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