Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week’s most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us — it’s the Week in Green. This week Inhabitat saw high-speed railways pick up steam around the globe as China announced plans to build a trans-continental railroad in South America and Japan began developing the world’s fastest high-speed train . We also saw eco transportation reach new heights as a kite-powered car completed an epic 5,000km journey across Australia and researchers developed a nanotech paint that will increase the fuel efficiency of airplanes. The automotive world is also gearing up for the Geneva car show as Toyota is getting set to roll out an all-electric IQ and Porsche pulled back the curtain on its Panamera S Hybrid and Boxster EV . In other news, this week we brought you an exclusive video interview where celebrated environmentalist Stewart Brand argues that nuclear power could save the world. We also explored several other alternative energy sources that are decidedly less controversial – PurposeEnergy is transforming beer brewing waste into a source of clean-burning biofuel, and a design duo has proposed a series of beautiful solar-powered artificial trees that scrub CO2 from the air. Roughly one in every six people do not have access to safe drinking water, so we were excited to learn about a pedal-powered water purification system based on the bicycle that holds great promise for the developing world. Speaking of cleaning up dirty water, this week Stephen Baldwin sued Kevin Costner over the oil-separating technology that cleaned up the BP oil spill. And last but not least, we were wowed by this hydrofloor system , which can save space and energy by concealing a swimming pool beneath your living room floor! Inhabitat’s Week in Green: trains speed up, paint improves planes, and the CO2-scrubbing artificial trees originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 21:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Happy Birthday Kurt Cobain! (Nirvana- Love Buzz) Feliz Cumpleaños 44 Kurt!! Be Still and Know … Kurt Cobain | This Is Not Porn – Rare and beautiful celebrity photos Kurt Cobain . … Tags: celebrity, Kurt Cobain , old, photos, rare. Leave Comment. Name (required). Mail (hidden) (required). Website. The Archive. Select Celebrity, Adam West, Akira Kurosawa, Albert Einstein, Alfred Hitchcock … WHITE LIGHTNING: BIrthday Tribute: Kurt Cobain BIrthday Tribute: Kurt Cobain . HAPPY BIRTHDAY KURT COBAIN . That outfit in the background has been informing my style for years. May I one day find those sunglasses. Here’s a clip on my fave Nirvana song from an MTV appearance in 92 … Kurt Cobain Film Feb 20 Kurt Cobain Film Feb 20. Kurt Cobain will be featured in a documentary film on Feb 20 to mark his 44th birthday. Happy Birthday to Kurt Cobain | Pigeons & Planes I guess Happy Birthday isn’t really appropriate, but that is what people say, right? I don’t know. I’m gonna stick with it. I’m not good at remembering. Kurt Cobain's Lesson: Be Hated for What You Are | www.bullfax.com Beleaguered US rocker Courtney Love has lost custody of her 17-year-old daughter Frances Bean, child of the late Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain , according to court documents.A Los Angeles judge passed custody of the girl to her … amoralafrancesa says: Happy Birthday, Kurt Cobain !! – forever-nirvana: http://tumblr.com/xhh1kgh92b
Continue reading …Noel Biderman has a wife and two kids and a stated belief that monogamy is a “failed experiment.” But he has to say that, because he created AshleyMadison, the website that caters to people looking for affairs, notes BusinessWeek in a profile. Some highlights: Members: The site claims 8.5…
Continue reading …Rabat – A son of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi promised a programme of reforms on Sunday after bloody protests against his father’s rule reached the capital. Saif al-Islam…
Continue reading …When your tablet needs a windowed UI, has it crossed some undrawn, implied boundary that makes it too complex for the kinds of casual tasks you’d want to accomplish on a tablet? Hard to say, but the mobile developers at Ixonos took to MWC last week to showcase a windowed build of Android on top of a tablet developed by Aava — so at the very least, we know it’s possible. The system is built atop Froyo and allows apps to continue running in the background — they don’t suspend, which means you can, say, play a video while you’re off composing messages. The company also demonstrated the software on a dual-screen 7-inch tablet, allowing apps to be launched on either screen and transferred between them — all seemingly without any customizations needed to individual apps, which is going to be key for a system like this to gain any market traction. Follow the break for Ixonos’ press release and demo video. Continue reading Ixonos shows off windowed UI for Android Ixonos shows off windowed UI for Android originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Feb 2011 20:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …It really sickens me to listen to the hypocrisy of western politicians calling for both sides to “exercise restraint” in the popular protests that are now sweeping across the Arab world ( Death tolls rise in Bahrain and Libya , 19 February). These same politicians have maintained a deafening silence for years when it suited them to support a swath of autocratic (often oil-rich) Arab governments. I think in particular of Libya, which I recently visited as an academic from a leading UK university. Having moved from pariah to western friend, it was awash with new American oilmen making big bucks and contractors building the first western hotels. But those few frightened Libyans who would risk talking to me spoke of 40 years of totalitarian rule, political prisoners, torture and the complete impossibility of change. In the last couple of days one of my Libyan students here in the UK managed to contact his family in the east of the country (internet down, many tele phones cut off and no journalists) and they spoke of cold-blooded massacres by “foreign mercenaries brought in from neighbouring countries”. The words of that student, in tears in my office, still ring chillingly in my ears: “He [Gaddafi] is completely mad. This is not in like Egypt or Tunisia. He will massacre every one. May God help us all!” Name and address supplied • What are teargas canisters and “crowd control ammunition” ( UK supplied weapons used in Bahrain crackdown , 18 February) if not weapons “which might be used to facilitate internal repression”? Why were licences for them approved after the government had “closely consider[ed] allegations of human rights abuses”? Allan Baker Kettering, Northamptonshire Libya Bahrain Egypt Tunisia Middle East Protest guardian.co.uk
Continue reading …Howard Kurtz devoted a good part of “Reliable Sources” Sunday to the attack on CBS's Lara Logan when Egypt's Hosni Mubarak resigned as President. As he addressed some disgraceful comments made about the incident by members of the media, Kurtz made it clear to viewers that Debbie Schlussel was a conservative, better never once depicted Nir Rosen as a liberal (video follows with transcript and commentary): HOWARD KURTZ, HOST: After CBS's Lara Logan was beaten and sexually assaulted in Cairo, a journalist named Nir Rosen, who's written for “The New Yorker” and “The Nation” among others, lost his job at NYU Fellow for tweeting the following, Lara Logan had to outdo Anderson, meaning Anderson Cooper who was roughed up in Cairo. It would have been funny if it happened to Anderson too. Nir Rosen went on Cooper's 360 and here's what he had to say. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) ANDERSON COOPER, HOST “ANDERSON COOPER 360″: Nir, how do you explain your tweets? NIR ROSEN, FREELANCE JOURNALIST: I don't have an explanation. I was a jerk. It was 2:00 in the morning and I was being thoughtless, forgetting that I wasn't just talking to a couple of people, that I was talking, in theory, to hundreds of thousands of people. (END VIDEO CLIP) As that clip was playing, the chyron at the bottom of the screen said, “Nir Rosen, Freelance Journalist.” Nothing about him being a liberal: KURTZ: Mary Elizabeth Williams, what he wrote was appalling, but he apologized profusely. Was this an overreaction for him to lose his job? MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAMS, SERVED AS CULTURE CRITIC FOR PUBLIC RADIO INTERNATIONAL'S “THE TAKEAWAY”WILLIAMS: And he also — he apologized. He expanded upon that in salon.com this week, where he said, again, that he apologized, but then he also backhandedly started talking about how he was so outraged that this attention only comes when, as he put it, the pretty blond lady has something happen to her. So is the outrage justified? It depends on who you're talking to. I know he's received threats. I think people have harassed him. That's never excusable. That's never the right reaction. Should he have lost his job. Yes, I think he should have because I think what he said was despicable. KURTZ: All right. Tweeting at 2:00 in the morning in dangerous. Now watch how Kurtz made it a point that Schlussel was conservative: KURTZ: Donatella Lorch, a conservative blogger named Debbie Schlussel wrote the following: “So sad, too bad, Lara. No one told her to go there. She knew the risks. And then this. How fitting that Lara Logan was 'liberated' by Muslims in Liberation Square while she was gushing over the other part of the liberation. Hope you're enjoying the revolution, Lara.” What are we to make of that? While he was speaking, this was on the screen clearly denoting Schlussel as a “Conservative Political Commentator”: As such, two mentions of Schlussel's political leaning but nothing about Rosen's. Why, Howie?
Continue reading …Click here to view this media Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said Sunday that the Bush’s administration’s erroneous belief that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was not the only reason for invasion, but it was “the big one.” “I think the concern I had that the information we had was imperfect,” Rumsfeld told CNN’s Candy Crowley. “It was more than imperfect,” Crowley interrupted. “Some of it was just flat wrong.” An Iraqi defector, codenamed Curveball, who allegedly helped convince the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had a secret stash of biological and chemical weapons, admitted this week that he made it all up. Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi told The Guardian that he invented the stories to help topple Saddam Hussein, but was shocked when the US used tales as an excuse to go to war. “Well, the intelligence community talks to hundreds of people,” Rumsfeld explained. “They have human assets such as this man. Some are honest. Some are dishonest. Some do it for money and some do it for self-aggrandizement and some just lie.” “Did anyone say ‘give me the person who gave the intelligence’ because sitting here listening to you, to me, the fault of the war was the intelligence community — the false premise of the war?” Crowley asked. “Well, first of all, there were a variety of reasons for the war, not simply WMD,” Rumsfeld replied. “If you looked at the resolution from the Congress, there were multiple reasons, and if you looked at the UN resolution, there were multiple reasons so it wasn’t a sole reason.” “But it was the big one,” Crowley observed. “No question it was the big one,” Rumsfeld agreed. “I think probably people would argue to you that we wouldn’t have gone in had we said ‘no, they didn’t have weapons of mass destruction,’” Crowley noted. “I think that’s probably right. A great many people would not,” Rumsfeld admitted.
Continue reading …Valerie Jarrett was once the least visible of President Obama’s top advisors—but with the exits of Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, and Robert Gibbs, Jarrett has gained duties while coming increasingly into the spotlight as Obama’s right-hand woman. In a lengthy profile, the Chicago Tribune traces her often wildly varied…
Continue reading …Facebook was a huge help to the Egyptian protesters who used it to organize the rallies that eventually ousted Mubarak—and to express his gratitude, one young Egyptian man named his new daughter after the site. Little “Facebook Jamal Ibrahim,” the family’s firstborn, received many gifts from other Egyptian youth,…
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