Ethanol plant in Iowa. Image credit: Wikipedia This week USEPA announced that the maximum ethanol content of motor fuel sold in the USA would be allowed to rise from 10% to 15%. Positives of the Agency’s decision are: reduced dependence on foreign oil; less consumption of deep-water rig produced oil; diverting high fructose corn syrup (HCFC) from our guts to our cars; and, more votes for Congressional candidates who support the action. A big negative, however, is amplifying the run-up in corn prices caused by extreme weather in the US corn belt this season. F… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Fluid Bed Gasifier Plant. Credit Advanced Plasma Power In Jim Kunstler’s World Made By Hand, the former motorheads in town mine the dump for resources. There is a lot of valuable stuff in dumps; it has been cheaper to bury stuff than to recycle or compost it. They are also filling up, and nobody wants new ones in their backyard. In Belgium, Advanced Plasma Power is building a plant at a h… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Disabled children perform during the pre-closing show of the XIX Commonwealth Games closing ceremony at The Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in New Delhi on October 14, 2010. Photograph by: Prakash Singh, AFP/Getty Images DELHI – The 2010 Commonwealth Games, surprisingly successful against all odds, ended Thursday with a stunning and sentimental closing that had as much security as pomp after British media reports indicated terrorists may have targeted the ceremony and the Metro transit lines to Nehru Stadium. “They picked a wrestler and weightlifter as extra security,” quipped gold-medallist grappler Ohenawa Akuffo, chosen along with gold-medallist lifter Christine Girard, as honorary…
Continue reading …And here you were thinking Focus Design had thrown in the towel after producing just one self-balancing unicycle . Silly you, huh? Nearly two years to the day after the aforesaid company cranked out the goofiest transporter since the Segway , along comes the SBU v2.0 to rekindle our hope in humanity. According to the outfit, this newfangled edition is sleeker, safer and more powerful, and better still, it should be “much easier to learn.” Focus is also tossing out a somewhat ambiguous guarantee, noting that it’ll most certainly be “an instant crowd-pleaser.” The newly designed motor packs 1,000 watts of power (compared to 350 watts on v1.0), and the more powerful battery will keep you cruising on Ventura Boulevard for at least a few more minutes than before. Control freaks will appreciate the addition of three gyro sensors (to monitor pitch, roll and yaw), lowered foot pegs and a regenerative braking system. This marvel of modern engineering is expected to start shipping next month, with just $1,499 and a willingness to try something your mother wouldn’t recommend standing between you and… well, something that your mother would never recommend. Vid’s after the break. Continue reading Focus Design’s SBU self-balancing unicycle hits 2.0: faster, stronger, sleeker, zanier Focus Design’s SBU self-balancing unicycle hits 2.0: faster, stronger, sleeker, zanier originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 10:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …And all you Republicans coming to D.C. in January are going to have to learn to love me: President Obama reveals in a magazine article that he is weighing what to do if Republicans win the House majority next month, and has come up with a novel approach: Make the GOP work with him. In a seeming twist on the post-1994 midterm calculation made by President Bill Clinton — when Republicans pummeled Democrats in the congressional election — Obama said he thinks Republicans will have to move in his direction no matter the outcome of the Nov. 2 vote. “It may be that regardless of what happens after this election, they feel more responsible,” he is quoted saying in the Sunday edition of The New York Times Magazine, “either because they didn’t do as well as they anticipated, and so the strategy of just saying no to everything and sitting on the sidelines and throwing bombs didn’t work for them, or they did reasonably well, in which case the American people are going to be looking to them to offer serious proposals and work with me in a serious way.” Accusing the public of mistaking his abilities, the president also told the magazine that he’s a little taken aback that voters are disappointed with the current turn of events in his administration. “The mythology has emerged somehow that we ran this flawless campaign, I never made a mistake, that we were master communicators, everything worked in lockstep,” Obama is quoted saying. “That’s not how I look at stuff, because I remember what the campaign was like. And it was just as messy and just as difficult. And there were all sorts of moments when our supporters lost hope, and it looked like we weren’t going to win. And we’re going through that same period here.” The inside-the-White-House account of trouble and turmoil in the administration comes 20 days before the midterm election and is sure to deflate Democrats reluctant to hear the president detailing mistakes from his first 20 months in office. “It’s pretty clear to me based on this interview that the president is saying, ‘I’ve given up, You’re on your own,’” said Democratic strategist Doug Schoen. There’s more at the link . There will be a big difference between what Bill Clinton did after the 1994 election and what Obama is likely to do after this election. Bill Clinton was a professional politician and he understood that in order to have a chance at re-election he would have to moderate his views. His pragmatism allowed him to regain enough of the public’s trust to win a plurality in 1996 and another term in office. Obama, on the other hand, is not a professional politician, but is an ideologue. To him there’s only one way to do thing and that’s to pursue a socialist America without rest. Even a pounding in the midterm election won’t change that. He’ll continue to push a lefty agenda and will hope that blaming Republicans for stopping him will be enough to earn another term. It’s likely to be a very frustrating two years for Obama and the Democrats.
Continue reading …You can’t help but smile, can you? ECOtality ‘s latest entrant into the rapidly expanding Blink line of EV chargers looks awfully familiar to avid motorists, and for good reason. Designed to mimic a conventional petrol pump, the DC Fast Charger should blend right in when installed in Best Buy parking lots , gas stations and beyond, with the company aiming to get these positioned in a wide variety of locations in order to ease “range anxiety.” We’re also told that motorists will eventually be able to utilize the Blink Network Smartphone Application in order to locate the nearest charging station and receive GPS directions, and an RFID-enabled payment system makes it easy to drain your wallet, rejuvenate your vehicle and get you back on the open road. There’s even a 42-inch LCD on the top, and while it’s primarily engineered for ads and information, we’re sure a few wire swaps would have your Xbox 360 displayed in no time flat. The DC Fast Charger should be hitting 16 major American cities in the near future, and there’s a video after the break to tide you over. Continue reading DC Fast Charger joins the ECOtality EV charging station fleet, looks like a fuel pump DC Fast Charger joins the ECOtality EV charging station fleet, looks like a fuel pump originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 09:49:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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Continue reading …Image credit: Care international in the Middle East Jordan seems to be a hot spot for permaculture. Way back in 2006, Warren reported on a Flash video that was making the rounds called Greening the Desert , documenting how permaculture activist Geoff Lawton worked with the local population to turn 10 acres of arid, salty Jordanian desert into a lush productive garden. While funding for the project eventually ran out, a
Continue reading …Image credit: Keith Johnson From massive solar installations in Nevada to environmental education tours , many Native American communities are implementing innovative and exciting sustainability initiatives. Now one farmer on the Pine Ridge Lakota reservation in South Dakota is hoping to create an ongoing permaculture teaching and demonstration project to promote s… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Rejoice, PS3 owners, your Netflix streaming experience just got vastly better than anything else on the market. Starting October 18 Netflix on the PS3 will no longer require a disc, and it’ll stream some content with 1080i resolution and / or 5.1-channel surround audio, while everyone else will be stuck with a max of 720p stereo for the time being. Oh, and you’ll get subtitles on some content as well. Netflix is partnering with Dolby on the audio side, and the surround format will be Dolby Digital Plus, which is the same codec used by the VUDU HDX streaming service — we’re guessing it’ll require a tiny bit more bandwidth but the results should sound pretty great. Netflix says 5.1 will come to other platforms “over time,” so we’ll see how long that takes — and given that the PS3 is now disc-free and the company’s eschewed the SRS surround features baked into its Silverlight-based platform, we’re guessing Microsoft’s exclusivity period has now completely run its course. Video and PR after the break. Continue reading Netflix on PS3 goes disc-free, gets 1080i streaming and 5.1 surround sound Netflix on PS3 goes disc-free, gets 1080i streaming and 5.1 surround sound originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Oct 2010 09:08:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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